insomnia

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“…and we sang dirges in the dark…”

I’m writing this on my phone again, today, because it’s still a relief not to have to carry the laptop.  I wouldn’t have thought it would make such a big difference, since the computer really is quite light, but the subjective experience is a notably easier feeling‒physically, at least.

I had to run a bit across some major roads to try to catch a connecting bus last night, because the first one was 35 minutes late, and it was good not to have the minor bit of weight in my back when doing that.  Of course, now, today, my back and hips and legs are aching more than usual, probably as a consequence* of that running.  It’s not the muscles that are the problem, though they do spasm up in response to the pain.  It’s the joints and the nerves.

Speaking of that, I’m not sure why typing on the phone isn’t giving me more trouble than it is.  Maybe my thumb joints have adapted after the initial use back a few months ago, or maybe I’ve adapted my typing style.  Or perhaps the problem is still coming, and I just haven’t been doing this often enough for long enough yet to trigger the inevitable flare-up.  I guess I’ll soon find out if it’s the latter, though even if I don’t get an exacerbation, it’ll be hard to differentiate between those first two hypotheses.

It’s not really important, I guess.

I haven’t been riding my bike, as I’ve said before, and I don’t think I’m probably going to be riding it.  It’s been too clear from the timing and the specificity of outcomes that it was triggering both pain exacerbations and postural adjustments that interfered with my sleep.  I can’t lose more sleep than I already do, and I already have enough pain** every day.

I literally feel fear at the thought of riding the bike because of the clarity and certainty of those outcomes.  It’s a shame and a waste…but then again, so am I, so I guess that’s fair enough.  I’ll just walk and take the bus until something kills me.

Speaking of that, it seems one of the people who used to work at our office, and who had recently had a heart attack at a rather young age, died yesterday, in the hospital.  One of the people at the office rents a room from him and he was devastated by the news.

I won’t give names, but the former worker was an electro-pop musician in slightly earlier days, and though his stuff isn’t really my kind of music, it was really quite good.  He wrote and performed it, and had albums and everything.  One of his songs was used in a movie.  So, he was the real deal, if not truly a big star or anything.

He said he really liked my song Breaking Me Down, and that if a slightly shorter version of it had been released in the 70s, it might have been a hit.  He also said he was impressed with my guitar playing on my “baddish” cover of Street Spirit (Fade Out), but that the vocals didn’t sound great***.

It’s very sad that he died so young, particularly for the guy who rented from him, because they were friends in addition to being “landlord/tenant”.

We’ve had a surprising number of people die who worked in or used to work in the office since I’ve been there.  It’s not my fault (I think) nor the fault of the business.  Of course, when I was in medical practice I saw a lot more people die, but that’s the nature of adult medical care.  Still, it’s also kind of sad.

Well, it’s very sad.  These are people who‒as far as I know‒did not actually want to die, and yet they did.  And here I am, ironically relatively healthy apart from my chronic pain and my mood disorder(s) and whatnot.

I would say that it’s hard to make sense of it, but that’s not really true.  It’s just that the universe isn’t set up such that the laws of mortality apply relative to one’s desire to live.  Biology leads us to tend to want to stay alive and have offspring, and after that, whatever happens is really just stochastic and erratic, and an adult human body is like an empty seed pod that lingers on a branch past all use once the age of reproduction has gone.

And I think to myself, “What a wonderful world.”****

I really don’t think I’m going to be able to go on much longer.  By which I don’t mean this blog, though of course that is subsumed in the larger subject matter; I mean I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to continue living.  There’s really nothing to which I look forward, short or long term.  I don’t look forward to getting up and going to work, I don’t look forward to coming back to the house and going to bed.  I don’t look forward to meals or drinks.  There are no shows or movies I’m awaiting‒I’ve become more or less indifferent to the Doctor Who specials and new series that are coming later this year, and the new Guardians of the Galaxy movie also doesn’t particularly spark my interest.  All the new Star Wars related crap seems just to be blah at best.

I wish there were some book series I was reading that was enticing, whether new or old, but I still can’t seem to read fiction anymore, which is a truly hellish turn of events for me.  Reading fiction was always my refuge, my joy, my escape.  Not anymore.

There is some interesting nonfiction, which I usually tend to seek out after hearing someone on a podcast with Sam Harris or Sean Carroll, but the podcasts are getting boring, and I haven’t finished the last 3 books I’ve gotten under those circumstances.

It’s like the line in the Beatles song I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party: “There’s nothing for me here, so I will disappear.”  She’s not going to turn up while I’m gone‒whoever the metaphorical “she” is‒so there’s no need to worry about letting me know.

I’m so tired and in pain and depressed and I really, really hate myself.  I wish I would have a heart attack, or develop cancer, or catch pneumonia, or something like that.  In my case, it would have no serious, life-altering repercussions for anyone, though I’m sure there are those who might find it sad.

There are sweet, kindly, compassionate people out there, after all, and my family members and some of the people who know me are among their number.  They would be sad over the deaths of anyone they know, and particularly family members‒as I am sad over the death of my former coworker‒and it’s good that people feel that way, I guess.  But death is the guaranteed payoff of life, after all, for everyone. It really feels like it would be better just to skip to the end.

*If you can have a consequence, why is there no sinquesence or perhaps sansquesence?

**One might even be inclined to say that I have too much pain every day, but let’s not be reckless.

***He wasn’t wrong, though I’m not sure if he meant my voice itself didn’t sound great, which it didn’t‒I had recently had Covid, and was not fully recovered‒or just that the recording of it was not great, which is fair enough, since I don’t have a studio or high quality recording equipment or mixing equipment or anything.  Possibly he meant both.

****Sarcasm.

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800 words, not including the title

It’s Friday morning.  Those of you reading this first thing after it comes out will already know that, but for any future people* who might be reading, it is the morning of Friday, April 21, 2023, as I’m writing.  Since I don’t work this weekend, I guess it really is one of those “TGIF” days, at least in principle, for me.

I’m not really doing anything this weekend, apart from doing my laundry on Sunday.  I do it every Sunday, because I must.  Other than that, it would be quite nice if I could simply rest.  I would so love to get a good night’s sleep.  It feels as though the time since I had a good night’s rest is longer than the time I’ve been alive, which is, of course, a contradiction, but that just shows how fucking tired I am.  I can’t even convey how tired I am, not really.  Nothing really does it justice.

I’m so tired I feel almost out of breath just walking to the bus stop in the morning.  Of course, there’s always, in principle, the possibility that something more is physically wrong with me than “mere” insomnia**.  But I did walk back to the house from the train station yesterday afternoon, which is five miles, and I had no physical difficulties doing that (other than joint and limb aches and so on), so I don’t think there’s anything significant wrong with my heart and/or lungs.

That’s almost too bad, really.  If it turned out I did have something serious wrong with my heart and/or lungs, I don’t think I would try to get help for it.  What would be the point?  I can’t afford it, anyway.  And why would I be trying to prolong a life that has lost nearly every source of joy and is steadily losing the few such things that remain.

Well, I say “steadily”, but that’s probably not accurate.  I don’t really think that there’s a consistent, gradual process occurring.  There may be sudden drop-offs, and there may be plateaus, and there may be momentary, teasing, cruel bumps upward that serve only to get one’s hopes up in order to take sadistic glee in dashing them.  At least, that would be the case if there were any malicious mind behind the fact that I am losing any interest in anything.  But as far as I can tell, though, there really isn’t any such mind—though one could, I suppose, say that my own mind’s dysfunction is causing it, and that wouldn’t be without justification.

Anyway, the point is, it’s not really a smooth descent curve.  There are bumps and spikes and fractal things, like any graph of measures that have local variance overlying general trends, like stock prices or global temperatures or what have you.

I’m tired.  Have I mentioned that already?  I’m seriously so very tired.  I want to lie down and just stay that way.  I want to be able to sleep.

I think I’m repeating myself here, but honestly, I don’t really care.  I don’t have the energy to care.  So fuck off if you want to try to make me feel guilty or something.

I don’t really have much of anything else to talk about today.  I don’t have any pastimes anymore, I don’t have any nearby friends—I don’t even know if I have any long-distance friends, to be honest.  I don’t have anyone with whom to spend my spare time.  You might think that would give me plenty of time to rest, and I suppose it does give me plenty of time to rest.  Unfortunately, I cannot seem to carry out the process of resting.  I can be idle, but I cannot seem to rest, or at least, I haven’t been able to do so, not for a long time.

I’m so tired of my life.  It’s just not worth the effort to continue it.  It’s mostly pain and stress and loneliness (and yet, in counterpoint, an ironic revulsion toward socializing) and a general feeling of being lost and of having ruined every good thing of which I’ve ever been a part.  Above all, though, there’s just fatigue.  I am just so very tired.

In fifty words, I’ll have reached 800 words in the first draft of this post, and I don’t think I’m going to try for any more, nor will I find it difficult to stop before going beyond that number.  Twelve more words.  Please do have a good weekend.  Bye for now.

words

*Are there flying cars and jet packs yet?  Are you cyborgs or purely artificial beings?  Or are you just the same old naked house apes?

**Is that when a body of water cannot sleep, or when a person cannot sleep near, or on, a lake?  I don’t know.

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“Ashes and dust and thirst there is, and pits, pits, pits.”

I’m at the bus stop today, because I didn’t feel up to riding the bike this morning.  I almost didn’t feel like riding the bike back from the train station at the end of the day, yesterday, even though that would have meant leaving it in the proven-to-be-unsafe location of the station.  I wouldn’t have worried about that too much, though.  I’ve got two thick cables and a U-lock securing it when it’s there, including one threading through the seat, so vandalism seems more likely than theft.

I did end up riding back to the house last night, but I just didn’t want to ride this morning.  I’m feeling some extra strain and pain in my hips and lower back that may be from riding, and I also just feel like I’m not up to the intensity of exertion it entails.  Walking is more my speed at the moment, and it’s cool enough out—for south Florida, anyway—that certainly the walk to the bus stop isn’t bad.

I may walk back from the train station today rather than take the bus, depending on how I feel.  I know I’ve written before about how much time it uses up, but it’s not as though I do anything better with my time than walk.  Honestly, if I could just avoid my feet feeling sore so often, I’d be fine with walking every day, everywhere.

I didn’t just feel tired yesterday afternoon.  I also felt extremely—I don’t know…stressed, anxious, tense, some word along those lines?  All afternoon, I felt as if I were going to fly apart.  I don’t mean I felt as though I would explode in anger, just perhaps that I might collapse into a ball or something.  I told my coworker, quietly, amidst another conversation, that I felt like I was going to have a nervous breakdown.  I know this is sort of a vague and antiquated term, but it seemed to capture what I felt.  My mind (and body) felt on the verge of shaking apart at the seams.

I still feel like that this morning, though not to as high a level, and it’s probably the main reason I didn’t want to ride my bike.  I also just feel fatigued, mentally and physically.  I’m even sort of out of breath, though that’s mainly a subjective feeling.  I just feel uncomfortable.

I’m very tired of all these negative feelings all the time, but I can’t seem to find many positive ones.  It might help if I had a pet, but I don’t have the wherewithal to take care of a dog because of my schedule, and I’m quite allergic to cats, so that’s not going to work.  I’ve already had the long experience of having a cat, and I had to take allergy meds and decongestants every day for seventeen years.  When I first got the cat, I didn’t know I was allergic, and once I had her, I wasn’t going to get rid of her.  But I can’t put myself in that position again.

Plus, honestly, I can barely take care of myself, and that meager ability is deteriorating day by day.  I don’t have any business trying to bring in and care for any other life form.

Oh, by the way, I didn’t realize it at the time, but yesterday was apparently Adult Autism Awareness Day, though I have no idea in what way it’s celebrated or promulgated or whatever.  Certainly in Florida there are no clear public health resources or supports of any kind for anyone with any kind of chronic, neurodevelopmental issues.

They will happily put you in prison, though.  Our benighted governor even jokes about putting another one of these prisons—as if we were not already overflowing with the shit-holes—on land near where Disney World is, as part of his process of antagonizing and threatening the state’s biggest employer and single biggest bringer of money into the state.  This is in response to the corporation merely making a public statement—you know, exercising a First Amendment right, that thing that even corporations can do, and which the Supreme Court said is why it’s okay for corporations and such to spend oodles of money in support of specific candidates, because that’s a form of speech, and is protected by the First Amendment.

He’s just so interested in the needs and concerns of the people of Florida.  He’s plainly trying to make himself attractive to the hardcore Trump supporters in case he has a run for President, and he’s perfectly willing to sacrifice the interests of the state for which he ran for governor, and to which he has sworn allegiance, willingly, voluntarily, to do it.  These are not the actions of an honorable man (unless I’m reading the situation incorrectly).

So, he fits right in in Tallahassee.  But not in the legitimate workings of the United States of America, as I’ve thought of it most of my life.  And it’s not as though he has the excuse of being ignorant of the US Constitution or the Florida Constitution; he’s an effing lawyer.  He graduated from an elite law school, and he worked for the JAG corps, I think, if memory serves.

Oh, well, I really shouldn’t care.  The people of Florida—at least the ones who are allowed to vote—apparently chose him and the legislators who write these various imbecilic laws.  I rather hope that he either causes the state to be subject to a multi-billion dollar lawsuit from Disney and that then the company leaves the state and the state goes bankrupt and everyone in the future ties its final decline to his idiotic actions.  He’s antagonizing a very large company that brings jobs and income to the state, and he has the temerity to call himself a Republican?

Anyway, that’s neither here nor there, I guess.  It certainly doesn’t have much effect on my non-life.  Everyone on both sides of the thing could burst into flames and die for all I care; the world would probably be a better place.  Then again, the world would probably be a better place if all humans burst into flames and died.  It would briefly raise carbon dioxide levels, but in the long-term, things would improve.

I should probably just put my money where my mouth is and lead by example.  It would be comparatively difficult to get gasoline right now, given recent flooding, but I think I have enough lighter fluid to douse myself quite thoroughly.

I doubt I’d have the courage to do that, though.  I need to find a better way.

In other news, tomorrow is my son’s twenty-third birthday.  It’s been more than ten years since I’ve seen him in person, or spoken with him, though we exchanged one email, more or less.  But he does always send along thanks for his birthday presents and other holiday presents, via his sister.  It’s been just as long since I’ve seen her in person, but I’ve spoken with her briefly on the phone, and we exchange texts and sometimes emails.

I doubt that I’ll ever see either of them again, or hear their voices, let alone spend any real time with them, which is the thing I would most like to do in the world.  They don’t want to do it, it seems, particularly my son, who doesn’t really want any kind of relationship with me.  How could I blame him?  I’ve surely fucked up everything important in my life, and they are the most important part of my life.  I’m no good at taking care of myself, either.

I’m really stressed out and tired and uncomfortable and lonely and confused and overwhelmed—the latter is ironic, because my life is thoroughly empty, so I don’t understand what feels so overwhelming.  But, it is what it is, as they say.  I used to want to conquer the world, and then sometimes I just wanted to destroy it.  Now, though, I just wish to be able to go to sleep and rest.  Why is chronic depression/dysthymia not considered a terminal illness for which one can avail oneself of physician-assisted suicide (not including oneself if one happens to be a physician)?

Well, okay, I guess the answer to that is fairly obvious.  Among other things, the whole nature of the disease calls the possibility of informed consent into question.  But goodness, sometimes the notion of a friendly IV mixture of opiates and benzodiazepines and barbiturates and digitalis sounds like the best, most delicious, most refreshing cocktail I’ve ever imagined.

Oh, well.  I guess I’ll wait a little longer.  It wouldn’t do to have anything happen that might taint the happiness of my son’s future birthday celebrations.  I want nothing but the very best possible life for him and for my daughter.  I wish that included my prominent presence, but maybe no one’s life would or will be made better by having me in it to anything more than a peripheral extent.  I know my life isn’t made better by having me in it.

Well, okay, that doesn’t make sense, does it?  My life is whatever it is, and no matter what state it might be in, it will be that way with me in it, more or less by definition.  But I do suspect that, given my neuropsychiatric characteristics, I am not prone to be a benefit to myself—certainly not when by myself.

Again, “Oh, well.”  I am what I am, I’m my own special…cremation?  Probably not.

ashes and dust

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Half sunk a shattered visage lies

Well, it’s Wednesday morning, and I’m sitting at the bus stop again, because it’s still raining in south Florida.

One thing that I like about summer in Florida—though it seems more of a central than a south Florida phenomenon—is that there is an almost-daily thunderstorm, but it happens in mid-afternoon, lasts for a brief period, and then goes away.  If you’re biking or walking or otherwise vulnerable to the elements, and you don’t feel like enduring the process, you can just wait it out.  Again, this does not seem quite to be the case as much here in south Florida, at least not on the east coast, but it’s relatively predictable.

Anyway, that’s not such a big deal, but it does mean that both walking and biking have been a pain these past few days.  I have also had very bad issues with literal back and leg pain, though the knee brace on my left knee seems to be helping that joint at least a little.  But much of last night, when I wish I were sleeping, my time was taken up with trying to loosen the spasms in my back and my hip and my calf and the arch of my foot and so on.  I met with only modest success.  So, as is often the case, I am now very tired, even more so than average, though certainly not many standard deviations away from the mean.

I try not to be mean, but on average, I think I am meaner than the mode in which I would prefer to be.  Ha.  Ha.

So, physically, I feel pretty ground down, and even the walk to the bus stop was less minor than it ought to have been, though I will admit that, compared to when I started back up walking not so very long ago, it feels like much a lighter endeavor.  Compared to walking five miles to the train station, it’s laughable, but then again, it’s unfortunately not much exercise.

I’ve noticed that riding the bike, while quite invigorating when the weather is decent, definitely puts new and different stresses and tensions on my skeleton and connective tissue and musculature, and it instigates flare-ups (flares-up?) of pain in slightly unusual places that catch me rather off-guard.  One doesn’t really, fully “get used to” chronic pain, but at least it has familiar patterns a lot of the time.  Then, when new things happen, they are especially disheartening, because they don’t tend to reduce the prior pain, just add to and overlay it.

Fun.

I’m sorry to keep talking (or writing, if you want to be pedantic, though I think “talking” is a perfectly reasonable word to use*) about this kind of irritating and negative stuff, but it’s what’s dominating my mind, unfortunately.  Believe it or not, I don’t even share some of my darker thoughts, even in posts like yesterday’s in which I dwelt on—and considered methods of—suicide.

I would love to make this more a blog of ideas and explorations, but when I’m feeling so depressed and in pain and alone, my ideas tend to go along nihilistic, entropic, pessimistic, pro-mortalist lines.  I look even at notions like the Lovecraftian concept of an alien and uncaring, unkind, malevolent cosmos populated and dominated by truly alien entities, and find myself disdainful—because I think it’s still anthropomorphizing the universe to imagine it inhabited by godlike or demonic beings, however alien and uncaring or malevolent they might be, and however much they may disdain humanity.  I also find it rather ho-hum, because, yeah, so, the universe is vast and dangerous and uncaring.  What else is new?

The fact is, as far as we can tell, there aren’t even any Lovecraftian god-aliens out there, certainly not on any kind of relevant scale, and such beings as there are certainly aren’t showing any interest in humans.  There is no reason for them to be interested.  Humans are only really important to other humans…and indirectly to the various other life-forms on Earth on which their activities impinge.

In some ways, humans are the closest things in the human world to actual Lovecraftian monsters:  innumerable and powerful but uncaring and destructive to less powerful beings.  To cephalopods, for instance and ironically, it would be humans that would be the “great old ones”, though humans are not so old, and they are great only in their power and ability to wreak havoc—though they have the potential for truer greatness.

But overall, the universe is far vaster than people can even begin to contemplate seriously, at least not without concerted effort.  The average, typical location in the universe is intergalactic space, in which there is perhaps one hydrogen atom per cubic meter, where light from even the nearest galaxy would be far too faint for the unaided human eye to detect.  In other words, it is an empty blackness, with a steadily shrinking temperature of only 2.7 Kelvin.  It’s cold, and dark, and empty, and it’s getting more so of all of those things with every passing Planck time.

Left to its own devices, the universe, as far as we can tell, is going to become that way everywhere, only even colder and even emptier.  If life is ever to become truly consequential on a cosmic scale—which is not, in principle, impossible—it will require seriousness and commitment and work, by the majority of people.

The current political and social and artistic cycles of the world, to say nothing of the military and ideological aspects of human interaction, don’t exactly thrill me with their possibilities.  Humans are like preschoolers fighting over toys and snacks and who gets to be “it” while clustering in a ramshackle hut with a hurricane approaching from one direction and an active volcano in the other, and the floor of which straddles a major, active geological fault-line.

When the end comes, it will probably be terrifying and painful, but it will likely be quick, at least—on a cosmic scale, anyway—because the toddlers have no idea how to protect themselves and each other and to survive.  And then, in the end, darkness and decay and the Red Death will hold absolute dominion and sway over all, and the lone and level sands of the desert will blow unnoticing about the forgotten monument-legs the toddlers leave behind, until—in quite short order—even the ruins and then the sand itself will go the way of all else.

There are billions of “livable” years in the universe, and even perhaps trillions if one stays close to red dwarf stars.  Given the potential of knowledge growth of which, if they decide to do it, humans are capable, that could easily be more than enough time to find the science and technology to get around even the heat death of the universe.  It’s not, in principle, impossible.

I’m not holding my breath.  I’ve known toddlers who were intelligent, inquisitive, cooperative, creative, kind, and showed promise of great things.  The human race as a whole does not meet that description.  It’s a shame about the good ones; but there aren’t enough of them, I suspect, to prevail against the troglodyte toddlers**.  So, I don’t think I’m going to try to wait around and see what amazing things they’ll get up to, because I think I’ll just be tragically disappointed.

And if I’m wrong, well—I will have deserved to be wrong, and that’s not a horrible outcome.  I’ll be dead, anyway, so I don’t think it will make any difference to me either way, even if it would be nice to know.

That’s it for today, I think.  There, I did actually get some ideas into this blog post.  I hope you’re pleased.

end-of-evangelion

*For pedants among us—I tend to be one—it’s worth reminding ourselves that all words are made up.  No set of letters or sounds have any inherent meaning, even within the human and related species.  Nevertheless, I am certainly against the casual bastardization and flagrant misuse of words, relative to their generally accepted meaning, and I truly dislike awkward, manipulative, new terms such as “allyship”, which sounds like a vessel in the navy of a nation that’s politically aligned with one’s own.

**Trogglers, if you will.

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Don’t know why there’s no sun up in the sky…

It’s Tuesday morning, and instead of sitting at the train station, I’m sitting at the bus stop.  It’s been quite rainy out, and after riding my bike back to the house from the train station yesterday afternoon in a non-stop deluge, I decided to walk to the bus to the train and so on instead.

I’m a glutton for punishment, obviously enough, but everything in my body aches now after the wet ride yesterday, and I was up more than usual during the night with back and hip and leg pain.  That’s not really anything new, but it felt clear that it was exacerbated by the thorough soaking, and then of course, by nearly slipping on the wet floor in my room, which is hard, smooth tile.

I say “nearly slipping”.  I guess I actually did slip, but I caught myself before getting very close to falling.  I suppose that’s a good sign of improved physical strength and agility from all my walking and biking and everything, but it doesn’t mean I don’t feel the consequences.

Even my supposedly water-resistant boots were literally squishing inside by the time I’d gotten back to the house, only five miles from the train station.

This is boring, isn’t it?  I keep realizing how boring it is that I’m writing about this stuff, and I do apologize.  I guess it’s the sort of thing about which most people talk to their friends or their spouses or their family in general when it happens, but I don’t really have any such people to whom to talk about it on a daily basis.  I suppose I can mention it at work, and people will probably listen politely, as they will when I tell the about a physics article describing the extreme roundness of an isolated electron and so on.  But no one really interacts about it.

No one really interacts much about anything I’m interested in; I bore people pretty quickly with them.  I, in turn, have a hard time getting interested in anything in which they are interested.  Certainly, typical matters of gossip or popular entertainment are pretty lost on me.

The closest thing I really have to regular, daily social interaction is reading and leaving comments and getting responses on Jerry Coyne’s website Why Evolution Is True.  But yesterday, at least, every comment I tried to leave disappeared.  I don’t know if that was a technical glitch or just that my comments were blocked or whatever by PCC(E)*.  I sometimes get the impression, on the rare occasion when he responds to one of my comments, that he doesn’t like me (this is not an unusual attribute), so he may just be disallowing my comments.  Thus, even that little outlet is fading or at least is glitching.

It’s irritatingly windy this morning, and the wind is blowing water from nearby trees even here to the middle of the bus shelter, and it’s getting on the screen of my computer some.  I may have to stop and finish this later.  It’s frustrating.  But what do I not find frustrating?

I felt horribly depressed almost all day yesterday.  In fact, ironically, I was probably least depressed while I was riding through the rain, partly because my locking mechanism for the seat of my bike had worked, and partly because it was just kind of hilarious how wet I was getting, from above and below.  I would have been less soaked if I had walked, because I could have used an umbrella.  It’s hard to use an umbrella on a bike.

There were a number of times during the day yesterday when I thought about how much I hated my life and hated the world and (mainly) hated myself, and how I wanted to just swallow all the Tylenol in the bottle I have at the desk** or slice myself open with one of the box cutters I have, or douse myself in lighter fluid and set myself on fire***.

None of these are great options, and I would prefer to find something less painful.  Of course, the governor of the sunshine state and the goobers in the legislature are, I think, working on making it so that I’ll legally be able to purchase a gun again soon, if they haven’t already.  Anyway, there are plenty of people in gun shows and so on who probably wouldn’t care about restrictions on selling guns to people like me—you know, non-violent “ex-felons” or whatever the proper term is, even though my “felony” charges were ones to which I pled guilty only because of extortion by the legal system.  I never knowingly or willingly “trafficked” in drugs; I was trying to help people with chronic pain in a society in which those with non-lethal causes of pain are expected simply to keep soldiering on despite constant misery, even though—ironically—their pain will continue much longer than will that of a person with, say, terminal cancer.

It’s hard to say, though, whether I could use a gun to kill myself.  I have too much knowledge about guns, and have used them with respect, shooting competitively and for pleasure—never once having so much as fired at another living thing, unless you count scaring squirrels or raccoons off with a low-power bb gun.  I did once play Russian Roulette, but only once, and afterwards, though I was obviously horribly depressed, my hands were shaking.  I didn’t do it again, though if I had succeeded, at least I wouldn’t have gone to prison, not that I knew that at the time.  I had no clue what was coming.

I don’t know why I’m talking about all this, or rather, writing about all this, sitting at the bus stop waiting to go to the train to the walk to the office.  I don’t have a therapist anymore, so that’s part of it.  I don’t have a personal physician of any kind, either.  I don’t have any local emotional support, and I don’t make a good friend, so I’m not likely to obtain any new ones or any other form of a social circle.

I keep wishing I would catch pneumonia or some other severe illness and be killed by it.  Maybe that’s part of why I was so amused by getting so wet when riding last night; there was just the bare possibility that my resistance would go down low enough that I would catch something.  But of course, that isn’t really how infection works, and I know it only too well.  You have to be exposed to an infectious agent, and I don’t seem to be all that susceptible.  Probably I have lots of antibodies and whatnot from medical school and then medical practice.

I’m just so tired.  I can’t sleep at night for more than about an hour at a time, then I wake up and try to go back to sleep and sleep at most another hour, and then eventually just watch the clock reach the time for me to get up.  I want to be able to sleep and just stay asleep until I feel rested, or forever, whichever comes first.  That would be like…well, I was going to say “like a dream”, but it’s not quite accurate.  That would be wonderful.  That’s what it would be.

rainybikebandw

*This is how many of us refer to Professor Coyne.

**This is probably not a good choice.  It takes a long time to work, and if it fails it can still cause terrible liver problems, and it’s a long and drawn out death even if it works.  It’s very unpleasant.

***That’s something best not to do indoors, of course, and it was rainy yesterday, so it probably wouldn’t have worked outdoors if I had tried.  Also, it’s not got too high a fatality rate, or if it is fatal, it too can be a long, drawn out, and very painful death.  My point, overall, is to try to diminish and avoid or escape chronic pain, both physical and psychological.

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Move along; there’s nothing left to see. Just a body. Nothing left to see.

Well, it’s Tuesday morning now, and I’m writing this while already at the office, because I didn’t leave last night.  I should have gone to the house on my new bicycle and ridden it to the train this morning, but unfortunately, there were snags.

First of all, the bicycle was delivered after our normal business hours.  Amazon allows us to put time constraints into the delivery instructions, and we have done so, so it would be nice if they attended to them and made sure to get things to their destinations during delivery hours, especially when they are expensive items.  I waited around after work for it arrive.  Then, unboxing it, I saw that it wasn’t technically the color I had ordered, but it wasn’t too far off, so that didn’t bother me all that much.

Then, after reading all the way through the instructions once before beginning, I then began to reread and do the necessary assembly.  However, the bike seat post clamp, or whatever it’s called, turned out not to be the kind actually described in the instructions, and as I was realizing that there was no slot in mine for an Allen key, I fumbled about and the seat post slipped and fell down into the frame of the bike.

It fell deep down.  And though it slid in quite easily, somehow, it does not slide out nearly as readily.  Indeed, it doesn’t seem to want to slide out at all, not even a millimeter.  The company’s website just recommends turning the thing upside down and using a rubber mallet or something similar to hammer at the base until the post falls out.  It hasn’t budged so far.

This is a problem that has been occurring frequently for some time, apparently—there are complaints or inquiries on their site going back three years and more—yet there has been no such simple preventative fix as to, for instance, put some kind of barrier in the structure so the post can’t slip past its top into the frame.

Of course, if I had put the seat on the post first, this wouldn’t have happened, but the instructions tell you to put the post in first.  I’m not sure why.  I’m not sure if there is a reason.  This does, apparently, occur often enough that people in YouTube videos advise putting the seats on first.

It’s maddening.  Anyway, I was working on the stupid thing, trying to figure out how to dislodge it, until far too late to catch the last train back toward the house.  So, I “slept” on the floor in the office again.  I just wanted to have the bike to ride home; it was the first thing to which I’ve looked forward in I don’t know how long.  My coworker said it’s literally the first time in 2023 I’ve said there was something I was anticipating positively.  He’s probably right.

Also, yesterday we missed another potential palindromic number sequence in our recording numbers for verifications.  Don’t worry about the specifics too much, just know that I decided that, if one would come up before too long a time had passed, I would take it as a message from the universe* to try to decide to live.  But the chance passed, yet again, not to my surprise.

And this last Saturday was the “anniversary” of the destruction of the One Ring in The Lord of the Rings.  I wish I had just killed myself then, as I considered doing.  I’m so frustrated.  I haven’t been able to get anything right in I don’t know how long.  Like the song True Love Waits says, “I’m not living.  I’m just killing time.”

And time is killing me, but it’s doing it too damned slowly.  I’m tired and I’m in pain and I’m trying not to give in, but it’s so much effort, and there’s no fucking payoff.  Am I just staying alive today so that I can just stay alive again tomorrow, then the next day and the next week and the next month and the next year…just staying alive because people think that’s what you’re supposed to do, and biology builds those drives into everyone?  What is the point?  I hate myself, anyway, and all that I’ve become.

Oh, and in case you’ve recently joined the readership of this blog, you should know, this isn’t about the bike, per se.  I mean, the bike is frustrating because it was an instance of me trying to do something proactive and positive, and then via fumbling, stupid mistakes I made it go wrong and made it more frustrating than it ought to be.

It’s not that I don’t think I can fix the problem.  Obviously, I can fix the problem.  I just don’t want to have to fix the stupid problem.  I’m tired of fixing problems.  I’m tired of effort, of trying to achieve…well, anything at all.  I feel like my life has been a constant attempt to build a sandcastle while the tide is coming in.  Oh, and there’s a hurricane coming.  And I don’t have any tools.  And the sand is basically really gravel.  But mainly, I’m just rotten at it, and I don’t seem to be getting better over time; rather, I am getting worse.

Oh, well, enough melodrama.  Sorry, everyone.  I really ought just to bring the show to a close.  It’s pathetic.  We’ll see, I guess.

distortedbike

*Though I don’t actually believe the universe sends messages; it’s just a conceit, a sort of reverse Russian Roulette.

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Wheels and heels and blister peels, alive, alive-o

It’s Friday day, or whatever that annoying song says, and I’m in a slightly better mood than I was yesterday.  That’s not a high bar to clear by any means, but clear it I have, for what it’s worth.

I’m at the bus stop again this morning, having arrived almost an hour before the bus is due, because I decided to give my feet one more morning of rest.  Yesterday wasn’t too bad—I taped up my most egregious blisters—but the atypical walking I did because of the blisters led my back pain to flare up quite a bit relative to its usual baseline, so I was a most unhappy camper.  However, I tolerated the walk back from the train at the end of the day, and my total mileage yesterday was right around eight, so it wasn’t as though I took it easy.  Nevertheless, this morning, though I’m wearing reliably non-problematic shoes, I figured I’d still give myself a slight break, though I’ll walk back this evening.

This weekend I’m off work, so that will help give a further comparative rest.

Given the difficulties with my tootsies, and the simple issue of time—I leave the house before five and get back after eight at night, giving me no chance to get a full night’s sleep even if I were not an insomniac of high order—I decided to break down and order a decent bicycle.

It will arrive at the office on Monday—that’s where I have my tool box—and I’ll assemble it and ride it to the train and thence to the house.  A five mile walk takes around an hour and a half, but a five mile trip on a bike, even at a relaxed pace, shouldn’t take more than about half an hour.  Although bicycles are welcomed on the Tri-rail trains, I don’t intend to bring it to work during the day, once I have it set up; I’ve done that before, and it’s a pain.  Instead, I have also bought a very good, double-lock system, and they have bike racks at the bus station well under the eye off all the other travelers, so it should be secure.  I’ll leave it at the station in the morning.

A bicycle is also good for shopping and the like on the weekend.  As I’m pretty sure you can probably tell, I’m not too intimidated by distance when it comes to walking; if it were not for blisters and time, I’d be happy to walk a marathon a day and more.  But walking takes a lot of time, especially if you want to go any significant distance.

I think, for instance, about trips to places like zoos and museums.  If traveling on foot, one would perforce simply use buses and or trains at least part of the way.  But, for instance, the Morikami Museum and Gardens, one of my favorite places, is about 40 miles from the house, and there aren’t good public transportation routes near it.  It’s in Palm Beach County, and the bus system there is a deep pile of crap, especially on weekends.

They really ought to be ashamed.

The Tri-rail trains are always good, but their stations are toward the east end of the county, and the Morikami is toward the west.  But forty miles on a bike, once one is accustomed to it, is not insurmountable—perhaps three or for hours of riding, even for a plodder like me.  Or one could take the Tri-rail to the beautiful Boca Raton station and ride from there.

I’m not suggesting that I’m going to be making regular trips to the Morikami, though that would be nice.  I’m just using it as a comparatively extreme example.  There are much nearer potential places—from grocery stores, to malls, to movie theaters and even science centers*, like the one in Fort Lauderdale—to visit.  Also, it can be good just to be able to get out and about to more distant places, like the beach and parks and so on, without having to worry about parking cars and catching buses or trains, or being in much of any way reliant on the structure of society and the acquiescence of humans.

We’ll see how it all works out.  Anyway, knowing me, the bloom will probably come off the rose very quickly, but I at least envision possible quite long journeys, once I become more accomplished at biking, as I used to be once upon a time.  As you can tell if you look back a long way on my Facebook account, before I was interrupted by my stint as a guest of the Florida Department of Corrections, I biked quite a bit, albeit on a cheap bike that contributed to two separate shoulder injuries when it went over on me.

I have to take some blame for at least one of those events—there were wet grass clippings in the path, and I took a bend far too quickly.  Also, I was using a leather shoulder bag, like a very large purse, rather than a backpack, so I was quite unbalanced.  I have much better backpacks now!  Also, the new bike has a cargo rack thingy above the rear wheel, so I can strap stuff there.

The only major downsides not already mentioned will be maintenance—which tends not to be my strong point—and fact that rain is slightly trickier to accommodate on a bike.  I’m not worried about getting wet.  I’ve ridden a 650 cc scooter on the highway in tropical storms, for goodness’ sake; I have excellent rain gear.  I’m more worried about getting my computer wet in my backpack.  But there are ways to waterproof that, so I’m not all that worried.

Anyway, on too rainy a day, I can always walk and carry an umbrella.  Walking in the rain, frankly, is very nice.  One doesn’t need to worry overmuch about sweat, for one thing.

Well, that’s enough of that, for a comparatively optimistic and forward-thinking post from me.  Sorry to disappoint you, if you enjoy the darker aspect of my personality (it is a major one, I’ll admit).  I’m sure it will return.  Why would it suddenly be cured, after all?  Still, hopefully I’ll have a comparatively restful weekend, and my blisters will largely heal themselves, and by Monday morning I’ll be able cheerily to take what may be my last regular morning walk to the train station.

And you might as well have a good weekend, if you can.

guyonbikealtered

*The trouble with science centers, for me, is that I don’t really want to go to such places alone.  Mostly, I tend already to know the stuff they are presenting, and so—though it’s at least a bit of fun to see the exhibits—I don’t get the joy out of them that I did when I was younger, or when going with kids and so on.

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In nature’s infinite blog of secrecy a little I can read.

Hello and good morning.

It’s Thursday morning once again, and so it’s time for me to attempt to create a simulacrum of what used to be my typical, once-weekly blog post, back when I used to do my fiction writing every non-Thursday morning of the week.  It won’t really live up to expectations, I wouldn’t think, since the situation is now so different.

For one thing, I can’t talk about my fiction writing, since I haven’t done any fiction writing since before I last posted The Dark Fairy and the Desperado, and previously, Outlaw’s Mind, both of which are uncompleted stories and are likely to remain that way until the end of the universe—barring, of course, the possibility that the universe goes on forever and every possible quantum state thereof is eventually realized somewhere, somewhen.

Indeed, if the universe is infinite in spatial extent, as seems to be the case, and if our understanding of quantum mechanics and the maximal entropy state of enclosed regions of spacetime are correct, or even reasonably close to being correct, then somewhere out there in space “at this time” there are an infinite number of versions of me who have completed both stories, and many others besides, and who are world-famous authors.

I used scare quotes around “at this time” because, obviously, given the finite speed of light/causality, and the flexible nature of time depending on relative motion, the concept of simultaneity is fuzzy at best.  Nothing outside one’s local light cones can be considered to be in one’s past or one’s future, but they are also not exactly “now”, either.

Still, we can give an overall statement about the age of the universe for things that have little to no “peculiar motion” relative to the cosmic microwave background and say that such things have gone through about 13.8 billion years since the hot big bang, on average, and it’s not nonsensical to do that.  So, if by “at this time”, I refer to other regions of a spatially infinite universe that have passed through roughly the same amount of local time since the big bang, I’m not incorrect in saying that there are an infinite number of “me” who have completed their stories—and there are an infinite number who have not, and there are an infinite number of every possible variation.

None of that does me (or you) any good, because—being outside my past and future light cones (and yours, which are almost identical to mine)—those distant regions are completely causally disconnected from us, past and future, especially given the accelerated expansion of the universe.  I suppose an Einstein-Rosen Bridge/wormhole could conceivably connect such distant regions, in principle, assuming such wormholes can even happen, which is far from certain.

There are those who hypothesize that quantum entanglement happens through wormholes (small ones), and there are those who have even tried to connect distant multiverses with the many worlds of a branching Everettian quantum mechanics, but I don’t think either of those things is close to having been rigorously described, let alone tested, nor are they generally accepted by the physics community.

Anyway, it still doesn’t help any of us, because clearly, if there are alternate versions of ourselves living better lives than we are*, they have no back-and-forth connection with the lives we currently are living—the wave function has split, the states have decohered, they are not the same beings, even if movies about multiverses win many Oscars and/or make a great deal of money.

What was I talking about again?

I don’t know.  I’m very tired.  I ended up sleeping in the office last night.  I did this deliberately; it had nothing to do with train problems or anything.  I just didn’t feel like going back to the house.  I was tired (still am) and there’s nothing at the house for me that is any more enticing than there is at the office, other than a shower.  And I don’t really care about a shower right now.  For whom would be grooming myself?  Whom am I trying to impress?  All is vanity, as it says in Ecclesiastes.

It’s a funny line for a religious text that some people say contains the infallible word of an all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful and omnipresent deity that made everything, deliberately and specifically.  If that were all the case, why would it say all is vanity?  Of course, the argument could be made that these were the words of some ancient human (Solomon or David, one of those kings, is supposed to have been the author of Ecclesiastes, I think), not the direct words of the creator of the universe, but if that’s the case, then clearly the bible is not literally true in all its parts**.  But that’s hardly the only case of seemingly contradictory portions of religious texts, is it?

Anyway, it’s chilly here for south Florida—about sixty degrees, which feels cold when you’re used to 70’s to 80’s, but would no doubt feel beautifully balmy to people back in Michigan or Ohio.  It’s certainly far warmer than intergalactic space, which is only about 2.7 Kelvin (so it’s about 286 Kelvin hotter here).  Then again, it’s much cooler than the heart of the sun, and cooler yet than the heart of blue supergiant stars.  And those are all vastly cooler than just later than one Planck time after whatever initiated the big bang.

Of course, there is, in principle, a maximum heat that any local region can achieve, because if the local energy is high enough, it will form a local black hole, and also the uncertainty principle will kick in to separate things.  Although…if everything is uniformly very hot, such that there is no net curvature of spacetime in one local region relative to another…maybe that’s where inflation comes from?  If there is inflation***.

Anyway, that’s enough nonsense.  I’m just jabbering and chattering, because I don’t really communicate with anyone day-to-day in any way other than this about things that interest me.  I’m very alone and very tired, but I’m also very bad at doing the whole social interaction thing, so I’m kind of stuck.

I’m inclined to say that I deserve it—that’s how I feel—but of course, as Will (played by Clint) points out below, such concepts are really vacuous.  There are a functionally limitless number of possible variations of lives that could be lived by a being that matches my rough description and/or has an identical past that diverged at some point.  I’m just living one of those possibilities, because, well, I had to be living one of them unless I were dead, which I’m not, unfortunately.

I hope most of you are having a better morning than I am.  Heck, I’d be delighted if everyone who reads my stuff always has better days than I do.  That would at least be some good news.  And, of course, somewhere out there in infinite spacetime—if there is such a thing—that situation is instantiated.

Don’t be jealous, though.  There are also places where everyone reading my blog always has worse days than I have.

Poor bastards.

TTFN

deserve

*And if there are, there are also infinite numbers of versions of us living every possible worse life as well.

**If in any of them whatsoever, which is a separate but related question.

***Well, by certain definitions, we could say with great confidence that there is inflation, since the universe is inflating now—that’s the “dark energy” you might have heard about—but it’s doing it quite slowly, doubling in size over the course of every about ten billion years, I think, at the current rate, assuming it’s a constant.  But if you change the time scale, it looks much the same as earlier, more rapid inflation…I think that’s the basis of Roger Penrose’s Conformal Cyclic Cosmology, but I haven’t read his full book on the subject yet, so I may be misunderstanding.

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WINTER forward, Fall back just doesn’t make sense.

Well, here we all are again—though I, at least, am not on the Mississippi.  I’m actually on the Tri Rail train, northbound between Hollywood, Florida and Deerfield Beach, Florida*.  But I suspect that most of you are not on the Tri Rail when reading it, though some small possibility of such an occurrence does exist.

There may well even be people reading this while on the Mississippi.  Of course, the Mississippi River is much bigger than the Tri Rail train system, and I think there is quite a lot of shipping of various kinds that goes on along its course, but I don’t know that there are very many people involved relative to the amount of traffic.  Of those people, a very small percentage are likely to be reading blogs (or other matter) relative to the people on the Tri Rail who might do so at any given time.

I’m sure there are legitimate ways to assess those numbers, but I don’t have enough information to do it.  I also don’t have enough interest to try to obtain the requisite information, even if it is available out there in the internet/web.

It’s a bit amusing to me that yesterday when I wrote my post, I was completely unaware that we had done the whole “spring forward” thing last weekend.  Part of the reason it didn’t occur to me is:  It’s not Spring yet, dammit!  What the hell is that, having the “spring forward” part of daylight savings time when it’s not even Spring?  Forget the fact that daylight savings time is a dubious practice to begin with; if you’re going to take the thing with the long-standing mnemonic “spring forward, fall back” and adjust the timing so it no longer applies…well, I can only say that such stupidity must have required an act of Congress**.

Anyway, it was funny, because I got on a train twenty minutes earlier than my usual one, and I noted, as I arrived, that the sun wasn’t even starting to come up above the horizon.  I thought to myself that it was remarkable how much difference twenty minutes had made.  But, of course, it was an hour and twenty minutes, it turns out, so that difference is less surprising.

Then, at the office, I noted that the microwave clock was off by an hour.  At first I assumed someone had just stopped cooking something and left time on it, but seven minutes and twenty-one seconds seemed like a long time to have left.  Still, people do stupider things.  I’m one of them, obviously***.

So, of course, as I reset the microwave clock, noting that no one had just left time on it, it flitted through my mind that maybe it was a daylight savings time thing, but again—it isn’t Spring yet, so I didn’t think that could be the case!

I was wrong, obviously.  It didn’t matter much to me either way, since even with the hour shifted forward, I was up earlier than my alarm by quite a bit, and I finally gave up and left, since I was up anyway, and that was why I got the earlier train.  Today, I just got up earlier anyway, again.

I’ve been walking to and from the train on both ends now.  Just since Friday, that means I’ve walked about thirty miles—twelve on Friday, twelve yesterday, and six so far today (rounded off, and with some loose change left out from the weekend).  I seem to have reached the point where I’m not troubled by new blisters, which is good, and I’ve adjusted my process the avoid such things in the future, for the most part.  I do have some achiness here and there, but it’s not that bad.  Sweat is my biggest issue, to be honest.  But I bring a change of shirt, and I have Lysol and deodorant aplenty, so as long as I rehydrate, it doesn’t seem to be much of a problem.

I am a bit frustrated that I haven’t again experienced the “endorphin rush” thing I had on Friday.  Maybe that was just me being all pleased with myself for having walked so far already that morning, and wasn’t really exercise-induced endorphins.  Over the weekend, and particularly yesterday, I’ve actually been even more depressed than usual for me.

I guess you could tell that much from my post yesterday morning, and I can only say that my mood went downhill from there throughout the day.  My mental energy today feels slightly higher, but then again, I have overdosed on caffeine already this morning, purely because I didn’t want to be quite so glum when I got to writing this post.  It was deliberate.

I’m really not prone to be kind to myself, am I?  In fact, I tend to be unkind to myself a lot of the time.  It’s not without reason that I did a cover of the song Hurt, originally by Nine Inch Nails/Trent Reznor.  I find that its lyrics more or less literally express my feelings and facts about me…except that, from my point of view, needles are for pansies.

Anyway, that’s getting too revelatory, and so I’ll draw to a close now—just for today, I mean, not permanently.  That may be coming soon, but it’s not here yet.  In the meantime, you can look forward to reading whatever I write tomorrow and the next day and for however long I keep going.  I really hope it won’t be very long.

You can place bets if you like.  I won’t do any match-fixing, or whatever the term is.  As Doris Day sang, whatever will be will be—as it must be, for once a thing happens, there is no way it can ever have been otherwise than it was.

*Actually, it runs between Miami Airport and Mangonia Park, which is in northern Palm Beach County, but I don’t go to either of those destinations.  Indeed, in all the time I’ve ridden the Tri Rail, I’ve never once gone to either of those two stations, though I’ve been to and/or through most of the stations in between.  This is perfectly understandable and predictable, given that they are the two termini of the line, and so one never passes through them en route to anywhere else.

**It is not without justification that Dave Barry once used “act of Congress” as a euphemism for “taking a sh*t”.

***Both in the sense that I do such “stupid” things and that I probably am one of the stupider things that people have done, though I shouldn’t disrespect my parents for bringing me into existence.  They had no way to know how I was going to turn out.

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Though it’s Wednesday morning again, I’ll avoid quoting from She’s Leaving Home…

Though it’s Wednesday morning again, I’ll avoid quoting from She’s Leaving Home, or referring to my tied-for-favorite of Charles Addams’s characters.  I’m back at the bus stop, just as I was yesterday and the day before, of course, and I still feel very tired.

In fact, I feel a bit more tired than I did yesterday, though I had a nominally better sleep last night—almost five hours (it wasn’t uninterrupted, though).  For me, that’s middling to decent, but it’s very clear from the inside that it is not the amount of sleep my body requires for optimal, let alone maximal, function.  It may, however, be the most sleep my nervous system is able to accomplish without pharmaceutical intervention.

But, of course, with such interventions, I always feel more tired even after a long sleep than I would normally.  Actually, come to think of it, last night I took half a Benadryl™ before going to bed, so I did have some slight pharmaceutical influence, perhaps accounting for the fact that I got all of five hours of sleep.

Jeez, that’s all really boring, isn’t it?  I’m so sorry.  My life is boring, unfortunately, so if I talk about my life, things are generally going to be boring.  I appreciate your patience.

I also appreciate the people who commented and responded and so on to my previous two blog posts.  You’re greatly appreciated, I want that to be very clear, even if in supporting me I fear you are throwing pearls before swine.

I’m considering going back on Saint John’s Wort, which is an “antidepressant” that worked for me in the past, when I first took it (along with therapy, so it isn’t easy to separate variables).  I wouldn’t expect much from it.  I’m actually almost hoping to get that little bump in motivation that sometimes comes at the beginning of antidepressant treatment and puts a depressed person at increased risk for suicide, because before, they were too crippled by lack of energy to take action, but now that the will is growing, they can do it.

The last time I took it, though—which was far from the first—I just felt worse overall in general, even after several weeks, so I don’t even know that it’s going to do anything if I take it.  I can hardly be certain that the first time I took it the beneficial result was anything more than a placebo effect.

I’ve been on other antidepressants, of course, from Paxil to Celexa and Lexapro, to Effexor and Wellbutrin, as well as more old-school ones like Amitriptyline.  They clearly had effects (including benefits), of course, but I don’t know that they were for the better.  Coming off Paxil led me to experience the only two episodes of sleep paralysis I’ve ever had, which were utterly terrifying but still quite fascinating, at least in retrospect.  So in that sense it was worth the course of treatment.  The side-effects weren’t good, though.

I can’t really take prescription antidepressants now, though, because I don’t have a doctor to prescribe them, ironically enough.  I have neither a general practitioner nor a psychiatrist (nor psychologist or social worked, either, but they can’t prescribe anything, anyway*).  I don’t even have a dentist.  My only interaction with any medical care since 2015 or so has been the time I went to an urgent care place with a respiratory infection/complaint and was sent to the ER and admitted because I was de-satting, and they thought maybe my congenital heart defect had reappeared a bit (based on an echocardiogram, not just my symptoms and the drop in oxygenation).

That was maybe five or six years ago.  They wanted me to get follow-up, obviously, but I have no interest in pursuing it, and certainly cannot summon the motivation to do so.  For one thing, I’m unconvinced that they’re correct, though that in itself is not a good reason not to pursue more information.  For another, I have no health insurance, and I certainly have no money to be able to get involved in paying for significant healthcare myself.  Also, I don’t want to have any more cardiac interventions of any kind, frankly.  I went through all that when I was 18, and I don’t want to go through it, or anything like it, again.

I also don’t have the mental resources—in terms of will, executive function, whatever you want to call it—to be able to seek out any kind of state or federal healthcare assistance.  I’m in Florida, anyway, and the public programs here suck.  Anyway, I’m no good at taking care of myself; I see myself as a nuisance, and I really want me to leave myself alone, but that’s obviously difficult.

Yeah, Florida really doesn’t make much very easy.  But, hey, at least there’s no income tax, so people like the Donald can enjoy living here.  The government is dicey at best, of course, at state and local levels, even relative to many other states and the national government—though our representatives there also aren’t exactly the cream of the mental or moral crop.  We really are the Mordor of the United States, in many ways, and not merely because it’s down here in the southeast.  Unfortunately, there are no volcanoes, and though we have big spiders, none of them are Shelob-scale ones.

Anyway, I probably won’t take any antidepressants, and I don’t expect to seek out any healthcare or mental healthcare.  It’s too much trouble, it’s too difficult, I can’t focus or concentrate on things like that.  I’ve been dealing with that shit too often in my life, and for too long, and despite my best previous efforts, I’ve ended up here in Mordor, all by myself.  I’m sick of it.  It’s not worth the effort.

I’m not worth the effort.

*I did get on BetterHelp for a bit, and it was okay as far as it went, but some difficulties arose, not anyone’s fault, certainly not my therapist’s, and I was off it after a little over a month, I think.