You’re allowed to say “crap,” but you’re not allowed to say “shit?” How much sense does that make?

Both words have the same literal meaning and are completely interchangeable from a linguistic standpoint. But one is considered acceptable and the other is, apparently, a sin to use.

A sin? According to whom? Well, according to those who believe it, it’s taking the name of the Lord in vain.

Oh really.

So shit’s become one of God’s names.

“Oh Shit, the eternal father, we ask thee in the name of thy son, Jesus H. Fuck, to bless and sanctify this bread…”

This title of an album by the Talking Heads is hilarious because it didn’t make sense in the first place, so asking it to stop making sense is like asking me to continue breathing.

Part of the value of realizing that I am a meaning making machine whose life is empty and meaningless, is knowing that part of my nature is to work to make sense of a world that frequently makes no sense.

For example, sometime last night, my friend and co-worker, Christie Rainey shot and killed herself. WTF.

Edit: Christie would have said that she “elected to discard the physical,” or “got off the front lines.” On occasion of others of my acquaintance doing the same, she had corrected me thus.

Christie was the perfect example of someone who, in retrospect, made perfect sense as a candidate for the suicide you never saw coming. She was friends with everyone–even the people who were friends with nobody–always smiling, probably involved with drugs and alcohol more than she needed to be, survivor of her son’s suicide some two years ago, and never letting anyone know (at least as far as I can tell) what she was dealing with.

Christie had plans with friends, family and coworkers to go see concerts and take road trips. This was either a spur-of-the-moment decision, or something deliberately and very carefully withheld.

And it makes no sense. No sense at all. A bolt from the blue. Out of left field. Shot in the dark. Unforeseeable. And as a machine that makes sense out of things, I simply can’t deal with that.

It causes me to feel out of control. (In reality, I’m not in control.) I feel anxious; afraid; wondering who the next one will be. For surely, there will be another, and there is nothing I can do to stop it. I feel afraid.

I’m starting to hate sunny, beautiful Tuesdays. Those are the days that bad things happen.

How do I know if I’m addicted to something?
If you can’t stop doing something, you’re addicted to it.

I can’t stop drinking water; am I a dihydrogen monoxide addict?
No. Being thirsty is your body’s way of telling you that you need water, and drinking water is a legitimate way to quench your thirst.

So how do I tell the difference between a legitimate need and an addiction?
Well, when people are addicted to things, consuming them becomes more important than having their life work. They’ll miss work and break the law to get the thing they’re addicted to.

After hurricane Katrina, people missed work to break into stores and steal bottled water.
Right, but again, water is a legitimate need. You’ll die without it.

So “you’ll die without it” is the test for whether something is addictive or not? You’ll die without food, but don’t people become addicted to eating? And what about sex? You won’t die without sex, but we don’t call you a sex addict until you’re David Duchovny.
You only need so much food; after a certain point, your bodies need for nourishment is filled and the benefit of eating more decreases. You won’t die without sex, but it’s an important part of the human experience, and there are consequences to living without it as far as your quality of life is concerned.

Sure! I like sex; I’d like to have sex all the time. How do I know where to draw the line between my legitimate need for sex and addiction?
Well, there’s the point of diminishing returns mentioned earlier. Also, when an action is performed out of addiction, it actually tries to serve some other, unrelated need that it can’t fill–booze, for example, can’t keep you company, but sometimes people drink because they’re lonely.

Lastly, there’s the issue of dependency and withdrawal, which only applies to some chemical addictions, like nicotine or heroin. Once the body is used to the chemical, it can’t function normally without it; removing the substance creates unpleasant withdrawal symptoms.

you’ve all fallen silent… Have you lost interest? Have I left you speechless? Or have the kung-fu creatures on the rampage gotten you?

re: my… malaise.

While I was in Denver a few weeks ago and pretty much everything went the way I didn’t want it to go, a friend and coach suggested to me that I look at what, in my life, I was still not dealing with or letting go unmanaged. When she asked me, the answer was right there for me:

I can’t have what I want.

So then she asked me what I want, and I realized I didn’t know. Asking someone what they want is a pretty open-ended question and while I am pretty clear on what I don’t want, I haven’t spent a lot of time figuring out what I do want.

Over the last couple of days, I’ve been thinking about what it is that I really want, and why it is that I so deeply believe that I can’t have it. And then, some time on Thursday, the conversation shifted:

I already have what I want.

The more I think about it, the more I see that this is a more accurate statement. I really, truly do not know what I could ask for other than what I already have.

What I realized is that my previous core belief assumed that I want solutions to all my problems, and that’s not so. Without problems I’d be miserable. I’d be bored to tears. I’d have nothing to do. I have constituted myself as someone who solves problems and there’s nothing that makes me happier or feel more fulfilled than having a big set of difficult problems to sink my teeth into. The best moments of my life have been when I have worked and worked and worked and finally solved something. These moments were brief, and followed immediately by thoughts of how I will do it better next time–not like there’s something wrong with the solution I came up with, but excitement that there’s still a level of performance and improvement I can reach for.

I have reached a point in my life where the problems I have chosen (and am choosing) for myself to deal with are really hard problems. Some seem hopeless. None of them are problems I can solve on my own. I’ve complained ad nauseum about them, but I realize now I wouldn’t trade them for anything. They are my problems. Some people have kids and some people have students and some people have pets and I have problems.