Monday, August 19, 2013

I may have GDD*

Can there be too much of a good thing?

This weekend we anchored in Port Madison, off the dock for the first time in weeks.  And I relaxed.  I mean I completely RELAXED.   I was so relaxed that I may actually have left the animal kingdom and become some kind of plant. 

Is this good?  

Once in a while I think it is. But I was so far gone that it was quite difficult for me to gather together enough energy (gumption?) even for the ten-minute job of greasing the heads.  I spent uncounted hours lazing in the cockpit, feeling the boat gliding slowly around the anchor and gazing at the water, the shoreline, the birds, the seals.  The insides of my eyelids. 

So what is this "energy", this "gumption"?  Is another word for this curiously slippery substance "ambition"?  Where does it one from?  How is it destroyed by the heat of a summer afternoon?  Can you get more of it with a proper diet?  Do certain strangely named supplements help your body to manufacture it? 

Investigators have found [citation needed] that subjects with low levels of gumption seem to have correspondingly elevated levels of a substance identified as β-lethargen. Is β-lethargen a gumption antagonist?  Or does it act independently to reduce the will to act? Is there a deeper homeostatic mechanism that is regulating both of these?  More research is needed. 

Next weekend.


*GDD: Gumption Deficit Disorder


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