This covers day 11 of 30 for the Hypnotherapy Project, which I'm collaborating on with Los Angeles-based ~~hypnotist~~ hypnotherapist Greg Beckett. You can read more about this experiment, what motivated it and what we hope to accomplish here.

A tool is just a tool: in the hands of a great chef, a knife can create masterpieces; in the hands of a murderer, mayhem.

Yesterday, we met The Edge. I didn't know her name was The Edge; when she came out, all hardy, strong and pleased-to-meet-you, Greg was asking to meet the part of me responsible for procrastinating. No one could have been more disappointed to see such a friendly, can-do, back-slapping go-getter. This was me procrastinating? NO WONDER I CAN'T GET ANYTHING DONE!!!

But this was not Procrastination, it was the part of me who'd been tasked with procrastinating. And apparently, I had some pretty fierce need to not get things done; we put the biggest, loudest badass of the bunch on the task.

Not an especially nuanced nor strategic thinker, this Edge. Give her a job and she gets it done, but she never questions orders. I guess I had more fear, more to protect than I'd reckoned with.

God bless Greg. He asked The Edge if she might be persuaded to be errand girl for some of the more neglected officers of communicatrix Command Central, say, the Financier, who's been patiently waiting by the open, dusty vault for eons, or Self-Esteem, who's simply never been, and got a resounding "yes!" I swear, I have a Selling Machine for an Edge.

For those of you laughing at all this, please note that this morning, before work hours, The Edge took the Financier, Monkey Brain et al on a fine, three-mile walk to make both a personal and a business deposit, and that a few of the checks fell just inside the 90-day safe range. Granted, there weren't any colossal-sized checks in there, but all told, there was enough to cover the rent and treats for the whole gang. [In the comments, a reader pointed out that this paragraph was a bit unclear. What I meant to illustrate was that I am: (a) so fearful of de-vague-ifying my money that I'll put off dealing w/ it for a really, really long time; (b) like most fears, when you turn the light on it, it is not as big or horrid a reality as you thought; and (c) I like the idea of myself as a kind of nerd version of the Hole-in-the-Wall gang.]

That Monkey Brain...she sure do like Peet's coffee...

xxx c

Image by Erica Simone via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.