Halloween Musings

It's been a while since I dressed up as anything for Halloween. Quite amusingly, no one noticed that I had dressed up. As this was perfectly in keeping with the character I was dressed as, I took that as a good sign. They might have noticed had I managed to find a decent black duffel bag to stuff with sharp implements. At the very least, they might have wondered at the bag.

I had decided to dress as Dexter. When he's in hunting mode, he tends to wear greys and khakis. In particular, he favors a grey shirt with small buttons running partway down the chest. Sadly, I had to choose between the correct color and the correct style of buttons. I went with the one that was the best color: a greyish brown. It has two large buttons rather than a row of small buttons. The pants I found, though, were a very good match: khaki cargo pants. All I needed to complete the look was the aforementioned black duffel bag. Ah well.

I also tried a mental experiment which turned out to be quite interesting. I tried thinking of myself as evil for most of the day. As far as I can tell, the most noticeable effect was that I consciously noticed more of my reactions to certain things that happened around me, and didn't try to push the more negative ones away. Interestingly, this made those reactions have less of an effect on me. I found myself pondering why, if I was evil, I didn't do things like drive my car straight into traffic. The answer was simple: it wouldn't accomplish anything useful for me, and it would severely inconvenience me. In non-evil mode, there are of course far stronger reasons for not doing so, but it was interesting to note that reasons still existed in evil-mode.

As a thought-experiment, I highly recommend this, so long as you're not a complete chaotic type who might take it too far. Or if you already think of yourself as evil, it might be interesting to try thinking of yourself as good and see what changes. In my case, I think the exercise put me closer to a calm, neutral center. Which is ironic, as that's how I normally think of myself. Apparently I've been missing the mark. More than that, though, I have a tendency to try and push negative emotions aside. Not ignore them, as such, but to try and gloss over them, see them as aberrations. Today I simply accepted and examined them, to my betterment so far as I can tell.