Taking It Out on the Carpet
The way I'm feeling right now, I can work up intense irritation at just about anything.
The carpet pisses me off because it's green and I'm not as happy with it as when I was when we first bought it. It's not new anymore and it traps dirt and cigarette ash like a freaking vacuum cleaner. It needs a shampoo. Or to be ignited and thrown out of the balcony in a blazing heap.
And the yellow slip of paper on top of the coffee table. It flips up and down, following the swivel of the stupid electric fan. A weightless piece of yellow fluff that can't stay still. Must it always bend to the will of stupid electric fan? Up and down, up and down, up and down in my periphery. Grr.
And my hair and its annoying in-between stage. In between short and mid-length. In between brown and black. In between ugly and fugly. If I chop it all off, will it stop bugging me? Or will the sight my scalp bug me much more?
And look at that stupid calculator to the left of the laptop! What a waste of space. Really. What's the point of a calculator as a stand-alone device when all computers and cellphones come with built in calculators? It's not like the calculator in question is the scientific type that can extrapolate complicated formulas. What can it do that a cellphone can't? Why did I buy one in the first place? Freaking useless.
I know I can't go around snarling at random inanimate objects and blaming them for the limitations of what they and what they're made of. I can't hate the stinking scrap of yellow paper for flipping up and down because the wind from the fan exerts a force on it that has more mass than the paper at just the right spot to make it move upwards. It's just doing what it does under the laws of Newtonian physics. And really, it can't do anything because it has no will of its own to do something. It's a piece of paper, for crying out loud! Let it go.
*****
Someone (or maybe a few someones, I can't remember exactly) once (or maybe a couple of times) told me that there's no reason to be bored. There's so much to do, and more importantly, so much that's going on in the world that a person can involve herself in that there simply is no reason to be bored. And that bored people are just brats who are looking to justify their brattiness (hmm. I think Velma said that, and followed it up with "If you're so bored, why don't you go and clean up your room!").
But for a Boredom Connoisseur, or a person who has spent her life avoiding boredom at all costs because it makes her do stupid things (like get "involved" with individuals who are bad for her, or ingest certain combinations of chemicals to turn her boredom neo-green and -purple), boredom is more than feeling weary and dull. It's a state that leads to worse states like depression, falling in love (with inappropriate people), and hyperactivity.
I can't afford to get depressed. One, I don't think my health insurance covers it. But more importantly, I do have a lot of work that needs to get done -- as in yesterday. Wallowing in a Pit of Major Suckage is simply not an option. I don't have time for it. Plus, I'd rather jump off a building than fall into depression again. Hamburger-ed body parts are prettier.
Falling in love. Bwahaha. Nope, not gonna happen. Not any time soon. It's not an option. Period.
So hyperactivity then. Let's see... I woke up early today and I've scrubbed the kitchen clean, re-organised my closet, gone to the bank so I can pretend to be a financially productive citizen of the Philippines, prepared extra-special ham sandwiches for lunch, finalised the last money transfer related to the GEM India workshop, checked email about 7 times, gotten back to writing the draft for the wireless training workshop for women, talked to a few friends, planned a weekend in Kuala Lumpur. I've also arranged for dinners with friends throughout the week and a trip to Baguio for the weekend. There's been a frenzy of activity today, and yet the sound in my head remains a droning, repetitive, cotton-y buzz.
And I'm still angry at the carpet.
The carpet pisses me off because it's green and I'm not as happy with it as when I was when we first bought it. It's not new anymore and it traps dirt and cigarette ash like a freaking vacuum cleaner. It needs a shampoo. Or to be ignited and thrown out of the balcony in a blazing heap.
And the yellow slip of paper on top of the coffee table. It flips up and down, following the swivel of the stupid electric fan. A weightless piece of yellow fluff that can't stay still. Must it always bend to the will of stupid electric fan? Up and down, up and down, up and down in my periphery. Grr.
And my hair and its annoying in-between stage. In between short and mid-length. In between brown and black. In between ugly and fugly. If I chop it all off, will it stop bugging me? Or will the sight my scalp bug me much more?
And look at that stupid calculator to the left of the laptop! What a waste of space. Really. What's the point of a calculator as a stand-alone device when all computers and cellphones come with built in calculators? It's not like the calculator in question is the scientific type that can extrapolate complicated formulas. What can it do that a cellphone can't? Why did I buy one in the first place? Freaking useless.
I know I can't go around snarling at random inanimate objects and blaming them for the limitations of what they and what they're made of. I can't hate the stinking scrap of yellow paper for flipping up and down because the wind from the fan exerts a force on it that has more mass than the paper at just the right spot to make it move upwards. It's just doing what it does under the laws of Newtonian physics. And really, it can't do anything because it has no will of its own to do something. It's a piece of paper, for crying out loud! Let it go.
*****
Someone (or maybe a few someones, I can't remember exactly) once (or maybe a couple of times) told me that there's no reason to be bored. There's so much to do, and more importantly, so much that's going on in the world that a person can involve herself in that there simply is no reason to be bored. And that bored people are just brats who are looking to justify their brattiness (hmm. I think Velma said that, and followed it up with "If you're so bored, why don't you go and clean up your room!").
But for a Boredom Connoisseur, or a person who has spent her life avoiding boredom at all costs because it makes her do stupid things (like get "involved" with individuals who are bad for her, or ingest certain combinations of chemicals to turn her boredom neo-green and -purple), boredom is more than feeling weary and dull. It's a state that leads to worse states like depression, falling in love (with inappropriate people), and hyperactivity.
I can't afford to get depressed. One, I don't think my health insurance covers it. But more importantly, I do have a lot of work that needs to get done -- as in yesterday. Wallowing in a Pit of Major Suckage is simply not an option. I don't have time for it. Plus, I'd rather jump off a building than fall into depression again. Hamburger-ed body parts are prettier.
Falling in love. Bwahaha. Nope, not gonna happen. Not any time soon. It's not an option. Period.
So hyperactivity then. Let's see... I woke up early today and I've scrubbed the kitchen clean, re-organised my closet, gone to the bank so I can pretend to be a financially productive citizen of the Philippines, prepared extra-special ham sandwiches for lunch, finalised the last money transfer related to the GEM India workshop, checked email about 7 times, gotten back to writing the draft for the wireless training workshop for women, talked to a few friends, planned a weekend in Kuala Lumpur. I've also arranged for dinners with friends throughout the week and a trip to Baguio for the weekend. There's been a frenzy of activity today, and yet the sound in my head remains a droning, repetitive, cotton-y buzz.
And I'm still angry at the carpet.