For those of you who may not be reading this on the day it comes out, this post is being written on a Saturday morning.  I’m working today, of course, which is why I’m writing a blog post.  I don’t write blog posts on days when I don’t work, other than the occasional (very rare) brief notice I might put up when I’m out sick.  I do that in case anyone is worried about me.

It’s not that weird to think someone might be worried about me, at least if they’re an unusually kind person who worries and cares even about strangers (and rather pathetic ones, at that)

I had a middling day yesterday at the office, and there were some stressful moments that made me, as I often do, just feel that none of anything is worth the effort.  I encountered one of those situations, which seem to happen often, in which I had either to let someone flout the schedule (and my personal need for an officially scheduled break) for their own purposes or otherwise to feel like I’m being the “bad guy”, since in order to enforce the norms which we supposedly have in place, I have to be harsh.  In an office with so much noise and crap, even to be heard entails raising one’s voice, and to get people who aren’t particularly self-disciplined to respect other people’s concerns, you have to take harsh tones.

I don’t like being in either mode.

I had tried, earlier in the day, to do some meditation in my moments of relative inactivity, just to ease a bit of the tension I felt, which‒as is often the case‒was quite severe as the day began and things got moving.  The fact that it was Friday was of no benefit to my mood, unfortunately.  I work today, as you know, so it wasn’t the end of the work week for me.  But even when it is, the weekend is just a time for me to face how utterly alone and disengaged I am, to lie about in my room and try to pass the time by watching YouTube comedy or science videos, doing some reading, and just trying to avoid random noise and other inputs from the world.

I know; it’s all terribly exciting, isn’t it?  Anyway, of course I don’t particularly look forward to weekends, except to getting a break from the stress that interacting with people almost always brings.  I don’t have any casual and/or fun conversations except when I call my sister on the phone once a week.  I only sleep slightly longer on the weekends because I can take two Benadryl before bed, which I can’t do during the week, since it makes me groggy through the next day.  Even that just seems to let me sleep until about 5:30, and usually not without interruption.

Anyway, sorry, I know that’s all very boring.  Depression is boring, I guess.  It would be, of course.  That’s one of the things about it.  But I guess that I share at least some of this stuff about my life with the idea that maybe, just maybe, someone out there will have a brilliant solution, or some resource, or will be friends with some superhero who can come to the rescue of someone who doesn’t happen to be trapped in a literal burning building, but who is very much figuratively so trapped, and is unable to escape on his own.

Ah, well.  Hope is foolish, at least for a creature like me.  I should just get going and embrace the inevitable fire.  Once the superficial nerve endings go, burnt skin doesn’t feel direct pain anymore…though there are deeper nerves and other signals in the body that still sound the alarms of distress right until the very end, even when there is no point.  So, it’s not a good idea to burn yourself severely if you’re going to survive it.  Thus, my recommendation is to embrace it and let it complete its job.

At least, that’s my recommendation for me.  I don’t actually recommend to any of you that you do any such thing.  Frankly, I hope you all have decent lives, with good friends and families whom you love and who love you.  I hope you have jobs that aren’t too stressful but that pay you a decent wage and make you feel productive and useful.  I hope you have activities that you enjoy in your spare time, topics that interest you, and people with whom you can share your interests, if they’re the sorts of interests that can be shared.  Yes, it’s true that I don’t think there is any external meaning to the universe‒at least, I see no evidence or reason for there to be one‒but that’s fine, that’s whatever it is, it doesn’t really change anything.

You may think you couldn’t bear to live in a meaningless universe, but if the universe is meaningless, then you’ve been bearing living in a meaningless universe already, all your life.  Well done.

And if the universe does have some intrinsic and/or extrinsic meaning, but it’s not something any of us understands, that’s okay, too, because then you will have been living in that sort of universe all along.  Again, well done.

If, however, you think you know the meaning of the universe‒and, implicitly, that you know that it has such a meaning‒then I can’t quite give you as much of a “well done”, because I’m all but certain you’re delusional.  I could be wrong about that, and I’m open to evidence and reasoning on the subject, but my Bayesian priors are quite high (or low, depending on how you approach the question).

Still, even then, it’s hard to hold that against you, as long as you’re not using such delusions as an excuse to cause other people suffering or to take things that you have no credible right to have.  If you’re just doing what you can to muddle through, whatever your beliefs, and trying not to do damage if you can help it, well, that’s how this “life” thing is done, I guess.

Keep it up.