Anxiety

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Pulling a trigger warning

[Seriously, I talk about suicidal thoughts and ideas of methods, as well as self-harm here, and I don’t want to trouble anyone who might be “triggered” by this…I do enough damage to people who are even figuratively close to me, and I don’t want to do that even more, so if this will, or even might, upset or worsen your mental state, please don’t read any more of it.]

I was a bit hypo-manic yesterday morning or something; sorry about my little tangent fest.  Today I mean to keep things shorter.

Work has been hectic and too up-and-down for easy tolerance lately.  Today is payroll day, so I’m going in early to get that done, but it will be chaotic and urusai and stressful no matter what.

I used to be able to deal with stress, not by avoiding stressful things but by not letting things bother me, by keeping things in perspective, by having good enough personal support systems in place, by having a good philosophical outlook, by meditating, what have you.  No longer.  The person I used to be is dead.  His remains are just sitting here and rotting, as you would expect from an unburied, unpreserved corpse in a hot, humid climate.

I hate my life.  Honestly.  Seriously.  I am trapped in this idiotic universe full of even more idiotic creatures and things, of which I am a prime example.  There is, of course, a way to escape, but to avail oneself of it requires courage, and I haven’t yet been able to work that courage up.  I’m trying.  I’ve come close.  It’s only a matter of time.  A natural 20 may be a relatively hard “saving throw”, but it will happen eventually.

It’s funny, but it occurred to me lately‒thinking frequently about such matters, as I am‒that it would be easier for me to shoot myself in the gut, sort of Van Gogh style, than to shoot myself in the head.  It’s hard to say why, exactly.  I have “played” Russian roulette once, and though I did pull the trigger (barrel in mouth, aimed as carefully as I could), I didn’t go for a second turn.  I just cried by myself in my stupid old apartment.  And that was before I even went to jail or prison for trying (cluelessly, it must be said) to help relieve the suffering of other people experiencing chronic pain.

I came to a realization when I responded to something someone on Threads said‒about just wanting to be shot in the head‒by saying that I would rather take it in the gut, because it would be slower and more painful.  I realized that I really would find it easier to shoot myself in the belly than the head.  Perhaps it’s because I could then experience the process and the pain.  Maybe it’s because it would give me a sort of chance to change my mind at the last minute or something.  I don’t know.  I suppose at some level I’m still a coward.  Anyway, I don’t own any guns anymore, so it’s a bit moot.

Weirdly enough, I doubt that I would be able to stab myself in the gut, let alone do anything like seppuku.  This is probably at least partly because one has to apply the force oneself, whereas with a gun, the bullet rockets out quickly and without hesitation once the trigger is pulled.

Using fire would be hard, too.  I know that I’m able to burn myself deliberately, because I do it from time to time (twice, yesterday) but it’s always at least a little startling how much it hurts, at least for an instant.  It can actually be almost invigorating, especially when some surprising little phenomenon happens, such as something in your skin giving a little “pop” when hot metal touches it.

A whole body process would be quite intimidating, though.  I have enough flammable liquids to do it, but I think that would be most appropriate for some sort of public statement of a death.  I’ve thought of going to sit out in front of the Palm Beach County courthouse (where the finishing blows to my life were delivered) and immolating myself, but you want to make sure you’re committed completely before trying something like that.  Otherwise it would be very embarrassing.

Maybe the best way, by some measures‒other than actual medically provided euthanasia, perhaps with some combination of high-dose valium, fentanyl, and digoxin‒would be hypoxemic asphyxiation, when you would just sort of go lightheaded and “faint” and, if you’ve done it right, just drift away.  I gathered the equipment for this not too long ago.

But of course, if you’re interrupted, or you accidentally dislodge your apparatus while losing consciousness, you could just get brain damage from hypoxemia and not even die.  To be honest, I don’t know how much worse my brain could possibly even be than it is now, but it’s a fact of reality that things can always get worse, even if it’s not true that they can always get better.

It would be good if something (not someone) else took it out of my hands.  Every time I start getting better from a respiratory infection I feel disappointed.  Where is the pneumonia that will develop over top of my URI and usher me away from this shit hole of a universe?

It’s a cliché that if you want something done right, you need to do it yourself.  It isn’t easy.  But I’m working on it.

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The noonday demon lurks everywhere

It’s Monday morning and, yes, I’m writing another blog post.  Isn’t it exciting?

I’m basically doing this because I have nothing else to do.  By which I mean I have no other real outlet on any kind of regular basis.  I don’t write fiction anymore, I don’t draw (or paint…nor do I do any sculpting, for that matter, but I haven’t done that in nearly 35 years).  I haven’t even diddled around on the guitar in about two weeks, and I haven’t played any kind of keyboard in far longer than that.  I certainly haven’t played any video games in I don’t know how long (unless you count the Euchre app on my phone).

I tried to download a chess app.  Well, actually, I did download one; it’s not as though that’s challenging.  What I tried to do was get interested in chess.  However, before I’d even gotten through one game against the computer, I’d remembered just how boring I find chess, even though I won that game.  It didn’t help that, because it was a free app, ads would pop up that would supersede the game now and then.  I uninstalled it.

Similarly, I tried again to get on Brilliant dot org and learn and/or review some stuff, and that was fine as far as it went, but the stupid Brilliant people (somewhat of an oxymoron, I guess) have the app set up so that it sends all sorts of irritating emails and (if you let it) cell phone notifications about how your “streak” is going to come to an end, so you should go and do a couple of review problems to continue it…it’s so annoying that I don’t go back on the app, and if it weren’t for the fact that I’m supporting Sabine Hossenfelder by using it, I would unsubscribe, so I would no longer be tempted to annoy myself.  People at Brilliant take note:  my loyalty to Sabine goes only so far.

It’s a shame, because I kind of like doing the stuff on Brilliant when I’m doing it, but the last thing I want is to trigger all those intrusive proddings that make me want to find where Brilliant is headquartered and burn the building to the ground.

I also have the Babbel app, and though I had briefly started learning a bit of conversational German, I fell off that (again, after irritating emails and push notifications).  Still, I think now I may try to start learning some Russian.  There’s nothing political in this, it’s just an interesting language.  It’s different enough from English to be engaging, and Mila Kunis speaks Russian.  So do many of the people in Ukraine (they don’t offer Ukrainian on Babbel, but I figure Russian would be a start) and as the Beatles sang, “The Ukraine girls really knock me out, they leave the West behind.”  Ha ha.

Anyway, I like languages, generally.  I’ve often said that language (especially written language) is the greatest invention of the human race, the one that made nearly every other invention possible.  Learning another language helps you understand your own language more deeply, and to get a sense of the nature of language itself, how it varies, what things are constant, and so on.

So, I set myself up to start Russian, but I didn’t actually start it yet.  Is that what they call “executive dysfunction” nowadays?  In my case it might be better called “middle-management dysfunction”, or perhaps even “janitorial dysfunction”…though that latter sounds like it might be a euphemism for incontinence.

I don’t know what to do.  Nothing is really interesting.  Certainly nothing is fun.  Nothing really even gives me any relief from anhedonia; I can only distract myself through autogenous damage, if that’s a term.  Cuts are best, but burns are less obtrusive‒people tend to freak out about blood too much, whereas no one can see burns at the moment they occur.  Burns leave deeper and more damaging scars, also, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

I’m trying to read an old, previously abandoned light novel series that I’d started because I liked the anime.  When I’m done with that‒which will be soon‒I think I’m going to be out of anything I can even force myself to read.

All of this is trivia, of course; it doesn’t matter‒because I don’t matter.  I don’t do any good for anyone, including myself.  I don’t really interact with anyone, except a weekly (ish) phone call with my sister.  I don’t have any friends to talk to or with whom to hang out; everyone I love has at some point decided they no longer want to be around me, so I don’t intend to fall into that trap ever again.  My memory is too damn good for me to forget how much that shit hurts.  It all still hurts.

“Life is pain, Highness,” the Dread Pirate Roberts said.  But it is not mandatory.  One can opt out if one so wishes.

I hope you all have a good day.

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Still here, for the moment. Not happy about it.

I’m not going to write a full blog post this morning; I have too much to do at the office, since it’s payroll day.  I want to try to get as much of that done as early as I possibly can, so I don’t want to spend too much time editing and sharing this.

Anyway, I don’t get the impression that it makes much difference, certainly based on yesterday’s number of readers‒though maybe that number has significantly increased since last I looked.  Nevertheless, I guess I feel that, since I’m still around, I might as well inflict a small sample of my personality onto the world at large*.  It’s not as though I have any reason to be nice to the world.

So, there’s no real topic here, today.  That’s okay.  Everything is moribund, and more so with me than with most people online.  I feel that it won’t be long at all before I post my last blog post, and I’ve probably already shared my last song and maybe I’ve even made my last video.

If, when it comes down to it, I know that it’s my last post that I’m writing (or that it is probably so) I will try to make it clear here, though I might postdate the publication of it so it arrives after the fact, so to speak.  It will probably involve quotes and/or snippets from various songs and possibly poems, and maybe the specific sharing of the last song on the first disk of The Wall.

More on that if it develops.  Otherwise, that’s enough for now.  I hope you all have a good day.

*So that people won’t feel bad when I stop doing it.  ^_^

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No more Shakespeare quotes for now – they’re just pretentious and irritating, anyway

Hello and good morning.  I don’t really know what I’m going to write about today—even more so than usual.  As you may be aware, I don’t tend to begin my blog posts with any clear subject matter in mind; I just start writing.

This is not, by the way, how I write my fiction.  There, I tend to have the basic plot in my head from the start, but I don’t outline or anything along those lines, except in my head.  I just write the story as it comes to me, but it’s clear that it develops below the surface when I do it.

I must say, I’ve become very frustrated recently with the process of trying to share my books and/or music with different people via, for instance, Instagram and Threads, which I mentioned earlier this week (I think).  I briefly even rather liked interacting on Threads, because it seemed like there were a lot of interesting but otherwise “normal” people there—normal to me, anyway.  I left occasional comments here and there that got shared and “liked” and to which people responded more positively than negatively.  I even had one person comment, on something I’d written:  “Nicest.  Reply.  Ever.”  Really.

Well, now I’m blocked (temporarily) from posting and replying or anything on Instagram and Threads, but when I was shown that there was some kind of suspension and I “appealed”, it said something along the lines of “Oh, so sorry, that was a mistake.  You haven’t done anything wrong.”  I don’t know if something had been flagged because I sometimes had the page open on a computer still when I looked at it on my phone or something and commented from more than one machine in quick succession, or what.

Anyway, I’m still blocked from sharing or commenting—supposedly through the 17th, though it’s unclear whether that means the beginning of the 17th or the end thereof.  And it’s kind of taking the wind out of my sails.  I don’t actually think that the universe “sends messages” to people, but nevertheless, it is possible to learn about the nature of things from the consistent pattern of events.  Once bitten, twice shy, they say, and I’ve been bitten too often.

There’s the old saying about the fact that a cat that walks once on a hot stove will never do so again, but will also never walk on a cold stove.  Often this is presented in a derogatory fashion—oh, those poor, simple-minded, overly risk-averse creatures who cannot understand how stoves work!

But cats are no more foolish for avoiding stovetops than a human would be for looking both ways before running into a usually non-busy street.  You might rush into such a road a thousand times without incident, but that doesn’t matter if on the thousand-and-first time you’re killed or maimed for life.

There are some things in the world, of course, that are well worth at least some risk of burning your feet or getting hit by a car, but being able to interact on Instagram and Threads with people who seem interesting or, at least, seem to be members of a species distantly related to mine, is not one of those things.  And it’s certainly not worth it just to try vainly to spread word about my books and music.  The world will little note nor long remember much of anything, and it will certainly not remember anything about me.

So, anyway, it was a stupid idea, but it was briefly slightly exciting, at least on the level that something counts as “exciting” for me—meaning that I’ve had a few quiet chuckles here and there, encountered some people who shared some potentially useful resources (I doubt I’ll be taking advantage of them, given how that inquiry has worked out) and even looked forward to people’s responses on the few occasions they happen.

Most of the people who “liked” my shared songs* and books and whatnot are probably bots, anyway.

Oh, and by the way, to the “brilliant” people who run Brilliant dot org—when a person comes back to your site to study and learn about things, and then is immediately afterward bombarded with emailed warnings and pop-up alerts about “your streak is about to end” in clear attempt to cajole them to come on more frequently, for people like me, it makes me want to avoid the fucking thing, which is what I’ve ended up doing for long stretches several times now.  That’s particularly frustrating, because otherwise I like Brilliant.org a lot, and think it is a good learning venue, at least a supplemental one.

I also just finished the latest volume of a light novel series I’ve been reading that was pretty good, and that’s frustrating, because there’s not even a scheduled release date for the next volume, and I can’t seem to find anything else interesting to read.  So, life continues to be a quiet, subtle, understated Hell, that burns not with open flame but with slow, steady friction as if one were constantly being rubbed by burlap and sandpaper.

Oh, well.

TTFN

*One of which, ironically, was “Like and Share”.

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No (get) alarms (me) and (out) no (of) surprises (here), please.

It’s Tuesday morning, the last day of the second week of the new year (from which you could rightly conclude that it is January 14th).  I’m on my way to the office and I’m writing a pointless blog post.  I really don’t have anything of interest to write, but the Force (of habit) is strong with this one.

I’ve been modestly exploring new (to me) social media platforms, including Instagram, Blue Sky, and Threads.  The only one on which I actually interact much is Threads, but even there, I don’t really do much, and there’s no sense of any actual connection with anyone.  Still, I decided I would do a belated retry of promoting my books and/or music on these apps.  So I shared a copy of a song on Instagram, and then from there on Facebook, Twitter, BS, and Threads.  Then I shared links to my books on those same venues (well, okay, not Instagram…that doesn’t seem well set up for one to share simple links, or if it is, I haven’t yet figured it out).

And that’s about it.  I’ve been reading a reasonably good Japanese light novel series called Chitose Is in the Ramune Bottle, but I’m just about to finish the latest volume and there won’t be another one for a long time.  I have no interest at all in any other fiction or nonfiction.  I don’t even want to read my current books or old favorites or whatever.

I have 5 credits with Audible, which I think is the maximum they let you carry, but I haven’t been able yet to find even one audio book in which I’m interested.

The world is just a projection onto acrid gray fog.

I guess today I’ll share maybe another song, a link to one of my other books, maybe both.  Maybe I’ll also share a “video” of me reading one of my short stories.  Maybe I’ll even put one or two down here to let WordPress join the party.

And that’s just about all I have to say about that.

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There is no title–just a lease. Ha ha.

Well, it’s Saturday, and I’m on my way into the office again, since we are open today.  And therefore, as I warned you, I am writing a blog post.

I have no idea what I’m hoping to gain by doing this.  I have no clear notion even of what in principle could be gained from this.  However, I am a creature of habit, as well as of compulsion and desperation, so, well, I’m doing this.  I also try very hard to be a man of my word, though I probably fail as much as anyone does at that.

I don’t really have much news to discuss.  There’s little percentage in discussing the actual news, i.e., events from around the globe, since in the modern world saying something online that someone disagrees with is tantamount to being a revolutionary religious heretic in their eyes, endangering not only the world but the souls of the unborn.

Of course, one of the expressions that most irks me in this vein is when people say that someone is “destroying their existence” or something along those lines, by what they’ve said.  This is obviously nonsense.  I try very hard not to say unkind or hurtful things to people‒courtesy is the lubricant of civilization, after all‒but mate, if I wanted to destroy your existence (and acted on that want) you would not be complaining about it; you would not exist.

This is part of the stupid conflation of words with violence, an idea that can only really be held by those who have little experience with real violence*.   I’m sure I’ve discussed that here before, and it doesn’t really bear repeating.

Yesterday morning, I had a little bump up in my mood and energy level, which I didn’t understand, but I also didn’t really question at the time.  Maybe it was because the holidays are over or something, I don’t know.  Maybe it was because a reply I made on threads got hundreds of likes‒which surprised me‒or because a deliberately stupid joke I made in response to another thread got a decent number of likes and no fewer than two people posting gifs of famous scenes of people saying “Boo”.  That made me chuckle, because it was more or less exactly the response for which I was hoping.

I don’t like to think I’m that shallow, for such things to significantly give me a boost, but who knows?  This stupid human body and limbic system with which they saddled me has all sorts of bugs and hacks and workarounds that just piss me off.

Anyway, such online responses are very temporary and shallow for me, enjoyment wise.  And yet, alternatively, when other people actually contact me directly via social media, in most cases, my immediate response is stress, tension, hyperalertness, anxiety, etc.  And in me, any form of fear quickly sublimates into hostility and battle-readiness, usually in a very literal sense.

I often have to take hours and hours before I can reply to a simple greeting through one of the various messengers (even ones that aren’t obviously bots trying to sell something or other, which I ignore) and sometimes it takes me days.  Even ordinary SMS messages can be stressful.  When I hear the text alert on my phone, my usual reaction is either “What do you want!?” or “Oh, shut up, will you?” before I even know who sent the text.

Even positive texts from friends and family, perhaps in response to my own holiday greeting texts sent to them, cause tension, even though I’m glad to receive them.

I suppose one could call it anxiety, but that’s not exactly the way it feels‒though maybe I’m splitting hairs.  Anyway, I just feel at a loss whenever anyone tries to communicate with me, especially if I’m mentally engaged in something else.  I feel as though I’ve forgotten entirely what one is supposed to do in such situations, but I know that I’m inclined to say or do stupid things.

So, I have to pause and think and give my brain time to digest the fact that someone has messaged me.  Somehow, it always feels as though it is a threat‒ironically, it can be more threatening to receive messages from someone I like than from someone I don’t, because those are people whose opinions about me matter to me, at least in principle.  And I know I always screw up relationships with people who matter to me.

It’s even stressful to see when I have comments here‒but please don’t let that dissuade you!  I want comments, I appreciate them, just don’t take it personally if I take a long time before responding to them.  I won’t say preparing to respond is as bad as trying to work up one’s nerve to walk across hot coals, but maybe it’s analogous to preparing to jump into a very cold lake.  Even if you know that, once you get used to it, you’re probably going to enjoy it, every time there is a kind of “stage fright”.

It’s analogous with physical contact for me.  I have no skill with how and when to initiate physical contact with someone, whether comradely or romantic or whatever.  This skill I have never been able even to begin to acquire, let alone to master, though back in the day I got pretty good at faking my way through seeming to feel natural with verbal interactions at least.

This probably has been a large contributing factor in my dolorous and limited romantic history.  Even when with someone with whom I wanted to be intimate, and who I knew wanted to be intimate with me, I have near-paralytic difficulty starting anything, even something minor like a touch on a shoulder.

Part of that is an automatic warning in my head that says, “Danger, danger, you are making a mistake.  There is no way that anyone, least of all this very special person, could want you to touch them in any way, let alone to do anything further.  You are disgusting!  Don’t inflict your slimy touch on someone else, especially not someone about whom you really care.”  Well, it’s words to that effect‒it’s rarely thought out explicitly, it’s just the uncrystallized, supersaturated feeling those words convey that tends to get in my way.

Oh, and I also tend to get pretty tense when someone touches me‒even if it’s a significant other, sometimes, and even though, in the right situation, even a minor touch can be soothing‒because I feel like I don’t know how to react and I’m sure I’ll screw it up, and anyway, they’ll be in danger of catching cooties** if they touch me.  And, of course, a lot of the time I don’t really want to be touched.

I don’t know how I got onto this topic, but anyway, my temporary boost yesterday lasted only a few hours.  I didn’t sink to as low as I had been on Thursday, but after all, if you’re treading water, it may seem for a moment, due to the chaotic action of the waves and maybe a random burst of extreme effort from you, that you have risen higher above the surface of the sea…but you will not stay elevated.  You will sink back down to the level of whatever passes for neutral buoyancy, after briefly dipping lower.  And, of course, unless you reach shore or a passing boat finds you, sooner or later, you will drown.

That is, unless you’re lucky enough to be eaten by sharks.

*Or perhaps those who have suffered brain damage due to real violence, but those people can be cut a lot of slack.

**Figuratively speaking.  I don’t have lice (which is what I am led to understand the term “cooties” originally meant) nor any other literal contagious infestation or infection.

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And thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale blog of thought

Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday again—the first Thursday of the new year, the first Thursday of the month, and the second day of 2025 (AD or CE depending upon your preference).

I’m heading in to the office already this morning.  It’s not the first day back to work in the new year, though; we worked yesterday, as well, and it was quite a longish day.  We also worked on New Year’s Eve, though we got out an hour earlier than we would have because I shook my head and expressed some outrage (I was in an even more foul mood than usual) that we were not getting off early.  I didn’t have any celebration to attend nor anyone waiting for me, but I thought others might want to get to something of the sort, and anyway, I just really wanted to escape the noise.

It was ridiculous that we worked yesterday (though unfortunately it turned out to be a successful business day).  In the plaza in which our office sits, we were the only business open, and this is a full-scale strip mall with dozens of shops and restaurants and offices.  The people at work who wanted vapes or to get something from the bakery or from the nearby restaurant were all out of luck.  The only places open were gas stations and our office.

Oh, and also my coworker, the one with whom I share various duties, was out sick Tuesday and left early yesterday.  This is not his fault, obviously, unless you mean it’s a design fault, but that fault is true of everyone, and my coworker certainly didn’t design himself.  But it meant that, especially on Tuesday, when I had to do payroll in addition to the other stuff, I was particularly frazzled.

It didn’t help that I knew, quite painfully, that I was not going to be “celebrating” the new year.  Why would I celebrate it when I had wished or yearned throughout the year for 2024 to be my last year?

In fact, on Tuesday—that was New Year’s Eve, in case you didn’t put that together and/or you’re reading this well after it was written—when I was feeling more horrible and stressed out and angry and sad than even I have felt in a long time, I developed a plan, if it merits that term.  I was not hungry during the day, and so I did not eat anything at all.  It occurred to me that I had a half a bottle of Jack Daniels at the house and about half a bottle of vodka as well.  They have both been there for quite some time, since I rarely drink.

My thought was this:  I’ve been on a relatively low carb diet for a few weeks, so I have relatively little stored glycogen relative to the usual amount; what glucose was in my system was probably largely the product of gluconeogenesis, which is the creation of sugar from various amino acids, mainly by the liver.  I figured on stopping at a gas station near the train station when I was heading back to the house and picking up some bottles of Diet Coke (which also has no sugar, of course) and then that evening drinking vodka and Diet Coke and Jack and Diet Coke, all on an empty stomach.  This would have not only the obvious effects of alcohol in disinhibiting behavior, but ethanol also suppresses gluconeogenesis—this fact is responsible for at least some of the typical effects of a hangover.

My thought process, if it merits those words, was basically to hope to get drunk enough and hypoglycemic enough either maybe to have a seizure (unlikely) or just to loosen my inhibitions enough that I would have the courage to use one of the means of suicide that I keep always nearby nowadays*.

When I thought about my plan, though, as the day went on and I finally headed back to the house, it seemed like a pain to stop in the gas station.  I was already exhausted.  I figured, okay, well, I can just drink liquor straight.  Once you get started, once the alcohol begins to take effect, drinking it becomes easier.  However, the thought of being drunk felt very unpleasant, and more importantly, I knew that if I did not work up the strength to go through with my “plan”, drinking the alcohol, especially with no food, would probably lead to a severe exacerbation of my chronic pain.

So, instead, I watched some stupid videos, feeling regretful but not willing to risk worse pain in an attempt to do an end run around the bastard urge for self-preservation and escape my constant physical and psychical pain.  I took something to help me go to sleep (which I don’t usually do on work nights), and I puttered around listening to the sound of all the amateur fireworks going off, feeling annoyed by them, for several hours, and I did not die—not even of natural causes.  And despite my attempts, I slept less than usual, largely because of the noise, but also partly due to my (very inner and apparently unrecognizable to others) turmoil.

And here I am, writing the first blog post of the new year.  I’m alive, and I’m not happy.  I have no friends, my family is far away, and I certainly have no capacity to try to upend and alter where I am, anyway, not on my own—the very prospect of trying to change my life, to move, to go somewhere else, these things are horribly stressful inherently, and I have no strong reason to think any of them would make any difference for me.  I am fundamentally alone, and I probably have always been so, despite past temporary delusions to the contrary.

Of course, so is everyone else, I guess, depending on how you mean it.

Anyway, here we are.  I’m working this Saturday, so I guess I’ll probably write a post then, too.  How lucky for you and for me, right?

yippee.

Well, my train’s about to arrive.  I hope you enjoyed this little, shitty blog post, and that you’re having just a wonderful new year already.  Yeah, right.

TTFN

*I have no fewer than two good lengths of rope, both tied into quite good nooses; a goodly supply of flammable liquids (more than three gallons) with which I could self-immolate; of course I have numerous blades, including very sharp razors and scalpels and box cutters and the like, with which I could open up some arteries; and I have various OTC medications that, especially in combination, could be toxic enough to be lethal.  Also, I’ve been scouting the area for easily accessible high places without closed-in roofs (mainly parking structures) which are high enough that, if I jumped, it would probably be fatal.  I have no guns anymore, alas, but there’s always the nearby Atlantic Ocean, always within sensible walking distance, and then again, there’s always just the long, open road.

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But though my blogs be mean, take them in good part.

Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday again, so I’m writing another edition of my blog post.  It’s not the first nor the second post I’ve done this week, so calling it my “weekly” blog post would seem somewhat inaccurate.

It’s now only two weeks until Boxing Day, so you should get out your gloves and your speed rope and your heavy bag and get yourself back in shape for the ring!

I really didn’t want to go to the office today.  If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have written a post, except perhaps a single line such as “No blog post today”.  That would be borderline self-contradictory, but since my thoughts and words have been dealing with depression and suicidality lately, I thought if I just wrote nothing people might become concerned.

I’m probably being egotistical even to imagine such a thing.

The reason I didn’t want to go to work was because the office holiday dinner takes place tonight, and I really feel tense about it.  We’ll be going to the same restaurant we used last year, and it was overcrowded and had too much sensory overload even back then, such that I had to start drinking (alcohol) as soon as possible to keep from scratching my own skin off.

It would have been one thing if everyone there had been people with whom I felt comfortable.  There are three or so people at the office with whom I get along well enough that, if just that group and I were going somewhere, it would have been okay.  Certainly there have been many times in my life when I’ve gone out to eat (and similar) with family and/or close friends, and I enjoyed myself.  But I was younger then*, and I had more energy for acting normal, and the people who knew me well were nonjudgmental about my weirdnesses, anyway.

Most of the people at the office, though, are people with whom I wouldn’t normally hang out at any stage in my life‒no insult to them intended, there’s just no common framework.  And the two or three people with whom I think I would most have enjoyed spending time seem to have become more distant recently.  Perhaps that’s all my doing; it almost certainly is my fault.  I know I’m becoming ever less fun to be around.  So I don’t really have anyone with whom I feel I could hang out comfortably‒not in the office, probably not in the world.

It’s not that there’s no one out there who might be willing.  There are many kind people about, though sometimes that can be hard to believe.  But I am not good company‒not for anyone, probably not ever again‒and I certainly don’t deserve any kindness.  I am too weird now, and my life is a mutated, Lovecraftian monstrosity compared to what it once was.

Let’s face it, I was always just a weirdo, anyway; I was just better at pretending to be human in the past‒or if not better, I at least had more energy for it.

Now, I barely have the will to get up and get going in the morning**.  Almost everything I do is just to distract myself, to divert my attention from being aware of my own pathetic and worthless existence.  It makes me wish I had a serious drug or alcohol problem.  Then I could both have a powerful distraction and something that would potentially lead to my death in short order.  Instead, I’ve wasted years trudging through my nosferatu pseudo-life.  My books and blog posts notwithstanding, it really would have made more sense if I had died some time in 2013.  Nothing since then has been of any real use, not to anyone else, and not to me.

I’ll try to work up something remotely akin to enthusiasm for the holiday dinner tonight.  But, if I’m too stressed, I just won’t go.  I know the food will be good, though.  I’m trying to watch what I eat, but everything and everyone around me tends to want to sabotage that intention (including me) especially at this time of the year.

Maybe I should just eat and drink until I make myself really sick, and then I won’t want to do it anymore.  It would be quite nice not to be a person who eats as an escape, as his only reliable source of distraction.  I feel much more clear-headed when I don’t eat, and I know I am much sharper.

How nice it would be not to be such a pathetic glutton.  But I do miss my sister’s holiday cookies.  And I mean to eat whatever I feel like eating this evening‒whether I go to the office dinner or not.

Maybe I’ll get botulism, or a bad case of Hepatitis A that turns fulminant or something.  Keep your fingers crossed!

TTFN

*Such is the nature of the past.

**Though I still cannot sleep even close to as much as I would need to be healthy.

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No one is to blame

Well, as often happens on the day immediately following a Monday, it is now Tuesday.  Congratulations.

I don’t know why I wrote “congratulations” there.  I felt as if I were saying that the fact that Tuesday has arrived was some manner of accomplishment and not merely the universe continuing to do what it does and work through its laws as always.

Maybe the thought was to congratulate those of you who consider it a positive thing to live another day for succeeding at doing so.  Maybe it’s a supportive statement to those who really don’t want to go on, but who continue to endure because they don’t want to bring pain to their loved ones.  Making it through another day for a person in that situation is no joke, and those people should be recognized.

It would be nice if they could be recognized in a non-judgmental way by those loved ones for whom the people in question endure.  Not that I expect that the loved ones of the suffering have any better calibration than the people who love them.  Nothing finite is without imperfections (and I’m agnostic about the situation with infinite things, but I have my doubts).

So, it is hard for a person with depression to endure, even when they’re doing it for their family and friends and are suffering because of it, and those depressed people are worthy of sympathy and non-judgmental support from their loved ones and the world in general.  But the people around them are worthy of sympathy, too, and should not be regarded judgmentally for not being able to recognize or even help their loved ones’ suffering.

Here’s where we come to the concept of blame, and how utterly unjustified it is, in every single case.  And to be clear, I don’t mean to say we shouldn’t hold people responsible for their actions in the sense that they are the proximate causes of those actions, and their behavior can be adjusted and improved.  But they are not the ultimate cause‒not of what they are, not of their strengths and weaknesses, not of their limits and their experiences and their sensory acuities and their social skills 

If you have car trouble and your cousin, with whom you are hanging out, doesn’t know the first thing about cars‒doesn’t own one, doesn’t drive, never has‒you may well be disappointed that this cousin can’t help you and doesn’t even recognize that there is a problem until and unless your car completely breaks down.  But you don’t get self-righteously angry at your cousin for that lack of knowledge and skill‒not if you’re even remotely reasonable.  You don’t fully understand what’s wrong with your car, yourself, and you certainly don’t know how to fix it.  And it’s your car.  How can you expect others to be both able and willing to fix your car for you?  They have their own vehicular maintenance issues.

I’m pushing the metaphor, I know.  But I think it’s a good one.  We can all, of course, try to be there for those we love, and to be worthy of having others be there for us, and sometimes that’ll work out and sometimes it won’t.  It can be quite natural to feel resentful and wounded by the people who fail to see your suffering, even though they care about you and are important to you.  But, as Radiohead sang, “Just ‘cause you feel it doesn’t mean it’s there.”  So cut other people slack; and cut yourself some if you can, too.

You didn’t build the universe, or the world, or your nation, or your community.  Neither did anyone else, living or dead.  These things just happened, rarely with any kind of coherent, before-the-fact plan of any kind.  And on the rare occasion when people did try to plan things, those plans essentially always went aglee‒the stricter and more regimented and more dogmatic the plan, the greater the apparent tendency to veer wildly astray, as though there were some manner of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle that applies at the scale of societies.

Civilization is a spontaneously self-assembled and self-assembling system, and like frost on a window, different parts of it carry different orientations and patterns that are not the product of any of the individual constituent water molecules.  The molecules can only line up in the crystal where there is a spot and only in particular orientations, based entirely upon where it is in the system and what the surrounding dynamics are‒and what came before.

This may be the case for the entire universe, as well.  The underlying quantum fields may just all “crystallize” out in particular ways that are highly stochastic and ultimately local, with different kinds of complexity in different places.

Anyway, I’m veering off topic.  The point is, there’s no call for and no use in blaming people for not knowing about your suffering and how they might have done differently and it might have helped you.  And don’t blame yourself, either‒unless you invented the universe.  If you did, well, you’ got some ‘splaining to do.

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The second of the “10th” that is the twelfth

It’s the first Monday of December in 2024‒December 2nd, specifically, meaning that the 1st fell on a Sunday, which means that there will be a Friday the 13th in this month*‒and I thought I would write a brief blog post for the day.  I don’t know if anyone was hoping for that, but it’s happening.

It’s relatively cool down here for south Florida; it was 55 degrees Fahrenheit when I left the house, which is, let’s see…(55-32) * 5/9, so 23 * 5/9, so 115/9, so just under 13 degrees Centigrade/Celsius.  That’s also about 286 Kelvin, but the Kelvin scale is a bit inconvenient for most day-to-day temperature readings.

I could’ve just looked all that up online, but I think it’s good for the mind, and for people in general, to know and remember (and apply) the conversion between Celsius and Fahrenheit, even if only for the mental exercise.  If we turn everything over to apps and computers, then eventually no one (or at least very few people) will even remember what such things mean or where they come from, or why.

Anyway, it’s something with which to keep one’s mind occupied.

There’s not much for me to do or to say, anymore.  I’m just killing time while waiting for time to kill me, so to speak.  That’s all I see myself doing from now on.  I have no goals or hopes or dreams or anything.  I don’t expect that I’ll ever see my kids again, or that I’ll ever see any of my other family and/or friends, or that I’ll make any new friends, let alone any kind of “new family”.

I’m not cut out for meeting new people or making new friends on my own.  I never have been.  All my old friends were people I knew from school‒junior high, high school, university, medical school, residency, all that.  I’m basically alone, and I think I will be for the rest of my life‒which hopefully won’t be very long, because it’s really quite pointless and stupid, and I’m pointless and stupid, and so is the world as a whole.

Hopefully, some day soon I’ll be able to say to you all, “this is my last ever blog post”, because it will be one of my last ever anything.  I’m so tired, and I’m stressed, and I’m in pain, and I’m depressed, and I can’t sleep for shit, and above all, I’m alone.  I’m sick of just about everything that I do, and I’m very much sick of myself.

And, frankly, the world as a whole, the universe as a whole, is just irritating and stupid and such a waste of potential.  There’s no point to any of it, and it’s not even headed in any kind of positive direction.

As Yeats wrote, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / are full of passionate intensity”.  I suspect that’s just the nature of things, since passionate intensity tends to be the habit of those with a dogmatic turn of mind, and those tend to be the people who do the most damage, who commit the most destruction:  precisely the people who believe that they are right, that they know what’s morally right, and that belief gives them carte blanche to do what they claim to think is right and fumigates all their deeds from any possibility of wrongdoing (in their own heads, at least).

Dogmatic thinking tends to be profoundly dangerous and destructive.  “Certainty” kills.  That’s why I say, “Spay and neuter your dogmas.”  We don’t need or want them to spread and reproduce.

Anyway, that’s enough for today, enough for a lifetime, enough for eternity, whatever.  I hope you all have a pretty good week and month and so on, or even better than pretty good, if possible.

*If you stop and think about it, this will almost certainly be obvious, since the 2nd week of such a month will run, Sunday through Saturday on the 8th through the 14th, which means the 13th is a Friday.