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the currency of stories
Dec. 18th, 2018 08:59 amSometimes when things are going annoyingly, and then get even worse, you're almost glad they got worse, because at least when it's actively bad, you have a good story.
That's my thesis. I'm not prepared to back it up, thoroughly, because like. I mean. Children can get bone cancer, this isn't the kind of world where you have the leeway to wish for bad things because there's really no bottom to it.
I'm talking, like, quotidian catastrophes. Little bullshit that doesn't qualify, vs. stuff that anyone can admit is objectively Not Good. There's absolutely a lower threshold on that latter thing.
I almost feel like one of the ways I manage my ADHD/depression/anxiety/whatever the fuck this is, is that I set up little catastrophes for myself, because if I do it right, and it's just Bad instead of Annoying or Actually A Disaster, then I can use my shit-hit-the-fan resources to manage my way out of it. (This might be why spending so much time at the farm has worked out so well for my mental health-- there's always #1 something Crucial to do, and #2 someone else to help me plan, which my objectively-unchallenging day job out here doesn't offer at all.) But that's kind of a sidebar to my actual point here.
My actual point is that once it's actually a minor crisis, you can both get sympathy, and construct an entertaining narrative, and there's a lot of consolation in that, and you get a jolt of Sense Of Purpose.
Which is a long way of saying that, well, my car definitely died, it was definitely the battery, I definitely was not able to jump it with either my shitty little dead jump pack or my partner's nice car, and so I had to walk down to the garage on the corner (this is one of the times when I am delighted to live in a city, though that's another sidebar-- at the farm, where the nearest garage is three plus miles away, my B-I-L actually knows how to jump a car and has better equipment to do it than I do here in the city, so) and they remembered 1) me, and 2) my old shitty car they used to work on that died a lot, and so they were able to walk to my house with their jump pack and get the car started and ascertain that the battery was at end-of-life anyway so they'll install a new one and put the car back in my driveway if I want. But all of that was at least amusing enough of a crisis that I feel less hopeless about my various other annoyances, which will all either work themselves out or not, so I'm going to hand-embroider the rest of this stupid unicorn at work today and see if I can't work out the rest later tonight.
That's my thesis. I'm not prepared to back it up, thoroughly, because like. I mean. Children can get bone cancer, this isn't the kind of world where you have the leeway to wish for bad things because there's really no bottom to it.
I'm talking, like, quotidian catastrophes. Little bullshit that doesn't qualify, vs. stuff that anyone can admit is objectively Not Good. There's absolutely a lower threshold on that latter thing.
I almost feel like one of the ways I manage my ADHD/depression/anxiety/whatever the fuck this is, is that I set up little catastrophes for myself, because if I do it right, and it's just Bad instead of Annoying or Actually A Disaster, then I can use my shit-hit-the-fan resources to manage my way out of it. (This might be why spending so much time at the farm has worked out so well for my mental health-- there's always #1 something Crucial to do, and #2 someone else to help me plan, which my objectively-unchallenging day job out here doesn't offer at all.) But that's kind of a sidebar to my actual point here.
My actual point is that once it's actually a minor crisis, you can both get sympathy, and construct an entertaining narrative, and there's a lot of consolation in that, and you get a jolt of Sense Of Purpose.
Which is a long way of saying that, well, my car definitely died, it was definitely the battery, I definitely was not able to jump it with either my shitty little dead jump pack or my partner's nice car, and so I had to walk down to the garage on the corner (this is one of the times when I am delighted to live in a city, though that's another sidebar-- at the farm, where the nearest garage is three plus miles away, my B-I-L actually knows how to jump a car and has better equipment to do it than I do here in the city, so) and they remembered 1) me, and 2) my old shitty car they used to work on that died a lot, and so they were able to walk to my house with their jump pack and get the car started and ascertain that the battery was at end-of-life anyway so they'll install a new one and put the car back in my driveway if I want. But all of that was at least amusing enough of a crisis that I feel less hopeless about my various other annoyances, which will all either work themselves out or not, so I'm going to hand-embroider the rest of this stupid unicorn at work today and see if I can't work out the rest later tonight.
