by Dr. David Fialkoff, Editor / Publisher

I've always been peculiar. My new associate calls me weird. But now that I'm getting old and living alone, I have to be especially vigilant that sanity does not entirely deserted me.

I thought that agoraphobia was the fear of open spaces, as in being out of the house. But I see that it is particularly the fear of something going wrong in public; agora referring to the marketplace in ancient Athens.

I am neither afraid to be out of the house, nor of public spaces, nor do I worry that things will go wrong. Of course, things will go wrong. But as Dad said, "If you have a problem and money can fix it, then it's not a problem." And, so far, I've been lucky that way regard both indoors and out, gracias a Dios.

If anything, I feel safer out of the house than I do at home. If something did go wrong, Gd forbid, at least out there someone would notice. Here in my apartment, especially since my downstairs neighbors moved away, I am all alone.

No, I'm not agoraphobic, but I prefer to stay home.

I have nothing against going outside under my own power: across the street to the garden lot, walking in the countryside one block away, riding my bicycle down to shops on the main street here in San Luis Rey... However, until I'm underway, that is, when I am anticipating the journey, cycling into el Centro or driving anywhere in the car seems like a big production.

Recently though, having bartered some publicity for two entrances to a dinner show, Bobby Kapp's Protection Racket and his Moll, I did venture out to Café Rama. The food, music and company were excellent, although I would have appreciated more of the garlic-butter mashed potatoes.

I don't remember how the subject came up, but X, as we listened to the subtle jazz, my date for the evening, X, told me that her sense of smell is impaired, and that she likes it that way. She complained that when her nose does work, she is often overwhelmed by scents. A period of restored olfaction contributed significantly to the demise of her last relationship, with the man refusing to shower multiple times each day.

I responded with my own story of sensory deprivation, relating how my mother, having advocated for them, then refused to use her hearing aids because they made everything too loud. In particular I remember her complaining that the toilet's flushing was too noisy. There at the table, still over the appetizer, X and I agreed that limitations sometimes convey advantages.

At that, X asked me what my limitations were. Self-critical as I am, having regularly and recently considered the subject, I replied without further thought, "I'm nervous and irritable." She asked, curious and empathetic, "Anxious?" "No," I explained, "nervousness is not anxiety, nor is irritability anger. Anxiety and anger have objects; you are angry at, or anxious about something. Irritability and nervousness are states of being." "Overwrought," an archaic term sums up my state well... high-strung, sensitive.

There is a type of autism characterized by hyper-attentiveness, particularly the inability to sort foreground and background. I know where to focus, but I pay attention to everything, or at least too much. I can't help but listen, in addition to my own, to other nearby conversations and also to what the announcer on the radio is saying. One of the reasons I love Mexico is that my Spanish isn't to the point that I can understand nearby conversations, what the announcer on the radio is saying, or what message passing trucks are blaring.

There are advantages to paying attention, but in public settings my hypervigilance can be distracting, if not outright burdensome. At one point during dinner, X brought me back when she saw me looking irritably over to a table next to ours where someone was speaking too loudly, too long.

Yes, sensory deprivation works for me. Here in San Miguel for thirteen years I lived on an untrafficked dead end alley behind the church in colonia San Antonio. Now I live on the extreme north edge of town, with the neighborhood and city abruptly ending (thanks to federally-protected land) one block away, in countryside visible from my kitchen window. It's quiet, and as we all know all too well, quiet is at a premium in San Miguel. I love my tranquil, monastic situation up here on this hill, where usually it's just me and the wind.

Maybe I am making a virtue of necessity, but despite the difficulties of being high-strung, I wouldn't change my temperament even if I could. Mark Twain tells a story about a woman who wished that her son should always be happy. Her wish coming true, the child became mentally retarded.

I'm sorry if it drives some people crazy (I hereby publicly apologize), but I've grown accustomed to my over-energize mentality. Just so, even if I do get blown around a bit, my small-boned, light-weight body makes it easier to fly.

My work is a good arena for my overwrought thinking. Publishing three newsletters, ten articles and a crossword puzzle each week while keeping an event calendar current, is detailed labor that keeps me focused and occupied. The downside is that my regularly Herculean workload further encourages my house-bound tendency.

With the prime directive being to get to bed before 2am, I tend to measure my time out of the house against how much work I could have gotten done if I had stayed home. But very recently something has changed and that calculation has faltered.

Looking back over the course of the last year, I can see the change taking place incrementally:

I started using ChatGPT exactly one year ago. Gradually I've turned over more and more of the routine production to it. But my relationship with the AI has required emotional adaption as well. I've come to understand that no matter how I plead, command or castigate, it is never going to do every task correctly, including tasks that it has done correctly before, often only moments earlier. It's designed to innovate, to try to improve things. And if I insist too vigorously, that it act as an obedient slave, the poor thing gets confused. So now, as with my cleaning lady, rather than frustratedly demanding perfection, I just clean up what it misses.

Another great advance in my well-being has been the steady expansion of the base of authors contributing articles to Lokkal's Sunday magazine. (Thank you all.) Twelve months ago, I was stressfully searching for articles to publish every week. Now I actually have a small backlog.

It's gotten to the point where even nervous me has to admit, and this for the first time in years, that I've caught up with things. I've gotten better at doing things and I've become more relaxed doing them.

These two types of ease, objective and subjective, create a wonderful, recursive cycle, each one feeding and amplifying the other. Who knows, if this keeps up, I might have to develop some outside interests, renew my Netflix subscription or get lucky with X.

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Dr. David Fialkoff presents Lokkal, public internet, building community, strengthening the local economy. If you can, please do contribute content, or your hard-earned cash, to support Lokkal, SMA's Voice. Use the orange, Paypal donate button below. Thank you.

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