Madness

An old clinical social worker friend came to mind this afternoon. I miss her knack for defusing awkward social situations with tongue-in-cheek psychiatric advice. I miss her irreverence. If she’d been around me today and yesterday, I think she’d have said something along the lines of “Looks like Mr. B could use a few doggy downers and a nice, long timeout.”

The several brainstorms I’ve had over the course of the last 48 hours all were given cautiously positive receptions and all are likely to be implemented. Good ideas, receptive colleagues. Add water and stir, right? Unfortunately, a madness overcomes me when good ideas occur.

No. Let me rephrase that. I become an ass. I charge at people with my ideas. I pound heads with them. And when I see in people’s eyes that they’re recoiling (as any healthy person would), it infurates me. They should jump for joy. They should dash into the street and hug strangers.

Yesterday, as I was cranking out the last few words of copy connected with brainstorm #2 of 3, I caught myself almost running from desk to desk, hand-editing a draft and shouting in my head like the sports bar crowd does when he fakes! he shoots! he scores!!! Only in my case, it was, “These two words go there! And that word … oh, shit! … yes!! … If this goes here, and that moves there and I add this … OMFG!! That’s it!!”

And then I ran back to my colleagues to demand (implicitly) that they stop whatever the hell it was they were doing …
and so on.

Two solid days of this. Or maybe three. It’s been a blur. An exhausting, embarrassing blur.
Maybe, as another friend suggested this afternoon, I just need to get laid.