Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday again.  I thought this might be the last Thursday blog post I was going to do, but because of my coworker’s vacation plans, I may do one or two more.  Or, of course, this could be the last one I do after all, depending upon the vicissitudes of fate and any tendency I may have to give in to (rather frequent) momentary impulses.  I suppose, as with all things, we will only know what really is going to happen when it arrives.  And then, it will be too late to change it.

Yesterday I had a slightly embarrassing moment when commenting on a website that I read pretty much every day.  The site owner had posted about a particular incidence of the bastardization of science teaching, and had embedded a PowerPoint show (with the voice) that had been made by the people responsible.  He invited the readers to watch the slide show, though he did an excellent job of summarizing things and pointing out errors of reasoning and of fundamental science.

I commented that I admired and thanked him for doing such things, and liked his description‒I think I said that last part‒but that I couldn’t bear to subject myself to the actual slide show, because my outlook on the world is too negative and discouraged already.

To my surprise, he replied, asking if I was being serious or if it was just a jokey way of saying that I didn’t have time to do it.

I don’t know if he was irritated by what might have seemed to be snark, or if he was concerned, or what, but I decided to make it clear that, while my tongue had been slightly in my cheek, I really did suffer from depression and that my outlook was fragile as it was, and too much exposure to such things could really make me despair‒or do so to a greater degree than I do already.  Then I added that, on the other hand, it was reassuring and encouraging that he (and implicitly, other people like him) did such a great job bringing such issues to attention and pointing out the problems they entail, and that fact bolstered me, if anything…and that was why I read his website every day.

I hope I got my point across, but I’ve been feeling embarrassed and stressed about those interactions since then.  I fear that my comments only ever serve to irritate this person, though I can’t be sure, and anyway, I don’t ever seem quite to get my points across, whether in such comments or here, for that matter.

I shouldn’t feel too bad about that, I guess, since even in person I’m apparently opaque to other people, as far as my meaning goes.  I sometimes don’t even know what I’m feeling‒when people ask me, I’m nearly always caught off guard and usually experience a very low-key panic.  One of my first therapists pointed out that I seemed quite disconnected from my own emotions and from that to which they were a response‒but even when I do know, and when I desperately want someone to notice, it never seems to work.

The train’s running twelve minutes late today, it seems; I’m standing on the platform waiting for it*.  Of course, more people than usual are gathering, and so it’s going to be more crowded, but I guess I’ll just tough it out.  It is frustrating, but I’ve gone into that fact many times before.

I see its headlights coming around the last bend now, anyway.

And now I’m on the train and we’re heading north.  That ought to be a very cool thing, oughtn’t it?  To any humans who lived before, say, 1800 and were transported to the modern world, it would surely be a miraculous and possibly terrifying phenomenon**.  Yet, as with all such things, or at least nearly all, it has become just another aspect of drudgery and bleak sameness and pointlessness, carrying people to jobs that don’t in any way fulfill or inspire them, then back to houses full merely of devices and foods and processes and whatnot that serve merely to distract them rather than fill or fulfill them.

Maybe that’s just me.

I’ve continued to throw out some more of my useless crap, which is a good thing.  I gave a bunch of colored pencils I had at the office to a coworker who has a young son yesterday***.  Did I mention that already?  I think I did, but I might be misremembering.  Possibly I just intended to mention it, and that intention remained vivid enough to seem to have happened.  It doesn’t really matter, of course; otherwise I could easily just go and look.

I threw out two bicycle pumps this morning, because I don’t think I’ll ever use them again, and they were just cluttering things up.  I think I may put the bicycle out in front of the house, by the street, and perhaps put a sign on it saying, “Free to any taker‒needs a new front inner tube.”  I’m not going to be riding that bike, or probably any bike, again.  It’s a bit of a shame, but whataya gonna do?

And now, well, I don’t know, is there anything left to say today?  I probably have nothing to share that is worth sharing.  It seems quite possible that I’ve never had anything to say that was worth saying, or anything to write that was worth writing, or anything to draw that was worth drawing, or what have you.

I certainly don’t seem to connect with anyone in any kind of truly deep or significant way; certainly not one single connection I’ve ever made at a close-up, strong level, has lasted.  It seems that I’m just not good at such things, or am simply not a good candidate for connections from other people’s point of view.  Matters have come to such a pass that I think if someone tried to make friends with me now, I would probably feel panicky and threatened, and even hostile, like the feral cats you see in videos, who are in terrible shape, and whom people are trying to rescue, but who resist with vicious fervor sometimes, because they are quite rationally suspicious of the intentions of these huge, weird creatures that are accosting them.

Sorry, I don’t know what I’m really going on about.  Apologies if it’s too incoherent.  I’ll draw to a close, now, and I guess I’ll be able to use my usual Thursday morning sign-off, since it will still pertain (barring accidents and impulses).  I certainly hope you all feel better than I do.  It would be just too horrible a thing indeed, if it were not so, at least most of the time.

Please take care of yourselves and of each other.  Tomorrow is Bilbo’s and Frodo’s birthday, and the day after that Autumn begins.  Then, Sunday night, Yom Kippur arrives, the Day of Atonement™.  It’s a big weekend, or it ought to be.  Probably almost no one around me will know or notice or care.

TTFN

*One useful thing about writing this on the smartphone is that I can even write while standing up.

**Of course, the time travel technology used to transport such a person to the modern world would be even more amazing, but never mind.

***That is, I gave him the pencils yesterday.  His son has existed for quite some time.