Am I alive or is it just a dream?

I flipped through an astrology book the other day at the bookstand, and it said that it was a bad year for people born in the Year of the Boar. It said, specifically, that it would be a bad year for motivation. God, were they right! I have more work than anyone like me could possibly handle, and what am I doing? Blogging! That’s right – wasting my time, listening to Launchcast, blogging and basically just doing nothing productive. Ugh! Have you ever been hurt so bad that after that one event, nothing seemed to matter anymore? Even though you went on living your life like it was normal, deep, deep, deep down, you knew nothing was ever going to be right again? That’s how it is. Sometimes, I’ll be walking down the street, and I’ll just stop for no reason and I’ll feel like the world is caving in. And no, it’s not an anxiety attack, it’s not quite that intense. It’s more like when you’ve been in a dark place and suddenly, you walk into a really bright room and your eyes smart from the light and you’re disoriented and you’re not quite sure if you’re awake or not. It makes me think of that thought puzzle, of the philosopher who fell asleep and dreamt he was a butterfly, and when he woke up, he wondered if he was a man who dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly who was dreaming he was a man. Is this my reality? Sometimes I wonder if I’m a completely different person, a person who was never hurt and doesn’t find it hard to motivate herself, who’s thinking of what her life would have been like if she hadn’t been so lucky... I’m always wondering if there’s a parallel version of myself out there; is she doing better than me? Or worse?

Final thought: Maybe I ought to reserve my mental facilities for my work…