Well, it’s now Saturday‒the first Saturday of official summer in the northern hemisphere, (and of winter, in the southern).  I hope you readers out there have something fun planned with your families today and/or tomorrow.  You might as well.  If you can find an excuse to celebrate together, you should do it.

I am writing this post‒the first draft, at least‒on my smartphone, because I didn’t bring my laptop computer to the house with me.  Instead, I brought my hardcover copy of Quantum Field Theory, As Simply As Possible.  It was an odd decision, I think.  Recent history has not shown me prone to reading real books at the house when I’m off work.

I think maybe it’s wishful thinking.  I guess I figure that, if I want to read any of it at the office during my down time, I can fire up the desktop version of the Kindle App* and read it there.  Since it’s basically a pdf, the limitations of the desktop app won’t matter much, and it should be big enough to see and read on the desktop screen (though I haven’t tried yet).

If that doesn’t work‒assuming I even try it‒I can always just bring the book back.

Anyway, that’s not really what I want to write about today, but I’m not sure how much I should write about what I feel like discussing, because I worry about the possible reaction.  I also, oddly, worry about a lack of reaction.  Maybe part of me is hoping to raise an alarm.  Maybe this is yet another of my hundreds of cries for help, this one a bit more strident, since the others haven’t worked.  My mind is in a peculiar state, even for me.

Anyway, that thing I briefly mentioned near the end of the post yesterday…well, I decided to do some minor trial runs of it, with slightly live ammo, so to speak.  At moments when something particularly stressed me out, I just quietly did that little thing.

I won’t get into details.  It’s nothing very dramatic, really.  If it were a game of Russian Roulette (which it isn’t, at least not literally), it would be one using a single loaded chamber in a revolver with, I don’t know, maybe a hundred chambers in the cylinder.  Probably more, maybe slightly less, it’s hard to say.  But the risk involved right now isn’t very high.  Still, it accumulates, as risk does, when iterations are independent.

If the chance of something happening on the first try is 1%, or .01 (or 1-.99, which is the chance of it not happening) then if you spin the cylinder twice, the total chance of the thing happening is 1-(the cumulative chance of it not happening), or 1-(.99 x .99), or 1-.9801, or .0199.  That’s close to 2%, but it’s not quite there, and the new, added increments get smaller and smaller.  Otherwise, after a hundred goes you’d be certain to have something happen, and with independently randomized iterations, that isn’t the way it works.  After a hundred random tries at something in which each attempt gives a 1% chance of the event, your actual likelihood of the event happening once is about 63%, if my figuring is correct.  Someone please check my math**.

Now, if one is playing traditional Russian Roulette without spinning the barrel between each trigger pull, then by the end of six pulls, the odds are essentially certain‒barring misfires‒that someone will “win”.  Whereas if you spin the cylinder (randomly and fairly) each time, the odds are, let me see…about 66.5% after 6 tries.

The point I’m making is that it’s not a high chance, but it gives me some sense of control and possible “escape” each time, and I think that helped calm me a bit yesterday.  I even think I might have slept a bit better last night.  That might be just because I was feeling physically a little improved since the previous day, though.

I did wake up quite a number of times throughout the night, each time filled with frankly absurd anxiety about something, but I have no idea what.  That’s just what usually happens, though.  I also woke up once coughing my brains out from a reflux/regurgitation event, but I think I know the dietary indiscretion behind that, and I don’t mean to repeat it.  That’s a horrible feeling.

Anyway, I think I feel slightly more level…though it’s still very early in the day, and just thinking about it while (now) waiting for the train seems to belie that possibility, as I feel tension and anxiety building rather quickly.

It’s so frustrating.  I just can’t ever seem to feel in any way at ease or relaxed or at home.  I really do feel sometimes like I don’t belong on this planet, or even in this universe, like there’s been some meta-cosmic mix-up.  You would think that one would get more used to the world after one had been in it for a longer period of time, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Possibly at least some of my former ability to handle it was due to the presence of my family and friends, who could provide good examples and smooth out rough edges and act as allies who helped when I was at a loss.  When needing to rely solely my own resources, I think I just get worn down.  It also doesn’t help that, despite my having worked quite hard all my life to succeed and thrive in this place, and having achieved quite a lot, it just wasn’t enough, and everything all went to shit, largely due to me just not seeming to get other people and what they meant or needed or intended or what.

Maybe I was just unlucky.  My back injury and chronic consequent pain really set the boulder rolling downhill.  Without that, maybe I would have been fine.

That boulder has been rolling for a long time, now.  I’m on more level-ish ground than I was, but only because it’s nearing the bottom of the valley; most of its prior, impressive height has long since been lost.  If this were a metaphor for energy states of quantum fields, I’d say it’s approaching the vacuum state, or at least a pseudo-vacuum; I can’t see the shape of the whole curve.  Maybe at this point I’m effectively already in the vacuum state, and any seeming movement is just quantum jitters.

Sorry, I’m skipping from metaphor to metaphor like a grade-schooler playing metaphor hopscotch.  How’s that for a meta-metaphor***?  

Anyway, I’m not getting anywhere with this right now, except heading toward the office.  But maybe, just maybe, I’ve put in motion things that will give me a higher chance of quantum-tunneling to a lower, true ground state, where I can rest, or at least stop being constantly in pain and anxious and depressed and lonely and futile.  Or maybe‒there’s always that foolish hope‒someone will help me.  Though it’s hard to blame anyone for not doing so.  I’m a rotten person who isn’t really worth the effort.  I know I don’t like me.

Anyway, that’s enough of that.  I hope, again, that you all have a nice first weekend of summer.  Or winter.  Either way, if you have friends and/or family with whom to spend your time, please make the most of your opportunity.

*Which, by the way, sucks compared to the smartphone/tablet version, and is very frustrating.  If any of you out there are on the development team at Amazon for this, or have access to those who are, please let them know that they need to improve their product relative to the other versions.

**Don’t bother accounting for the possibilities of more than one occasion of the outcome happening.  We’re talking about Russian Roulette‒if one “event” happens, there will be no more spins.

***Since I used the word “like” I guess it’s technically a simile about metaphors.  That’s not as much fun, though.