dysthymia

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No sleep till…

I’m at the train station quite early even for the first train of the day, today, but I was wide awake for more than two and a half hours before I even left the house.  I didn’t really sleep in yesterday much—which meant that I got my laundry done relatively early, and without having to interact with my housemates, which is always a bit more relaxing than the alternative, but it would be nice if I could just get some rest.

To be fair to me, so to speak, I did do some napping during the day, yesterday.  It’s a bit frustrating, though, that I only nap when I feel like I’m literally losing consciousness, not just slipping off to sleep but as if I’m actually succumbing to some state of disease or something.  It never just feels good to fall asleep, and when I wake up it’s just confusing and groggy and tense and weird.

One good thing about when I was taking Paxil for my depression was that it made me enjoy going to sleep.  That was something I don’t think I’d experienced before or have experienced since, though I’ve known people who described feeling particularly good about going to sleep.  However, Paxil had side effects and other issues that overwhelmed the benefits, I’m afraid.

Anyway, that’s enough of that for now.  The point I’m trying to make is that I am not terribly well rested, even though yesterday was Sunday, and so if I’m grumpy and weird and unpleasant in my writing this morning, apart from it being utterly typical for me, the reason is at least partly that I’m not rested.  It’s probably  also just that my personality is grumpy and weird and unpleasant, but that’s a longer-term issue, the solution to which I do not know.  I know how I could make the issue go away, but that’s not quite the same thing as solving it, so for now I’ll wait until I’ve given up on any solution to enact that choice.

And now, I am on the first train of the day, headed north toward the office, to start yet another week of marking time until something changes my life.  In the meantime, I did buzz my hair Saturday afternoon, down to the quarter-inch length of the clippers.

It’s been months and months since I cut my hair, and it was getting quite long, but that didn’t bother me.  What bothered me was that, when I went to see about possibly making a YouTube short or something similar, I saw how unruly my hair looked and how much it made my face look even rounder and more disgusting than otherwise.  This is despite the fact that I wash my hair every day and comb it carefully and all that.  But once that’s done, I tend to forget about it, and I spend as little time looking in mirrors as I can.  So, seeing a few practice videos of my face was shocking and borderline horrifying.

Also, let’s face it, having really short hair is just easier for maintenance.  Even though I recently ranted about the weirdness of the military being into short hair, I have to admit, it’s nice not to have to worry about it except for the occasional touch-up trimming.  It’s still over-warm and humid here in south Florida, and that’s another good reason for shorter hair.  Hopefully it will cool down at least a little as the week goes on.

There’s something weird happening with the sound the train is making on the tracks, or with its air-conditioning or some other system.  For a bit there, there was this nearly-rhythmic squeaking noise coming and going, almost as though there was a big cage full of discontented birds and the occasional hamster on a rusty wheel up in the roof of the train car.  It seems to be a function of how fast the train is going and whether it’s on the inside or outside of a slight curve in the track.  Further bulletins as events warrant.

I am writing this on my laptop computer, by the way.  It’s just much easier and more natural for me to write this way.  It’s been over a week since I’ve done any significant walking, because I’ve been sick, and I’m still under the weather, so carrying the computer isn’t an obstacle.

It’s not as though lugging the laptop makes my backpack that much heavier, anyway, so even once I get going back into walking—assuming I do—it shouldn’t be an issue.  When I was biking it could be a worry, because if it suddenly started to rain while I was biking that could be a situation where the computer could get wet in the backpack before I had the chance to adjust.

I haven’t been biking in a long time, though.  I haven’t even tried to replace the inner tube on my all but new bicycle.  It’s been sitting upside down on the patio near my door for months, and I have the equipment and have watched the instruction videos.  There’s nothing particularly difficult about doing it.  I just have no motivation to do it.

Anyway, that’s enough for now, I guess.  There’s nothing interesting or good or positive going on in my life, so all I have to convey is my more or less constant negativity.  Even I get tired of it sometimes (by which I mean nearly all the time), so I can only imagine how it is for all of you.  I apologize.  I know I’m terribly unpleasant.  Even people who love me don’t like to be around me much, as I’m sure I’ve noted before.

I just wish I could rest and sleep and feel refreshed and rejuvenated at some point.  Life can be unpleasant enough as it is, but it’s worse when you don’t feel like you ever really get a break or a respite.  Oh, well.  I guess I’ll continue to continue, at least for today.  We’ll see what happens by tomorrow.

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Meandering thoughts early on a Saturday morning

As I noted above, it’s early Saturday morning, and here in south Florida, it’s already 80 degrees (Fahrenheit) and muggy, despite it being the 11th of November.

The trees here don’t change color, there’s always mold and mildew and stuff like that, annoying insects are pretty much always out and about throughout the year, and I’m sure there are lots of other things worth reviling about the area.  I won’t even get into the politics and the general idiocy levels and the bureaucracies, because they’re probably not significantly worse here than anywhere else; they’re just different and weird, because it’s Florida.

I do enjoy being able to see the various reptiles that abound here most of the year.  You definitely don’t get many lizards in Michigan, even in the summer; you’ll see the occasional turtle here and there, and if you go into the woods, once or twice you might encounter a snake.  But it’s mostly mammals and birds (and various Arthropoda when the weather is warm) up there, and in pretty much all but the southernmost US states.

Mind you, Hawaii had no endemic mammals (if you don’t count humans) for quite a long time.  It’s the most isolated archipelago on the face of the Earth; how could mammals have reached it?  Birds, sure.  Insects—well, they can get almost anywhere*.  Amphibians—it’s more difficult, but they can hitch a ride on floating vegetation, as can many reptiles, since they don’t tend to require as much food and fresh water as mammals do.  But how would a population of mammals from the mainland survive an accidental trip to the Hawaiian islands?  It’s not impossible, but to my knowledge, until humans brought them, no other mammals had come to those islands.

Florida, on the other hand—that second most southern of the United States, and the most southern of the continental United States**—has been part of the mainland for as long as human beings have existed, as far as I know.  Plenty of mammals abound here, in addition to the various birds and reptiles and amphibians and insects and other arthropods.

It’s my understanding that, until quite recently, actual jaguars lived in Florida!  I’m not talking about the Jacksonville football team.  I’m talking about the actual, third-largest member of the cat family (and the largest in the western hemisphere).  I’m talking about that brilliant, beautiful predator that can casually fetch crocodiles from the waters of the Amazon to eat.  I’m talking about the member of the big cat family that, instead of going for the throat, like most big cats do, tends to jump down on the back of its prey and crush the prey’s skull in its immensely powerful jaws.

Death by jaguar would probably not be pleasant, but it would at least be stylish and cool.  And if a jaguar eats you, you become part of one of the most magnificent predators on Earth.  While it’s true that humans are better predators—they are pretty much the most powerful predators ever on the planet—there are plain few of them that could be described as magnificent and sleek and imposing.

There are no more wild jaguars in Florida, and there are probably no more wild Florida panthers, either.  Instead, we have this horrible proliferation of Naked House Apes, the vast majority of whom are far from inspiring either to look at or with which to interact.  They succeed by dint of science and technology, of ideas the vast majority of them could not begin to describe or explain.

How many humans who regularly use the GPS system could explain why the system has to account for both special relativity and general relativity, or else it would be utterly useless and inaccurate?  How many of them even understand what is meant by a logic gate, even as they carry around spectacularly sophisticated computers in their pockets, which they use to take selfies*** and watch idiotic nonsense on TikTok?

How many people can’t interact with an idea that requires more than 240 characters to express?

I could go on and on, of course.  And I’ll admit that all of those positive things and ideas—engines and mathematics and circuits and piping and roads and farms and houses and medicine and so on—came from people who at least appeared to be human (though one often wonders if there isn’t some deep level of difference within the species such that some minds are barely the same type as many others).  But those people, and their ideas, are exceptions to the general rule and tendency.

Even nowadays, when we see so many of the fruits of the brilliant ideas of the likes of Ada Lovelace and Emmy Noether and their sistren****, we have to realize that there is such an abundance only because those ideas are so potent—they persist, they spread, they lead to other, subsequent, consequent ideas.

The prevalence or rate of occurrence of brilliance is probably no greater than ever before, as a matter of percentages, but there are more people—thanks to the products of past genius—and the edifice on which they rest is so much vaster and more stable and powerful that newer, still achingly rare instances of genius can build on those monumental, cyclopean, Olympian structures and devise things and ideas that could, in principle, in the long run, change the face of the very universe itself.

I don’t know what point I’m making here, today.  This is almost free-association or even “automatic writing”.  I guess it’s a good way to pass the time while I’m on my way to the office, which is at least a nearly decent way to pass some of my time on the way to the grave.  But I’m impatient to reach my destination.  I don’t feel very well.  I wish I could rest.  I’m really, really tired, and yet I never seem to be able to sleep much.

Oh, well.  The universe was clearly not made for my comfort, so I have no right to feel slighted or misled by it.  Then again, rights themselves are a human invention (or, just possibly, a human discovery), as are laws and customs and social patterns and all that happy horseshit.  The universe at large does not recognize any rights at all, unless you want to count the right (as well as the absolute obligation) to follow the laws of physics, whatever their ultimate nature might be.

That’s enough of my random brain exudates***** for the time being.  I hope you all have an excellent weekend.

*There are apparently endemic midges in Antarctica!

**At latitudes that roughly match those of Egypt, apparently.

***And how many of them understand how LCD screens (or LED screens) are different from the old CRT screens of traditional TVs (or what those acronyms mean), and why some people predicted that color TVs would become “extinct” because the earlier ones relied on certain rare-Earth elements, and why that prediction was incorrect because clever people figured out there were other ways to do the same thing?

****It’s horrible to realize that the reason it’s comparatively easy to list the women who have made astonishing contributions to human knowledge and understanding—these two I just mentioned having done no less than, respectively, basically inventing computer science and programming before the computers had even been built and codifying and mathematically explicating how conservation laws in physics derive from fundamental symmetries—is because women have been prevented from even exploring their potential in such areas throughout most of history in almost every culture.  Interactions with humans throughout my life has made it quite clear to me that the average human female is at least as intelligent as the average human male.  This implies that, over the course of human history, to a good first approximation, half of all potential genius has been not merely squandered but prevented.  It’s heartbreaking and soul-crushing to imagine all the possible art and poetry and science and philosophy and mathematics and music and so on and so on that might have existed already had women not been systematically prevented from developing their skills and ideas throughout most of human history.  If anyone ever wonders why I get depressed, this is one of the reasons.

*****I think the replacement for the term “tweet”, as in a posting on Twitter, should be something like an X-cretion, an X-udate, an X-trusion, or maybe even an X-foliation.

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Roaches and live-streams and lightning, oh my!

I did not have nearly as good a sleep last night as I did the previous two nights.  I don’t know if that means I’m getting worse—with respect to my current respiratory illness—or that I’m getting better.  I certainly don’t feel better, and indeed, I am wearing a mask today because I’m coughing quite a bit still, and there’s no need to spread illness to other people in a petty way.

It would be one thing if I were doing it on purpose; I can imagine myself doing that in certain circumstances.  There are occasions in which I feel that there are simply too many humans for anyone’s good, including their own.  This has nothing to do with any silly, movie-Thanos concept of environmental correction or anything stupid like that.  It’s much more a spiteful, hateful, vindictive kind of thought, rather like the way one feels when one steps on a cockroach that has wandered into the kitchen when one was trying to have a nice meal or snack.

One is not really expecting to make any overall global gains by doing this, and one certainly doesn’t consider oneself to be aiding the cockroach population’s well-being by doing so.  Nevertheless, it is momentarily satisfying to act on that feeling of disgust and revulsion and just to crush out of existence that little, annoying thing that bothers you.  There’s no need to dress it up and give oneself “excuses”.  This is just how living things sometimes behave.

Incidentally, I actually think roaches are quite impressive creatures in all their many species.  They are obviously extremely adaptable, their “design” is simple and consistent, and in one form or another they have been on this planet for about three hundred million years.  Some of them can even have a kind of sleek aesthetic appeal, when they’re not encroaching (no pun intended) upon my personal environment.  Nevertheless, if they intrude on my living space, I will kill them.

I’m working tomorrow, so I’ll be writing another post tomorrow, unless the unexpected occurs in some fashion.  Perhaps some giant cockroach will step on me, or my illness will progress significantly, and I simply will not be able to go to work.  Maybe I’ll die.  But unless something drastic happens, I’ll be going to work.  If I were to switch weekends, it would mean that I would have to work the next two weekends in a row, and I really, really, really don’t want to do that.

I wish I had just left on September 23rd, like I’d hoped to do.  If I had done that, I would almost certainly been most of the way to my destination by now.  That would be 48 days at this point, and even at a very modest walking rate, I could have gone a thousand miles in that time.  I would have been able to see the changing colors of the leaves of deciduous trees in person again.

Or I would be dead, of course, in which case I would be at my destination, albeit in a different sense.  That was one possible point of the venture.  Now, even if I were to leave today, I probably would already have missed most of the changing leaves by the time I reached an environment in which they actually change.  Instead I’m stuck here, where it’s still muggy at five o’clock in the morning.

I was thinking yesterday of trying out live-streaming to YouTube, so I opened up the app on my phone to look into the process.  But, apparently, to live-stream from one’s phone, one has to have at least 50 YouTube followers.  YouTube suggested that I make and share some “shorts” to grow my audience—apparently because that tends to grow one’s audience—but when I started practicing a bit of video, I was reminded of the fact that I do not like my face.  That partly informed my decision to wear a mask today (though not as much as did my cough).  A mask and glasses improve my visage, and frankly, they feel more like me than does my actual face anymore.

So, I may soon be doing YouTube “shorts” and similar things, and if I do, I’ll possibly embed them here.  I’m not the hugest fan of such things, but at least they don’t hide or disguise the fact that they’re made on phone cameras.

It would be nice to get to the point where I could live-stream things onto YouTube from my phone, because there are things I sometimes consider doing that might be worthy of live-streaming—though the terminology could become amusingly ironic.  But, of course, one doesn’t need 50 followers or more to live-stream from a computer, and I do have a portable laptop computer.  I’m writing this blog post using it, and I have been using it for such writing all week.

Technically, the computer needs to have a Wi-Fi connection of some variety to be able to upload, but my smartphone can be used as a mobile hotspot.  I’ve tried it before, and it’s been quite effective.  The phone gets literally hot before too long—the processing of information does produce waste heat and increase local entropy, after all—but that wouldn’t be too big a concern.

Anyway, further bulletins about all that as events warrant.

In the meantime, I hope most of you don’t have to work tomorrow, and that you have families and/or friends with whom you can spend the weekend doing things that are at least somewhat enjoyable.  I’m unlikely to be lucky enough to be gone or incapacitated or otherwise prevented from doing whatever it is I do by tomorrow, but over a long enough time, even the vanishingly improbable becomes almost inevitable.

For instance, if you had a 1% chance of being struck by lightning in any given day*, your chance of being hit by lightning by tomorrow would be, of course, 1%.  After a week, though, your chances of being hit on some day would be about 6.79%**.  After 30 days, your likelihood of having been struck by lightning at  least once*** would be 26.03%.

After 100 days, your odds of having been hit by lightning would not be 100%, of course, but they would be high:  about 63.40%, if my calculations are correct.  And after a full (non-leap) year, your chances of having been hit by lightning would be…97.45%.

They never will truly reach 100%, no matter how long you try—that’s just the way probability works.

It’s a bit like trying to get a massive particle to go the speed of light.  No matter how small the mass, even though you can get closer and closer, to reach the speed of light would require infinite energy.  This is related to the fact that the ratio of 1 over the square root of (1 minus (the square of the velocity of the particle over the square of the speed of light)) goes to infinity as the velocity goes to c, the speed of light.

energy

That’s not why probabilities never reach 100%, but it is mathematically reminiscent.  One has to wait an infinite time for a low probability event to become, effectively, certain.  But for practical purposes, it can quickly become so likely as to make other considerations irrelevant.

And now, I’m at the station before my destination—not metaphorically, alas, but literally.  So I’ll sign off for today.  I hope you have a good one.

*Because, apparently, you live in a ridiculously lightning-prone area and enjoy playing golf in thunderstorms using iron golf clubs.

**NOT 7%.  Odds of independently occurring, repeated chances do not add in a simple way.  If they did, then after 101 days, one would have 101% chance of having something happen, which makes no sense mathematically or logically.

***And when it happens once, you’re unlikely to get a chance to go for a second hit, so I’m leaving that possibility out of the equation.

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“Be resident in men like one another and not in me”

Well, I’m on the laptop (computer) again today.  I specify that it is the computer because I want to make it clear that I’m not on anyone’s actual lap top.  I don’t think there is anyone out there whose lap could tolerate me sitting on it—I suppose Santa Claus could maybe use his magic, but it’s a bit early in the year for him, even given holiday-time mission creep—and probably even fewer laps on which I would be able to tolerate sitting.  And one cannot really be on a lap around a race track or in a swimming pool, unless one is actually going around that track or swimming, either of which activity would make it very difficult to type.  I guess the top of such a lap could be thought of as its beginning, as in “taking it from the top” in music.  But that wouldn’t change the writing difficulty.

That’s a weird opening to a blog post.  Sorry.  I think I’m particularly weird in the morning, or at least I’m a particular kind of weird in the morning.  I know that, as with many people suffering from depression, my mood is often at its worst in the morning, but sometimes I’m at my least weird and my most sane—from my own point of view, anyway—in the morning relative to the middle of the day or the afternoon or the evening.  Often I feel most sane when I’m most depressed.

It’s quite frustrating when, by the end of the day, my energy level lifts a bit, because then I have a hard time relaxing and getting to sleep.  But, of course, it’s not as though I can sleep in, or sleep late to make up for staying up too late.

I will say, though, that last night I got nearly four hours of sleep (pretty uninterrupted once I got to sleep), and it felt surprisingly deep.  I had at least one dream of which I was vaguely aware, because it was interrupted when my alarm sounded.  I don’t remember anything about the dream, other than that it was a dream, and I awakened feeling quite disoriented*, thinking it must be much later than it was.  It wasn’t.  It was just as late as it was, as one might expect.

My work friend who had the stroke is apparently doing pretty well, which is good news.  It feels so ironic to me how often people around me, ones who have a lot for which to live, and who have good reasons to be healthy, and who have families and friends, are stricken with significant health problems.

I’m referring to serious, dangerous health problems here.  I have some health problems—chronic pain, stuff like that—and I certainly have mental health issues.  But I’m the person I know whose life could most easily tolerate significant health setbacks, or at least the one whose ill-health and/or death would have the least impact on those around me and the world at large.  Even so, on I go.

Yet my life, such as it is, is in fact steadily eroding.  It has already become quite a poor, puny, pathetic little remnant of a life.  I don’t do anything other than go from my one room (with attached bathroom/shower) to work and back, and I write this blog.  I don’t play guitar or write fiction or sing or any of that anymore.  I’m getting more and more tired of even non-fiction books.

I don’t watch any ongoing TV shows other than things like Loki, which is quite limited, and Doctor Who.  Unfortunately, even the latter is something that I wish I could watch with someone…and not via a cheesy-ass “watch party” thing online.  I don’t understand how those could be any fun at all.

I have a hard time even visualizing people I know when I’m not around them.  I mean, I know they exist, of course, but I can’t readily imagine what they might be doing, or that they’re doing anything in particular, if I’m not with them.  I know they exist, but I only really feel them existing when I’m in their presence.

Maybe that’s part of the whole ASD thing, I don’t know, but it’s always been very difficult for me to maintain any form of relationship over significant distances.  There have been exceptions, but you could count them on maybe half the fingers of one hand.  And those exceptions always involved nearly-continuous communication.

Still, while of course I know, intellectually, that other people are all still there when I’m not in their presence, I don’t seem intuitively to model them except when they’re nearby—and when they’re nearby, I don’t so much model them as watch them in a kind of analytic way (though I do feel the noise of their emotions).

So, when I’m alone, I often feel*** truly and completely and fundamentally alone in the universe.  I often feel that way even when other people are around, though there are some distractions and intellectual engagement that help make that a bit easier.  But there have been relatively few people in my life with whom I feel really connected, and eventually most of those people have gone far away or cut ties with me or died or whatever.

Who can blame them?

So, anyway, that’s the deal.  It’s Wednesday, and that means it’s payroll day.  And tomorrow will be my traditional Thursday post.  I sometimes entertain the notion of writing blog posts in the afternoon or evening, and seeing if the content is different in character, and if anyone would notice.  But to do that would require serious restructuring of my routines and schedules and things, and I don’t think I’m up for it.  Also, morning is when I have time to do this.

I’m awake anyway, so I might as well use that fact for something productive…if that’s how this can be described.

Please try to have a good day.

*It’s weird how the Brits tend to use “disorientated” even though the root word is disorient, not disorientate (which sounds, perhaps, like the name of Catherine Tate’s sibling or child**).  I guess even in the states we say “disorientation”, but I think that’s just because “disoriention” would not flow very well.  I’m probably biased.  One related thing I find frustrating, and found especially frustrating when I was in medical practice (and training) was how many doctors, even American ones, would refer to the state of having been dilated as “dilatation” instead of just “dilation”.  It feels like they lost control of themselves, and only just barely were able to resist saying “dilatatatatatatation”.  It makes no good sense.

**Of course, Catherine Tate is her stage name, so it would be weird for a sibling or child of hers to have the last name “Tate”, to say nothing of the first name “Disorien”.

***I don’t think I’m alone, of course.  I’ve never been tempted by the philosophical position of solipsism; it doesn’t make any sense, at least in its literal form.  But I definitely feel a sort of intuitive pseudo-solipsism in some senses and at some times.  By that I mean I am the only person I have any actual sense of persistently existing.  On the other hand, I can sometimes “feel” other people’s emotions, in a sense, when they’re around, and one on one that can be good when one is a doctor.  However, when there are a lot of other people around it can quickly be overwhelming, especially if it’s also literally noisy.  Two kinds of cacophony is too much.

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I was off sick yesterday. You’re welcome.

Hi, everybody.  I’m writing this blog post on my laptop computer.  I brought it back to the house with me on Friday (when I left work early) and it seemed a shame not to make use of it.  Of course, this was my intention when I brought it.  I like typing much better than using the phone, as you all know, if you’ve been reading my blog posts for very long, and I also needed to give my thumbs a rest because of the relatively mild but nagging and persistent arthralgia* they’ve been having.

I am sorry that I did not write a post yesterday.  I was out sick; I have been sick all weekend, feeling quite crappy, I’m afraid.  I’m still far from my baseline health, but I need to go into the office or too many things are going to get into disarray and be terribly backed up.

Also, to be honest, when I’m just sitting at the house, I don’t do well.  It doesn’t help that we had the “Fall back” thing this weekend, but even without that, my sense of time’s passage was really screwed up over this slightly prolonged isolation.  It felt like a surreal sort of turbulent time flow, with me waking up, thinking it must be morning, and realizing that it was only ten thirty at night, and I’d barely dozed off (for instance).  My sleep has been deeply discombobulated.  I definitely got a bit of a feel for the notion of time not being linear but being a “big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey…stuff.”**

Unfortunately, I haven’t been walking for three or four days, at least nothing of significance.  My back is absolutely killing me.  I can barely reach down to tie my shoes, even when seated.  I feel as though I’ve aged decades over this weekend.  I don’t know if this is partly from coughing a lot, or mainly from lying around so much or what.  Probably it’s multi-factorial.  In any case, though, I feel horribly stiff in addition to having what I suspect is an on and off fever (because I have intermittent sweats, especially after taking analgesics/antipyretics).

It’s interesting to note, as I just did when I pre-saved this blog post, that last year’s post for November 7th was written on a Monday.  So, we’ve shifted to one day later for the same date this year, at least at this time of the year.  I guess that makes sense, since 52 (weeks) times 7 (days) is 364, which gives one extra day in non-leap years.  I’ve probably noted this before, but it still sometimes strikes me as interesting, albeit probably not very important.

It also shows that I’ve been writing these daily blog posts instead of writing fiction most days of the week for at least a year, and almost certainly quite a bit longer.  That’s rather disappointing, at least to me, because these were meant to be therapeutic in some sense; I was hoping to get my mental health into better condition before nearly this long had passed.  Of course, I don’t know what my mental health would have been like had I not been writing these blog posts.  Maybe it would have been better, maybe it would have been worse.  Regrettably, I can only imagine the alternatives; I cannot actually carry out any form of controlled test.

I probably would have been better off if I had just either written fiction every day, even if almost no one ever read it, or not having written anything at all.  I don’t think I would have been any healthier, had that been the case.  In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if I were already dead*** in that case.  But at least I wouldn’t be facing this same daily grind of nonsense and futility.

The funny thing is, I could write fiction.  I’ve never had traditional writer’s block in the sense of sitting and looking at the page or screen and not knowing what to write.  I’ve just felt utterly unmotivated.  It’s much akin to the fact that I seem unable to say, “I love the world and I love myself” even in my own head.

I just have no will to do anything.  Or perhaps it would be more precise to say that I have no drive to do anything.  I have will in the sense of being able to resist various impulses, albeit imperfectly and not consistently.  The various portions of my frontal lobes that are involved in impulse regulation seem to be functioning reasonably well.  Sometimes I think they’re functioning too well.  Unfortunately, the stress-related parts of my brain have grown stronger over time—my amygdala is probably pretty beefy at this stage, and I don’t think it used to be that way.  I am much more tense and stress-able than I ever used to be.

I mean, I guess I’ve been through a fair amount, and chronic pain (and a stint in FSP) certainly doesn’t help to calm one’s fight-or-flight responses, though it can lead to kind of “learned helplessness” over time.

Anyway, that’s enough for today, I think.  My mind went wandering for about ten minutes just now, and I sort of forgot what I was doing, so I think I’ve said more than I have to say for today.  I hope you all are physically well, and that you’re mentally exceptionally good.  Why not?  Hope is hope; it’s only a bit more constrained than wishes.  I can wish for world peace to happen today, by some miracle, and I know that’s almost impossible, but I can (and do) sincerely hope for you all to have a good day.

*From athro- referring to joints or articulations, and -algia, referring to pain, as in analgesics.  So, arthralgia literally just means “joint pain”.  But it sounds more impressive in Latin (or is it Greek, or both?), and also, if it’s in a “dead” language, then it can be a term that medical professionals around the world can use without having to learn each other’s many terms for the various things.

**A quote from the 10th Doctor (played by David Tennant) from Doctor Who, Series 3, episode 10, “Blink”.

***Can dead people be surprised that they’re dead?  I suspect not, but it’s quite difficult to know, as we get no actual (reliable) reports from the undiscovered country.

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I searched for form and land; for years and years I roamed

It’s Friday, and since I don’t work tomorrow (on what would have been my Mom’s birthday), it really is the last day of the work week for me.  Not that I have anything planned for the weekend, other than doing my laundry on Sunday morning.  I don’t know whether I feel worse on the Fridays before I work on Saturday, or on Fridays before I don’t, but neither one is worth anticipation, and today is no exception.  I feel quite blah.

I did not walk (nor jog) to the station today.  I got slightly stiff, and had a mild exacerbation of my back pain, during the day yesterday, and decided I would give myself a break this morning for my body to do any adapting and recovery it needs.  It’s a bit of a shame; the weather is semi-cool and there is a nice wind blowing, so it would have been pleasant for walking.  Depending on how I feel this afternoon, I may walk back from the train, but then again, I deliberately wore boots today to discourage myself from not letting myself rest.

Also, of course, I like my boots, and wanted to wear them.  As you can see, I have not given them away or otherwise disposed of them yet.

I’m trying to do the whole “I love the world” thing, but I’m having trouble with it.  I haven’t given up yet, but my mood seems to get in the way even of that much.  It’s apparently hard for me even to say that I love the world, let alone myself.

I wish my mood were more consistent.  Little moments where mantras work and when I feel that I’ve made some progress give me a false shot of hope, but then‒as always‒I wake up ridiculously early in the morning and just watch the clock until it’s late enough that I can say, “Fine, you might as well just get up.”  Then I find every little thing stressful and irritating.  Maybe I give up trying to give myself calm, positive self-messages and just try to get in some regular mindfulness meditation and/or self-hypnotism.

Or maybe I should just give up, full stop.

I would obviously like it if I were to be able to be in at least a neutral mood most of the time.  Of course, it would be preferable to be able to be positive a goodly amount of the time, but that’s a lot to ask.  It would even, as I said, be acceptable just to be glum all the time so that I didn’t get all the yo-yo action that drives me ever crazier.

No, I don’t appear to have any clear form of bipolar disorder, based on clinical criteria, just in case anyone’s wondering.  I’ve been seen and evaluated by a decent number of mental health professionals, and though, of course, they could be wrong, they seem to have a consensus about my dysthymia and depression, and none of them seem to consider any form of bipolar to be an issue.  Although maybe I’m masking symptoms and signs of that, even from myself.

It seems unlikely, but I’m apparently pretty good at masking in general, so who knows?  Not me.  We never lost control.  You’re face to face with the man who sold the world.

Sorry, I slipped into quoting a David Bowie/Nirvana song there.  It’s a good song (both versions) and it’s fairly simple to play and sing, so that’s nice.  I haven’t ether played or sung it in quite a while, but I listen to it from time to time.

I think it’s interesting that, in the Nirvana version, Kurt changed the line in the second verse from “We must have died alone, a long, long time ago,” to “I must have died alone, a long, long time ago.”  He definitely gave away some of his internal issues in his choice of lyrics in a lot of his songs, and apparently, even in his covers.  It didn’t do him much good, unfortunately; he certainly didn’t seem to get the help he needed.

I guess it’s hard.  The world is very big and impersonal, and though it is beautiful in all sorts of ways, it does not seem to give a flying f*ck at a rat’s a*s about any particular, extremely finite, living creatures.

Anyway, I guess it’s fitting for me to end the week on a downer, since I tend to start the week on a downer, and the occasional upbeat posts are the exceptions.

I’d like to say something snarky and dismissive and contemptuous to close out, but I really do hope that everyone who reads this has a good weekend, as do all the people whom all the readers love and about whom they care, and then on out to six or so more layers.  What the heck, why doesn’t everyone have a good weekend?  I, myself, don’t expect to do so, but it would be at least some consolation if everyone else in the world did.

See if you can all do me that favor, please.

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I don’t have any vember…do you?

It’s November now, so Happy November, everyone, if that’s something that people say on any kind of regular basis.  October is generally my favorite month, and now it’s over, so at some level that’s disappointing.  On the other hand, I don’t think I can remember ever having a worse October (subjectively speaking*) than the one that’s just finished, so I guess I can’t feel too bad about it being over.

I’m quite concerned about a coworker of mine, who is one of the few people I would consider a friend at work.  She had some weird sensations and weakness (subjectively) in her hand Monday, and said she felt weird, though when I tested her grip strength it was normal.  But I guess it got worse by the end of the day and she went to the hospital.  Third-person (and thus unreliable) information is that she had a small stroke of some kind, which seems strange to me given that she is only 41.  It’s not impossible, of course, but I certainly didn’t consider it likely.  I thought it much more probable that she had slept oddly on her arm or something along those lines.

I feel bad not to have been more proactive and not recommending that she go quickly to the doctor or emergency room, but it’s not as if I’m in practice anymore, and I don’t really give medical advice one way or the other when I can help it.  Also, frankly, my own mental state is far from good, and is trending lower over time.  I can’t trust myself to care for myself; it’s hard to be able to do my best for other people (though I usually like them more than I like myself).

Still, I would wish that I could have worked some miracle of prevention or whatnot on Monday.  It would probably have been better to encourage her to go to the ER sooner…even if it probably would not have made a difference (some of this is talk is likely me just trying to make myself feel better, but I think it’s nonetheless true).

I did not walk significantly yesterday‒a total of only about one and a half miles.  Today though, I walked to the train station, and arrived nicely just as the 610 was pulling in, which I am again rather foolishly happy to say I felt no urge to try to catch.

The walking is getting easier, which is nice.  I think the spandex knee and ankle supports are making a difference, and it seems pretty clear that these shoes are going to be simply better than the boots would have been.  I’m still sad about that, but reality is that which it is; we do not have veto power over it.

It occurred to me this morning, as I was getting near the end of my journey, that I may be getting fit enough that I could throw a bit of jogging in‒very slowly and gradually‒without hurting my back.  I’ve always enjoyed jogging/running, and maybe, if I take advantage of the delayed and postponed nature of my epic quest, I can thereby turn it into something even more impressive.

I imagine myself starting by doing perhaps a brief warm-up walk‒say, to the end of the block‒and then running forty paces the first day, then eighty paces the second, then one hundred twenty the third, and so on.  I’m sweaty in the morning and bring a complete change of clothes anyway, when I walk to the train, so it would make nary a difference as far as I can anticipate.

One of the advantages of such a practice would simply be the decreased time for the journey in the morning.  It takes just about an hour and a half to walk the five miles to the train in the morning, but even a light jog could bring that down to less than an hour, though that would be a long-run goal (no pun intended, but it’s slightly funny, so I’ll leave it).

It would also be quite nice to start every day with a real endorphin rush, which jogging/ running always tended to give me.  Even when I was in residency, for part of the time at least, I used to jog about four miles in the morning on days when I wasn’t post-call.  I had to use a treadmill usually, because this was in New York, and much of the year it was too cold for jogging outdoors.  But it was a good habit, and I felt good, and I looked good (for me, at least).

It’s something to think about.  Meanwhile, November is a month with a very important US holiday:  Thanksgiving.  It’s a nice, foody holiday, and even though I don’t have anyone with whom I celebrate it anymore, I still tend to get something like a turkey sandwich with cranberry based topping, which is available not far from me.  I may do that this year.  Maybe I won’t.  I don’t know what I’ll do, but there doesn’t seem to be any real reason to specify my plans, or even to have any such plans.  We’ll just see what happens.

In the meantime, I hope you all have a good month.  Thank you for reading.

*Event-wise, of course I’ve had worse Octobers.  After my divorce, and then while I was in prison, those were objectively worse months, and my chronic pain was worse than it is now.  But weirdly enough, my mood was less low.  Possibly this is is a matter of some kind of emotional erosion.  More of it was going on back then, but I’ve now been eroded to a lower level than I ever was in the past.  I’m probably overthinking things.

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Sometimes every night can feel like Devil’s Night

I walked to the train station this morning after having walked less than a mile and a half total yesterday‒it was a deliberate break.  I arrived just as the 610 train was pulling in.  Indeed, I was stopped at the railroad crossing by the lowering of the gate that presaged that train’s arrival.  I’m pleased to be able to say (honestly) that I felt no urge whatsoever to try to catch that train.  It would seem that I’ve internalized the fact that waiting at the station for twenty more minutes is both useful and pleasant, giving me a bit of time to cool down and dry off a little.

It is a bit less breezy today, so I’m a bit sweatier than I was most days last week.  I also decided not even to bother wearing shorts this morning, since‒given the spandex knee and ankle supports I wear‒it exposes all of about three centimeters of very pale and faintly scarred legs to be cooled down.  I imagine that I look like some old Bavarian school child wearing weird, black lederhosen when I dress that way.  That’s not as big an issue, though, as the fact that I’m building up too much laundry.  It took way longer yesterday to clean all my clothes than it usually does.

I know that I received at least two comments on my post from Saturday, but I have not stopped to read more than the first few words of either one.  I just want right now to thank the people who made those comments‒it was obvious from the first few words that they are positive and supportive‒and let them know that I appreciate their responses.

I’m sorry to reveal that I haven’t read them fully yet, because of a very strange but intense anxiety that doesn’t quite make sense to me.  I’ve really sunk pretty low, I guess, when I find it stressful even to read comments on my blog that are obviously positive.  I don’t get it.  What is wrong with me that I get intimidated by even that level of interaction?  It’s absurd, but not in a pleasant or funny way; it’s frankly rather contemptible. Those people deserve a better response from me, and I do intend to make some reply soon, hopefully today.  Sorry it’s taking so long.

I wish I could tell you that I had a good weekend, or that I feel less depressed, but it really wasn’t any kind of restful time or anything.  Mostly what I did Saturday evening and Sunday was eat a few indulgent things and watch “reaction” videos on YouTube.  I may have noted this before, but watching such reactions is, in some ways, almost like watching a show or movie with a friend who hasn’t seen it before.  Even that fact, though, is rather depressing.

Speaking of friends and reactions and comments, I just want to make it clear again that I don’t really respond to Facebook comments about my sharing of my blog posts on that venue.  I don’t even necessarily read them.  Dealing with Facebook and the like is more stressful than dealing with comments here.  TwiXter would probably be even more stressful, but I don’t really ever get replies to anything on that venue, though I share each post there.

I finished Sapolsky’s new book, and it was good.  I can’t help but recommend it highly.  I have to admit, I was a bit disappointed that he didn’t say more about depression.  In the end, what he mostly said (apart from reiterating that it was, like all else in the brain, a purely biological process) was to relay some facts about depressive people being more accurate in their assessment of many things rather than being irrationally negative‒whereas most people are irrationally positive, especially about themselves (I’ve known about this research for years).  So, to paraphrase Sapolsky, depression in certain circumstances can be seen as a pathological dysfunction in one’s capacity for self-deception.

Maybe.  Certainly it is possible that simply to face reality in as unbiased a fashion as possible is inevitably depressing‒which is a further depressing thought in and of itself‒and that all optimism entails delusion at least at some level, or at the very least, it entails ignorance.

This is related to the fact that I ask for people to give me (hopefully) new ideas when trying to offer their support against my depression, because I don’t want to feel better by means of self-delusion or even via neurological manipulations (though the latter may be a bit better).  But maybe ideas alone can’t help against my depression‒certainly CBT didn’t work that well for it‒since it’s more about the tendencies of the state of the system than the outputs of any particular thought processes or program or whatever.

What I should probably do is just give up on trying to feel better.  As those who read Saturday’s post can probably tell, I often get close to that.  It certainly can be hard to keep trying; I’m ever more discouraged.  And now we’re approaching the end of my favorite month, and we’re getting deeper into the longer, darker days of the year.  I didn’t really want to make it this far, to be clear, but I derailed my momentum for my previous plan for the sake of coworkers, and I haven’t yet regained it.  But that can be corrected, at least mostly.

Meanwhile, I continue to tread water, but the ocean gets colder at this time of year, and the waters get choppier.  It wouldn’t be surprising if a particularly big wave drove me under for the final time soon.  It wouldn’t even be really unwelcome.

I’m also constantly, if half-heartedly, seeing if I can lure in some sharks.  That’s a further metaphor, of course, but it has a specific meaning in my mind; it’s not just a vague notion.  I won’t get into it more for now, but maybe I will, later.

I hope you all have a good day, and have a good week.  For those of you who recognize the pseudo-holiday, have a Happy Devil’s Night.  Try not to burn down any inhabited buildings or anything, okay?  No need to give Devil’s Night a bad name.

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Please use caution; this blog post MIGHT be “triggering”

It’s Saturday, and I’m at the train station, having walked here again this morning, as I did yesterday.  It’s a bit interesting that my pedometer reads as me having walked about 5 and a half miles, when the Google Maps distance from house to station is just barely shy of 5 miles.  But, of course, that assumes more or less direct travel and my walking may meander a bit, and I take up my waiting spot at the very farthest end of the platform (to board near the front of the train).  Train platforms do tend to be long, because trains are long.

I had a very difficult day yesterday, as you may have been able to predict, if you read yesterday’s blog post.  I felt pretty horrible, despite having done my walking in the morning‒no endorphin effects, it seems, were available, or they were swamped by other forces.

During most moments of the day I felt angry and sullen and, especially, hopeless.  I frequently thought about things like dousing myself with a mixture of lighter fluid (2 kinds) and rubbing alcohol and setting myself on fire, or taking blades from the supply of replacements for my box cutter and just cutting my wrists or neck open.  It was a bit like the way one feels when one stares over the edge of a high cliff or bridge:  it would be so easy just to jump, in many ways easier than not jumping.

And it was enticing, though not in any exciting kind of way.  It was a curiosity and a sense of despair combined with a dark feeling of compulsion, and I thought of the possibilities frequently, imagining what they might be like, how it would feel and all that, without any fear, though I recognized that I would not want any pain to endure long.  Despite that, at one point I contemplated just smearing my face with charcoal light fluid and lighting it, or alternatively splashing it with Drano or similar, just to ruin what’s left of my visage, because I don’t like how I look or feel, so I might as well just take the final step of ruining how I can ever possibly look, so I no longer need even to bother imagining that I might be able to recover some of my past health or strength.

Of course, I didn’t actually do any of those things, though I brought the lighter fluid and the blades and everything out and got them near at hand, so that at least I could really feel the salience of the ideas.  I don’t really know how close I actually came to doing any of the things I contemplated.  Maybe I was not close at all; or maybe only the slightest nudge of the wrong kind would have been enough to topple me over the edge.

I certainly didn’t feel very hesitant or resistant, nor did I feel afraid.  I did not, however, want to inconvenience or frighten (or traumatize, let’s be honest) the people at work.

I also don’t want to “trigger” any potential readers who might have similar urges or self-hatred or depression or proneness to such thoughts‒that would truly be terrible.

I am likewise not trying to tell lurid and shocking tales just to get a reaction or attention‒except in the sense that I want to make it clear, in a way I’m not readily able to do face to face (so to speak), that I’m really not doing well at all, and that I could probably use some serious help.  I am not good at seeking help, though.  I hate myself too much to want to save myself, at least unreservedly.

I feel like someone who has swum or been stranded so far out to sea that land is no longer in sight‒I’m not even certain in which direction it lies‒and the prospect of swimming back to shore seems so daunting and exhausting and hopeless that the idea of just giving up and drowning seems easier (and perhaps better).

And, of course, one occasionally wishes for sharks to come.  But shark attacks are much fewer and farther between than fear and popular culture would lead one to believe.

Oh well.  It seems that I can tread water for a very long time, to push that analogy farther*.  But I am very tired in many ways and I never can seem to get enough sleep‒which I guess makes sense when one is treading water.  I don’t know which way to go, or how I would possibly be able to reach shore even if I did.  Maybe the Coast Guard or some friendly fisher-folk will come along and happen to see me and rescue me.  Or perhaps I’ll just go under.

Whatever happens to me, I hope you all have a good remainder of your weekend.

*This analogy at least helps to explain why it’s so frustrating when well-meaning people say things like, “Hold on, keep going, don’t give up.”  Imagine a suspense movie in which someone is stranded out at sea and is treading water but they have a radio or phone or whatever, and someone says to them (over the phone), “Just keep treading water, keep swimming, there are people who would be sad if you drowned.”  And the swimmer, optimistically trying to complete the speaker’s sentence, might say, “Is a rescue party on the way?  Are you in a boat or a search plane?”  And the caller says, “What?  No, no, nothing like that.  I don’t have a boat or a plane or anything.  I just don’t want you to drown.”  And the swimmer asks, “Well, have you called the Coast Guard or the Navy or the Police or something?”  And the phoner replies, “Oh, no, I haven’t called anyone or tried to get you help or anything.  I just don’t want you to drown.”  Such a swimmer might be justified in finding the exhortation to keep swimming a bit presumptuous and irritating, perhaps even maddening and disheartening.  I’m not saying this reflects the actual attitude of such “callers”.  I’m quite certain that they have the very best of intentions.  But this is the way it can feel for the person who is struggling, and who is told to try to hold on, but given no material help in doing so.

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Don’t worry; this won’t be like yesterday’s post

It’s Friday again, and I’m working again tomorrow, so this won’t be the end of the work week for me.  I did not walk to or from the train station yesterday, deciding to give myself that recovery day after nearly 24 miles of walking over the previous two days.  But I did walk to the station this morning.  I probably won’t walk back this evening, but that will depend at least a bit on how I feel.

I started off the morning yesterday in a moderately good mood, at least for me.  As you may have noticed, I was rather silly and self-indulgent as I wrote yesterday’s post, of which the footnotes were almost longer than the main body.  I feel better about such footnotes while reading Determined, because Robert Sapolsky seems at least as fond of frequent and often extensive asides as I am.  Maybe it’s something to do with having the name Robert*.

I often imagine that my less dark and somber and repetitive posts‒like yesterday’s‒will be more popular than my usual ones.  That’s certainly how I feel when I’m writing them:  “Here, at least, is something that readers might be able to enjoy, and which deals with somewhat interesting subjects.”

However, time and again, I have found that such posts receive fewer likes and comments and so on than my darker posts.  It’s been similar to the way my interactions with other people in the workaday world‒and before that, the academic world‒tend to be.  When I’m feeling relatively good, and feeling good about myself, people seem to find me confusing and irritating (at least based on the ways they interact with me, and their expressions, and the impatient tones of their voices, and their tendencies to keep their distance).  Maybe I just get too hyper and silly.

On the other hand, when I’m dysthymic and even fully depressed, although people do seem to find me a bit of a downer, they don’t seem to mind me as much.  It’s frustrating, but it’s been a long-standing pattern that I’ve noticed throughout my life.  It makes it that much harder to want to bother trying to be upbeat and energetic.  What’s the point, if when I’m actually feeling halfway good about myself I just rub other people the wrong way?

I guess maybe it would be different if I truly didn’t care whether people liked me at all or found me a pain in the ass.  But there are at least some people with whom I like to be on friendly terms, if I can, and that very class of people seems to find an upbeat, positive, energetic Robert to be annoying.  I guess maybe I’m just too weird overall; and at least when I’m depressed, the exposure of others to my weirdness is blunted, whereas when I’m in one of those increasingly rare states of higher energy, my weirdness comes out in full force.

I’m tired of this, anyway, all of it.  The universe, even in a form recognizable as similar to how it is now, may continue for tens of billions of years, but even the small span of years since I last saw my kids‒about ten and a half of them‒seems functionally eternal to me.  And, of course, depending on the time scale one uses, it could seem huge to anyone, and on other scales it can be unnoticeably tiny.  If one proceeds along orders of magnitude, rather than some linear measure, then the human lifespan is somewhere in the middle between the Planck time and the life of the universe, at least as we know it**.  But that’s neither here nor there.

When one is feeling depressed and hopeless***, people are prone to say things like “Be strong” and “Hold on”, as if these were self-evidently good things to do.  But they are not self-evidently good.  They are very much context-dependent.

If one follows such advice regarding a feud or vendetta or some other culturally negative or destructive matter, one is prone to do far greater harm than if one just let things go and gave up.  Think of Ahab in Moby Dick.  And wouldn’t it have been better if Hitler had killed himself ten years earlier than he did?  If many of the mass-shooter/suicide perpetrators had skipped some steps and just killed themselves in the first place, would not the world‒and its memory of those individuals‒be vastly better?

I need to leave, I need to escape, I need to stop trying.  I’m too exhausted.  Above all, I need to stop even hoping to be upbeat and positive.  It tends, mainly, not to be profitable (metaphorically or literally) for me.

Okay, that’s enough crap from me for now.  I’m working tomorrow, so the plan is for me to write another bloody post then.  I doubt that I’ll be lucky enough (or that you will be lucky enough) to have events intercede and let me stop trying anymore before then.  But I can always at least hope for the final disappearance of hope itself, even in its flimsiest fragments, so I can just call it a life and be done.

Maybe I’ll get lucky.  If not, well, I guess I’ll write some more tomorrow.

*I don’t really think so, of course.  It’s just a silly thought.  Though he has apparently also had lifelong trouble with depression, so maybe that could be a more realistic connection.

**Of course, if one thinks of the time needed for even supermassive black holes to evaporate due to Hawking radiation, we are far closer to the short than to the long.  Then again, when compared to infinity, any finite number, no matter how large, is unreasonably close to zero.

***And particularly if one expresses the fact that they feel suicidal.