I've often heard that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Now obviously that's not the medical definition, but it's still a pretty good barometer for mental health. According to that adage, I'm crazy in the coconut. And have been for quite some time now.
Today was supposed to be a big day. A good day. A fresh start. "The first day of the rest of my life." Instead it just got thrown in the pile with every other day I've ever wasted. I wanted to wake up at 9 or 10, go get my hair cut and then meet up with my sister for a spot of adventure ending sometime before 4 (when she goes to work.) After that I was going to walk around and look for places to work or do community service. Preferably both.
I ended up waking up at 3:30PM.
I have had a problem with sleeping since about sophomore year of high-school. Give or take a year. I never seem to be able to fall asleep at normal times and waking up before noon is near impossible. Except for when I lived in LA and woke up every day, on the dot, at 8AM with no alarm clock. Sun shinin', birds chirpin' and I'd just pop out of bed and proceed with my day. Back here in PA however, you'd be hard-pressed to wake me for anything. Free cheeseburgers, you say? They need time to cool, I don't like really hot food anyway.... Naked virgins eager for me? Let 'em wait a little bit longer, it'll build up the tension... Nuclear holocaust underway? I'm probably irrevocably irradiated now anyway, might as well enjoy some sleep while I can...
No matter the incentive I will rationalize a way to stay in bed. On-the-cusp-of-waking-Josh's logic is infallible. Of Vulcanic accuracy. This pattern of behavior has gotten me kicked out of school and fired from more than a few jobs. The exception to the rule was that damn LA, though. And my pre-high-school years. How come I was able to wake so easily then? And go to bed at a decent hour? Must be D.S.P.S. I concluded. Everything I read about it coincided with my preferred pattern of sleeping.
Inability to fall asleep before 2AM? Check.
Inability to wake before noon? Check.
Fruitless attempts at "resetting my clock" by staying up for a few days straight and then going to bed at a decent time? Check.
If I go to bed at say 5 or 6am, maybe even 7, I can wake up at noon no problem. Completely refreshed. I fall asleep quickly, sleep soundly and the very moment I open my eyes, I am awake. If I try going to bed at 11PM or midnight, I lay there for hours in the silent dark thinking about absolutely everything until maybe conking out around 4 or 5. Then next morning when my 3 alarms go off in one minute succession of each other, I have shut them off and laid back down without so much as a conscious thought going through my brain.
I've tried everything. Different job schedules like 2-10, drinking coffee in the morning, exercise... Nothing seems to change the fact that I simply do not want to get out of bed. Ever. I'm still in bed right now.
Before I discovered the parameters of DSPS I hypothesized a similar disorder. It seemed to me that normal people wake for 16 hours and sleep for 8. And for the average employed American that 8 ran from about midnight to 8AM. I however like to sleep for anywhere from 12 to 24 hours or more and wake for 24 to 48 or more hours. I simply have a longer cycle. Longer days, longer nights.
While I still think there is some validity to that, and also the DSPS, I think there is a more concise underlying problem. Indeed likely the root of all my problems.
There are simply too many variables to work through to observe an obvious pattern and I'm too deeply involved for an objective view but it would seem to me that about the time I discovered women, introspection and self-actualization was the same time my sleeping problem began. It'd be unfair to solely blame it on my first girlfriend for entering my life and it'd also be a cop out to just say it came with adulthood.
Up until about 16 or 17 I was the character many people remember me to be and I largely still consider myself to be. I was your typical bored smart kid. Your textbook case of intelligent class clown. I finished my work before everyone else and was left with a surplus amount of time to myself. So I became disruptive. Discovered the joys of making others laugh. Thus the Josh Vish many know and love was born. About that time is also when my grades started slipping. I was fiercely intelligent but self-destructively stubborn. Why should I do this tedious homework when I know I'll already get a perfect on the test? Foolish... My standardized testing scores were literally off the charts, my IQ test had me well above the genius bracket, and yet shortly after all this was discovered my grades slumped to average at best. Just barely passing by high-school. I'd ace the tests and get incompletes on the homework assignments. As + Fs = Cs. I didn't do homework because "my home time is my time."
What happened here? Is this the source of my cockiness? Did telling an 8 year old boy he is literally smarter than all the adults in the building and that he has more potential to increase his intelligence than 90% of the entire population, cripple him? Cripple me? Was I too immature to deal with such news? There is a difference between intelligence and maturity.
I STILL have this attitude that I can accomplish whatever I want, yet I barely ever try at anything. Anything I've ever seemingly "accomplished" has come to me naturally. Drawing was an innate skill that I honed during my free time in school, sure, but truth be told I never really had to work at it. Or being funny. It just came naturally. Losing weight and getting into shape, an admirable feat for sure but still it didn't require too much effort on my part. Maybe I'm selling myself short? I did after all put in the hours at the gym and monitor my eating with precision the rest of the day... it's just that.... it never felt hard. It never felt like work. I couldn't understand how other people who claim to want to be in shape weren't. It's so easy, it's so simple, I thought. How are they not getting it?
Ah ha, there's the rub. I've always followed the path of least resistance. I've never really been challenged in my entire life. Whether it's because I avoid challenges or because nothing is worthy to challenge me is up for debate. It is likely a combination of the two. I had even designed a quote to excuse my supposed overflowing talent yet lack of observable achievements:
When it's easy to do anything, it's hard to do something.
Why did I stop drawing? During my school years and my short run in the office world I drew habitually. Almost obsessively. Was it simply a way to escape the monotony of the day? When I have hours of free time now, I don't draw. In fact, I don't even entertain the idea of wanting to draw. The only time I want to draw is when there is something else I'm supposed to be doing.
Nowadays I don't understand how they could have thought I was so ridiculously intelligent. If I'm so smart, how come I'm such a loser? If all these people with supposedly inferior intellects are successful in modern society, why aren't I?
Simple. Because I don't want it.
Why don't I wake up? I don't want to.
I am a HUGE proponent that people will do whatever it is they actually want to do.
If you are overweight and can't seem to get in shape, it's not because you're doing something wrong, it's because you don't want it bad enough.
If I can't wake up on time, find and hold a job, move toward being a filmmaker, etc.. it's not because my approach is somehow flawed or because the world is against me, it's because at the core I don't truly desire it.
I was a fat kid for years. I never spoke of wanting to lose weight, I just did. One day I just got my act together and started doing what was necessary. BECAUSE I ACTUALLY WANTED IT.
This is my problem. At the core, I don't think I want to do anything.
When i was in jail, I modified my quote to:
I can do anything, I want to do something.
I have no clear-cut goals. I used to want to be a father. Part of me still thinks I do. Filmmaker, comedian, bodybuilder, artist... All these things I claim I want to be, I am making no moves toward becoming.
"Shoot for the moon land amongst the stars", I'm on the moon like, okay.... now what?! Why bother setting another goal if this one is so lofty for so many?
A good friend of mine once added an addendum to a popular quote:
"I think therefore I am... depressed."
I largely believe this to be the case. Too many times and from too many people I have been told that "You are too smart for your own good." I used to cite it as my tragic flaw, much to a former flame's behest. She'd conjecture with "It can't be your tragic flaw because that means it will ultimately lead to your downfall." To which I'd just stare at her blankly and wait for her to catch on. It goes back to "Thinking is the enemy of perfection." Our culture values careful planning and long-term goals. It looks down upon brash spur-of-the-moment decisions. Anything I have ever done, good or bad comes down to spontaneous decision making. The creation of this blog. This very entry. Drawing. Being funny. Losing weight. Gaining muscle. Making funny little skit videos. Nothing I have claimed to want or laid down plans for has ever came to fruition. Maybe normal people need more planning in their lives, but when you have a to do list that starts off with:
Open eyes.
Reach for phone to shut off alarm.
Stand up.
Shut off alarm on entertainment center.
Exit to bathroom.
Splash face with water....
Maybe it's time to just start shooting from the hip? How about, just wake the fuck up? Let things develop organically. I've never done that. I mean not really. Not as a rule of thumb.
People chastise "flying by the seat of your pants". Well guess what, if that's the only way you're going to fly, then maybe it's a good thing. Because planning to attach my trousers to an aircraft has just left me stumbling over details like What kind of pants? What material? What color? How big of an airplane? Maybe a helicopter instead? Maybe for me, and for some of us, flying by the seat of our pants is the only way to fly.
I have a good 15-20 writing projects lined up. Some fiction screenplays and some focused blogs. I rarely, if ever, work on them. This blog that I am typing right now though? Obviously getting done and certainly wasn't planned in advance. I told you what I was going to do. Write some fancy symbolic fight between me as a character and a personified Monday. Well that didn't happen. This did. So maybe instead of berating myself for not going with my original vision I should be congratulating myself for actually completing something.
Or is that just the part of me prone to follow the path of least resistance taking over again?
Water doesn't think about where it's going to flow next or how fast, it just does. A frog doesn't ponder how best to be a frog. "Should I sit on this lily-pad? Should I eat that passing fly?" It just simply is a frog.
So why is it so hard for me to "just be" Josh Vish?
Isn't all of this technically being me? Aren't I being me right now? I mean maybe water or a frog doesn't question its motives and maybe that's perfectly fine, but maybe this is what I'm supposed to do. Maybe this is how I be me. Maybe the only secret to me being me, or you being you, isn't some specific set of guidelines for behavior, whether self-created or not, but simply being at peace with everything you do.
So maybe the way I'll cure my "insanity" isn't by changing my methods, but by instead expecting the results I've already been getting and being content with them.
People think I don't try. I think I don't try. Maybe I've been trying too hard?
The difference between the young version of me that drew, made people laugh, got in shape, moved to LA, made short movies with people, etc. and the me that doesn't seem to be accomplishing anything I want is that he just did. He didn't obsess or plan, he did. "Just do it." in person form.
The difference between the me that wanted to write a clever narrative that would awe and inspire people and the me that wrote this blog is: that I actually wrote mine.
Instead of trying to sit down and figure out what I want from life in clear-cut black-and-white terms maybe I just need to let go and see where I head naturally.
I'm sick of saying I used to be this or I used to do that. Or I want to be this, I want to do that.
You know what?
I am.
And for once in my life, that's good enough for me.
It would be so nice to end it there. So movie happily-ever-after. But the sad fact remains that it doesn't end there. I simply do not know who I am or what I want to with my life. And until I figure that out, I am effectively paralyzed. Dead in the water.
"And where does the newborn go from here? The net is vast and infinite..."
Sometimes Tuesday makes for a better Monday
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