The Year In ... STOOPIDITY

So here we are at the end of another year; while not exactly a banner year - a year for the ages - I can say, with all due pride and fanfare, that I did NOT set myself on fire, poke my own eyes out, or otherwise maim myself. For most of you that would be a given, but I seem to be a beast of a different color.

I began the year locked up in segregation, awaiting the disposition of yet another ticket for possession of porn, pills, and gambling; three of my favorite things in here. I could give you a five page dissertation as to WHY these things seem so dear to my shriveled heart, but it would seem to self serving and I'd only convince myself of their importance. So I won't do that.

What I will do is spend some time musing on why it seems easier to train a circus bear to ride one of those teeny tiny bikes than it is to get me to place something, ANYTHING, in front of my suicidal drive to blast off all the toes on my feet. What most people seem to learn at an early age is that actions that bring negative consequences should NOT be repeated ad nauseum. When I suffer punishment, I take it as a challenge: I will find the path to getting what I want without penalty. This type of determination is usually highly prized and well developed in highly successful people, and to be fair, I do apply this compulsion to succeed in many areas of my life. It just seems that I'm constitutionally unable to avoid the "banana in the tailpipe" situations.

For as long as I've known how I've always loved to gamble; mostly on cards and sporting events - since I've never rolled dice in a filthy alley I'm no degenerate gambler, right? My dad liked to play bingo and the slots at the reservation casino, and I'd be willing to wager that my grandfather, uncles, and aunts have all bet on one thing or another. Like alcoholism, gambling addiction seems to be endemic in the Indian population (I have nothing to support that assertion other than observation and my own experience, but I would be surprised if there wasn't a link between addictive behaviors and the populations of the survivors of genocide).

But I babble, the point here is that I dance perilously close to the edge of a precipice that I'm sad to say I have plunged over before. More than once, and deeply. At times I have not walked away from a losing hand at the table, when I know damn well I should have. I don't know if it's ego or willfulness, or the inveterate gamblers' belief that "I can make it up on the next hand, game, etc". The truth of it is that more times than not I end up losing more. To the well adjusted and sane the problems with my thought patterns are obvious, but I have a hard time walking away. Not all the time but some of the time.

So I recently lost a fair chunk of my bank account and I resentfully had to pay it off. The easy part is knowing what I did wrong, making a plan to avoid the same pitfall in the future. But as we all know life is rarely about "easy" and I seem to have a pathological dislike of easy. I can do the post-mortem, and the planning part, I just don't seem to be willing or able to put anything into action. Doing so requires a good deal of self discipline. Self discipline is a strange creature; it lurks in all of us seemingly ready to spring into action and snatch victory from the slavering jaws of defeat. But it is a fickle bitch of a beast since it is also just as readily willing to sit on its fat f-ing haunches and watch us immolate on the pyres of our pride.

I like to think of my self discipline as a beat cop patrolling my psyche looking for the opportunity to step in and lay down the law to my miscreant id. Unfortunately for me, family and friends, and my bank account, my beat cop seems more drunken, Irish look-the-other-way flatfoot than tireless crusader. More times than not I can simply roll right over my inner G-man and plunder the bank of Dumbassed Ideas, walking right past the sleeping fool with armloads of Bad Ideas. I need to fire that bastard.

As most of the followers of this blog know, I come from a slightly different background. While I refuse to let that be any type of excuse for anything I have ever done; it goes without saying that I am wired differently. At some point in everybody's development there comes a watershed moment where a youth transitions into a semblance of their future adult. A point where the foolish decisions are scrutinized with a wiser more jaundiced eye. That moment has yet to arrive for me. I know that it's close, I can feel some sort of pressure building against the dam of childish wants, and desires for the world to be the way I want it to be. But I resist; terrified of the terrible responsibilities of that adulthood. I fear being drowned, swept away by the demands of what I NEED to be doing rather than what I WANT to be doing.

I know, I know, blah, blah, blah, and boo-hoo-hoo. The point here is that I need to develop a sense of self discipline (wouldn't that take self discipline to do?). So why am I not doing that instead of typing away, expounding on my feelings like some weepy schoolgirl one might ask. Well mind yer own damn business I say; one thing at a time.

I strayed from the main idea... I would like to think that the past year was instructive in the sense that I can move forward. To where, or what I move on to is a mystery. Now on to other instructive episodes of foolishness.

I learned that I was willing to risk loss rather than lose a potential gain; to the point that I would act on something without doing my due diligence. In short I bought high and sold low. I'm sure that I'm not the only one to have made this error.

But I have rambled on for way too long and left the subject a long time ago; not to mention the not so subtle pressure of her-whose-name-shall-not-be-spoken to actually get this printed mailed and posted. So until next time I'm out of here. I have a few books that I want to review on my next post but I guess that I should probably get to reading.