Still Figurin' Out Who I Think I Am

This one's about importance, imagination/humor, and music.

"The most important thing in your life...Has it changed over time or has it stayed the same? If you so wish, tell us what it is."

What's up y'all? I'm just here to help push along the next 24 hours, most of which will be nerve-wracking and confusing, so don't mind me as I use you in an attempt to take my mind off some stuff and misplace emotions in different baskets for the time being.

I'm looking at this prompt in two ways: the short term, and the long term. For me, the idea of something being "most important" is fluid, and can evolve based on situations. What we search for of importance today may not be the same a week from now, or a year from now...the idea of life today and life overall can be mutually exclusive.

Take, for example, today and tomorrow. I need to try and get a good night's sleep, and get a start on that as early as I can, because I need to be up at 4:30am Tuesday morning. I need to remain calm and focused, because I'll be taking a bus to Syracuse from Cortland for two doctors' appointments. I tend to get nervous for doctor's appointments; I've been told before that I have "waiting room anxiety" which elevates my blood pressure, and I assume that's because I'm always worried that this might be the time they find something physically wrong with me. I've also never been on a trip like this to Syracuse (if I've been there before, it's only been to pass through on the way to somewhere else). Once I get to the Centro bus station, I'll have to take two more buses to get to my destination. I'm very apprehensive about this, mainly because I'm unfamiliar with anything that has to do with where I'm going.

I'm not sure what the extent of each appointment will entail. Maybe a routine physical, and then a consultation with a mental health specialist? Or will they want to look further at my surgically repaired ankle also, and maybe determine why standing and walking still aren't the easiest things to do? I don't know the breakdown of the two appointments. All I know is they're for my disability claim, which I've been told by a few people will most likely be denied anyway, and I'll have to appeal the decision (which, again I've been told, is almost always successful). I'm compounding a lot of my biggest triggers into one big, giant clusterfuck of everything I try to avoid. Externally, it will look like I'm fine and everything's as normal as can be...but inside, I'm terrified; I don't know how else to explain it. There are approximately 1,867,392 things that can go wrong between now and this time tomorrow, most of which are absolutely out of my control but can still ultimately change the course of my future. I don't know how people survive this kind of stuff, but I'm about to find out.

But anyway, that's what's most important for me, today, in the here and now. Come Wednesday, it'll be something else...most likely of lesser significance, or a lower priority. Whether we realize it or not, everything comes with degrees. Rankings. Status (or lack thereof). Perhaps it's good to have a certain idea of potential importance over time..."It's important for me to be content, no matter where I am." Let that be a good place to start, and hopefully never see where it ends. Maybe it'll keep moving back, the finish line just out of reach, so that happiness is always visible enough to never stop fighting to attain it, or the destination doesn't become more disappointing than the journey.

"'Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.' - Francis Bacon. If you had to choose between having an imagination or a sense of humor which would you choose? Which is more important: an imagination or a sense of humor?"

Maybe I'm overthinking this...or maybe this is harder to answer than it seems. Isn't anything possible through imagination? Isn't that where the genesis of everything is? I can imagine a sense of humor, and I can joke about imagination, so in reality aren't I really getting two for the price of one if I learn how to use one properly to generate the other? Is the weaker of the two still passable to some, even in a diluted sense?

I look at myself in this prompt, and I'd like to think I was gifted with both a healthy sense of humor and a robust imagination; I don't know what I'd do with an absence of either one. I would've had to learn at some point which area I was more proficient in, and adapt my weakness to...well, I guess the word I'm stumbling into, is compensate. By logic then via this prompt, that would mean I was given the imagination as a means of making up for not being funny or finding humor in anything...were I to feel closer the need for consolation, it would've been the other way around.

Either way, lighten up, Francis  . Chances are, if you've only got the sense of humor or the imagination but not both, you're probably suffering internally from some sort of bigger psychological, psychopathic deficiency anyway, and no one else is wondering which of those two traits is your most dominant; they're trying to figure out the best way to avoid you at all costs.

Today in the "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS" , I posted this prompt: "Tell us about a certain memory that is triggered whenever you hear a specific song. Was the song actually playing at that moment, or is it something in the lyrics or the music itself that jogs your memory?" And I realize that it's a variation of a prompt I've seen a bunch of times in different groups. I may have to retire the "Music Monday" category, because I'm running out of ways to kill it on its own.

And for someone like me, who lives every day according to a different soundtrack as it is, picking out just one song that triggers a memory is hard because there's so many to choose from. I've been thinking about this off and on throughout the day, and nothing's coming to mind that separates itself from the other ideas. What I'm really trying to think of is that one big "Aha!" moment where suddenly a song comes on and everyone just looks around at each other like "Yep...this is happening right now!!"...everyone's got at least a couple of 'em, right? Somethin' better than dancin' with a brown-eyed girl to Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl"   or watching a house on fire from the top down during Bloodhound Gang's "Fire Water Burn"  . Lemme think a little more...

Ahhh yes. I may have referenced this event before, not for a song, but for Apple being totally shady as fuck regarding the songs played in shuffle mode during certain situations. A few years back I was dating a woman whose parents lived about a half hour or so away, and practically in a fancy-ass version of a log cabin in the middle of nowhere. I definitely don't think they lived on a road so much as it was just a plot of land with a trail to get to another set of trails to find their place. Anyway, we went to visit them one evening for who the hell knows why. It wasn't dinner, because we went there pretty late at night as it was...it may just have been for a bonfire, and for me to actually meet her folks. I don't know why else to be honest; it was probably ten years ago.

But on the way home, probably 1am-ish, my iPod started playing songs as if it had its own nighttime, "spooky music in the dark middle of nowhere" playlist. Every song had a theme of night, sleep, or darkness. I even tried skipping a few songs, and still, songs that fit this category would come up. My girlfriend was half-asleep in the passenger seat, and I wasn't too sure of where I was or where I was trying to get to (other than home), which made the idea of imminent horror movie-style death more appropriate.

I don't remember exactly all of the songs that came on at that time, but this one stands out as the one I most easily recall. Certainly not sonically frightening, but lyrically and in its visually dystopian bleakness it was not something I needed to hear at that moment as part of a larger soundtrack of maybe falling asleep at the wheel, or worse.

"Someone's son or someone's daughter...
'over my dead body'."
Lyrics and info.  

The above image is taken from a Facebook post made maybe last week or so by the RZA (leader of the Wu-Tang Clan). It's from the book The Tao Of Wu  , which, if I can track down a local copy, might move up and become the next book on my TBR (to be read) pile. I used own it and have read it before, but it is pearls of wisdom like this I often forget and am in need of reminding myself of from time to time. It's often we speak from emotion first and thought second, when it should be the other way around.

I saw this comic while scrolling through Facebook this afternoon..."Pearls Before Swine" is one of my favorites, and this was particularly funny to me today because it sums up in three panels how I've mostly felt about relationships for nearly half of the last seven years or so, and maybe in general. It's a lot of work getting me out of my shell, almost to the point it no longer feels worth it, because as soon as I'm out I usually end up back inside longer, deeper, and more frustrated at myself for leaving in the first place. IDGAF level: Elite.

The Bills lost yesterday in a highly-anticipated game   against the rival Patriots, which didn't stop me from playing keyboard warrior all afternoon on Facebook and Twitter. I tried my best to hurl insults and make inappropriate remarks, and while I left it all out there on the internet, it wasn't enough to put my team over the top even though statistically I had one of my best days of being a jerky a-hole fan ever. If watching people get riled up over watching other people get paid millions of dollars to get riled up a few Sundays out of the year is something that interests you, there's still plenty of room to hop on my bandwagon over at @Fivesixer  . You don't need to follow me, and I don't need more followers...it's just something else to do to pass the time, I guess. Don't mind the occasional corny attempts at humor or the random stripper/porn star follower request either...that's just part of the wallpaper that makes me human, or something. *shrug*

Speaking of Twitter, the new American favorite pastime of Donald Trump gawking has hit increasingly popular levels as of late...especially when the obscenely rich-on-his-own-ego rich person launched a Twitter Q&A with the hashtag #AskTrump. Thankfully and dependably, the internet did not let us down  . While it's true I will fear for our great nation if this man becomes president, each day that it becomes more obvious that he can't ever, ever be president just brings me another day closer to the sadness that will occur once he and his crazy hair end up going away for good.

And finally, today is the birthday of perhaps the greatest human being alive  , Bill Murray. Nothing I can say about any of his movie roles will ever take the place of the many amazing stories about him that have occurred in random ordinary peoples' everyday lives...I'm not even gonna link anything. Someday, if you're bored or lonely or unhappy or any combination of the three, just Google him and read some of the things he's done. Day = instantly brightened.

Ok, well, easier said than done on my end, anyway. I think I'm gonna go off in search of some kind of comforting baked goods so I can put off the inevitable panic that's bound to happen regarding tomorrow, and hope that me wanting to fall asleep early so I can wake up early doesn't lead to me worrying about oversleeping so much that I don't sleep at all. Peace, may pretty horses come to you, and GOODNIGHT NOW!!