No Effing Limerick last week. No Monday blog post. No kidding. After a flurry of activity in week(s) prior, the blog went into a state of severe stagnancy for over a week.
Let me tell you in the form of prose, I was very off the grid. I “tweeted” when I could, checked email sporadically and Facebook had no idea what I thought. It was a mixed bag of Eventualism. First off, my inbox filled faster than Susan Boyle’s newly-purchased black book. Score one for EffTD. But my narcissistic nature took a huge hit thanks to my lack of tweeting and facebooking. In essence, I traded one form of EffTD for another (social networking in exchange for gambling) – and lost on all counts.
So, really, who or what is to blame for this? A case could be made to blame Las Vegas, but it is only doing what it does best…whatever that is. My senses were so overloaded I wasn’t sure whether I was seeing, hearing, tasting or smelling my semi-hard earned money bid me farewell. Some would be apt to blame themselves, but that would be a “mis-apt” in my case. At the end of the day, I had to look beyond these unlikely culprits and just decide to move on…and let go.
Letting go is never easy, especially for an Eventualist. The fact that Eventualism and EffTD are built on holding on to things for the most eventual time possible makes it even more so. But it can be done…and here’s how:
1. Simply forget what happened. The best way is to actually forget, as opposed to pretending. If you’re new to Eventualism, I’d suggest drinking quite a bit. At a novice level of expertise, without enough alcohol (an EffTD tool of the trade) it is easier said than, er, something.
2. Take on a character and emote them. This is hard to do. To create a character and emote its very characteristics is a challenge very few can muster up the courage to do. It will enable you to muster up further courage to do the letting go. I’ll use myself as an example. Say I created a character named…Mike Vardy (just to simplify things). And this character made some mistakes – something he regretted. Now I, as this character, would apologize and try to smooth things over. But I, as myself, would not. I would instead continue a bloody war of “word revenge” until I emerged victorious, no matter the cost. This would be the opposite of letting go – it would be putting out. By creating an alter-ego, I’ve allowed myself to let go. (That being said, it would’ve been a good war.)
3. Go play basketball. This involves a lot of picking up and dropping of balls. There is a lot of letting go in a typical hoops game, so you’ll get good at it really fast. You’ll also learn that, as opposed to every other form of the game, basic traveling rules rarely apply in the pro ranks.
Here is what NOT to do if you’d like to let go:
1. Eat lots. The only thing you’ll be letting go is yourself.
2. Journal or blog about it. Unless you want to let it go all over the Internet or in the future after you bury your journal in a time capsule.
3. Go play football. Unless you want to be a running back.
So I’ve made peace with my errors of the past week or so. I could point fingers (and the way I point is with all five so that none are pointing back at me), but have chosen a more eventual path. Since I’ve paved the way, feel free to follow.
Oh, and follow me on Twitter too, okay?
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