millsworks

Yesterday I went into a tizzy because I couldn’t find a particular backup disk with some important script files on it. Whenever that sort of shit happens to me I behave pretty much the same way I do when my computer or hard drive goes down.

It’s bad enough losing data when one is notorious for not backing up their shit – but when you lose the fucking backup – that’s just too much.

I stomp around and fume and swear and throw things and just generally behave like an ill-tempered ogre that might be prone to dismembering friends and family members if any of them so much as utter the words: “Is something wrong?”

When basic crap around me breaks down or refuses to work – or refuses to be found – I cease to be a civilized human being. I would not fare well in any post-apocalyptic scenario – whether it be an Omega Man or A Boy And His Dog or This Quiet Earth or any other world-gone-wrong scenario. As much as I enjoy watching those films and putting myself in the role of the stalwart and ever-resourceful hero, when confronted with the reality of things-fucking-up I quickly realize I am not the hero type – I am, in fact, the Wallace Shawn character from My Dinner With Andre.

“But, Andre, I like my electric blanket!”

Fortunately, after digging through mountains of improperly filed debris which I like to refer to as my stuff, I managed to find the files I was seeking. However, it would be too easy to simply carry on as before now that the world has been set right once again. It’s not right – it’s still busted – I just happen to be able to once more find a way to pick out a path amongst the shattered landscape that surrounds me. As someone who lives, for the most part, inside their own head, I am all too capable of ignoring the basics that would drive more sane creatures into outrageous fits of despair. Dirty dishes, mounds of laundry, stacks of books, desk buried beneath a sedimentary paper simulacrum of geological proportions – all of it is so easy for me to ignore because all the real action is happening between my ears.

I was better able to cope with this state of affairs when I had an assistant and an office. That’s my excuse – for the moment – and I’m sticking with it. I pretty much need a full time nurse to lead me around and point at the next thing on my To Do List. All the other petty inconveniences that plague normal people and which constitute life in the real world are – in my case – always better handled by someone else.

That someone else is not my wife nor would I ever expect her to assume such a role. Merely thinking of the possibility – let alone voicing it – would ensure my quick demise in flash of eye-ball laser power reducing me to a small pile of smouldering and bewildered ash. She has her own shit to deal with and the attendant shit of sharing her life with the organizational equivalent of Charles Shultz’s Pig Pen.

This is something I must handle on my own.

I’ve done this before, you know. Every time something goes horribly wrong as a consequence of my own inability to cope with the world beyond my eyeballs, I vow to shape up, get my shit together, hunker down, suck it up and a litany of other buzz words all uttered with the intent of, once and for all, ceasing this obsessive compulsive behaviour that is an extension of my fractured thinking processes.

Having one’s thinking process be fractured is not, on its own, a bad thing. It leads to many acrostic views and stimulating synchronistic perspectives that can feed multiple creative endeavours.

It just also – in my case at least – requires someone to follow me around with a shovel and a broom.

The human equivalent of a dog-walker, I suppose, prepared to stoop and scoop and perhaps occasionally yank on the leash to keep me off the grass – (that’s intended as a metaphor, yo) – since I am so obviously incapable of doing anything that doesn’t involve what is of immediate interest right in front of my nose or right behind my eyes.

For today, at least, I am making the effort to clear up the strategic piles of thoughts, works, interests, possibilities and potential that allow to cluster about my feet (often literally) and get myself back on the path – any path – that leads to something – anything – remotely productive.

Tomorrow, I’ll probably dig out all the old wind-up toys and spend the day on the floor taking pictures of an as yet to be conjured epic scenario – the dirty laundry can be sculpted to create other worldly landscapes – and those stacks of books can be pressed into service as the ruins of tall buildings from some distant and dysfunctional metropolis.

But what’s really truly important about all of this is . . . I found what I was looking for.

Cheers.