Every once in a while, a concentrated burst of inspiration hits me. It’s like being squirted in the face with a high-powered water gun, except instead of my face, it’s my brain, and instead of water, it’s an urge to write.
This usually occurs when I’m hopped up on three or so cups of coffee, and I’m ridiculously excited about the world and everything in it for no real reason. I’ll be bouncing around in my computer chair, thinking about things I actually know nothing about but I think that I do, when suddenly a light turns on inside my brain and I’m like, “Oh man! I should DO something with this energy!” But instead of running a couple of laps around the outside of whatever building I’m in, I decide to write.
Because when I become energized, it’s not the way normal people do. I become energized INTELLECTUALLY, not physically. My brain becomes flooded with dopamine which tickles my neurons so that they fire all over the place, and then my brain’s like “Let’s run a fucking MARATHON, let’s go, come on, I’m ready,” but then I have to remind my brain that, actually, we hate running, and it’s like “Well dammit, you have to do SOMETHING with me.” So I say, “Why don’t we do some homework?” and it’s like “Whoa, whoa, slow it down there, slugger, I don’t want to work THAT hard.” So we compromise, and I do a little creative writing.
Anyway, these inspiration bursts also cause me to have ideas. They’re usually bad ideas, with just a few good ones sprinkled in there, but either way they’re always these hopeful, optimistic, big-picture thoughts that I’m way too lazy and angry to think about most of the rest of the time. I get this weird feeling of clarity and understanding, this feeling that for a brief moment, I suddenly understand the way the world works and everything that needs to be done for it to work better. I feel like I can see the projected path my life will take.
Of course, this gets me even more excited and bouncy because I think I’m all enlightened or some shit. I’ll tell Brad, or whoever is most accessible at the time, all about these extremely inspiring yet unrealistic ideas like I don’t know how no one has thought of them before. Except sometimes I get so excited about them that I forget how to use words correctly, so I’ll end up asking, “What’s that word for being able to express yourself clearly?” and Brad will say, “Articulate?” and I’ll laugh because how ironic is that? But then I’ll say, “Anyway, that’s what I think I should do with my life,” and it’s not until I calm down later that I realize I didn’t actually say any of what I had wanted to say. And then I try to remember what it was that I had wanted to say, and I can’t. And just like that, things are as unclear to me as they always were.
I wonder what my life would be like if I thought this way all the time- clearly, rationally, optimistically. And in a way I do think this way all the time, because I essentially mainline caffeine into my veins every morning in order to get out of bed at a respectable hour. But these inspiration bursts don’t come every day or even every time I drink three cups of coffee. They are rarer than that, and so only at certain times do I feel like I understand my life, myself, and the world. Point being, my normal baseline state of mind does not include a clear understanding of the world; I can only reach this state with copious enhancement drugs that are flavored with Cinnamon Bun Coffeemate. With that in mind, can I really call it a state of clear understanding? Do I really understand myself this way, or do I just think I understand myself?
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