Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Beware of NLP

While writing my little post last week on the pleasures of watchlessness, of timelessness..... I managed to lose my watch.

Since I was already late leaving for the office, was departing for a working trip to Shanghai that evening, would be in need of accurate time-keeping for the 3-hr presentation I had to give the next day.... this was somewhere beyond inconvenient.

I spent a fruitless half-hour (making myself even more late) scouring my apartment, gnashing my teeth.

I didn't find it again until my return on Sunday evening. I had put it in my cutlery tray in the kitchen. Why? I never take my watch off in the kitchen. I never leave it in such an improbable place. Since I'm not cooking at home very much these days, it might well have been some days, or even weeks, before I happened upon it there. I could probably have looked at it and not seen it, because that is such an outrageously improbable place for me to have left it.

These are the dangers of Neuro-Linguistic Programming. I inadvertently self-sabotaged myself by writing words in praise of being without a watch. I am checking myself every few seconds while writing this to make sure that I haven't again unthinkingly taken my watch off and left it somewhere stupid.

Beware, my readers, beware. Your mind can fuck you up in the most unlikely ways.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am thinking, maybe someone had hidden your watch there just to annoy you. Who have you had visiting before the watch went missing/hiding? Then ask them when they least expect it and see how they react. If they burst into laughter, then you know you've got your man/woman.

Froog said...

No, I was wearing my watch while typing the Hankou post. A few minutes later, when I was about to leave for work, I was not wearing my watch.

I live alone. I hardly ever have any visitors.

It was self-sabotage, pure and simple.

Unless you believe in invisible gremlins....

Anonymous said...

No I don't belive in invisible things, but I do believe I am good at getting people to reveal information without asking the questions directly. It's fun, you should try it sometime. I'm laughing right now.

About self-sabotage, I know it too well. If I had the time, I would write all the stories about my self-sabotage in the past few years and it will fill a book. I think there is an element of "M" involved in it. I read that somewhere.