Lifestyle

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Vamonos a escuchar mientras caminamos

I am writing this post on my smartphone today, as opposed to my computer.  Though, of course, a smartphone is a computer, and indeed, is far more advanced a computer than any I’d used prior to the turn of the millennium.  It’s a lot more advanced than the computers that ran the Space Shuttle™ and vastly more advanced than the ones used in the Apollo moon landings.  Thankfully, Newtonian mechanics is straightforward enough to be computable using quite simple systems and some smart humans, of which there were many involved in that program, and Newtonian mechanics is all one really needs to get to the Moon and back.

Anyway, I walked to the train station this morning, as was my plan, which was why I did not bring my…my folding computer back to the house with me yesterday afternoon.  I plan to bring it with me this evening, and to take tomorrow morning off from walking, just to avoid overdoing things in the short term. There will be plenty of time for overdoing things; I need to pace myself at least a little bit.

I feel that my sleep has been getting even worse recently than it usually is, and it’s really quite frustrating.  Yet, even though I’m deeply tired, I can’t seem to get sleepy.  I’m not sure what I can do about this, but it’s quite frustrating.

I do have one rather fun thing to report:  this morning on the walk to the train, I listened to a new audio-book I’d ordered with this month’s Audible credit (which hit my account yesterday).  That book was the first Harry Potter book…but in Spanish!  If there’s one set of books I know well enough to be able to fill in the gaps in Spanish, it’s that set.  The only potentially better one would be The Lord of the Rings; all in good time for that!  So, my tentative thought is that I can listen to the whole Harry Potter series in Spanish and this should help me improve my spoken (and heard) Spanish skills.

Audible also has the Harry Potter books in Japanese, and I almost started with that, but I figured Spanish would probably be the one in which it would be more useful to improve my skills.  I am in south Florida, after all.  The other people who share the house in which I live are primarily Spanish speaking, for goodness sake.

There’s nothing that says I can’t do both, of course, and that is my tentative plan.  I mean to do a lot of walking, so there will be plenty of time to listen.  Even in my hour and a half walk so far this morning, I only got to chapter 4 of the first book, and it’s the shortest of the Harry Potter books.  Just wait till I get to book 6!  I read that one seven times between when it came out and when book 7 was released, because I was impatient.  By the time I finish that, maybe, the audio will feel completely natural.

Once again today, I let the 610 train go while waiting for the 630.  I’m glad I did.  Today’s weather was warmer and muggier than Monday, and there is essentially no wind to cool one down, so that time is well used.  The wait is only somewhat effective, of course.  I brought along a second shirt to put over my “athletic” one, just so that I’m not sweating all over the back of the seat on the train.  My shorts are designed to be very good at letting go of sweat, but even so, given the pattern of accumulation, I look almost as though I had wet myself‒though only if I had done so while lying on my belly.

It’s not that bad, I guess, and I have my little “scent bomb” spray to hide any bad odor…and I’ve been told that my initial sweaty smell isn’t too bad.  Far worse (to me) is the odor of mildew.  If it gets going, I feel nauseated.  I hate that smell.

This is probably why I can’t stand to eat pretty much any kind of mushroom; they all smell vaguely like mildew.  Also, their texture is gross.  I suppose if I were to eat a magic mushroom in order to try to treat my depression, I could probably just force a bit down.  But it would have to be in specific, deliberate, and controlled circumstances.  At least I’m highly unlikely to eat poisonous mushrooms accidentally, which is good, because by all accounts of which I’m aware, they bring about a slow, painful, and horrifying death when they kill, and there are generally no known antidotes.

I don’t have much more to report.  It’s been a weird few days at the office, because my colleague is out of town, on his delayed vacation.  It’s a bit hectic and I am slightly behind schedule on payroll, but that is largely due to a region-wide Internet outage we had yesterday afternoon.  The phones in our office are VOIP, and of course, the reports we get, from which I render the payroll, come through email.  We left the office not long after lunch, after waiting a bit to see if the Internet would return.

The irony is that, after everyone had left and I was just getting ready to lock up, the internet connection came back (earlier than predicted by Comcast, who I suspect use a sort of Mister Scot technique when estimating repair times).  It was too late to do anything about it, and I was practically heading out the door already, but it’s both mildly frustrating and rather amusing.

That’s about enough for today.  Tomorrow, I plan to write using my laptop computer, so the flow might be better.  It seems appropriate for what may be one of my final traditional Thursday blog posts.  In the meantime, please have a good day, today.

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Here we go again, it seems

Well, here we go again, as I wrote above, starting another work week against all of our better judgments.  I walked to the train station and arrived relatively early today, but I’m letting the 610 train go‒it’s just now arriving‒and I will get on the 630.  That way I have time to cool down a bit.  I will use the extra 20 minutes to write this blog post, such as it will be, here at the station.

I don’t know what I’m really going to write about‒though I’ll begin with the annoying fact that “what to write about” feels like a phrase that ends with a preposition.  I don’t think the word “about” actually is a preposition, but it acts sort of as one here, and its object is “what”.  I want to write something to the effect of “I don’t know about what I’m going to write”, but even I feel that’s more awkward than the more common alternative.  It does bother me, though.

On a different subject, I think that maybe I should just give up on talking about the fact of my worsening dysthymia/depression and suicidal thoughts that I wish I could escape.  The combination is what I wish I could get away from, I mean.  Either one, even without the other, is nearly just as bad, and it’s honestly not too easy to imagine the latter without the former.

I often present my intermittent desire to die as if it were a philosophical conclusion arrived at merely through thought, but those ideas are at best motivated reasoning and at worst sophistry.  I just happen to be good at such things, so it’s going to be difficult to argue around me.  And though I have arrived at some conclusions through more and less rigorous means, I am open to new and convincing reasoning and discussion and ideas.  Such things don’t appear to be forthcoming, alas.

Maybe, since my depression precedes and/or is orthogonal to my reasoning about the value of my life, I shouldn’t expect any counterbalancing notions to be arrived at by reasoning or conversation.  I’ve undergone cognitive-behavioral therapy before, which is keyed to targeting the disordered reasoning associated with depression, but it was no more successful‒with or without meds‒than other approaches.

However, it doesn’t mean that certain forms of response are welcome or even remotely useful.  For instance:  being berated is not useful.  I once had a former coworker/friend berate me for being depressed and feeling suicidal*.  They even compared my situation to theirs:  they had (and still have) some form of slowly progressive cancer, which remains under treatment, as it has been for years now.

To me it’s a rather foolish comparison, and not one to make to someone who is alone and feeling suicidal.  For one thing, though I would never dismiss or belittle that person’s suffering, that person did and does continue to share info about the course of their treatment on Facebook, with pictures of them at the hospital, for instance.  When they go, they are always accompanied by their spouse, their children,  their grandchildren, and so on.

I’m not saying their situation is enviable in general terms, but in some ways‒sometimes‒I do envy it, reprehensible though that may seem.  I’m fairly certain that, if such a thing were possible, I would gladly take that person’s illness upon myself if, by my doing so, they would be cured.  It would bring me joy to be able to make their life better, and to give them more and better time with their loved ones.

I would not then fight the illness, most likely.  I would simply ask for palliative care, and let the disease run its course.  Maybe‒but maybe not‒if my kids knew I would be dying soon, they would want to see me again.  I don’t know.

Maybe, even if it were possible, I would not actually go through with the disease transference.  It’s easy enough to think one would, but It’s just an idle thought as long as it’s an impossible thing to do.

But it was infuriating to be berated for feeling depressed and actually judged about it, as though I simply had chosen to be depressed and could choose not to be at a whim if I just stopped being…what?  I don’t know‒mentally lazy or something along those lines.

I am not my own biggest booster‒I’m more likely to be my own detractor and even derogator‒but neither mental nor physical laziness have been hallmarks of my life or character.  And failure to grasp simple concepts or recognize facts is not one of my major failings, though I certainly am capable of it.  I try very hard not to fool myself about things, but of course it’s always conceivable that such trying may lead me to fool myself in other ways.

Still, for instance, unless someone is going to perform some convincing miracle that would persuade even a disinterested extraterrestrial, then supernatural or mystical or religious arguments are not going to convince me of much of anything.

I’ve read the entire Bible (original and sequel) some of it more than once (and a tiny bit of it in Hebrew), and I’ve read as much of the Koran as I could get through, and I’ve read the Tao te Ching many times, and various other works of religion and philosophy.  I’ve tried to read both high and low religious apologia and statements and philosophy as much as I could without puking on myself, but even such luminaries as C. S. Lewis and Francis Collins and Descartes seem to lose their grasp on what it even means to have convincing reasons for something**.  If my discussions about depression and pointlessness and death involve motivated reasoning and sophistry, I’m far from alone in those things.

Of course, my depression and suicidal urges don’t really come from reasoning about my situation.  This is clear if for no other reason than that I had them even at some times in my life when everything was going objectively well for me.

It seems they are tendencies baked into the circuit boards of my brain in some fashion, possibly related to possible ASD***, or possibly orthogonal to that possibility.  Rather than a lack of joy or a surfeit of sorrow, they seem to be associated, at some level, with a setpoint issue‒perhaps a defect in one’s capacity to feel or sustain joy, or an overactive solemnity and dreariness perception circuit.  Certainly I have great difficulty with belief (as opposed to being provisionally convinced about something).

Maybe there is no help to be had, given current states of technology and knowledge.  It might be interesting to try psilocybin-based therapy or trans-cranial magnetic stimulation or some such other, but I don’t have real access to those things.  I’m also not able to advocate for myself.  That’s one of my problems.  I don’t like myself, and I have no real capacity to seek out anything on my own behalf.  I haven’t gone to see a doctor of any kind for some years now.  What I need is probably not argument or reasoning but rescue, and that is not forthcoming.  Why would it be, for such as me?

Anyway, writing this blog is about my only form of self-advocacy and help-seeking, but it seems to suck for those purposes.  Oh well.  I guess it’s something for me to do until my time is up‒which, for today at least, it is now.

*As if it were perhaps some form of “lifestyle choice”.

**And Augustine and Aquinas are frankly often embarrassing.  I suppose one must give them some slack given the fact that they lived many centuries ago‒but then again, Marcus Aurelius lived even longer ago than they, and he was able to write things that make a great deal more sense than these two.

***There are strong associations between the two noted in the literature, and people with ASD have much higher rates of depression and suicide than the general population, and an average lifespan, even among “high functioning” individuals, in the 50 to 60 year range.

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“Walk this way…THIS way.”

Well, for the first time in a few weeks, I walked to the train station today.  The weather is perhaps ever so slightly better for such things because it’s been raining a lot and it’s slightly cooler.  Maybe.

I’m sure that all the people up north are unimpressed by my grousing, thinking such sardonic things as, “Oh, poor baby, is it too hot for you in the first week of October?”  But I’ve said before, as someone who grew up in Michigan, I like the cooling off that happens in Autumn.  One can always put on a jacket and so on, or wear a sweater (or both) when it gets cool out.  Down here, even if it were okay to go around with no clothes, there are times this would not keep you cool enough to avoid potential overheating and dehydration.

Also, during the day, you could be prone to some truly unfortunate sunburns.

Anyway, I had a pretty decent walk this morning.  I must have been going at a good pace in my new boots, because I arrived in plenty of time for a train twenty minutes earlier than the one I had intended to take.  I’m writing this on that earlier train, since I only had a few minutes to wait before the train I usually just miss arrives.

While I walked, I listened to the Audible version of Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari.  But here’s a surprise:  I was listening to the Spanish version!

I used to speak Spanish pretty well, after taking a couple of years of it in college, including a literature course, and when I was in residency, I had a fair few times to use it, since the Bronx has a large Spanish-speaking population (like most of the Western Hemisphere).  However, it has now been ages since I’ve used it regularly, and I find that when people speak to me in Spanish, I have a hard time understanding much of it.  That seems like such a shame, especially since, by the time of my last college course, I was thinking partly in Spanish.

So, I decided to get that book in Spanish (audio), and listen to it to try to reinvigorate that part of my brain.  I’ve read the book in English, so that makes it a bit easier.  I can’t say that I was honestly following everything that was being said (or read) but I caught quite a few words and sentences and concepts, and I think that will get easier as I go along.

I also recently got an audio book of a Japanese light novel in Japanese (I had to go looking for it on Amazon), and even recorded the audio‒or rather, imported the audio‒for several anime I have watched many times, figuring to do something similar with Japanese, of which I have only a smattering.  But it seems better to focus on Spanish first.  Spanish is all but ubiquitous where I currently live.

But I also want to go for the Nihongo on some of my walks.  I think that learning and using foreign languages helps one understand one’s own native tongue better, and also to recognize the nature and importance of grammar and careful communication.  I’ve said before that language is crystallized thought, and having more ways to crystallize it may at least give one different and more sophisticated ways to think.  Seeing the differences (and commonalities) of language is very interesting, also.

All European languages (as far as I know) have lots of evolutionary history in common.  Some, of course, are more directly related than others; Spanish and Italian are obviously close cousins, while English and Russian are less so.  But when one gets to the “Far East” things are much more divergent from the West (and vice versa), and though there are words imported from Europe (e.g., the Japanese for “bread” is “pan”, as the Portuguese introduced bread to Japan), the roots of the languages appear to be almost completely separate.  This makes it all the more interesting when one finds grammatical structures in common, especially when they do the same thing, but in different ways.  It makes one think Chomsky really was onto something with his notion of a universal, inherent human grammar.

I learn by hearing pretty well, almost as well as I do by reading.  In fact, when I read, I always subvocalize‒i.e., I say the words in my head.  It makes my reading slower, but I read more deeply than most people I know, and I tend to remember what I read better than many.

So, I’ll do some Spanish for now, but maybe I’ll intersperse it with Japanese as well.  It should be interesting, at least.  We’ll see how long this intention lasts.

Before I close, I figured I’d share with you a bit of what might be interesting trivia regarding my walk.  Before starting off, rather than using an “energy drink” replete with high fructose corn syrup or other carbohydrates (which I’m trying to minimize overall and even completely avoid when I can), I drank a few swigs of olive oil!

Ha ha!  That surprises you, I’ll bet.  But it makes sense.  At aerobic exertion levels, the muscles (like most of the rest of the body) “prefer” to run on fatty acids, not glucose, at least when insulin levels are normal.  And, of course, olive oil is all fat, which is a much more efficient form of energy than carbs.  One can’t drink much olive oil in a swig or two (and I did not try) but at least it doesn’t lead to any rebound drop in blood sugar and consequent fatigue.

I don’t know if I will continue to do that, or even if it had any effect on the speed of my walking (there were too many variables to make any credible determination of specific causation), but it certainly doesn’t seem to have impaired my abilities.

That’s enough for now.  I hope you all have a good day, and a good week, and what the heck, have a good month.  It’s one of the best ones of the year.

walk this way

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It’s a day more poached or boiled than fried

First, the latest updates on the work situation:  it looks like I am going to be working tomorrow, as previously scheduled, because my coworker’s wife is still sick, but they can’t get next weekend rebooked or some such, so he will be working then and doesn’t need to ask me to switch.  Of course, there apparently exists the possibility that they will be going instead sometime during the middle of one of the upcoming weeks, but you know what?  I can’t keep worrying about this crap.  I haven’t had a “vacation” since I went up north when my mother died a few years ago, so it’s not as though I’m not due, anyway.

Vacations are something people in general enjoy with their families or significant others or some such, and I have no one around here with whom to go on a vacation.  And being just off work and being by myself around the “house”‒or more specifically, the one room in which I live‒is in many ways worse than going to the office.  So I don’t tend to take time off except when I’m sick and/or in an exceptional amount of pain.

I know, it’s an exciting life, right?  I shouldn’t share such titillating tidbits too much or people will shrivel up with envy.

Ugh, it’s sooooo muggy and humid and the air is so still today.  I’m dripping with sweat so much that it’s fogging up my glasses and it’s getting in my eyes, even though I’m just standing on the platform waiting for the train.  Oh, and the announcement says the train is boarding on the opposite side from its usual one, so there are roughly twice as many people.  At least they’re all quiet at this time of day.  Of course, the northbound and southbound trains arrive at very close to the same time, for this pair of morning trains, but presumably‒and based on past experience‒the people running the system are on top of that coordination problem.  I’ve never heard of any train collisions since I’ve been using the system.

However, apparently they’re more than capable of screwing up in other ways. My usual train arrived just now on its usual side of the tracks, and everyone who had thoughtfully noted the announcement and waited on the other side‒which included me‒had to scramble to get over to the train quickly.  Thankfully, the train waited, but it’s really bad that they did this.  I had to rush down the stairs after riding the elevator up to the bridge with about eight or so other people.  I thought it might have been good if I had tripped and fallen on my way down, but such a fall would be unlikely to be fatal; it would probably just hurt a lot.  I suppose if that happened I might have been able to sue the Tri-Rail people, but that’s not the sort of thing in which I’m interested.

I’m so sick of my life.  This is it; you’re reading about the most interesting things that happen to me.  In fact, this blog is the most interesting thing I do.  But it’s not very interesting, is it?  The stuff in between is worse.  And, of course, I could try to find other things to do and with which to distract myself (and I still do try to read books that keep my attention, almost desperately) but there is nothing that makes me feel like I want to do it.

I guess I should stop writing about this stuff, huh?  My psychological/neurological issues are pretty dull.  Yesterday’s blog was longer than usual, because I was dealing with a lot of weird and highly personal and distressing subject matter, but I think I’ll leave off on things like that.  No one really wants to read it or hear it, there’s nothing anyone can do to help me with it, apparently, and I’m tired of beating that stupid dead horse.  I’m tired of metaphorically shouting into the void with this blog.  When you shout into the void, it seems, the void shouts back at you, and when the void is shouting, you just get emptier and emptier yourself.

At least the shout of the void gives an inviting hint of pure silence that might be waiting there for you‒silence not just in literal noise, but silence in the mind, in the heart, in emotions and thoughts.  Oblivion is preferable, eventually, to cacophony.

Of course, as Sauron (in a vision of the eye) said to Frodo in the movie version of The Fellowship of the Ring, “There is no life in the Void‒only death.”*  This is a bit contradictory, depending on one’s definitions.  Can there be death without life?  Was the universe “dead” for the billions of years that passed before life came into existence?  That doesn’t seem coherent to me, at least not the way I think of “death” as coming after life.

Mind you, if you define (or, rather, use) the word death simply to mean “lacking life” then I suppose the universe was dead, and in fact, almost all of it still is and probably will always be.

Maybe Sauron (as reimagined by Peter Jackson et al) just meant you can’t survive in the Void?  Perhaps he meant it was like a wasteland of sorts, a place barren of food and water, that holds only death for creatures that wander into it.  But no, that doesn’t make sense.  Sauron is one of the Maiar, and knows that he literally cannot die, though he can be reduced to a powerless, miserable spirit until the end of days (as he is).  Likewise, in Tolkien’s world, all men and elves and dwarves and hobbits and all those that are “kindled with the Flame Imperishable” do not die completely, though their bodies can die.  I assume that means that even orcs have an afterlife.

Anyway, enough.  Sorry to waste your time with my brain squeezings.  I should find something better to do, speaking of the Void.  In the meantime, I’ve got a headache from clenching my jaw, and I’ve written too much already.  Have a good day and a good weekend if you can.  I’ll be writing again tomorrow, probably.  More’s the pity.

*There is no comparable notion or connection in the books, and it’s hard to see why Sauron would speak of the Void.  Melkor spent much time in the Void both before Eä was even made and after, but he had been alone, and that was why he started to “think different” as they say.  Sauron, on the other hand, was originally a Maia  serving Aule; he wasn’t off in the Void with his eventual new master.  And, of course, Melkor was in the Void by the time of LotR, so there was life in the Void by then.

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G’mar chatimah tovah

It’s Monday, and it’s Yom Kippur, but I am not only going to work, I am actually writing this on Monday morning, because I have a hard time breaking these sorts of patterns.  It’s as difficult for me to force myself to write a post a day early‒on Sunday in this case‒as it is for me not to write a post (or, previously, not to write 3 to 4 pages on a draft of fiction) on a workday morning.  I don’t know whether to feel proud or embarrassed by this attribute, but it can be frustrating at times, and at other times, it can be useful.  Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive.

I am fasting today, however, and I began the fast probably shortly after sundown last night.  I wasn’t paying close attention to the time.  As I’ve discussed previously, the fast entails abstinence from food as well as anything to drink.  That latter bit is in some ways nice, because I tend to have to use the bathroom frequently*, and often have to do so while en route to work.

This is one advantage the trains have over buses: they have bathrooms.  But using them is often a frustrating process, because it’s frequently the case that one or more of the bathrooms is in use (or locked for staff use, as I suspect, though that seems very inappropriate) and I have to go from car to car to find one that’s free.  Of course there are other issues with any public lavatory, but those go without saying.

Anyway, with minimal PO liquid intake, other than what is needed to accompany aspirin and other daily meds and whatnot, I shouldn’t spend nearly as much time running back and forth to the bathroom.  That’s not the main purpose of the fast, of course; it’s merely a silver lining.

It will also be nice not to have to buy anything for lunch today, and not to buy any beverages as well.  Sometimes when I fast, I feel like I don’t know what to do with myself.  I often eat and drink during most days just to pass the time, just to give myself something to do, and to give myself a brief, reliable prod to the reward circuits in my brain.  I certainly almost never eat out of true hunger.  In fact, often, the longer it’s been since I’ve eaten, the less hungry I feel.  I also tend to feel sharper, and a bit more alert.  But I get bored, or tense, or something, and food (and water) is a momentary relief switch.

Whatever.  The point is, I’ll be doing without food and water today, but I am working, though I shouldn’t be.  I shouldn’t be doing anything that I’m going to be doing.  Saturday was the first day of autumn, and Friday was September 22nd**, as I’ve discussed, and I wanted to at least try to use those facts as impetus to take some kind of action…but I don’t want to screw up my coworker’s planned family outing this coming weekend.  At least I didn’t have to work this last Saturday.

If there were a longer time span between now and when he was going, I think I would have been forced to ignore the fact; after all, there’s only so much I can keep putting things off just to avoid the inconvenience of others.  Two weeks extra may at least give me time to make more preparations‒and who knows, maybe it’ll allow time for some superhero to come and save me, or at least to change my mind.

Ha ha.  I’m joking.  That’s extremely unlikely to happen in any form or sense.  If that were going to happen, it’s had plenty of time to do so.

There has been a slight, coincidentally autumnal, turn in the weather this weekend, in that Saturday it was overcast and rainy, and it rained overnight, and there was a bit more wind.  It’s still hot, but a few degrees less so that it has been.  Sunday was warmer and brighter than Saturday, but there was at least still a bit of wind.

My back/hip/leg pain has been flaring these last few days, unfortunately.  It’s always there to some degree, but it’s annoying when it acts up.  Maybe the fast will help reduce it a bit by the end of the day.  I can’t remember if it’s done that in the past‒which probably means it has not.  If it did, if it does, I might be inclined to fast much longer.  Of course, that would be a fast related to food, not to water.  A water fast isn’t going to make one feel better for very long.  It might have other benefits, of course, but that’s not directly related to my pain level…though it is indirectly related.

In any case, I don’t expect anything to give me very much benefit.  But I may try to extend the food fast at least a little bit, even past today.  I could save some money.  And it’s nice not to have to clean dishes or throw away packaging or things like that.  Life is full of so many stupid little inconveniences, all of which add up to a truly miserable experience unless there’s something to counter-balance them.  For me, unfortunately, there is little to no such counter-weight anymore, and there hasn’t been for quite a long time.

All right, well…that’s enough for now.  If any of you are fasting for Yom Kippur, you probably are reading this after the holiday, so I hope you had a good one.  It’s not a happy holiday necessarily, but it’s not sad or mournful, either.  In some ways, it’s an attempt to make a fresh start in a new year, and that’s probably a good thing for anyone.

I don’t expect a fresh start for myself.  I’m not even sure what such a thing would entail.  But it would be nice just to stop feeling rotten (physically, mentally, socially, morally, and so on).  I don’t have high hopes…but then, I wouldn’t, would I?yom kippur

*You can ask my brother and sister; I was a real trial on long-distance road trips of any kind, because I needed to go to the bathroom so often…sometimes more often than there were available bathroom facilities, so I spent a certain portion of my youth relieving myself near the shoulder of many a road.

**Among other things, the night Frodo left Bag End in The Lord of the Rings.

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Songs, weather, depression/pain, AI, the subjectivity of time, and the apparent inevitability of entropy

It’s Monday, Monday, like the Mama’s and the Papa’s sang.  I’ve never quite known what that song was about in any deep sense, since I’ve never paid too much attention to the lyrics, other than “Monday morning couldn’t guarantee / that Monday evening you would still be here with me.”  Could it be about the tenuousness of joy or something?  Maybe it’s a sort of Buddhist message.  Of course, no morning can guarantee (so to speak) that by the evening anything at all will be the same, apart from the fundamental laws of physics (whatever they may ultimately be).

One wonders:  has Monday morning, in some anthropomorphic sense, ever guaranteed anything to anyone?  It’s a weird notion.  Maybe I’m thinking too much about this.

Anyway, I’ve always thought the song had a pleasant melody, and the harmonies were good, as tended to be the case with that group.  I like California Dreamin’ better, and not just because the meaning is a little less opaque.  However, I do have sort of the opposite feeling to the singer(s) of the latter song.

In that song, they lament the fact that all the leaves are brown and the sky is gray, and they dream of being in California, “safe and warm”, even on a winter’s day.  Well, I’ve been for plenty of winter walks here in south Florida when I didn’t need to wear a jacket or long sleeves, and could go barefoot, and could even have worn shorts if it weren’t for the fact that my lower legs are kind of scarred up and embarrassing.

But growing up, I’ve always liked autumn best of all the seasons.  Halloween is my favorite holiday, and winter, frankly, was never too hard a problem.  At least I could enjoy a hot cup of coffee in a way that I just can’t here in Florida.  Here, I’m sitting motionless at the train station and literally dripping with sweat just from…I don’t know, just from being alive, I guess (I don’t recommend it).  And then, most of the time, trains and buses and stores are all over air conditioned, so when you’re sweaty from being outdoors you feel seriously chilly when you enter them.  And then, when you go back outside, your glasses instantly mist up, because their surfaces are so cold and the air is so humid.

I know, I know, these are not exactly the trials of Hercules.  But they are annoyances to which I wish I had never chosen to subject myself.  Now, however, as the man said, “I am in blood, stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, to turn back would be as difficult as go o’er”.  Mind you, I have never done anything as horrible as Macbeth did in the play, but that doesn’t mean the metaphor can’t still apply.  One of the brilliant aspects of Shakespeare’s writing is that his lines can be used not merely in context, but to examine, explore, and describe so many things in life.

Anyway, knowing me, I probably would be just as unhappy had I stayed up north somewhere.  I think the fundamental problem is an internal one‒well, I mean, that’s clear and plain, since I started having trouble with dysthymia and depression long before I ever moved south.  The problem is with me.  I am faulty.  And when the problem is fundamental to oneself, one cannot avoid it by going elsewhere, because, as many have pointed out, from Ralph Waldo Emerson* on, “No matter where you go, there you are.”

If one’s own nature is the problem‒or some aspect of it, anyway, or some damage that is permanent, a wound that goes too deep, that has taken hold‒there is little that one can do about it.  If there is no therapy that seems to help, whether medical or psychological, and there are no lands to the west in which to seek healing, what is one to do?

Of course, if one is convinced that the odds are, in the long run, that the good things in life will outweigh the pain (of all kinds), then one can choose simply to bear it as best one can.  After all, pain, of all kinds, is an inevitable (or at least inevitably potential) part of life, for good, sound biological and ecological and statistical reasons.  Pain keeps organisms alive, when it’s working best.  But it can reach a point where it’s not functioning optimally, where it’s not producing a net gain‒physically, psychologically, “spiritually”, or in any other clear way.  Then, what does one do?

I’m speaking mostly rhetorically here, but I guess if anyone thinks they have an idea I haven’t discovered, they are welcome to share.  I have thought long and hard about these issues, and I’ve read a lot of related material, and have tried many forms of treatment, but I can’t claim to have learned everything that could possibly be known about them.  I’m reasonably smart, but I have had finite time and finite energy and finite intelligence with which to explore.

Even a “deep learning” AI can often only “learn” so much, so quickly, because it trains on immense streams of data, beyond any human bandwidth.  And adversarial systems like Alpha Zero learned to play Go even better than previous systems by playing millions or billions of games against itself to develop its skills.  A human who was capable of that concentration and memory and above all, who had the time might well become just as good.

But human experiential time takes much more real time than does that of an electronic system**.  Also, humans were not built to be able to focus solely on one thing for such scales of time and experience.  There’s no net survival or reproductive advantage to it on any kind of ordinary, biological level.

AI’s have to be built and actively maintained.  They cannot yet sustain themselves.  Perhaps, when they can, there will occur an evolutionary arms race between and among such AIs, happening much more quickly than human biological or even cultural evolution.  But it seems difficult to speculate about what the outcome of such evolution might be, once it took the bit in its teeth and ran where it “wanted” to go.

Well, it’s fairly easy to speculate, but that speculation is probably going to be fruitless.  The phase space of possible states is too big to explore easily.  Even an AI evolution that proceeded at maximal possible speed might only explore the tiniest fraction of all possible forms and functions of intelligence before entropy led it to fall apart, like the rest of the universe.

Of course, it’s not in principle impossible that an AI (or other intelligence) could figure out ways around even the heat death of the universe, or the Big Crunch, or a Big Bounce, or whatever the future of the universe ends up being.  Even if the universe turns out to have been simulated (which I doubt mightily but don’t rule out completely), the simulation has to exist in some outer reality, and the mathematics of entropy seems likely to apply in all possible realities.  There are simply more ways, in general***, for a set of things to be put together in such a way that they do not achieve any given function or meet any given criteria of order, than for them to be put together in ways that do.

Anyway, I don’t know how I got on that topic.  I tend toward entropy in the subject of my thoughts as well as in reality, it seems.  (This is not ironic, by the way, lest someone mislabel it as such.  This is actually quite appropriate, and is a rather pleasing concordance.)

That’s enough for me for Monday morning.  I hope the morning is very good to you, and that Monday evening is even better.

time or not cropped png

*He didn’t put it in those exact words, but he certainly criticized his friend, Henry David Thoreau, for going into the woods to find himself.

**Which leads to potentially horrifying speculations about what it might be like for an artificial general intelligence trying to have interactions with biological intelligences and having to wait between interactions‒times that could be the subjective equivalent of a human waiting for decades or centuries or even millennia‒just to “hear” what the human says next at normal human speed.  Orson Scott Card explored a little of this notion in the interactions between Ender and “Jane” in the brilliant Speaker for the Dead, the first sequel to Ender’s Game.

***Here I’m using “in general” mainly in the physicist’s sense, meaning something that applies to every situation of a given kind, everywhere, as opposed to the more common, colloquial meaning which is roughly synonymous with “usually”.

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Remember what the dormouse said: Decongest your head

Well, it’s Saturday morning, and I’m waiting at the train station for the first train of the day on this first day of the Jewish year.

I took a long-acting decongestant last night, and though it did make me notice more alertness when I had my frequent nocturnal awakening, I don’t think I actually woke up more often than usual.  If anything, as I’ve long suspected, nighttime decongestants improve my breathing (duh), and thus the quality of such sleep as I get.

I have a family history of some degree of sleep apnea, and I suspect that using decongestants‒as long as the side-effects aren’t prohibitive‒provide protection from, and possibly prevention of, that process (This, I suspect, is especially true if, as needed, inhaled corticosteroids are also part of the treatment).

I’ve long suspected that sleep apnea can be a long-term secondary consequence of chronic allergic (and/or vasomotor) rhinitis, with narrowing of the nasopharynx due to inflammation/swelling of the mucosa leading to snoring and worsening sleep, then the weight gain often associated with certain kinds of inefficient sleep and high carb intake secondary to the nocturnal relative hypercapnia (high CO2) and the elevated cortisol that often accompanies chronic insomnia.  That high carb intake, with consequent elevated insulin, may lead to worsening of the inflammation and further narrowing of the airways and the gradual reduction in the quality of sleep, leading to a vicious cycle.

This is hypothetical, of course, and there are many variables that would need to be controlled to test it; I’ve only ever “experimented” on myself, starting when I first had a cat and realized that I was allergic, and that I was sleeping horribly and developing many signs and symptoms consistent with early sleep apnea.  It worked.

I’ve tried (with incomplete success) to avoid having cats since my first one was no longer in the picture.  That helped some and I have intermittently cut back on decongestants, but in south Florida‒and when living indoors in general, I suspect‒it’s hard to avoid all potential airway allergens and irritants.  Over time, the decreased quality of sleep (especially in someone like me who has a deceased tendency to sleep at all) has its effect on my cognitive function, and on my general energy level and appetite.

I have noticed that, when I am treating myself assertively for congestion, I tend overall to be cognitively sharper than when I am not, and I do not think this is simply due to the stimulating side-effects of the decongestants.  Studies have demonstrated that even true stimulants such as amphetamines do not actually bolster measures of intellectual function, though in the short term, they can improve alertness.

The biggest problem with my use of such things is that they tend to increase my level of internal stress and anxiety, particularly social anxiety.  All chains break at their weakest link (at least when under uniform tension), and social interaction is evidently my weakest link.

I’m not terribly afraid of physical danger, though it could never be said that I am fearless nor even particularly courageous, and I’m relatively used to physical pain.  I also don’t worry much about people being “mean” to me or not particularly liking me, or whatever‒for the most part, I don’t really have a clear notion of what other people are thinking of me at any given time, or indeed, what they’re thinking of anything.  When I’m not in someone’s presence, their presence in my brain seems abstract and ephemeral at best.  There are rare exceptions to this rule, but they are countable on the fingers of one hand.

But I do get stressed out about knowing what to say or how to interact, especially with new people, and I worry very much about being a bother or an annoyance to others.  Phone conversations are particularly stressful, except with people I know very well.

So this is definitely a trade-off situation, as are almost all things in life.  The body is an extraordinarily complex Rube Goldberg machine, and to push down on the system in one place almost always causes something to pop upward somewhere else.  I know, that’s not quite a consistent metaphor, but I think it works to convey my point.

Right now, at least, I want to try to improve my sleep quality‒increasing its quantity seems an unachievable goal without using things that make me feel worse overall‒so I can have the energy to do more walking and the like, including quite long-distance walking.  And I want to try to optimize my thinking as best I can, to decrease the risk that major decisions and changes I hope to make are based on poor thinking.

As for social anxiety, well, my social life is nonexistent anyway, apart from work.  I don’t expect ever to make* any new friends or have any new relationships, romantic or otherwise.  That aspect of life just doesn’t seem to be in the cards for me‒certainly nearly all such things have been disastrous hitherto for me.  Maybe if I could find some other member of whatever species I am, it might be different, but I don’t consider the odds of success, or the probable payoff, to be worth the likely cost and the probable rate of failure.

Plus, let’s face it:  I’m no one’s idea of a good prospect for a long term friend or partner of any kind.  I can be quite useful; I tend to be hard working and disciplined, and I’m reasonably bright, but my skills in romantic interactions, for instance, have always been horrible, and if anything they have atrophied over time.

I used to be tolerably good at friendship, but I seem to have no skill at keeping friendships going from a distance.  I don’t naturally think to try to reach out to people‒those times when I do think of it, I always feel awkward and anxious and am sure I’m just going to be an annoyance to anyone with whom I interact and to find the interaction stressful and even heart-breaking.  I’ve said before, even leaving comments on blogs or videos or what have you often leads me to feel real stress afterwards, and to regret doing it.

I just don’t think I’m well designed for this world, though there are attributes I possess that are useful and effective.  Overall, I’m just not a good fit, and the places where that fit is bad chafe and grate and grind away quite painfully at me.  Every day is painful, and not just physically.

If I could find some other world to try, I might do that, depending on what I judged my chances to be.  But I don’t think that’s going to be an option, probably not ever in my potential lifetime.  So, it seems better to consider and prepare for a relatively straightforward exit from this world.

I could say, “Prove me wrong”, like those stupid Internet memes, and I guess if anyone thinks they can do it, they’re welcome to try.  But I don’t expect any fresh arguments or evidence that I haven’t already seen or considered.  I’ve been dealing with this question since I was a teenager.

Anyway, have a good day and a good weekend.  Thanks for reading.

the doctor in the desert

*Google’s auto-correct tried to make me change this phrase, making it “to ever make”.  Yes, it actually recommended that I split an infinitive where I had not done so, though there would be no improvement in the clarity of my expression thereby.  It’s exasperating.  To quote a very sarcastic young Scrooge, “This is the evenhanded dealing of the world!”

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It’s Friday. Yay.

Actually, I work tomorrow, so it’s not as though I’m especially excited about the end of a work week.  On the other hand, there’s never any reason for me to get excited at the true end of a work week, even when I have a full weekend off.  I don’t do anything fun on the weekends; I don’t have family or friends with whom to spend my time.  I guess I do get a bit of extra rest, but ironically, lying around too much makes my back and legs hurt more, so that’s not a huge amount of help.

Speaking of lying around, yesterday I left work quite early‒indeed, before the work day had really started‒because I had a rather sudden-onset lower GI issue that required an immediate (albeit relatively minor) wardrobe change, and threatened to require more extreme ones.  I had realized that I was quite tired and unambitious in the morning, but hadn’t realized that it was because I was actually ill, not merely lazy.  I guess that’s reassuring, in some sense.

I got back to the house as quickly as I could, and I medicated myself, and I tried to rest.  I do feel somewhat better this morning, but I still have some GI churning going on.  I guess I ate something that wasn’t quite all that good, perhaps.  I don’t think it’s anything all that serious.

It might be interesting to try to find somewhere one could “catch” cholera.  However, in the modern, Western world there is little enough cholera around, which is certainly a good thing for people who want to stay alive, and who want to do so by (among other things) avoiding copious watery diarrhea that dehydrates and volume depletes them until their system collapses.

It sounds bad, but I think it sounds preferable to a death by salmonella, or by toxic strains of E. coli, and way better than dying due to Clostridium difficile enteritis.

All right, enough of that crap*.

Tonight at sundown marks the start of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.  Unfortunately, I’m not looking forward to it particularly, and I won’t be celebrating it.  I’m even going to be working tomorrow‒not doing so would entail switching weekends, which would entail two weekends worth of work in a row.  I’m already barely holding on to the end of my rope as it is.  I don’t want to throw gasoline onto the brush fire that is my deteriorating life.  It would be nice to achieve a tiny bit of dignity for me, just once.

I haven’t had a terribly dignified life, as far as I can tell…or at least as far as I know.  Actually, I’m not really sure what that would mean or entail or what.  For the most part, I don’t quite grok these weird, interpersonal social “virtues” or whatever they might be called.  I’m a fan of politeness, of course; I always used to say, manners are the lubricant of civilization.  Things go much more smoothly when one disciplines oneself not to be rude even to people with whom one disagrees.

But if there is a clear, concise, and precise definition of dignity, I don’t know it.  Then again, I’ve never looked for one, either.  The subject has never really seemed that interesting to me.  Of course, it’s not a frankly boring subject either, and if I had limitless time in which to explore any field of knowledge or thought, I’m sure I would get to it eventually and give it the attention it probably deserves.

Anyway, the point was (if memory serves) that I’m not celebrating any happy holidays.  Of course, eight days or so after the end of Rosh Hashanah comes Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, not truly a “happy” holiday.  That might be an idea worth embracing.  It’s generally a day of complete fasting‒no food, no drink, no smoking (if you smoke), no sex, all that stuff.  And people tend to go to services, of course, if they’re observing the holiday.

I haven’t observed any holidays or rituals of much of any kind in quite a while.  These are community-oriented things, and I have no community.  I often fast on Yom Kippur, just because I think it’s a useful thing, mentally and “spiritually”, to do from time to time.  It clears the head a bit, and that’s good when one’s head is as gloomy and polluted as mine tends to be.

It’s also often tempting to try to see if I can continue the full fast for more than one day.  It’s the drinking that’s the hardest thing.  It’s relatively easy to go without food, certainly for 24 hours, and it’s often reasonably easy just to continue that.  But the body’s need for water is much more significant and urgent.

Maybe I should try to do the fast, and to extend it as far as I can, at least the eating bit, as part of my own atonement and closure.  It might be worth a go.  It would be nice to lose some weight.  That requires a fair amount of willpower, though, and I may not have it in adequate supply.

Ah, well, I guess we’ll see.  One way or another, I hope to atone very soon, so I should be able at least to get into the spirit of that holiday.  As for New Year (by whatever cultural measure) I don’t have much enthusiasm for it right now.  But for those of you who do, and who celebrate it:  well, I hope you have a good holiday.

For the others, I’ll be writing here tomorrow.

rosh-hashanah-merged

*Ha ha.

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Would there be fewer late trains if we were less willing to accept sloppy language?

I did not walk back to the house from the train yesterday‒it was late and I felt quite low on energy and enthusiasm‒but I did walk to the train station this morning.  It’s muggy and hot still, but it’s cooler than it is when the sun is shining (especially if you just wear black clothes like I do, since, like Wednesday Addams, I’ve developed an allergy to colors).

The biggest drawback to walking in the morning is that, down where I currently live, at this time of year, at this time of day, the air is abysmally still and lifeless.  Now, at the train station, it seems there is at least some breeze, which I suspect is at least partly due to traffic on I-95, just behind me, not more than twenty or so meters away.

Of course, the station is also quite a bit closer to the ocean than is the house in which I currently dwell.  This can make floods more likely here, as I have witnessed first-hand, but the temperature differentials above the ocean and above the land seems to generate a more or less constant wind at or near the beach.

I’ve long suspected that such a breeze should be coming into shore during the day‒because land is heated more rapidly by the sun than the sea is, and the air above it heats and rises, and cooler air from the ocean flows in to replace it‒and then heading out to sea at night, because the water temperature doesn’t change as readily it stays warmer at night and so the process would reverse.  I am by no means sure that this describes the actual dynamics of the situation, and I suspect matters are more complicated than this, but this is how I hypothesize about it.

Aaaaaand, guess what.  They’ve just announced that the train for which I am waiting is delayed 15 to 20 minutes.  They then say “stand by for more information”, but no more information is ever shared over the speakers.

It’s infuriating just how often the trains are delayed.  If I had an employee who came in late this frequently, I would have to consider firing that person.  It’s unprofessional and disruptive; people make plans based on the expected, published schedules.  And while, of course, there are occasional, unforeseen things that happen anywhere and everywhere, the frequency at which it happens on the Tri-Rail ought to be embarrassing to those who work in the system.

I’ll give it some time, but I really hate riding trains that are late, because they’re usually more crowded than they would be if they were on time.  It’s rather infuriating that I deliberately dragged my feet to miss the previous train‒which was on time‒by just a minute or so, so that I would have time to cool down a bit before the next one arrived.

The next next train, which is almost on time, will be expected to arrive only 8 minutes after the train for which I was waiting.  I think I may sit out the first train and wait for the second one, which should be less crowded.  Right now it feels as though there are a few hundred people waiting for the next train.  I already wish I could just send them away, and this is while they’re just spread out on the platform.

I think I will wait.  The difference in arrival time will be negligible.

It will be a somewhat busy office day today, because I’m going to be doing payroll early, like I did last week.  But that’s not something for which I need to be in the office particularly early; it’s dependent upon two different weekly reports that will arrive today, during the day, so I can’t do it too early.

Yeah, the train platform is packed.  The train is coming now, but I’m not getting on it.  My days are stressful enough without having to squeeze into an over-crowded train car.  It’s not that I’m not capable of tolerating it; I’ve been through worse things, of course.  But it’s just so unpleasant, and too many things in my life are unpleasant, and I don’t have more than a brace or so of pleasant things with which to counteract them, so they wear me out much more than they might have in the past.

I’m not sure I properly used the term “brace” there‒I know it can mean two things, as in “a brace of coneys”, but I’m not sure it really applies to the concept to which I was applying it.

I guess I should cut myself a little slack, considering that even professional news organizations and publications seem to have‒for instance‒lost the conceptual difference between “fewer” and “less”.  Sloppiness of language may seem trivial, and of course, language does evolve, but these irritations are not changes due to legitimate adaptations and pressures that produce a more effective tool of communication.  This is a case in which language, which I see as a kind of crystallized thought, is mushy because the thoughts involved in using it are mushy, as is much of the “information” being conveyed.

Sloppiness of language is a symptom of sloppy thought, and I think it also engenders further sloppiness of thought.  The process feeds upon itself, and people understand each other, and the world, less and less and less over time, until finally, darkness and decay and the Red Death hold absolute dominion and sway over all (to paraphrase Poe).

Okay, well, I am now on the next train, which was indeed only about 8 minutes later than the previous, overcrowded one.  I’ll get about another mile of walking in between the station and the office, so by the time I get there, I will already have walked nearly twice as far already today as I walked the entire day yesterday (according to my pedometer).  The train car is over-air-conditioned, particularly since I’m still a bit sweaty despite a second shirt and my cool-down at the station.  Ah, well, it’s not a terribly big deal.  I’ve had worse, as the Black Knight said after getting his arm chopped off by King Arthur.

I guess I’ll call this good for today.  I hope you have a nice day, and especially that you have a nice day tomorrow.

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Now let it work. Mischief, thou art afoot. Take thou what blog thou wilt.

Hello and good morning.

It’s Thursday, and I walked to the train station this morning, but I did not walk back to the house from the train station last night.  It had just gotten so late, and I was tired, and I wanted to get back to the house early enough that I could relax and at least try to get to bed at a reasonable hour, even if I never do sleep through the night.  But I committed to walking this morning, and I fulfilled that commitment.  Bully for me!

I must be getting in better shape, or maybe I just left earlier or summat, because even though I stopped to get a beverage* and tried to take my time after that, I still arrived in time to catch the train that leaves twenty minutes earlier than the one I usually get when I walk.

My feet and knees and ankles are doing tolerably well, so the shoes I did choose seem unlikely to lose when it comes to my long-distance walking.  I also find‒curiously enough‒that wearing spandex knee braces helps keep my ankles, especially my right ankle, from acting up.  It seems that something in the way I move (ha ha) when my knee stability is not optimal is adding torsional, irregular forces to my right ankle and Achilles tendon.

It’s often quite surprising just how non-straightforward the source of damage or pain is in the body compared to where one feels the discomfort.  Spandex helps with some of this because it adds one’s sense of surface touch to one’s ongoing awareness of the position of one’s joints from within**.  The sense of surface touch is much more precise than many of our other senses, which makes sense***, since it has much more of a role to play in guiding our targeted moment to moment actions regarding injury, obstacles, insects that might bite, and so on.  It may also be that spandex helps decrease excess fluid accumulation in a joint by providing counter-pressure in a fairly uniform way, and this can certainly be expected to improve a joint’s stability.

I’m sure that’s all quite boring.  Apologies.  I don’t mean to be tedious; it’s just a talent I have.

Switching topics:  I like listening to good podcasts (or audiobooks) while I walk, and this morning I listened to the AMA (ask me anything) podcast for the month on Sean Carroll’s Mindscape.  Well…I listened to part of it.  His AMAs are usually three or four hours long, because he tries to get through as many questions as he can, and he tries to answer them as carefully as he can.  It makes for some very interesting listening, because he is a theoretical physicist who also works in philosophy.  Formerly at CalTech, he is now at Johns Hopkins and also works with the Santa Fe Institute and is just in general broadly interested and interesting and quite thoughtful.

I still like Sam Harris’s podcast (and his guests) a little bit better, but that’s not particularly important.  I like them both, and I learn a lot from them and their interlocutors.  I have noted that I like long podcasts but prefer short videos, which is interesting and seems on its face odd to me.  Perhaps it’s simply that one can listen to a podcast while doing any of a number of other things, but not so with videos.

Anyway, it’s nice to be able to hear about and potentially learn about interesting things while walking.  It’s also occasionally fun, in a rather silly way, when someone asks a reasonably complicated question to which I know the answer and then to hear Sean Carroll say the same thing I would have said (this is far from common, but it does happen).  Of course, people rarely ask him questions about medicine or biology, because he is not a specialist in those areas.  If they did, I would probably usually be able to give better answers than he, but that would hardly be particularly impressive.

It’s also hardly important.  I’d rather be listening to someone talking about things I know less about than they, because that’s how one learns.  I sometimes try to do brief “podcasts” or “audio blogs” of my own, but I don’t get the impression anyone ever really listens to any of them.  I don’t know.  Maybe they do.

Oh, I wanted to address the very nice comment left by a reader yesterday, in which‒among other things‒he said that he liked the idea of the manga that I had mentioned.  I just want to make clear, although HELIOS started out as a comic book idea, and then became a manga idea later (at around the same time I thought of mangas for Mark Red and for The Dark Fairy and the Desperado) I don’t see myself ever actually doing a manga now.

I think that the work involved in making a manga‒from the initial script to the storyboarding to the penciling to the inking to the screen tone‒would all be just too much and it would be difficult to work into my schedule.  Perhaps if someone were paying me to do it full time, I might try.  But I don’t think that’s very likely.

I really only have the notion of perhaps writing a “light novel” of HELIOS, rather akin to the light novels that are popular in Japan which are often turned into manga and or anime.  Mark Red and DFandD and HELIOS are probably stories that lend themselves more to manga/anime style settings, but I am much more of a prose fiction writer, even though I do draw sometimes.

Anyway, I think that’s probably enough for today.  I intend to keep doing my walking and hopefully that’ll help me be healthier overall.  I’m also trying very hard to completely eliminate sugar and most starches or refined carbohydrates from my diet; that certainly helps me feel physically better.  We’ll see how everything goes.

Maybe, if I do well and my mood starts to improve consistently, I will start to write fiction again, on HELIOS or on DFandD or on Outlaws Mind or on Changeling in a Shadow World or even on Neko/Neneko****.  Who knows?

I hope you have a good day.

TTFN

*The water fountains at the Hollywood Tri-Rail station have been “temporarily out of service” for, I don’t know, it must be most of a year.  I would very much like to be able to get a drink of water when I get to the station after walking 5 miles, but I think the people who run the place are happy to try to coerce people into buying something from the ridiculously overpriced vending machines at the station.  I would not seriously consider doing that unless my life depended on it, and I might not do it then.  I’d even rather pay twice as much somewhere else than buy something to drink at the station when they have water fountains but just haven’t fixed them.

**This is called proprioception, as most of you probably know.  It’s not a very precise or reliable sense, being quite coarse grained, and it also seems to deteriorate with age and with damage to joints.

***Sorry, that wasn’t meant to be any form of pun, but it is the best way I can find to put it right now, so I won’t change it.

****The story of a cat (named Neko, the Japanese word for cat) who is devoted to her human, a lonely but upbeat and gainfully employed young man (who is fond of anime and manga and light novels, among other things).  When the man buys an odd, exotic fish, the cat intends to eat it, being a bit jealous and also just having the instinctive desire to do so.  But then, the fish reveals to the cat that it is magical (evidenced well by the fact that it can talk and that the cat can understand it), and if the cat spares its life, it will grant her a wish.  She agrees, and chooses to be able to become a human woman (at will) to be a potential companion for her human.  Surprised when she first encounters him, he asks her name, and she stammers, Ne…Neko.  He takes this as her having the Japanese name Neneko, and she accepts that.  Thus, the title.

Neko/Neneko

[The above is a concept drawing of a potential scene from Neko/Neneko]