Personal

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“Look into my eyes…”

I’m not going to write much today.  I don’t really have much to say.  I know, that’s never stopped me before, but today I just don’t have the mental energy to write anything or to make up anything about which to write, other than the fact that I don’t have any such thing.

I’m very, very, very tired‒though I still can’t sleep for shit.  I’ve said pretty much all there is to say, for me.  I don’t really have anything to add.  My tendency, in real life, is to subtract, at least from all the people and things I encounter.  I tend to take away joy from the people with whom I am in contact, and I take away more, it seems, from those I love most and to whom I am closest.  I drain their energy, but I don’t seem to gain any energy for myself thereby.  I no doubt do the same to at least some of the people who politely read this blog.

It’s enough.  I don’t want to do any of it anymore.  Writing fiction, writing nonfiction, drawing, singing, playing guitar, studying science…all of it is shit, and all of it is pointless.

I don’t know if I’m going to write a post tomorrow, or ever again.  Of course, in principle, that’s true every day, but this time it’s a conscious…well, not an intention, but a conscious lack of intention, or wavering thereof.  Anyway, I don’t have the energy.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll feel great.  I doubt it like the fucking mischief, but it’s a possibility allowed by the laws of nature, as far as I can see.

In case I don’t write anymore ever again, I want to thank you for reading.  There aren’t very many of you, but you are there, and I appreciate you.  I hope I haven’t poisoned your minds too much.

Please have a good day, and a good rest of your lives.  It’s been an honor and a privilege to communicate with you, one that I know I could not deserve.

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Well, here we go again

It’s Monday morning, again, and I’m starting another week writing a blog post in the morning instead of doing something productive or creative or whatever.  Or, I suppose one could also say I am doing this instead of sleeping, though it’s not as though I really had a choice about that.

Oh, and the reason I didn’t post on Saturday was because the office didn’t open on Saturday, since everyone kind of needed a break.  It wasn’t because I died sometime after my Friday morning post, unfortunately.

Anyone who thinks that dying would be the unfortunate thing clearly hasn’t wrestled with and internalized the fact that everyone is going to die anyway, and that chronic pain makes the process of being alive a form of slow torture.  And as some famous person from the time of the inquisition said, if anyone has not confessed themselves a witch or a heretic, it is merely because they have not been subject to torture.

He was commenting on the fact that, unless there is truly some greater purpose motivating someone, torture works on essentially everyone, eventually.  Now, I don’t know if it’s melodramatic of me or if I exaggerate in calling 20+ years of chronic pain (while still trying to live a gainfully employed, productive life) a form of torture.  Maybe I’m just a wimp.  I do know that I do not have that greater purpose, that goal on which to keep my gaze fixed.

I used to have something or some things like that.  One of the thoughts that helped me get through prison was that I could look forward to seeing my kids again when I got out.  The whole point of accepting a plea bargain, even though I consider myself innocent, was that I didn’t want to take the chance of being in prison any longer than I had to, because I wanted to see my children again as soon as I could.

Of course, that turned out not to happen, because they didn’t actually want to see me.  It turned out that their lives were at least simpler when I wasn’t around, just like their mother’s was, just like pretty much everyone else’s life is simpler when I’m not around.

That was about 10 years ago, and I still haven’t seen either of them since.  I ask you, what’s the point of enduring anything in that situation?

I have a lot of endurance, I think‒mentally, anyway.  I can put up with a surprising amount of stuff just out of general pig-headedness.  But after a while it all gets annoying.

And lest anyone be under the mistaken impression that I am someone who has not sought help or not allowed people to help me when they tried:  I have gone through years of therapy at various times and of various kinds, I have taken various types and brands of antidepressants and related medications, I have called the suicide crisis line more than once and have very briefly been hospitalized because of it.  I have taken various kinds of medications and have tried numerous interventions including surgery to address my chronic pain.  I don’t easily let problems go.  I don’t tend to give up easily, at least not at things that matter to me.

But I am tired and I am in pain and I am alone.  Also, it turns out I am autistic.  That would, of course, be nothing new, just newly discovered, but it does make it very hard to make new friends or new connections with people, especially now that I am no longer in an environment where there are people around who are interested in at least some of the things in which I am truly interested or who have shared backgrounds.

I would like to do good in and for the world in some fashion.  I would at least like to bring original creations into the world that make some people happy, at least for a little while.

I know we’re all just animals, muddling our way from the womb to the tomb, acting in ways shaped by natural selection’s effects on our ancestors.  There need be no deeper point to life than that to keep everything rolling.  But it’s not very interesting after a while.

I don’t know.  Everything is getting boring.  It’s hard to bother keeping oneself alive when everything is either dull or irritating or painful.  There is such a thing as learned helplessness, even for the very stubborn.  All creatures have their limits.

I don’t know what I’m trying to say or do here.  I don’t know what the point is.  Probably there is no point.  I know that I am pointless, at the very least.  So I’ll draw this to a close again, and start yet another pointless, unpleasant, idiotic day.  I’m stupid that way.  But maybe I’ll get smarter someday.

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Anyway, here’s my Friday blog post

Well, it’s Friday, the official end to another work week‒though I am scheduled to work tomorrow‒and I am here writing yet another blog post.  Today, I’m writing on my phone, since the few days’ rest seems to have eased my thumbs at least a little.  Also, I feel that my last few posts, which were written on my mini laptop computer, sucked and went on too long*, so using the smartphone might improve things.  I don’t imagine it could readily make things much worse.

I’ve been having a great deal of pain over the last several days, as I think I’ve mentioned.  I mean, I’m in pain every day, pretty much all the time, but it does vary from day to day and even from moment to moment.  When it’s at its baseline, I can almost ignore it for a while.  But when it’s acting up, it’s very hard for me to put in the background.  It dominates whatever else might be happening.  It makes everything harder‒and things are often not easy for me in the first place because of my chronic depression and (apparently) due to my hitherto undiagnosed autism.

Anyway, I’ve felt very stiff and grumpy and above all pretty miserable over the past several days, but apparently, it doesn’t quite show on the outside.  I’ve occasionally quoted the song Brain Damage by Pink Floyd as representing the way I often feel:  “And if the cloud bursts thunder in your ear / You shout and no one seems to hear / And if the band you’re in starts playin’ different tunes / I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon.”

I guess the inability to make others aware of my distress‒and often my own inability to recognize it in myself‒is probably at least partly related to ASD.  I suppose it’s just as well that this aspect of it keeps me from being too irritating to the people around me (at least in this way).  I know that I’m plenty annoying in numerous other ways, though, and I spend a lot of time berating myself for having been an idiot in many situations and interactions.

I also find myself spending a lot of time being severely irritated by people and occurrences in the world around me.  Sometimes the irritation is perfectly well-deserved, and sometimes it is thoroughly irrational and unfair on my part.

I don’t know what to do with any of it.  I don’t know what to do with my life, other than to wad it up and throw it in the figurative dumpster.  I’m already like a plate of leftovers that’s been left in a not-quite-cool-enough refrigerator for many months.  I’m a putrid, fungus-and-bacteria-riddled mass of something that was (maybe) once fit for human consumption.

Now, even the most robust person‒or even a dog or a pig or a flipping billy goat‒would vomit if they thought to bring me into their lives.

If you look closely, you might even be able to make out the shape of what I used to be, but that old outline is obscured by alien clouds of hyphae and fruiting bodies, by oozing purulent liquid, and by the scent of mildew and gangrene.

The things I am and which remain to me are merely reminders and mockeries of what I used to be and what I used to have.  But even back then, in my “heyday”, I was a mess, never worthy of the good that existed in my life.  At least I’m more self-aware of my shortcomings now than I used to be.

But literally every step I take is painful.  Everything I do is uncomfortable.  And though I have never had an inherent belief or thought that I have any right to be comfortable, it all does old.  It’s something that can be endured if there is a compensatory reward of some kind; if one has love, if one has friendship, if one has companionship and purpose, then one can tolerate a great deal.  Otherwise, it’s just a parade of painful, pointless moments.

Of course, I would never say that I have more pain or discomfort than any other person.  I’m quite sure that there are many, many, many people whose lives are more painful and whose existence is less positive, less valuable or beneficial to themselves than mine is to me.  I don’t know why such people bother.  I don’t know why I bother.

I find myself disgusting.  I’m pathetic and weak and unimpressive, and I need to stop deluding myself that some day I might once again become otherwise (if I ever have been).  The return on the daily invested effort of existence is tiny, and it’s shrinking all the time.

That’s enough for today.  Honestly, with as much pain as I’ve been in, and as unpleasant as I find my own company, I would not complain if I don’t live to post tomorrow**.  I doubt anyone else would, either.

In the meantime, please try to have a good day, if you can.  You might as well.

*Reminiscent of my life, in that sense.

**That’s trivially true in a sense, of course.  If I’m not alive, how can I complain?  Nevertheless, I do mean it more deeply here.

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I do wish thou wert a dog, that I might blog thee something.

Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday, and I’m writing another blog post.

I did an update yesterday to my little miniature laptop, and now the MS Word (and presumably Office overall) has also been updated, with—as usual—relatively frustrating consequences.

Microsoft appears to have a real knack for changing things that were perfectly fine and making them not as good as they used to be, adding things that no intelligent person wants—like their frequent, irritating interruptions asking us if we want to let their AI assist us.

And, of course, they still have their stupid Craptos font in place as the baseline, even though it looks terrible and not at all professional.  Honestly, I’d rather submit a scientific paper in Comic Sans than in that stupid new Aptos, largely because they haven’t given us a choice whether or not to have that as our primary font.

They also have that stupid office icon everywhere that looks sort of like a ribbon folded over four times, or whatever that stupid symbol is supposed to seem to be.  It’s distracting and intrusive.  Why do they change things just for the sake of changing something?  It’s just stupid.

This is one of the big failings of some among the “progressive” end of the political spectrum.  They rant on and on about wanting to make “change”.  But change, in and of itself, is not necessarily a good thing.  I’ve gone over this so many times, but random change is much more likely to be detrimental than beneficial, especially in a system that is functioning relatively well.

Most mutations in germline cells don’t lead to improved survival and reproduction.  Only the rare few that happen to confer some local advantage will make an organism more robust.  That’s natural selection, and it is inherently blind and stupid.  It only produces “progress” because it has unthinkably long time-scales and numbers of organisms with which to work, and is utterly blind to suffering and failure and, yes, even to extinction.

When engineered systems are changed, those changes need to be evaluated, carefully thought through, and ideally tested thoroughly before being put into full implementation.  Otherwise, matters can degenerate rather than be enhanced.

Random mutations almost never produce benefit; even a complex, reasonably stable system is going to suffer if there are arbitrary changes.  Most systems in reality are not streamlined, smoothly functioning, sleek and simple designs.  They are Rube Goldberg machines, and if one bit of random “machinery” goes off, almost always the whole thing will fail completely.

In the body, random genetic changes are likely to lead to cell death or, even worse, to the development of cancer.  Similarly, radical changes in products or governments are almost always catastrophic.  This is one of the reasons even Jefferson noted, in the Declaration of Independence, that prudence recommends that, while imperfections in a current government are tolerable, it’s usually better not to go the way of revolution but to endure, changing the system gradually from within.

Only when there is no other way to do things that does not entail worse suffering should one overthrow or radically change the government.

Of course, for government changes to be overall beneficial, it’s important for the people involved to be knowledgeable and thoughtful, careful, committed to making things as good as possible and willing to correct their own errors (which requires them to admit to being fallible).  This is part of why the current and recent governments, in the USA at least, have been horrible.  They are run by micro-brained monkeys throwing their feces at each other, too stupid to realize that they are ignorant, and too narcissistic (on both sides) to be self-correcting.

Even the people at Microsoft, which is a premier technology company and has made real advances and improvements in its day, seem prone to this moronic “change for the sake of change” thing.

I hate them.  I hate all of them.  I hate everything.  It’s all so, so, so irritating.  People are so stupid they think that they—or some people—run the world, which is utter nonsense.  They seem to imagine that the people and places that exist now are real, while the countless dead people in the past are not.  But we are the same as our dead forebears.  We are all just individual molecules in a vast bath, or as Kansas so eloquently put it, “just a drop of water in an endless sea”.

The fact that all these little AI assistant things are being mindlessly added into products is an example of change that it not well-considered.  It’s just a desperate, hysterical attempt to compete again others who are doing the same stupid thing.  We don’t know yet what good, if any, will come of it, but outcomes will almost certainly be unforeseeable—even by AIs.

I don’t know if it’s possible for me to have any realistic hope at all for the future of civilization, whether human or artificial or some combination.  So far, AIs have only impressed me when they have carefully focused goals, like winning at Go or figuring out protein folding.

I’m angry and frustrated.  At times, I just want to destroy all life in the universe and all potential for future life.  It just so often seems that life is a thoroughly bad idea in and of itself.

But probably it will be more efficient if I just destroy me.  I’m sure most people would prefer that to other options.

In the meantime, try to have a good day if you can, enmeshed as you all are in the poisonous net of reality.

TTFN

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Are you entitled to a headline?

It’s Wednesday, and I’m writing this post using my laptop computer, and here we all are again, though we are not on the Mississippi.

Actually, for all I know, some of you reading actually are on that river.  But I am not, and I don’t think I ever have been “on” it, though I think I have crossed over it at least once, on a bridge somewhere.  I’ve also had at least one dream that I can vaguely remember from long ago about driving in a car up a road that ran alongside some imaginary Mississippi (I think I was on the west side of it) but whatever it was in my dream was almost certainly not much like the real thing.  Similarly, the landscape around was also not at all like what I’m sure the real landscape along the Mississippi really is.  It was almost…compressed, and also simplified, in a way rather reminiscent of the Territories in the Stephen King/Peter Straub book The Talisman.

That was a weird digression, wasn’t it?  I guess it’s not really a big deal, though.  I have no particular agenda for today’s post, so it’s really going to be just a stream-of-my-consciousness thing.  Hopefully that won’t be too unpleasant for you.  If it is, I suppose you can console yourself with the fact that you only have to endure it for the few minutes it takes to read the post—indeed, you don’t actually have to read the whole thing, though if you’re reading these words, you’ve probably already read a substantial amount of it.

Still, least you’re not stuck inside this consciousness like I am, every waking hour.  And I have more waking hours than most people do because of my insomnia.

I had a particularly bad pain day yesterday.  I actually needed to use my bamboo walking staff to get up from my seat.  Well, I didn’t truly need to use it, I guess; I was able to do it without.  But it hurt quite a lot more to stand up without it than with it.

I’m not certain what caused this rather severe exacerbation.  Sometimes I try to do slightly different exercises or stretching or to wear different shoes and whatnot to see if they are better, and sometimes it just turns out they are worse.  On the other hand, sometimes the pain seems just to be random, or at least it’s worsened by some event or series of events that are not clear, and over which I have no apparent control.  It’s frustrating.  I keep trying, believe me; I’m still alive, after all*.  But Batman knows it’s hard to know why I try, because I see few if any potential short-term or long-term rewards.

Of course, I’m also no further along in deciding what, if anything, to do about my autism diagnosis.  Maybe I won’t do anything.  Maybe it’s enough just to know.  Supposedly there are supports and communities and so on for people with autism, but I am not good at seeking out communities at the best of times.

At least some people use this sort of situation as inspiration to make “content”, either on Instagram or on YouTube or similar.  I did do my old YouTube video “Asperger’s…or not?”  I guess I could do another one, a sort of sequel to that one, now that I have my formal diagnosis.  Unfortunately, I’m even more hideous to look at now than I was back then, so the prospect of making a video is of mixed potential at best.

In any case, I have been having a lot of trouble, largely because of the pain and my depression.  I’ve been taking the Saint John’s Wort for several weeks now, and I’m far from sure that it’s having any beneficial effects on my mood.  It all makes me want to ask “What is Saint John’s worth?”

Yes, that’s the sort of joke I think of whenever I write those words.  It’s not something I seem able to resist.  I have more of an excuse now, I suppose, but I doubt that makes it any better or more tolerable.

I don’t know what to write.  I don’t know what to do about my pain or my depression.  I don’t know what to do in general.  I’m getting lots of strong urges to hurt myself—partly just for distraction, partly to express my frustration, which I cannot seem to do in other ways, and largely because I just hate myself—and I have succumbed to them more than once recently.  That’s not a good trend.

I guess that’s enough for today.  I’ve already said more than I had to say, so the signal to noise ratio of this post is small.  But what part is the signal and what part is the noise?  I’ll give you a hint:  anything that seems whimsical and humorous and upbeat is almost certainly noise.  It’s my habitual cloak, since I know that people in general don’t want to deal with someone who is in distress.  They want to be able to convince themselves that there is nothing that needs to be done, or that there is simply nothing anyone can do.  It’s nice to be able to give those people an out.

As for the prospect of finding some out for myself, one way or another, well, I guess you can only wait and see, while I try to see if I can find any answers, whether trivial or significant.  And if nothing else changes, tomorrow I will write another blog post.

Please, please, try to have a better day than I have.

*Whether or not that’s a good thing is a question on which I am far from clear.

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When we fight reality, reality always wins.

It’s Tuesday morning now‒which, fortunately, as far as I know, has never been described as “never-ending”.  Alas, the same cannot be said of Tuesday afternoon.  However, since we are not still stuck in the last Tuesday afternoon‒or indeed in the very first Tuesday afternoon‒then we have to conclude that the line “Tuesday afternoon is never-ending” from the Beatles song Lady Madonna is a poetic figure of speech.

That’s weirdly frustrating for me.  It reminds me a bit of how I remember reading that Tolkien was frustrated with the play Macbeth because Birnam Wood didn’t actually come to Dunsinane, signaling Macbeth’s imminent defeat*.  Tolkien didn’t see why, in a play that clearly involved the supernatural, the wood could not literally come to Dunsinane.

Of course, in the fullness of time, in his own work, the Forest of Fangorn really did come to Isengard, and to Helm’s Deep.  It’s one of the best moments in The Lord of the Rings.

How did I get onto that subject?  Or, as Théoden asked, “How did it come to this?”

Now I’m suddenly thinking about the moment when Théoden, despairing, asks (in the movie) “What can men do against such reckless hate?”  It’s a real moment of doubt and pain, but Aragorn is there to support his spirit.

And that makes me think of doing a “parody” version of Sympathy for the Devil, in which we would have the line, “I was ‘round when Théoden had his moment of doubt and pain / Made damn sure that the uruk hai met our swords and sealed their fate.”  It could be called, perhaps, Sympathy for the Ranger or Sympathy for the Strider or something like that.

We could have lines like “Just as every Noldor is a kinslayer, and all the Nazgul slaves / as East is West just call me…Aragorn, ‘cause Minas Tirith I will save,” or something along those lines.  It’s a bit silly and cheesy, I guess, but that’s okay; it’s a parody.  Anyway, I don’t think I’m actually going to try to produce a whole set of lyrics for it, but who knows?  I’ve done weirder things for more frivolous reasons.

As for what to do about relatively more serious things‒i.e., my diagnosis of ASD level2‒I still don’t know.  I don’t know how I’m going to go about following the recommendations in the report, such as they are.  Knowing at least some of the explanations for many of the difficulties I’ve had in my life, including my relatively intractable troubles with depression and with insomnia and social anxiety, is a good thing in and of itself, but it doesn’t necessarily give me any idea how to approach things from here.

In some sense, it is a little discouraging, especially regarding my depression and insomnia, since there is no cure for neurodevelopmental disorders; they are a product of the fundamental structure and function of the brain.  At best, they can be managed.  This also explains why many traditional or typical treatments for such things do not work well in those with ASD; evidently, for instance, cognitive behavioral therapy doesn’t tend to work as well for people with autism as it does for “neurotypical” people.  And I know that antidepressants have more limited efficacy as well.

This makes sense.  We commonly hear of how many of the treatments and scientific understanding of major illness were for a long time only studied in men, and women were treated the same way as males, until slowly, gradually, the medical community realized that many diseases present differently in women, and respond differently to treatment.

Well, autistic and other “neurodivergent” people are a much smaller portion of the population than women are, and we don’t know as much as we would like about psychiatric and related disorders and their treatment even in the neurotypical.  It makes sense that we should be somewhat behind the curve in even understanding, let alone knowing how to treat, psychological and neurological disorders in those with underlying neurodevelopmental conditions.

The universe is complicated.  Any attempt to make it seem or feel less so, as by following the “ideas” of demagogues and demonizing those who might disagree, is just going to leave one vulnerable to underlying, actual reality‒which is not merely a matter of perception.

The universe at large does not care what you believe.  You can definitely be killed by forces and things that you not only don’t understand, but in which you don’t believe, or about which you have not the slightest inkling.  As a particularly gruesome example, it didn’t matter whether JFK ever knew he was being shot at, let alone that he had been hit.  A person can die before they even know that anything is happening; they can be just snuffed out and gone.  Probably most people, and nearly all other animals, die not understanding at all what is killing them or how or why or what death is.

Such is the evenhanded dealing of the world, to paraphrase Ebenezer Scrooge.  The only thing we can do to armor ourselves is to try to understand as much about the universe as we can.  For one never knows what knowledge will be useful or even essential before one has that knowledge.  Greater knowledge is always worthwhile, all other things being equal.

Of course, all other things never really are equal, but that’s why it pays to learn how to solve partial differential equations.

That’s enough for now.  Have a good day if you can, please.

*Macbeth’s reaction when he receives the news that, apparently, Birnam Wood really has come to Dunsinane Hill, is to hit the messenger and yell “Liar and slave!”  I know I’m not the only one who thinks it’s kind of funny and also is an instance of one of the cardinal failures of literary and dramatic (and real life) villains:  they discourage their own people from giving them information by punishing them for delivering accurate but bad news.

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(ASD 2) x 2

It’s Monday morning now, and it’s a new month, and I’m writing a new blog post, one that will‒or should‒not be like the old post.  Though, of course, superficially it will look like most of the others, and for someone perusing a bunch of them who does not happen to read English, there will almost certainly be no distinguishing characteristics.  Certainly there will be no meaningful ones.

Be that as it may, as of Friday evening, I have now received my autism assessment report.  It is official; I have been diagnosed as having autism spectrum disorder, level 2.

The level 2 part of that surprised me a little bit.  In case you don’t know‒and for most of you, there’s no reason why you would‒the levels of autism, not in order, are:

Level 1:  What would be called “high-functioning” autism by the hoi polloi, though that term is frowned upon by the “neurodivergent” community by and large, because it judges the quality of a person with autism by how well they can pretend to be someone without autism.  In any case, those with level 1 are people who have autism but are not significantly disabled by it, and are able to do okay on their own with minimal or at least fairly easy accommodation.

Level 3:  These are people who are more severely impaired by their autism, and are more or less dependent upon support from others; they cannot really function on their own at all.

Level 2 is mid-range (duh!) and is characterized by needing “substantial” or “considerable” support.  Here’s a quote from a web-search:  “Autism Level 2 means a moderate level of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), where an individual requires substantial support to manage social communication and daily activities, exhibiting more noticeable challenges in social interaction and repetitive behaviors compared to Level 1, but not as severe as Level 3.”

I guess my bias was that, if diagnosed, I would be level 1, since I do live on my own and I don’t really have any support.  On the other hand, there’s little argument but that my life is a complete mess, and it’s not improving.  So I guess I really don’t do so well on my own.  But it’s not as though I have any health insurance or any other access to support services to help me improve things.  Still, at least it explains a little bit about my intractable insomnia and depression and anxiety and so on, as well as all my many failed interpersonal relationships.

I don’t yet know whether this knowledge will make any difference for me.  I don’t yet know what I’m going to do with the result.  I am still digesting it.

There is, however, an amusing coincidence, if you enjoy such things*.  I was born with an atrial septal defect (a hole between the upper chambers of the heart) “secundum type”, that was repaired when I was 18.  In other words, that was “ASD” secundum type.  So, one might say, ASD type 2.

And now I have Autism Spectrum Disorder, level 2, so:  ASD level 2.

These are both official acronyms used by the medical community.  It’s nothing but a coincidence, of course, but it is a peculiar and slightly amusing one.  I have been diagnosed with ASD 2 in two different ways.  There’s only one of the two for which there was a surgical intervention that was essentially curative.  The other is something for which one just has to adjust and deal as well as one can.  Fortunately, I’m really good at adjusting to and dealing with just about anything that comes at me.

Ha ha ha ha ha!  That was a lie, obviously.  I don’t think I’ve ever been particularly good at adjusting to things, except perforce, which has certainly happened a fair number of times.

Anyway, again, I don’t know at all what I’m going to do with this information.  I don’t know how I could possibly actually seek, let alone obtain, any manner of support and/or accommodation, other than the basic stuff that happens more or less on its own.  I’m going to tell a few people at work, I think‒certainly the owner, though I feel a bit shy about that, but also my two coworkers with whom I am closest, one of whom has a child with autism.

I don’t know how much will change otherwise.  But I figured I would share this information with those of you who read this blog regularly‒a rarefied few individuals, I must say.  I guess I’ll be writing a post tomorrow, too, barring the unforeseen (a caveat that always applies).  In the meantime, I hope you all have as good a day as you possibly can.

*Well, the councidence’s existence isn’t actually conditional upon you enjoying it, but I think you know what I mean.  Please let me know in the comments below if you do not know what I mean.  I don’t like not being clear.

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Udaimonic so-and-so, U.

It’s the last day of February, everyone.  It’s also Friday, the last day of the “typical” work week, and it is also the last day of my work week, since I am not working tomorrow.  It’s not as though I have anything particular to which to look forward this weekend, but I do need the rest.  I’ve been feeling exceptionally exhausted lately.

Alas, as you know, exhaustion does not translate into sleepiness for me, just weariness.  Somewhere in the neurologic centers and relays that connect such things as fatigue and sleep, I have a short circuit, or at least one that doesn’t perform up to spec.

Of course, my pain continues, though as always, I have tried to adapt my activity, my posture, my exercise, my shoes…even my underclothes to try to decrease my pain.  I have put a tremendous amount of mental energy into this over the years.  If I had devoted that time/energy/effort to the study of any abstract problem‒say, the dynamics of an accelerating near-light-speed spacecraft approaching its local Schwarzschild “radius” as length contraction and “relativistic mass” take effect and bring GR into play‒then I would have made significant, possibly really important, advances.

Alas, when one’s problem is chronic pain (coupled, causally or otherwise, with insomnia), it is very difficult to focus enough mental acuity upon other things.  The very nature of pain as a neurological process in animal systems does not allow it to be easily ignored, or indeed to be ignored at all for any length of time.

Those creatures which can readily ignore pain for long, or who don’t experience pain*, don’t tend to leave as many offspring as those for whom pain is both present and urgent.

It’s a similar problem for those rare people who don’t experience fear, though clinically this seems more likely to happen as a result of damage to the brain rather than being congenital, possibly because children without fear really don’t tend to reach adulthood.

It’s interesting to note that, anecdotally at least, people who don’t feel fear tend to be quite frightening to would-be bullies and predators.  They don’t behave like others do in response to potential threats, and predators tend to rely on fear in others.  A person who looks at them with no more fear than they would at a tree or a rock can be quite disconcerting for someone who has become dependent upon the fear of others.

This is one of the reasons it can be good to have dogs present if you’re guarding something.  They don’t fear guns (generally) so one can’t exactly threaten them with firearms.  And if they attack, they don’t hold back.

That was quite a series of little tangents, wasn’t it?  I think they were interesting, but then again, I was the one who brought them up, so that shouldn’t be surprising.  Whether or not anyone else is interested is difficult to guess.  It’s rather akin to the way things are with humor‒it can be very hard to know consistently what other people will find funny, or for them to know what you find funny, so you might as well amuse yourself.  Then, at least, you can watch to see who enjoys your humor, and those people are the ones with whom you can enjoy such things in the future, at least in principle.

I am horribly tired, and I’m in a great deal of pain as I write this, though for the moment at least I don’t notice any fear that might be present.  Time’s been my way when I’ve been so tired and depressed and in pain that I had no reaction to and felt no fear toward things that would normally have made me quite afraid, from minor things like wasps and bees all the way up to oncoming cars and trucks.  I don’t tend to be afraid of people much, never have been‒at least, I’m not afraid of them physically.  Socially, they can make me quite tense.  In that case, though, the tension is not the same as fear, though I guess it qualifies as anxiety.

Speaking of fear, I fear this is it for this week.  I truly hope that you all have a wonderful day and a wonderful weekend and that you are healthy and safe and eudaimonic**.

*There are people who have a genetic disorder called CIPA:  congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis (i.e., they don’t sweat), and they basically don’t experience pain.  They also don’t live very long, and before they die their bodies tend to be quite damaged, often by such simple things as standing in one position for too long, since it doesn’t feel uncomfortable to do so for them.  They also don’t notice infections, and they don’t tend to get fevers.  It occurs to me, however, that though their lives are short, people with CIPA might well have significantly longer pain-free lifespans than, say, I have had.  I had pain issues starting at a pretty young age, after all.  Still, if I could be cured of all pain at this stage of my life, when I am hardly worried about my longevity anyway, I think it would be worth it.

**It’s interesting to consider the prefixes “eu” and “u” in words of Greek origin.  “Utopia”, for instance, literally means “no place”, making it clear that an imagined perfect society does not exist and may be impossible.  Whereas, if one were to write “Eutopia”, one would mean “true place” or “good place”.  Thus, my middle name “Eugene” means “true born” and is etymologically related to the term “eugenics”.  Mind you, only a fool would believe that I was actually the product of some eugenics program, that I am some true-life Khan Noonien Singh***.  “Eugene” was just my paternal grandfather’s name.  On the other hand, while eudaimonia means “good spirit” and refers to a state of general emotional and mental well-being, “udaimonia” would mean “no spirit”.  That sounds more pertinent to me, don’t you think? 

***Though I suppose one could speculate that I was a failure of such a program.

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The blog of death is as a lover’s pinch, which hurts and is desired.

Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday, of course, which is why I’ve greeted you as I have.

I slept worse than usual even for me last night, and yet I’m wired and tense, not at all sleepy.  I cannot go on this way.

I’m once again writing this on my phone.  I got at least a few days’ rest for my thumbs, and it has seemed to help.  But mostly, I just didn’t want to carry my mini laptop back with me yesterday, because I’ve been having a rather severe exacerbation of my chronic pain, worse than usual, and it’s just a lot of work to deal with it and with extra weight.

I suspect that the various little things I’m trying to do to improve my strength and health are actually backfiring and making my pain worse rather than better.  It’s frustrating.  I really don’t like to give up on things and I am terribly stubborn, but it’s getting to be just too much.  Every day veers between tedium and stress and exhaustion and pain, and there is no evidence of any light or even rest anywhere along this tunnel.  There certainly doesn’t appear to be any exit other than the obvious one.

I’m still waiting for the results of my autism assessment, which is not any surprise; it’s not technically “due” until tomorrow, so I’m just being overanxious in hoping for it sooner.  Still, I’m not sure what difference it’s going to make, one way or another.  It’s not as though I’ll be able to avail myself of any services for adults with ASD or anything.  This is Florida, America’s limp and syphilitic penis, and there are no real such health services of which I’m aware.  Also, I have no insurance; I cannot seem to manage to keep track of and maintain such things.

I really don’t feel any hope for my future.  I’m just tired and sore and tense and adrift, and I don’t fit with anyone or anything else in the world.  You sometimes hear someone talking about trying to find one’s “people” as it were‒the people who share similar interests and characteristics‒but I don’t think I have a “people”.  I’m pretty sure that anywhere I go I will be a weird outsider who never really fits in.

To be fair, when it comes to most groups I don’t particularly want to fit in.  Many things that other people find interesting don’t grab my attention at all.  I don’t begrudge people their interests, of course, as long as they’re not harming anyone else.  The more joy in the world the better, I would say, ceteris paribus.

But I can’t seem to form joy.  I am at best capable of momentary distraction.  Okay, new science knowledge can sometimes make me feel actual joy, albeit transient.  But that’s about it.  Even that is losing its charm, especially since there’s no back and forth with anyone about it.

So, I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I feel that I’m barely making it through to the end of each day.

I’m sure this is really getting old for all of you, and I’m very sorry about that.  Believe me, I know I’m a miserable person with whom to interact.  I try not to be.  I’ve been trying to be a positive presence, a useful, productive, and positive force in the world, because at least then I can justify my existence.

But it’s exhausting to try to act upbeat and funny and energetic and clever and enthusiastic when you’re just trying to make yourself stop feeling horrible, even if for only a brief time.  I know there exists the famous saying‒admired by many because it rhymes, as if that were a legitimate measure of intellectual quality‒that one should “fake it ’til you make it”.  But I’ve been “faking” it, or trying to do so, for as long as I can remember, and it has not brought about any significant change.

It’s no more effective than was my long experiment in which I applied autosuggestion to myself, repeating the mantra “I love my life and I love myself” (in my head) any time I was walking anywhere or when I was idle.

I almost always have some such message on repeat, trying to accomplish something.

But as far as I can tell, all I’ve accomplished is maybe slowing my descent and degeneration.  I don’t see any way to turn this around‒and I’m pretty smart, and I have been trying to find answers for almost my entire life so far.  Trust me, the obvious ones that tend to spring to mind have not succeeded.

The good news is that, if I were suddenly to disappear‒say, for instance, if after I post this blog entry, no one ever hears from me again in any way‒no one would really be affected.  It would not change anyone’s day-to-day life (other than perhaps a few of my coworkers).

Not to say that no one will mourn me in principle, much as Adam Smith recognized that a European person of learning would feel a rather abstract sense of mourning if all of China were wiped out by some massive earthquake.  I would certainly not be a loss for which any sensible person would be willing even to risk losing their little finger.

Frankly, I doubt that I’m worth someone stubbing their toe.

Anyway, that’s it for now.  I work tomorrow, so I expect I’ll write a post then, but I am off this weekend.

TTFN

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This is my brain, on.

I’ll bet you wish it could be turned off sometimes.  I know I do.

I’m writing this post on my laptop computer today, and at the very least, it’s going to be easier on my thumbs.

I was just about to sing the praises of MS Word, because it looked as though this new page on Word was going to start with the Calibri font instead of that new, Craptos font they’ve made their default because someone somewhere fellated just the right person.  Unfortunately, that was just the program catching up with itself, and the font changed to the new default, and I had to change it back manually.

Honestly, if anyone out there invents time travel to the past and figures out that it can change our timeline (I doubt it), then please, go back in time and interfere with the parents of each and every person involved in the decision to change the base font and in the design of the new font, so that all those people are never even conceived.

You see, I’m being generous.  I just want those people never to have been.  I don’t want them to suffer.

Actually, I do want them to suffer.  I want to torture and burn each and every one of them, to break their bodies with baseball bats and steel pipes and to wash their faces with broken glass.  But I know that’s a bit excessive, so I’m willing to settle for erasing their existence completely.

Such are the better angels of my nature.  This is me being kind.  Thanos was a pussy.

Okay, well, now that I’ve gotten a little bit of the madness out of my system, and all without hurting any actual people, I hope I can go on and write a somewhat sensible blog post.

I’ve already had some frustrations this morning, not least of which was waking up by about 2 am after less than four hours of sleep*.  Other things have happened as well, to do with transportation and so on, but I won’t get into it all.  I would come across as a truly disgruntled curmudgeon and/or just an asshole.  I’m not saying those would not be accurate descriptions of me, and sometimes even comparatively kind ones, but I would rather not come across that way if I can help it.

I haven’t received my report from my autism assessment yet, of course.  Well, not “of course”.  If something is supposed to arrive within a week, that means it could take less than a week, which this would be, if it had already arrived.  Be that as it may, it has not arrived.  There are three more days in that week (and in this month, it turns out), but I would of course rather it arrive sooner than later.  That’s not something about which I have a choice, however.  I put the ball in their court and they are the ones to return it.

Is that a tennis metaphor, the whole “ball in your court” cliché?  I suppose it could refer to volleyball or other “court” sports (but not badminton, since they do not use balls, they use shuttlecocks—why do these terms lend themselves so well to sophomoric jokes?).  I guess it could even have something to do with jurisprudence, but I don’t know what one would be doing with a ball in a court of law.  Maybe it originally referred to a masked ball, or even a formal ball, for all the lawyers and judges, and we’ve all been misunderstanding the metaphor as referring to a physical object, a ball, such as are used in many sports.

I doubt it.

Try not to be too bothered by my nonsense and gibberish.  I’ve always been mad, and I think I’m probably going madder.  That feels like it should be “more mad” but I think “madder” is more proper.  I don’t know for sure.  It doesn’t really madder much, though.  Ha ha.

Anyway, I’ve already reached my target word count for this bouncing bullshit, so I’ll call it quits.  I know I’m joking about it, but my mind really is falling apart.  Or, rather, I guess it’s more that it’s decaying, it’s rotting from within, it’s rusting, it’s crumbling, it’s finally succumbing to all of its design and manufacturing flaws.

I guess I was just a lemon, after all.  Unfortunately, I’m not the kind of lemon with which you can make lemonade.  Sorry about that.

*It’s proper to use “less than” here instead of “fewer than” even though hours are, in a sense, discrete, countable units, because I am referring to an overall measure of continuous time—an integral amount of sleep if you will—and I am giving an estimate, rounded up to what is perhaps the nearest whole hour.  It’s rather akin to saying you have drawn less than three buckets of water from a well; though buckets are discrete, water is continuous, so to speak.  On the other hand, it’s not sensible to say “there were less than ten people in the room,” for instance.  People are not a continuous variable.  They come in quanta, if you will, in indivisible** chunks.

**Well…you can divide people into smaller bits—much as I would like to do to the people behind the Aptos font in Microsoft Office apps—but then they cease to be people pretty quickly.