November 23, 2002

  • It’s 3:10am, on Saturday morning. I had hoped to be gone, snoozing in some rest area in Idaho right about now. (Probably the one just east of Boise on I-84. Yes, I have an encyclopedic knowledge of rest area locations.)

    The point being that I’m having a lot of trouble getting my ass out the door.

    I couldn’t find the freaking title for the van, so I can’t give it away just yet. I have to go through more red tape in order to do that. Hopefully the evil neighbor won’t get it towed while I’m gone for a month and a half.

    I couldn’t get rid of the computer junk, even though some people from usenet expressed interest. I was just too overwhelmed to tell them when to come by and get stuff.

    And, to top it all off, today I got a letter from the courts, calling me in for jury duty ON CHRISTMAS EVE. Why? Because I’m not stressed enough, and it’s important that I feel really awful before I go, apparently.

    I’m inflexible. It’s a fact. It’s known. I’d rather be the image of flexibility, the poster-child for gliding through changes like an Aikido master swimming through an onslaught of attackers. But that’s not how I’m allowed to operate.

    So here I am being pissed at myself and whoever ‘randomly’ picked me for Christmas Eve jury duty which I have to get out of. Not because these are big deal problems, but because they’re just more red tape existence issues, and they demand that I change my priorities and refocus and cross things off the to-do list that I haven’t done, simply because they will never get done and it’s no use leaving them on the list.

    The term is ‘executive dysfunction.’ You might see that term and think of Ken Lay, but you’d be wrong. ‘Executive dysfunction’ gets defined in the context of everything from ADD to schizophrenia. Essentially, it works like this: If you’re too busy being crazy, you’re unable to do things like plan ahead and follow through.

    The executive dysfunction label tears my heart apart when I realize it applies to me. I just want to deny that I’m having trouble with it. I want it to be true that, once I get this mind thing all straightened out, I’ll be able to enter the workaday world. But it just ain’t happening.

    Anyway. Here I am at my desk at three in the morning being overwhelmed.