mahiwaga

it’s bizarre how they pretty much have a name for everything, how it has become fashionable to call every little personality quirk a syndrome.

take executive dysfunction, for example. it refers to a kind of frontal lobe problem, basically a sub-type and/or differential diagnosis for ADHD. it really just means those times when you have too many things to do or so many choices to make that you don’t know what to do next and so you just freeze up and let everything go to hell.

so now we enter the whole nurture-vs-nature debate. whenever someone coins a fancy name like ADHD or executive dysfunction syndrome, the next thing that comes up is, whose fault is it? (and the lawyers come of the woodwork…)

but that is beside the point at this stage.

as they say, you can’t put the shit back into the horse.

of course, it’s easy to rationalize and point to my procrastinating tendencies as the root cause of all my problems, which is kind of silly. i know for a fact that i can cure myself of my procrastination and still have a lot of problems. problems are like the molecules of an ideal gas: they expand as necessary to fill up the entire space.

it’s hard to want to cure myself of my malady, too. after all, i’ve gotten by these 28 years OK. sure, there have been plenty of rough spots and tight squeezes, but that’s life, right?

the problem with this particular malady is that it fucks with motivation. try as one might, it would be hard to get me to change without some serious jedi mind tricks, or maybe electroconvulsive therapy.

with a problem like this, someone could threaten to kill me if i don’t fix my problem, and i’d probably just lock up and let them shoot me in the head right there.

such is the nature of this beast.

shit.

one of these days i’m just going to have to figure things out, grow up, and act like a responsible adult.

right.

I realized that I didn’t have my charger for my phone (I swear I brought it with me) so I had to go and get one. This required me to go inland.

Playlist for the journey:

1. Brian Eno - Deep Blue Day
2. Dream Academy - Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want (this is the instrumental version that they play in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” while they’re traipsing through the Art Institute in Chicago, which is a cover of the Smiths)
3. M83 - In Church (Cyann & Ben Version)

So nothing exciting there. Highway 46 from Highway 1 to Highway 101 is very pretty, particularly after the rains, with the verdant grass and the low-lying clouds. It’s about 26 miles or so, not too windy. A lot of the Central Coast wineries are along side this highway, but I have yet to stop at any of them. I don’t remember what year exactly that was, but at least 10 years ago or so, I went down this highway with my family to go see Hearst Castle, which is disgustingly opulent, but I guess worth seeing once in your life. (I forget how much admission was.)

Right before sunset, I decided to go find the Point Piedras Blancas lighthouse, which is, unfortunately, not open to the public. I did, however, get to watch the elephant seals and watch the sun set with the lighthouse in view.

It is apparently mating season among the seals, and it is really easy to tell the difference between males and females. Males have a characteristic snout which earned them the name of elephant seals, while females don’t. One of the males was trumpeting and trying to approach some of the females, no doubt in an attempt to copulate. The females would bellow in protest, try to bite the male, and fling sand at his eyes. This happened with three different females. The male eventually gave up, moved away from the females, and lay on the sand like a log. I couldn’t help but feel sympathetic. Heh.