Psychology

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…or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed blog?

Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday again, against almost everyone’s better judgment, and so it’s time for another Thursday edition of my blog post.

I had a subjectively bizarre day yesterday, or a disquieting day, or a disheartening day…something along those lines.  Outwardly, it wasn’t that strange, I suppose.  Inwardly, I’ve been feeling increasingly weird and disjointed.  I don’t know if that’s showing itself in my writing at all or not; there’s no good way for me to tell.

There have been two closely spaced opportunities to have palindromic number sequences in the 8-digit recording numbers this week.  If it seems strange to you that there should be two that come close together, just think about how, up until a number sequence is centered on “99”, the stepwise increase in those middle two numbers to keep them the same is 11, 22, 33, 44…and so on.  Then, right after 99, it immediately flips over to “00”, and the sequence restarts.

Anyway, we passed the 99 one earlier this week.  I think it was Tuesday.  Then, yesterday morning, it turned over to 00 and then it was just a matter of the last 3 digits being a reverse of the first.

It was getting close, and the numbers were increasing only slowly, because it was early in the day.  Then, there was a long break between deals, and I took a moment to dial the verification line just to see what number we were on.  It was only 12 shy of the palindrome!

Then, I had to use the restroom, and during the half-a-minute while I was in, a new deal closed and my coworker went over to begin verifying it.  Shortly after I came out, he sort of waved me over.  I thought he was going to give me the paperwork so I could begin processing the deal, but he pointed at the recording number:  26500562.

He knows I’m into number patterns, and he figured I’d like that.

Afterwards, I asked him the (probably strange) questions, “That’s really what the number was, right?  You didn’t just write it down that way because you knew I’d like it?”  He chuckled, obviously understanding at least some of my wish to confirm the result.  But no, it was real. It was a palindromic number.  I should have been pleased and even thrilled.

All I really felt afterward was a deep and profound worsening of my feeling of depression.  I didn’t feel like I’d gotten a message from the universe, but even if I did, it was way after the “due date”, which would have been last Friday at the very latest (and that was a date that had been pushed back repeatedly).  I could think of excuses to invalidate it, like saying I had skewed the results by calling the recording line earlier.  But that’s all just a silly way of messing with oneself.  What it really came down to was:  the number wasn’t enough to give me motivation.  It was definitely cool, but it didn’t mean anything deeper to me.

I’ve experienced similar phenomena before.  From time to time, I’ll be slightly torn about a particular course of action‒nothing momentous, just usually choices of a meal, such as whether to eat something healthy or something indulgent‒and I’ll flip a coin about it, usually one of my collection of dollar coins.  Sometimes I’ll flip three or five or even nine of them, as if taking a vote.  Then, when I have the outcome…well, I’ll often realize that, no matter the result of the coin flips, I want to do something other than what the result directs.  And so I ignore that result.

It’s a psychologically interesting phenomenon.  The coins don’t act as a true decision maker, but they do clarify, for me, what my real wish or inclination is.  So it’s useful in some ways.

The palindromic number is similar.  Maybe if I did have some kind of stupid, quasi-mystical idea of what the numbers symbolized, I would find it more compelling.  But, of course, I have no actual belief that the universe is sending me any messages.  In a way, it’s good that one turned up‒way after my original deadline and idea‒because now I know that it doesn’t give me any more reason or drive to live at all.  Rather, it just highlights the fact that I have no such drive or reason, and it was absurd to think an eight-digit number sequence could provide it.

Yesterday it also turned out that my coworker’s wife‒who is also a coworker‒is coming down with a cold, and so it looks like they aren’t going away this weekend but are going to reschedule to go next weekend.  This would have me push any plans or tentative ideas back yet another week.  I almost started to cry in the office, and just had to sit and look at my computer screen or down at the top of my desk for a while.  My coworker asked if I was okay, and I said, honestly, “No.”  He then asked what was wrong and all I could reply was, “Nothing new.”

Anyway, since then I’ve acclimated slightly to the schedule change.  I know that the palindromic numbers don’t actually mean anything to me, and that realization made me feel even more depressed.  And the timing of the date pushback is also more depressing.

But, on the other hand, this coming Sunday is October 1st, and when the first of a month falls on a Sunday, that always means that there will be a Friday the 13th in the month.  And that will begin the weekend after my planned-to-be pushed back work weekend.  So, if I want a good day to take some special action, and I can’t use Bilbo and Frodo’s birthday, then after a Friday the 13th, especially in October, is at least mildly ominous.

Well, okay, not really.  Not to me.  I like the number 13, and Fridays the 13th are good days, especially in October.  Also, both my niece and my daughter were born on the 13th of their birth months, albeit different months and widely separate years, so I can’t feel that the 13th, Friday or otherwise, bodes ill, and I never have.

Really, I see this coming Friday the 13th and related events as potentially…well, not good, maybe, but at least as good as things are going to get.

In the meantime, I must say I’ve been having a lot of bizarre sensory impressions recently.  It’s not that anything particularly strange is happening‒I myself am the strangest thing in my own life, to be honest‒but I keep having this odd feeling that things aren’t actually the way they seem to be, though they seem “normal”.

It’s not a feeling of déjà vu, but it’s almost similar in character.  It’s as if the familiar things I’m seeing and doing and feeling are actually simulacra or illusions‒or perhaps that the memories I have of having been in these places before is an illusion, a false memory.

Also, the flow of time feels a little off.  For instance, when I’m waiting for one light to turn green after another turns red, it seems to take several seconds, way longer than usual, to the point where I find myself looking around impatiently while at the crosswalk.  It also seems that drivers are taking longer than usual to start moving after a traffic light changes.  Things all around me seem to be moving more slowly.  This does not, however, really give me any advantage; I am moving slowly too.  I can only observe the phenomenon, not act more quickly than usual, relatively speaking.

I think there has been an increased frequency of me thinking I see movement out of the corner of my eye, or I hear a noise of movement just beyond eye-shot.  When I see such movement or some shape out of the corner of my eye, I first suspect that it’s a bug of some kind, but that’s not new.  This is south Florida in the hot and wet part of the year.  Seven times out of ten, such movement really is a bug.

I’m also feeling the need to check my pockets even more frequently than usual to make sure that I have my wallet and keys and phone and all still with me.  I never feel secure about that.  I’m not sure that I want to feel secure about such things.  I’d rather be anxious than overconfident and wrong about keys and wallet and phone, etc.

The tension does wear me out though.

Anyway, I don’t feel that reality is illusory, though I feel increasingly distanced and separate from it.  It’s more as if, perhaps, I myself am an illusion.  It would be an elaborate illusion, of course, since I would even have illusory thoughts and experiences and dreams and all that, but hey, according to some Hindu beliefs, all of reality is but a dream being dreamed by Brahma.

It’s reminiscent of something Stephen King described in Danse Macabre, and which was quoted in the Vsauce video about “creepiness”:  Imagine coming home and realizing that everything you own has been replaced by an exact duplicate.

It’s not that I actually think that.  I don’t.  But it almost feels vaguely that way, only it’s all of reality that feels like it’s a replica…perhaps including me.

I guess it doesn’t matter, anyway.  Our experience of reality is always a form of constrained dream.  It shouldn’t make a difference if it sometimes feels more like a full-fledged dream even while awake, especially for someone like me, who has such bad and long-standing insomnia.

That’s enough for now.  I don’t really know what, if anything, my point has been‒here in this blog post, or the point of my existence in general.  I hope you all have as good a Thursday as you can.

TTFN

dagger of the mind merged down

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“Who knows? Not me.”

I didn’t walk the full five miles from the train to the house yesterday afternoon‒I walked about three or three and a half‒because I didn’t want to give myself any blisters or abrasions from walking too far for the first time in a new pair of boots.  But I seem to have stopped well in time for that, since there are no blisters or even sore spots on my feet now, and my ankles and right Achilles tendon appear to be in good nick.  Also, and most importantly, though I had a bit of tension in my right side along my back upon returning to the house, that went away nicely with a bit of stretching and replenishment, so that’s pretty good.

Anyway, lesson learned:  it matters if the boots you wear are even a little bit oversized if you’re going to be walking any very long distances in them.  It looks like these new, half-downsized ones will work well.

It’s been sloppy and wet here in south Florida these last several days, but there does seem to be a slight increase in morning breeziness.  And, of course, since Saturday, the time of darkness has been slightly greater than the time of daylight, and its dominance is increasing at the most rapid pace at which that will happen.  This is because, for a sinusoidal curve, the fastest rate of change is when it crosses the x-axis (at the equinoxes in this case), and the slowest rates of change are at the peak and at the nadir (the solstices in this case).  So, for a little while now, the nighttime will be growing rapidly before it settles out, steadily and gradually, as we barrel toward the end of the year.

After mentioning the fact that I don’t play the guitar in the morning anymore, yesterday I decided to fire up the axe for a bit.  Remarkably, it was still almost perfectly in tune!  Probably it helps that the office is kept pretty much at a constant temperature.  Also, I had left the capo on the fourth fret the last time I played.  That was for playing the chords and stuff from the Nirvana version of The Man Who Sold the World.  I didn’t start with that yesterday, instead playing through a few iterations of Nothing Compares 2 U.  It’s a lovely song.  I like the Chris Cornell version best.  Of course, now Prince (the songwriter and original performer) and Chris Cornell and Sinead O’Conner (who had a big hit with her cover of it) are all dead.

Then I did play some of The Man Who Sold the World, and then Ashes to Ashes, both Bowie tunes, at least originally.  And, of course, Bowie and Kobain are also both dead, though they died under very different circumstances.  Then I got my guitar book out and played a little Just the Way You Are, and Sorry Seems To Be the Hardest Word, and Here, There, and Everywhere, by Billy Joel, Elton John, and Paul McCartney‒all of whom are still alive!  That’s just weird, isn’t it?  Imagine that!

Of course, the latter song is credited to Lennon and McCartney, but that was a formality according to their agreement for all Beatles songs they wrote.  It was a McCartney song, and it was apparently the only song of his for which Lennon directly complimented him.

Considering the quality of Sir Paul’s work overall, that’s a hell of a statement, in more than one way.  First off, it must have really impressed John (rightly so) for him to make a point of telling Paul that it was a good song.  But it seems harsh that John never complimented any others, at least to Paul’s face.

Then again, he was British, and emotional expressiveness (other than through song and theater and literature) is a major national deficit by most accounts.  Maybe that’s why they do so much good music and poetry and drama and comedy and the like.  I often get the feeling that part of the reason Thom Yorke’s singing is so powerful and conveys and evokes such emotion in the listener is that this is Thom’s only real way of expressing himself deeply.  And, of course, he does seem almost possessed when he’s performing.

As a YouTube reactor (I cannot recall which one, for which I apologize) said of his singing, “He’s feelin’ it when he’s singing…and he makes you feel it, too!”

Now, John Lennon did compliment Paul to other people‒during interviews, for instance.  Though even then, he was far from effusive.  That was just his way, I think.  He had a very troubled childhood, and emotional expression was probably difficult for him, even for a Brit.

Then again, he wrote some incredibly expressive songs, from If I Fell to In My Life to Julia to Across the Universe, all the way up to Starting Over and Woman, with scads of others thrown in for good measure.  If being closed off and repressed helped lead to the creation of those truly great works of art, the world at least can hardly feel too horrible about it.  Though it would be nice if a person could be well-adjusted and have the ability to express and receive affection easily and still produce great art (and ideally, of course, not be murdered by a slimy little worm of a creature who claimed to be a fan).

Alas, though it seems possible in principle, it doesn’t seem to happen often, if at all, in practice*.  Shakespeare supposedly wrote Hamlet, and some of his other great tragedies, partly in response to the death of his son, Hamnet.  And of course, I, his much later and far inferior admirer, only really started to write and publish stories that have always been in my head once my life, my family, and my career had been wrecked, and I was in prison.

We can be thankful, if saddened, for the great art that was born of Shakespeare’s sorrow, and of Lennon’s.  In my case, on the other hand, it was almost certainly not worth it, particularly for me.  But I can’t change any of that stuff, either.

Life’s like that, I suppose‒to quite the end of one of my own short stories, possibly the darkest one I’ve ever written…which, weirdly enough, first came out of me years ago, while I was happily passing the time keeping my then-friend and soon-to-be fiancée company while she did some overnight work for a summer job.  I don’t know where it came from, except that I did often like to play solitaire (with real cards).

Anyway, that’s enough for now.  Have a good Wednesday.

*As Einstein is reputed to have said, “In principle, principle and practice should be the same, but in practice, they often are not”, or something like that.  He was a clever fellow.

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Yet I, a dull and muddy-mettled rascal, blog, like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause, and can say nothing

Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday again.  I thought this might be the last Thursday blog post I was going to do, but because of my coworker’s vacation plans, I may do one or two more.  Or, of course, this could be the last one I do after all, depending upon the vicissitudes of fate and any tendency I may have to give in to (rather frequent) momentary impulses.  I suppose, as with all things, we will only know what really is going to happen when it arrives.  And then, it will be too late to change it.

Yesterday I had a slightly embarrassing moment when commenting on a website that I read pretty much every day.  The site owner had posted about a particular incidence of the bastardization of science teaching, and had embedded a PowerPoint show (with the voice) that had been made by the people responsible.  He invited the readers to watch the slide show, though he did an excellent job of summarizing things and pointing out errors of reasoning and of fundamental science.

I commented that I admired and thanked him for doing such things, and liked his description‒I think I said that last part‒but that I couldn’t bear to subject myself to the actual slide show, because my outlook on the world is too negative and discouraged already.

To my surprise, he replied, asking if I was being serious or if it was just a jokey way of saying that I didn’t have time to do it.

I don’t know if he was irritated by what might have seemed to be snark, or if he was concerned, or what, but I decided to make it clear that, while my tongue had been slightly in my cheek, I really did suffer from depression and that my outlook was fragile as it was, and too much exposure to such things could really make me despair‒or do so to a greater degree than I do already.  Then I added that, on the other hand, it was reassuring and encouraging that he (and implicitly, other people like him) did such a great job bringing such issues to attention and pointing out the problems they entail, and that fact bolstered me, if anything…and that was why I read his website every day.

I hope I got my point across, but I’ve been feeling embarrassed and stressed about those interactions since then.  I fear that my comments only ever serve to irritate this person, though I can’t be sure, and anyway, I don’t ever seem quite to get my points across, whether in such comments or here, for that matter.

I shouldn’t feel too bad about that, I guess, since even in person I’m apparently opaque to other people, as far as my meaning goes.  I sometimes don’t even know what I’m feeling‒when people ask me, I’m nearly always caught off guard and usually experience a very low-key panic.  One of my first therapists pointed out that I seemed quite disconnected from my own emotions and from that to which they were a response‒but even when I do know, and when I desperately want someone to notice, it never seems to work.

The train’s running twelve minutes late today, it seems; I’m standing on the platform waiting for it*.  Of course, more people than usual are gathering, and so it’s going to be more crowded, but I guess I’ll just tough it out.  It is frustrating, but I’ve gone into that fact many times before.

I see its headlights coming around the last bend now, anyway.

And now I’m on the train and we’re heading north.  That ought to be a very cool thing, oughtn’t it?  To any humans who lived before, say, 1800 and were transported to the modern world, it would surely be a miraculous and possibly terrifying phenomenon**.  Yet, as with all such things, or at least nearly all, it has become just another aspect of drudgery and bleak sameness and pointlessness, carrying people to jobs that don’t in any way fulfill or inspire them, then back to houses full merely of devices and foods and processes and whatnot that serve merely to distract them rather than fill or fulfill them.

Maybe that’s just me.

I’ve continued to throw out some more of my useless crap, which is a good thing.  I gave a bunch of colored pencils I had at the office to a coworker who has a young son yesterday***.  Did I mention that already?  I think I did, but I might be misremembering.  Possibly I just intended to mention it, and that intention remained vivid enough to seem to have happened.  It doesn’t really matter, of course; otherwise I could easily just go and look.

I threw out two bicycle pumps this morning, because I don’t think I’ll ever use them again, and they were just cluttering things up.  I think I may put the bicycle out in front of the house, by the street, and perhaps put a sign on it saying, “Free to any taker‒needs a new front inner tube.”  I’m not going to be riding that bike, or probably any bike, again.  It’s a bit of a shame, but whataya gonna do?

And now, well, I don’t know, is there anything left to say today?  I probably have nothing to share that is worth sharing.  It seems quite possible that I’ve never had anything to say that was worth saying, or anything to write that was worth writing, or anything to draw that was worth drawing, or what have you.

I certainly don’t seem to connect with anyone in any kind of truly deep or significant way; certainly not one single connection I’ve ever made at a close-up, strong level, has lasted.  It seems that I’m just not good at such things, or am simply not a good candidate for connections from other people’s point of view.  Matters have come to such a pass that I think if someone tried to make friends with me now, I would probably feel panicky and threatened, and even hostile, like the feral cats you see in videos, who are in terrible shape, and whom people are trying to rescue, but who resist with vicious fervor sometimes, because they are quite rationally suspicious of the intentions of these huge, weird creatures that are accosting them.

Sorry, I don’t know what I’m really going on about.  Apologies if it’s too incoherent.  I’ll draw to a close, now, and I guess I’ll be able to use my usual Thursday morning sign-off, since it will still pertain (barring accidents and impulses).  I certainly hope you all feel better than I do.  It would be just too horrible a thing indeed, if it were not so, at least most of the time.

Please take care of yourselves and of each other.  Tomorrow is Bilbo’s and Frodo’s birthday, and the day after that Autumn begins.  Then, Sunday night, Yom Kippur arrives, the Day of Atonement™.  It’s a big weekend, or it ought to be.  Probably almost no one around me will know or notice or care.

TTFN

hamlet statue old photo look

*One useful thing about writing this on the smartphone is that I can even write while standing up.

**Of course, the time travel technology used to transport such a person to the modern world would be even more amazing, but never mind.

***That is, I gave him the pencils yesterday.  His son has existed for quite some time.

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Please imagine a clever title here

Well, after once again awakening hours before I could even have caught any trains, today I arrived at the station just as the first northbound one of the morning was arriving.  This time, to avoid temptation, I didn’t cross over, but stayed on the near side and took the elevator to the bridge.  I also hoped that I would sweat less by walking a slightly shorter distance (with a stop in the middle).  I think I am sweating a bit less, but it’s still annoying and relatively ridiculous.  I mean, it’s not even five in the morning now, and the weather app claims that it’s only about 75 degrees out!  Why am I sweating so much?

It would be nice if this were a sign of some underlying terminal disease*, but I don’t really have that kind of luck‒whether you want to consider it good or bad or whatever.

I did some pretty good walking yesterday evening, while talking to my sister on the phone.  I can tell it’s been several days at least since I’ve done long walking, because I developed a slight broken blister overlying my right Achilles tendon, where the rear of the shoe rubs it.  They aren’t brand new shoes‒I’ve walked good distances in them before‒so I know it’s just that my skin has gotten more sensitive, and probably, my walking posture has gotten a bit more slack.  Anyway, the blister is disinfected and taped up now.

You may ask:  if I claim to consider the possibility of a terminal illness a good thing, why would I bother to treat a blister on my “heel” and protect against infection?  It’s a good question; I wish I had thought of it, myself.  Well, the answer is, I want to be able to walk potentially quite long distances, without blisters and the like stopping me.  I wouldn’t greatly mind collapsing due to heat exhaustion and dehydration/volume depletion and electrolyte imbalances and kidney failure, but simply being unable to walk because of blisters and similar injuries‒that would be galling.

We’ll see what happens, I guess.  I already mentioned yesterday that I have to push my potential plans back about two weeks, anyway, out of deference to my coworker’s family vacation.  I don’t know why I trouble myself, really.  I guess I just really dislike causing more inconvenience to other people‒ones I know, at least‒than I must.

Still, eventually, one must reach a breaking point.  I think that, mentally, I’ve already reached that point, to be honest.  I no longer truly hope for, let alone expect, anything or anyone to “save” me, if you will.  I don’t expect to “recover”, or to rebuild any semblance of a life or career.

I don’t really do anything for enjoyment or fulfillment.  Even this blog is mainly just a habit.  I suppose there is some trace or modicum of the notion that it might end up being useful to me in some way, or might even garner help from some unexpected quarter, but that’s sort of akin to imagining one might win a big Powerball jackpot.  It’s possible, but one shouldn’t make any serious plans about it actually happening.

It is rather nice to be throwing away some things that I have kept for a while just out of inertia or habit or a tendency to be a packrat.  Not that I have a great many possessions; I certainly don’t.  Everything I own fits in a single bedroom with attached shower and “walk-in” closet, plus a few things at the office.  I’ve thrown out or given away some of those latter things already, and packed others away.  I hope to pare it all down further still.

I started listening to an Audible version of The War of the Worlds yesterday.  Of course, it’s a heck of a story, the first ever alien invasion story, and still one of the best.  I must say, though‒and I feel slightly bad about having to say it‒that the narrator is a bit disappointing.  I don’t mean the character who tells the story, I mean the guy who read the book for the recording.  This is a dramatic and scary tale, but he’s done only a bit more than reading it straight.  Even the iconic opening paragraphs came out rather lackluster.

I wonder how people find my reading of my stories, like The Chasm and the Collision and my short stories.  They’re up on YouTube, and they’ve been uploaded here as well.  Maybe I’ll embed one or two below, in this post, and anyone who wishes can listen.  I would very much welcome feedback on both the stories and my reading of them.  I tried to do the reading well, but I don’t know whether the effort produced the desired results or not.

I guess it doesn’t really matter much.  “The world will little** note, nor long remember…” yadda yadda yadda.

I’ve always thought those were truly ironic words that Lincoln wrote/said there:  that the world would not long remember what he was saying at the time, but that they cannot forget what the soldiers had done there at Gettysburg.  Meanwhile, there are many of us who can recite part or all of the Gettysburg Address***, but I don’t know how much high school history classes even teach the American Civil War nowadays, let alone any of the specifics of that battle.

Of course, if you believe some YouTube videos, many young Americans don’t even know what continent the US is on, or how many states there are, or from which nation the US declared its independence and when.  Goodness knows most Americans can’t even recognize the opening of the Declaration of Independence, and despite so many claiming to revere the US Constitution, I doubt many of them have read through the whole thing, even once.

It’s really not very long.

I doubt that many of them have even read the Bill of Rights, or would even have a rough idea of what they are (with the possible exception of the 2nd Amendment, which is concise at least, although it’s apparently difficult to interpret unambiguously).

Oh, well.  Individual, actual knowledge of any particular subject is often inversely proportional to the strength of one’s opinions/convictions on the matter.  I guess that’s nothing new, but it continues to sting nevertheless‒rather like a new, recurrent blister in a bodily location one thought had become inured to abrasive forces.

With that, here are some audio recordings of me reading some parts of some of my stories.  The first is my story Hole for a Heart, and the second is Chapter 1 of CatC  If you listen, I hope you enjoy them.

standing on ledge

*Apart from being alive in and of itself, which appears to be uniformly fatal as far as we can tell.

**Rather ironically, Google is suggesting I change “will little note” to “will have little note”, offering a (flawed) correction to what is widely considered one of the most grammatically perfect speeches in American history.  Heavy sigh.

***1863 Lincoln Park Lane, Gettysburg, PA  24601.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

time or not cropped png

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

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

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

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Remember what the dormouse said: Decongest your head

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

the doctor in the desert

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

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If wishes would prevail with me, my purpose should not fail with me, but thither would I blog.

Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday, so I’m beginning this post in the fashion customary for my Thursday blogs, going back to when this blog was intended as a promotional project for my fiction writing.  Now I’m just going through the motions, but I guess that’s what one does with motions—one goes through them.

I half-heartedly intended to walk this morning, but it’s so effing muggy and the air is so dead that it’s intolerable.  Even here at the train station, reasonably near the ocean and the highway, the atmosphere feels utterly immobile; sweat gathers on me everywhere (including behind and beneath my reading glasses) even while I’m sitting still.  It’s quite annoying.

In other news:  yesterday, during what was probably my last “celebratory” day of sorts, I missed another palindromic number sequence in the recording numbers at work.  It was close—we passed the palindromic number by only 26, which is pretty small considering it’s an eight-digit number.  Still, it might as well be ten thousand or a million away.  A miss is a miss.  I did not get a palindromic number, and I don’t intend (or I don’t hope) to stick around to try for another one.  This has all gotten far too terribly old at this point.  There’s little to no expected return on continued investment in this failure of an enterprise that I call my life.

I mean to give things a little space of time.  I don’t want to sully the important day that was yesterday, after all.  But there are always days one doesn’t want to mar; there are always excuses and evasions.  One cannot keep succumbing to them indefinitely, or enterprises of great pitch and moment will their courses turn awry and lose the name of action.  Eventually, one must just take up that bare bodkin and use it on the nearest of all possible targets.

I don’t really know what else there is to write, today, but if I leave it here, this will be an extremely short blog post.  Perhaps everyone would welcome that.  Perhaps it would become my most popular blog post ever.  That would be pretty funny, and perhaps a bit ironic.  But even if it were my most well-read post, I don’t think anyone would take seriously the not-so-subtle subtext, the point I’m trying to make without being frankly out in the open.

I don’t think anyone really cares very much.  I can’t blame them.  If even I don’t like having me around; why would I expect anyone else to want to have me around, or even to share the Earth’s air with me?

I stink to myself, a lot of the time, though I try not to do so.  I wash regularly, and I use antiperspirant and aftershave, and I brush my teeth and so on.  This is part of why I hate the sweating thing.  It just feels so icky, and depending on the shirt I’m wearing, it can trigger that mildew smell.

Today, thankfully, I’m wearing a “new” make and model of shirt, so to speak, and in addition to being more comfortable, this type doesn’t seem as prone to the mildewage.  It doesn’t, however, have a pocket, which is what I liked about the others.  Oh, well.  That’s a tolerable trade-off.  I can tuck my reading glasses into the collar, and anything else I can just put in my other pockets.

Okay, well, that was a few more paragraphs about absolute drivel and pointlessness, wasn’t it?  Yet I’ve still only reached six-hundred words, just a moment ago.  Usually the nonsense just pours out of me, which makes sense, since I’m stuffed to overflowing with it; indeed, I may be made of nonsense entirely.

Really, though, I honestly don’t have much to say.

Which reminds me:  How many of you think the little “reprise” of Breathe from the album Dark Side of the Moon was sort of tacked on at the end of the song Time, just so it didn’t end with the words, “The time is gone; the song is over.  Thought I’d something more to say”?  I think that’s the true end of the song, because it’s the only ending that makes sense given the rest of the song.  It’s also quite a poignant and beautiful ending.

I ask this because, after watching some “reaction” videos on YouTube, especially of people listening to the song without listening to the whole album in a row, it nevertheless surprises me that more people don’t note the incongruous shift in tone, tune, rhythm, melody and whatnot that follows the seeming originally intended ending of the song.

I guess it doesn’t matter.  Most of the song has never really applied to me, anyway, apart from that last line.  I’ve never just kicked around on a piece of ground in my hometown or waited for someone or something to show me the way.  I was always ambitious*, even back when I was quite young.  I went all the way through to pretty impressive achievements, as far as it went.  I certainly didn’t miss the starting gun.  If anything, I was prone to jump it.

I was third-born, like Ender, with whom I felt some kindship the first time I read that book, though my brother and sister are more or less nothing like Peter and Valentine Wiggin, apart from the bipedal, upright posture and bilateral superficial symmetry**.

Of course, as Caesar could have told us, the wages of ambition are death.  But, then again, so are the wages of indolence.  And while ambition can be good, it can also be terribly disappointing.  Plans that come to fruition are little different—in the long run at least—from plans that come to naught.

And now, it’s time for this blog post to come to its end (now that I’ve padded it a bit with further idiocy), even if it isn’t actually going to come to naught, since it’s already written, and has been saved.

I hope you all have a nice day and all that.

TTFN

prism

*So says Brutus, and Brutus is an honorable man.

**I presume they both have the usual internal asymmetry of the organs, like we all have, but I’ve never so much as seen an x-ray of either of them to confirm it.  Nevertheless, I know they have both been to doctors on many occasions for many things, and I suspect, had there been major atypia in their internal anatomy, it would have been noted and made much of already.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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“Although I laugh, and I act like a clown…”

It’s Friday, and I’m sitting at the train station, writing this on my laptop—by which I mean I’m writing it on my laptop computer.

I’m pretty sure that everyone reading this knows that, when I say I’m writing on my laptop, I mean I’m using my laptop computer, not that I’m doing some bizarre form of self-decoration by writing on my actual lap, and then—presumably—recopying it onto the web sometime later.  That makes little to no sense.  Nevertheless, I feel compelled to clarify that when I say “laptop” I mean “laptop computer”.  I try to make it into a joke—I do this with a lot of things that I find it impossible not initially to take literally—and it is indeed funny sometimes.  However, it is not simply my choice to try to be jokey.  I cannot resist thinking that way, it seems.  At least, I don’t tend to be able to resist it.

I brought my computer with me because I didn’t walk back to the house (which is not my home) from the train after work, and I knew I wasn’t going to walk to the train this morning.  I was a bit physically wiped out yesterday by noon.  I was also psychologically wiped out, even more than usual, to be honest.  I started the day ever so slightly giddy after having walked to the train station—I’m a person who responds well to accomplishments, and I also tend to get good endorphin rushes (apparently) from endurance exercise.

I guess in a way my “crashing” is probably like coming down from any kind of drug—you get a rebound effect.  So, even if the endorphins and enkephalins or whatever are endogenous, if you get in a state where you have a high concentration of them—or, rather, a high degree of activity in nerve cell groups that are associated with those neurotransmitters—when it stops, the overstimulated postsynaptic nerves are going to become more inactive than they were at baseline.

I’ve noticed that I often have this sort of experience with comedy.  If I’ve been watching lots of funny videos, for instance, afterwards I’ll often have a powerful come-down feeling, and actually get depressed—more so than I am at baseline, I mean, which is pretty flipping low.  This used to happen to me especially badly when I would read through my former Dave Barry collection.  He was so funny, so consistently, that by the time I’d read very much of his stuff, I was apparently strongly prone to shift the other way, and sometimes got very depressed afterwards.

Maybe the opposite of this phenomenon is why so many people like sad stories and sad songs.  If you listen to a particularly heartbreaking song—it would probably have to be a good one, of course, if it’s going to elicit particular emotions—and feel very sad for the duration of the song, maybe afterward you get the equivalent of an upward rebound.

This doesn’t seem as persistent or prolonged in most cases—the sadness from a song or similar, I mean—as does the potential for laughter from good comedy.  Maybe that’s why I’ve never noticed any tendency to get happier after feeling sadder from a song (or a story).  Then again, I don’t tend to be happy in the first place.  Once my brain gets depressed, that tends to be a self-reinforcing process, like a hurricane forming over the ocean when it’s hot at the end of the summer, which becomes a self-sustaining cycle.

I’ve used that metaphor for depression before, and I’ve even mentioned it here, I think.  In a sense, I could just characterize my tendency toward depression by thinking that I’m just a tropical ocean late in the summer.  How lovely.

I don’t know what I’m trying to accomplish by writing that stuff, honestly.  I guess I’m probably not actually trying to accomplish anything other than “writing today’s blog post”, which is what I am usually setting out to accomplish when I start writing every day.  I won’t be writing tomorrow, though.  I have the weekend off, and that’s good.

So many little things stress me out, and I don’t know why.  I have a present for my daughter’s birthday—really, a collection of presents—and I need to write out the card I have and finish boxing things in the box I have, and tape it up and address it and bring it to the nearby post-office and send it away, but even the thought of writing the card—deciding what to “say” and how to put things, even though I’ve written millions upon millions of words in my time, and my daughter is not a harshly critical audience—and then of actually going to the post office and going up to send the package are just so inducing of anxiety that I tend to put it off.

It’s weird because I know it’s not a big deal.  I’ve done many much harder, more stressful things in my life.  Yet, even thinking about it and writing about it fills me with tension and stress.  It’s really quite pathetic.  I hate that part of myself.  Which makes it pretty much like every other part of myself, come to think of it.

Anyway, I haven’t started writing any new fiction, of course.  I idly searched through Amazon for spiral-bound, top-flipping writing pads, imagining that, if I got something handy and convenient in which I could write with pen on paper, the “old-fashioned” way, maybe I’d start writing some new fiction.  I’ve tried to do analogous things to myself many, many times in the past.

It doesn’t work; I don’t think it ever has, for me.  I write fiction if and when I’ve decided I’m going to write fiction, and when that’s the case, it doesn’t need to be on any particular, special device or surface.  I wrote two novels and a novella while I was in prison, for crying out loud.

Maybe I’ve stopped writing (fiction) just because I’m mentally and emotionally exhausted.  I don’t sleep well at all—it’s so bad that I hardly even talk about it, because it’s just the same fucking thing all the time, anyway.

I don’t have any real joy in the work I do, I don’t have any real friendships, certainly not with anyone with whom I spend any time other than at work.  There’s nothing that I do for “fun” other than watching YouTube videos and—to a steadily diminishing degree—reading nonfiction (a rapidly shrinking pursuit) and fiction (all but completely gone).

I found a meme yesterday that I guess I’ll share here, showing the difference in what it looks like from outside to be reading, and what it feels like from inside, to be reading.  That used to be abundantly true for me.  Reading was probably my single favorite thing ever—and not just reading fiction, obviously.  I’ve always said that the written language is by far the single greatest invention of the human race.  I have encountered no reason to change that assessment.

reading

But now, steadily, I’m losing the joy of reading, and I have been for a while.  There are no dragons or rainbows or other mystical and mythical things going on in my head, like in the picture.  Reading, for me, is just a desert (but not a dessert, alas) for the most part.  Even nonfiction isn’t that interesting—the good stuff I liked I’ve read quite a lot about, and I have reread my favorite books on various subjects over and over.  None of it is engaging any more.  I force myself to do it, because without it, I don’t even know what I am, let alone who I am.

But I can’t really seem to read fiction of any kind anymore.

I don’t know how I’m going to make it to the end of this month.  I don’t truly expect to make it to the end of this month.  And I honestly don’t very much want to make it to the end of this month.  I’m reminded of the lines from a Beatles song:  “I don’t want to spoil the party, so I’ll go.  I would hate my disappointment to show.  There’s nothing for me here, so I will disappear…”

Several people in the office—or, well, three of them at least—are on vacation at the moment, and I guess that’s good for them.  I honestly wish them the best of times.  But I don’t know what I would even do or want to do if I took time off.  I can’t think of anything fun that I would want to accomplish or experience.  And, frankly, the prospect of trying to make arrangements for going somewhere and doing something is so stressful and intimidating that even thinking vaguely and nebulously about such a non-specific trip or vacation makes me feels so tense I’m surprised you cannot hear me vibrating.  Maybe you can.

What I need is a dirt vacation*, I think.

Oh, well.  It’ll come quite soon, I suspect.  I can’t say I’m looking forward to it, necessarily, except that it would be worth feeling nothing simply not to feel so stressed and depressed and lonely and so bloody tired all the time.  It’s just a regression to the mean, if you will—and the mean is zero, or vanishingly close to zero**.

Have a good weekend.

*That’s like the proverbial “dirt nap”, but it lasts longer.  Ha.  Ha.

**This is somewhat related to the fact of why perturbation theory can work in things like quantum electrodynamics.  Most positives are canceled out by negatives, leaving finite answers to things like path integrals and so on—a converging, rather than a diverging, infinite series.

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Add title. Beat until foamy and stir until well mixed

It’s Wednesday morning at almost exactly 5 o’clock, and I’m writing this on my phone today, because I did not take my laptop with me yesterday afternoon.  I did walk from the train to the house in the evening, though, even though I got out of the office slightly late.  It was a decent walk, and I had a nice talk with my sister* while I did it.

Today, except for the phone conversation, I plan to do a repeat, which would be good.  Between yesterday and the day before, I walked a total of about 15 miles.  That’s not too bad.  I was very thirsty by the time I got back to the house, and I drank a largish bottle of seltzer nearly all in one go (not quite, of course‒that’s hard to do with fizzy water because of the carbonation).

Otherwise, let’s see, is there any real news?  Oh!  Well, I was able to get the payroll done a day early yesterday, because the report we usually get on Wednesday is going to be practically nonexistent.  At most there might be minor adjustments.  So, that’s good in its way; there will be far less stress during the day today.  I only wish I had other ways to engage my mind when things are not as busy.  Unfortunately, as I think you know, I’ve been having real trouble finding even any nonfiction reading that’s engaging, let alone any fiction.

Oh, yes, and I certainly haven’t started writing any new fiction, whether HELIOS, which I mentioned yesterday, or any other of the ideas I have about which I could write.  There’s been no sign that anyone is even politely interested in that prospect.

I sometimes‒often‒envy some other bloggers who have a vibrant comments section.  Indeed, there is a site to which I go every day, on which I find the posts interesting and also often find the comments interesting.  Many days‒perhaps more often than not‒I will even leave comments, myself.  Usually it’s nothing very deep; I leave compliments on pictures shared by other readers when I like them, or I’ll make a stupid reference or joke of some kind.  I don’t know if my few comments are ever very interesting to anyone.  I often suspect that I’m just annoying to pretty much everyone else who uses the site.  But it’s nice that they always have some comments.  It makes the whole thing feel like discussions more than articles, really.

Of course, that particular writer has a few tens of thousands of people following his site, so I can’t expect his engagement, even if the percentage of people who comment were the same.  Also, let’s be honest, my stuff isn’t necessarily all that interesting.

I suppose, in the age of social media, it’s possible‒in principle, at least‒for almost anyone to get a large following, at least by old time standards, but the barrier to be cleared is actually to reach people who might be interested.  Of course, I share my posts on TSFKAT**, and on Facebook, and even on LinkedIn, but I don’t have many followers on those sites, and I don’t know how the algorithm pushes any of my posts, or Xpostulatiions, or links, or whatever.

Back in the day, when I was promoting my books (sort of), I paid to boost a few posts on Facebook, but I don’t know that it did much.  I couldn’t afford to boost them much, let alone to do a paid Amazon promotion or anything of the sort.

Advertising or even asking people to “Like” and “share”*** always feels somewhat suspect to me.  I feel as though it’s a sign of poor character for me to try to get people to know about my work through anything other than word of mouth.  I have a species of very low self-esteem.  Perhaps it’s a defense mechanism.  I fear that if I were even somewhat narcissistic or entitled or whatever, I would end up doing a tremendous amount of damage.  Maybe even that fear is rather egotistical.  Probably it’s just that I honestly don’t like myself, and so have a very hard time pushing my stuff, even when I think that stuff is pretty good.

And I do think most of my fiction is pretty good.  It’s never going to rival the works of Tolkien, or Stephen King, or J. K. Rowling or anyone at that level.  But I think there are readers out there who would like the stories if they ever became aware of them.  It would be nice at least to be able to do that tiny little amount of good in the world entailed in writing a story that some people enjoy reading, even if they only enjoy it a little.

Of course, there’s no point promoting anything I do on YouTube.  It would be a bit weird for me to make a video to promote a blog.  I guess reading some of my stories out loud and sharing those “videos” is promotional, in a way.  Maybe I should read some of my blog posts as a YouTube video or something.  If so, which ones would I choose?  Any suggestions?

Of course, though I automatically have an Instagram account via Facebook, I certainly don’t use it.  And I sure as Hell don’t have TikTok.  I think I made a Tumblr account once, but I have no idea what it was or how to access it, and in any case, I don’t really look at Tumblr.  I know I had a Pinterest account, and I think that site is still up and running, but again, it doesn’t do too well with written matter.

Oh, well.  I like WordPress.  It’s nice to be able to share daily thoughts in writing, and for the most part, not to torture anyone with my face and/or voice.  And I like to read a lot of the things other people write, though I wish I could read more‒not just that I had enough time, but that I had the will and capacity to read.  Anyone who knew me back in the day, so to speak, would know just how horrible it is for me not to be able to read fiction (or even much nonfiction).  It’s a bit like not being able to breathe, but it kills you much more slowly, so the torment is drawn out.

Anyway, if any of you feel like it, please do like, share, and even comment on this or other posts of mine.  If you’ve read any of my books and want to share info about them, that would of course, be welcome and greatly appreciated.  Likewise (but less likely) for my music.

And if anyone actually would like to watch/listen to me reading any of my blog posts via a YouTube video, and you have any posts in mind, please let me know.  You can leave a comment anonymously if you like, so you don’t have to fear too much backlash for encouraging the likes of me.

Thank you for reading, no matter what.  And please, do have a good day.

*On the phone, which I guess is obvious; she didn’t come down to Florida just to accompany me from the train station to the house.

**The site formerly known as Twitter.

***That reminds me of a song…