I have good days and I have bad days. Today was a bad day.
Saturdays are always bad days. I work in the dishpit on Saturdays. It’s mindless work so I start thinking. I’d been pretty good at listening to lectures on my iPod on the way to work so that I actually have something to think about. But today I forgot that the best way to deal with my racing mind is to give it a race car and so, inevitably, I started thinking about myself.
I hate thinking about myself. It never seems to go anywhere.
And wouldn’t you know it – I sent off a stupid email to X this morning and I thought mainly about that. It was sent with the best intentions but that’s when I make my biggest errors.
There’s a scene in a Star Trek movie –I think its the first TNG one– where the crew throw Worf off the side of a ship in the holodeck. Everyone gets a good laugh except Data, who asks why that’s funny. Someone, I forget who, tries to explain the humour. Data thinks he gets it and he shoves the doctor overboard. Not funny. Everyone is pissed and Data is utterly baffled.
I’ve always related to Data in that scene. I’m pretty much the same. In social situations, I usually shove someone overboard with the best intentions and am shocked that they don’t see it that way. I’m reminded of something a friend of mine said to me one night over a lot of drinks and cocaine: “You’re endearing Ryan, but you’re a social retard.”
Oh well, tomorrow’s another day, fiddle dee-dee. At least time is ruthless in its thrust forward, away from our old stupidities and towards new ones.
