Hm. What an odd sensation…

Do you guys remember when you were kids and were promised some toy, or a trip to Disneyland or something, but it wasn’t going to happen for a month? All that anticipation, delicious and excruciating at the same time, as if life without this toy/trip/whatever had somehow lost some of its value? “Delayed gratification,” I think they call it, but with a twist that it isn’t really anything you need to enhance some crippled part of your life, it’s only something you really want.

It occurred to me, yesterday evening, that I haven’t experienced that particular sort of pain and delight for a very long time. I have wants and needs but they’re all pretty much filled, I don’t go in for collecting ‘stuff,’ and almost consciously don’t have toys. If a tool, or a shirt, or some piece of infrastructure breaks or can be superseded by something better, then I work on the replacement but I never get worked up over it.

What does all this have to do with anything? Well, yesterday two widely-separated but intimately-related things fell together as if by supernatural intervention. I speak of synchronicity here often, when a sudden need is met by a nearly simultaneous gratification of that need, even when there’s no dreaming reason to imagine that it would. That happens to me, and I love it, but this was beyond that. This was two complex processes, neither of which I could influence in any way except to cooperate, neither in touch with the other at all but both intersecting at the point of my tender torso. It was weird and wonderful to watch.

I have said, perhaps at excessive length, that I wish to replace my EDC handgun. That I have no money with which to do so, and so I must sell an unused asset. Stuck here at the gulch by myself, there was little I could do to move either of those processes forward. It was more a wish than an intention, and likely to remain so.

With me or without me, processes moved. It remains convoluted, because it must be done legally and so it can’t be done simply. The transaction is probably well over a month away from consummation. But imagine this…

…stuck in one of these – custom-made, yet…

And you may have seen the near future at Joel’s Gulch.

And – getting back to my original point – I experience this strange sensation. Anticipation, coupled with extreme impatience. As if Christmas is coming, but grinding along far too slowly to suit me. I’m too old for this, but it’s still kind of fun. One way or another – probably the way that has already been set in motion – Uncle Joel is getting a new toy. 🙂