I don’t feel much like writing anything today.  Or, rather, I don’t feel like writing anything that isn’t morbid and gloomy and morose and dark, and I know that people don’t like to read that stuff.  Of course, this blog isn’t necessarily about entertaining or even informing other people, though it’s nice when I can do that.  This blog is of me, by me, and for me, ultimately.  Which should make me satisfied (though not necessarily happy) just to write it.

Well, satisfaction is a tricky and evanescent thing at the best of times.  It’s not a good biological strategy to have lasting satisfaction in any kind of organism.  I’ve talked about this before, and I’ve referenced Yuval Noah Harari’s example of the squirrel that is durably satisfied by a single nut:  it would be a content, happy squirrel for the short time it lived before starving (painlessly) to death.  That doesn’t sound too bad, honestly, but natural selection will never tend to allow such a creature to endure let alone thrive and reproduce.

Anyway, I’m not satisfied by writing this blog, but there is a pressure of a sort to do so, and by doing so, I relieve that pressure briefly.  I guess that’s a good thing, as far as it goes.  It’s not much good, but it is some good.

It’s about the only personal thing I’ve done in a long time.  I haven’t sung or played any music nor even listened to any music in what feels like a very long time.  I haven’t really been reading very much, either, and certainly not much about topics or from genres that formerly interested me.

I got a Stephen King book that I hadn’t read before, but I lost interest before the real plot even got going.  I’ve tried to reread Insomnia, which is one of my favorite Stephen King books, but that doesn’t hold me for long, either.  Neither Tolkien nor Donaldson pique my interest, nor Lovecraft nor Poe nor Shakespeare, and I can’t seem to summon the energy to do any science reading either.  Even my own stories are boring to me.

I am just washed out, maybe.  I am tired and I am alone.  And yes, in some spiritual solidarity kinds of senses, one is not ever alone, because there are people out there going through things such as what you are going through, and who would willingly offer you moral support or whatever.

That sort of reassurance has never made very much sense to me, let alone providing any comfort, though I appreciate the thought.  It must be a neurotypical notion of some kind, useful and even truly helpful for those whose identities‒such as they are‒are dependent upon their group or tribe or whatever, and who are able to feel connected by such means.  It’s never provided comfort to me.  If anything, it’s more depressing to know that many other people have been depressed, are depressed, and will be depressed out there in the world.

My feeling of being alone is somewhat analogous to the old Woody Allen joke, if joke it was, in which he said he doesn’t want to achieve immortality through his work, he wants to achieve immortality by not dying.

So, yeah, I don’t want to stop feeling alone because some hypothetical people out there are going through similar feelings or wish me well in some general sense, well-intentioned and appreciated though such things are.  It doesn’t work for me; it doesn’t assuage my feeling of being alone.  I want to stop feeling alone by actually having a friend or friends or family with me.

Of course, that’s a tall and rather hypocritical order.  I don’t even like being around myself, so it’s hard in good conscience to want to inflict myself upon other people.  And it’s not as though I can really conceive of wishing to “be” someone else, though I can certainly wish to change some of my attributes or improve myself.  Mostly, most of the time, I just want to get away from me, from awareness, from the constant internal pressure that brings no reward but which certainly punishes if not followed.

Anyway, sorry, this has not been amusing or upbeat or in any way optimistic.  At least you know I’m not sugar coating things.  Except, really, I am.  I do not let out anything like all the dark thoughts and notions that go through my head.

I actually almost always try to be more upbeat and amusing than I feel.  I try to be positive for other people.  I don’t know that I succeed very much, but I do try; it’s one of those pressures that I cannot easily ignore.  Doing it brings no real happiness or joy or satisfaction, any more than any achievement ever really brings me such things or ever has.  I just feel the pressure, the tension.

I don’t know.  It doesn’t matter.  No one really cares, and that includes me, at some level.  Like Kansas said, everything is dust in the wind.