Blog Dis
The Conditioned Mind... or is it brainwashed?
2025-03-25
I am haunted by the realization that I am a creature of habit, born and bred into a lifestyle taught to me by my parents and society, one that I cannot easily shake off.
I speak of the worker mind and patterns associated with said state. All my life, I've worked, sometimes on shifts but for the most part a Monday to Friday existence, which means my mind has been thoroughly conditioned to wake up every morning at a set time. Granted, on weekends, I actively push the envelope and force myself to sleep in, and sometimes I even succeed given the fact that I purposely stay up far later than normal in order to exhaust myself enough to sleep.
The work mind is a curse, I tell you, the curse of Kafka and Orwell, conditioned in a world that comes across like a large, menacing insect or Big Brother himself, watching over me all the time, reminding me that I should really be working, that I shouldn't be at home being silly and as loose as a goose. If you do not work, society regards you as lazy or alternatively wealthy enough that you don't have to work. If you're brave enough to admit to people that you're currently in a state of 'unemployment', the first reaction is to conclude you are a bum. After all, only good little machines work and the broke-ass, tired, worn out machines are the ones who stay at home, without a job, courting that ever-too-close moniker of bum. And so you'd think that while being in an unemployed state, one would be able to sleep in like there's no tomorrow. But the reality is rarely this case. The insidious result of belonging to the human race is that you will, whether you want to or not, eventually have to return to work, because while you are temporarily out of work, your mind will toss and turn over options of what to do with your time while not working.
Work is inescapable. In fact, work provides the formal structure and the ongoing expectation that you were put on this earth to make something of your life. Only work doesn't necessarily feed your soul. Work is the building block that equips you with the cash to chase after the true meaning of your soul, what I call the purity of your raison d'etre... your reason for being. I truly love to communicate ideas and to express them to others. I've always regarded the imagination as a muscle because if you flex and stretch and tighten and work this muscle, it'll work wonders for you and occasionally even surprise you with astounding ideas. However, in order for this imagination-muscle to function regularly and whenever you need or want it to, you actually have to work at it! Believe me when I say, writing is a hellish life because you begin with a pile of weak-ass structure that is over time and lots of hard work, shaped into something meaningful.
I haven't figured out a way to write by avoiding work. It simply doesn't appear to work this way. The irony is that when I sleep, my brain still works on creative ideas, often times coming up with resolutions in the wee hours of the morning, forcing me awake. Ah-ha! Evidently, my brain gets very excited about having conjured these ideas that it feels confident enough to wake me up to focus my conscious thoughts more intently, enough to the point that I can't fall back to sleep. But regardless of how tired or excited my brain may feel, come that standard time in the morning, when I'm accustomed to waking up to go to work, I wake up again. My mind is so conditioned and brainwashed into accepting this precept of life, that I am powerless to change it. Work! Work! Work!
All work and no play makes Patricia a dull girl, which is probably why our body, by design, is equipped with fingers, tongues, eyes, a nose and a sensitivity of feeling and perception to distract us from time to time, taking us away from our sacred work. The upside to all of this is that f*cking isn't a form of work, and shouldn't be regarded as a form of work. Really. Good sex actually requires effort, not work, and imagination to bring it to a poetic level between two steamy bodies. You won't ever know how to please a partner's body unless you put effort into learning about their likes and dislikes. Sure. You can collide the first time, a second time, even occasionally if there's been a period of time when you haven't swapped fluids, but to prolong the connection, over a long period of time, you'll surely have to learn about them, and apply some effort at improving your time together by flexing your imagination, the all-important muscle.
If I had my druthers, I'd far prefer to apply my energies at discovering a man's body and all its secrets, than I would at chasing down a dollar under the watchful eyes of Big Brother - the bastard who hides insects in his pockets, I swear!
I speak of the worker mind and patterns associated with said state. All my life, I've worked, sometimes on shifts but for the most part a Monday to Friday existence, which means my mind has been thoroughly conditioned to wake up every morning at a set time. Granted, on weekends, I actively push the envelope and force myself to sleep in, and sometimes I even succeed given the fact that I purposely stay up far later than normal in order to exhaust myself enough to sleep.
The work mind is a curse, I tell you, the curse of Kafka and Orwell, conditioned in a world that comes across like a large, menacing insect or Big Brother himself, watching over me all the time, reminding me that I should really be working, that I shouldn't be at home being silly and as loose as a goose. If you do not work, society regards you as lazy or alternatively wealthy enough that you don't have to work. If you're brave enough to admit to people that you're currently in a state of 'unemployment', the first reaction is to conclude you are a bum. After all, only good little machines work and the broke-ass, tired, worn out machines are the ones who stay at home, without a job, courting that ever-too-close moniker of bum. And so you'd think that while being in an unemployed state, one would be able to sleep in like there's no tomorrow. But the reality is rarely this case. The insidious result of belonging to the human race is that you will, whether you want to or not, eventually have to return to work, because while you are temporarily out of work, your mind will toss and turn over options of what to do with your time while not working.
Work is inescapable. In fact, work provides the formal structure and the ongoing expectation that you were put on this earth to make something of your life. Only work doesn't necessarily feed your soul. Work is the building block that equips you with the cash to chase after the true meaning of your soul, what I call the purity of your raison d'etre... your reason for being. I truly love to communicate ideas and to express them to others. I've always regarded the imagination as a muscle because if you flex and stretch and tighten and work this muscle, it'll work wonders for you and occasionally even surprise you with astounding ideas. However, in order for this imagination-muscle to function regularly and whenever you need or want it to, you actually have to work at it! Believe me when I say, writing is a hellish life because you begin with a pile of weak-ass structure that is over time and lots of hard work, shaped into something meaningful.
I haven't figured out a way to write by avoiding work. It simply doesn't appear to work this way. The irony is that when I sleep, my brain still works on creative ideas, often times coming up with resolutions in the wee hours of the morning, forcing me awake. Ah-ha! Evidently, my brain gets very excited about having conjured these ideas that it feels confident enough to wake me up to focus my conscious thoughts more intently, enough to the point that I can't fall back to sleep. But regardless of how tired or excited my brain may feel, come that standard time in the morning, when I'm accustomed to waking up to go to work, I wake up again. My mind is so conditioned and brainwashed into accepting this precept of life, that I am powerless to change it. Work! Work! Work!
All work and no play makes Patricia a dull girl, which is probably why our body, by design, is equipped with fingers, tongues, eyes, a nose and a sensitivity of feeling and perception to distract us from time to time, taking us away from our sacred work. The upside to all of this is that f*cking isn't a form of work, and shouldn't be regarded as a form of work. Really. Good sex actually requires effort, not work, and imagination to bring it to a poetic level between two steamy bodies. You won't ever know how to please a partner's body unless you put effort into learning about their likes and dislikes. Sure. You can collide the first time, a second time, even occasionally if there's been a period of time when you haven't swapped fluids, but to prolong the connection, over a long period of time, you'll surely have to learn about them, and apply some effort at improving your time together by flexing your imagination, the all-important muscle.
If I had my druthers, I'd far prefer to apply my energies at discovering a man's body and all its secrets, than I would at chasing down a dollar under the watchful eyes of Big Brother - the bastard who hides insects in his pockets, I swear!
