The Bashful Narcissist

The other day I saw this video about modern day slavery and got kind of depressed. Then I watched a video of myself at a reading in San Francisco and got really, really depressed. What kind of narcissist gets more upset over their double chin and lazy eye than they do about human trafficking? This kind, I guess.

Anyway, here's my weird video from Listen To Your Mother.

It's not that weird, it just doesn't match the non-weirdness of how I thought I looked with the real-life weirdness of how I actually look. And also, what's up with my posture? Why does it look so much like Gollum's from Lord of the Rings?

Where is my Alexander Coach when I need her? I don't actually have an Alexander Coach, but I think I should find one. I do have a writing coach named Katie Rubin though and I was talking with her today about Shame. (Whenever I see the word Shame capitalized like that it reminds me of that scene in Game of Thrones: "Shame. Shame. Shame.")

Katie asked me a question that was something like, "Would you like it if your life wasn't ruled by shame?" And I was like, "Heck, yeah!" But there was also another part of me that couldn't help but think, "Whatchu talking bout, Willis?"

Like, what if my life wasn't really ruled by shame? What kind of (openly) loud-mouthed, obnoxious bi-atch would I be? Why does that feel sort of terrible? If I didn't have a committee attempting to censor every thought, word, and deed, would I turn into the world's biggest ass hole?

I was wondering that exact question tonight when the last of our O.C. (Original Chickens) flew the coop. (We still have our random stray chicken named Zombie, but he wasn't part of the O.C. gang.) I can't tell you the number of times I've secretly wished for those stupid chickens to hurry up and die peacefully in their sleep already so I could stop stepping in their stupid piles of chicken poop. But now that it's happened, I feel really sad. We got those chickens when my kids were in Kindergarten and Pre-School back when we lived on a fish farm. Now, the invisible link to that time that our last chicken was silently tethering us to, has been broken.

Who are we when we strip everything else away? Now that all of our chickens are dying off, we won't be the cool chicken house on the corner anymore. Now, we'll just be the house with the crappy yard. And who would I be if I wasn't constantly thinking mean Hobbit insults about myself?

I think Gary Douglas said that "Consciousness includes everything and judges nothing." What if we all went all California New Age and stopped judging? Even the bad stuff. Because if we weren't judging, there wouldn't be good or bad, I guess it would all just be stuff.

This would be a better post if I actually had the answers to those questions. Then again, who am I to judge?