From Robot With Love: Confessions of a DIPS-omaniac

I got mad at a book. Yes, an inanimate object that I read voluntarily. Yes, I am aware this is ridiculous. But I finished reading this month's Extreme Book Club book, You Are A Badass by Jen Sincero, and I was angry at it. Not like defenestrate-the-damn-thing angry. (Though that would have been fun. Except it was a library book. And I live in a ranch, so it would have been like a 5 ft drop. Highly unsatisfying). Just angry in the sense that I felt a lot of swears towards it. Like fuck this fucking vision board/manifesting your ideal life shit. Sure, I'll just glue some pictures to a goddamned poster board and think positive thoughts and then everyone will get affordable healthcare, no one will ever be discriminated against and my dad will be alive again. It's not the book's fault. The book is just trying to help people. Probably I'm not the right audience for this particular brand of helpfulness.

So I went back and finished my current non-book club book, Mike Doughty's The Book Of Drugs. Drug memoirs fascinate me, even though drugs and alcohol have never appealed to me in any way whatsoever. But many other people enjoy them, some moderately and some obsessively. Maybe I'm just trying to figure out why I'm so different. I'm starting to think it might be the whole reality thing. People talk about turning to drugs or alcohol seeking an escape from reality. Whereas I have sought to run into reality and experience the agony and the ecstasy, the excruciating pain and utter exhilaration, for mile after mile after mile. I have not wanted less reality, only more of it. I have not wanted to dull the edges of life, only to sharpen them, to feel everything - every weird, wretched, wonderful thing.

So I'm not a vision board person. I'm not a dipsomaniac. Though I guess I am a DIPS-omaniac (possibly a DIPShit?). For those of you more sane than me, DIPS stands for Donuts, Ice Cream, Pizza, Speedway, this ridiculous/crazy/awesome idea Valone and I had to run 14ish miles, stopping to eat donuts, ice cream, pizza (and runner's choice of gas station food/drink at Speedway) along the way. Because we're lucky and we know a lot of awesome people, we had plenty of company on our DIPS Challenge half(ish) marathon Sunday. It was a gorgeous sunny day, filled with gorgeous sunny people, Misfit Donuts, Salvatore's Pizza, Perry's ice cream from Sonny's Deli, gas station Mountain Dew (me) / Slim Jim (Valone) and 2 long, epic hills. Here is some hard-core reality: eating cheese pizza and then running up Browncroft Blvd and Penfield Rd is not a thing that makes stomachs happy. But it is a thing that makes hearts happy. Infinity of thanks to Valone for being an epic human/ridiculous run co-creator and to all our friends old and new who came out to run or tandem bike with us. If I had a vision board, it would just be pictures of you. (And Pete and ice cream and toucan shorts and hundreds of dogs). Until next time, my loves. And there will be a next time. We still have a lost cactus to find (We saw a missing cactus poster outside the donut shop and it was the best/saddest thing ever.)