Glutton for punishment

I don't know why I'm going back to this. I was bummed out at the wage-slave job all day Tuesday after reading Claire Wolfe's quote from a Kate Wilhelm novel ... because I recognized myself.

"... Sanity was accumulating debt and paying it off and accumulating more ... Sanity was pretending things would get better tomorrow, next week, next year. Sanity was pretending there was no beast inside roaring and searing, tormented and tormenting ...

"It was accepting rush-hour traffic and too many horns and poisoned food and too many wars and deaths and killings and armed people shooting other armed people and unarmed people alike and terrorists and more terrorists to fight the terrorists and politicians lying and lying and the war machine rolling forever onward and hunger in the shadow of wealth and too many children and too many people and too many fat religious leaders telling everyone else what their duty was and making everyone hate feeling too fat or too thin or too blond or too dark or too tall or too short or too old or too young and ... pretending it meant the good life and good health and mental well-being and teaching guilt and shame to those who faltered ..."

Great reading, but discouraging because so true. So why come back to it? Because after reading it, I sat down and scrawled 10 things I could do to start clawing my way out of this "Sanity," nine of them short-term and one longer term. It took me about two minutes to write down the list, because all of these ideas had been pressing against my brain busting to come out. The thing that bummed me out was then I had to report for duty as a wage-slave, postponing any active work on anything on the list.

I'm on my way out the door to do the same now, but I'm not as discouraged as I was yesterday. Now I have The List.