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If this be magic, let it be an art Lawful as blogging.

Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday, the 4th of May in 2023, and it’s time for my long-standing Thursday blog post.  This is still, it seems, my most popular day for blog posts.  I’ll credit Shakespeare for that; he tends to make everything better than it would have been otherwise.

I’m sitting at the train station as I write this.  I took my time this morning, because I figured I’d do my best to slightly miss the 5:15 train and write this while waiting for the next one.  It was a near thing, even though I dilly-dallied about getting ready and tried not to push myself while riding the bike to the train station*.  I even took my time securing the bike with the two cables and the U lock.

Nevertheless, as I took the elevator down to the northbound side of the station, the train had only just pulled in, and the train doors only barely closed just before I got off the elevator.  This may sound like a bad thing, but it was good.  If the doors had remained open, I’m almost sure that I wouldn’t have been able to resist getting on that train, and starting my blog post there.

However, I find the benches at the station much more comfortable for writing than the seats on the train, probably at least partly because of roominess, but also, I suspect, because these benches are metal, not cushioned.  You may think cushions would be better, and perhaps for you they would be, but I find that firm seats, hard futons, and all that sort of thing, are much better for my back than are soft, cushiony surfaces.  Possibly the latter tend to be a bit unstable for my back, allowing too much shifting, which leads to strain and spasm on my lower back.

This is all hypothetical, but it’s consistent across time.  It also makes sense for humans—even pseudo-humans like me—to do better with less-cushioned environments, given that we evolved in a world where there was no “memory foam” or what have you.  For countless generations, human ancestors would have “slept rough” and that would have been the situation for which we adapted.  I occasionally wonder how many modern discomforts and ailments are at least influenced by mattresses and pillows and cushioned seats and sofas.

It’s curious that it was a chore of sorts to try to come later to the train station.  Part of that is simply a matter of my insomnia.  It wasn’t too bad last night**, but I still started waking up a bit before three in the morning, having fallen asleep a bit before eleven.  Four relatively uninterrupted hours of sleep is actually quite good for me.

I got the battery charger for the scooter battery yesterday, but I haven’t unpacked it.  I’d been thinking that I might like to ride it to the movie theater this weekend and see The Guardians of the Galaxy III in theaters, since it introduces Adam Warlock, one of my favorite ever comic book characters*** (both when he’s in hero and in villain mode).  Then I thought, I might as well ride the bike, instead; the nearest theater is only about eight miles away, so that’s less than an hour bike read even at my unimpressive pace.

The closer I get to the weekend, though, the less I feel like I want to go.  I don’t fancy the prospect of dealing with crowds and whatnot, and Saturday morning, which was my planned time to go, is likely to be crowded, even at the first showing.  Also, I think I would just feel lonely, going to the movies by myself.  I don’t think I’ve ever done it.

Not that I would feel much less lonely at the house, but there at least it’s appropriate, and I don’t have to deal with the sound and presence of lots of strangers.  Though popcorn and a movie theater soda with lots of ice (which I like) seem like they might be particularly nice after a good bike ride.  I don’t know.

Speaking of dealing with other people, I’m now on the train, as of the latter part of the previous paragraph, and one thing that worries me about taking a later train than usual is that I fear I may have displaced people at the station from their usual bench site and on the train from their usual seats.  I really prefer not to do that to other people, because when I have a routine, including a routine place to sit or what have you, I find it irritating when some interloper takes my usual spot.

That’s not a particularly healthy way to react, I know, and I certainly have no right to claim a spot at the station or on the train as my own.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t change the serious stress and even hate I feel when someone is in my usual spot.

Of course, lately my schedule has been wobbling about, as witness the fact that yesterday was different than Tuesday and today is different than yesterday, and Monday I was lying down in the dark with a migraine.  So, I have no consistent spot in which to be, and no claim on any regular space.

Nevertheless, because a train had just left when I arrived at the platform, I was able to sit where I used to sit every day, since no one for the next train had arrived yet before me.  And the seat I like to use on the first car of this train happened to be open.  But I can’t help feeling worried that someone who normally gets this seat at a later station will be miffed, and I suspect at least one person had to adjust his usual location at the train station due to where I was sitting.  I suspect this because a man came and was going to sit on the other end of my bench, but he appeared to change his mind and took himself to the next bench down.

I can’t blame him for not wanting to sit next to me; I suspect I give off a sort of feral cat vibe of “don’t get too close to me or I’ll go off on you, teeth and claws and all”.

Anyway, I guess that’s enough for today.  I don’t think I’ve said anything of substance; this post has been all noise, no signal.  I guess a lot of my life is like that, anyway, and I’m probably far from alone in this.  But I do hope you all have a good remainder of the week.  I’ll be writing a post tomorrow, barring the unforeseen, but not on Saturday, since I won’t be working then.  Please enjoy your time with family and friends.  Don’t take them for granted.

TTFN

The Warlock symbol

This is an updated version of the symbol I used to use, as mentioned in the footnote

*Yes, I rode the bike this morning.  So far, there’s only a slight twinge of altered/new pain along my left hip and side.  Perhaps my body has been adjusting a bit during my recent down time.  Perhaps after two days it will flare up more prominently.  We shall see, I suppose.

**I took half a Benadryl at bed time.

***Really.  I used to go by the nickname Warlock in high school, and I even signed my homework and paper and stuff that way for a couple of years, including putting a symbol of overlapping pentagrams—one upright and one inverted—inside the “O”.  My teachers were okay with it.

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Bikes and trains and thoughts of vampires by a different kind of undead

I’m writing this blog post on the train, or at least I’m starting it on the train.  I decided to ride my bike to the station this morning, because I was so pleased with my purchase of an automatic, USB-chargeable, programmable tire pump and the effect it had on my bike tires on Sunday.  It was a nice ride this morning.  The temperature was, supposedly, 69 degrees Fahrenheit when I left the house—so not too hot, but not too cold, neither.  It’s also not expected to rain today.

I almost planned to ride the bike all the way, bringing it on the train and riding it to the office and then back and so on, but I decided to hold off on that.  Yes, leaving it at the station required me sitting on the ground and applying my triple locking setup—two thick cables and the hard steel U-bend* lock—but on the train there are sometimes quite limited spaces for bikes.  It’s also not a good idea to wander far from your bicycle, so I would need to sit on the lower level of the train, which is not my preference, and if there were not enough seats, I would need to stand.

Unfortunately, if one is standing, it’s very difficult to write a blog post on a laptop computer, as I am doing now.  I could write one on my smartphone, but that’s a slightly less convenient process in the sense of it being much slower.  It’s taken me less than fifteen minutes to get on the train, find a seat, unpack my computer, start up the computer, log in to the train Wi-Fi, open up Word, start and name this file, set it to autosave, and to write what I’ve written so far.  Some of that is easier with the smartphone, but it’s mostly more laborious.

I’m on either my third or fourth day taking the Saint John’s Wort, so it’s too soon to imagine that it would have significant effects, but I’m cautiously pessimistic.  By that I mean, I don’t expect it to make a huge difference or to change my outlook or improve my mood, but obviously, I’m willing to see if it does.  As I’ve written, it helped me before, but that was combined with talk therapy, and I was happily married and in medical school, working my way along toward being a doctor, and I had classmates who were my friends and all that.

My current life situation is very different, and you’re reading my only equivalent of therapy at the moment.  But, as I say, we shall see what happens.  At least, you shall see, if you so desire.  I shall experience it, until I stop experiencing it.

I’ve been rereading my book Mark Red, the first book I wrote while a guest of the Florida DOC, its first draft having been done in longhand.  I’m enjoying it quite a bit.  As I’ve said many times, the vampire, Morgan, is one of my favorite characters I’ve ever made up, possibly the favorite.  Mark is a good character, too, but he’s a teenage boy, so there’s only so much interesting there can be about him.  And there are other, secondary characters about whom I hadn’t thought in some time, but upon re-encountering them, they are quite fun.

One of these, who has just arrived in the story, is Ray, a powerful psychic and wise advisor with a quirky attitude, who wears two pairs of glasses—one on his eyes and one on his forehead—and is based almost entirely on a person I met at the place on Gun Club Road, in Palm Beach County**.  That guy had two pairs of glasses, because the county didn’t provide bifocals, and he wore them both at once (one on his eyes, the other stored on his forehead) because it was just easier, since pockets were not an option.  He was quite wise in his way, and he gave me permission to use him in the book.

I also have a character whose nickname is New York—he appears later in the book—who is based on another person I met there, who asked me if he could be in the story, and if he could save the day.  So he is in the book, and he does save the day, and I was happy to let him do that, because he was a pleasant guy, and quite funny.

Cat only knows where those guys are now.

As I reread Mark Red, I find myself thinking that maybe, if I do decide to write something else, I should write the next book in that series.  I have no less than two sequels thought out for it.  Book two would have, I think, the subtitle “Marcus”, and book three would be “Primogenitor”.  Obviously, I already have a general idea for what would happen in the books, though the specifics are almost always a surprise.

I don’t really expect to write any more fiction, though, any more than I expect to write any more songs.  Possibly I’ll never play the guitar again.  I may not even play anything on the “piano” again.  Currently, my keyboard is basically just a small piece of furniture on top of which I store various random items, and underneath which I have stacked much of my small collection of “real” books.

When I think of the many hundreds of books I used to have (not counting comic books and manga and other graphic novels), it’s a bit sad.  But it’s not as sad as losing the real piano my then-in-laws gave me as a medical school graduation present***, and the cello I had played since high school, and the various toys and other things from my kids’ young days.  I guess I have my memories of all those things, though they more often make me sad than happy, largely since I don’t get to see and interact with my kids now.

Oh, well.  Life’s like that, I suppose.  I can’t recommend it unreservedly.  If someone is considering it, I can only say, caveat emptor.  I’ve certainly never assumed that I have any right to be happy or to be comfortable, and people who do seem to think they have such rights seem almost always to be irritating.

It would be nice, though, to have a life that at least was sometimes pleasant and interesting—not in the “may you live in interesting times” sense—and if I had someone with whom I could talk about things that interest me, or that interest that person, or both.  It would be nice to spend time with my kids, most of all.

I suppose if I were a person who had any sense of entitlement, I might push the issue somewhat, but I’m not really built that way, and don’t know how to connect with people even when I want to do it.  I’ve certainly never found much enjoyment in stereotypical social interactions.  And the thought of making any major changes, like trying to pick up and move and start over somewhere else, seems far more daunting than, for instance, trying to bring the One Ring to Mount Doom or whatever.  I almost had a nervous breakdown just when my housemate moved out and then I had to move my stuff into the back room from my front room and the new people moved into the rest of the house.

Seriously, if something like that (or worse) happened again, I think I’d want just to going into some field somewhere and try to lie down and stay there, like when Anne Rice’s vampires “go into the Earth” or whatever that was.  I’ve said it before, but I wish I could just go dormant and sleep and do nothing else until either I was fully rested, or forever, whichever came first.

And, as I’ve also said before, if wishes were horses, we’d all be buried in horse shit.  And that doesn’t sound all that restful.

Mark Reed and Morgan

*All of which, of course, could be undone by anyone who can simply unlock the lock on the U-shaped lock thingy.  But the bike rack really is right near the entrance, where there is heavy foot traffic, and anyone who possesses the skills to pick a lock like that rapidly, in broad daylight, with people coming and going, is so impressive that, while I won’t say they deserve to get the bike—they do not—I will say that something dreadful must have happened in their lives for them to be reduced to stealing bikes by the entrance to the train station.  They are already living their punishment, I suspect.

**You can look it up if you want.  The most positive thing to say about it is that it would be an excellent place to ride out a hurricane…or a nuclear attack.  It’s a sturdy building.

***It wasn’t new—they were far from wealthy.  They had bought it many years before in case any of their kids wanted to learn how to play, but alas, none of them did.  So, when the time came, since I could play, they gave it to me, and it was a truly wonderful gift.

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I didn’t write a blog post yesterday

Well, it’s Tuesday, and I’m back to writing on my laptop—the computer, that is, not the upper surface of my thighs when I’m seated.  Writing on those would not only be rather bizarre, but I think it would be quite difficult to upload such writing to WordPress without first retyping it, anyway.  And if I’m going to do that, I might as well just write my posts out longhand on paper before typing them in.  I sometimes consider doing that, but the time required is prohibitive.

I was off sick yesterday, which is why I didn’t write a blog post.  I had a migraine, with nausea, though somewhat regrettably, I did not find myself able to throw up.  So I laid on the floor with the lights off and the blinds drawn for a little more than half the day.

I’m going to be riding the bus to the train station this morning, though I was tempted to try my bike, because I got this new, portable, electric, USB rechargeable air pump on which you can set your goal pressure and it pumps up to that pressure very quickly then stops.  It came fully charged and worked beautifully on my scooter tires—then the scooter battery turned out to be dead, so I couldn’t use it.

I was frustrated, so I tried it on the bike and realized that, despite my earlier attempts, I had previously underinflated the tires a bit.  So, I rode the bike to 7-11 Sunday (and back—no need to leave it there), and I had no noticeable exacerbation of my back pain.

However, the trip to 7-11 is shorter than to the train station and back, and I’m a bit too nervous to do the latter today…cats walking on hot stoves and all that.  Anyway, I’m writing the beginning of this post (now) in my room in the house, but will probably finish it at the bus stop*, depending on how fast I write, which is, to be fair, pretty fast.

I started taking Saint John’s Wort again this weekend—it’s possible that’s what gave me a belly-ache on Sunday and then might even have contributed to my migraine yesterday, though I’m skeptical of that.  Still, it’s not as though any other antidepressant ever failed to give me side-effects, and most of the others require a prescription.

I tried the curcumin stuff, but it gave me stomach problems almost immediately, so that was a miss.  I’ve got Sam-E, or however they write that stuff, but it’s more of a supplement to treatment or whatever and I’d rather not start it at the same time as the SJW**.  Anyway, since “the wort” (as in “going from bad to wort”?) was the first and most effective antidepressant I’ve taken, so I’ll try it again as, potentially, the last antidepressant I take.  I simply cannot go on the way I am.

I’ve been trying to do mindfulness meditation, as you may know, and when I do it helps a bit.  I also try not to let myself by constantly distracted by other things from it when I’m at work, and it seems to be somewhat useful as far as it goes.  One of the biggest benefits to meditation is that it seems to make me less grumpy at the office, and less stressed out when people interrupt something I’m working on to ask me to do something unrelated, derailing my train of thought and my work process and everything.  I still dislike those things, but at least I don’t feel like I want to lash out at the people involved with teeth and fists and claws and everything to make them go away.  Well…I do feel like I want to, but I can at least keep from letting it show in my voice.

I think it only shows to me, anyway.  I don’t think other people ever really pick up on what’s going on in my head.  I feel like it ought to be obvious to everyone that I’ve been depressed and self-harming and feel suicidal and all that, but no one really says anything, and when I mention such things, people seem to think I’m joking.

I suppose I have only myself to blame for that latter problem; I have a dark and somewhat morbid sense of humor, and I guess my delivery must be pretty deadpan whether I’m joking or not.

Here’s a hint, in case anyone is paying attention:  If I ever say that I hate my life and feel like I want to kill myself, and to hurt myself, and wish I would catch pneumonia or cancer or trip in front of an oncoming car or just drop dead—even if I sound like I’m joking, even if I am joking—I do mean it.  It may not be the whole story of me.  Obviously it isn’t, because I’m not dead yet, but it is true, nevertheless.  I hate myself, and a big part of why I haven’t actively sought out help or whatever, or at least not much, is that I really don’t like myself, and don’t want help, or rather, can’t let myself seek help because I don’t think I deserve it.

I have no sense of anything like a future for myself; I can’t imagine a life even one year down the road, even one in the autumn of this year.  I can’t imagine another birthday.  I have no image of my own future life in my mind.  It’s just a fog of emptiness and entropy.

Anyway, that’s that.  Go ahead, take it as a joke or as the mind drippings of a dealer in melodrama.  I missed yet another potential palindromic digit sequence in recording numbers at the office last week, and it’s getting old even hoping for one, however fun it would be.  If one appeared today, I don’t  think it would matter (though it’s not possible, currently).  What’s the point?  Is getting eight digits that read the same front to back as the recording number on an audio recording verification system really a good enough reason to stay alive?

I mean, I like fun with numbers and everything, but they only have so much charm.  Hell, there’ve been at least two new Numberphile videos with Professor Grime, one of my favorites, and I haven’t bothered to watch either of them.  I couldn’t give a shit.

That’s not a good sign, in case you didn’t know.

Anyway, it’s getting about time to leave for the bus stop, and I’m already at over a thousand words in the first draft of this.  I do type quickly, and when I can just write what I think pretty much as I think it, as I do with these blog posts, it comes fast.  It’s much easier and quicker than speaking, ironically.  Unfortunately, fewer and fewer people seem to read anymore.  They all want to watch five minute smartphone videos on Instagram or TikTok or whatever, with their annoying, vertical aspect ratios that just don’t really work to make a watchable tableaux of anything but some juvenile face, most of the time.

There are a few brilliantly funny videos, I’ll admit, but they are short.

There are reasons both movies and TV are wider than they are tall and always have been.  A lot of it has to do with the fact that we evolved in a world where all the stuff with which we can interact is within a fairly narrow vertical range but a functionally unlimited one horizontally.  We and other animals don’t do much going up or down relative to moving along the surface of the ground.  Even flight takes place within a range much narrower than the horizon is wide.

But because smartphones are relatively effortless—and thus mindless—people make all those stupid vertical videos.  Heck, I’ve done it myself.  See?

video screenshot

Anyway, that’s enough of that.  Who knows what will come next.  I’m giving myself a last chance with the Saint John’s Wort, but it may be just enough to give me the will to make an end, who knows?  Prediction is difficult, especially about the future.  Maybe this blog will all be the beginning of a truly long course of writing, and maybe it will be the final records of a mind headed for catastrophic failure and death.  The latter seems more likely to me, but I’m unable to be objective about it.

Thank you all for reading, anyway.  You know who you are:  you’re the ones reading, and thus the only ones who will be thanked.  That’s kind of convenient, at least.

*I finished it at the house before leaving.

**Saint John’s Wort, that is.  It has nothing to do with “social justice” or the warriors thereof.  I’m not even sure that’s a coherent term, “social justice”.  Perhaps it’s merely a redundant one.  What’s the alternative?  Anti-social justice?  Asocial justice?  Solitary justice?  It’s weird.

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Taking pains to meditate on some of my books

Well, it’s Saturday, and I’m writing this at the bus stop instead of starting it at the house because…well, I just felt like getting out of the house.  I had a pretty bad night, pain-wise, with the pain waking me rudely at a bit before 2 am.  It hasn’t really gotten any better since then, and I certainly didn’t get any more sleep.  It’s really bad, even now, on the second edit; it may be getting worse.

This sort of thing makes my attempts to fight depression extremely difficult sometimes.  Yesterday I did, as I said I would, make it a point to do a bit of mindfulness meditation, usually only for a few minutes at a time; I am just getting into/back into it.  I feel that I was at least a bit less tense thanks to that.  I even walked about halfway back to the house from the train.  That was the second half, since I took the bus partway.

The walk was decent, and I don’t think it triggered my current pain flare-up, because I was already having an equivalent flare-up during the day yesterday, and if anything, it felt a bit better after the walk.  I’m not sure what might have made my pain edge up from its baseline, but edge up it has indeed done, and with a vengeance*.

As I said, it’s hard to try to think about improving my spiritual status when my pain is so striking**.  But I’ll keep trying.

I’m also trying not to listen to any podcasts or audio books or even music for now so that, when I have moments without tasks to which to attend, I can try to relax and be “mindful”.  Possibly it’s beneficial, in and of itself, not to have information piping into my ears all the time, even if it’s interesting information.  Maybe that will help encourage my own identity to speak more.

That’s probably not a good thing, given the nature of my identity, but we’ll see.  As I say, though, the pain makes it hard to meditate, or indeed to be positive in any sense.

I’m well aware, of course, that it is actually possible for one to meditate using one’s pain as a focus of the mindfulness.  I, however, am not nearly advanced enough for such a thing, and I doubt I ever will be.

I’m very tired of being in pain.  It’s been going on for two decades pretty much without any respite‒not for a single day, as far as I can recall‒and it surely looks like it’s going to be with me until I die.  That’s a horrible thought, but it would be mitigated if I had something else onto which to hold.  Unfortunately, right now I do not have any such thing, nor do I have any inkling where to find such a thing, or even if such a thing exists.

It’s frustrating, but I’ll keep trying to meditate, and to walk, and to minimize my eating-as-stimming habits.  I’m even tempted to start taking Saint John’s Wort again, though the last time I started it I felt worse rather than improved.  But maybe it was interacting with something else at that time, because the first time I ever used it, it was quite beneficial.

This is all probably an exercise in futility, or more than one such exercise; it’s entirely possible that I’m simply not built to be relatively pain free or psychologically stable.  It may be my destiny to be the King of Pain, as the song says.  That’s one song I have memorized still for the piano.  It’s a great song.  One of the others I can always play is Eleanor Rigby…you know, the song about all the lonely people.  Why do you suppose those two songs have stuck in my head over the decades?

It’s a mystery, Charlie Brown.

I don’t have much more to write this morning.  Though, speaking of my writing, I did, on a whim, begin to read my book Mark Red again yesterday evening.  I’m still only in the first chapter‒really, the first scene‒but it’s something to read at least.

I am fond of the book; I think it’s a good story, and I like Mark, and I like the version of vampires I’ve created in this universe.  But I particularly love Morgan, the vampire who saves Mark‒because he was mortally wounded thinking he was trying to save her‒by making him into a demi-vampire.  I think she’s still my favorite character that I’ve created, though there are strong contenders in The Vagabond and The Chasm and the Collision.

Heck, I really like Michael from Unanimity, who I didn’t realize as I was writing him is almost certainly on the autism spectrum.  He’s an awkward, shy, brilliant but self-doubting, reluctant hero, so to speak.

I guess it’s good that I like my characters and my stories.  It’s not as though I wrote them to try to please anyone else, though I certainly had my kids in mind when I did CatC.  Sure, it would be great if there were lots of people who read and liked my books, and if any of you want to share links to them with anyone you think might enjoy them, I would certainly be delighted.  But I didn’t ever really expect wide readership let alone fame, though I can’t say I never dreamed of it..  I’ve just always liked to make up and write stories.

Self promotion, on the other hand, has always been one of my worst areas.

Life is curious.  Sometimes it’s even curious in a good way.  Often it’s not.  Ah, well, I wasn’t consulted when the universe came into existence…as far as I know, anyway.  Although, as in my book Son of Man it’s conceivable, if far from known to be possible, for the “future” to influence the “past”.  So maybe I was consulted.  Maybe someday I will even create the universe itself, to my own design.

That would probably explain a lot of the poor craftsmanship, wouldn’t it?

9734_1044064641361_1817998561_91048_2300407_n

*We’re talking Wrath of Khan, Captain Ahab level vengeance here; we’re talking Law Abiding Citizen level vengeance.  We’re not pussy-footing around.

**Or boring, perhaps, would be more accurate.  But I mean boring like a drill is boring, not as a synonym for “dull”…though it could be described as feeling as if someone were using a drill with a dull but broad bit on various parts of my anatomy.  And it does certainly get old.

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An intention to work on meditation

It’s Friday morning, now, and I’m writing this on my phone, because I did go back to the house from the office last night.  My boss actually made a point to have me leave a bit early; he took me to the train station himself.

I guess it was pretty obvious how worn out I was.  I actually felt rather giddy and weird much of the day, yesterday, but it wasn’t exactly a healthy feeling.  This morning I feel more like my usual self, which is not an improvement, necessarily, but at least it’s “usual”.

I’ve been reading a book called From Strength to Strength, by a guy who was on Sam Harris’s podcast and sounded like he had some interesting ideas.  It’s basically about how the abilities and habits people have as young go-getters, achievers, innovators and whatnot inevitably diminish over time, but that other abilities, and the possibility for a different and deeper kind of success, can happen after passing the peak of the “fluid” intelligence stage.

However, as he notes, it can be difficult for people whose habits of achieving have been honed and have worked well so far in their lives to achieve what they thought they wanted‒money, power, prestige, and so on‒to let go of those habits and move on to more rewarding “second act” kinds of things, like good relationships, family, teaching and helping others, and spiritual pursuits.

Now, I was certainly a high-achiever, but all my youthful rewards were taken from me by injury and ill-health, divorce, depression, and incarceration.  I lost everything I had except a few knick-knacks that had been lent to other people, and I lost my wife and kids (effectively), and I certainly lost any and all prestige I’d had.

The prestige stuff was never a huge deal to me, nor was “being a doctor” the way in which I defined myself (I’m not sure I ever actually “defined” myself in any way other than that I was the person thinking and doing whatever I was thinking and doing).  I went to medical school almost as an afterthought, when other plans got derailed due to my congenital heart condition.

Medicine was something I liked, though‒intellectually challenging and stimulating, full of science and learning, and centered around the ability to do real good in the world and relieve or at least lessen the suffering of some people within the reach of my arm.  That was good, because I have always felt a kind of inherent guilt over the very fact of my own existence, and have felt very much wrong in this world.  I’ve always felt that I had to justify, in some way, my continued existence, the inevitable depletion I caused of the planet’s oxygen and food and water.  Either that or I would simply need to embrace being a villain and willfully choose destruction and cruelty and evil.

That latter bit was too much work, though, and it’s hard to be a pure bad guy when you’re what might be thought of as a sort of anti-narcissist.

So, anyway, back to the subject.  I didn’t need to force myself to jump off the treadmill of my youthful power curve; I had already crashed and burned catastrophically.

I unfortunately have no close relationships whatsoever to cultivate anymore, not really.  My sister and brother, with whom I get along well and always have, are more than 1300 miles away, and my cousin slightly farther.  I cannot face the prospect of trying to move closer to them, to change where I am located, to try to find a new place to make a living, and to become a burden, even a minor one, upon those people‒even if they would be willing to take that burden up.  I am not willing to deliver it.  Not to them.

However, I may be able to try to approach some kind of “spiritual” life.  I can’t be religious in any kind of traditional, “western” sense.  I just can’t buy into that stuff.  I’ve tried.  I’ve read the whole Bible (parts of it multiple times), both testaments, including the first chapter of Genesis in Hebrew.  I’ve read as much of the Koran as I could force my way through (about half).  None of them are very impressive, and I’m willing to bet the Book of Mormon, for instance, isn’t any better.

However, I’ve always been pretty good at self-hypnosis and meditation.  I’ve had trouble with meditation in recent years, because, while it tends to reduce my tension and stress, it seems to exacerbate my depression.  However, that was often meditation associated with a sort of mantra, drawn from my time of self-hypnotism habits.  But maybe if I try simple, pure Vipassana meditation, it might be better.

I don’t think I could possibly become very much more depressed than I already am without crashing full-steam into a life-threatening‒or life-ending‒crisis.  And that would be at least some kind of result, so that’s not so very bad.

Anyway, I think I’m going to try, in my moments of lack of work, to get into a more persistent practice of mindfulness meditation.  I’m not ready‒and I may never be‒to work toward any metta (lovingkindness) meditation, because it’s hard for me to feel beneficent feelings toward the world in general, though it’s easier than feeling them toward myself.

It’s not true that in order to love others you have to love yourself; that’s patent nonsense.  It may be that you have to love yourself in order to be loved, but I doubt even that is close to being true.  These all seem to be just tropes and gimmicks trying to trick people, often with good intentions, to work on loving themselves.

Anyway, that’s a tangent.  I do hope that maybe, at least, being less tense will make me snack a bit less, since eating is almost a form of “stimming” for me, a kind of self-soothing behavior, a reliable source of at least transient positive feeling, strongly wired into the nervous system.  I don’t eat because of actual hunger, that’s for sure.  When I actually am hungry, I usually don’t eat, because the feeling, the sensation, is quite interesting and stimulating.  But, of course, these kinds of eating habits end up making me feel worse about myself, and they aren’t good for my physical health.

So, I’ll try to do the mindfulness stuff.  I might as well.  I’ve tried every class of antidepressant except MAO inhibitors in the past.  I’ve not tried psychedelics, unless you count my disastrous attempt to take a hit off a former coworker’s blunt that led me to feeling weird‒not in a good way‒and throwing up repeatedly for a few hours.  I’m very nervous about psychedelics, because my mind is not my friend, and I don’t know what it might do to me.  Anyway, I have no idea where I would even get psychedelics from, or even MDMA (which seems like it might be interesting, but is apparently neurotoxic).

I’ll try to try meditate, and who knows, maybe I’ll develop at least some insight and improvement.  If I do, I imagine the character of this blog will change.  That might be something to which my readers can look forward.

In any case, I work tomorrow, so in the shorter term, I will be writing some form of blog post tomorrow, barring the unforeseen.  Don’t expect any real changes by then, of course.  That would be almost ridiculous.

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The deep of night is crept upon our blog, and Nature must obey necessity.

Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday, the 27th of April, the week after my son’s birthday, and I’m already in the office as I write this blog post‒because I never left the office last night.  It got to be late enough that, if I caught the next train, I probably wouldn’t have reached the house before nine, whether I took the bus(es) from the train station or walked.  That is what happened Monday night and Tuesday night.

Of course, If I’d had the bike at the train station I might have reached the house earlier, but I didn’t, and I don’t regret that.  Given that every time I ride that bike, it triggers a flare and a new (but not improved) alteration of my back and leg and foot pain, I think I’m going to keep it for “special occasions” or something like that, even though I’ll be paying for it for three or four more months or something like that.

Pretty pathetic, isn’t it?

Even if I’d caught an earlier train, I don’t think I would have had the energy to get back to the house from the train station, and had I reached the house, I don’t think I would’ve had the energy to come back to the office this morning.  I had sort of planned all along to stay here, because if I went back to the house, I didn’t think I’d be coming in today, and I wasn’t sure if I would be coming in ever again (if you know what I mean).  I guess maybe it was a kind of semi-conscious self-preservation thing, in a way.  But, of course, that can’t work forever.

It’s not a big deal if I stay one night in the office.  It’s not like it will produce a noticeable effect, outwardly.  I always wear one of 2 kinds of black shirts, the same kind of black pants (or trousers if you prefer), the same brand of black socks and one of three brands of black shoes.  Once you find something that’s comfortable for you, I say, you might as well wear that.

I prefer black because you don’t have to worry about matching anything; black goes with everything, particularly other black things.  It’s also a nice, outward representation of my character, my heart, my outlook, what have you.  And if I ever have to pass as a Sith Lord, I can do that.  I only wear black nowadays.  Even my underwear(!).

In any case, though, I don’t mean to stay at the office tonight, though if there were a shower here I might be tempted.  I feel very grimy and sticky, and that’s a particularly unpleasant feeling for me.  But it is dreary to have the daily ritual of going back to a place that feels no more like home than does the office or the train, and not much more like home than the bus, frankly.

Nothing feels like home, anymore.  The planet Earth doesn’t feel like home‒not that it ever really has, to be honest.

I find myself strangely envying my former coworker who just died.  That may seem insensitive, but it’s simply true.  He didn’t die instantly, with the initial heart attack, which sometimes happens.  He had a few weeks or more of being ill and having all other responsibilities taken away, and his family (and friends), aware of his ill health, got to come and be near him for one last time.  That might be nice.  I sometimes think that, if I were known to be dying of cancer (for instance), maybe my children would come and see me.

I don’t know what other sort of thing might engender that outcome, and I certainly don’t want to try to force my way into their lives.  They deserve autonomy and to be free from my odious self, who already screwed up everything in his own life, and caused them pain in the process.  But I would dearly love to spend time with them.

Of course, I do have a potentially terminal condition, and I don’t just mean “life itself” which is uniformly terminal as far as we can see.  I mean depression.  Depression has a direct lifetime mortality rate of about 15%, or at least that was the statistic the last time I checked.  That’s not counting the many things depression makes one more likely to have‒people with depression are more prone to various kinds of physical illnesses and to worse outcomes if they get those illnesses, and they are also more prone than others to drug and alcohol problems.

But I’m talking here about direct self-destruction: suicide, from the Latin “sui” meaning self, and the “cide” part that always means killing, as in fungicide, herbicide, insecticide, anthropocide, etc.  “Suicide” almost feels like it ought to be the opposite of “sui generis” but that’s not correct, and in fact they probably often go together, subjectively speaking.  Maybe it would be the opposite of “sui genesis”.  Could it also be called “sui exodus”?

Anyway, my point is that depression has mortality rates comparable to many cancers, but there are no Ronald McDonald houses for it (as far as I know).  It’s not a sexy/tragic/dramatic disorder worthy of Hallmark movies and that kind of twaddle.  It just sucks all around, because its very nature is to suck and to make everything in the universe feel like it sucks.  Maybe in this it’s like the very curvature of spacetime; tending to bend inward on itself and collapse, unless it is infused with a uniform, positive energy, in which case there will be a tendency to expand.

Believe me, I don’t have a uniform positive energy.  Maybe I used to, but my cosmological constant has long since quantum tunneled into a vacuum state so close to zero that it makes that of the universe, tiny as it is, appear flipping gargantuan.  I don’t know if I have a negative cosmological constant, which would make a kind of human anti de Sitter space.  Then I would collapse rapidly, which might be nice in and of itself.  Also, you could mathematically demonstrate the holographic principle on me using certain areas of string theory.

Maybe the state of suffering from depression is rather like being a human anti de Sitter space.  And the speed of collapse depends on how large the negative lambda is, but collapse is inevitable unless it changes signs.

Incidentally, it appears that people on the autism spectrum‒which I suspect I am, though I don’t have an “official”* diagnosis‒suffer from depression, including chronic depression AKA persistent depressive disorder AKA dysthymia (which I do have), at a significantly higher rate than the general population, are harder to treat, and also, if I recall, are more likely to commit suicide, and certainly to engage in self-harm.

I could have told you that.  Wait, I just did!

Okay, well, that’s more than enough for this Thursday.  I don’t know what I’ll do tomorrow or the next day.  I’m scheduled to work on those days, and I suppose I will, since I don’t like to inconvenience the people around me.  But as I told a coworker yesterday, I’ve been staying alive for quite a long time mainly just not to inconvenience other people, and there’s only so much longer I’m going to be able to do it.  I don’t have any other drive to stay alive; there is nothing to which I look forward.  I’m tired.  Sleeping on the floor in the office is no worse than sleeping at the house, but that’s not saying much at all.

Someday, perhaps soon, my sign off on a Thursday will be “TT” rather than TTFN, because I won’t expect to return.  But for now, the expression remains:

TTFN

ads space ish

*It’s an odd notion, the “official” diagnosis of anything.  I mean, it’s useful for things like insurance and statistics and science, and certainly there is some value in the judgment of experts on such matters, but it is not something handed down from Mount Sinai (the medical school or the Ten Commandments place).  No one can speak ex cathedra on medical diagnoses, or on any fact of nature, frankly.  So don’t put too much stock in them**.

**Unless it’s good chicken stock.  Good chicken stock is tasty.

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“…and we sang dirges in the dark…”

I’m writing this on my phone again, today, because it’s still a relief not to have to carry the laptop.  I wouldn’t have thought it would make such a big difference, since the computer really is quite light, but the subjective experience is a notably easier feeling‒physically, at least.

I had to run a bit across some major roads to try to catch a connecting bus last night, because the first one was 35 minutes late, and it was good not to have the minor bit of weight in my back when doing that.  Of course, now, today, my back and hips and legs are aching more than usual, probably as a consequence* of that running.  It’s not the muscles that are the problem, though they do spasm up in response to the pain.  It’s the joints and the nerves.

Speaking of that, I’m not sure why typing on the phone isn’t giving me more trouble than it is.  Maybe my thumb joints have adapted after the initial use back a few months ago, or maybe I’ve adapted my typing style.  Or perhaps the problem is still coming, and I just haven’t been doing this often enough for long enough yet to trigger the inevitable flare-up.  I guess I’ll soon find out if it’s the latter, though even if I don’t get an exacerbation, it’ll be hard to differentiate between those first two hypotheses.

It’s not really important, I guess.

I haven’t been riding my bike, as I’ve said before, and I don’t think I’m probably going to be riding it.  It’s been too clear from the timing and the specificity of outcomes that it was triggering both pain exacerbations and postural adjustments that interfered with my sleep.  I can’t lose more sleep than I already do, and I already have enough pain** every day.

I literally feel fear at the thought of riding the bike because of the clarity and certainty of those outcomes.  It’s a shame and a waste…but then again, so am I, so I guess that’s fair enough.  I’ll just walk and take the bus until something kills me.

Speaking of that, it seems one of the people who used to work at our office, and who had recently had a heart attack at a rather young age, died yesterday, in the hospital.  One of the people at the office rents a room from him and he was devastated by the news.

I won’t give names, but the former worker was an electro-pop musician in slightly earlier days, and though his stuff isn’t really my kind of music, it was really quite good.  He wrote and performed it, and had albums and everything.  One of his songs was used in a movie.  So, he was the real deal, if not truly a big star or anything.

He said he really liked my song Breaking Me Down, and that if a slightly shorter version of it had been released in the 70s, it might have been a hit.  He also said he was impressed with my guitar playing on my “baddish” cover of Street Spirit (Fade Out), but that the vocals didn’t sound great***.

It’s very sad that he died so young, particularly for the guy who rented from him, because they were friends in addition to being “landlord/tenant”.

We’ve had a surprising number of people die who worked in or used to work in the office since I’ve been there.  It’s not my fault (I think) nor the fault of the business.  Of course, when I was in medical practice I saw a lot more people die, but that’s the nature of adult medical care.  Still, it’s also kind of sad.

Well, it’s very sad.  These are people who‒as far as I know‒did not actually want to die, and yet they did.  And here I am, ironically relatively healthy apart from my chronic pain and my mood disorder(s) and whatnot.

I would say that it’s hard to make sense of it, but that’s not really true.  It’s just that the universe isn’t set up such that the laws of mortality apply relative to one’s desire to live.  Biology leads us to tend to want to stay alive and have offspring, and after that, whatever happens is really just stochastic and erratic, and an adult human body is like an empty seed pod that lingers on a branch past all use once the age of reproduction has gone.

And I think to myself, “What a wonderful world.”****

I really don’t think I’m going to be able to go on much longer.  By which I don’t mean this blog, though of course that is subsumed in the larger subject matter; I mean I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to continue living.  There’s really nothing to which I look forward, short or long term.  I don’t look forward to getting up and going to work, I don’t look forward to coming back to the house and going to bed.  I don’t look forward to meals or drinks.  There are no shows or movies I’m awaiting‒I’ve become more or less indifferent to the Doctor Who specials and new series that are coming later this year, and the new Guardians of the Galaxy movie also doesn’t particularly spark my interest.  All the new Star Wars related crap seems just to be blah at best.

I wish there were some book series I was reading that was enticing, whether new or old, but I still can’t seem to read fiction anymore, which is a truly hellish turn of events for me.  Reading fiction was always my refuge, my joy, my escape.  Not anymore.

There is some interesting nonfiction, which I usually tend to seek out after hearing someone on a podcast with Sam Harris or Sean Carroll, but the podcasts are getting boring, and I haven’t finished the last 3 books I’ve gotten under those circumstances.

It’s like the line in the Beatles song I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party: “There’s nothing for me here, so I will disappear.”  She’s not going to turn up while I’m gone‒whoever the metaphorical “she” is‒so there’s no need to worry about letting me know.

I’m so tired and in pain and depressed and I really, really hate myself.  I wish I would have a heart attack, or develop cancer, or catch pneumonia, or something like that.  In my case, it would have no serious, life-altering repercussions for anyone, though I’m sure there are those who might find it sad.

There are sweet, kindly, compassionate people out there, after all, and my family members and some of the people who know me are among their number.  They would be sad over the deaths of anyone they know, and particularly family members‒as I am sad over the death of my former coworker‒and it’s good that people feel that way, I guess.  But death is the guaranteed payoff of life, after all, for everyone. It really feels like it would be better just to skip to the end.

*If you can have a consequence, why is there no sinquesence or perhaps sansquesence?

**One might even be inclined to say that I have too much pain every day, but let’s not be reckless.

***He wasn’t wrong, though I’m not sure if he meant my voice itself didn’t sound great, which it didn’t‒I had recently had Covid, and was not fully recovered‒or just that the recording of it was not great, which is fair enough, since I don’t have a studio or high quality recording equipment or mixing equipment or anything.  Possibly he meant both.

****Sarcasm.

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Can one exaggerate the dangers of “mental health”?

Well, here I am again, writing a blog post on my phone, because I didn’t feel like toting my mini* laptop around.

It was really rather pleasant not to have to carry it at all yesterday.  Even after I picked up a seltzer and some minor dinner items at a convenience store between two buses on the way back to the house last night, the load was minor.  Despite my light burden, however, I didn’t walk from the train station, as should be obvious from the fact that I mentioned two buses; it was simply too late in the evening.  As it was, I didn’t get back to the house until just before nine.

It’s a glitzy, glamorous life I lead, I know, but don’t envy it.  You don’t see the struggles I face when out of the limelight.

Actually, I guess you do “see” a lot about them if you read my blog regularly.  You don’t see all of them, of course.  Even I am not quite so indiscreet as all that.  But you certainly know about some of my difficulties with depression.

With that in mind, I must (and do) apologize to StephenB for my extra-gloomy reply to his comment yesterday.  I think he was trying to perk me up with a little good-natured humor, playing on my words in a way that skillfully echoed how I played on them, but I just doubled down on the doom and gloom.  That’s one of my greatest skills.  It might be innate enough for me to consider it a talent, or even a fundamental attribute of my being.  Maybe it’s just my nature, my design (or design flaw) always to feel self-hateful.  I don’t know.

I do wonder what it would feel like to love myself.  Much is made in literature and spiritual inquiry and religious teaching about the danger of self-love**.  Certainly, in public discourse we see frequent reminders of the perils of narcissism.  The generally believed notion seems to be that everyone loves his or her own person more than they do anyone else.

But the Judeo-Christian admonition to love one’s neighbor as oneself is very bad advice for me.  I’ve always tended to feel more positive and generous in spirit toward other people than toward myself.  Cat forbid I should view other people as dimly and darkly as I view myself.

I’m reminded of a line from a Monty Python sketch in which some TV criminologist, played (if memory serves) by Graham Chapman, says, “After all, a murderer is only an extroverted suicide.”  It would be very bad, or at least not very positive, for my “neighbors” if I started to “love” them as I do myself.  I have become more prone to misanthropy over the years, and even edge toward pro-mortalism, but I recognize this as probably irrational and born of my mental illness, as it were.

Incidentally, I’m puzzled by a recent apparent shift toward referring not to mental illness but rather to using “mental health” when one is actually referring to what would previously have been called “mental illness”.  We live in a world in which people say things along the lines of “we have a growing problem of mental health” or “if you’re troubled with mental health…”*** or similar phrases.  I wish I could think of a specific example.  But it’s weird because mental health is not a problem, it’s the lack thereof.

Tiptoeing around words to avoid upsetting people by naming the fact that an illness is an illness and a problem does not seem like a healthy thing to do, as far as I can see.  If you’re afraid of words, how are going to deal with actual illness, actual pain, actual, physical danger?  Not too well, I would guess.

Speaking of actual pain, I’m at least somewhat pleased to note that my thumb pain doesn’t seem to have been too badly exacerbated by writing my post on my phone yesterday.  This obviously influenced my decision to do it again today.  I may come to regret this choice, but my future selves often get pissed at my past selves.  My past selves don’t really have to trouble with that fact, though, because they aren’t around to have to face the consequences of their actions.

Bastards.

I guess I’ll just have to wait to find out if I have troubles from doing this.  Some form of trouble will always come, of course; that’s the nature of the universe.  But I may or may not avoid this specific one.

Meanwhile, I’m having a hard time staying motivated or disciplined even to go to work.  I won’t just slack off, because I don’t want to cause unnecessary trouble for the people at the office, and for my boss, and so on.  I’ve never been any good at doing things for me, really, but I do find it distasteful to be rude to other people or to let them down.

I’ve always tried to live for other people in some sense, but it’s left me prone to real problems when either other people get fed up with me‒which tends to happen‒or when other people take advantage of me because I like to work hard and be productive and be appreciated, and try to relieve suffering when I can.  Sometimes that ends up landing me in prison, while people who took advantage stay free and clear and go on about their lives.  Certainly I was the one who bore the brunt of that situation, the one to which I am not-so-obliquely referring.  I still am bearing it.

Apparently, this sort of thing happens to people with ASD with some frequency.  This is another clue that’s caused me to sneak myself toward the suspicion that I might be “on the spectrum”.  I doubt that I’ll ever get an official diagnoses****‒the process is expensive and not easily entered by adults, especially ones who are, on paper, successful, or who at least have been in the past.

Also, frankly, there doesn’t seem to be much benefit in America, certainly in Florida, to receiving a diagnosis of ASD as an adult.  It’s not as if I’d be able to get disability benefits, and even if I could, such benefits are laughably inadequate.  So, what would be the point?  Better our nation should spend its cultural energy arguing about what terms are harmful and should be avoided at universities or should never be mentioned in a public school or whatever, right?

That was sarcasm, just to be clear.  Yes, my self-hatred is beginning to leak out onto my “neighbors”.  Should it ever fully escape containment, that would be a direr catastrophe than Fukushima and Chernobyl combined.

Okay, that was wildly hyperbolic, I admit it.  But who doesn’t appreciate equations like y=1/x?

And with that very bad, very nerdy joke, I’ll begin to end this blog post.  If I’m still alive and still able to do it, I’ll write more tomorrow.  Don’t get your hopes up: I probably won’t die today.  More’s the pity, right?

hyperbolic speech

This is the most important diagram of all time in the entire universe.

*This has nothing to do with the Mini Cooper or Cooper Mini car, or whatever the proper way to name it is.  Although, I think it would be rather cool if they made a small laptop with their logo and design or something, as a promotional thing.  Though that would probably have a very limited market.

**People even used to think it could make you go blind or grow hair on your palms.  Ha.  Ha.

***I’m quite sure I’ve literally heard that phrase.  “Troubled with mental health”?  I wish I were so troubled.  I’m troubled by a lack of mental health.

****Though I do carry “official” diagnoses of depression and dysthymia, from more than once source.

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Enter freely and of your own will. No need to wipe your shoes.

Well, it’s Monday morning again, and here I am, writing yet another blog post for unclear reasons (though at least they are not nuclear reasons).  I’m writing this on my phone today, because I didn’t bring my mini laptop back to the house this weekend.  I want to say that I forgot it, but that’s not true.  I didn’t forget it.  I willfully chose not to bring it back with me because I just didn’t feel like dealing with it.

It’s not as though it weighs a lot or anything, though I can tell the difference when it’s not in my backpack.  I just didn’t want to bother, either with carrying it or with opening it and using it on my lap in the train (and at the bus stop).  It puts an irritating strain on my knees, because of the way I have to sit to prop it up.  Also, honestly, I’m kind of sick of toting it around.  It’s not as though I’m likely to write any more fiction on it, or on anything else, ever again (and I don’t exactly hear anyone complaining about that).

There are many more stories I could write, the ideas for which I wrote in long note entries on prior cellphones.  And I still find story ideas occurring to me with noticeable frequency, especially when curious coincidences occur.  But I don’t write those ideas down anymore.

I don’t write blog post ideas down, either, because I don’t bother with any coherent, unified theme or context when I write a blog post.  It is a “web log”, so it’s a log, a journal of sorts, and in its purest form, it’s just a recording of thoughts.

Sorry, everyone.  It must be, at best, a mixed blessing to read my thoughts.

Anyway, I’m writing this on my phone, on Google Docs, and I hope it doesn’t cause too much pain in my thumbs, but if it does…oh, well.  It’s better than the flare-up of back pain I have just from riding my bike to 7-11 yesterday (a total of 3 miles), my first time riding it in several days, because of the rain.

I think I’m going to have to give up on using even this comparatively comfortable bike.  It’s been pretty stress-inducing right from the start and every time I use it my pain increases.  I never should have bothered with it.  I probably shouldn’t buy any new things ever again.  They’re all more stressful than beneficial.

I’m barely able to cope with day-to-day minor tasks like brushing my teeth or changing my clothes or any of that‒though I do those things because I have to do them.  And going to work is a pain, too, but as long as I can’t eliminate the drive to eat and drink to stay alive (I am working to try to get over that) I have to go to work.

Speaking of that, I’ve been writing the beginning of this at the house, still, so I don’t have to dilly-dally at the bus stop (and maybe need to use the restroom while waiting, and have to wait until I’m on the train).  So, I’ll pause here, and put in a little gap marker, and resume this at the bus stop.  See you there.

***

Okay, here I am at the bus stop, and I’m still half an hour early, because I misjudged how long it would take me to get here and so forth.  Also, to be more precise, or more complete, I’m not at the usual bus stop, but at the one up the street from it.  Coming later than usual had at least one noticeable effect, and that’s that someone was sitting at the other stop already.  The bench there isn’t very big, and I didn’t want to sit too close to some stranger while writing, but I definitely wanted to sit, because my back is really annoying me.

Sorry to complain so much all the time.  I feel as though the only thoughts I have and the only words I can say‒the only truth about me in general‒is a collection of negative opinions, negative thoughts, negative feelings, and pains.  It’s really frustrating, and I’m sure it must be frustrating to those of you who read this blog.  Then again, I guess you choose to read it, so maybe there’s something interesting in it.

Perhaps it’s a bit like looking at a car crash beside the road as you’re driving.  I’ll grant that, for a long time, my life has definitely been a prolonged and catastrophic wreck.  And the accident is not over yet.  I keep hoping for the gasoline to leak and for a spark to make it catch fire and explode.

I really hate my life, in case you couldn’t tell.  I hate it.  I’m so tired and in pain, and worn down and alone, and lonely but unable to reach out to people because I seem to have lost my social skills, such as they were, and anyway, I don’t feel I have any right to burden anyone else with my heaping pile of shit.

That’s a metaphor, by the way, in case it wasn’t clear.  I don’t literally have a heaping pile of shit.  I use toilets just like pretty much everybody else.  I just mean, more or less, that my life is a heaping pile of shit, that I am a heaping pile of shit.  You get the idea, I guess.  You probably didn’t need me to explain it to you.

I don’t even like to listen to music much anymore, and I certainly don’t play any music.  I tried reading some fiction this weekend, but I couldn’t even make it through a Stephen King short story‒I tried several.  I also didn’t make it through a single movie, though I got through one or two comedy panel shows on YouTube and some “reaction” videos to Doctor Who episodes, though I had seen the episodes and the reaction videos before.

I should wrap this up, now.  I mean the blog post, of course…but I also mean my life.  I should wrap it up.  Put it in a take-away bag and give it to the stray cats and raccoons and opossums.  I’m so tired.  I don’t expect any rest, but cessation seems enticing.  After all, zero is greater than any negative number, and my overall state is definitely in the negative, and has been so for a long time.  The area under my curve is really the area over my curve, and the integral result just keeps getting to be a larger negative number with every passing moment, for both the experiencing self and the remembering self.

Anyway, the bus will be here soon.  Better go 

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800 words, not including the title

It’s Friday morning.  Those of you reading this first thing after it comes out will already know that, but for any future people* who might be reading, it is the morning of Friday, April 21, 2023, as I’m writing.  Since I don’t work this weekend, I guess it really is one of those “TGIF” days, at least in principle, for me.

I’m not really doing anything this weekend, apart from doing my laundry on Sunday.  I do it every Sunday, because I must.  Other than that, it would be quite nice if I could simply rest.  I would so love to get a good night’s sleep.  It feels as though the time since I had a good night’s rest is longer than the time I’ve been alive, which is, of course, a contradiction, but that just shows how fucking tired I am.  I can’t even convey how tired I am, not really.  Nothing really does it justice.

I’m so tired I feel almost out of breath just walking to the bus stop in the morning.  Of course, there’s always, in principle, the possibility that something more is physically wrong with me than “mere” insomnia**.  But I did walk back to the house from the train station yesterday afternoon, which is five miles, and I had no physical difficulties doing that (other than joint and limb aches and so on), so I don’t think there’s anything significant wrong with my heart and/or lungs.

That’s almost too bad, really.  If it turned out I did have something serious wrong with my heart and/or lungs, I don’t think I would try to get help for it.  What would be the point?  I can’t afford it, anyway.  And why would I be trying to prolong a life that has lost nearly every source of joy and is steadily losing the few such things that remain.

Well, I say “steadily”, but that’s probably not accurate.  I don’t really think that there’s a consistent, gradual process occurring.  There may be sudden drop-offs, and there may be plateaus, and there may be momentary, teasing, cruel bumps upward that serve only to get one’s hopes up in order to take sadistic glee in dashing them.  At least, that would be the case if there were any malicious mind behind the fact that I am losing any interest in anything.  But as far as I can tell, though, there really isn’t any such mind—though one could, I suppose, say that my own mind’s dysfunction is causing it, and that wouldn’t be without justification.

Anyway, the point is, it’s not really a smooth descent curve.  There are bumps and spikes and fractal things, like any graph of measures that have local variance overlying general trends, like stock prices or global temperatures or what have you.

I’m tired.  Have I mentioned that already?  I’m seriously so very tired.  I want to lie down and just stay that way.  I want to be able to sleep.

I think I’m repeating myself here, but honestly, I don’t really care.  I don’t have the energy to care.  So fuck off if you want to try to make me feel guilty or something.

I don’t really have much of anything else to talk about today.  I don’t have any pastimes anymore, I don’t have any nearby friends—I don’t even know if I have any long-distance friends, to be honest.  I don’t have anyone with whom to spend my spare time.  You might think that would give me plenty of time to rest, and I suppose it does give me plenty of time to rest.  Unfortunately, I cannot seem to carry out the process of resting.  I can be idle, but I cannot seem to rest, or at least, I haven’t been able to do so, not for a long time.

I’m so tired of my life.  It’s just not worth the effort to continue it.  It’s mostly pain and stress and loneliness (and yet, in counterpoint, an ironic revulsion toward socializing) and a general feeling of being lost and of having ruined every good thing of which I’ve ever been a part.  Above all, though, there’s just fatigue.  I am just so very tired.

In fifty words, I’ll have reached 800 words in the first draft of this post, and I don’t think I’m going to try for any more, nor will I find it difficult to stop before going beyond that number.  Twelve more words.  Please do have a good weekend.  Bye for now.

words

*Are there flying cars and jet packs yet?  Are you cyborgs or purely artificial beings?  Or are you just the same old naked house apes?

**Is that when a body of water cannot sleep, or when a person cannot sleep near, or on, a lake?  I don’t know.