Proverbs 4, Verse 5
"'Learn to be wise,' he said, 'and develop good judgment and common sense!
I cannot overemphasize this point."
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CHIPPED WISDOM:
It's no coincidence that this blog is called "Chipped Wisdom." It's not just an exceedingly clever and unending morsel of drollery. It stems from my very deep rooted belief that my thought process, the way I formulate ideas and plans is inherently flawed, harmful, broken and busted. Imperfect. If my brain were a product, it would be most readily found in the Scratch-and-Dent section of Best & Company.
I used to LOVE going to Best with my parents when I was a child. I always seemed to end up in the audio equipment section-- lustily eyeing an incongruous selection of microphones with the ball-top pushed in and stereo speakers that were ripped and de-laminating. Occasionally, these oddball things would make their way home in the trunk of my mom's Camry where I would display them proudly for a few months, and then either impulsively break them or methodically disassemble them, depending upon my mood. The end result was the same-- it's not like I was some autistic child prodigy who had some innate knowledge of electronica and could put the goddamn things back together after taking them apart. I didn't know a motherboard from Whistler's mother. And I'd be no use at putting that bitch back together either.
I guess I look at the way I behaved as a child-- not just what I was interested in acquiring but what I would do to these objects afterwards-- and I find it troublesome, that I didn't behave logically. I wasn't content with MicroMachines or Hot Wheels-- I needed meticulously crafted 1/18th scale painstaking replicas of the Peugeot 505 or models of antique Cadillac hearses, complete with mini casket and gurney and faux-velvet drapes on the windows that cost over $100 to complete my fetishistic play. And then, eventually, these expensive playthings would meet their unfortunate demise.
Yes, I was a child. Yes, you did dumb stuff, too, and you were also weird. And maybe I want to be dumber and weirder than you were-- maybe that's my narcissism bubbling up to the surface-- but I am nevertheless concerned that my judgment has never evolved or improved as I've aged. I'm still saying and writing things before I speak, I'm still terrible with money, I'm still reacting to anxiety instead of acknowledging it and controlling it, I'm still eating the wrong things and saying the wrong things and laughing at the wrong things and being generally, well, wrong.
I'm rash, judgmental, sardonic, apathetic, quick to anger, slow to think-- and those are just my good qualities.
I suppose I'm being particularly harsh on myself tonight because I'm considering stopping my meds. I don't notice a dramatic enough change, after five months or so, to warrant staying on it in view of the weight gain. Yes, I could stand to maybe gain even a pound or two more, but I am becoming obsessed with my burgeoning belly, and having to buy new fucking pants, and losing my identity as "the skinny guy." When I think about the theatre reviews that have been written about me-- the positive ones, at least-- the reviewers have almost always, without fail, mentioned my physical appearance in relation to how funny they thought I was. Now that may be a truly terrible reason to stop an anti-depressant that may or may not be having a positive impact on my mood, but I don't want to not be skinny. I want my Ethiopian-like body back.
Is that wrong?
Or is that just another example of why my brain would be discounted by 25% on the shelf at Clover?
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