Feel the fear, and nap anyway

I've been thinking a lot about emotions. This is partly due to my having Newman as a companion.

Newman is all about emotions. Well, two emotions, really – fear and happiness.

Actually, Newman is only about emotions. That's because he has real trouble thinking. He tries by tilting his head when he's puzzled but it doesn't seem to work. So essentially he feels but imposes no thought onto emotion. I achieved this state of emotion without thought during my 50th birthday, moments before I passed out. All I remember of the experience is that it was wet, smelled bad and required a lot of laundry duty the next day.

So fear and happiness comprise Newman's entire emotional spectrum. These also happen to be two of the most primal emotions. Primal in that they are rooted way back in our evolutionary history before Dr. Phil was around to help us.

The funny thing about Newman is that he often follows rampant emotional episodes with a nap. When I get home from a long day of shopping for kitchen accessories or wall art, all I hear as I approach the house is Newman barking at a decibel rate of about 320. He doesn't know I'm there (I sneak up to the house a la Seal Team 6) so this means he has been barking for 4 hours.

When I enter the house, all this pent up emotion suddenly gets released, similar to poking a large hole in the Hoover dam and watching Vegas drown. Newman expresses this emotion by digging his nails into my skin and licking all my epithelials off. If I was murdered at this moment there would be little evidence for CSI Miami to examine. Presumably David Caruso would still pause, take his sunglasses off, and exclaim, "he's dead, Jim". That is, if Jim Kirk were his boss.

Naturally, after all this emotional diarrhea, Newman needs a nap. So he flops his weight down on the floor, recovering until the next emotional moment, like if I have to go to the washroom. He jumps up thinking (sorry, not thinking, hoping - an emotion) we are now going to play. No, we're not. We're peeing. Down on the floor again.

Well, this emotion and napping thing works for me too. Whenever I get depressed, I immediately nap. So let's say my weight is up a bit and I can't get into that bathing suit, or maybe a glue gun will no longer hold my shoes together, or the Argos just aren't playing as well as they use to, I get really sad. I nap.

Lately, I've been feeling those primal emotions that Newman feels, more specifically, fear.

My second biggest fear in life is that I am operating below my potential. My biggest fear is that I'm operating exactly at my potential.

My future really depends on me not operating at my full potential yet. I depend on this. It gives me hope. If I've reached it, there's trouble ahead.

There are still so many things I want to achieve. Stuff I want to learn. Or get better at. Suck on every moment of life more fully. Drill down to the nitty gritty of an interesting life.

Gosh, I'm tired. Think I'll nap. Reaching my potential will have to wait for another day. So will my fear.