ManicDDaily



A Shot Food

An article in today’s New York Times discusses self-sabotage—that is, many people’s unfortunate tendency to ensure that expectations of disappointment are not disappointed: the bizarre attraction to shooting one’s self in the foot,  because (i)  a wound in the foot looks like a stigmata (i.e. is a good accoutrement to a martyrdom guise), and (ii) a familiar pain feels safer than the risk of an unknown pain (or even pleasure).

I, for one, am very good at this type of self-sabotage.  The article talks of repeated masochistic love affairs.  I’m offering, as an example, a long masochistic love affair with fatigue.  (Let’s not get too personal here.)

If I stand back a little from my own conduct vis-a-vis fatigue, I am aware that much of it– taking too many things on; getting to, and leaving from, my office too late in the day; drinking a very strong cup of tea upon my arrival at home in the evening; doing a lot of goofy evening stuff (i.e. blogging), then staying up very very late reading and re-reading silly books, or doing a crossword, or trolling the internet; getting up super-early to do some of the same exhausted internetty/reading/goofy types of strong-tea-fueled pastimes–is not productive or even all that pleasurable.

If questioned, I will say that my staying up late happens by chance, as if I just get carried away (every single night).  If questioned harder, I might admit that the late nights are an act of will—I’ll say that I need that time to myself to feel that my life is expansive.

If questioned extremely probingly, I may even admit that my schedule of late, crowded (but slightly aimless) nights is one that I stick to with extreme rigidity, despite the resulting exhaustion and reduced productivity.

What’s the answer to this kind of self-sabotage?  The article talks of medication, therapy.

But I look to the sage of my apartment, my dog, Pearl.  Pearl (nearly fifteen) is an extreme creature of habit, particularly now that she is losing her vision.  Pearl knows, for example, the direction that each of her walkers (me, my husband, daughters, nephews) like to take her in (North or South), the exact places (within my building) where her walker will get nervous of her bladder control and pick her up and carry her,  the amount of time each walker will let her sniff and mosey.  Pearl then enforces these patterns, tugging in the walker’s habitual direction, stopping stock still in the spots where she is supposed to be carried, turning recalcitrant when a normally tolerant walker tries to pick up the pace.

Most of Pearl’s walkers just let Pearl have her way.  But sometimes the patterns simply have to be changed, when, for example, Pearl’s side of the sidewalk is covered with salt.  It’s hard to shift Pearl—you have to tug her with some determination, which because she is small, cute, fluffy, can be embarrassing.   She will eventually follow the walker’s tug, however, and then, oddly (after a day or so),  she will become just about as rigid about the new habit as she was about the old.

Which means, I guess, that old dogs can learn new tricks.

Of course, some kind of tug must be there, a determination to make the change.   (I have a feeling I’ll be up late.)