Does anyone else ever feel guilty about never letting their first alarm of the day sound, about always shutting it off before its allotted time because you’re awake anyway?  It feels almost like an unkindness—as though the alarm wanted to do its job, but was always thwarted.

I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m the only one who so anthropomorphizes such a function, but what can I say?  I’m a weirdo.

I’m currently waiting for the very first train of the day, since I was awake anyway, and I decided to see how the new, even earlier, 4:20 first train is.  I’m hoping it will at least be less crowded than the 5:20 train.

They haven’t even opened the gates that lead to the stairs or the elevators or the ticket machines at the train station yet, which seems a bit unreasonable, considering they are the ones who set up the new schedule.  Still, according to the tracker site, the train is on its way, and it’s only two minutes (!) behind schedule.

I don’t know why it’s two minutes behind schedule at this hour.  I don’t see how it can be dealing with any kind of traffic or anything.  Oh, well.  This constant inability for people to keep to schedules is only one of the reasons I despise living in this world.

Speaking of things that make me not want to continue living, if anyone out there reads this on WordPress Reader, or by any other, similar means:  are you able to comment and “like” the blog posts I write just as used to be the case?  I know I’m having trouble doing so with, for instance, my favorite website that I follow, and that fact is starting to make me fade away from reading it as consistently as I used to do, because I cannot “like” a post and see the comments (or leave a comment) all in the same place.  I’m wondering if that’s also happened with my blog, because I’m getting many fewer views and stuff than I used to receive.

It may simply be that people have gotten tired of reading my posts or even of dealing with me at all.  I know I’ve gotten tired of myself, more and more all the time.  I can certainly understand if people have just gradually drawn away from what is, after all, a depressing blog.

Even posts like yesterday’s, in which I went into all sorts of minutiae and trivia about temperatures and percentages and the like, are probably just mind-numbingly dull for most people.  Many of the things I enjoy are difficult for other people to appreciate, it seems.  As Edgar Allan Poe wrote in one of my favorite poems, “…all I loved, I loved alone.”

Anyway, I would appreciate some feedback about the visibility and/or accessibility of this blog for others, because I cannot readily tell from my perspective how others are seeing it.  And please—as always—comment here, not on Facebook or TWFKAT*.

I fear that the “Happiness Engineers” at WordPress, as they nauseatingly refer to themselves, have altered things to try to make the platform more exciting and up-to-date and have instead caused it to cease to work properly for oddballs like me who really would prefer things to be consistent, for them not to be constantly fiddled with, especially since that so often makes so many things so much worse.

If I were more paranoid, I might imagine that the world is trying to push me finally to commit suicide, since so many of the things from which I have taken at least some small modicum of distraction, if not necessarily comfort**, are shriveling up and blowing away.  I’m getting increasingly bored of the science and mathematics offerings on YouTube, and the reaction channels I watch have already reacted to stuff I like, and no matter how briefly enjoyable it can be to pretend I’m watching something with a friend, that’s clearly really not what’s happening.

Most of these people would never be my friends even if we lived nearby and had anything else in common but shows to watch.

And the newer science and math and nature videos I’m encountering are sometimes astonishingly idiotic, credulously addressing things like UFOs and whatnot.  Ex-Twitter is even less interesting than it was before, and I was never a huge fan of it.

I try to get involved in Facebook, but it’s also rather sparse and spare, and there’s not as much interaction as might be beneficial, and even the briefly interesting little, short video things very rapidly become astonishingly repetitive and boring.  I think those are all attempts to compete with TikTok or whatever, and if that platform is at all like those things, then I can see that I am not missing much.

Even the podcasts by Sean Carroll any by Sam Harris are too brief and intermittent to provide enough benefit to make a serious difference, though they at least are truly engaging while they last.

[FYI, the train arrived finally, just about here.  I meant to note this when it happened, but I got distracted.  It’s more crowded than I would have predicted, which is quite disappointing and borderline distressing.]

And now I have this external pressure to get health insurance, even though I don’t want to care for my health, because there’s not any compelling urge to keep myself alive and “healthy”***.  However, I did promise****.

I don’t want to take care of myself.  For what purpose, to what end, would I do so?  I mean, I do keep trying little things, attempting to tweak matters, trying to adjust and improve my physical and mental health, but even when I start a day in a relatively playful mood, I still wind up at some point slamming my forehead repeatedly against the metal posts that support cubicle walls in the office, until a coworker has to come and make me stop.

This was because some people who arrive late end up staying and working into lunchtime, bringing me alone for the ride, even if it’s supposed to be my break time.

I think, today, if at the beginning of lunch anyone is still on the phone who arrived at the office later than the official starting time, I’m going to unplug the modem and just forcibly interrupt these worms who have no consideration for other people’s time.  Of course, if there are people who were on time who are still on the phone, I’ll not do that.  People who began work when work is supposed to begin and who just overflow a bit into break time deserve some courtesy.  The others deserve only shadow and flame, but I’ll be merciful; they’ren’t really worth the trouble.

I’m really uncomfortable in my own head and my own skin.  I feel quite desperate, and I am losing most of what few psychological supports I had.  I will do my best to force myself through the process of setting up insurance before the end of the week if I can, but I can’t help but hope that some catastrophe will take the whole thing out of my hands and make it moot before then.

I’m running out of time, though.  I’m so tired and stressed out and frustrated and in pain, and it’s only the stupid, pre-programmed, hard-wired, firmware-like, non-intellectual fear drive that keeps me from doing the sensible thing and just dying.

I’m not afraid of anything specific, really; it’s just that innate, existential, unkind drive to avoid dying, which is about as pleasant to me as the need to urinate and defecate.  I hate being alive.  I hate my life.  And while I definitely don’t want to hurt people who still think I’m the person they used to know, and whom they wouldn’t want to have die “before his time”, it’s simply the case that that person is already dead, anyway.  He has been dead for years.

I’m so tired.  I feel like the last passenger pigeon or the final surviving quagga, whiling its time away in a bleak cage somewhere with no company of its own kind, waiting to die and put the final full stop on the extinction of its species.

I suppose it would still be acceptable if some miracle were to happen and change my life and bring me back to the way I used to be, or better, but I don’t see how it’s going to happen.  Certainly, no “supernatural” figure seems poised to intervene, and I don’t think any natural ones have the wherewithal or the inclination.  There’s certainly little to no benefit in the admittedly well-meaning cajolery to “just hold on” and all that jazz.  I try, obviously.  I’m still here and writing.  But it feels more like I’m fulfilling a prison sentence than it does like surviving…and I’m familiar with both.

As another poet I admire—and who escaped the prison by his owns hands—wrote:  “Oh, well, whatever, never mind.”

*The Website Formerly Known as Twitter.

**WEIT is a comfort and often a joy, and I am very distressed about not being able to see and comment and “like” it, and other comments, as I usually do.

***Physically, of course.  My mental health is a lost cause, anyway.  I received a “how are you doing?” automated email from betterhelp.com last week.  I had briefly used their service, but I quit when my therapist had to go on leave (for legitimate personal reasons).  I didn’t want to have to try to find a new therapist.  I know the checking-in email was automated, and the corporate decision to send it was probably related to the time of year, since many people have troubles in this season.  It felt touching, in a way, even though I know that there were no real people involved in sending anything to me specifically.

****To be fair to me, this was a promise made on the spot, and to someone who had long since broken her own much less spontaneous promise to be with me for the rest of our lives, through better and worse, sickness and health, and all that bullshit, so I guess I shouldn’t feel too pressured.  Promises like the aforementioned, traditional ones, however, are no longer taken very seriously, even in the moment they are pronounced…or so it seems.  That’s yet another charming human innovation:  purely performative vows.