The Chemical Dragon is competent

I was all set to be indignant this morning about how Hillary Clinton isn't a bad memory yet, but I've decided that I don't care who wins the primary or the presidency or anything in the US as long as my stocks keep going up and as long as their economy stays on course for deep into the shitter so that the world can force it to abide by some sort of industrial environmentalist framework, in the interests of protectionism if nothing else. When I choose a country to live in, I will care desperately about who wins what there. In the meantime, I will simply laugh as the so-called 'left wing' in the US ties itself into insoluble knots; as Italians make themselves the monkeys of the world by electing an offensive tapeworm like Berlusconi; and as Belgium continues to be Belgium. Hah. Hah.

I dislike people who tell other people not to care so much, and yet I am at a point in my existence where I must tell myself not to care so much. The chemical rages of the past week or so which are finally, slowly abating served their purpose, as the monthly hormonal rages each month do in a less traumatic manner. Namely, to put things in perspective. Three lessons:

1. Other people's fuck ups cannot be controlled by the power of my mind. This came clear to me last night as we watched an amateur theatre group. A young kid was doing a solo routine and sort of losing the audience, and it was making me miserably uncomfortable.

"But wait," I thought. "That's not you up there. That's some boy with chutzpah who knew what he was letting himself in for. Why are you uncomfortable? Just try not to look bored in case he glances at the audience and you've done all you can; this is his show."

So I stopped being uncomfortable and he managed to pick the thread back up, and I learnt a lesson that most people probably learn in their early teens: I'm not the fucking omphalos of the universe. Not rocket science, but I'm happy to have learnt it, as now I'll be able to watch figure skating, ballroom dancing, and ridiculously extended Democratic primaries without using far too much of my energy crossing mental fingers and repeating "don't fuck up, don't fuck up, don't fuck up" on someone else's behalf, with more emphasis, I must say, than I ever use on myself.

2. Memory can be a burden. Again, hardly rocket science, and you'd think all that psychoanalysis would have helped me to that conclusion a long fucking time ago. But it did not. Suffice to say, there are still people and events in my head that are no longer in my life, and in each case there is an excellent reason why they are in my head and not in my life. Some of them have no further use outside of cautionary tales, character inspiration, or occasional archetypal reference in dreams. And many of them used up their concern credits years ago.

And yet I have a tendency to relive people and events periodically. Fine. Everybody does. But it has been compromising the present - perhaps inevitably, as I'm in a sort of long-term, rootless transition state, living in a country where I don't plan to settle - nonetheless, excessively. The present may be transitory, but it always is, and it deserves more of my energy than it's been getting. And there should be a sort of freedom to leading an existence as transitory as mine is at the moment that I have not been enjoying as much as I could.

3. In the grown-up world, competence is all you need to impress people. Maybe I spent too much time in higher education to appreciate that while university professors will grade you anywhere between A+ and E, the professional world is Pass or Fail, and all you have to do to Pass is make sure you know what you're doing and then doing it. And then fundamentally, the only way to get extra credit is to Pass more things.

Yes, that A+ used to feel so good. And the fact that I miss how good it felt points to the fact that I should, at some point, turn away from the grown-up world and start working on projects where perfection is a beautiful dream rather than something I can manage by making sure my feature covers all the right industrial issues with all the right sources, in accordance with our in-house styleguide. In the meantime, I'm getting money and I shouldn't get into a tizzy too much over something that has much more economic than emotional significance. Care yes, ulcer no.