Remember over the summer when a PSYCHOlogist said Payton had impulse issues?

Heh. PSYCHOlogist. It’s no accident the word ‘psycho is in there. To think I wanted to be a PYSCHOlogist.

Apparently impulsivity runs in the family.

I wonder what impulsive means exactly. I look it up on my desktop dictionary and it says to act without forethought. Ok. What exactly is forethought? Careful consideration of what will be necessary or may happen in the future.

You know. Because the future is so predictable that it makes perfect sense to subject ourselves to time-consuming forethought. Do you know how stressful it is to try to think ahead to the 100 different ways a decision can go only for it to go that 101st way we didn’t think of? Very stressful. And very pointless. Think of all of the energy put into forethought that ends up being wasted. Live in the now.

I’m beginning to wonder if impulsiveness is even real, at least in terms of a real problem. Say someone does something impulsive. Is there any way to prove that the impulsive act wasn’t the exact right thing for that exact moment?

I can hear the naysayers now…

But what about those dire consequences that happened as a result of the impulsive act that wouldn’t have happened if there had been forethought?!?

Yes, there is that. But how do we know the resulting consequence isn’t the exact right thing for that exact moment too? If every experience is an opportunity for learning and growth, then that’s what it is.

Almost 4 years ago, one of Wally’s clients impulsively decided to take away their account. That impulsive decision seemed at the time to have dire consequences because, holy shit!, Wally was losing his job. It seemed very dire at the time. In reality, it was the exact right action because, though I’m getting a bit tired of Mobile, this was the exact right place for us to come to.

So see, there is nothing wrong with impulsivity. Except we’re a society with a chemical addiction to certain neurotransmitters, so we love dire futuristic predictions, all of which require a thing called forethought.

Let’s look at this anti-impulsivity phenomenon a bit further…

Forethought = stress = release of certain neurotransmitter = certain feelings we call negative = more stress = more neurotransmitters = more negative feelings = eventual visit to the doctor = pharmaceutical prescription = why the psychological/medical/pharmaceutical industries tell us impulsivity is bad because if it weren’t, they would make less money.

You can’t get rich off of a sane person, which is why I don’t make money from my blog. I’m the only sane person in the blogiverse.

But what does all of that psychobabbly rambling have to do with impulsivity running in the family?

It was an impulsive act when I went and beheaded myself.

Yes, I’m tired of my blog name, but I didn’t think ahead to things such as all of the other places I’m registered under my blog name – Twitter, StumbleUpon, BlogLog, etc., etc.

What a pain in the ass I didn’t foresee.

I don’t know which is less tedious – reattaching my crowned head or going by two different names or starting new Twitter, Stumble, BlogLogs, etc., etc.

From my point of view, the lesser of three evils, meaning the one that takes the least amount of work from me, is to seize the throne from myself and place the crown back on my head, albeit crookedly, of course.

No matter what I do, it’s going to seem as if I’ve lost my head. But whatever. My impulsive act may have been rash and the consequences may be that I look flaky and indecisive to some, but I know it was the exact right thing to do at that exact time. I really loved that headless, naked Barbie in the martini glass and how else was I going to use it?

Besides, if I hadn’t acted impulsively last week then I wouldn’t have spent time trying to redefine my blog, come around full circle and come up with this newest blog header, which I think is totally awesome.

While I do love a good martini and that is the superficial meaning of ‘shake-shake’, the name does mean more than my drinking preferences. It also means to shake up how we perceive things, especially eccentric children. And at that, I am the Queen.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 15th, 2008 at 2:02 am and is filed under All About Me. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.