Diary of Surrender, Week 9: The Devil Comes for You at Your Highest Moment, But Who Comes for You When You’re in Pajamas by Early Afternoon?

This is a story about chocolate and Xanax and heroes.

Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash

I’m writing a diary about my year of giving up, although I may give up on this too. Who knows? You can read about why I’m giving up here, and the previous week of saying fuck it here. (The term “week” is used loosely).

I haven’t been writing because I just don’t wanna. Not sure what to say about that, other than to say that I don’t wanna. I have a vague voice chirping in the back of my head that I should finish what I started (namely, this weird Diary of Surrender project) and I do agree with the chirping voice, but I’m at a point that if I don’t want to do a thing I’m not doing the thing.

One the one hand, this is freedom. On the other hand, this is stupid: I still haven’t paid a traffic ticket I got more than a month ago because I don’t wanna. To be fair, I tried once online, but it wasn’t in the system yet. I looked again a week later, it wasn’t there, and then I just decided to stop looking for it at all. I recognize this is bad. But like writing, I just don’t wanna look a third time.

So I’ve just been sort of drifting around, doing the next indicated action. Working. Going to a Bat Mitzvah. Exercising, but only when it’s super convenient. Watching an obscene amount of television. Just sort of drifting, thinking about all the things I should do but don’t: refill the hummingbird feeders, start cooking again, start painting again, taking Fish on longer hikes, cleaning out my closet (why do I have so many clothes?), and of course, writing. But like I said — I just don’t wanna.

But something happened on Monday that was so on the nose of the giving up theme, that I had to document it, so here I am writing, even though I don’t wanna. Sometimes I wonder if this project has made me kick my surrendering up a notch, just to have material for this series, like how people studied by anthropologists act differently, knowing that they’re being watched. If I’m doing that, I really chose the wrong theme. Next year it should be something like Diary of Becoming a Triathlete or Diary of Learning How to Rock Climb, or…