The day before yesterday was an emotionally charged day. I went to a reggaeton dancing class with the idea of blowing some steam off. The teacher was a superb dancer but a very inadequate teacher, not gauging the level of the supposedly introductory class and instead pushing us through a difficult choreography more adequate for TikTok than a dance floor.
I left the class even more high strung than I had come in. I needed to relax. My coping mechanism is weed. I couldn't help myself, I broke my sobriety by smoking in a park next to the dance school. Taking breaks from weed increases its perceived potency. I felt my entire body relax and very soon I dozed off on the bench I was sitting on. A while later I woke up, startled, and made my way back home.
I had walked three blocks when I noticed my phone wasn't in my pocket. I hastily walked back and didn't find it on the bench I had slumbered on. I went to the dance school to ask, but as I was walking up the stairs I realized I had read an email asking me to review the class, while I was at the park. I thought the best thing I could do was go back home and use my laptop to find its location.
When I came back I remembered I had left my laundry in the drying machine--maintenance had sprayed the entire floor because of cockroaches. I asked the guy if this insecticide killed bed bugs. Tienes chinches? Yes, I've been at war, I've thrown away or washed everything, sprayed, dusted, cleaned, but they keep on biting me at night. The guy went into my room and soaked it with insecticide until pools formed in the ground. "Take all of your bedding and clothes and wash them today", "yes, I know, and thank you".
I came upstairs with my laundry. The floor was littered with dead bugs. I was high and disgusted. I begun sweeping... Oh shit the phone what am I thinking about! I went to my laptop and saw that it was at the Eaton Centre, a shopping mall. I didn't have a phone to call my number, I was waiting for my roommate to come back. I put the phone in lost mode. The person who took the phone must have freaked out and turned it off, because the location stopped updating. My roommate didn't come back that night, he wisely asked for lodging at a friends place to avoid the insecticide fumes.
I wasn't thinking straight because of the weed. The very first thing I should have done is ask a stranger for a phone call and offer a reward. This I only realized the next day in sobriety and I understand this to be penitence. "Well, losing an old iPhone 6s is an reasonably cheap wake up call", I wont smoke again I must learn to relax endogenously rather than through the use of substances.
The problem is I'm utterly broke. My credit card was inside the case of my phone, but even then it was maxed out and nearly useless. I had enough money in my account to pay for next month's rent and a bit of expenses. Buying a new phone would put me at nearly zero cash at hand and zero credit. Oh man, the wake up call was and wasn't cheap. It came at the worst time possible. I needed to have my phone available in case the police contacted me regarding the stabbing, and also my participation in the clinical study hinged on the fact that I could be contacted by the clinic. I couldn't wait for a phone.
I remembered Apple's 15 day return policy. The only thing I could afford was an iPhone SE. That's what I got. I spent a considerable amount of time looking for a Fizz chip to recover my number and then setting up everything to have my virtual identity back. It's amazing how computing devices have become physical entities which contain a digital souls. When the body dies, the soul remains in the cloud, and is reincarnated into a new physical device. Perhaps this is a good metaphor to explain to technophilic atheists. You are not the hardware, you are not the software, you are the cloud and you are instantiated from it. But we must be wary of metaphor when dealing with spiritual affairs, as it limits the spiritual experience to our own limited understanding of the world and the universe.
I was spiritually hung-over yesterday. Yet I never recriminated myself. I didn't think "I should have done this" or "I'm an idiot". I thought: I broke my commitment and I am paying the price. It is not necessary to castigate myself to learn the lesson. I quietly did what was required of me to obtain my penitence, but I did so with my head hanging low. I took many naps in between.
I've been procrastinating doing the delivery gig. I knew I couldn't put it off any longer, or I would find myself asking for money. And as Huberman pointed out, the best way to do something you are avoiding is to try to do something which is even more unpleasant than the thing you are trying to do. It was time to get to work.
Last night I worked from 8:30pm to 4:30am doing deliveries for DoorDash. I enjoyed some parts, I disliked others. But that is the topic of my next post, I have already written enough for today.
There are unsavoury things in my life at the time, but the overall picture is beautiful poetry. When something "bad" happens, I know it's just a somber line or paragraph, the verses will eventually raise to kiss the sun over the clouds, and then descend back into storm and thunder. I love it all.