There are almost always two of me inside my head. I don’t mean that in a Jekyll-and-Hyde way or a split-personality way or even in a multiverse kind of a way, it’s far more mundane than any of those. I mean it more like a Windows 95 program, like there’s one me up-front running these day-to-day tasks and there’s another background process constantly generating jokes and trying to figure out how the human race and the universe works. My surface self is almost never using more than half my mental resources, excepting when I’m alone and writing and maybe when in the throes of passion. Those are probably the only times I’m entirely one consciousness at once.
It’s not about different names or personalities, it’s about conservation of energy, of effort, about the compartmentalization of effective intelligence. I’ve often been asked why if I am a decently intelligent person, why am I not something highly-paid and of conventional prestige, like some lawyer or college professor or something. I have a degree from a rich people’s school that I am
still paying off over two decades later, after all. If I’m so smart, people ask me, why am I some itinerant art-bum, a waiter here, a barista there, a library aide now, an emergency operator then. Filling in here and there, hosting open mics, running pub trivias, announcing for charity events.
I guess that’s a question to ask but that’s my answer. If I could manage to put all of my mental energy into anything long-term, yes I’d probably be successful but I’d probably also be such a driven overly-focused prick about it that it’d do more harm than good. I am a more-thoughtful, less-harmful man for it. Split attention distracts me from how sad and furious I am all the time toward a world so devoted to cruelty and greed over wonder and love? I can use half my mind doing the “Normal” things, just enough juice to be a functional member of society, and devote whatever else to dreaming up puns, ditties and philosophies. That program is always running?
Is it a constant drain on the random-access-memory of my brain-computer to function as such? Jesus merciful Jones, yes. Bills, appointments and minor obligations, often drowned out by the chatterings of wordplays and what-ifs. Taking an above-average but by-no-means genius mind and splitting it in twain does not create two above-average brains. We ain’t earthworms. That’s not how any of this works? You end up with two barely-functioning adults. One answering the phones. One building parody songs by substituting “wolfman” for “woman” in pop music hits.
“Girl, You’ll Be a Wolfman Soon”. “American Wolfman”. “I Am Every Wolfman”. Et cetera.
Excepting moments alone in thought or enraptured within love? I cannot be just one person for long. It is for the best for all people involved, my-selves included. I would probably either save the world or burn it up entirely were I whole? And either would probably destroy the economy.
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