Bad Stories

A bugger. The first 3 days of this week I’ve managed to do my 2,000 words a day. I’ve also been getting in plenty of meditation sessions and this has been making me feel more stable, more in control. My reward this morning for that seems to be a sore throat, phlegmy cough, aching body and a nose full of snot. But no, the world doesn’t work like that.

It is only the human mind that tries to impose some pattern, some logic on disparate events. It is the human mind that links such events together in a story. My mind of course is a lot more practised because I’ve made it my job to link up stuff like this. I write and find new interesting toys as I go along, and impose upon them the order of a story. This ability is the source of my success but it is also a factor contributing to my present fucked up mind.

Take a storyteller. Screw him over with trauma – oh, I dunno, make him watch his wife die of bowel cancer – then step back and watch him fall apart. It’s a bit of a truism that writers are often depressive personalities anyway, so after that scenario depression is guaranteed. The loss can also create anxiety and concomitant panic attacks (especially if he was a heavy drinker and stopped doing that to ameliorate the depression). Sprinkle this with a soupcon of paranoia and you have the perfect recipe for some seriously negative thinking. You have someone telling himself the bad stories and failing to believe in the good ones.

But fuck that shit.

The meditation is working. Directly after each session I feel normal (or at least my version of that). I think more clearly and find myself dismissing trains of thought leading down into the pit. The time when I feel ‘right’ is getting longer and longer. This is all good, but I’ve also made an appointment to see a hypnotherapist to see what else can be done to straighten out my head. Maybe I should see a doctor too though I fear that would lead to pills. But that would be my choice, and I would choose to avoid them.

I will beat this.

On a final note. Though this post might appear a bit negative in itself it is not. Negative is when I don’t write a blog post at all. Negative is when I’m sitting staring into space wishing I felt better or at least in some way functional. And negative is not me getting ready to whack out another 2,000 words!