Rules are for ugly people (part 2)

Originally, I was going to call this post "Religion is for ugly people" but I thought that would cause too much controversey. What inspired that name was a woman on the subway platform, handing out 'Embrace Jesus' brochures to passersby. The only exception was if a good-looking man or woman walked by her, she would ignore them and not bother trying to hand them a brochure. A dimmer bulb than me would deduce that religion is, indeed, for ugly people but seeing as I'm an avid fan of subtlety, I have a different explanation: pretty people are harder to convert. What's the appeal of selling good times in the afterlife when you're the star of this life right here? And rather than try, she had a feeling she'd be up against it with people who have looks.

For the record, she took one look at me and gave me two brochures...the old bag. I guess if religion is for ugly people, I can expect to become the next pope.

But I digress. The second half of my day was tepid and uninspired: I've been ignored by my supervisors and I hate my new cube (the fact that it IS a cube, not an office, and even as a cube, it's decrepit, poorly-lit and with very little porn-shuei-my back faces a busy corridor, so everyone can see my screen). The IT guy was painfully unfunny (yet singularly unaware of this fact) and the benefits lady looked like she hadn't been to the doctor's in a decade.

I'm aware that the only thing that I hate more than change is the fact that I hate change, which would account for why I torture myself by inflicting more and more change on myself, in a pathetic bid to prove that change doesn't bother me.

Still with me? Well, take this then: I'm on the tail end of a confidence power-surge which is due to expire any day now. It's coinciding with a period where my motivation to define, much less accomplish, new directives is at a low ebb. This has been going on since I got my citizenship and it's an all too familiar strain of mania: my energy is off the charts high, my muscles spasm involuntarily and I can't sleep to save my life. Part of it is the underwhelming feeling you get when you achieve a major life goal that you didn't think you'd ever do (in my case, the citizenship thing). So much so, that I'm not quite sure what to do with the rest of my life, because I never planned for life post-citizenship. I simply didn't think I would need to, which is clearly a mistake. This has exacerbated my usual mania to a point of almost unbearable anxiety and compulsion to move, think, talk, laugh and (*sigh*) buy shit I don't need.

Which brings us to the other side of the coin: once the mania goes away (and I know, in the pit of my stomach, that it's going away soon), the depression that washes over me to replace it, will be pretty substantial. I know this because my depression is almost always inversely proportional to the heights of mania I had reached...and this year's has been higher than usual. It's scaring me because I know I won't be able to cope with it. The older I get, the weaker I feel on the inside, while the outside keeps getting stronger, tougher and more belligerent. It's a sign that changes need to be made and I'm going to have to spend some time carefully considering what that change is going to need to be.

Major change isn't the ideal thing to have on your mind, the first day of a new job.