Seaweed: Unsmart

Temper:  A tendency to be of a certain type of mood.

I'll tell you this - all of these financial people are really taking up a lot of rent-free space in my head right now.  I woke up pissed at one of them; I started a conversation, a thread in my mind which I have repeated over and over, where I am cutting but kind, funny but pointed in my criticism, and devastatingly accurate, dry, witty, and wise.  I swam for 35 minutes, giving my speech over and over.  I tinker with the timing and the content, reorder the phrasing, pause for a beat or rush confidently through the whole thing.

I have not, of course, actually spoken to a live human being.  I have not spoken to a dead human being, either, for what that's worth.  I haven't even spoken the words out loud, preferring to think them to death.

Aren't you glad I'm spending my time productively?  Actually, there is some wisdom in this.  As a man with a bad Temper I have to be careful to channel my emotions in a productive way. "Hey, fuck you," doesn't move the ball toward the goal, as a general rule.  It doesn't endear you to anyone.  The typical response to that isn't a pivot to even more helpfulness.

So what have I learned here?  Have I learned anything?  Have I learned nothing?  I'm leaning toward nothing at the moment - for a guy who considers himself an eager, willing student of all things I learn nothing a lot of the time.  Maybe I suck as a student.  

I'm under the impression that I spent an entire morning arguing with a phantom in my head, a figment, a figurative person, a wraith that does not exist.  And I've only got a certain limited amount of time left in my life, a rapidly diminishing amount of time, and I wasted it in a virtual reality battle, a battle that isn't all that acute, a battle that will certainly work out in my favor eventually.

I'm not very smart.