A Few Words About Impatience

Friends,

I've been meaning to write to you about impatience, an issue which (as some of you may know) is near and dear to my heart, for some time now. I would have written sooner, but procrastination got the better of me - more about that later; in fact, much later. Don't hold your breath, though, waiting for me to explain how both of these seemingly contradictory impulses manage to reside in me, because even I don't know that and it's going on inside my own head even as I'm writing this.

Impatience is a scourge in the life of anyone who suffers from it. It causes frustration (the leading cause of death amongst electronics in my house), exacerbates high blood pressure (which will, in all likelihood, be the cause of my death - if, that is, such an event occurs naturally), and frankly drives my friends crazy, even though I am extra careful to choose them for their patience, knowing from the outset what I'll be putting them through in the course of our relationship.

Partly it's a result of the high standard I set for myself, a standard which I feel ought to be universally held but isn't; mainly, though, it's because I am acutely aware of the hot breath of my own mortality on my neck, and I am driven to do as much as possible before it sinks its teeth in. Occasionally when the massive work load I've assigned to myself in the admittedly limited time I have left on Earth is thwarted - or even appears to be thwarted, however temporarily - I can usually be counted on to react in an anti-social manner. This usually involves impugning the circumstances of birth, IQ, and personal habits of those responsible for said thwarting, be they the employees of Blogspot or the volunteers of Wikipedia or what have you.

While the stress involved in spending every minute of the day either writing or thinking about writing is, by and large, entirely enjoyable to me, it is stress all the same; I seem to spend those moments when I'm not in the flow of writing worrying about whether or not the last thing I wrote is the last thing I'll ever write. Imagine, then, a nightmare scenario in which I find myself in a writing flow when any number of machines and or software applications refuse to cooperate, especially since I have always placed a high premium on cooperation, having been raised by Sesame Street.

The Pop Culture Institute has always been intended as a helpmate for those in need of it, starting with myself; I am hard at work as we speak (and making great progress, too) on a cure for Writer's Block, and now, additionally, Impatience. Despite what Big Pharma might tell you, not everything can be cured with a pill, and such is the way with this; in the end, whatever cures Impatience will not have the side effect of causing anal leakage, not if I have anything to say about it. Utilizing the most up-to-date Cognitive Behavioural methods in conjunction with a rigourous regimen of relaxation techniques designed to help me "get the fuck over myself"*, I feel certain that this grievous condition can be remedied.

A cure is right around the corner; I can feel it.

In the meantime, please accept my deepest apologies if I've ever gone mental on you, made you the victim of my venting (which, while it helps me, does nothing good for those at whom I've just vented) or exposed you in anyway to my affliction during the course of treatment. Rest assured, an end is in sight; in this case I can safely say the light at the end of the tunnel is not an oncoming train.

yours,

michael sean morris

Blogmaster of Ceremonies

*Actual Clinical Term