That last short thingie is practical, and it is what I isn’t. One of the major signs/symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is lack of practicality, and that is one area where I shine.  Jeez, where do I start?  For one thing, in seventh grade, I had a girlfriend who was a Seventh-Day Adventist–not the most practical choice for a horny teenager.  (By the way, her name was Nancy Stouffer, and I am pretty sure she is the same Nancy Stouffer who writes children’s book and sued J. K. Rowling for stealing her ideas–gee, maybe she has NPD, too.  But I digress.)

A phrase which I have used over and over in my life has been “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”  For things like seeing if my Porsche could go zero to 60 to zero in the driveway of  my apartment complex–it couldn’t–I totalled the car AND a neighbor’s patio.  That wasn’t too practical, never mind I was stoned out of my gourd on speed and cheap champagne.  Before that, in college, I was a liberal arts English major–again, nothing too practical there, except I had this vague idea of getting a doctorate  and a tweed sport coat with leather elbow patches and teaching composition at some prep school somewhere. When I was interviewed for my first real job, civil service information writer, the interviewer said something like “You do realize, nothing you learned in college will be any use to you here.”  Okay, that WAS a slight exaggeration, but not much.

Then there was the time I got married, mainly because the woman had been my little sister’s best friend in high school. Never mind I was 12 years her senior and we had nothing in common except belonging to Mensa and liking to get high. Our divorce was final the same year we got married–’nuff said.

And speaking of Mensa–talk about NPD heaven!  Jesus, you could hear the egos rubbing together a mile away–kind of like the jolly green giant in new corduroys.

But the supreme impracticality was my decision to abandon a high-paying job and comfy townhouse apartment–not to mentioin trivia like my birth family, and what acquaintances and fellow Mensans I knew that I mistook for friends.  When I told my fellow bureaucrtas what I was doing (by then, I had been advanced to drug and alcohol program specialist, a sinecure I accepted in return for not blowing the whistle on some egregiously ilegal shit the governor’s office had been up to at the time), many of the men said enviously “Gee, I wish I culd do that.” I usually replied,”Oh you could–if you had the balls.”  As if I had any inkling of what I was getting into.

At the time, SuSu wa a single mother on welfare, working as a mail-order psychic  reader, doing readings at festivals, growing pot and subsistence-shoplifting. Since the state deducted a buck from her check for every buck she earned, there was little incentive to go for big earnings, but she hung in, courageously investing what she could in ads in tiny pagan newsletters and national psychic mags.  Answering one of those pagan ads was how we got together in the first place.

But I digress.  When she told me we were karmic soulmates, I somehow turned it around to mean that we sort of had to get together to work all this shit out.  I had just gotten into Wicca and stuff–stuff including a really nasty Xanax addiction–so it is probably fair to say that I was not in what I laughingly call my “right mind.” Every time we had an argument, she would threaten to break up.  I didn’t like this–narcissistic injury big-time–so I figured if we were married, she would stop doing that.  Boy, was I wrong.  And talk about doing the right thing for the wrong reason (today I am convinced that getting maried was the right thing, in spite of everything.  And my gratitude to her for hanging in there through all the pain and betrayal I inflicted on her and hers for so many years is boundless.)

So we got married in Winchester, Virginia, by the same judge who had married me to my second wife.  Nothing like continuity.  So I moved to Alaska, abandoning enough furniture and stuff to furnish an apartment, giving away stuff I had promised to SuSu (another NPD thing–as a rule, our promises are not worth a pitcher of piss).  Never mind that getting married threw her off welfare and she had to support me (we blew about $25,000 I had in my retirement fund on our extended trip from Pennsylvania to here).  Never mind that I had NO useful trade skills–there isn’t much use for a PR guy in the valley here.  Never mind that I had NO survival skills and hated snow and cold weather (hey, no one told ME there was snow on the ground six months out of the year, and that illustrates still another NPD thing–blaming others for our actions.  “Look what you made me do” is a classic NPD line.)  Never mind I loved luxery and comfort and convenience–and here I was, moving into SuSu’s place, which she  accurately described as “a squalid hovel.”  In the summertime–when things were best–mushrooms grew out of the floor and ants crawled over her son’s face as he slept.  But I digress.

Meanwhile, her psychic reading business was going to shit because during our courtship, she wrote long letters to me (at my request–more narcissistic supply–and then didn’t bother reading them since I got loaded as soon as I got home from work and got the mail, and then figured I didn’t have to  read them since we talked on the phone every day) instead of doing her client work.  This is just one of zillions of examples of how much damage NPD folks can inflict without really trying–imagine what we can do when we TRY.

I could document many other instances (the great boom box fiasco is worth a whole blog in itself, I have decided), but I think the point has been made.  Today, I am SO much better–I grow much of our food in my garden, make a nice bit of money on the side doing small engine repair, do arts and crafts during the winter months to sell at my stand in the summer, read to the blind–yeah, right.  Fact is, I still go fluting off into the fucking ozone at the drop of a metaphor.  I am still way better at being politic than at being practical, and efficiency is something I can only aspire to.  Once in a very great while, I manage to rise to adviseable.

Like when I got SuSu to make a SALE sign I could parade around with to drum up business at my stand.  I had my best Tuesday sales of the whole season that day, even though I was the only vendor open.  (Usually, I depend on spill-over from bigger and/or more well-established vendors for most of my business.)

Selling knives online was my idea–haven’t sold one yet, as far as I know–but it was SuSu who made it happen.  I hadn’t had a clue as to how to make a website happen.  Still don’t, for that matter.  My family is STILL trying to teach me how to cut and paste.  I did it once under close supervision, maybe I could do it again by myself.  They should make training wheels for these computer thingies.

At least today, you can tell me how impractical my ideas are and I won’t want to kill you.  That’s real progress.

Meanwhile, I have been neglecting to mention the therapeutic process.  That is, how  has it come about that today I am slightly less of an obnoxious fuck-up than I was four or five months ago.  For one thing, I have been asking God to take away and/or add what is needed for me to become a more complete human being.  For another, I have done scores of shamanic journeys to consult with one of my guiding spirits (“power animals” in shaman-speak) on how to deal with  this bullshit.  Plus, SuSu has invested hours and hours confronting me, forcing me to look at myself–only not  using a mirror this time.  And therein lies the key.

E. J. Gold, one of the new age writers who has influenced SuSu and myself, has writtten that the only real power we humans have is the power of our focussed attention.  In various ways I have been helped to focus my attention on my disfunctional behavior, in order to amend it, and myself.  For some odd reason, this seems to be working.

Odder still, I find myself, feel myself, changing within.  I  don’t always welcome being corrected, but I don’t resent it. Sometimes. I no longer view criticism as an attack on my personhood.  Usually. I don’t have to be in the spotlight, drawing the attention of a largely indifferent crowd.  Most of the time.  I can pay attention to others and to their feelings.  As long as there are no bright shiny objects nearby.

Still and all, it is so easy to erase the little bit of progress I have made–the lapse of attention for an instant, and I am back in the old habits and patterns of a lifetime.  Habits and patterns that repelled, annoyed, and disgusted people for nearly half a century.  Habits and patterns that left me resentful, bitter, and alone. 

Habits and patterns I intend to transcend.