I was walking down Market Street in San Francsico a couple of months ago. It was in early June, which I can state with certainty because I was on my way to the Apple store to buy an iPod for my wife's birthday.
As I walked past a drug store, I recalled that I needed some chewing gum. As I have mentioned before in these pages, I am a tremendous user of chewing gum, and at the time I had entirely run out.
I had cash, I had time. I needed chewing gum.
And I walked right by the drug store without stopping.
I'm not sure exactly why, but somehow part of me had made the decision that I was not going to stop and adhered to that decision despite all rational incentives to the contrary. My mental monologue had completely confirmed that yes, I ought to walk into the drug store and purchase some chewing gum, and then I walked right by. I'd say "deliberately" only all the deliberation had gone the other way.
Subsequent to that, I spent a good four blocks wondering why, exactly, I had not stopped at the drug store. By all rights I should have, yet clearly I had chosen not to - some part of me vetoed the decision to enter that particular drug store at that particular time. The mind had made itself up but the feet just kept on walking.
Don't worry, I picked up chewing gum later.
Although infrequent, this sort of thing is certainly not new to my experience. From time to time I will make a decision - almost invariably the irrational, self-damaging one - based solely on "I don't want to." (Or, more rarely, "I want to.") It's never anything major, which I find reassuring because it means that the logical part of my brain really does have the final say. It's just stupid stuff like "I don't want to work on that right now" when "that" needs to get done and I have the time now and not later, yet I work on something else instead because, well, I didn't want to work on "that".
I am not, mind you, talking about things like skipping a workout, which fall easily under the "lazy" rubric, and as such have a rational part to the decision. No, I'm talking about purely those decisions that are logically inexplicable.
And that's why you haven't seen a Cant column from me for a few months. It's not that I was busy at work, although I was. We shipped our product at the end of June, and my business factor went way down, yet here it is August and no Cants for July.
What happened was, I just didn't want to.
All rationality was to the contrary. For one thing, I like writing. Certainly coming up with subject matter can be challenging, but in general I don't have any problem in coming up with at least one trivial subject to natter on about. And Cant is a project that I set up and am still a primary motivating factor behind. There's a definite sense of responsibility. As I say, I had the time - in fact, having given up World of Warcraft cold turkey, I actually had a number of evenings in July where I sat around trying to think of something to do.
No, my absence from these pages was purely a matter of that perverse portion of my decision-making process saying "No. I don't want to."
One might explain it as burnout, or simply a different use of my energies (for I have been writing, you see, just not Canting), and those explanations would have some truth to them, but in all honesty it was just a preverse reaction against a responsibility I imposed upon myself. I just didn't want to write Cant.
As you can see, that's faded.
Yes, it's good to see you too.
- Sun Ra