Things to Troubleshoot

You can troubleshoot your own mind, in the moment. Your own reaction. Your own felt sense of a lack of control, of a need of control, of failure of control, of reaching for control. You pause, count to 10. The reach will create an even greater loss of control. You know this. Pausing can stop the cycle.

You can troubleshoot your own state of autopilot. Your days run into each other. You try to plan breaks or excursions, but you plan them according to how you’ve always planned them, and so only include the kinds of interruptions that have been pre-approved by you.

You can troubleshoot your projects. Where are they stuck? I met with a writing coach today, Christine Sheehy, on an intro call. She talked about my book, and we realized quickly that I was in the beginning stages of it, still, after 60 days of blogging about it. I am stuck because I do not know in what state the reader will come in, or in what way I want the book to change them. I do not have a vision of the journey that I want to take the reader on. I did not know that this was the way in which I was stuck. I had believed myself to be past this. I am not.

You can troubleshoot your relationships. Are you wishing that intimacies were happening with people that are not happening? Are you wishing you were doing things with certain people, that are not happening?

You can troubleshoot your desires. Do you desire that which you want to desire, or are you desiring to have other desires entirely? Do you wish for your patterns of thoughts and rewards to be different than they currently are? Do you wish to not wish for a thing you know you will ever have? Or for a relationship that will not be requited?

You can troubleshoot your actions. Do you want to try to do something different, just because you can? Do you want to see yourself doing something in physical space, in a different way than you’d ever done? Make a face you’d never made? Hold your arm in a tension you’d never held? Do you want to look at a picture of yourself from your youth, and replicate it now? Do you want to locate in a book an organ you do not know the name of, and then locate it on your own body?

You can troubleshoot your relationship to society. Do you have any feelings about it at all, other than fear, or terror, or being left out? Do you feel comforted? Which parts of it do you interact with? How often do you speak to a stranger, as a way of securing your own well-being? How often, do you imagine a world in which you are more terrified of strangers, or less?

You an troubleshoot your relationship to the cosmos, to the sky. You can feel your own body, and sense your relationship to it. You can wonder if you feel yourself in awe of yourself, the way you maybe should or feel you ought to. You can wonder about your cells, and if they are working towards making your life easier, every day, or about the bacteria in your gut.