Stripes Again... Really?

As I pull in to work, I notice that a bee is flying around inside the car. I immediately scream and swerve to the right, smashing into a parked car. That didn't happen. Actually, I rolled down the window and continued through the parking lot thinking that the bee would fly out one of the 4 wide open windows. No luck. I park and the bee is still buzzing around. I get out and leave the door open for a second, assuming that the bee will follow me, which does not happen. I'm going to be late for work, but I don't want to lock the bee in, and I shouldn't leave the windows down because it's supposed to rain today. I go around to the other side of the car and open the passenger door, and still the bee just hangs out inside, but as soon as I open the rear passenger door, it departs. Walking into work I realized I'd been straight up disrespected by that bee. It decided to scam a ride in my car, and then refused to leave until it got the full chauffeur treatment. Like i don't have enough to do, bee! How about I drive you to a field that needs pollinating or to a picnic, next? Can I get a little hat to doff as I open the car door for you to enter and exit? Freaking bee. I don't come to your hive, and mock you.

Unnamed Colonel Mustard Project

As the founding father of a nationally know mustard dynasty, it often falls to me to remind the great unwashed masses of the virtues of this mighty yet tiny seed, and how it directly benefits all humankind. Just as every journey is series of steps, or every forest is a collection of trees, the tapestry of human existence is woven with lives, some interconnected, some intertwined, others oblivious. To tell the story of how the this humble condiment has spawned empires and crushed governments, made kings of beggars and reduced men of god to amoral killers, I'll focus on a life which has been profoundly influenced by this most pungent of seasonings, my own.
My story is one in which mustard which has brought joy and tragedy, poverty and great wealth. I've seen those greater than I squirted from this heartless industry like so much mustard water onto a piece of dry white bread. Maintaining the financial viability of a modern day condiment empire is a never ending siege. Every day is a battle, be it with the Captain Ketchup's of the world or the rough and tumble rapscallions of the relish game. Anyone who has the intestinal fortitude, and sheer force of will to succeed in this livelihood though will have untold riches and power, but what mustard gives mustard can take away.
This story begins in the last days of the Crimean war, as the sun begins its rise over a muddy field, men are beginning to stir. A horse knickers, another exhales, a cooking fire crackles and pops as it's fed. Above the general murmur of voices is a woman's scream. It hangs there for seconds, and stops and then again. A few people look up and over to the medical tents, most don't. A rivulet of liquid streams out from under the filthy canvas flap that acts as the western wall of the field hospital. It turns opaque, as dark as the mud around it in the morning light. Another scream, and then silence. A nurse cuts the cord connecting the now unconscious woman to the tiny baby, so pink he's purple. She cleans him off. He takes his first breath. She wraps him up. Swaddled up in blankets, in the arms of a nurse, they are surrounded by thousands of French troops preparing to return to home after the recent Signing of the Treaty of Paris. This tiny baby, so small, so insignificant in it's surroundings like the minuscule mustard seed, will grow from this inauspicious beginning to become a leader of men and a titan of industry. From the bastard son of a camp prostitute to a decorated war hero to the founder of a benevolent industrial juggernaut, this is the story of Colonel Mustard.

Momentary Flights of Panic

I had a little panic thinking that I had all this stuff listed here. I had an almost uncontrollable urge to get to the nearest computer and log in and delete all this. I haven't yet. It immersion therapy. I'm just desensitizing myself. I'm just replicating being social with this. I may or may not be sharing personal information with other people by writing this. It's like if Schrödinger's box was full of spiders instead of a cat, and then attached to your face. You may or may not have hundreds of spiders crawling over your face.

Sanity from the Point of View of the Insane Must Seem Crazy

For the past few weeks, I started to worry a bit that I was going crazy. I figured I was finally losing it. I found myself compelled to do strange things, and I didn't really know why.
I stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom and scissored off a few inches of long straggled hair that I had just let grow wild for the past few years. I hadn't been shaving much, and hadn't had a haircut in a few years. I had been going for an abandoned lot kind of look. I just wanted the world to know that the premises were not being taken care, that they were unsafe, that you should stay away for your own good. At any point you could stumble through an ant's nest, or step on a rusty nail. You might get an infection from that nail, and you wouldn't die, but it would hurt like hell and maybe the first round of antibiotics aren't very effective and they switch you to another drug, which works, but it makes you sick. You beat it. You feel better eventually, but maybe you'll always have a twinge of pain in the sole of your foot before a thunderstorm or when you stretch just the right way, like shifting forward onto the balls of your feet to get a serving bowl from atop the highest shelf in the kitchen. Sometimes the pain is shallow, and you just remember to never go exploring in abandoned lots, and sometimes the pain is deep and you feel like you're pushing your foot onto that rusty nail again, and it all comes back, the pain, the aftermath, how long it took till you felt better again, and maybe you drop that bowl and it falls to the floor and shatters. You just have to protect yourself.
So I was leaving my hair long, not shaving, not really caring, leaving this lot unkempt, nature's way of saying do not touch, so no one would come around and get hurt, and one day I just cut a few of the worst inches off. I don't know why. I just did. I guess, if you want to take the above metaphor out to it's logical conclusion, I realized that having a lot you don't care for increases the risk of people being hurt. The correct response is that you actually work on that lot. You clean it up. You mow. You tear down the ruins of the previous structures and build a new foundation. You reestablish connections to utilities. You build something. You sell it. People move in. They use the lot. That is being a responsible person.

The other thing I did recently which I thought seemed a little crazy, was make an outline of things to do to improve my life. I know that doesn't sound crazy, but it a had a multiple paragraph intro, a kind of corporate jargon style. It was weird, or at least I thought so. As I made the actual outline, though, I began to get a much better perspective on some things that I needed to work on. All those things that I needed to do, from getting new tires to self development, didn't seem as insanely overwhelming as they had before. I had built this tower in my head of all the things that I needed to do in my life, and was so intimidated that I was effectively paralyzed, but looking at them as bullets on an outline opened a door in the tower revealing a staircase. Maybe it wasn't an impossible attempt to scale a sheer tower, but instead a long journey with many steps. This crazy thing I did helped. I went back to it. I added things. I crossed things out when I completed them. I feel like maybe I am moving again, just a little, but some.
So, these things that I thought were crazy are instead little pieces of sanity creeping back through, bobbing up to the surface. The truth is that I have been crazy a long time. I have been so depressed. The past two years have been real hard, and the two years preceding that were difficult too. I feel like maybe I am coming to an end of this darkness. I think my mind has had enough of this, and is implementing it's own plan to get me better.

Ethereal Not Invisible

I need to stop being invisible, both in life and online . I felt pretty invisible for a long time; i've sought it out. Wrapped up in it like a security blanket. I have a bit of the ole social anxiety disorder, just a tad. It got worse after my marriage ended. If not worse, just more noticeable. I could almost completely opt out of social life when I was married, but now that i don't have a partner to come home to everyday, to talk to, to share with, opting out of a social life is psychologically unsustainable. So, I guess i should stop being invisible. I'm ok with ethereal. I can be tenuous. I can be barely there. It's a start.