insomnia

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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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Self-treats and self-tricks

First of all, Happy Halloween.  It’s my favorite holiday, but I’m not doing anything to celebrate this year.  We haven’t been decorating the office or anything, and I’m not going to dress up, though I usually do.  It’s just not very much fun anymore, and there’s no one with whom to celebrate it.

I had a brief period yesterday afternoon until evening when I decided to attempt an experiment on my mood (it’s not a new idea)*.  I had been idle for a bit near the end of the day and checked YouTube and saw that there was a video on a channel called “Mended Light” which is partly run by the guy co-runs “CinemaTherapy“, but this one is more directly mental health oriented and he does the videos with his wife, who is also a therapist.

Anyway, the reason it caught my eye was that it was about “Why don’t you love yourself?” or something along those lines.  The video wasn’t as trite as one might expect it to be, given that, and there was a linked follow-up that brought up one of their earlier, related videos, which was also not as trite as it might have been.  Thankfully, these were both less than fifteen minutes long, and I could play them at double speed and with closed captions.

The points made were focused on some simple but non-trivial ideas about how you don’t want to love others or especially yourself in a sort of “earned” or “purely value-related” way, because no one is perfect, and if you already have a hard time loving yourself, then you’re never going to be able to avoid doing things that make you judgmental toward yourself.  So the idea was that if you love yourself in a way that is more…I don’t know, not unconditional but maybe just not judgmental, you can see yourself as worthy of love even if you’re imperfect (which, of course, you are).  You can, in a sense, choose to love yourself.

That doesn’t preclude you from trying to better yourself‒it’s not to be confused with narcissism.  Even a parent that loves a child tremendously can still try to teach the child, and punish bad behavior, reward good behavior, and try to guide the child in a good direction.  Only a fool thinks someone can be born a perfect, fully-developed being with no room to improve.

That’s certainly a reasonable point of view, I thought, and it was not a new one to me.  Somehow, though, at that moment, it felt newly salient, like something I could grasp.  And since I’m in fairly desperate and perilous psychological circumstances, I thought it was worth a try.  So I went back to some old ideas of auto-suggestion that I first read about and started using way back in junior high, after reading a book by Leslie M. LeCron.  I decided to do a sort of mantra (I’ve done this sort of thing before, sometimes for years at a time, including when I was in prison).

I would just say to myself, repeatedly, while walking or when idle, “I love myself”.  Before long, I started to add another phrase, making it, “I love the world, and I love myself”.

It probably sounds silly, but again, I’ve done such things before, and it has worked for certain purposes.  I think it made a difference for me in high school, where no one could reasonably say I was academically unsuccessful.  I used to do a full self-hypnotism thing with auto-suggestion a couple of times a day for years.  It wasn’t about loving myself then, but more about self-improvement and related things**.  The self-hypnotism also helped calm my mind, I think.

Anyway, I felt pretty darn good for a few hours yesterday evening, but I suspect this was a primary fact, not a secondary one.  In other words, I think the uptick in my mood was what made me feel open to the notion of self-improvement, not the other way around.  But the words did help me focus on the good things, about the outside world, at least, and I felt less hostile and even had a slight “warm glow” feeling.

I also did some extra walking (totaling about 9 and a half miles for the day).  And I had about one and a half small mixed drinks in the evening to celebrate (the half was because a moth flew into my drink about halfway through and I poured the rest out).  I also ate some leftover Chinese food from Sunday’s lunch, because it would go bad if I waited too long.  That latter choice was probably a mistake‒I ate too late in the day, and I have some heartburn now, which is, of course, unpleasant.

Anyway, this morning I got up (though, as always, I’d been waking up on and off for hours) and could not even think the words of my proposed “mantra” to myself.  This has happened to me before when I was trying to do positive self-talk.  It ends up feeling not like I’m trying to reprogram myself or whatever, but simply that I’m lying to myself.  Of course, as the song Billie Jean implies, it is possible for lies to become true, and that’s part of the point of auto-suggestion, e.g., “Every day in every way I am getting better and better.”  But so far, today, when I try to do the mental chant, the words turn to sand in my metaphorical throat.

Maybe it’s the heartburn.  Maybe it’s because I had an even worse sleep than usual.  Or maybe I’m just not able even to say that I love myself unless I’m already in an unusually good mood.  Maybe I’m amazed at the way I hate me all the time (ha ha).

I don’t know.  I don’t even know why I’m sharing this.  But at least partly I want you all to know that I’m not just giving in and imploding.  I’m trying to improve; I’m trying not to hate myself and my life.  I’ve been trying not to be depressed for a very long time‒for centuries, for millennia, and that’s despite the fact that just 11 days ago I turned 54.  [That’s the same age as Matthew Perry (well, he was 2 months and a day older than I)].

Anyway, Happy Halloween, again.  I don’t know what you’re all going to do for the day, but hopefully at least some of you will have fun.

vagabond happy halloween

*Spoiler alert: it hasn’t lasted even twelve hours.

**I didn’t feel like I needed help loving myself then, though most of the time I deliberately pretended to be egotistical, in what I hoped was a humorous, self-mocking sort of way.  I already didn’t actually like myself much, but I didn’t really dwell on it.  Still, my “heroes” were usually the villains of stories; I certainly never could imagine myself as any manner of traditional “good guy”.  How could something like me be anything but an antagonist?  But at least I could be a villain who got stuff done and achieved some kind of progress or something.  Nevertheless, I have never seen myself as anything but a potential bad guy, and those were the characters in books and movies and comic books with whom I identified***.  It wasn’t until the Harry Potter books really that I found a hero that I could truly admire and find inspiring yet “real”, and a villain for whom I had no significant admiration at all, despite that fact that I did a post about him in the brief series to which I linked above.

***It’s amusing when I read or hear clichés about how “nobody sees themselves as the villain” or similar, like in The Talented Mr. Ripley.  That’s utter bullshit.  People who say or write such things have clearly never explored many potential aspects of human beings and similar-appearing but alien creatures like me (ha ha).  Many people see themselves as the bad guys in their lives…and the real bad guys, who are never very inspiring or impressive in real life, only too easily take advantage of such people.

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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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And damn’d be him that first blogs, ‘Hold, enough!’

Hello and good morning yet again.

It’s Thursday, of course, and‒being a bit compulsive, as I am‒I could not fail to start this blog post with some form of “Hello and good morning”.  For those of you who like that consistency, you’re most welcome.

I did not walk to the train this morning, though I am wearing my New Balance walking shoes, because when I awakened for the first time during the night‒sometime between 1230 and 1 am‒I already noticed that, despite a modicum of rest, my right Achilles tendon was sore and burning when I moved it.  It is still a bit sore this morning.  So, apparently, my interventions yesterday, such as they are, were not adequate to stop the boots from causing my weak spot trouble*.  I will at least say that the arch of my left foot seems reasonably okay, but even it has a bit of a twinge.

So, with regret, I fear I need to retire my boots for any serious long walking, which seems ironic, but such is life.  Anyway, the NBs are lighter and easier to carry along in any case.

As for other things, well…I don’t know.  I really don’t have much to report.  The weather is slightly warmer today than it was yesterday‒I’m not wearing a hoodie at the train station right now, but I’m comfortable‒but it’s nowhere near the oppressive heat and humidity we’ve had until recently.  It would’ve been a decent morning for walking, but there’s not much to be done about that.  I don’t want to exacerbate my heel.  “He’ll let the heel heal for a bit,” one might say of me.

I’m not sure if I’ll write a post tomorrow.  I’m not sure if I’ll go to the office tomorrow.  I almost decided not to go today, but I want to bring my laptop computer back from the office, and I forgot to do that yesterday.  But tomorrow, if I still feel like I do this morning‒or worse‒I may not go in.  You’ll know, if there’s no blog post tomorrow, that I haven’t gone to the office.  And, of course, as I have said, I don’t work this weekend.

After that, who knows?  I don’t have any vision of next week, frankly.  I have some vague notions and ideas, but I don’t know what will happen.

I also don’t know what else to write about today.  There’s nothing going on.  I’m still not writing fiction or singing or playing guitar or “piano”.  I haven’t done any drawing in a very long time.

I also haven’t been reading this week, really.  I haven’t made any more progress in Robert Sapolsky’s new book, though I was looking forward to it.  I’m certainly not looking forward to any other books, nonfiction or fiction.  There are no movies or shows of interest to me.  Not even the upcoming Doctor Who specials are of interest, nor the new season.  And though Loki season 2 has been okay so far, I could miss the rest without much regret.  I certainly don’t see anything coming down the movie pike that’s worth anticipating.

I think I’m just about down to the dregs.  I don’t have much to offer but muck and sediment and sand.  There might be people out there who are into that kind of thing, but I’m not sure who they are.  I appreciate all of you reading even when I’m writing absolutely nothing of value.  I wish more people could have read my books; I think there are some decent stories there, and it would be nice to share them with more people.  Oh, well.  I guess most authors feel that way, at some point.

Anyway, that’s enough for today, I think.  It’s a short post, but surely that’s a relief if anything to dedicated and loyal readers.  Have a good day and, in case I don’t write a post tomorrow, have a good weekend.  Please.

TT(FN?)

Welcome Home Medium in prog (2)

*It is, of course, an appropriate location for a weak point.

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[Put some quote from a Pink Floyd song here]

I’m writing this on my smartphone after having walked to the train station this morning.  It’s cool enough weather that I even wore a hoodie for the walk (though if the sun had been up but the temperature the same I probably would not have done so), and I certainly don’t feel dehydrated.  I didn’t walk back from the train last night, but that was only because we got out of the office late, and then the later train I caught was a further 20 minutes behind schedule.  That was really irritating.

The 610 train is just arriving now, but I will catch the next one (and I only feel a little bit of anxiety over that decision).  I made good time, and I also got up a bit earlier than scheduled, because that seems to be the general trend of my life.  If this continues long enough, I might end up getting up in the morning before I go to bed.  I need to do something about this before I arrive at a contradiction and make the World Program™ crash and shut down.

I wore my boots this morning, and as I had intended yesterday, I did not overtighten the laces.  This has helped a little, at least, but I fear it’s not enough.  My right Achilles tendon is burning, and the arch of my left foot, just a bit behind the 1st metatarsophalangeal joint, is already feeling tight and achy.  That’s not too terrible after five miles of walking at a pretty brisk pace, but it didn’t seem to happen with the New Balance walking shoes at all.

I’m very disappointed, but I may need just to nix the boots.  It’s very sad to me, though I know it’s not truly a big deal.  I think I’ve just gotten to the point of having so little of value or meaning in my life that the loss of even the option to use the shoes that most aesthetically appeal to me feels like the death of an old friend.

It’s all rather pathetic, and not in a good way.  Still, I must do what I must, tautologically speaking.  So, I’ll try to do the walk again tomorrow morning, wearing the walking shoes, and see if it really is easier on the joints of my feet.

By the way:  of course, I have not started writing any kind of short story, or any other story.  What’s more, I haven’t practiced my guitar at all, nor have I listened to any more of the Spanish version of Harry Potter.  I also didn’t translate beyond the first sentence of the Japanese version of Harry Potter.  Nor did I read more than a few paragraphs past the preface or opening note or whatever he called it of Robert Sapolsky’s new book.

I didn’t even finish listening to the podcast with Sean Carroll and David Deutsch.  I tried to listen to a playlist of my favorite songs yesterday while waiting for the train in the evening, but after skipping about a dozen or so of my favorite songs because I just wasn’t interested in listening to them, I concluded (correctly) that I just didn’t want to listen to anything.  Nothing is interesting.

Of course, a famous (and fatuous) saying is that only boring people are bored, but in my case it’s not completely inaccurate.  I am dreadfully boring, even to myself.  Having to listen to me talk, or even just to be around me, for any length of time would probably count as cruel and unusual punishment.  I know it’s punishment to me.

I just got on the train.  It’s mildly interesting to note that there was enough breeze blowing up the tracks as I waited that, given my underlying sweatiness, I actually felt a bit chilly, and had to put my hood up.  That worked well, though.  And once I get to the office, I have other clothes into which to change.

This week has already seemed very long, and it’s just now Wednesday.  It’s kind of a weird inversion or subjective tension when one compares this to the lyrics of the song Time.  Whereas those lyrics note that “every year is getting shorter”, to me it feels‒though the year thing still seems true‒that every day is getting longer.  If the two tendencies continue, I could run into another paradox, in which a day eventually feels longer than a year, and then, again, the world might come to an end because of a logic error.

Actually, I guess it’s not always a contradiction for a day to be longer than a year.  If memory serves, for instance, Mercury is almost tidally locked with the sun, so its days and years are nearly the same length.  And if I recall correctly, I think that a day on Venus‒meaning a complete planetary revolution‒is longer than a year*.

On Earth, though, days are much, much shorter than years.  That’s even truer on Jupiter, where the days are about ten hours long, but the years are nearly a dozen times as long as Earth’s, because of its greater distance from the sun**.

Anyway, all this trivia is beside the point.  I am almost entirely without any sustained joy or happiness, nor do I see any reasonable prospect of that changing.  What would change about it?  I don’t really even care about the upcoming 60th anniversary Doctor Who special!  There are no books or movies or shows or whatever that seem interesting.

And I’m very tired.

*I did recall correctly; that is in fact true.

**This follows from Kepler’s 3rd law of planetary motion, which states, if memory serves, that the period of a planet’s orbit is proportional to the 3/2 power of the length of its orbit’s semimajor axis.  This would mean Jupiter orbits at just under 12^(2/3), or 5.24, times the distance of Earth…and indeed, according to Wikipedia, Jupiter’s semimajor axis is indeed 5.2038 astronomical units.  See, all that math we learned in school is useful for something.

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Sprechen sie David Deutsch? How about Japanese?

I’m writing this blog post on the laptop computer, which I brought back to the house yesterday with just that intent.  I did not walk to the train this morning, though I feel that I could have done so, had I chosen.  The weather is even more pleasant and cool than it was yesterday—62 degrees (F) out, which is even better for walking than 69 degrees.  I’m even wearing my hoodie to sit at the train station!

I’m also wearing my boots.  I thought that I might be lacing them too tightly—I might have mentioned that yesterday—particularly on the left foot, but also potentially on the right, which might explain the increased torque that’s caused strain on my right Achilles tendon.  If everything is reasonably well during the day today, and I’m able to resist the temptation to tighten the boots up too much, I mean to try to walk back from the train station to the house this evening.

I’m at the station very early, right now.  I woke up early, of course, and I had too much nervous energy even just to loll around, so I got up, did my things, took out some garbage, put out food for the stray cats, and then got to the train station well in time for the first train of the day, which should arrive in 3 minutes.  It’s all very exciting.

I’ve been packing some coats and a raincoat that I have in bottom of a large, hiking-style backpack, with a somewhat crazy idea in mind.  It’s relatively heavy, so far, but certainly not too heavy.  I’m going to need to get myself a new belt, though.  I had to punch a new hole in the one I’m wearing, since it’s tightened up a bit, but the next size (supposedly) of the same make and model belt—the one that I like—doesn’t quite reach to the first hole.

This doesn’t quite make sense to me, since there’s not supposed to be that much difference in their maximum length.  Something’s gone awry.  When I ordered that belt, maybe they sent me one that had been mislabeled.  But I don’t want to order another one of that kind to find out, because if it’s not an error, then I’ll have two belts that both don’t quite work yet.

So, I mean to get a fully adjustable belt, like the ones I wore in the Boy Scouts and then in the Navy.  To be honest, they were always a good style of belt, and if I make sure to pick one with good Amazon ratings (or similar) it should work well.

It looks like the first train is running approximately six minutes behind schedule.  I’m not sure quite how that happens as often as it does; the schedule is the same every day except Sundays and holidays.

I thought of an idea for a very short, rather gruesome story yesterday, when I was approaching the last bus stop (on foot) right before the train station.  Someone was sitting at the stop, wearing bright sneakers but otherwise dark clothes.  There are a fair few trees shading that bus stop, and it looked almost as though there was only the lower half of a person sitting there, until I got quite close.  That triggered an idea for what would be a very short story—especially for me—but might be fun.

We’ll see whether I write it or not, I guess*.  Well, you guys all might not see, even if I do write it, but I guess if I do, and if I find the time and the inclination to edit it, I may post it here, or I may just publish it direct to Kindle.

When I was first working on Mark Red and even The Chasm and the Collision, I intended just to publish them as serials via Kindle.  I think that’s not entirely unheard-of, and it’s almost the way Japanese “light novels” get published.  Each volume of such things—the truly “light” ones, anyway—are too brief to be full novels, and the story, like that of a manga, is expected to continue through a number of volumes.  Sometimes each novel is really a separate “adventure”, as in the Haruhi Suzumiya series, and sometimes they are truly ongoing, single overall stories chopped into sub-events, like Toradora.

I wish I could find the full, English translation of the Shakugan no Shana series.  I loved that anime, and have read what there is of the manga; it’s one of the most original fantasy stories (set in the modern world) that I have encountered.  But they only ever seemed to have released the first two volumes in English.  If it had come out after the advent of the light novel availability on Amazon (Kindle and otherwise) and the readily available purchase form thereof, I think it would have done well.  But I got mine at good ol’ Borders, back in the day, and of course, my copies are long gone.  I can reorder them from used book sellers via Amazon, but it won’t get me the later volumes.

Had I but world enough and time, I would seriously consider just getting the whole series in Japanese and honing my skills with the language by slogging through them, “translating” as I go, and trying to get the most out of them.  It wouldn’t make as much sense as, for instance, getting the Harry Potter books in Japanese, since I know those practically by heart, but it might still be useful.  Maybe I could get the English translations of the first two novels, just so I could get going.

I think I threw away my Kodansha Kanji Leaner’s Dictionary in a fit of pique a while back, but with the advances in Google Translate, one can draw (sort of) the Kanji one is trying to translate.  Also, Japanese books geared toward younger readers tend to have hiragana characters next to the kanji, so that readers can pronounce the words and recognize the meaning (since they probably know the words by sound), and can learn their Kanji in the meantime.

This is all pipe dream stuff, anyway.  I mean, I could do it, and I’m sure it would be interesting, but I don’t know that I could sustain my interest.  I can barely sustain interest in anything.  Robert Sapolsky’s new book, Determined, should have come out overnight**—I preordered it months ago—and I don’t have much desire to read it yet, though he’s a very interesting and wonderful writer and scientist (a behavioral biologist and neuroendocrinology professor, who himself has struggled with depression, apparently, and for which reason he too has been leery of things like psychedelics and so on).

Maybe he’ll be on Sam Harris’s podcast again now that he’s coming out with the new book, though with recent horrible “political” events, Sam may be distracted a lot in coming weeks.  Well, “distracted” is probably not the right word; but his attention will likely be elsewhere.

I have been listening to Sean Carroll talking to David Deutsch on the former’s podcast, and that’s good, though it’s lamentably under two hours long.  Still, one of my favorite physicist/writers is talking with another that I like even more in some ways—what’s not to like?

I wish Deutsch would write another “popular” science book, but he doesn’t crank them out quite like Carroll does (the latter’s books do not disappoint, at least).

Maybe I should start looking for some of Deutsch’s academic stuff.  Some of it may still be on arXiv or similar, and there may be public domain editions of the non-preprint material.  He is a terrifically original and deep and quick thinker, one of the first pioneers of quantum computing, an advocate of Everettian quantum mechanics, founder of what he calls Constructor theory (an approach to how knowledge and explanation work in intelligent life forms), and a guarded optimist.

He thinks, following Turing’s mathematical demonstrations about the universality of computation (which he fleshed out himself regarding quantum computation) that there is, ultimately, only one “form” of intelligent computation.  He sees, therefore, intelligent extraterrestrials, human beings, and potential AGIs all as “people” or “persons” in the same right.  The only real differences would be due to specific “software” and memory and processing speed.

Trust me, he makes very convincing cases for these things.  He is a rigorous thinker.

Again, though, I don’t expect really to make any progress in exploring more of any of this.  But it’s interesting to think about for them moment.

And now, my stop is coming up, so I’ll draw this post to a close.  Please have a good day.

deutsch Deutsch

nihon deutsch

*I doubt it.

**It did.

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Trivial nonsense on a pseudo-ominous day

I’d intended to walk to the train this morning, so of course I didn’t bring my portable, foldable computer designed to be suitable for use resting upon one’s lap with me yesterday.  Therefore, I am writing this blog post on my smartphone*.  However, I did not walk to the train.

I just felt really wiped out still this morning; my sleep wasn’t quite as bad as it had been the night before, but it still was rotten, and I feel rotten.  Also, this morning it’s three degrees (Fahrenheit…so one and two thirds degrees Celsius) hotter than it was two days ago.  I’m sweating even more than usual even though I’m just sitting at the train station right now.  There’s also, again, no breeze of which to speak, so everything is stagnant, and sweat doesn’t really do any work toward cooling one down.

I hope that, by this evening, it’s either cooler or at least breezier, and that I’ll have a bit more energy, so I might feel up to walking back from the train.  At least then I wouldn’t have to worry about sweating on train seats.

My coworker did come to the office yesterday, bearing pictures and stories of his brief family trip, mainly focused on his very young daughter.  It was quite charming.  Another person I know is currently on a trip as well‒two of them together, really‒and all these reports got me nostalgic about trips I had taken to (or times I had lived in) their various destinations.  I fear to talk too much about my own experiences in such circumstances, though I feel the urge‒I suspect that I’m just being horribly obnoxious when I catch myself doing it, and internally rebuke myself with things like, “No one gives a shit about all your stupid stories” and so on.

To be fair, no one has complained to me about it, so I evidently haven’t overstepped the bounds of good taste too much.  I probably do so overstep here, on my blog, but if anyone here doesn’t want to “hear” my stupid stories, they have only themselves to blame for reading them.

Today is Friday the 13th, isn’t it?  Back in the old days, some local network station would probably have used today‒and the fact that we are in the month of October, to boot‒as an excuse to show some highly edited versions of the slasher films named after the day.  For all I know, some of them still do.  Anyway, I tend to like Friday the 13th, largely because 13 is a prime number, and it’s one for which I feel a special affection precisely because it is so reviled by so many other people, for silly, superstitious reasons.  I myself am not superstitious.  I’m just a little bit stitious.  Ba-dump-bump.

I will be working tomorrow, so maybe I’ll walk to the train in the morning.  Timing things like that can be a bit awkward on the weekend, because the trains only run every hour, and none of the departure times is roughly comparable to the place in the hour that I usually catch them.  So if I get up at the same time as usual, whether walking or otherwise, I’m either “too early” or “too late” compared to my preference.  Of course “too early” is VASTLY preferable to the alternative, so I will err in that direction.  It’s not as though I can choose just to sleep in‒not without the use of pharmaceuticals‒so I might as well just get going.

I had a rather abrupt surge in my lower back pain this morning, above the usual baseline (to which I’ve almost become accustomed).  It may be because I didn’t put on my spandex knee and ankle support thingies**, since I had chosen not to walk.  It seems a bit much to think, though, that just the very small amount of walking I’ve done without them, wearing boots that give decent ankle support, would trigger an exacerbation.  It’s possible, I guess, but it seems unlikely.  It’s also possible that I slept in an unusual position, or just that fatigue and relative dehydration and whatnot are taking a bit of a toll.

Ah, well.  I brought my knee and ankle specialty spandex bits of supplemental clothing with me, in case I walk this evening, so I can always slip them on during the day.

I already gave away my folding massage chair.  It wasn’t doing me any good anymore, and it’s one less thing to have around or to leave behind.  I’m trying to farm off or just eliminate as much useless junk as I can.  The less clutter, the better.

That last sentence makes me wish I could legitimately say “and the less butter, the cletter”, but that last word, alas, has no meaning of which I am aware.  I suppose I could make up a meaning for it, but if you have to invent a word to make a pseudo-spoonerism work, then you’re really reaching.

One of the security guys on the train just walked by, and as he did, he muttered, “Damn, it’s hot.”  He’s far from overstating the situation.  The A/C on the train appears to be running***, based on the noise, but it doesn’t seem to be cooling the car much if at all.  I guess that at least means that my glasses (and my phone) won’t fog up when I exit the train, and that’s worth avoiding, so it’s a good thing.  See?  Who says I can’t find the positive in seemingly negative situations?

Some do say that cynics are really just frustrated idealists.  I don’t know that I am or ever have been an idealist, but I certainly am frustrated.

With that, I’ll draw (or write) this post to a close.  I hope you all have a good and lucky Friday the 13th, and that you have a good weekend to follow.  I expect to be writing a post for tomorrow morning, so if you like that sort of thing, come to this space then‒figuratively speaking‒at about the usual time.

*I don’t have any urge to clarify the word “smartphone” because it really doesn’t refer to any other entity in the universe of which I know, and‒certainly compared to any phones I used prior to the last ten years‒it is a very smart phone indeed.

**I’m not sure what the best term for these is.  “Brace” feels most typical, but that, to me, somehow implies hard, hinged, moving parts, which are lacking in the products I use.  “Support” seems reasonable, but it feels a bit vague.  Perhaps “compression sleeve” would work, but that feels a bit confusing.

***I would guess that it’s probably powered by alternating current created by an alternator (duh!) attached to the engine, but it could be run from batteries that receive their charge via rectified current initially generated in the engine.  If that is the case, then we have the rather pleasing situation of an A/C running on DC.  That’s better than butter and cletter than clutter.