When there are a lot of things to do I often choose to do something other than those things and let those others sort of languish there. The thing I choose to do is usually unproductive as opposed to the others which are all probably considered at least minimally productive. Meanwhile the anxiety builds and deadlines approach sooner and it is an unhealthy and counterproductive habit.
The whole time I've been sitting here trying to figure out what I should do first, or at least what I should write about instead, there has been this thudding going on above the ceiling. I figure it is vents contracting or the wind blowing and tune it out for a bit. It goes on. Background noise. But then I turn off the music and sit and listen to it, and the more I listen the more the possibility that a rat has been caught in a trap and is trying desperately to flap itself free becomes real. And what was once just a droning background noise has suddenly dominated completely my thoughts, and I become transfixed with the idea that there is a rat dying just above my room, a breathing creature with a subjective experience, experiencing what it is to die. Caught in a crushing metal device for no reason at all, just because it gave off the smell of something good to eat. But the creature doesn't know reasons. It only knows that terminal fear. The thudding is beginning to quiet down. The whole thing is like the progression of some sort of morbid song.
Sometimes contemplating certain aspects of reality is unbearable. And that short list of things on my to do list becomes unbearable as well. Everything becomes cast under this unbearable light when you reach a mood like this. It doesn't take any sort of cheering up to cure it. It just takes time for it to pass.
I hope I'm just mistaken and those thuds were nothing but structural groans. Waste of a post.
