Looking for other Hills

I have an issue.

I've noticed a pattern in myself - namely that I am lazy and impatient when it comes to almost anything. I try to get the most for the least amount of work. Now that I'm writing this, this reminds me about Atlas Shrugged, which I'm currently reading, but that is another matter.

The point is, I think I need to fix this. I've always had a problem of not living in the moment. Despite years of improv training and performing, I still have trouble recognizing the present for what it is. This brings me to the sort of person I am today - reasonably well connected in many many different circles, having tons of superficial acquaintances, having a large skill set, etc. I feel spread too thin. I don't know if life is supposed to have some central focus or not, but everything is really blurry. I spent thirtyish minutes today reading job descriptions and figuring out what I'm doing this summer, which is one of the most dehumanizing and disheartening tasks ever, yet somehow I enjoy it a little bit.

This blurriness leads to me being lazy. I developed a certain level of passive aggressiveness - listen, listen, listen, consider, and then make a small contribution that tilts things slightly in your way. What is wrong, man? I think I'm afraid of confrontation for some reason, some deep-seated reason I don't feel like going into. Fuck.

This all leads to the title of this entry - "Looking for other Hills". My lazyness and passive-agressiveness and lack of presence in the moment leads to me, if I am not absolutely pleased with a situation, to look for a better situation. This applies to almost everything for me: relationships, friends, disciplines (haha), fads, habits, hobbies, jobs. This stems from my belief that in a world as large as ours, the possibilities are so diverse that any reasonably-motivated person can, instead of taking the time to fix/work on something, easily look out and find anything better as their choice. When I get tired/bored of something or someone, I just stop paying attention to them instead of actually confronting them. As I write this, I realize more and more how much of a douche I am.

This is changing now (making a phone call). I'm grabbing life by the horns.

Promising more positive entries in the future,
Dustin

Green Unicorns and the Flu

The last few days I've been suffering from being sick, probably from some new strain of the flu. The worst was on Thursday, where I threw up everything I ate. I ate four slices of bread, 4 eggs and some orange juice. None of that stayed down, leaving me with a net foodage of nothing.

I don't get sick often, which is why this was such a surprise. Also, I had taken a flu shot earlier, which is why I'm geussing this was a new strain. Also, it was very late in the flu season. I remember back when I was in elementary school it seemed my family would get it almost every year, but I haven't had it for like, 10 years. I point the blame for this case of the flu at a particular close friend of mine, who shall remain unnamed.

So, at this point you are probably wondering what I mean by "Green Unicorn". Here is a chronology of my flu experience (very approximated):

10 am Thursday - Threw up clear liquid

10 - 12 Thursday - Slept?

12 - 3 pm? - Made two slices of toast. Ate slowly over the next 3 hours, while watching the George Lucas director's cut of THX 1183. I had to stop several times to throw up the toast.

3 - 5 - ?

5 - 7 - Made a nice big dinner of two slices of toast and four eggs. The eggs were somewhere between scrambled and sunnyside up. In this period of the symptom, I was beginning to enter the stage of delirious hilarity and neediness. Being sick and effectively alone in my house, I was unfilled. I was also starting to sort of imagine and hallucinate, and I was beginning to feel cold. Wow, I need to work on my writing.

7 - 9 - I began to watch Spinal Tap with the commentary, which turned out to be the bandmembers in character. I was delighted that they kept the mockumentary facade, and that they managed to keep thier characters and voices after 20+ years.

9 pm - Threw up everything I just ate. At this point I reached a new high in humour for what was going on. I appeared that despite my acute attempts to eat, I would not be allowed to do so. I then proceeded upstairs to sleep off the flu.

10 pm - 10 am. This was a blurry period, where the Green Unicorn comes in. at 10 am I woke up, apparently better. I still have a headache, which is either from the flu still, or playing Rag Doll Kung Fu for the past few hours.

In the blurry period, I remember being very cold (which means I had a fever, if you've read your body manual). I know somebody, well more so am aware of them, that overdosed on ecstasy and had their brain overheat because they passed out and nobody looked after him. I changed position in my bed every ten minutes throughout the night, and I always had the nagging thought that my brain would overheat. I had visualizations of the Divergence Theorem and Heat Conduction equations from MATH 227 and PHYS 231. Not only that, but in my delirious half awake/half asleep state my brain began to wander and repeat itself. I found myself trapped in thoughts I couldn't escape, like things I had forgotten to do or people still talking to me. This has to me in the past whenever I've visited a new, fast-paced place and been forced to do a routine for a long period of time, usually school or minimum-wage jobs. I get mentally stuck in it, and being a frequent insomniac does not help.

I devised the green unicorn to get rid of these thoughts. What is something I am not likely going to think of, but isn't too abstract so as to be unimaginable? A Unicorn. What is the least likely colour for a unicorn to be? Green. Its not magical or natural.

Whenever I entered a routine thought-pattern in my flu-driven delirium, I would call in The Green Unicorn, which would tear up the fabric of what I was picturing, and then EXPLODE, leaving my mind blissfully empty. It wouldn't actually break up a wall of the scene where I was, it would literally roll it up like a carpet as it charged through.

I'm going to use this now on to destroy or alter dreams I don't like, I suppose until it becomes so commonless place as to be dilute, but then I'll invent something else.