I just love the phrase, "What am I doing?" It's the simplest and least insane way to imply that you feel like you are more than one person, and the other half of you is disobeying somehow.

Most often, it comes out of someone driving, as they turn onto the wrong street. Or someone who absentminded lights a cigarette, having forgotten that they're supposed to have quit. Or out of someone who's had a nasty attack of nostalgia. Well, nostalgia's not right - that feeling when, well -

I worked at NightRide for two years. It was a service that drove students home (or, as it happened, from party to party to party to party...) after dark. I started in September of '04, right after I moved into a new place, and biked home using the same route every time, so as not to be surprised by anything unexpected at 2:00AM, when my shift ended.

One night, I clocked out, found my bike, and rode straight to a place I had lived in for just two months, two years ago. I tied my bike outside and was halfway to opening the back door when I realized what I was doing. "What I am doing?" I said, out loud, before the annoyance set in that now I had to ride four miles uphill to my real house.

That feeling. It's not nostalgia, because I wasn't longing for or feeling the presence of my old home. I just ended up there accidentally. And it wasn't out of habit, because I had never made that particular ride before. It wasn't even exhaustion making my actions random... I had my 2AM burst of post-work energy.

So what's that feeling called, Wikipedia? Huh? That feeling when your body does something without your brain's approval? Where your brain is on, it's alert, but distracted, maybe, and your body goes and does completely way unexpected and inexplicable? You don't feel like two people, not quite, but you do sort of wonder what's driving the body, if you're not driving it. You're split, sort of, and you keep your brain focused for the next few days, worrying that if you don't, your body might decide to buy a plane ticket and fly to another country. Before you know it you'll wake up in a hostel in Estonia and say, with conviction this time, 'WHAT AM I DOING?'

Every Tuesday I sort of wish it will snow so there won't be a softball game. This, after I spent all my time looking up a softball league that would have me after ten years of not playing at all. I wanted something that would get me into shape in a nonthreatening way (rugby, my last try two years ago, turned out to be a threatening way indeeed; the warmup mile run alone was too much to start with, and the fact that I was the lightest person there at 150 pounds was practically a guarantee that I would be in the hospital before the end of the season) and would shape my week a little bit, force me to compartmentalize my time.

But now I just wish it would snow. Snow or be warm. As much as I want to have something to do when I'm alone in my house, when I do have something to do, and it's stressful, I wish it were optional. Actually, it's probably simpler than that; softball, for me, means biking four or five miles down to the fields on the outskirts of town, and when the game's over and I'm exhausted, either biking back (all uphill) or going out to the main road and waiting a half hour for a bus - this all when it's at or around freezing and the wind is howling. For everyone else, they just have to jump in their cars, drive there, play, jump in their cars, drive back. Simple as that.

It's a sacrifice I make, not having a car, and I like to think it's for the good of the environment, so I can gloat, and not just because I don't have the money, which is probably much closer to the truth. I oscillate between liking it and not. Sometimes when I'm struggling against the wind with both handlebars wobbling with the weight of my groceries and it's starting to snow and cars are sweeping by me at close range and sometimes honking, I get frustrated and angry to the point where it's not even in line anymore with the situation. But later, thinking about it, I think, what do I not have that these people in their cars do?

I used to think nothing. I used to think I had nothing less, and that I was actually gaining something - exercise, and time spent outdoors. Things like that. I disagree with myself now. I'm definitely short on something these people have, and that's the freedom to just go out at a whim and have fun without getting weighed down with the consequences of when's the bus running, what are the intervals, how cold is it, will it snow, which way is the wind blowing, can I ride my bike into it, has someone stolen my bike light, how long will this take, will I be able to get any sleep tonight once I get home?

Because of all these questions running through my head, I often decide just not to go anywhere because it's too much trouble, and my life becomes more monotonous instead of more colorful. And yes, I realize that this is ridiculously whiny and specific about a problem that's not a problem at all, compared to the rest of the problems of the world, and yes, I realize that I could just not think about all those things and go anyway and deal with the consequences as they happen, but that's not who I am, and these are the consequences that riding a bike has, for me, and this is how it's been and now I go nowhere more often than I go somewhere. It makes me sad.