That there? That's a shovel.

I do believe I may have written this idea on my other forum, a forum that is oft filled with inane chatter about how I'm losing my mind and would, I am quite sure, reflect poorly on this forum and would certainly lower anyone's general esteem for me or at least my credibility as some form of soothsayer of ideas. Nevertheless. This is my call a spade a spade theory. Its offshoot theory is well known under the title the policy. (I will return to la politique shortly.)

What is it that I mean by calling a spade a spade you may very well ask. Is it to do with poker or gardening or some inane theory about reality? Well yes, I suppose mostly it is the latter. It is, however, the latter applied to the everyday metaphysical and psychological world.

The prime example is: you have a shitty day. You call it a shitty day. Now this doesn't mean calling it early and calling it often. It means you look at a day and say: That was sure one bad day. And thanks to the rigor of the human mind you close it off with that label (again this is why no calling too early, that would unmistakably be called giving up). But labeling is locking down, is saying one day is just one day and it is not a pattern. Ohh, but here is where it gets good. What is a bad week? Or a bad season? Do you know what they are? They are the time you have just left behind by labeling them the shit-piles that they are. They have been moved against by your very saying. Oh the power of words in the human mind. Fab.

And lucky for us that is just the negative half. The positive offshoot referred to by name and color up there (above, in that lovely shade of green) is precisely the opposite. It is the open sense and desire for goodness. It is the can-do-attitude you can't bear to hear anyone talk any length about. It is starting out on the right foot.

You exercise the power of closing on the bad. And relish the open possibility to call forth from some darker realm the good. Problem is this system in unstable, no base to rely on. All it can do is give you some tools to fight villains, patch holes and give you something other than your own god-damned finger to leave getting waterlogged the dike. And conversely the tool to pry open the lock box of good times (reverse Pandora, not inverse, reverse, ya dig?)

The actual suggestion. Mark a bad day on your calendar when you see it. Don't be afraid to say that day was fucked and leave it up for lost. Stop the tide right there. If you can't try stopping it when there has been a week of X's on your calendar. I can promise you at some point you will stop being sad about the bad days and just get pissed enough to fight it.

I feel like I have neglected the wonderful green monster in this post and the beauty that is positive inflection and all the things it can bring you. But I'm not there right now. Right now I'm holding off the flood. And the green-machine is so good it'll need its own giant post of glory.

For now just stop digging deeper into the hole of badness and mixed metaphors, throw it down and leave the spade right there in the hole.

Worrying about ladders is for the future.