The bureaucratic process of changing a pattern creature

It's funny how major changes in your life often seems to under-state their significance at the time of occurrence. Getting access to change the self-image appears to be a long and bureaucratic process.

I'm wondering where this lag is coming from. Why is it necessary for your subconscious to hold back the appropriate emotions? Which brain institutions are requiring to have their say on the matter, and why are they taking so long?

Take my girlfriend, who left to study in Hong Kong for five months, as an example. I'm just now beginning to realize that she is not coming back anytime soon - a month after she left. I know this because that strange, foreign feeling you can't quite explain have finally emerged. But why now? Why not in two months or just the day she left. Puzzling.

So now I'm pondering when leaving the work force as a full-timer, which I just did today, will kick in, and what kind of feelings and change in self-image it'll bring along when it finally does.

We're a species of pattern creatures.