I’m probably the world’s worst at putting my feelings in a holding pattern and then writing about them a day or even several days later.

Perhaps I should reword that. I’m the world’s best at it.

Like right now, as I recall the mini-panic attack I had yesterday when I discovered I had a tiny hole in one of the latex gloves I wore to the store.

OMG, OMG, OMG WHAT IF THE BUG GOT IN?!?

Or the thoughts I had today about an episode a month ago where I hugged one of my good friends who could have given me a terrible affliction. I know, I know. I suffer from Pandemicmonia. I’ll take a Pepto Bismol tablet. It should be fine in a minute or two.

Hey, I didn’t say the feelings were rational. I just said I experienced them and often put them in a holding pattern. The truth is, as soon as I got home yesterday, I washed my hands for a full minute and a half — with my latex gloves still on. Then I rewashed my hands for another thirty seconds — with the gloves off.

Oh, and that friend I hugged over a month ago? He’s not sick, and neither am I.

Why am I suddenly thinking about how I felt in both instances, a day or over a month later?

This afternoon I simply got to wondering why I do this. Is this normal? Am I exhibiting some kind of abnormal self-imposed sensory deprivation thingy, so I don’t have to think about how I feel at the moment?

Okay, perhaps I need to clarify a few things about myself.

I am not normal.

I have never been normal.

I have no idea what the heck normal is.

And I really don’t care if I’m ever classified as normal.

What I do know is that for the longest time, I’ve experienced things, glorious things, remarkable things, scary things, hurtful things, all.kinds.of.things. And for some reason, I put off the enjoyment of these things, the analysis of these things, and the feelings experienced by these things to a later time.

Sometimes days.

Sometimes years.

Today, I told myself I needed to stop doing that. If I’m feeling scared today, I need to write about how frightened I am and why. Same for if I’m happy, overjoyed, stressed out, sick, or blue.

Blue’s a metaphor y’all. Come on, look at my profile picture. Do I look like a Smurf to you?

Anyway, I don’t need to give you folks an autobiographical day by day account of the reading on my feeling meter, but I do need to learn to let my daily feelings influence my writing.

Some days I’m going to want to be angry and let the anger fuel my writing of passionate rants. Some days I know I’ll be melancholy and dig deep for those levels of sadness and let the emotional undertow offer up things bringing me down.

You know the old saying about striking when the iron’s hot? Yeah, it’s like that. So as I hurtle toward becoming a collection of ashes in an urn on my baby’s mantle, I need to start laying down my take on how I feel at the moment. Besides, at my advancing age, it’s not like my memory of things is always the greatest.

I heard a joke a while ago about losing one’s memory…and…well, somehow I seem to have forgotten the punchline.

But hey, I do remember what I had for lunch this afternoon.

Uh….

Hang on, it was food, I remember that much.

The point is, having experiences today, whether they be blessed events or torrid piles of sh*t heaped on my head and not capturing the essence of how I feel at the time converts the experience into nothing more than an emotionless recollection of something that happened in a galaxy, far, far away.

Being in the Now trying to drum up emotions of the past is counterintuitive and in my case, certainly non-productive. There’s no fire in the gut and passion boiling the blood.

For me, this equates to two fundamental things. I didn’t have chili for lunch, and I’m not writing this in the void of outer space.

It also means I’m writing yesterday’s news today. I’m merely recounting, not feeling.

In my humble opinion, I owe all of you folks a h*ll of a lot better than that. Especially all you faithful readers who read my dreck (may I Gutbloom?) steadily. You expect real and I need to learn to give real to you in real-time.

It’s going to take some time to get there because I seem to have hard-wired my brain to experience the event then think about how I felt later, but I’m getting a little better at it.

Tomato bisque and grilled cheese sandwiches.

You’re probably thinking what the h*ll? I just remembered. I had tomato bisque soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. As I ate, I felt so calm and at peace, so full of tranquility…

Okay, enough of that. Let’s see what emotion I feel tomorrow. Maybe I’ll have chili-dogs with onions and cheese.

Maybe I’ll just have gas.

Thanks So Much For Reading

Let’s keep in touch: paul@pgbarnett.com

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