dysthymia

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It’s Saturday now

And I’m in the office.  I haven’t come to the office this time, of course, I’ve just been here since yesterday, as I noted in my confusing and single-paragraph post yesterday evening.  I slept at the office, on the floor, and it was just as comfortable in many ways as if I had been at the house.  True, I couldn’t shower, but I’ve buzzed my hair down to 1/4 inch after seeing how it looked after I was in the hospital, and so it’s impossible to tell just by looking that I’ve not showered.  I usually have deodorant and other toiletries at the office, but those are already moved to the new office now, so I’m going to need to go over to the convenience store and get some deodorant and mouthwash this morning.

As for the house, well, there’s a reason I don’t refer to it as home.  It’s not a home to me.  I haven’t felt like I have a home since before I went to FSP.  No, it’s just a place I can hide for a while at a time, and not have to interact with anyone, and where it’s just my stuff inside, such as it is.  But I don’t feel at home there, I don’t feel comfortable, it’s just a place I’m existing.  I don’t even have a real chair there, though I have a piano bench and a folding metal chair tucked into a corner.  When I’m at the house, I just recline on a pile of pillows on the futon on the floor.  It’s good for my back in the short term, though after I stay there for a while it tends to backfire*.

Everything in my existence orbits around pain.  I guess it’s no irony that one of the two songs I have had memorized on piano for decades now is the Police’s King of Pain (the other is Eleanor Rigby by the Beatles).  Maybe it’s because I memorized that song that my life took on its current aspect.

I don’t really believe that, of course.  That’s absurd, magical thinking, and there’s no evidence that it’s the way the real world works, except through confirmation bias and the like.

Right now it still hurts to urinate, with spasms up in my right side and flank, which lingers a little even in between.  It’s nothing compared to the acute onset of the issue, but it’s still there.  And my back and hip and leg pains haven’t ceased to exist out of some strange courtesy.

I’m overwhelmed, and not in a good way.  There is too much happening in my head and around me right now, too many stupid little, annoying changes, too many deeply unpleasant surprises, too much chaos and randomness even in the day-to-day routines.  I am overwhelmed.

I used to be a person who could accomplish things, at least partly because I had people around me whom I loved and for whom I wanted to make things good as much as I could.  I cannot do good for myself.  I cannot live for myself.  But I used to be able to do good and make good things and relieve suffering.  I’ve saved people’s lives and even helped ease people’s deaths when it was appropriate.  Some of the most copious thanks I’ve ever received were from the families of patients who had died.  I was told by one family that, before he died, their 96 year old father/grandfather said I was the first doctor he’d had that he felt that he could trust.

Now look at me.  Or rather, don’t look at me.  I’m disgusting to start with, with my teeth that used to be good but have been ravaged by years of pain killers and prison and then just an inability to have the energy to take the very good care of them I used to take.  Also, I’m currently crying, and there’s snot on my face.  I don’t look great at the best of times anymore, and certainly no one is going to want to look at me now.

I’m caught in the pincers of some kind of weird metaphorical tweezer.  I cannot stand the thought of trying to change my situation; the idea of moving, of trying to change jobs, of trying to find something, is literally horrifying–imagine needing to wade through a swimming pool filled with roaches and centipedes and maggots and other larvae, above which soars a nearly-opaque cloud of mosquitoes, all female.

But staying where I am, doing what I’m doing, is just as horrifying, and now there are a bunch of new stressors, not the least of which is my fresh, new pain problem, which hopefully will be temporary, though it isn’t gone yet.  I guess a week is a relatively short time, and maybe I’m expecting too much, but it’s a fucking huge level of discomfort, and I don’t have the mental resources to deal with it, not on top of everything else.  Why I am I continuing to endure my already-existing chronic pain, my anxiety, my depression, all the other things associated with my hitherto undiagnosed ASD, and then now dealing with newly discovered problems?

I’m overwhelmed.  I cannot summon the will to make a change, or even the conviction that I ought to do so, because I cannot really think straight.  I cannot imagine what to do.  I don’t know that there is any way at all to escape, except by dying.  And I am always afraid.

You might think that after having pain every day for decades and having lost basically everything that ever mattered to you and for which you had worked so hard for so long you wouldn’t have any need to be afraid anymore.  What do you have to lose, after all?  But fear is not a rational thing, it’s not the conclusion of a thought process, it’s an emotion, one in which nature has invested heavily, and having pain after pain for a long time, of various kinds, can cause a “learned-helplessness” reaction related to depression, but even then, fear doesn’t go away.  One is always afraid of yet more pain.  One is afraid of facing another day with the same old pain.  One is a afraid that one is going to live a long, long life and never for one day of the rest of it not be in significant pain.  One is afraid that one will also be alone for the rest of that long life, with no comfort and little joy.

I don’t know what’s going on.  I mean, I’m writing this post, of course, that’s going on.  But I don’t know what else.  I’m falling apart, I think.  I’m breaking down.  Like I said yesterday, I can practically smell the melting plastic and circuitry in my mind.

Whatever.  Nothing I do or say matters, nothing I am matters.  I don’t know what I expect to happen because I’ve written about this.  I feel a bit like Frodo crying out for his friends in “Fog on the Barrow Downs” after they’ve been separated, but the only answer I will probably get will be from some foul undead spirits.  There’s no Tom Bombadil out there to come rescue me.  I wish there were.  And I could really use Elrond’s healing power, or even Aragorn’s.

That’s enough.  Go on, go read something else.  No one wants to feel miserable, and that’s how I tend to make people feel, so you should probably find something comical or at least entertaining to explore, and just try to have a good weekend.

*Honestly, no pun intended.  I didn’t even notice it until the editing process.

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No songs or pictures, just pathetic words of despite and destruction and despair

Well, it’s Tuesday.  I think my stunt (or whatever you might call it) yesterday has failed miserably.  I don’t know why I’m surprised, let alone disappointed.  I’m either just not good at that sort of thing, or I’m just not worthy of that sort of thing.

I don’t know if that quite made sense just now.  I’m apparently very bad at getting my feelings across, on top of the fact that, a lot of the time, I’m not quite sure specifically what I’m feeling.  They’re just a bunch of swirling, overpowering sensations that don’t ever seem to show on my face or in my voice.

Anyway, I have no subject on which to speak (so to speak) today, and it doesn’t really matter, because I seem incapable of conveying anything important to anyone for whom it could possibly matter.  It’s fine.  As Thomas Covenant said (before he ever went to the Land) this is what people are like:  futile.  He would change his point of view on that after many grueling and heartbreaking yet inspiring experiences, but I think he was onto something.

I’ve always had a bit of sympathy for Lord Foul in those books.  Part of this was just because he was so eloquent‒I’m a bit of a sucker for a good speaker‒but especially after I learned that he was trapped inside the arch of time, inside the Land, and he literally cannot possibly die or be permanently defeated while trapped there.  He hates everything in the Land and its world not just because it’s his nature to hate, but because he is trapped by and with everything there, potentially forever.  So if he is ever to be free to go anywhere else‒even to die‒he has to destroy the arch of time and thus that world.  It is personal to him, of course‒he’s not called the Despiser for nothing‒but it needn’t be.

Anyway, I am not trapped in the arch of time, or at least I’m not constrained from ever dying within it.  Or maybe my own arch of time is just that span of moments that began at birth (or conception) and will reach its other end at my death.  If that’s the case, I wouldn’t need to destroy the arch, just…complete it.

This is all metaphorical bullshit, I know.  Don’t misunderstand me.  I don’t have any misgiving that any of that could be real.  But the stories were good, at least the first two trilogies; I’ve never finished the last 4 books.  There is no denying that The Lord of the Rings is better, and much more inspiring and uplifting.  But the Thomas Covenant books do a better job of capturing the horror and despair and terror of not just fighting evil, but of being evil.

That’s probably why it appealed to me.  My innate tendency is to be, well, perhaps not evil, but destructive.  I feel terribly angry so much, so often, and I just want to break and burn this world, this life, that is so bloody uncomfortable.  But I know that I don’t have any business hurting other people, almost none of whom are ever deliberately hurting me.  So I bottle it up and try to calm it, and I don’t act on it.

But like I said in my reversal of Nebula’s last line to Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3, I wasn’t born to be a dad, I was born to be a destroyer.  I’ve just always tried to fight against that, and I have in some small ways succeeded.  I even swung things in the other direction at times, becoming a doctor and a dad.  Of course, I eventually failed miserably at both of those things, as usual, but I did some good in the meantime.

And there is one being I have a proprietary right to destroy.  I just need to quit the foreplay.

Anyway, this has been weird, I suspect, but what else is new?  I hope you all have a good day.

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Six songs to try to express a little bit of how I am doing

I don’t have the energy or will or “spoons” to write much today.  I’m just about ready to tap out.  My “executive function” is so low that I think the only thing I’m capable of executing is myself, and even that is difficult.  I certainly don’t have the capacity to act to save myself.  I keep trying to express just how fucking horrible I am doing, but I don’t think it’s coming across.  I guess it doesn’t matter much.

Anyway, today I figure I’ll embed some songs I’ve recorded myself performing that do something to convey my difficulties.  Some are originals, some are covers.  I don’t know if they will work, either.

It doesn’t really matter.  I don’t have the will to take any action about anything.  I can only do what I do every day, automatically, and I am getting closer and closer to being unable to do even that.  I think I’m pretty nearly completely out of gas, and I am basically only a burden to the world.  It doesn’t help that we’re moving offices this month, which I hate, but that’s just a little insult to add to the injuries that are leading to the end of things.

Anyway, here are the songs.

It’s not a perfect expression or set of expressions, but it’s about all I’m capable of, even after a weekend “off”.  It doesn’t matter.  I’ve basically given up.  I’m so tired already and it’s just Monday morning.

I hope you each have a great day, individually, and that you all have a great day, collectively.

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It’s the end of the month as we know it

It’s the last day of April in 2025, which means tomorrow is the beginning of May.  This is also the last day of the official Autism Awareness Month, and tomorrow begins the official Mental Health Awareness Month.

That last term is a bit odd.  If mental health is the norm, we don’t really need to be aware of it, except perhaps to be thankful if we have it (I certainly don’t).  It’s the lack of mental health‒you know, mental illness or even mental injury‒that we would like to be aware of and make better.  But I guess some people feel that’s too stigmatic or negative or something.

I think that’s silly.  Do we euphemize cancer?  Not really, not when we’re dealing with it seriously.  All the cancer awareness things slap you in the face, and they more or less say, it’s cancer, take it seriously, we want to fight it.  But what does it mean to be aware of mental health?  We don’t want to fight that, we want to fight for it.

I’m aware of mental health as a concept, of course, though even there, things can be a bit nebulous.  I guess health in general is just the notion that things are functioning more or less as they are supposed to function.  But that allows a fair bit of leeway.  It’s also somewhat relative.  If it were “normal” to be as healthy as Captain America, for instance, Usain Bolt might be considered a bit sickly, and most of the rest of us would be functionally disabled.

It’s hard to convince oneself that the average person, in America, at least, is as mentally healthy as one would like them to be.  I suppose that shouldn’t be too surprising.  Mental health (or the relative lack thereof) is measured largely by its interactions with the surrounding civilization, and that has been changing quite rapidly, from any kind of evolutionary standpoint, especially in the last few centuries, and especially in the last few decades.

Small wonder our brains/nervous systems often don’t function optimally in this realm.  The human (and humanoid/replicant/changeling/alien) brain is remarkably adaptable, but it is not a blank slate upon which just anything can be written at will.  There’s plenty of hardware that’s specific to certain kinds of functions, and there are read-only aspects of the operating systems and even the user interface (which we call consciousness when it’s combined with something akin to the Windows task manager).  We can’t rewrite the firmware yet, and we may never be able to do so.  We have trouble even changing current programs or loading new ones.

Well, that was an unplanned digression…which may be a redundant term.  Are planned digressions even truly digressions?

I was mostly just thinking this morning about what such a pair of months might mean to me.  Both of them are pertinent, since I have issues relating to both “awareness” subjects.  But so many of the things I see shared, particularly about “mental health”, are things I already know, but which have obviously not been adequate to improve my mental health.

Heck, I remember paying real attention in high school in our psychology lessons, reading all the abnormal psychology stuff, knowing that there was something off about me, but not seeing any good answers.  Of course, this was in the 80s, in a public high school, so the material was pretty simplistic and out of date even for the time.

I also used to own books about psychology, self-hypnotism, self help, lots of related stuff.  I didn’t know what it was with me, but I knew that I was strange.  I was pretty good at pretending to be “normal” in a sense, but a lot of even that was just me owning and sometimes exaggerating my odd habits as if they were normal things.

It helped that I was known to be smart, and also that I was raised to be polite and not to be mean or cruel or condescending to people.  That was pretty easy; while I was good at some things, there were many things with which I had difficulty, and I knew that only too well.  I still don’t feel very comfortable riding a bike, for instance, and many athletic pursuits requiring agility have always been hard*.  I also was truly abysmal at dealing with girls/relationships.  I had no idea how really to interact in any kind of would-be romantic way, nor to recognize if someone liked me, nor to let anyone know that I liked them.  I’ve not grown out of that problem.

Anyway, so I’ve been dealing with issues of mental health for as long as I can remember, including a time when I was really quite young and I almost made myself unable to talk after getting upset about some interaction and telling myself that I just wouldn’t talk anymore.  When I finally (after several hours) decided to talk again…I almost couldn’t do it!  I really had to force myself, and almost panicked before I finally was able to squeeze out some words.  That was frightening.

I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned that to anyone before.

So, anyway, I’ve been weird my whole life, and I’m no less weird now, but now I am alone, and I have lost pretty much everything I worked very hard to get or be or create as well as nearly everyone I care about most**.  I recognize that it’s not impossible that good things will happen for me in the future.  But I can see pretty clearly that it’s really unlikely.  What could lead me to think otherwise?  Only some profound delusions could do that, and though I cannot rule out delusions in myself, if I have them, they are not of the optimistic variety.

Geez Louise, this is such a pointless post‒just like my pointless life.  I need to wrap it up and be done already.  I hope you have a good day.

*It turns out at least some of this was related to my congenital heart defect, which was discovered when I was 18, and for which I had open heart surgery in the summer after my freshman year in college.

**By this I mean they’re not around, and most of them don’t want to be around me, not that they’ve died‒except my parents, of course, but that was basically natural.  Still, there was a long stretch when I didn’t even interact with them.  It wasn’t as long as the time since I last saw my own children, but it was still very painful.

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How long should one keep smacking the bottom of that bottle?

I made it through Monday again, it seems.  It wasn’t particularly easy.  Starting in the morning, I developed a nasty, unilateral headache that I couldn’t seem to get to go away.  I finally left the office at lunchtime and went back to the house, where I mostly laid around and tried to sedate myself, with some success.

The headache didn’t really start to fade until around midnight, so I didn’t have quite the rest I might have desired, but at least I got some rest.  And now, only a faint residue of the headache remains.

It didn’t feel like a typical migraine, which I have from time to time‒thankfully not very often‒but almost more like a bad, unilateral sinus headache.  Hopefully, it has pretty much run its course now.

It might be nice if there could be a situation in which one could go through some period of painful illness, but then come out afterwards with one’s prior, chronic pain somehow eliminated.  Of course, that’s not likely to happen in real life.  It certainly hasn’t happened to me.

It is true, apparently, that a bad measles infection can effectively wipe out prior immunities, making one vulnerable to diseases to which one had previous resistance.  I suppose that might even be a boon in someone with an autoimmune dysfunction, though it would be difficult to time the infection just right.

I’m not aware of anyone having tried such a therapy, and I don’t think it’s something I would recommend, even if it were workable (which it really isn’t).  Better just to keep vaccination for measles and other preventable illnesses going and look for other avenues to treat autoimmune disorders.

As for what else to discuss…I’m coming up empty here at the moment.  Actually, it’s not just at the moment, is it?  I’ve been squeezing the dregs out of the mustard bottle that is my life force for a long time now.

Sorry, I know that’s a terrible metaphor, but I don’t feel that I’m really worthy of anything fancier.  Anyway, I’ve certainly spread that condiment out over a lot of sandwiches (that’s my continuing the rotten metaphor, with a sandwich representing a day).  But there’s hardly anything left in there, and there are no refills available, as far as I know, and now I’m really just going through the motions.  There’s just a dribbly little, watery remnant, with no flavor left and very little color.

I really pushed that one to the crumpling point, I fear.  But I hope I at least got my point across.  If I didn’t, that would be a real shame.  What a thing not only to have used a truly lame metaphor but to have it fail to do what one intended.  What a tragic joke that would be.

It wouldn’t be very tragic, of course‒it’s hardly anything of consequence.  But still, it would be sad.

I’m really tired and wiped out, even though I went back to the house early yesterday.  Well, I mean, I did just say that my headache didn’t really start to go away until about midnight, and as per my usual self, I was awake today well before three in the morning.

I know, I know, this is all so boring and repetitive!  I’m very sorry.  I wish I could be telling you all about a new story I’m writing, or about my return to a past story, or about some new music I was learning or writing, or even some new drawings I might have done.

Heck, I’d like to tell you I was making progress in studying quantum mechanics and general relativity or differential geometry or computer programming and computer science in general.  I wish I could tell you (and do so honestly) that I was learning more Japanese, or refreshing my Spanish or learning Russian or German, or even French, all of which languages are interesting.

But I’m not doing any of those things.  I’m not doing anything creative or productive or even just distractive (that’s probably not a formally recognized word, but maybe it is).  I don’t have the energy to do anything creative other than this, if this even counts.

Of course, I go to work and do my job, and that’s all well and good as far as it goes, since I don’t like being a burden to people.  But that’s as good as it gets, I think.

I don’t know what else I can do.  I’m just a mess.  I feel like a tattered and smeared old wrapper from a cheap, fast food hamburger.  I suppose some of the smeared matter on the wrapper might be mustard, if we want to keep the metaphor‒or simile, in this case‒consistent.

Well, my train will be here soon, so I’ll bring this to a close.  I hope I haven’t been too much of a downer.  If I have, well, take comfort in the fact that you are only reading these thoughts.  You don’t actually have to experience them.

Please try to have a good day, and try to have better thoughts than mine.

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Step up or STFU

Here I go again, writing another blog post.  It seems like just yesterday that I wrote a previous one‒but of course, it was two days ago, not just one.  Wow, what a spooky difference.

I’m getting ready to be at work, or rather, am in the process of being on my way to work as I begin to write this.  I’m not actually currently moving relative to the surface of the Earth, but that happens a lot during commutes, especially when you don’t have your own vehicle anymore.

I don’t really have “my own” much of anything anymore.  I mean, I have a small amount of stuff, as George Carlin might say, though I’m quite sure I have waaaaaay less stuff than he had when he performed that particular routine.  Not that that’s bad; he certainly earned his stuff.  I mean, he’s still making loads of people laugh and think even after he’s been dead for a while.  I don’t know how long that will go on‒contrary to delusional claims by people who like a cool-sounding expression, online is not forever‒but he will, I suspect, be remembered fondly far longer than most.

The average day, on the other hand, feels like it is forever.  I don’t think I really look forward (in the positive sense) to anything nowadays.  There are two movies in theaters right now that I ought to want to go see, but if you presented me with free tickets, free concessions, and a ride to and from a theater of my choice, I think I’d say, “Thanks, but I’m not interested.”  And that would be true.

Likewise, though I watched the first episode of the latest series of Doctor Who a few weeks ago, two more have come out since then, and I have no desire to watch them, or anything else.  There are no books to which I look forward.  I’ve had to force myself to read at all, and even that’s probably a mistake*.  I occasionally look at my guitars and at the keyboard and they almost feel alien to me.  Like, what is that even used for?  I can’t really even imagine picking one up and playing it (or sitting down and playing, in the case of the keyboard).

I can’t really imagine writing any fiction.  The only thing(s) I anticipate at all anymore is something to eat, and that’s just so, so pathetic.  Thankfully, even my favorite snacks are starting to feel and taste and smell very dull lately.  I don’t know if perhaps I had my sense of smell altered back when I got Covid, or if this is born of the fact that all pleasures have backfired on me at least one time or another, and more so than ever, lately.

I really think I’m just about done.  I should’ve been done already.  I should’ve been done a long time ago.  But we’re always told to hold on, to stay alive, that we’re wanted and needed here on this stupid planet.  It’s a bit of a similar situation to what happens with “pro-life” people:  They don’t want there to be abortions, they want all those potential people born, but they aren’t helping to take care of them, and they don’t even want there to be public services available for them or for education or what have you.

So it is with the people who don’t want other people to commit suicide.  They don’t want you to kill yourself, but they’re not offering to help you be alive, not in any meaningful sense of helping.  And so, of course, when people do reach the end of their rope (sorry, no pun intended, but the expression is doubly appropriate so I’m leaving it) they have to choose the analogue of “back alley abortions”, killing themselves (or trying to do so) in messy, unreliable, disruptive ways that often don’t succeed but can lead to permanent damage and social opprobrium.

In some civilized countries, it’s possible for people to go to places like Dignitas and get physician-supervised ways to end their lives with minimal pain and with some peace.  Of course, even in such places, the service seems to be available mainly for people with terminal cancer and similar incurable illnesses.  But depression is often a terminal illness, and it is certainly incurable as far as I can see.  And, of course, ASD is not a disease, it’s a neurodevelopmental difference, so there’s no curing that, short of a brain transplant (which would really be a body transplant for the donor brain).

But if no one is going to give serious help to a person who has severe difficulty even wanting to live, and who has no capacity to lift himself out of the whirlpool of self-loathing and chronic pain, then why is there all the verbiage about how “depression is a liar” and other bullshit like that.  As if optimism weren’t a liar.  As if all the ideals and isms and dogmae and “good” things weren’t lies or liars or both.

So, fuck that noise.  Don’t tell a woman not to have an abortion if you’re not going to care for her and the child, and don’t cajole and guilt-trip a suicidal person about not killing themselves if you’re not gonna come in and help them in some real, tangible, serious way, God damn it.  A person on the verge of suicide is already admitting that they don’t think they can survive under their own steam.  They can’t swim anywhere, but you want them to keep treading water, or at least floating‒indefinitely‒just so you don’t have to be aware of the fact that they drowned while you were out boating.

All right, that’s enough for now.  I hope you all have a good day.  Autism Awareness Month ends this week and Mental Health Awareness Month begins.  Fat lot of good they’ve done or do.

*Interesting aside:  I accidentally typed “provably” when I tried to write “probably” right there.  The words are, so I understand, etymologically** related‒probe, prove, proof, probable, etc.

**Etymology and entomology are however (apart from the “ology” bit) unrelated.

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Definitely NOT in the park (and it isn’t the 4th of July)

Well, it’s Saturday, and this is a blog post, so as you may surmise, I am working today.  I’m writing this on Google Docs, but not on my mini laptop computer and also not on my phone.  I’m writing this on the desktop computer I use at the office.

I went to the train to head back to the house yesterday, feeling despondent and dreary.  When the train arrived, it was so overcrowded that I just couldn’t stand the idea of getting on, and so I decided to wait for the next one.  Then, as I waited and more people arrived at the station, I thought the next train was likely to get just as crowded as the previous.

I thought about the fact that I would just be going back to the house and trying to lie down and sleep and then trying (so to speak) to stay asleep, only to need to get up and make my way back to the office again.  Well, there’s nothing at the house that makes it much more inviting than the office, apart from the shower and clothes.  But I wear the same clothes to work every day, anyway‒same color, style, brand, what have you.  I can get away with a bit of deodorant and spray cologne and a shave and toothbrush‒I keep extra implements for such things at work.

So, anyway, I came back to the office and just slept here on the floor.  This is the exciting and glamorous life that I lead.

Now, it’s early in the morning on Saturday, and I figure I might as well write a blog post, as I warned you I might.  And here I am, writing it.  I think it’s going to be short; I have no topic to address, nor really any interest in anything.  I’m disconnected and disaffected, and if I can think of a good third word that both rhymes and applies, I’ll add it.

Nothing’s coming to mind so far, though.

I’m actually kind of pulling up short already.  I don’t know what to say next, other than to comment on the fact that I don’t know what to say next.  I’m still in pain, and it’s still above my average (though not by a huge amount), and of course, I slept no better at the office than I would at the house, but I also slept no worse.  It’s quieter at the office, also.  And it’s not as though there would have been anything interesting for me to do on Friday night, even if I’d been free, and there’s certainly no one with whom I would do anything.

I see that Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith is out in “select” theaters this week, to celebrate its 20th anniversary.  I’m unlikely to go see it.  If I had someone to accompany me (whose company I found comfortable enough) I might go, though it would be bittersweet, I think*.  The last time I saw the movie in theaters, I was with my (ex) wife and our kids.  We had a very good time, and my son at least was probably old enough to remember some of the event.

That’s about it.  No new fiction, no music‒I have my guitar right here next to me as I write this, but I cannot even comprehend the notion of wanting to pick it up and play.  When I conjure the image, I feel more like one might feel sitting in an overly sterile, very crowded waiting room for a job interview for a truly uninspiring company, one at which one really doesn’t want to work.  At least it’s not a nervous feeling; it’s just a bored and pointless feeling, a lack of interest in or at least energy for anything.

And now, this week I’m going to be getting less weekend rest than I have been for the past short while.  I only hope it doesn’t too strongly impact next week.  But it’s not as though I’ve been doing well even with full weekends and heavily sedated sleep (as heavy as OTC stuff will allow).

You would think that, as you approach the center of the whirlpool that leads you down to the inevitable abyss, you would pick up speed and things might at least become a little bit exciting.  This does not, however, appear to be the case for me right now.  I’m losing my patience.  I’m in physical and mental pain every waking moment‒and for me, that’s more moments per day than for most people‒and can really only seek distraction when I can get it.

That’s enough kvetching for now.  I know all you regular readers already know of my issues, and I don’t think anyone out there has any answers for me, even if they were inclined to provide them.  I hope you all have/are having a good weekend.

*Not the candy.  I don’t tend to eat anything with bittersweet chocolate while at the movies.

by

“Everything is…broken”

Hi, everybody.

(Hi, Dr. Nick!)

I am writing this blog post on my mini laptop computer this morning, because I’ve been getting sick and tired of writing on the “smartphone”.  I’m also getting sick of writing blog posts to some degree, so it’s best to make it relatively easy on myself when I can, and when I have the gumption, or the will, or the “spoons”, whatever you want to call it.

We have some new people at the office this week, so depending on how many of them would be able to show up, I may be working tomorrow.  If I do, I suppose I’ll probably write a blog post tomorrow morning.  So, I guess you’ll all know whether or not I’m working based on whether or not there’s a blog post.

Of course, if I don’t work tomorrow, there will be no blog post (or at least it’s very unlikely).  And, definitely, if I die (or become gravely or catastrophically ill or injured) before tomorrow, there will of course be no blog post.

As for everything else, well—to a good first approximation, everything else sucks.  Although the universe as a whole may actually be doing the opposite of sucking, since the cosmologic constant, or Dark Energy, or whatever, appears to be leading to the universe’s accelerated expansion.  But metaphorically, at least, the universe could still suck even while it expands (you could even say it blows).

None of my problems are resolving, nor are any improving, to be honest.  I can’t even accept telephone calls from people I know, nor can I seem to find the energy to play any music, nor to write any fiction.  I am more or less all out of “spoons”*, or nearly so.  And I don’t seem to be getting as many of them replaced when I do get them.  It’s as though my subscription has been downgraded.

That’s all metaphorical, of course.  When I say spoons, I’m referring to all members of the dairy professions.

(That was a Life of Brian reference.)

I’m sorry that I keep pausing while writing; I hope it’s not too boring for you while I do (ha ha).  I’m having some difficulty concentrating.  This is at least partly because my left eyelashes seem to be getting tangled and poking at parts of my eyelids in the wrong way, and I have not yet been able to locate and remove the offending lash(es).  This used to happen only to my right eye, but apparently things are changing themselves up—equal opportunity offenses, I guess.  Sometimes I feel like I want just to pull my whole eyelid off, it’s so irritating; it’s hard to ignore something that’s basically poking you in the eye.

My back and legs are already flaring this morning well above their baseline, and I feel like I got even worse sleep than usual.  I’m not as overtly angry as I was yesterday, not because the causes are any different, but because I’m just steadily more exhausted all the time.  I don’t have the energy to do anything much.  I can barely conjure the will to do this.

And, of course, my depression and my ASD and the related anxiety and all that continue to make life uncomfortable at all moments, and there are very few things that make up for it.  Even food is losing its taste.  Where is Lestat to turn me into a vampire?

Well, I know that isn’t going to happen because that doesn’t actually happen.  It’s called reality.  Google it.

Well, this post is going nowhere, isn’t it?  I guess in that, it’s like everything else, including the universe itself (as far as we can tell).  It’s some measure of how far I’ve sunk that the first draft of this little tidbit of a blog post has taken me over an hour to write, and again, this is on my mini laptop computer.  Given that I can generally type far faster than I can speak, that should give some indication of the degree of my dysfunction.

That’s it, I’m done with this for today, I’m out of here.  I unfortunately did not die yet this morning, so here we go again with the blog post.  Couldn’t I at least be hospitalized?  Heavy sigh.  I guess I’ll finish with a quote from a great artist who took what was probably the sensible course: “Oh well, whatever.  Never mind.”

*All Out of Spoons was the original title for the old Air Supply song All Out of Love, but they decided that wasn’t catchy enough**.

**That’s a lie, of course.  At least, it is as far as I know.

by

*Or as title

It’s another Wednesday morning, and I’m not walking to the train again this morning, because my feet blisters are still quite irritated.  It’s so frustrating; why were they okay on Saturday and Sunday but not on Monday?  Did I overdo it?  Or‒as I suspect‒did my socks influence things?

I wore a different type of sock on Monday than I had on the weekend.  I also wore that preventative ankle brace on my right foot, and that is the foot on which the majority of my blister problems developed.  Is that a coincidence?  Quite possibly, of course.  Don’t let Sherlock and Mycroft tell you otherwise with their apparently clever but illogical and quasi-magical notion that the universe rarely indulges in coincidence.  Except for things that are literally causally related, there is nothing that isn’t coincidence.

Of course, from another point of view, nothing is coincidence.  Everything follows the laws of physics‒or the laws of nature, or however you wish to characterize it‒and can do nothing but what it does when it does it.  That doesn’t mean it has any meaning beyond that, from the human point of view.  For instance, the idea that the universe is “sending you a message” is absurd, unless some specific person, who is of course a part of the universe, literally sends you a message.

I’ve often said that while everything has a cause or causes, many things‒almost everything, as far as I can see‒has nothing that a human would call a reason.  This is the old teleology error that goes at least as far back as Aristotle*.

I had no intention to write about all that today, but often the only way for me to know what I’m going to write at any given time is to start writing.

You might have noticed‒well, I doubt anyone was really paying attention, but now that I’m telling you it’s going to be much easier to catch‒that I have not indented my paragraphs today.  Before, I was trying to see how pleasing it was to indent manually while writing in Google Docs, in case I might decide to try again to write fiction, and to do it on Google Docs.  I’m sorry to say, I’ve felt no urge nor even any real willingness to write fiction.  I’ll probably never write any fiction again.  I’m getting pretty close to the point of not writing anything anymore.

I’m really just exhausted, in more than one sense of the word.  I hurt every fucking day, and have to dose myself with various things to keep it at least under control enough that I can carry out reasonably normal functions (for me, anyway).  I haven’t read for more than about twenty minutes total in the last week or week and a half.  I haven’t played my guitar in weeks, maybe more than a month.  I barely even listen to music**.  In fact, I tried to give my black Strat away, but that wasn’t really workable, and the person to whom I offered it was just confused.

Every little thing feels overwhelming.  The only thing I do in spare time is wander through things like Instagram and Threads, which are already starting to get boring.  Occasionally I will see things that are funny or interesting or frustrating, and sometimes I’ll even make comments that other people find interesting or funny or whatever.  But what’s the point?  I don’t feel a scintilla of any connection there; it’s not even an awkward conversation.  Not that it hasn’t been useful and sometimes enjoyable‒it has.  But I don’t have any friends there.

I also don’t really have any friends anywhere else (except if you count quite old friends, far away, with whom I rarely interact anymore).  I have “work friends” who are really more work acquaintances.  There’s no one with whom I share any time or interests outside of work.  I certainly don’t talk to my neighbors, nor to anyone on the train.

It’s been more than twenty years since I had a day without feeling constant pain (except rare moments of high-medication, which provides its own “fun”) and probably thirty years since I had a good night’s sleep without the use of heavy doses of sleep aids of one kind or another.  I’ve tried to get healthy during this time, don’t get me wrong.  I’m stubborn; I do not give up easily.  That’s probably the only reason I’m still alive, but it has other drawbacks as well.

What I ought to do is give up even trying to be healthy, even trying to get stronger or to thrive or even to survive.  Of course, knowing me, unrestrained self-indulgence in self-destructive practices would probably lead me to become unreasonably healthy and successful.

Nah, that’s not going to happen.  It would make a funny story, but the universe doesn’t seem particularly predisposed to irony, even if humans seem to love it and “find” it even where it is not.

I’m done for today, I think.  I wonder, if I didn’t ever write another blog post, how many people would notice, and then for how long they would keep wondering if I would return and how long it would be before they forgot about me entirely.  I suspect it would be a very short time.

*Anagrams include “a tit loser” and “tater silo”.  Also, see the top of this post.

**And when I do, it’s usually “reaction” videos to songs I know, because watching these feels almost like sharing a beloved song with a friend.

by

The paragraph indentations below are not merely done on a whim

     Wow, okay, yesterday was one heckuva day, and not in a good sense for the most part; it was a real cluster-fudge*, so to speak.  This is not meant to imply that yesterday was all bad or anything; that would be absurd.  I may be a madman (without a box, alas), but I am not so irrational as to think that there were no positive things in any given twenty-four hour period, even if I restrict the universe being evaluated down to only things that happen to me.

     I have never been one of those depressed people who interprets himself or his life as “all bad”.  That would make things easier, probably‒I would either have destroyed myself long ago or I would have embraced my identity as a pure villain**.  But I am capable of nuance, an attribute that seems often to be missing in our political discourse.

     Mind you, that latter happens largely because it’s what people seem to want to consume, or at least what enough people want, and to which enough people respond, that it becomes a stable and often successful strategy for politicians to use.  So, at least some of the “blame” for the vacuity of news and politics is that humans tend to run toward misleading simplicities rather than dealing with a complex world in which even people with whom they disagree can have good points and do good things and have their own pain and loss and fear and love and memory and dreams.  And even people with whom they agree on most things can nevertheless sometimes behave like complete assholes.

     The world is complicated.  How could it not be?  Almost everything of which we are aware and of which our reality consists is constructed from incomprehensibly vast numbers of interactions between quantum fields on tiny, tiny scales, with causality propagating at the speed of light, with behaviors and properties requiring complex numbers*** to describe mathematically.  If you’re an electrical engineer, you might use complex numbers in real life, because they are very useful for modeling cyclical processes like alternating current, but most macroscopic, emergent processes don’t require complex numbers to describe.

     Or maybe they would be best described, mathematically at least, using complex numbers, but most macroscopic, emergent phenomena have too many things going on‒too many moving parts, if you will‒to be efficiently described by any remotely practical mathematical formalism.  Even computer algorithms might be inadequate to describe the functioning of large scale matters in sufficient detail.

     It may be that natural language really is the best tool for describing such aspects of reality, since it allows one to vary one’s level of intricacy and complexity to suit the needs of any given situation.  But of course, to do so requires one to be rigorous to the point of being a martinet about one’s language usage.  If a word or term can have more than one meaning, it is crucial to specify which meaning one intends so as to avoid apparent disagreements that actually just come down to semantic confusion.

     I don’t necessarily mind semantic discussions‒I like words and language and logic and poetry and puns and all that stuff‒but if one is trying to share an explanation for something, and really to share understanding, precise word meaning is going to be necessary.  You can’t use html to write a program that runs in Pascal.  Okay that’s not a great analogy.  Let’s say…you can’t win a game of Texas hold ’em poker by following the strategy you would use for euchre.  It’s not just that you won’t win; your moves won’t even make sense.

     Okay, well, that’s probably enough for today.  I’ve been trying not to be as negative as I was yesterday, and I think I’ve succeeded reasonably well.  I do this sort of back and forth thing so often that some people have said they wonder if I am literally bipolar with a rapid cycling rate.  I can only respond by saying that this possibility has been considered by me and by several different mental health professionals, and it is thought not to be the case.  Of course, I’ve never been tried on a course of, say, lithium****, nor really on any of the other, less tricky mood stabilizers (other than as would-be adjuncts for chronic pain treatment).  But if I were occasionally waxing manic, I would imagine that sometimes I would feel really good about myself, and I rarely do.  Also, antidepressants have never triggered a manic or hypomanic event for me, and I’ve taken many different ones at different times.

     All right, well, there was a whole paragraph after I’d already said I’d written enough.  My apologies.  I do go on, don’t I?  Have a good day, if you can.

*If no one has used that euphemism as the name of a brand of candy, I’ll be even more disappointed in humanity than I was already.

**Knowing me, I would probably accidentally do good for the world every time I tried to do evil.  At least it would be funny.

***Complex numbers are numbers with one “real” part, i.e., some number on the usual, continuous number line, and one “imaginary” part, which is a real number multiplied by i, the square root of -1, which is no more truly imaginary than is any other number.

****I like the song a lot, though.