You would think that, by my erratic blogging schedule, I don’t like doing it. Totally wrong. It’s another way for me to go on at length about whatever topic strikes my fancy, and I love to give my unsolicited opinion to everyone. I imagine that someday, I will be the old man in front of you at the grocery store, regaling the checkout girl with a story about the high cost of lemons as you go mad from beign made to wait. I apologize pre-emptively.
So why do I blog so infrequently? I’m acting out. We all have responsibilities and a long list of obligations that we’re not terribly happy about (laundry, cleaning the cat box, doing a job you don’t like, etc) and sometimes we choose one thing on the list to fail on purpose. You know you’ve had those moments, when you’ve walked through the kitchen and shouted at the dishes “I DON’T CARE HOW YOU SMELL, I’M NOT WASHING YOU.” It’s a bad choice and it makes your life slightly worse, but you make the choice anyway for the sake of control. It’s a rebellion against determinism and expectations.
And so, to spite the world and myself, I skip my blog post. There are other minor worries and anxieties that encourage me to skip, but the need to be bad and do the wrong thing is the main culprit. Luckily, I’ve muscled my urge to rebel into a really weak position, so my outbursts are limited to giant slurpees and missed blog posts. If I had no control over my self-destructive urges, I’d end up doing something really bad, like voting conservative.
Having some level of insight into my own bad behaviour is pretty helpful on the little dude’s wild days. I can recognize that look in his eyes when he’s about to dump out a bag of sugar, or knock over a pile of books for the third time. He’s announcing his autonomy and self-determination by making a jackass of himself. We’ve all been there.
Chris Loblaw, Author 