It is becoming more and more clear that I may have a bit of a "substance dependance" situation.
Over my two weeks in California, I barely drank alcohol and rarely smoked any cigarettes. While at ETech, and again in San Francisco, I was privy to many highly interesting conversations, meetings, dinners and the like. However, almost every time, I did not feel to be anywhere near my peak intellectual capacity. I felt... diminished somehow, as if my hands were tied behind my back and I couldn't figure out why or how.
An afternoon with Mimi, dinner with Joi, a hike through the hills with Howard... while I managed to keep up the conversation with these new friends for whom I have the highest esteem, I myself felt as if I'd poked a pencil through my brain... positively self lobotomized.
I anxiously questioned myself: "why is it I can have incredible brainstorms in conversations with friends back home and be completely hogtied in most other situations?"
The answer is all too clear. Conversations with friends back home usually take place over a bottle of something or other and a full ashtray.
Today, pacing my winter-sealed apartment, refusing to have coffee and cigarettes, I accomplished little other than basic chores. Until around 9PM when prompted by some deeper thought that needed thinking, i poured myself some wine and lit a cigarette. And so the levy broke. Hyperactive wheels within wheels churning, spewing out prolifically on whatever topic needed its 15 seconds of attention. One glass of wine. No excess.
Is that a kind of addiction? I do not crave alcohol or cigarettes, at all. In fact I intensely dislike both: they make me feel physically ill. But my mind ... oh, my mind reels when they are in my blood...
So many things I wanted to discuss, alas the opportunity now passed. Well, not really, but I could have contributed so much more.
Maybe I'm just to hard on myself? Bah! Ok, end self-pitying rant. Carry on!
