Personal

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For they blog between term and term, and then they perceive not how time moves

Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday, so of course I’m writing my “traditional” blog post, with my “traditional” salutation and ending.  I haven’t written the ending yet, but I will, and of course, when you’re reading this, I will have already written those four closing letters—like a vortex manipulator, it’s a kind of cheap and nasty time travel.

I’m writing this post on my mini lapcom, the device formerly known as a laptop computer (to me, at least), because I thought it would be good to write my traditional Thursday post on my traditional type of device.  It’s all very exciting, obviously.

Except of course that it is not exciting.  Nothing is exciting.  There are many worrisome and alarming and infuriating and disgusting things happening in the world and in my pseudo-life, but they are not exciting.

I can’t even feel one of my turns coming on.  Rather, I think I’ve been in “one of my turns” in a low-key way for quite some time now.

I’m very tired.

I wish getting out the lapcom got me fired up to write some new fiction.  I certainly have plenty of story ideas and plots and whatnots in the back of my mind.  But I have no energy to act on them.  By the end of any given workday, I can barely drag myself onto the train to go back to the house, to be honest.

Then, of course, there’s the current washing machine problem.  The machine has finally been delivered, but the old, broken machine is still in place, so the new one hasn’t been installed, and I’m not sure when it will be.  I’m eating into my savings, such as they are, buying new clothes in the meantime.

The need to buy new clothes is particularly irritating, because—quite apart from the expense—I had no desire to buy any, possibly ever again.  New clothes are for people who have a future toward which they look with at least some degree of positive anticipation.  I do not see my own future with any good feelings.

Speaking of the future and not having one and also writing fiction, I thought of an amusing, cautionary tale, a fable of sorts, recently.  Imagine a young man—this sort of story really only works with such a protagonist—who finds a literal genie in a lamp and is given the traditional three wishes.

For his first wish, this young man asks for the ability to stop other people (and things) in time, imagining/planning various nefarious deeds he might undertake while people are “frozen”.  The genie is puzzled and seems troubled, but he grants this first wish.  Soon, the young man finds himself in a situation where he wants to test the power, but when he turns it on a chosen target, as soon as he does, the person just…vanishes.

The young man summons the genie, saying the power didn’t work, panicking a bit about what happened.  The genie explains that the person for whom he stopped time vanished because they simply did not continue past the point in time at which they had been frozen.  So, they did not exist in any future time, and they never would.

The genie had wondered why the young man wanted that power, but he had granted it.  Unfortunately, this deed cannot be readily undone; they cannot bring the person out of the past using the young man’s power as it is.  To change that power and to bring the person back would require the use of the two remaining wishes.

Will the young man choose to do it?  Will he correct his error?  Or will he continue to have the power, now using it as a weapon rather than the for the lascivious means for which he had imagined using it?

I admit, it would be kind of interesting to have such a power.  It’s reminiscent of the ability to send people “away” that the main character had in Stranger in a Strange Land.

What would you do with such an ability?  I would probably use it in morally questionable ways, myself.  But there certainly are people about whom it can safely be said that the world would, overall, be better off if they stopped moving forward through time.

Incidentally, this process would not run afoul of the principle of conservation of energy.  That conservation principle, like all physical conservation principles, is dependent upon the symmetry of the system—this was demonstrated by the genius Emmy Noether in her famous theorem.

The conservation of energy is (or, rather, it would be) a consequence* of the time symmetry of the universe.  But the universe is not symmetric in time, not on large enough scales.  So, on large enough scales, energy (and thus also mass) is not conserved.  Locally it tends to be, because locally, time is symmetrical to a good approximation, rather as the local surface of the Earth is approximately flat on a small enough scale…or rather like the way a small enough portion of any continuous curve can be arbitrarily closely matched by a straight segment on a small enough scale.  This latter fact is the source of the power of calculus.

But just as one can have a local hill or curved shape on the surface of the Earth, one could—in principle—violate local conservation of energy given the right available manipulations.  Now, we in the real world cannot do such a thing, at least not right now, but presumably it would not be beyond the power of a genie.

Okay, well, that’s all pretty stupid, I know, but what do you expect?  It’s me, after all.

I hope you or y’all have as good a day as you possibly can, which you will have, since there is no other possibility.  That doesn’t mean it will be a good day.  It will merely be the best possible day you can have, even if it’s horrible.  Still, I do hope that for you, at least, it will be good.

TTFN

*An interesting term to use, given the current subject.  It has a relation to the order of things in time:  con (with) sequence (ordering of things).

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“Broken branches trip me as I speak.”

Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday…I can’t think of any jokes or plays on words regarding this day of the week that I haven’t already done, probably ad nauseam.  That’s my habit, it seems:  perseveration, repetition, all that stuff.  That’s probably related to the ASD thing.  It’s certainly been with me all my life in one form or another, or at least as far back as I can remember.

Speaking of “as far back as I can remember”:  I think my oldest memory‒certainly one of the oldest‒is of having to be carried out of The Three Caballeros in the main street theater in Disney World (currently known as the Magic Kingdom), because they started shooting their guns.  I remember the noise being painful and terrifying, and I remember someone picking me up and taking me out of the theater.  I would have been about two years old, I believe.

I used to be unable to tolerate loud noises such as fireworks and muskets* and the like.  I also hated getting my hair cut, I remember that; but I also really hated getting it combed, especially since it was so prone to tangles.

Enough pointless recollection.  I don’t even know what I was trying to discuss there.

Ugh.  I don’t even know why I’m doing this, he said, inadvertently quoting Luke Skywalker from The Empire Strikes Back.  I mean, I get the nature of habit, but I don’t want to be a creature that blindly follows habit.  I’ve been trying to improve my own habits, to decrease or eliminate bad ones, to inculcate good new ones (or to reinitiate older habits that were good).

But even those objectives, though “good” in and of themselves from the point of view of having better strength of character or whatever, are also pointless in the end.  If I’m just robotically carrying out “good” habits without joy or friendship or love or anything along those lines, it’s just a Sisyphean task, and I’ve never been convinced by Camus on that subject.  I’ve written about this before, but I’m not sure precisely where and when.

I’ve probably written about all of this before.  Everything is repetitive and dull; it’s so irritating.  The YouTube algorithm is even failing to find me videos in which I have enough interest to distract myself for a moment.  The other social media are likewise tedious to annoying; they’re mostly just online forms of distilled human stupidity.  As if human stupidity weren’t concentrated enough already.

I’m not interested in any new science right now, or math, or computer stuff, or philosophy, or even fiction (new or old).  I have no interest in any movies or shows that are coming out; what a joke that landscape entails.  I also have no interest in listening to or writing or playing music, despite my Radiohead quote in the title of this post.

Oh, yeah, and every day, so much of the day, so much of me hurts.  That takes the bloom off many a potential rose.

I’m not even happy about the fact that it’s October and Halloween is coming.  I have no one with whom to celebrate it.  Ditto for the subsequent celebrations.  Holidays are things people celebrate with other people.  Maybe not all possible kinds of people do it that way, but on this planet it seems pretty consistent.

I thought about it recently, as if for the first time, though I don’t see how it could have been:  For the initial long stretch of my life, I was always around other people, even in my personal life.  I was the third of three children, so my parents and siblings were always about; I even shared a room with my brother until I was high school age.

I was in the same house and school system from K through 12 as they say, so I knew my fellow students and had several good friends.  Then, in college, I had a consistent roommate for all four years‒a most excellent one, I may say‒and another core group of friends.

Then, of course, I got married.  That entailed a bit of a rift with my own family‒I won’t get into that cluster fuck, because no one comes out looking good‒but also became a welcomed part of my then-wife’s family.  Unfortunately, with respect to my prior friends, when I’m away from people I have serious trouble maintaining ties‒this is apparently related to autism, but I’ve always just felt ashamed of it but incapable of doing otherwise.

Then of course I went to med school and residency and lived with my wife, and eventually we had kids, and that was wonderful‒they are wonderful‒but then my injury and chronic pain happened, and I guess my underlying ASD didn’t help me deal with that.

Then I got separated and then got divorced**.  And then I made the foolish (however well-intended they were, which they were) choices that led to me being a guest of the Florida DOC for 3 years (minus gain time).

Gradually, more and more, I have been alone by myself, and I am not good at taking care of myself***.  It’s odd; I used to be pretty good at taking care of other people, though I don’t think I have that will anymore, but I’ve never been good at taking care of myself.

And when, over time, everyone you care about goes away, consistently, then whatever your priors were, your Bayesian assessment of probabilities almost has to lead you to a high credence that you are a big part of the problem.

And by “you” I mean, of course, me.

*For instance, at the musket festival at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan…an immensely cool place, by the way.  Greenfield Village, I mean.  I don’t really know anything about the rest of Dearborn, but I expect it’s fine.

**I deliberately put this in the passive voice, because it wasn’t my idea.  I think I would never have sought a divorce‒it’s not really in my nature‒but I wasn’t going to try to coerce someone who didn’t want to be around me to stay around me, despite oaths freely given and all that.  I could never blame someone for finding my company objectionable.

***As for what “self” actually means, I’m using it here informally, just as a general reference to the person writing this blog and about whom it is being written.  There are no deeper metaphysical meanings; you can infer them if you wish, but that doesn’t mean they were implied.

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“I am Jack’s wasted life…”

Well, it’s Monday again, and honestly, I don’t care or see the point…or, well, some other nearby sentiment to those two.  I’m not sure exactly what sentiment I’m trying to convey, really.  I just feel wound up yet worn out.  It’s been a very annoying weekend.

On Friday, I got back to the house to discover that ice accumulation around the “freezer” area in my half-fridge had pushed the door open, which had led to much more accumulation and also dripping condensation.  This is south Florida, after all; there’s a lot of water in the air.  I ended up having to unplug the fridge and just let it all melt, trying to soak up the water with old shirts (There were no spare towels‒I only had two*).

The wet was a bit too much for the shirts to absorb, but I have a strong floor fan, so I turned it toward that task, instead of cooling me.  I had to throw out pretty much everything in the fridge, but that was not much; I don’t ever have many refrigerable foods.  Like the narrator in Fight Club said:  “A refrigerator full of condiments and no food.  How embarrassing.”

Anyway, the rest of Saturday had a lot of drying of the floor, and a walk to the bank.  Not much else of note took place.  I did dust off my PS4 and try to get it going for the first time in a very long time.  I got it to start after a while‒it seemed almost to have atrophied or gone into some electronic rigor mortis or something.  Anyway, I got it updated after I reset my password, and then played two of my favorite games for about ten minutes each before realizing they were not any fun.

Then, Sunday morning when I went to do my laundry, the washer wasn’t working.  I tried to figure out the problem, and at first it seemed to be an electricity issue.  I tried all the circuit breakers, but they were fine, and the ground fault interrupt was also not sprung.  I got out a long extension cord; I had to depower my fridge (and microwave) to use it, but there was nothing in the fridge by then, anyway.

Power was thus supplied, and I hoped the problem was solved, but it was not.  The washing machine was broken.  Despite various interventions, I could not get it to run.

My laundry, with detergent, was just sitting in the machine.  The landlord tried to get a replacement washer out to us as soon as possible, but his guy was busy elsewhere, and of course, it was Sunday.  So my laundry has not been done this week.  I’ve had to buy some new clothes (and new towels) and get out old clothes I don’t usually wear and so on.  It’s very uncomfortable and unpleasant, as well as expensive.

So, my whole routine has been thrown for a loop, and my routine is all that I have anymore.  I went for quite a long walk on Sunday afternoon once it became clear that the washer replacement wasn’t soon arriving.  It was pretty hot out, but the heat index was one to three degrees below body temperature, so at least normal thermoregulation functioned, more or less, though I got a bit of sunburn.

I walked west along 215th Street, AKA County Line Road, until I got to the place where 215th crosses the Florida Turnpike.  I looked down to see how high the overpass was, but it was disappointing.  If it was done right, a person could probably carefully hang and drop, landing with minimal injury beyond a few scrapes.

Even if one were trying to kill oneself by jumping from there, one would have to go head first (doing it just right) and/or rely on getting killed by traffic.  That would be rude; it would not be okay to traumatize some poor shmoe who’s just going somewhere on the turnpike on a Sunday afternoon.

At that point, I turned around and headed back.  I stopped at a convenience store nearby and bought three beverages, all of which I drank before getting back to the house.

To top everything off for the weekend, one of the stray cats I feed, a quite neurotic and paranoid one, and certainly the oldest of her cohort, died overnight.  She had been (apparently) okay earlier in the day, but maybe she had an infection.  I don’t know.  It doesn’t seem to have been a horrible death, and I guess it was pretty fast.  She wasn’t alone, at least.  The other few cats who tend to stay close to the house were nearby and seemed to have kept her company, at least in some sense.

I don’t know.  I’m probably anthropomorphising.  Still, she had more friends (and probably family, really, when you think about the nature of stray cats) around her when she died than I will likely have when I die.  I honestly don’t know if that’s better or worse.  Maybe it’s not good to subject the people you love to your final hours.

Still, I was regretful and sad (still am) that my Dad died while I was en route to see him for the last time.  And I was glad‒or, well, it was a positive thing, anyway‒to be there with my mother when she died, though I don’t think my presence did any actual good for her.  At least my sister wasn’t there alone.  I guess that was pretty clearly good.

I don’t know what the point of all this is, but in a way, that really is the point, and it makes my point:  there is no use in all that I do, such as this blog.  There is no use in anything.  And I certainly am of no use.

Maybe the social media-ites are right and one shouldn’t have to earn the right to exist, but I have never felt, not for one moment in my life, that I deserve anything just because I’m alive, including my life itself.  Nature is not generous or kind, and as far as I can see, nature doesn’t consider anyone or anything to “deserve” to exist.

I certainly don’t.

*Thanks to other recent events reported here, I bought some more.

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“I’m falling down the spiral, destination unknown”

Well, it’s Friday morning, and I’m still fasting.  I’m also, once again, writing this post on my smartphone.  It is so hard not to take the easiest, lowest “action” route at any given time in any given moment, such as when leaving the office to go back to the house.  I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised by that; it’s what the laws of nature themselves do at every time in every place, following the “path” with the least local action.

That is local though.  Nature doesn’t necessarily come out with the most straightforward long-term pathway for things.  That would require it to see ahead, to be able to act at a distance, in a more literal and broad sense than even just the collapse of the wave-function*.  And so, likewise, for instance (please forgive me for being very loose with my analogies) I leave the mini lapcom at the office even though I will regret having done so the next morning.

And so, also, I will snack on and just eat unhealthy foods in too-great amounts, even though I will regret it later, and despite prior experience.  That prior experience can only change my action when its negative effect applies strongly enough in the moment of temptation.  But alas, it’s difficult to get to that point.

If I were somehow to get sick to my stomach‒or, well, even just nauseated‒every time I ate anything but the healthiest food, I would probably rather quickly stop desiring a lot of foods, because nausea is a very strong internal signal that leads to longer-term aversion in the human nervous system, a fact shaped by evolution to prevent someone from eating poisonous or infectious foods more than once (ideally).

Anyway…

I’m tolerating my fast so far with minimal trouble, which doesn’t surprise me.  Indeed, by the end of work yesterday, I felt very upbeat, at least physically.  I wouldn’t go so far as to say I was euphoric, but it was a feeling in the same genus, if not the same species.

However, I did not sleep well last night, even for me, which surprised me a bit.  I honestly expected I would probably feel sleepier than usual, just as a matter of energy conservation.  Of course, that would fly in the face of my own reasoning about the extra alertness and motivation engendered by food deprivation, at least up to a point.  So I should not be surprised, and if I am, that’s a sign of my own relative lack of thorough and rigorous thinking about what was happening.

Mind you, it’s only been 36 hours since I last ate something.  That’s not exactly earthshaking.  I’m sure that other states of mind and body would/will arise if I continue to fast.  I do feel a little floaty and disconnected already, but then my mind is weird even at the best of times.

One thing that fasting makes clear to me:  food really is practically the only thing that gives me any reliable dose of joy anymore, however transitory and however low the rebound takes me afterward.  There is nothing else in my life‒nothing of which to speak, anyway.

I don’t do anything for fun, I don’t really have any conversations with anyone (except my sister slightly less often than once a week), I don’t go anywhere for fun or inspiration or interest.  I watch semi-random YouTube videos and putter around on a few other social media just as distractions.  I haven’t even watched any sports or any other shows, not after the first regular season football week, because it rapidly got boring.  I don’t even play any of the video games I have.

I still do read some, but I’m running out of books in which I have any interest‒currently I’m most of the way through If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies.  After that, I don’t even know what I would want to read next.

It would be best‒not just for me but for everyone else in the long run‒if I could apply enough willpower to stop eating completely, forever.  Goodness knows that’s what I want to do.  I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it, though.  I mean, I will try, I am trying, and maybe after the first few days it will become easier.

So far, though, dealing with the dearth of activation in my nucleus accumbens is daunting.  I’m a miserable person even when I can stuff my face with food that I like.  Without food or music or creative writing or any other expression, it’s all very much a long, long road with no inn at the end or even any rest stops along the way.

I don’t know what to do.  Perhaps some epiphany will hit me.  I doubt it.  I suspect there is no deep, secret answer.  There’s only transient, pointless existence then a return to nonexistence; so I suspect, though I do not claim to know for certain.

Whatever.  It’s Friday, and the weekend approaches.  Who knows?  Maybe I’ll still be fasting by Monday for my next blog post.  I would like that.  I would also like it if you all have a very good day and a good weekend.

*That is what Einstein referred to as “spooky action at a distance”, not quantum entanglement. 

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The brain may devise laws for the blog, but a hot temper leaps o’er a cold decree.

Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday, of course, and it is also the 2nd day of October.  Those two things don’t always coincide‒that probably goes without saying‒but in this case (and roughly one seventh of all October 2nds) they do.

It’s also Yom Kippur, and though if I were truly observant of the holiday, I would not be writing this or going to work, I still want to wish anyone out there observing (it’s not really celebrating) the day a very good and positive one (but if you’re observant, so to speak, you’re unlikely to see this until after the holiday ends).

And, of course, I have begun my fast.  That’s not very impressive so far, mind you; I just haven’t eaten anything since yesterday afternoon at about 4:30, which is not too much longer than usual at this time of day.  Of course, I feel fine, energy and hunger-wise, because I don’t usually eat anything by this hour.  I will be drinking water‒fizzy most of the time, but still water, even though it’s not still water, ha ha‒and possibly diet soda, but that’s it.  I have to have water, because I take a fair amount of medicine for my pain and such, and many of those things should not be sitting in an unlubricated stomach.

It’s not really that hard for me to hold off on eating once I commit to it.  Throughout high school at least, and part of college, I never ate breakfast and rarely ate lunch.  I was skinny, but my mind was as sharp as it’s ever been (though of course I am “smarter” now than I was, because I know a lot more, and that’s not just knowledge, but skills and habits as well).

I also had plenty of energy back then.  I’ve spoken before about how this makes biological sense.  In our ancestral environment, a lack of recent food would be associated with the need or urge to seek food out, and that requires alertness and motivation and energy for a hunting species or even a gathering species, and certainly for one that does both.

Anyway, I really hope not only that this fast helps to clear my mind a bit and to calm my “spirit”, but also that it helps reset my body somewhat.  At the very least, it would be good to get back to that high school (and college) tendency of spending less of my time eating.  It’s gotten to the point that what I do in my “spare time” is often just eating, for momentary pleasure, for distraction, for avoiding boredom, for escape, etc.  But, of course, that tends to lead to a negative cycle, and I feel physically worse and worse about myself afterward.

So, hopefully, I will cross the activation-energy barrier today and head on through towards a more stable plane (or plain) of mentality, and of metabolism.  I don’t know for sure how long the journey will last, or where I will end up, but I will probably keep you all posted.  Watch this space, as they say.

It would be very nice if I successfully get some degree of spiritual insight from this fasting process‒whatever that even means*‒but whatever happens, until the end, I will probably continue to post here every work day.

In the meantime, I’ve at least put in some absurd footnotes as tangential thoughts struck me while writing.  I even did one of my footnote-within-a-footnote thingys, which is always fun (for me, anyway).  But you have to be careful with such digressions;  it’s a bit like writing a computer program with lots of subroutines embedded within other subroutines embedded within yet other subroutines.  The potential for errors that confound your logic (and that make your program freeze, in the programming case) is quite high.

Anyway, G’mar chatima tova, everyone.  I hope you have a good day.  I think I will, too.  And if I uncover any special psychic powers though this fasting process, well…I probably wouldn’t say anything about it.  But who knows, I might.

TTFN

*I’m referring to “spiritual insight”, not “this process”.  I’m pretty sure I know what “this process” means in this particular case**.

**Actually, that’s a pretty unambiguous term nearly any time you might use it.  You might not understand what this process is, but you probably understand what “this process” means in most cases, assuming a decent command of English***.

***That’s a command of the English language, not command of the English.  Commanding the English, and the rest of the inhabitants of the British Isles, has historically been a tricky business, including by the English themselves.  Even the Romans had issues with the “English” and when it came to Scotland, well, Emperor Hadrian just said, “Screw it, put a wall up to try to keep them there up North, I don’t wanna have to deal with those crazy bastards”.  He probably said it in Latin**** though.

****I can’t even imagine the nightmare of trying to conjugate all the Latin verbs and so on in my imaginary quote from Hadrian.

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“What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars.”

Well, I did bring the mini lapcom with me when I left work yesterday.  Nevertheless, I am writing this blog post on my smartphone.  There are specific, calculated reasons for this, but I’m not going to bore you with them, because they are only relevant to me.  But please, do tell me if you notice that this change has affected the quality of my writing, for better or for worse.

Okay, that’s that out of the way.  Now, on to more interesting things.  It’s the first day of October, my favorite month, although the reasons it has always been my favorite month are almost all effaced here in south Florida, in the current state of my “life”.  Still, it is the month of Halloween, and of Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show, and all of that, so it still holds its position as number one month, as well as being the eighth and the tenth.

A few years ago‒it feels longer‒I set myself the task of writing a “short” story to honor the month of October (though the story didn’t have to be set in the month of October).  That led to Hole for a Heart, which is not my darkest story*, but my sister says it’s my scariest story.  I’m sure that’s pretty subjective, but it warms my own heart-shaped hole at least a bit to have written a quite scary story.

I wish I had the gumption to write something new again for this month.  If I did, the lapcom would be better for writing fiction than the smartphone, though the latter might keep me from going too ham on the whole thing, i.e., writing too much.

But I have a sort of feeling of learned helplessness about writing fiction, as well as about music (writing it and even just playing it) and art and science and everything else I do.  I put a lot of energy into things with almost no return, certainly not one commensurate to the effort involved.  Eventually, I just feel like an exhausted rat lying in the bottom of his cage, knowing that no matter what choice he makes or action he takes, he will be randomly shocked and otherwise tormented.

It’s not that he doesn’t care about the pain or the other stuff, he just knows the pain will come no matter what, and that has taken almost all the possible joy from being creative.  This is especially so when the creativity goes almost entirely unnoticed, like a sculpture made on the ISS and then promptly launched from there into deep space without anyone having seen it but a handful of astronauts.

I don’t know what it might take to rekindle (no pun intended) my writing or other creative sparks.  Maybe if I just had less pain it would do.  Unfortunately, the pain seems just to add new flavors and textures to itself over time; it doesn’t diminish.

I guess maybe that could be considered creative in a sense.

It’s a curious sort of irony, but I know that writing fiction seemed to stave off my depression, at least a little.  One might think it would be exhausting, writing 1400 to 2000 words every workday (except when editing/rewriting, which was its own grind).  Maybe eventually it was, and that was what led me to stop finally, since there was no real reward to it after a while, since almost nobody buys the books and/or reads them.

I don’t regret having written my stories, of course, nor my songs, nor any drawings I’ve made, nor my blog(s).  But over time I’ve had rapidly diminishing relative returns on the fiction writing and on the music and such.  The returns on this blog, relative to the effort, are shrinking more slowly, and occasionally there seems even to be an uptick, but the overall trend of basically everything except my personal knowledge** is downward.

I don’t know when the y-axis overall will cross the origin‒for many particular things, I think it has long since done so‒but I suspect it’s a finite distance, and I’m not decelerating, so I will cross it eventually.

Sometimes‒indeed, pretty much every day and twice on Sundays, ha ha‒I think to myself the metaphorical equivalent of “Where is that fucking x-axis?  It’s time for this to be finished already.”  If I had a goal, or anything significant toward which to look forward, things would probably be different.  But I don’t, and they aren’t.  That’s logic for you.

Well, anyway, this evening begins Yom Kippur and my fast.  Whatever you all are doing, I hope you have a good day.  I expect that I will be writing to you again tomorrow.

*That would be Solitaire.  I’ve told the story of that tale’s origin here before, I think, so I won’t get into it now.  If I am misremembering, let me know, and I’ll try to tell you the curious but not very exciting tale of a very dark tale indeed.  Oh, and if you want to read either of those stories but don’t want to do the Kindle thing, they are both featured in Dr. Elessar’s Cabinet of Curiosities, which is so far my only work you can get in Kindle, paperback, and even hardback!

**I do think that I am always learning new things and improving my understanding of things I knew from before, and I have a good memory, especially for things in which I’m interested.  That’s all well and good, and I’m glad of it, but knowledge in my head is only as good and as durable as my head is.  Eventually, as Roy Baty said, all these moments will be lost in time like tears in the rain.

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“I’m coming down fast, but don’t let me break you.”

I’m writing this post on my mini lapcom, as I call it, following the lesson of my own reflections yesterday on how my thumbs and whatnot are getting particularly sore and tender while writing on the smartphone, and it’s just easier writing with the “laptop” computer.

Of course, I don’t know what subject on which to write, but that’s typical, even usual for me, though I probably wouldn’t call it “normal”.  It’s just my personal, weird way of approaching this blog.  I suppose my subconscious is probably working on some of it ahead of time.  But I don’t really ever plan the posts, though occasionally I think about a general, vague kind of thing that I will discuss, like “What is that flat, circular thing that they throw in the Olympics called, again?”

Sorry, that was a really stupid joke.

There are some imminently upcoming matters that are of at least personal interest to me.  For instance, this is the last day of September in 2025.  Tomorrow begins October, which is generally my favorite month, though down here you can’t readily tell October from any other month.  But it’s still a good month, and it culminates in my favorite holiday (which is Halloween, in case that wasn’t clear).

Tomorrow at sundown also begins Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.  Now, I clearly am not “observant” in any serious way, and I have no local (or other) community of any kind, but pretty much every year, unless I am physically sick, I fast for Yom Kippur, from sundown to sundown (at least).  One is supposed to fast from food and water, but since I’ve been in south Florida, I tend to skip the water fasting part; even at this time of year, it’s too easy to get dehydrated, and I sure as hell don’t want any more kidney stones if I can help it.

I may try to extend my fast this year, beyond just one day.  I’ve done it before.  Once I get past a certain point, it becomes comparatively easy just to continue not to eat, and for me, at least, that point of ease arrives pretty quickly.

Clearly one cannot fast indefinitely.  Or rather, if one does it for more than a certain length of time, one is likely to cease to eat permanently (if you take my meaning).  That’s not so bad a thing, really, and it doesn’t seem like a terrible way to die, to me, though I know a lot of people seem to think it especially horrible.

But the thing is, ketosis (which happens when fasting) is fairly pleasant, as I know from personal experience; the brain prefers to run on ketone bodies (in the sense that it runs better on them), and one’s hormonal status, such as one’s bouncing stress hormones related to insulin and glucose zooming up and down, at least become steadier when one has gone without food for a bit.

It’s not a mere coincidence that many religions and spiritual practices make use of fasts.  Up to a certain point, going without food for a while keeps one clear-headed, less emotional and distracted (once one gets over the initial hump of habit).  There are hypothetical biological reasons for this; an animal (such as a human, or even me) needs to be clear and sharp when food has been scarce, because they need to seek it.

I wouldn’t mind achieving some type of epiphany because of a fast.  I also have a (slim) hope that fasting might help some of my pain symptoms, at least the more recent ones.  I have a slight suspicion that maybe I have some form of psoriatic arthritis (though it certainly could be a “second year medical student syndrome” type of thing), since my fingers are particularly getting more painful and swollen lately*, and I have new tendonitis-type symptoms and even a proximal interphalangeal joint in my right middle finger that’s popping in and out as I move it.

The left hand is not as bad, but then again, I am right handed, so the right hand gets more use and stress—not least from controlling a computer mouse.  But I also get a lot of pain that has become more localized to my ileo-sacral region, shifting from side to side (and various other joints, not quite symmetrically) which is a common spot for psoriatic arthritis to affect.  So, it could be a somewhat atypical presentation of psoriatic arthritis (I do have a long-standing psoriasis-like rash).

More likely, though, all of these symptoms are merely part of my chronic pain syndrome, which leads to awkward postural adjustments that cause irregular strain on various joints and tendons, and it’s all made worse by the fact that I am way too fat (because I often eat for “comfort” when the pain is acting up, which is likewise often).  So, whether by one mechanism or another, perhaps fasting would help reset things.

I would not hope to get carried away and fast forever, but at least it would be nice not to die a fatty.  I guess we’ll see how everything goes.  But I am at least going to fast tonight until tomorrow night.  I have plenty of internal reserves on which to live, but I will keep taking my vitamins and pain medicine, of course.

That’s pretty much it for now.  I hope you all have a good day, and by tomorrow night I’ll have begun my fast.  If I keep it up, you’ll be able to follow my progress here.  It probably won’t be very interesting, but it might be.

Talk to you soon.

*That’s discouraged me from playing guitar very often, which is annoying in itself.

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I’m back and (nominally) going forth

It’s Monday again‒the last Monday of September in 2025.  This day, in this month, in this year, will never come again.  Or, well, even if the universe is one big closed time-loop of some kind, it seems quite clear that the scale of it is so huge that it may as well be eternity before this time will come around again.

And then, of course, even if it does come around again, it’s not as though we would be aware of it.  I’ve brought up before the notion of it being like people in movie on a DVD or Blu-ray or what have you; at each moment, the characters are, from their viewpoint, facing an uncertain future with many possibilities, and yet we the viewers know that exactly the same things will happen to them, and they will do exactly the same things each time we watch the movie.

That’s all old hat, I guess (a weird expression, but somehow it works).  But it is interesting to consider occasionally, and then to think about where (if anywhere) quantum indeterminacy fits into such a picture, from the possible “many worlds” Everettian version of quantum mechanics to things like superdeterminism on the other end and so on.

Whatever.  Sorry, I sometimes get a little swept up in such matters, and it probably gets quite boring for my readers.

Anyway, I did not go to work on Friday, and that’s why I didn’t write a blog post.  My apologies.  I felt truly horrible at a sort of pan-corporeal level; it almost felt as if I were experiencing the effects of some kind of poison (though I do not actually suspect such a thing, it’s just a way to convey my experience).  I think something “global” and metabolic was going on, though I guess it might have been some viral syndrome or other.  I’m not feeling completely better, even today.

I also scratched my right eye in my sleep apparently, on Thursday night, and that didn’t help matters.  Thankfully, the conjunctivae heal very quickly, so that’s mostly better now.  It’s still a little irritated, and so it is irritating, but that should just be a matter of time.

As for anything else, well…I have nothing, really.  That applies in more than one sense, now that I think about it.  But in this case, I mean that I have nothing interesting in mind about which to write.  It doesn’t help that I’m doing this on my smartphone, which makes writing slower and also a bit painful.

I really should bring the mini lapcom back to the house with me.  It’s so much easier to write on it‒it really allows me to be in some ways more fluent and fluid even than when speaking (although if you get me started on a subject in which I’m interested, I can talk at a rate that will make most people wish for me to get severe laryngitis).

It’s tough, however, to talk with my six pm self to get him to want to bring the lapcom, when he’s globally fatigued at the end of the workday.  Likewise, he has a hard time making excuses to my morning self, who is still fatigued and who has sore thumb bases.

Nominally, of course, they are “the same” person‒and taking “the person” as the four-dimensional self-reinforcing and self-sustaining pattern that I am, like a complex braid in spacetime, one would say that they are indeed the same person, or at least that they are parts of the same person.  But as an experiential matter, they are subjectively quite different, instantiating different states of body and mind.

Oh, they are obviously far more alike than unalike‒the morning me is closer by far in overall state to the afternoon me than to any state of any other person, let alone any other animal or what have you.  But still, the Buddhist (and similar systems of thought) notion of the lack of any fixed “self” riding around inside the mind like a homunculus is clearly correct.

There is no “center” of consciousness in the brain except for the whole brain itself.  But even that does not exist in a vacuum*.  Its state is influenced by the states of the rest of the body, of the environment, of the information coming into the person’s mind via the senses, and so on.

It’s a fucking complicated system, okay?  It’s the most complicated thing‒at least on this scale‒of which we are aware.  By that, I mean human (and humanoid) minds and brains in general, not mine specifically.  I have a fairly high judgment of my own intelligence, but I’m not as egotistical as all that.

Maybe I should try to be.  Maybe I should cultivate a sense of self-importance and specialness (why is that not “specialty”?) that would keep me feeling nominally good about myself.  But people like that are so boring and annoying and even pitiful.  I don’t know if going that way would be more triumph or surrender.  It would probably be the latter.

Oh, well.  Try to have a good day.

*Unless it’s a Boltzmann Brain, which is pretty unlikely.  You can know you’re not a Boltzmann Brain if you continue to exist for more than a few seconds before disintegrating into the global entropy of a nearly empty universe.  Although, of course, your memories of having existed for more than a few seconds may simply be false memories, a real possibility in principle in any Boltzmann Brain.  But contemplating those possibilities reveals that they would make baseless any notion we have of consistent physical laws, including the laws that allow for Boltzmann Brains (if they do, which is questionable), so it gets pointless pretty quickly.

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But life, being weary of these worldly blogs, never lacks power to dismiss itself.

Hello and good morning.

Well, yesterday was something of a cluster fudge*.  I mentioned that, if not for payroll, I would not have gone to work, but payroll existed, so I needed to go.

I intended to leave as soon as payroll was done.  However, my coworker, with whom I share some of the daily tasks, ended up calling in sick from a stomach bug, so I was going to be stuck.

Then my boss, who is actually very kind, asked the people from our other office to come over to cover for me so I could leave at about 2 at least.  But after that there were numerous messages and questions and issues and the like that I had to witness, though I did not participate in all of them.  Perhaps needless to say, I didn’t get much rest.  I wouldn’t be going to work today, honestly, but I just know there will be a mess to clean up, and it will only accumulate further if I wait**.

I know, it’s my own problem; if I were less uptight about such things I could just leave it for a bit and rest today, which would probably be better for me.  But I would not be able to rest much today from thinking about it, and when I finally went in, I would quietly blow a gasket.  It wouldn’t be obvious on the outside, but I might very well get so stressed as to deliberately harm myself‒that does happen with me more often than I like to admit‒and that’s worth avoiding.

That’s why I started smoking cigars regularly:  it’s a way to self-harm without the risk of being Baker Acted (or whatever the term is nowadays).  That’s definitely worth avoiding.  I once called the help line thingy when I was feeling in a particularly bad way, and I ended up being picked up by the Palm Beach Sheriff’s office, handcuffed (by deputies who were obviously pretty pathetically frightened to deal with someone who was self-destructive) and taken to a little shit-hole mental health place in south Palm Beach County.  It would have been better if I had done something to force them to shoot me.

I was only in the mental health place for 24 hours, but I got nerve damage in my left wrist/hand from poorly applied handcuffs***, and that lasted about a year before I lost the paresthesias.  Anyway, I’ve told that story before‒parts of it, anyway‒and I don’t want to bore you too much.

I do keep getting, every few days, a pop-up message when I get on Threads that says someone thinks I need help or am having a hard time, and it gives links to things like the suicide help line, and to, I don’t know, places with ideas or resources or something that other people have found useful.

Unfortunately, because of the experience I just described, among other things, I generally avoid calling the help line.  It’s not just that I seem ever more with every day to have difficulty interacting with anyone I don’t know well; I really don’t ever want to be arrested, or just “arrested”, again in my life.  I’ve been through way too much of that shit, especially for someone who never even tried marijuana until his mid-forties**** let alone any other drugs or crime.

I do truly appreciate the thought behind these pop-ups.  But I’m not a young man, and I’ve had mental health problems pretty much my whole life (partly because, it turns out, I was an undiagnosed autistic person, with complications thereof, but I didn’t know that until very recently).  I also supposedly have a uselessly high IQ, and in addition I get obsessively curious about things in which I am interested (or about which I am desperate).  There are very few treatments, let alone ideas, that I have not explored and digested, and sometimes tried, to help my chronic depression.

Of course, it turns out that the ASD complicates things, and some treatments and helps that often work well for so-called neurotypical people end up not being as effective for those “on the spectrum” and can even be counter-productive.  Unfortunately, I’m not clear on any alternatives that might be available to me, and I have no community of like-brained people with whom I can seek support‒I’ve really gotten far more socially awkward over time even than I was in the past.

So, I’m not sure that humans are going to be particularly useful sources of mental health information for me.  I need something geared to a Nexus 13 or whatever.  Unfortunately, the Tyrell Corporation very rudely failed to become real by 2019, so they don’t have any useful things to offer a para-human like me.  They can’t even grant me a four-year lifespan.

Anyway, those are my sharable thoughts for this morning.  Imagine what the nonsharable ones must be like!

I hope you all have better days than I have been having and will probably have for the foreseeable future.  And thank you for reading my blog, today and in the past.

TTFN

*Not with pecans, though.  I really hate pecans, and yesterday wasn’t quite so bad that I should compare it to having to eat fudge with pecans.

**There was.

***Yes, I know the difference.  I’ve had a stupid amount of experience with police handcuffs‒and leg irons and shackles‒for someone as boring and well-behaved as I try to be and am.  Sometimes I think my life would have been better if I had been some manner of delinquent.  It probably would have been shorter at least, and that would be an improvement.

****I was trying to help a particularly bad bit of back pain that day, and some coworkers let me try a joint they were smoking.  I proceeded to vomit off and on for the next two hours.  It was not an auspicious trial.

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My a pile of cheese for this post

I really don’t feel well today, either mentally or physically, so please excuse me if this post is sub par.  I would probably not even go to work today if it weren’t payroll day (Wednesday) but it is.  So, I am going to the office, but I don’t know if I’ll stay there the whole day.  If I still feel as wiped by the time I’m done with payroll‒and I usually feel more wiped at such a time‒then I will probably go back to the house.

Some of what’s causing me trouble is the new soreness and pain in my right forearm up to my elbow.  It’s some form of connective tissue inflammation, I’m nearly sure, but it’s not clear what the cause is.  I sort of hyperflexed my right wrist‒under my whole weight‒several weeks ago, but to my surprise, that didn’t even hurt the next day.  It’s not impossible for this to be some delayed, accumulated damage/inflammation, but it would be strange to have had no symptoms in between.  Still, that’s the only concrete and direct potential cause of which I am aware.

Whatever the case, even picking up lightweight things with my right hand is painful, and that’s frustrating because one thing I’m not uncomfortable saying about myself is that I’m pretty strong.  I do under- and overhand pull ups and dips as my main upper-body workout.  But there were certainly no pull-ups this morning.

Of course, I have most of my usual pains‒my back hasn’t stopped hurting for two decades, so there’s no reason to think it would stop now‒including the arthralgia in the base of my thumbs.  Nevertheless, this week I’ve been writing my posts on my smartphone because carrying the lapcom feels too daunting.

My apologies; I doubt that anyone reads this blog merely to follow my litany of physical and psychological complaints.

I honestly don’t know why anyone in particular reads anything I write.  I appreciate it, of course.  Thank you.  But I don’t understand it very well.  If I didn’t have to interact with myself, I wouldn’t.

Actually, I guess I can understand why someone might read my fiction.  Many people like reading sci-fi, fantasy, and horror stories, and I’m at least willing to admit that I like my own stories, so it’s not insane that someone else might.  I actually know three people who have read at least some of my (published) stories and enjoyed them, and one of them‒my sister‒is still alive (I don’t think liking my stories is what killed the other two, but it is a rather disheartening coincidence).

But this blog is strange.  That’s not surprising in and of itself; this is me we’re discussing here (or at least I am).  I just don’t know what it is that appeals to people about this.  I’m glad that it does, but I don’t get it.  While I do often (well…occasionally, anyway) go back and reread some of my fiction, I don’t know that I have ever gone back to reread any of my old blog posts.

If anyone reading has done that, I’d be interested to know what motivated it, and whether it was a good experience.  Heck, if you think you’ve thereby learned any useful information about me that I might not already know, please, lay it on me.  After all, they say knowledge is power, but it’s much, much better than that‒knowledge is knowledge, which is better than power.  When you acquire knowledge, you take part of the universe into yourself without diminishing that which you internalize.

Well, okay, acquiring knowledge does increase the overall entropy of the universe, but at a very low rate considering what is gained.  Anyway, everything increases the overall entropy of the universe, because that’s what the mathematics requires.  I wrote a post on Iterations of Zero about that once.  If I can find it without much trouble, I’ll put a link to it.

Okay‒[shakes head metaphorically to try to clear it]‒I think I’m going to wrap this up.  My brain is really fatigued, and it’s only very early in the morning.  Actually, presumably the rest of my body is also fatigued‒it certainly feels fatigued.  But I only feel the rest of my body via my brain, so it’s all sort of redundant and recursive and self-referential filter.  I guess that’s a bit like this blog.

Anyway, have a good day, please.  Thank you.