I wonder if there is any truth to a standard cycle of emotions. Plato provided a very interesting theory of a cycle of political systems in The Republic, that rotated according to the dominance and balance of the three parts of the city and their virtues, which is analagous to the three parts of the soul. I believe it was something like aristocracy to timocracy to oligarchy to democracy to anarchism to tyranny to aristocracy. (I’m pretty sure that’s not exactly right– I may have made a distinction where there shouldn’t be one.)
Anyway, I wonder if there is a cycle of emotions that people in general, and myself in particular, move through. I need to get to sleep, but I will briefly point out that I have certain periods of melancholy, reflection, obsession, warrior-like discipline and motivation, and satisfaction.
I bring this up now because I am being afflicted with a change that seems very familiar, and I wonder how often, and with what regularity, I continue in this direction. I have been in a period of melancholy over the past week. This past weekend has been somewhat depressing, somewhat productive, and largely a waste of time. But even in those wastes of time, I could not do anything else. And now, as I am about to go to bed and thinking about tomorrow, I feel the war drums beating in my chest. I will most likely wake up tomorrow and go straight to the floor to do pushups, then curls and crunches, despite doing very little in the way of physical fitness in weeks. I will move briskly, waste no time, and be out the door precisely when I need to be. I will do what I need to do, and avoid that which is destructive. I will move toward perfection, but it will be without much reflection and without much joy. I will do what needs to be done.
The military uprising seems like a familiar and common response to a period of melancholy. No other emotional mode has the ability to shake myself out of that melancholy. But the military mode nevertheless erodes after life stabilizes.
I will track these emotional phase shifts for a little while and see if I can detect some pattern.
Natural Causes 
Ah, observe. Who is the observer and who the doer? Can the observer be content no matter what the doer is doing?
Love~
Wow, where are you? It’s not 2:30 or 2/24. 🙂
I would like to know more about what you meant in that first comment. It looks like it could be interesting.
As for the second, I’m still in Chicago, but I think this blogger software measures everything in Greenwich Mean Time…and I haven’t summoned up enough care to see if I can change the settings. I think I read somewhere that I can’t.