Strike While the Iron is Hot

Those are the words from that good bloke Plark. They struck a chord within me. All of the other comments were very welcome and helpful as well on yesterday’s post. I decided to strike while the iron is hot so to speak.

I drove down this morning to Fat Albert’s to get a cup of coffee and a sweet roll and Carolyn was there. I told her that Monday I would get “paid” and asked her if she still wanted to go out for lunch. She was ecstatic and accepted. She gets off at 1 PM. I told her we would drive down to Auburn and go to one of those firm bars (Chili’s, Applebee’s, etc.) for some drinks and lunch. I feel as if I am exploring an undiscovered country for the first time it has been so long since I have been out on a “date”. I can be kind of old fashioned about such things and wanted to pay.

I was thinking this morning that out of the past ten years, I am as stable as I have ever been as far as my mental illness goes. So why not try something new and exciting? I no longer talk to myself in a crazy way. I no longer have those vivid hallucinations or delusions. My life is only occasionally racked with paranoia. Not that constant paranoia like I used to experience as if being watched and followed constantly. My only big problem now is my social aloofness and the extreme anxiety that occurs in social situations and I think that is largely due to that I am just out of practice.

The way I have learned to deal with that last symptom is to isolate myself. On a week such as this, I can go for days without any real or meaningful social contact other than through carefully controlled interactions on the internet. On this blog you get to read about the interesting ten percent of my life. The other ninety percent never gets written about; that ninety percent is spent with me usually alone, quiet, and most likely just reading. I have been on a real big reading kick lately and can read for hours on end.

Anyways, here’s to those undiscovered countries out there just waiting to be explored. I will follow in the footsteps of those great explorers such as England’s Cook and Spain’s De Soto this upcoming week. I will step out of my own little carefully controlled world and try something frightening and different; those first few steps back into the land were social creatures dwell; an unexplored country for me, indeed.