Moose in the Kitchen

I’ve been plowing through five years of blog posts, trying to re-categorize and tag and generally inflict my deep desire to organize on the digital world.

(It also gives me an excuse to watch excessive amounts of Community, a show that encapsulates the glorious joy of being alive. And being a slacker. A funny slacker. This obviously holds great appeal for me.

I have to go there, I have to show the clip of Abed as Batman. Beaten in televised awesomeness only by Abed as a vampire, but youtube keeps pulling that clip down, presumably because such profound awesomeness destroys the functionality of the site, much like the awesomeness of wine destroys the functionality of my brain. Or something.

Um, close parentheses.)

Something I’ve realized, reading through the past five years of my life, is that I’ve spent a disproportionate amount of my time being very down on myself. Very, very down on myself. I spent most of 2007 flagellating myself with the grim determination of a Spanish monk joy riding his iron maiden through the peak years of the Inquisition.

On the one hand, welcome to being human. On the other hand, dear god. Why do we do this to ourselves? Why? I’m not perfect by any stretch of even the most flexible imagination, but I’m a decent human being. Even a kind one, on certain days of the week. Dogs like me, I give good hugs, and I will help you move. (Anyone need help moving?) Some days I’m forced to take comfort in the fact that I’ve never killed anyone, whether on purpose or by accident, but still. So why all the ego-driven existential drama?

As you can imagine, this is something I’d like to stop. I’ve been devoting a reasonable amount of time* to digging up uncomfortable things and peering at them and then sending them off into the ether where I hope they explode in a shower of bright sparks, sparks that settle again somewhere far, far away from me.

* If you assigned “reasonable amount of time” to a person and that person aged as most people do, you’d have yourself a toddler.

I tend to suppress important pieces of myself – mainly because feeling them is painful and I don’t like pain. Examples of Suppressed Pieces: 1) incriminating adjectives I use to fillet myself, 2) judgmental little darts that tend to make people uncomfortable (YOU DON’T SAY), 3) ducat doubts.

Frankly, it sucks – and has been known to send me into the blowing-cloak-on-windy-cliff doldrums of an eighteenth-century heroine with no suitors and no TV. But ultimately it’s valuable. Because every time I let something go, I get a little lighter. A little more imperturbable to the buffeting forces of the world, a little more “Hey, dude. I’m pretty cool. If you say something that contradicts this belief, I will shovel it through my Self Worth Filter and watch it morph into a compliment and I will thank you with genuine pleasure and you will be understandably confused.” (Some call this delusion. I call it Being Awesome.)

It can be hard, taking your ego and making it redundant. So I’m trying to give myself space to do things that make me happy – like go to Baker Beach on a sunny day and bounce up and down like a 13-year-old at Starbucks when we see a pair of dolphins swimming just offshore. Or walking to the Japanese Tea Garden in the morning and drinking tea by the pond before doing anything that resembles work. I’m pondering what brings me joy and – here’s the truly inspired bit – ACTUALLY DOING IT.

Exhibit A:

Doing things that bring me joy. Also known as slacking. And forgiving myself for slacking, because sometimes being happy is worth it. I would even venture to say that happiness is always worth it.

Related posts:

1. Wisdom from Joy of Cooking
2. Enjoy Every Sandwich
3. License to Grate Cheese
4. Mooselibs
5. Yeah, I Might Still Be Watching Glee