I wanted to write a little bit about my day today. It has been a bad day, but it doesn’t exactly feel like it. I feel like today doesn’t count. I don’t feel well, I have done nothing but lay around and sleep for the most part today, however I have not slept my usual 8 hour prior to starting work. Night shift strikes again. I feel bad. My head is a little stuffy and the usual back of skull-into-neck ache returns to compliment the discomfort in my jaw. If the nurse lady asked how bad on a 1 to 10 scale with I would say a 1 or 2. Even though I probably should say 5 or 6, because its not that bad I can get by hour by hour, minute by minute, but obviously its bugging me and you should take this seriously oh wise medical professional. If this is the fourth time I have been to your office complaining about my 2 level discomfort maybe its because it is serious at least to me, and yes I don’t need opiates prescribed immediately or a morphine drip, but I am sick. Sick of this. These chronic 2’s weigh. But whatever, Ibuprofen works even if the doctors don’t. And its much cheaper.

I left my house once. I felt hungry and decided upon Panda Express. But having seen the scale this morning I felt guilty about it. My friend stayed with me this week and I have always struggled with a ‘when in Rome’ mentality. I would be a poor host if I ordered salads and only drank water. But a lack of groceries and a desire to get back to sleep justified my fast food cravings. I started my car and it didn’t squeal too bad but the check engine light that started up again a few days ago was staring at me. I headed towards the nearest Panda Express but the guilt kept on me. I decided that my desire for myself is gonna need to be more desirous than shit food. So I turned my car around, and went past the grocery store, the laundromat, and a few other things that I could have done productively. I got home and instead of going for a walk, or riding my bike, and cleaning up, I laid back down on the couch.

I checked my apps a thousand times. Instagram to twitter to youtube and back over and over again. I played Inscryption and kept telling myself just one more run, but there was always one more run. Eventually I’d open Hinge or Bumbl and saw that the elf girl I had been messaging me on Hinge didn’t just stop responding but actually took the time to unmatch me. I think she didn’t appreciate my response to her question “What rituals do you do?”. She brought it up earlier and I was humoring her and said I follow a few that work for me.

My answer was that “I always swish any liquid that I drink before swallowing.” I will never know what she really thought about this answer but I think most likely is that she was disappointed. Disappointed that its so mundane, and that it didn’t fit her definition of a ritual. I invite her to look up the definition, my swishing thing is totally a ritual. And I think it is closer to the real rituals that cultures have always followed. The ones that this pink wig wearing young lady probably romanticizes in her mind with shamans and crystals and something to do with the moon, would be laughable to the ancient peoples she thinks she’s paying pagan omage to.

Real rituals are practiced everyday. Not just the priest laying the wafer on the tongue of the church goer, but also slapping of the appropriate pockets checking for phone, wallet, keys as you leave the house. The ancient culture’s shamans were probably some wise elder instructing the sick to clean their house and drink clean water. The group that salted their meat in a certain way is probably the closest they ever got to using ‘crystals’. These are the true rituals. Rather than blood sacrifice and strange ceremony, its just that before you eat you swish some water.

Anyway this got me thinking about my personal rituals. And if you read the first half of this post I think you’ll agree that I am the dying culture.