Day: March 27, 2018

Tweaking My Amygdala

After reading about how doing exercises in imagining positive outcomes can affect the influence of right amygdala and reduce your fear, anxiety, and worry, I decided to do such an exercise while walking today in preparation for my writing session.

In the exercise that I read and remember most sharply, people were asked to imagine that they were Superman. Bullets bounced off them. They could fall off cliffs and not be harmed, which made sense, as they could also fly.

So often, it’s my own doubt and lack of confidence that undermines me and my writing efforts. Like many folks, the impostor syndrome shadows my life, with the attendant fears that I have no talent, intelligence, or ability (sound familiar, writers?), and that exposure as a fraud is imminent. I wanted to counter those effects with positive visualization. Of course, I don’t know how I’ll measure the impact of what I did. I awoke feeling pretty damn confident, optimistic, and hopeful (I know – I exist with a complex dichotomy of feelings and thoughts), and I write almost every day, regardless of my mood. What I really need is a team to test me, check on my amygdala, and give me updates. Barring that happening, I’ll assume it’s working and drink my coffee.

Coffee always helps.

Almost always.

Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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Dangerous!

I like to go down stairs as fast as I can, like I’m a little kid. Doing this the other day, I startled two elderly women as they came around the corner to go up the steps. Apologizing, I explained what I was doing.

“Oh,” one said, and I moved on. As I did, I heard her companion say, “What’d he say?” Then I heard a brief exchange, and one said, “That’s so dangerous.”

Yes, that’s me, Dangerous Michael.

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Multi-floofing

Multi-floofing (catfinition) – a form of multi-tasking that involves trying to concurrently serve several cats’ demands.

In use: “He had to multi-floof in the morning, petting each cat and scratching their heads and chins, answering their meows while filling kibble bowls and doling out portions of wet food that addressed their dietary restrictions.”

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The Australian Dream

It was another wild night of dreams, with this one making a deeper and more lasting impression.

I found myself in another land. After meeting a man and speaking with him, I realized I was in Australia. My wife was also present. No reason for being in Australia was given, but I was pleased. I’ve always wanted to go to Australia, and have just missed several times. I still plan to go.

Anyway, in the dream, I was given some papers that turned out to actually be a little book. I didn’t know what to do with it or why I had it. Reading it didn’t help because it seemed incomplete, and my wife couldn’t figure it out, either. Finding another fellow, I asked him about it, and he showed me how it was a continuation of other documents. He said they were living documents, and took me to a huge wall of like documents. After he explained it, I was excited and explained it to my wife. She wasn’t interested.

I was then informed I had to get to another part of Australia. I hopped into a car and began driving, trying to figure out where I was going as I went. The roads were holed and shoddy. Most of them were like slick mud. As I complained about them to myself and merged onto a highway that was also like slick mud, I was overtaken by cars. They passed at shockingly high speeds. “I forgot they don’t have speed limits here,” I said to myself in the dream car, accelerating to match the pace while I looked for signs and directions.

I found myself out of the car and running. Everyone was running. Instead of driving, we were running everywhere. I was still on the highway and looking for where I was going. Somehow, running, I found it and arrived.

People were there, but it was no one that I recognized. They gave me more books. Where all the other books were white, these books were red. I immediately understood that these were new books, and that I had to take them back to the other location, which I did right away.  That pleased the people on the other end. Understanding the books and system at a fast rate, I took on the role of explaining to others how these books continued the stories.

Everyone was told to line up to go somewhere else, part of some planned activities. I got in line and found that I was at the line’s beginning, with my wife beside me. As I started to go, I encountered the first man that had given me the books in the beginning. He and I exchanged some comments, and I told him that I knew how the books worked. That made him happy, and he let me go. As I walked through the gate with my wife into a green field bordered by a white picket fence, I realized that he’d been my teacher.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

In 1985, I was reassigned from Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, Japan, to Shaw AFB in South Carolina. Part of a mobility unit, my primary mission was to deploy to southwest Asia and exercise command and control of deployed Air Force units. Since we didn’t do that often (other than field exercises), my secondary mission of training Air Force reservists in southwest Asia command and control took center stage. I was on the road a lot. My commander let us drive our cars to many locations. That meant I listened to a lot of music in my car.

One of my favorite albums of that time was No Jacket Required by another Genesis member, Phil Collins. That was a terrific album. While I favored several songs on it, “Sussudio” edges out “Take Me Home” and is the song I’m streaming through my head today.

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