dysthymia

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I had a headline in mind, but it would have been gross

Well, today I am writing on my smartphone because I simply, and stupidly, forgot to bring my lapcom yesterday.  I don’t always know where my mind is, to tip a hat to the Pixies, but it often seems not to be with me.

Of course, that’s a figure of speech.  I know that my mind is me, whatever that ultimately means, so I am never anywhere without my mind, anymore than a square can be said to exist even if all its sides are removed‒really, even if one side is removed (though in that case, it can be implied, somewhat like the famous square illusion made of four incomplete circles).

Anyway, I’m going to keep it short today, partly because I’m feeling somewhat queasy, and that takes away a lot of one’s energy‒at least, it takes away a lot of this one’s energy.  I don’t feel like I’m going to throw up or anything; it’s not that bad currently.  I just feel a little like my upper GI tract is not happy with me.  Perhaps it’s a bit like a frowning parent:  not angry, just disappointed.

It’s not a great way to start a day, but there are many worse ones, so I suppose I shouldn’t complain.  I will complain‒I am complaining‒but I shouldn’t.

Here’s a peculiar question that occurred to me after writing that last sentence:  are there cases where one shouldn’t do something, but one ought to do it (or vice versa)?  Or are those two words such nearly complete synonyms that such a thing would be contradictory?  One can speak a contradiction, or write it, etc., but one cannot actually bring one into being.  “Talk is cheap, mother fucker,” DMX said.  Reality, on the other hand, has a huge cover charge at the door and you have to pay à la carte for what you get.

This reminds me (I’m not sure why) of a brief, mainly inconsequential writing error I found yesterday in an article related to the new Spider-Man movie.  They used “i.e.” when they were providing an example and should have used “e.g.”.  I know it’s a minor error, but come on, they went through this difference in Get Shorty, for crying out loud (the movie, at least; I don’t remember if it was in the book).

Anyway, it’s not a very auspicious day, for me or for the world, so I’m going to try not to drag this on.  I don’t feel very well, physically or mentally, and what’s more, I don’t expect to feel well, physically or mentally, in the future.

That doesn’t quite reach the level at which I expect not to feel well, physically or mentally.  It’s a subtle difference in wording, but conceptually the states are quite distinct.  One can vaguely not expect that things will necessarily be good, perhaps based on past experience, but not really be inclined one way or the other, or one can frankly expect that things will be bad.

Of course, in the end, no one here gets out alive, but even that isn’t necessarily a bad thing (nor is it necessarily a good thing).  It’s just the way reality appears to be, as best we can tell right now, no matter what anyone claims based on “belief” and “faith” and centuries old to millennia old hearsay (also known as religious writings).

A delusion embraced by millions or billions or even quadrillions of people is still a delusion.  You don’t make dog shit into fillet mignon just by telling yourself and others repeatedly that it is, and if you eat it, that’s on you.  Don’t try to feed it to me, especially not by force.

Of course, you can sort of turn excrement into steak, such as by using it to fertilize grassland on which cattle will graze before eventually being eaten.  But the fact that nature allows this particular remarkable transformation does not mean (for example) that a cracker becomes the body of an ancient rabbi, or that some wine becomes his blood, just because someone said something in Latin near it.

All the pseudo magical crap distracts from the actual good messages that can be found (occasionally, here and there) in religions and ideologies.  People don’t want to have to do the work of really turning crap into burgers, though, because that involves actual farming, which is hard and the results are not guaranteed.

Of course, one can consider or imagine oneself more or less guaranteed to get certain outcomes from religious practices, but the actual outcomes are almost certainly going to be largely the opposite of what people want and tell themselves they will get.

Humans can be very stupid a lot of the time.  But they can also be brilliant, even the most unassuming and humble of them.  Like Ultron said, they’re grotesque and yet lovely.  Like him, I’m often torn between reveling in the human works of art and science and engineering and exploration and so on, and doing my best to wipe every last one of them from the face of the universe.

Unfortunately, right now my tummy is too icky for me to put much energy into either one.

I hope you have a good day.

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“…would you like to see me try?”

Here we go again.  It’s the start of another “work week”, and unfortunately, I am writing this on my smartphone.  I just didn’t feel like bringing the lapcom back with me on Friday, because I had some other items in my backpack that already made it a bit heavy.  It shouldn’t have daunted me‒it wasn’t really very heavy‒but it did.

Anyway, I’m hoping to keep this post brief, since there’s really not much to say and not much going on and my thumb bases have by no means recovered to a normal baseline.  I am also sweating a strangely large amount this morning considering that I am currently sitting still.  It’s not even really that hot in here.

It’s too much to hope, probably, that this sweatiness presages some acute, life-ending illness, but I guess some day that will happen.  When it does, I’ll likely end up as one of those dead bodies that’s only found because of the smell of rot that develops.  It’s not as though anyone would be seriously affected if I just stopped being around, so no one would miss me very quickly.

I mean, okay, the people at the office would probably wonder, because it’s not like me even to be late (at all) to work, let alone not to show up without some kind of notice.  In addition, my absence would make things at least temporarily inconvenient.

Mind you, I live in a house that has another family living in the other section, and they would probably notice pretty quickly if I died.  Their dogs would, anyway, though I don’t know if they would “say” anything about it.

I’d rather die out on the road, walking as if I were intending to reach some destination.  But we only get limited input into how we end up dying.  Even if you take the matter fully into your own hands, you’re not guaranteed that it will work out the way you’d prefer‒this fact has stayed my own hand on more than one occasion.  Life is complicated, and even the process of leaving it can be hard to predict.

Speaking of walking, I did a decent amount of it this weekend.  On Saturday, I walked just shy of eight miles, and yesterday I walked about five miles.  That’s not too bad.  And thanks to some precautions I took, it hasn’t so far led to any serious pain exacerbations, nor to any knee or ankle issues (of significance).  That’s something, at least.

I did not get anything else significant done this weekend, of course.  I did not write any fiction, and I did not play any music or do any singing, nor did I draw or paint or study physics or mathematics or any other science.  I basically just vegged out.  Probably that was part of what allowed me to have the energy to do my walking, but it is a bit disappointing to me, though probably not to anyone else.

I’m rereading Stephen King’s book On Writing, hoping that maybe I’ll get some inspiration to write some more fiction, because it has worked to help my enthusiasm for writing in the past.  And, admittedly, it does make me feel a little wistful dreaminess about, say, Outlaw’s Mind, or my planned Changeling in a Shadow World, or even HELIOS.  But it’s not enough to get me to work on any of them.  More’s the pity.

I think I might take a break from reading soon, too.  Every time I finish one book, I have a terrible time mustering interest in another one.  I can read even without such interest, of course‒it’s a powerfully ingrained habit that I have had effectively all my life‒but it feels very dreary to have to force myself to read, and to go through Amazon trying to find books that grab my interest, only to find that they all seem dreadfully boring.

Remind you of anything?  Maybe the blog you’re reading now?  It’s hard for me to avoid dreariness here.  To paraphrase The Wall, disc 1, side B, 4th song from the end:  Day after day, life turns grey, like the skin of a dying man.

I’m really tired, and it’s only just now the very beginning of the week.  Maybe by tomorrow I’ll feel better.  I doubt it.  There’s no good reason to suspect or expect that I will, other than perhaps the natural cyclicity of things.  Thank goodness for the complex numbers, which make dealing rigorously with rotations and cycles much easier than they would be otherwise, and in which to multiply by i is to apply a rotation of 90 degrees (or pi over 2 radians) counterclockwise.

On that circular note (ha ha) I will draw today’s post to a close.  I hope you all have a good day, and hopefully a good week, even if I do succumb to something and am never heard from again.  No sane person would make their happiness dependent upon, or even merely linked to, me or my happiness, as experience has demonstrated.

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Reflecting on indirect, unconscious drawbacks and their impacts, and other weird thoughts

Well, there’s no lapcom here today, alas.  I just didn’t feel enough drive or urge or energy‒or perhaps impetus‒to bring it with me when I left the office.  Maybe I should say that the magnitude of the vector for taking the lapcom with me was overbalanced by the net vectors that summed up to pushing in the other direction in this (very) high dimensional phase space that is the description of the state of my nervous system and its effects on my activity.

You’ve heard of Hilbert Space*?  Well, you can call this “Robert Space” if you wish.

Anyway, so, yeah, I’m writing this on my smartphone today, and I’m already regretting it a bit.  The arthropathy in my thumbs is complaining rather vociferously (and quite metaphorically) just from the little writing I have so far undertaken.  So, hopefully, I will be able to keep this relatively short today.

That doesn’t always happen.  Like a lot of people, I suspect, sometimes when I get rolling in habitual behavior, I keep barreling through even when I can feel the negative effects already as I do it.

Conversely (or whatever the proper term is), it has occurred to me just in the last day or so**, that my thumb pain may be part of why I haven’t been playing guitar.  It’s not that, when I think of playing it, it occurs to me that my thumbs hurt and so I consciously choose not to do it after weighing the fun versus the pain.  If it were that conscious, I would (clearly) know it already.

But the thumb pain can make the process of playing less pleasant, and that can decrease the emotional reward and reinforcement I get from doing it, and so, in the fullness of time, make me less likely to do it in the future.  It’s sort of a very low-level application of the aversion training from A Clockwork Orange.

If so‒it’s strongly possible, but I cannot swear that it’s really, definitely the case‒that may mean that what I really ought to do to increase my playing is to try to increase the magnitude of that “take the lapcom home” vector.

But, of course, it’s not some axial vector, aligned along only one unit vector, with a cross-product (or outer product, I think, if memory serves) of zero.  And it’s not a fundamental vector, with only itself as its input, either.  It’s a vector that is, itself, the sum of many vector inputs (and heck, maybe some scalars, I don’t know, but I don’t think tensors would apply to this situation), some of which would probably surprise me.

Still, it might be worth a try.  It’s not as though the thumb arthropathy is something I like and want to keep.  So, if I can find ways to counter it, maybe I can see what effect that has on my tendency to play guitar, and thus, finally, on my tendency to sing.

I used to sing a lot, especially when I commuted by car and could play various CDs (but not treasury bonds, ba-dump-bump) and sing along but no one could hear me.

Even when driving my scooter*** to and from work, I had a Bluetooth enabled helmet, linked to my playlist on my phone.  When you sing inside a motorcycle helmet, in traffic, you don’t need to worry about being overheard.

Now I don’t commute that way, and since I have housemates, I don’t often feel comfortable just singing when I’m in my room.  But early morning in the office, when playing guitar, it can be good.  That is, as long as playing guitar is good, which is apparently not the case for now.

Oh, well, I guess I shouldn’t dwell on it.  Everything is futile, everything is imperfect, everything is chaotic, everything is entropic.  And to paraphrase the Stones, I’m neither waiting on a lady nor am I waiting on a friend.  I’m just waiting on the end.

Speaking of the end…

*Maybe you haven’t.  Let me know.

**You wouldn’t think it would take so long for this possibility to occur to me.  I mean, I’m reasonably bright, and the connection is not a distant or particularly occult one.  Unfortunately, you cannot choose to think of something before you have thought of it.  Likewise, you cannot choose not to think of something once you’re thinking it, but you can let such thoughts go and do your best not to identify with them.  Oh, and also, by the way, no one has ever been able to “unsee” anything, ever.  The expression is idiotic.  Also, there’s no hour (or other period of time) in your life that you’re going to get back.  Noting that fact about some specific, unpleasant hour just makes you sound semimoronic.

***I say “scooter” because I guess that’s the official term, but it was a 650 cc Honda Silverwing, so really it was a full-on motorcycle that just had continuously variable transmission.  I’ve always been clumsy with manual transmission vehicles.

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A belated first post of the work week

I hope nobody was worried about me yesterday when I didn’t write a post.  I was out sick.  I had some kind of gastrointestinal bug, or perhaps some type of bad reaction to something I ate.  I’m not sure.  Anyway, it was unpleasant, as such things tend to be.

I often find myself wishing, in such situations and even less severe ones, that I didn’t ever have to eat at all.  Of course, if you see me, you’d know that I’ve tended to err in the other direction, but I would very much like to lose my sense of hunger, or perhaps more my sense of pleasure in food.  My current life is almost completely devoid of any real, reliable joy of any kind, and I am chronically depressed, so I unfortunately tend to go for biologically reliable sources of “feeling good”, however minor and evanescent, such as eating.

I suppose it’s a good thing that I don’t have any kind of drug problem, since I’d probably be stuck going to that for my diminishing returns of transient joy.  I suspect many people with drug problems do just that.  Actually, I often kind of wish that I did have a drug problem, because then I would be (a) more likely to be thinner than I am, and (b) might die of a drug overdose, which is comparatively faster and less painful than dying of a food “overdose” over time.  It’s a moot point, though.  I’m not the sort of person who could really manage an illicit drug habit; I would find the whole process stressful and irritating.  I didn’t even like taking opioids legally when I was given them for my chronic pain.

Alcohol, which is legal, has many drawbacks, not the least being that beyond a certain point, it doesn’t really do anything for me and exacerbates my chronic pain.  It can be useful as a social lubricant, and in that it can be very useful, considering how socially awkward I am.

But alcohol doesn’t make me feel much euphoria past the initial relaxation stage, which is definitely pretty good for short times.  However, one trouble with alcohol is that it impairs one’s judgement—it certainly impairs mine—and so when one feels a little relief from anxiety and a consequent bit of euphoria because of it, one falls into the cliché, “if some is good, more must be better, and a lot more must be great”.  Most of you probably have direct or indirect experience with how that line of “thinking” turns out.

Now, I will say that I took one medication a few times, in medical circumstances, that could probably become a problem for me, and that was diazepam (brand name Valium®).  I’ve written before about how, when I was given diazepam, even though the circumstances were far from pleasant ones—wisdom teeth extraction in one case, and a heart catheterization in the other—I felt tremendous.  I felt normal, if you understand the sense of what I mean by that—and even if you don’t.

Anyway, that’s a prescription med, and I’m not really interested in taking it.  I know too much about how rapidly diminishing are its returns, and about its long-term effects on cognition, and worst, about how tolerance to it tends to lead to increased anxiety between doses, so it pretty quickly becomes counter-productive.

This leads me to wonder if it might be somewhat useful to people with chronic anxiety to take medications or similar that increase their anxiety, and to stay on them for a while, then to stop.  It wouldn’t address any underlying issues, of course, but not all such chronic states are due to Freudian-ish causes in experience and upbringing.  Some of them are genetic or at least congenital.  Sometimes, a person’s biology can just give them an anxiety set-point that is significantly higher than average.  Some other people, of course, will have the opposite.  And most people will be somewhere in between.

This is the nature of traits in populations of sexually reproducing species (e.g., humans):  there is variability in nearly every attribute, as genes get shuffled and reshuffled, paired up with different alleles and other genes in the genome, reacting in highly complex ways, and providing the broad variation on which natural selection does its ruthless work.

This is what is largely behind the famous phenomenon of the moths that changed coloration in industrial age England compared to their pre-industrial age colors, matching the new soot-encrusted bark of trees.  They did not develop the trait or attribute de novo; there was always a variability in that physical aspect (color).  But in different circumstances, different colors were more likely to survive to reproductive age, and so they began to predominate when a persistent change in circumstances happened.

The same sort of thing surely has happened with humans many times, over and over, as civilization changes, and our own effects feed back on our natures and alter their own causes.  If people could step out of their little, provincial world-views, this would likely be obvious to all but the most benighted of souls.

How did I get to this subject/topic*?  I don’t know, though maybe it will become obvious while I’m editing.  Anyway, I’m going to draw this to a close just with the revelation that I’m writing this post on the lapcom.  Was there any difference between its style and that of one written on the smartphone, now that I reveal the fact to you only at the end?  Inquiring minds want to know.

I truly hope you have a good day.  And I really wish I could actually hang out with some of you or with someone today with whom I could have a comfortable interaction.  But I am not good company anymore, if I ever was.  So I will probably, and appropriately, continue to be alone, and will die alone, and hopefully fairly soon.

*I never really have been able to discern a consistent and sensible difference between these two terms, but people often use them as if they are two different things, rather than simply synonyms.  Possibly that’s just a function of pretentiousness.  But maybe I’m just ignorant.

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Monday morning meandering moaning

Well, it’s the start of a new work week, which means it’s the end of a weekend off, at least for me.  I’m sure many people are on various different schedules, but this one (Monday through Friday working and Saturday and Sunday off) is still probably the modal one, if I had to guess.  Though, I wouldn’t be surprised if the situation has more than one mode, or perhaps one mode but a very broadly tapering and irregular slope for the rest of the schedules.

Anyway, it was just now the weekend, and I did not work during that time‒not in the sense of “employment for compensation”, anyway.  I did do some walking, though.  On Saturday, when it was overcast (and looked like it was going to rain, but never did), I walked a bit over 6 miles, umbrella in hand but forlornly unused the whole time.  On Sunday, when it was appropriately (not ironically) sunny, I walked just about 4 miles.  That’s still not too bad, but it was a bit more unpleasant because of the heat.

I guess I like walking in cloudy, gloomy weather (and at night) more than when it’s bright and sunny.  Of course, bright and sunny days in autumn‒real autumn, not this Florida bullshit‒can be delightful things in which to walk around, when the sky looks like a giant, freshly and expertly painted watercolor.  Even bright winter days (again, do not count south Florida, there is no winter here) can be truly uplifting and enjoyable.  At least, they are if you’re wrapped up warm.

Other than the walking, though, my weekend was completely without substance.  I did not read anything new (and precious little old), I did not watch any sports/games or regular TV of any kind‒no, not even any football.  I think the only person with whom I spoke, other than a delivery person, was an older guy whose phone had died and asked me the time while I was walking on Saturday.

Oh, and on my Sunday walk, I passed by a guy who might have been homeless‒perhaps he was just odd‒who held his arms out wide as I came nearer, as if looking for a hug.  I don’t think he was actually looking for a hug, though.  It was probably a gesture intended to intimidate, perhaps so I wouldn’t try to steal his stuff or something.

Anyway, I don’t give a shit about those kinds of things, so I just nodded, said, “What’s up?” and walked on.  He said nothing.  I suppose he could even have been a figment of my imagination, but that seems unlikely.

I didn’t speak at all otherwise.  Well, no, that’s probably not quite accurate.  I probably spoke “to” some of the reactors on some YouTube videos.  These are pretty much the closest thing I have to friends with whom I do things.  It’s rather pathetic.

I didn’t even watch many new videos, and I certainly didn’t watch any that were informative or useful or even interesting in any deep, novel sense.  Of course, if something catches one’s attention, it is “interesting” per se*.  But it’s not necessarily a durable kind of interest.  If you see movement out of the corner of your eye, you turn to look, but if it’s just a rustling of a curtain (purple or otherwise) or if when you turn to look it’s gone, as happened in Comfortably Numb, then that interest is basically spent.

I did notice, just this morning‒while I was pretending to try to be able to go back to sleep right up until it was time for me just to get up‒a video titled “There is no hard problem of consciousness”.  Now that seems at least somewhat interesting, and it’s a statement with which I’m inclined to agree, but I am curious to hear what this person’s arguments are, though I have not yet watched it.

Usually‒almost always‒such videos are rather disappointing; they just rehash basic ideas that I’ve dealt with long ago.  But sometimes someone says something actually thought-provoking.  Anyway, it’s nice to know that people are at least thinking about such questions (I think, again, that our culture’s mental health might be better if instead of going to therapists so often we sometimes went to philosophers instead).

I, on the other hand, have been having more and more difficulty finding any depth or interest.  I must have watched dozens (literally) of reactions to the Avengers: Doomsday “special look” trailer, because that actually got me excited.  Doom is my favorite villain, after all, and it looks as though the MCU might actually be doing him justice.  Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t come out until December, and I’m losing interest already.

Like the Pink Floyd song says**, “Nothing is very much fun anymore”.  I haven’t played any music on any instrument in weeks now, and I sang for all of two minutes or so while watching somebody react to Baker Street.

I think I might try to do a personal “try not to laugh” challenge today.  I think I tend to joke too much and make light of things to much, probably as a defense mechanism, but it’s a bit of a distraction.  Maybe I would be able to do more if I took things more seriously.

I don’t know.  Maybe I won’t even make it through the first work conversation without joking.  I certainly can’t seem to write a blog post without some kind of joke in it.  But it would be nice not to feel anything much at all:  No fear, no regret, no pain, and no joy or hope or optimism.  What’s that Vulcan practice on Star Trek?  Kolinahr?  Something like that.

I suppose it doesn’t matter.  It’s all fiction, anyway.  Meanwhile, I hope you all have very good, real-world days*** today.

*Is that the correct usage of “per se”?  Somehow it looks not-quite-right to me, but I am far from sure why that’s the case.

**One of My Turns, this time.

***I’m conflicted about whether that should be singular or plural.  There are arguments for both choices, or should I say, for each choice.

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The color of the blog doth come and go, between his purpose and his conscience

Hello and good morning.

It’s the first day of October, but I have very little to say about that other than what I’ve already said recently:  It’s my “official” favorite month, but right now that’s about as impressive as saying it’s…I don’t know, my least disliked form of terminal cancer or something along those lines.

Anyway, it’s a new month, and I guess those of you who have survived to see it can feel good about that, if that’s something you think is good (by whatever criteria you use to mean “good” regarding such things).  For my part, I’m not so sure, but if you’ve been reading this nonsense for any length of time, you probably don’t find that admission surprising.

I really feel wiped out, honestly, almost as if I’m out of breath while just sitting here and writing.  It’s not necessarily purely subjective‒my pulse ox is only about 94 to 95 percent right now, which is a tiny bit low, but it is early in the day.

What, you’re surprised that I have a personal pulse oximeter?  Don’t be.  It’s entirely predictable, given my background and how inexpensive such things have become.  Actually, I have two of them:  one at the house, one at work.

I’m somewhat weirdly hopeful, or perhaps wishful, that this slightly low oxygen saturation is the harbinger of a steady, progressive, terminal illness‒a slow-moving pneumonia or tuberculosis or lung cancer or something, even COPD.  I’m just exhausted with this living crap, and there are only a very few things that make it in any way worthwhile to me.

I’m so tired.  I just woke up‒or at least, I just got up‒about an hour ago, and I’m as tired as if it were already the end of a long, labor-intensive day.  Of course, I’ve been awake on and off for hours already, but that’s unfortunately nothing new.

I really want to be able to rest.  Of course, the famous saying is that there shall be no rest for the wicked, and perhaps I am just wicked.  But perhaps if the wicked were able to rest‒truly to rest‒they would be less prone to be wicked.  I don’t know.  I’m just spouting a bit of nonsense right now, don’t take the specifics too seriously.  I haven’t really given any thought prior to this moment about the possibility that “wickedness” can be at least partially a product of fatigue.

Of course, it does make some sense.  We know what impulse control, mainly through the actions of parts of the frontal lobes, is subject to fatigue.  We know that people are more prone to, say, break their diets or pick up cigarettes again at the end of a long, hard day.  Conscience may make cowards of us all, but conscience itself has only so much charge in its batteries.

Fortunately, the frontal lobes don’t get fatigued in isolation, so by the time one’s impulse control is lagging, one’s impulse creation is also a bit on the slow side.  The brain, like the body, is at least prone to getting tired all at roughly the same time.

I’m sorry.  Everything that crosses my mind right now is just turning into meditations on being tired.  I am tired.  I am sleepy.  I am exhausted.  I am fatigued.  I am run down.  I am worn out.

[Help!  I’m being attacked by that most dreadful, ferocious, frightening, and intimidating of dinosaurs:  Thesaurus rex.]

Ugh, I’m already running out of gas, today.  If I had a cocoon, I’d wrap up in it.  If I had a sensory deprivation chamber, I’d go lie down in it.

Actually, that last possibility sounds lovely.  I wish I had one of those.  I’ve looked around the area, but though apparently there used to be services that offered sensory deprivation chambers near where I live, none remain that are close enough to be useful to me.  It would be good, though, I think.

Some people are bothered by enclosed spaces, but it’s never been much of an issue for me.  I was quite happy to sleep in the little coffin beds in the Navy‒in fact, the night I slept in the pitch black silence in a submarine was one of the most pleasant sleeps I’ve had.  I tend to find MRIs relaxing, and when the noises come on, I pretend I’m watching a gangster movie.

Of course, context is crucial here.  I do not like being restrained or constrained by other people, and if someone tries to do such a thing to me, I am prone to do everything I can to hurt and/or kill them, and I will be very hard pressed to restrain myself.  In these cases, my frontal lobes don’t inhibit the impulses, they egg them on.

My frontal lobes don’t like being pushed around by other, entirely finite and fallible and flesh-and-blood mortals any more than the rest of me does.  Even lawful “authorities” are merely a matter of necessity, and they are certainly prone to error, like everyone else.  No one has true, inherent authority over someone else, though of necessity we can give some people power over others, because the alternatives are worse.

Anarchy is rarely an improvement over having a working government, for instance, but that doesn’t mean we should ever take our eyes off said government; it must always be held to task and kept from becoming too self-important and/or self-serving.

I will close with a quote from a Beatles song, and embed that song below, as a reminder to those who would arrogate authority to themselves:  “Can’t you see, you’re really only very small, and life goes on within you and without you.”

TTFN

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“When I try to get through on the telephone to you…”

Well, it’s Monday again, and as I foresaw and predicted, I am writing a blog post.  Yes, indeed, as Pink said, I’ve got electric light, and I’ve got second sight‒I’ve got amazing powers of observation.

It’s not all that impressive when you stop and think about the fact that I’m predicting (after foreseeing) my own actions, over which I presumably have some degree of control.  Such control is far from complete, but for stuff like this, it’s fairly effective.

I’m going to try to keep this post short today, mainly because I know people don’t seem to like it when I get too negative and depressed and morbid, but that’s very much how I feel this morning.  So, I can’t really express my feelings without bringing discomfort to my readers.  That feels churlish to me, and anyway, it doesn’t seem to do me or anyone else any good at all.

That’s no real surprise.  It doesn’t seem to be in my nature to do or to be good; it requires specific effort for me to do good in the world.  It certainly doesn’t appear to be my natural inclination.

Then again, the argument could be made that, because I choose to try to do good (at least sometimes) that means I am good by nature.  After all, if one is simply inclined to do good, or at least to try to do good, then one will simply tend to do so.  That’s good, of course, and such people are welcome.  But it’s not that impressive.  Like a very tall person easily getting something down from a high shelf for a shorter compatriot, it’s good and helpful, but it’s not that impressive, and it’s certainly not heroic.

Whereas if a person has a tendency to be angry and to wish people ill and to become easily frustrated and to desire to lash out, but they don’t do those things because they feel it would be wrong…well, that’s got a certain degree of admirability, since it requires conscious effort to restrain one’s impulses.  I’m not saying that it’s particularly impressive; almost everyone restrains a great many impulses in order to exist in society.  But it is something that requires at least a modicum of effort.

Okay, well, enough of that nonsense.

The point is, I’m going to try not to dwell too much on my depression and self-destructive thoughts, because it doesn’t do anyone any good, including me.  I’ve yet to receive any significant help from anyone or anything because of it, and though certainly I receive some well-meaning suggestions or thoughts or what have you, most of them are things I’ve already considered or tried.

So, it’s not doing me any good, and it’s not doing anyone else any good, as far as I can tell.  I’m just getting steadily worse over time, though that may not be obvious from the outside.  But the fact that I neither do music nor write any fiction any more is telling.  In fact, I don’t really do anything creative or artistic or scientific or whatever.  I just exist most of the time.  And it’s hard to see why I bother.

Ah, well, it probably doesn’t help that I had a particularly poor night’s sleep last night, even for me.  I’m already mentally exhausted, and I’m just starting the work week.

I did get some decent walking in yesterday‒about five and a half miles total.  Fortunately, I’m not having any negative consequences from that so far, and I would have expected to have them by now if they were coming.

Of course, my various chronic problems continue, including my chronic pain, my chronic depression and I guess my ASD (it’s congenital, so I guess that makes it chronic, in a sense).

Anyway, again, enough of this.  Even though I said I would try not to do so, I am dwelling on negative things, not just in my head but here on my blog.  I can only apologize.  I guess that’s one of the dangers of “stream of consciousness” writing.

It doesn’t really matter.  I hope you all have a good day and a good week.  October starts this week already, and it’s normally my favorite month, but there’s nothing really to which I look forward this time around.  It’s just blah.

Meh, whataya gonna do?

by

“When the storm arrives, would you be seen with me?”

Okay, well, I will have set this up to post at about 8 am my time today, just as I did with yesterday’s post.  I have not yet looked at my stats for yesterday’s post, so I don’t know whether, so far, doing this has made any difference in my readership.

That’s fine, though, because it would be absurd to try to read any conclusions from one day of a slightly changed time of posting.  It’s not a statistically significant sample size, among other things.  So, it’s best to try it for a bit and see how it goes and only to draw conclusions after I’ve had at least a decent run of days.

I am still somewhat under the weather from yesterday, but I have to go to the office because it is payroll day, and that needs to get done.  I did leave the office at lunchtime yesterday, and when I got back to the house I knocked myself out with some benadryl and some CBD gummies with a bit of delta-9 and delta-8.  It did help me sleep, at least, though I’m sure it wasn’t an ideal sleep.  Still, beggars can’t be choosers, generally speaking, though I’m sure there are exceptions to that “rule”.

I did wake up hideously early, though, even for me, but I didn’t want to take any further sedation, because then it might affect my ability to do what I need to do today.

I forgot to take some of my vitamins and stuff yesterday evening, including the lithium supplement that I’ve been taking.  I didn’t take that this morning, either, just to see how the dearth of it will affect me, if at all.  I know, I know, I’m doing too much haphazard starting and stopping of variables, and it makes it very difficult‒as well as potentially very misleading‒to draw conclusions about what effects these interventions are having.

But I have a difficult time being patient with this stuff.  Anyway, this was an accidental skip last night; I’m just continuing it for the moment.  We’ll see whether there is any noticeable change in my mood, but it certainly didn’t revolutionize my affect by taking it, and it’s not supposed to have the same kind of delayed effect that the traditional antidepressants require.

So, yeah, with both of those things, we shall see how the outcome goes.  Or maybe we won’t, I don’t know.  There are no guarantees.  Even the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics could be wrong, though it is unlikely.

I’m going to try to abstain from discussing my darker moods and thoughts here for at least a little while.  I’ve begun to wonder if ruminating on them and putting them out there in writing is making them worse rather than making them any better at all.

I guess I’m doing lots of little would-be therapeutic interventions for me.  Someone has to do it, and I’m probably the one best placed to take action, though I am entangled in the outcomes, which may confound things.  Still, I’m the only one who is going to do anything for me, so there are no other options.

I am in a very real sense quite alone in my situation.  I guess that’s not new, is it?  I’ve tended to be the one who helps other people, not the one who gets helped.  That’s just the way it goes, though.  Like Chris Cornell sang, “Arm yourself, because no one else here will save you.”  These are words of wisdom, and not just for fictional super-spies.

I still haven’t played guitar (and sang) for more than one little fifteen-minute interval over the last three weeks or so.  That’s an estimate, of course.  It is mildly worrying or at least disappointing how much I am losing interest in so many things that usually have interested me.  I certainly haven’t written any fiction, nor have I studied much new physics or biology or what have you, though I have hearkened to the computer science/AI stuff a bit, because at least that is somewhat interesting and intriguing.

Well, I will endeavor to persevere and even to improve.

You all, my readers, could in principle spot changes in my mental status before I even recognize them, myself, and I do hope, as well as request, that you do that.  It would be most welcome and potentially useful.  I thank you in advance.  In the meantime, I hope you’ve been having a good week, and that you continue to do so, and indeed, that each day is an improvement over the previous one.  Why not?  It doesn’t take much improvement per day, if it is every day, for truly impressive results to accrue.

by

“Sometimes I think I’d like to watch it burn.”

Umm…I don’t have any idea what to write this morning, this work-week beginning, this dawn of yet another iteration of zero.  But I guess that hasn’t ever stopped me before, though it feels more prominent now than I remember it feeling in the past.

But such feelings are unreliable guides to the past and present actual state of reality.  This is not to say that they are absolutely untrue and misleading; if that were the case, not only would everyone have picked up on it long ago, but it would have been weeded out of the gene pool.  A perfectly unreliable memory is no better than no memory at all.

On the other hand, it’s not evolutionarily sensible to have a perfect memory, either, largely because the information required to store perfectly all the things that have happened to you, and to which your senses had access, would very rapidly exceed your “hard drive” space.  No, your nervous system must sift out the useful information and discard the useless, or the not salient or pertinent, as much as possible, because the brain, though tremendously useful, is extremely energy intensive.

Human brains burn about 20 percent of the daily calories burned by a person.  Yes, that’s true even of people you consider morons.  The most ignorant person around still has a version of the best operating system available in the known universe (at least for the moment).  How much smarter is the least intelligent but functioning human compared to the smartest nematode…or even the smartest house cat?

Oh, who cares?  I don’t know why I go on about this nonsense.  It’s not as though people are actually interested.  I’m hemorrhaging readers steadily, it seems.  I’m not exactly sure why.

Maybe it’s because my insomnia and early awakening are getting steadily worse, and so I’m posting my posts earlier and earlier.  Maybe if I delayed them, like I do with the audio posts, more people would notice them.  What do you think?  Should I try that?  Would it bother you if my posts went up at, say 8 am versus whenever I finish them?  Would it matter?  Do you think there is a better time for them?

I don’t really expect it to make a difference.  No one notices when I’m not around, so to speak.  I’ve been banned from Meta platforms for some time now, and the only people who have touched base were the few people who did so anyway.  There are quite a few people whom I would consider friends, and who could get in contact with me, but they don’t.

I’m not saying that they ought to check on me.  It’s not their responsibility.  But I suspect at least a part of the whole thing is that, once I am not even peripherally in their lives, people don’t really notice.  If anything, I suspect that they probably feel a slight lightness, a sense of greater vivacity, some decreased sense of dreariness about life, the universe, and everything.

Certainly I have not heard anyone complain about the fact that I’m not around.  No one says they miss me, that their lives are emptier without me nearby.  No, most people either don’t notice (at least superficially) or just experience relief.

Even the four dollar coins* I keep for helping me make certain decisions are not on my side (not that they would be, since they are coins, not people).  Late last week‒I think it was Saturday, but it might have been Friday‒when I was feeling particularly low, I asked if I should just kill myself.  I spun the four coins and, on the first try, I got four heads.

Heads is the side I use to mean “yes”.

So, yeah, even the ladies (2 Susan B. Anthonies and 2 Sacagaweas) don’t seem to think having me around is worth much.  Of course, they are just coins.  I know there is no actual thought or judgment there, let alone attachment or agency.  It’s just sort of perversely funny to me.

Whatever.  I’m tired of this, and everything is getting less and less consequential.  I think, unless someone voices clear and convincing objections in the comments today, I will set up tomorrow’s post to come out at 8 eastern time, at least roughly.

Or maybe I just won’t post anything.  It’s not as though doing this is helping my mental health (obviously), and I doubt that I’m contributing anything to the world of ideas.  Even if I had some deep and interesting insight, it would go essentially nowhere and reach almost no one.

Oh, again, who cares?  Thanks for reading today.  I hope you have a good week, a good remainder of the month, a good rest of the year, and a good rest of your lives‒just in case you never hear from me again.

*By which I mean four one-dollar coins, not $4 coins.

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Meet the new year, same as the old year

L’shana tovah!  It’s Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, so for those of you who celebrate it, I hope you have a good one.

It’s Saturday, also, of course, and I am going in to the office.  I can hardly claim to feel slighted to be working on Rosh Hashanah, since if I were actually observant, I would never be working on any Saturday, since that is Shabbat.  I would be hypocritical to try to claim the day off by some form of religious right.

It is also rather sad and frustrating that I just have no one with whom to celebrate this and other important days.  Tomorrow is another very important day, and of course next weekend begins Yom Kippur, which is the so-called highest of the holy days.

Anyway, all that’s neither here nor there.  It has nothing to do with me other than memories.  I can’t even share well-wishes with people on Facebook as I used to do, thanks to my weird expulsion from Meta’s sites.

But it’s not as though anyone has a right to Facebook.  Not even the people who created it have a right to it.  It can all be taken from them at any moment by the whims of fate, and sooner or later, it all will be taken from them, just as everything else will be taken from everyone else as well.

Again, happy new year.

Each day is the beginning of a new year depending on one’s point of view.  And every second is the beginning of a new day, and so on.  Likewise, each day is the end of a year, and each second is the end of a day.

And each moment is the end of some noteworthy number of lives.  Every day is the last day some parent out there will lift and carry their child.  Every day is the last day some parent will ever see their child, and every day is the last day some child will see their parent.

Every moment is, for someone out there, the last moment they will spend with the person they love the most.

This is not even counting the suffering, the fear, and the deaths of non-human animals and other forms of life.

So, yeah.  Happy, happy.  Joy, joy.

Sorry, I know I’m being perhaps even more of a downer than usual.  It’s what I’m best at, I suspect.  I should charge for my services; after all, like the Joker said, if you’re good at something you should never do it for free.

I don’t know if there’s actually a market for what I’m selling, though.  I’m down to about a dozen or fewer regular readers here, and it’s not as though anyone’s sharing my posts or calling them to the attention of friends as being entertaining or insightful.  That’s not surprising.

I am quite creative in many ways, but those ways all tend toward the dark and horrible.  Way back when I was writing the first science fiction/fantasy* novel I ever completed, some of the best parts in it were the “horror” elements, which just crept in as I wrote the type of story I liked to write.

I seem mainly to be a source of darkness in the world‒though I’ve been part of bringing some wonderful things into the world as well.  I’ve even done my share of good deeds, and possibly more than my share.  That’s pretty much over now, though.

Of course, darkness doesn’t require me to bring it into existence.  It makes no difference to the universe if one declares oneself, say, an Agent of Chaos or of Entropy.  That’s about as sensible as someone claiming to be an agent of gravity or of the electromagnetic force.

Real things, fundamental things, don’t require human (or other) agents to carry them out.  They simply are, they happen, there is no avoiding them.  They happen with or without anyone even knowing they happen.  This is one of the things that should make everyone suspicious of every religion, really:  why would real omnipotent force require agents?

So yeah, like I said, every moment is laden with loss and suffering and death, and ironically, this will only ever end if and when everyone and everything is dead.

Happy New Year.

*Yes, it counted as science fiction and fantasy.  That was one of the points of it:  it told of an ultra-high tech, space faring civilization that also used “magic”.