Shit! 400 PPM. Oh shit! Higher cost of living. Double shit sticks! Health care costs. Holy shit! You can bike there? Today has had a pattern to it; stark realizations have been popping up as I prepare for the long weekend. As I review my situation, both material and spiritual I’m left feeling conflicted.
You see I’ve got it all right now, I’ve built another really awesome vehicle which has been customized for moving me and my family pretty much anywhere we’d care to travel. Sure, its not a Sprinter, but a van like that could never get to half the places I’ve already been. Sure it burns gas, thereby releasing carbon into an already altered atmosphere, but I don’t see many of the nearly seven billion rest of you either changing your pattern of motive behavior or diverting your desire to attain something similar. And sure, it costs a lot to keep any vehicle going, but I’ve been doing ok despite going “freelance”. These sorts of comparisons just keep coming up.
Essentially this conflict has resulted in a period of angst; its all driven by a sensation of needing to do something. Its a sort of overwhelming itch that today has been focused (much to my chagrin) on my truck Ootek.
Right now the safest thing to do is probably just to sit on these feelings until the go away. If they go away. Wait for the weekend and drive off in my mighty-awesome truck thereby getting to see friends and family in distant reaches of the state in a timely and socially acceptable manner. But that mental itch, an unjustified compulsion to do something rash and now and quick (more often motivated by a notion of moral obligation in my case), just won’t leave me alone. This voice in the back of my mind just nags away “you should probably sell your truck.” “Get ride of it, its holding you down.” “You’re burning gas and causing climate change.” Blah, blah, blah. Why can’t I have a “normal” mental problem and fixate on hand-washing, grammer-correction, or something benign like that?
When I hear other people joke about OCD it sort of makes me a little angry. They don’t see how this is a problem, so its funny to them. They don’t see how it can result in an unavoidable discomfort that just lingers until you obey some ridiculous and potentially self-destructive compulsion.
Good grief, I sure hope this summer melting in the Arctic is not exceptional.
FeetForBrains 