Rising Above My Inner Buffer (or, Self-Improvement's a Bitch!)

Ack. That pretty much sums up my week.

I think I've mentioned on here before that I've been watching The Riches on Monday nights. Suddenly, I've realized that it is actually the only thing I'm watching these days. (I even let the series finale of Gilmore Girls get by me . . . )

If you're not watching this show, you should be. The premise is that a group of itinerant scam artists, through an appropriately wacky series of events, begin impersonating a wealthy family and trying to live their lives. Hilarity, of course, ensues, but so do the moral quandries.

What moral quandry, you ask? Not whether it is okay to "steal the American dream," but whether you are wrong for wanting that dream in the first place. The Malloys (now known as the Riches) refer to "normal" people living on the grid as "buffers." This late in the TV season, they are discovering that, slowly but surely, they are becoming more like buffers than they would like.

I'm a buffer. I've never been anything but a buffer, and I guess that's what I'll always be. But, while I don't plan to become an itinerant scam artist anytime soon, I'm beginning to wonder if buffer-dom is all there is.

I think a mentioned a few posts back that I am currently reading two different self-improvement-type books these days. The programs involve a lot of stream-of-consciousness writing and meditating. I'm realizing that my mind, on any average day, is cluttered up with a lot of crap. Pure buffer crap.

Bills, household chores, cooking, work issues, weight issues -- this is the stuff that goes meandering through my head all the time. Seriously -- ALL THE TIME. People, my brain is not a very interesting place to be. I'm quite bored with it, if you want to know the truth.

So . . . where was I going with this? I don't know. I guess the goal at the moment is to clear out the ol' noggin -- much like a spring gutter cleaning -- and try to fill it up with some better stuff. Some less buffer stuff.

Or maybe just less stuff, period.

Do you ever wonder what your brain would do if it had the space and the time? If it was just left alone FOR FIVE MINUTES without worrying about the minutae of everyday life.

You might solve world hunger.

Develop the power of telekenesis.

Write the great American novel.

Heck, you might actually hear an answer to all those frantic prayers you send up a hundred times a day.

It's just a thought, I suppose. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to meditate. For 8 whole minutes.