Well, we’ve reached the just-shy-of-two-thirds point in the month of January, and we’re exactly nine months out from the most important day of the year (Ha ha). How exciting.
It’s still chilly here in south Florida; at least, it’s chilly for south Florida. I don’t think we’re in any immediate danger of having snow in Miami‒we’re more than twenty degrees Fahrenheit* too warm for that‒but it’s cold if you’ve lived in the subtropical cesspool climate for more than a quarter of a century.
That’s way too long to be in Florida. Florida is a nice place to visit, but given the overall quality of humans that tend to have influence here‒and we all know one extremely prominent one‒you wouldn’t want to live here. Or, as a popular local saying goes, “Florida: come on vacation, leave on probation.” Even my grandparents on my mother’s side, who had lived in Florida for some years, moved back north for their final years.
I’m not sure what to “talk” about today. Or, to be my usual unnecessarily strict self regarding such things, I am not sure about what to “talk” today.
Here’s a mildly amusing point: when I try to construct that last sentence’s last phrase without ending it (not counting the word “today”) in a preposition, or a dangling participle, or whatever the proper term is, the stupid Google Docs word processor tries to suggest that I’m incorrect and recommends the less grammatically correct but more popular way to put things, such as what I wrote in the preceding sentence. It’s pathetic and disgusting. Google should be ashamed of themselves, every last one of them, to the point where they commit mass seppuku.
It’s almost as if someone said they wanted to listen to some lovely orchestral music, perhaps something by Rachmaninoff, and the respondent‒perhaps some artificial “intelligence” program‒played “Baby Shark”.
Anyway, so much of nearly everything is so very frustrating in this life. Nothing is rewarding. Well, nearly nothing is rewarding, and the few rewarding things are not just few but also very far between.
I see no future for me. I cannot visualize actually having a remaining life that’s any better than that of a homeless drug addict.
Everything is maddening. Or maybe it’s just that I am maddened by everything. It hardly matters which is the more accurate way to put things, since the experience for me is the same: unhappiness, loneliness, frustration, insomnia, chronic pain, constant tinnitus in both ears, professional and personal disgrace, and who knows how many other things I could list if I had the energy for it.
I don’t think I can do this much more, perhaps not any more. I’m so frustrated and miserable and stuck. Supposedly, someone with my level of ASD‒level 2** officially‒needs moderate support, not just “some” support. I don’t have any. I am on my own.
That’s not to say I don’t have people who care about me, but they are far away and have their own shit with which to deal. They certainly don’t need to waste their energy on the added piece of shit that I am.
I don’t know how often I have felt that I really ought to kill myself, that it’s probably the most sensible course of action for me‒socially, biologically, ethically, what have you‒but I have not done so yet. Each occurrence of such contemplation must carry some certain percentage of risk****, like a more metaphorical version of Russian Roulette (though I literally tried that once). Eventually, probability suggests that my actual killing of myself would approach a mathematical certainty.
It will never quite reach certainty, of course, even if (when?) I finally kill myself, at least not as a matter of retroactive probability. Just because someone won the lottery last week doesn’t mean we can retroactively say that their odds of winning were 100%. One could say such a thing from a certain point of view‒the past being unchangeable and so fixed and deterministic‒but it’s not a useful way to think about probability.
Anyway, enough of this shit for now. I don’t know if I’ll write a post tomorrow; I mean, it’s always uncertain, but it feels less likely than usual. If I do, I guess it’ll show up here.
*Let’s see, in centigrade (or Celsius) that’s five ninths as many degrees as in Fahrenheit, so 20 times five is 100, divided by 9 is 11 and one ninth, or 11.1111111…
**Level 2: Perfume, lingerie, women’s clothing, and jewelry***. Everybody out of the elevator.
***That stuff would probably actually all be on level 1. They usually keep things of interest mainly to women on the first floor of department stores, since statistically, those are the things that bring in the most business.
****If you want to call “risk” something that would end my constant dysphoria and also free other people from having to think about me in any other than a sad little, throwaway, “Aw, what a shame” kind of way.

No, you should not do that. Read the excellent _Reasons to Stay Alive_ by Matt Haig. It’s more intense than the John Moe book, since it lacks a sugar-coating of humor, but definitely worthwhile. In fact it’s good enough that both Stephen Fry and Michael Palin (and many others) have praised it.
Ah yes, “Baby Shark”, the lost Fifth Piano Concerto by Rachmaninoff. 🙂
Yeah, I’ve read a ton of stuff like that over many years, in books, online, in medical school and practice, all that stuff. As far as I can tell, none of it has any insights that end up helping in the long run, and sometimes it’s even “triggering”, though I use the word advisedly. The stuff that’s more fluffy and “you matter” and all that just gets maddening, and the deeper, more serious stuff just makes me feel more depressed a lot of the time. I’ve also tried to read lots of books about autism (by people with autism or people who work with autistic people). It’s illuminating and it’s remarkable to find similarities in experience, but there are not many useful things in those, either. Honestly, I don’t think there necessarily are any useful answers. The world is complex and the brain/mind the most complex single thing in it, and there’s no reason to expect that nature has created solutions to all problems with it. And we know that humans haven’t arrived at any consist and reliable ones, either.
Sorry, I don’t mean to be a downer. I just am.
Yeah, some of these books can be triggering for sure. One that is not so triggering, often bitingly amusing, and not fluffy at all: 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works – A True Story by Dan Harris. He’s the anchorman/journalist who suffered an on-air panic attack, along with depression, trauma, etc. but found ways to cope. I’ve only read some of it but it’s pretty entertaining and gripping so far.
I have read it. Good book. And, of course, I read Sam Harris’s “Waking Up” and their videos that they did together about meditation and so on. All very interesting. Lots of stuff like that.