The Morning Pages -- January 22, 2022

 

I woke up to the sound of Gunnery Sgt. Hartman yelling at Leonard, aka Gomer Pyle. My new all night movie sleep soundtrack includes Pulp Fiction, The Sunset Limited, On The Beach and Full Metal Jacket. It’s a veritable potpourri of intense dialogue and emotionally charged themes with which I am attempting to infuse my dreams. I always fall asleep easiest to movies that are dialogue driven if I have already seen the movie a bunch of times. Otherwise, action movies will make me fall asleep faster initially, but I am sometimes awakened by explosions and a dramatic musical score.

After my motivational wake-up speech, I self-ambulated to the bathroom to pee, brush my teeth and wash my face. Self-care is a bitch. I told Denise the other day, “This kind of beauty takes a lot of work.” I was being facetious, but it is true. To maintain the illusion of being a person who gives a shit, I have a rigorous routine that I must follow. That routine can be tedious, but each little step has been arrived at to address some issue with my physical body where entropy has tried to make an incursion.

For instance, I have to clean my ears with hydrogen peroxide, witch hazel, hydrocortisone, betadyne, Neosporin and anti-microbial lotion, in varying combinations at different times, all to address the issue of itchy ears. Perhaps, instead of all that, I should just stop listening to false teachings. According to II Timothy 4.3:

“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but having itching ears, they shall heap to themselves teachers in accordance with their own lusts.”

That’s what the Bible says about itching ears. Potato, pot-ah-toh, I’m still in bed, texting with Emery and the DBSA board. Here’s a text I sent to the other members of the Board. I’ll include it because it qualifies as writing done in the morning:

 

“Is there a limit to the number of affiliates that our chapter can have under our umbrella?

“A couple of years ago, I attended a meeting of DBSA Grass Valley after a counselor at Sutter-Yuba Behavioral Behavioral Health had made a few inquiries with Linda about starting a group in the Yuba City area. No one was doing Zoom meetings at the time, so we felt that it would be beneficial to start a support group for people with depression in the area.

“Then Covid hit and changed everything. I kept attending the group, and you were all so welcoming and kind that I became fully invested in this particular group and put aside my plans to start a new group. My fact-finding expedition turned into more of an adoption.

“However, if and when the day comes when Zoom meetings are no longer the primary venue, I may find that there is a once again a need to start a group in my area. I’d like to affiliate with this chapter if at all possible, should the time come. Other considerations, like finding a suitable physical location to have the meetings, might prove to be challenging, possibly prohibitive, but I’d like to think that the door would still be open, should the need arise.

“At any rate, for now, if there is a need for these people in Nevada to have a quick way to get started, and we can help, I am all for it. Perhaps, down the road, if they are successful, and we wind up having too many affiliates, they can become their own chapter.

“Those are my thoughts. I just woke up, so they may be coming out all jumbly.”

 

I like to include quotes because that’s just so much extra writing that I don’t have to conjure up out of my brain. Am I trying to flat-rate this Morning Pages exercise? Absolutely. That is what we geniuses do. It is impossible to differentiate between a genius and a lazy person, especially when they are one and the same.

I’m pretty sure that I’m not doing these exercises correctly anyway. I am supposed to be writing in longhand, in some paper journal. <annoying buzzer sound>  Wrong! That won’t be happening. I write in a digital format. It is easier, and I get to correct my mistakes. I can’t live with strikethroughs or eraser marks. I’m also not supposed to be editing these pages at all. <annoying buzzer> Nope! I’m gonna use my backspace key until it wears out. Multi-tasking while doing the Morning Pages <slaps hand before it can reach the buzzer> Screw you! I’m gonna do it how I want, or I won’t do it at all.

The Morning Protests, they should be called. The Morning How Do I Get Out Of This Crap Pages. Well, here’s some more text that I cut and pasted, completely out of context, but still more inspired than anything that I am doing in this Word document at the moment. I play better to an audience, I guess:

“I don’t claim to be a believer, nor am I a complete unbeliever. I’m pretty skeptical, but I’d like to think I have an open mind.”

“The more I learn in life, the less I know. I believe that knowledge, in the realm of human experience, is mostly subjective. Perception is reality, and even consensus reality is subject to human interpretation. And thus, none of my statements should be taken as factual.”

“Sometimes, I think like a snail, in very slow, basic thoughts, with a limited view of the world. I would hate to think that reality is limited to my small perception of it, although for me, the snail, it mostly is.”

“There are as many different perspectives as there are sentient lifeforms. You are more of a hummingbird. You definitely get more traveling done in a day, since many flowers need your attention. It’s a good thing that there are so many different individual consciousness units, since it’s such a large world; it would just be going to waste if only I, the snail, were to inhabit it."

Now I have a phone call and two text chains going. I guess I’m going to have to abandon this exercise for the time being. Cats gotta eat. I gotta exercise. The morning is almost over, and I have barely cracked the third page.