20141121.0714

A year ago, I wrote of the effects coffee had been having on me. Now, as then, I have been drinking more tea on my days away from the office (to call them "days off" is a misnomer, as I and many others have noted), and now, as then, doing so has largely staved off the negative consequences of over-caffeination while still allowing me access to the benefits of caffeine consumption. Yet I feel myself to be less productive now than then, and I do not know if it is an effect of my being a year older or if it is a result of my being a year more inured to the stimulant. Nor do I know what can be done about either, if anything.

There is a part of me that suggests my stimulant-enabled successes could be continued, even enhanced, by recourse to more powerful drugs; it reminds me that my lovely wife, even though she holds a master's degree in English and another in linguistics, works as a pharmacy technician and thus has access to such substances. It is not one of the better parts of me, I know; the side-effects of such chemicals are not likely to be advantageous to my family life, both in terms of the legal troubles attendant upon their misuse and in the alterations to my psyche they would doubtlessly impose. Neither my Mrs. nor Ms. 8 should be subjected to such travails--yet I cannot help but wonder if I would not do better at supporting them did I avail myself of such things.

Perhaps I am paranoid about my situation that I even tangentially entertain the idea of taking other stimulants than caffeine to increase my productivity. Perhaps also I am embedded more fully in certain myths about work and the work ethic than I had realized or noted (here, here, and here, among others). I am not going to heed the part of myself that suggests I take on another drug addiction to help support my financial addiction--as I remark above, I am passingly aware of the consequences, and I do not deem them acceptable--but I confess to having such a part, and I worry about what it indicates about me that I have it and that I react to it as I do.

It is one more thing about which I worry for myself and for my family (who I flatter myself depend upon me). There are many such, as I think I have given evidence. And I probably ought to let them alone; considering them does me little if any good, and they are as nothing compared to the worries I know others have. I have made remarks to that effect, and more than once. Yet I am still who I am, and it seems that among the parts of that person is a worrier, and an introspective one trained and habituated to follow ideas almost out of reflex. And that has some interesting implications about the way things happen...