Anxiety

by

It’s serious Labor just to get through each Day

Good day to you all.  It’s Monday, the 7th of September, and for those in the USA, it is Labor Day.  That’s sort of the government holiday antipode of Memorial Day.  The latter marks the unofficial beginning of summer, and the former marks the unofficial end of summer.  In south Florida, I can fairly and reasonably say about the supposed end of summer, “Would that it were.”

That’s because the weather in autumn‒late autumn, anyway‒is much more pleasant than it is in summer here.  This is a large part of the reason for the “snow bird” phenomenon:  people who live up north during the warmer half (roughly) of the year and then come down to Florida during the cooler half of the year.

I say “cooler” in the meteorological, thermodynamic sense, not the social sense.  Contrary to what many people here seem to believe, there are not many cool people per capita in Florida.  It just doesn’t tend to fit the regional identity in any sense; “The Florida Man” is not celebrated for his coolness.

Just to give you an idea of how bad it is:  I am probably only barely below the mean level of coolness in Florida, at least based on the usual criteria of greater society.  Even well-known people from Florida are rarely noted for being cool.

Not that it really matters, of course.  Coolness is an epiphenomenon that accreted like pipe scale on the surface of primate dominance and reproductive hierarchical behavior patterns; that’s all fairly obvious looking at humans from the outside as it were.  But it all becomes self-referential after a while, building on and/or reacting in support of or opposition to prior standards of “coolness”, until it’s long since become a sort of autoerotic death spiral, a precursor to AI slop.

That doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes appreciate cool things and people; I just recognize “coolness” as entirely parochial.  What octopuses think is cool and what spiders think is cool and what albatrosses think is cool are going to be very different from each other and from what humans think is cool*.

Speaking of coolness, I went to the movie theater (by myself) this weekend to see the new Spider-Man movie.  The movie was certainly reasonably cool as far as it went; I thought it was well made and well acted and fun and so on.  It was at a theater that has a full bar, which is also pretty cool, so while I waited I had a Jack and Coke (to help with some social anxiety).  It was tasty, but it made me need to use the restroom four times before the movie started.  That was annoying.  But I rarely drink alcohol, anyway, so it’s an effect I need not dread.

The popcorn was pretty good, I guess, and so on, and the seats were comfy, but by the end of the movie I just felt more alone than I had before, despite coming out and joining the throng (then going into Target for some cat food and then to Walgreens for some sparkling water before ordering an Uber back to the house).

It was an expensive day, though.  The concessions were even more expensive than the ticket (and that’s not counting the Jack and Coke).  And the Uber to and from the theater was not cheap, either.  So, I don’t think I’m going to be doing that very often.  I may not do it ever again, maybe not even for Doomsday.

Though, when it comes to money, it’s not as though I’m saving for retirement.  I don’t expect to retire.  As of right now, I just expect to keep moving until I fall apart and then just basically die.  I mean, in the end that’s what everyone does, but my situation is likely to have less bric-a-brac cluttering up the works than many.

Honestly, I wish I could skip to the end a lot of the time.  Which I guess I can, of course, but it requires gumption and willpower to do it, and I am generally low on spoons, as the metaphor goes nowadays; I’m not sure how that figure of speech became prominent, nor why, but it feels somehow apropos.

Many things that I am doing to try to improve my willpower and my mental reserves and so on are at least partly to try to build the will to overcome my instinctive but annoying resistance to self-destruction.  I’m getting there, I think.  I’m making progress.  Maybe I’ll get there soon.

Honestly, I don’t really even mind that much if I don’t get to see Avengers: Doomsday.  I’m just sick of all of this shit.

I hope you all are doing better than I am.

*Of course, the thought processes as such are likely only to be very roughly analogous to what humans think about coolness, especially for non-social species.  There may also be overlap; I imagine many humans might think certain examples of flying skill shown by an albatross are very cool, and so might another albatross.

by

Monday, Thursday, Doomsday, Workday, let’s call the whole thing off

It’s Monday, but for some unclear reason, I felt the strong urge to write that today was Thursday when I was titling this file to be saved.  It took a moment of concentration to correct that urge.

Probably it goes back to the long stretch of time when I did my blog posting only on Thursdays, because I worked on my fiction every other workday.  That paid off, in a sense, because I did write quite a lot of fiction in that time.  Though, to be clear, it did not pay off in any material sense; I’ve spent more by far on copies of my books to give away to coworkers and such than I am likely ever to make back.

It was an awful lot of work for things that, as far as I know, only two other people have actually read at all.  My music has done better, honestly, though not in the sense of bringing in any income.  But at least some people have listened to it, my originals as well as my covers.  I guess songs are quicker and easier to consume than novels or even short stories (especially my short stories).

So, yeah, even though it’s been years since I was following that Thursday blogging practice, the etchings of that habit are still not completely effaced from my brain.  This is the way of habits, as I think I mentioned not too long ago.

Speaking of music, by the way, I want to share a really cool bit of music that came up in my YouTube feed, and which I think deserves a listen (and a like and a share if you can) from all of you.  It’s very good, as is the artist’s other work.

YouTube is basically all I did this weekend.  I did not read nor write, nor did I play any music (either on a stream or from a recording or on guitar or keyboard or cello).  I haven’t done any of those things in several weeks, barring a few one-time exceptions.  I mean, I went for walks on Saturday and Sunday, though I was careful not to go too far, and I used sunscreen this time.  This was because I had a few errands to run; it was too hot and humid to walk for fun.

But, yeah, I watched videos and vegged out rather pathetically pretty much the entire weekend.  I mostly watched various reactors reacting to either Backrooms or Fantastic Four First Steps.  Meaning, I watched multiple different people and groups of people reacting to each movie, more or less at random.

It’s almost like watching a movie with someone, though not quite*.  Movies are a way of socializing for me; they are one of the few ways I can connect with people.  TV shows are similar.  I don’t really like to watch things by myself.  I do it sometimes, of course, and I even went to see a movie by myself once, when I went to the theater to see the last Guardians of the Galaxy movie, because I just didn’t want to miss that.

I considered going to see the new Spider-Man movie this weekend, but it just felt…I don’t know, like something that would highlight my solitude even more than does watching oodles of different people reacting to movies that I’ve liked.

Mind you, I did watch a few more worthwhile videos.  The Science Asylum guy put out a couple of new videos about basic circuit theory topics, and I watched Tyler Folse reacting to a Veritasium video.  That tends to be fun.  He (Tyler, I mean) frequently speaks my own thoughts** when he’s watching such videos, which is refreshing.

Anyway, that’s as good as it gets, and I don’t know if it will ever get that good again.  But I am still going to work, though it is often difficult for me clearly to say why I do it, even to myself.  I’m just bringing in income to sustain an existence that is almost without anything to recommend it.

I don’t like it here in Florida, for one thing.  It’s naturally an amazing state, quite unique and with many, many interesting life forms.  Unfortunately, humans are not one of the interesting ones.  They are an infestation that has turned this state into a wellspring of the stupidity that is so rampant in the US.  It’s no coincidence that Taco Piggy took up residence here.

So, I’m working to sustain an existence I hate, in a location that is largely repellent‒but with a few very lovely oases in time, such as my youngest, who is enough to counterbalance many, many negative things, but who would almost certainly be well served by not having me in their life any more than necessary.  That’s certainly the general consensus at which most other people have arrived regarding my presence in their lives.

It gets harder and harder all the time for me to get up and get into the office every day.  It’s not because there’s anything particularly bad about the office; I mean, the noise can be really irritating, and if I don’t watch myself it can get the best of me, but the people are okay.  They’re actually quite nice.  I’m without a doubt the least pleasant person at the office.

That alone is enough to make life subtly and pathetically dreadful.

*I also watched a few more people reacting to the “special look” trailer for Avengers:  Doomsday, but I think I’ve seen most of them by now.  Doom is, as I’ve noted, my favorite villain and one of my favorite characters overall in fiction, so the special look is nice because it focuses more on him.  Here it is, in case you missed it.

**Not literally.  He’s not like Tyler Durden.  I just mean that he seems to have similar thoughts in response to the things he’s watching to the ones I have.

by

Is this blog good for MY mental health?

For the first time in quite a while, I’m using my mini lapcom to write this blog post.  The main reason for doing this is that my thumbs have really been bugging me lately.  Also, as I’ve often said, it feels more natural to type on the lapcom than on the smartphone, at least so far.  This shouldn’t be a surprise, since I have been typing far longer than I’ve been using a smartphone; indeed, I’ve been typing far, far longer than smartphones have existed.

How do you like them, Apple™?

Who knows, maybe someday I might get to the point where typing on the phone is at least as natural as on the lapcom.  I suppose if I wrote an entire book on one, that probably would make quite a bit of progress toward making it feel more natural.  But it isn’t as natural, and I don’t think it’s likely ever to be, at least for something like typing, because the scale is wrong; it’s too small*.  And of necessity, it either doesn’t have as many available functions as the desktop programs, or they are more difficult to access with any decent speed.

Okay, enough of that topic and/or subject.

I have, as you may know, been having somewhat worse than usual trouble lately with my chronic mood disorder(s).  I’ve been trying various personal interventions (nothing pharmacological at the moment), because it’s getting fairly bad and potentially very dangerous (to me).  Regarding those personal attempts, though, one thing I’ve noticed over time is a kind of internal barrier to certain specific interventions, and it’s kind of puzzling and a bit disturbing.

A long time ago—when our own galaxy was far, far away from where it is now**—I read a lot of various kinds of self-help and psychology books, trying to figure out, among other things, why I was so weird and how to get along despite that fact and such like.  In them, I learned about autosuggestion.  I also learned about a famous case of a proponent thereof who was ridiculed for encouraging people to try repeating to themselves on a few occasions throughout the day:  “Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.”

Now, I’ve always thought that sounded quite interesting and potentially beneficial, especially since I tend to ruminate on and repeat things in my head anyway, and if I could make it something useful, then I might as well do so.  So, I applied it.

I never applied it in its original form, though.  I used to give myself messages about my mind getting stronger every day, or my will getting stronger, or my power (whatever that meant) growing, or me getting smarter, or me getting stronger in all senses of that word, those sorts of things.  But somehow, I always balked at telling myself that I was getting “better”.

I have tried doing the auto-suggestion thing again lately in various forms.  I think it at least gives me some mental focus, and at times at least makes me feel that maybe I’m getting stronger, or my will is improving, or whatever.  It’s a little silly but not without merit.  However, when I try to do the “better and better” version, it’s as if someone had cast one of those “langlock” jinxes on my mental tongue, and the phrase doesn’t want to come out.

It’s similar to the resistance I have to telling myself that “I love my life and I love myself”.

Interestingly, I was able to do that one while in prison, which feels sort of ironic, since I wasn’t loving life then.  But I knew that my situation was temporary—more so than life itself is, even—and I was able to keep looking forward to getting out and being part of my children’s lives again***.  Having something in the future toward which to look really helps keep your spirits up, or at least your fortitude.

I sometimes wonder if I fear getting better—not morally, I don’t think I have any issue with that.  But I do worry that some aspects of my personality could be quite harmful if I were to think too highly of myself.  I also have real internal revulsion (bordering on literal nausea) toward the idea of being delusional, especially about my own abilities and nature.

I guess it wouldn’t be too big a stretch to say that I fear it.  So many of the ills that I see in the world—current, past, and potentially in the future—are born of people who are too sure of themselves, too convinced they are right, too sure that they are exceptional, too convinced they know “better”.  I would hate to fall into such a banal and pathetic personality trap.  It’s all very silly, probably.  It might even make some of you laugh, or roll your eyes, or throw your hands up at my melodrama.

I suppose if I had anyone around with whom I could just talk about these things, I wouldn’t bother sharing them here on my blog.  They are, after all, quite personal.  But if I don’t share any of the thoughts I have, they are merely evanescent fluff inside my head that will never have any contact with other, external ideas, but merely have autologous impacts.  Of course, everything is like that (as far as we can tell), but I’d like to have some beneficial local impact on myself, at least.

And who knows, it may be possible, in the fullness of time, for the descendants of humanity, or similar beings, to break free of the nature of the transient and vanishing, and become, like the virtual particles near the event horizon of a black hole, real particles, things that endure indefinitely, and actually gain some degree of control over not only their own future but that of the universe itself.

When I’m being somewhat fanciful, I imagine myself contributing to such progress, and even being able to see it to its fruition.

See what I mean by getting egotistical?  I fear that tendency toward grandiosity, because it can be toxic all by itself, and because it is a frequent hallmark of more serious mental illness.  I’m more than a little afraid of that, because I often feel that manic magma of grandiosity rising up inside my mind.  I think it would be all too easy for me to lose my grip on myself entirely.  My mind, such as it is, is pretty much all that I have going for me; I’d rather not lose it if I can help it.

But the more time I spend on my own, the more likely it feels that it’s going to happen.  And I am not enthusiastic about it.

*That’s what she said.  Ha.  Ha.

**On a cosmic scale that doesn’t really mean anything, but time has passed, and the Earth, the Sun, the Milky Way, the local group, and so on are all moving.  From a cosmic scale they don’t seem to change much, but if you zoom in, even the surface of the Earth moves at nearly a thousand miles per hour (depending on your latitude) in its daily rotation alone.  Here’s The Galaxy Song to put it into context.

***It turns out that was overly optimistic and did not come to pass, but there was no good way for me to know this at the time.

by

‘Tis all men’s office to speak patience to those that blog under the load of sorrow

Hello and good morning.

I’m back on the smartphone again today, so hopefully I can at least avoid going on and on and on like I did yesterday.  That ought to be easy enough, but apparently, it is not.  I don’t know why I get so “talkative” here all the time, but it doesn’t seem to be because I have anything important to say.

As I’ve noted before, typing on a QWERTY keyboard feels almost more natural than speaking to me (and I do it far more often now) but that’s definitely not true for using the smartphone, and it probably never will be.

For one thing, I haven’t stopped having arthralgia/tendinopathy in and around the bases of my thumbs related to such use.  It’s not severe discomfort, certainly not compared to my chronic pain, but it is there and it is annoying.  It seems, however, to interfere with playing guitar more than with using my smartphone (or anyone else’s, I would guess).

Yesterday, I wasn’t sure I wanted to play any, so I figured I’d give fate a hand in things.  I carry four dollar coins with me every day‒two Susan B. Anthonys and two Sacagaweas‒and I use them to help make decisions when I feel no particular pull in a given direction.  I also use them to clarify my own inclinations:  if I get a result and dislike it, I know that I really want to do the alternate thing.  I’m told that my son has adopted this sort of habit as well.

Anyway, I flipped all four coins and got a unanimous set of heads*, so I played guitar and sang some.  I did it somewhat reluctantly, but when all four ladies agree, I find it hard to ignore them.

It wasn’t anything fancy, I just mainly went through a series of songs I know by heart, plus I think I played through Desperado using the pdf I have of a printout of the chords.  There were a lot of twinges in both thumbs/wrists while I was playing, though.  Still, I’ve come to realize that I have a decent repertoire of songs that I can do off the cuff, so if I needed to do some busking, I could probably do it.

I also recently realized that the Radiohead song(s) Polyethylene (Parts 1 & 2) ends with the same chord on which their song Fake Plastic Trees begins.  That was too funny a coincidence (given the subject matter/titles of the songs, especially), so I’ve taken to playing them as one combined song, a sort of mini-medley.

Several days ago, I even tried taking a video of me playing and singing (not those songs), using the desktop’s camera, and I discovered something:  if I ever do want to record myself doing music again, then I need a new microphone, probably more than one.  The sound quality was terrible, full of clipping and distortion and such.  Also, I need a new face, but that’s a separate matter.

I have also been working on learning Bach’s Two Part Invention number 13 for the guitar (mainly the right hand part so far‒the left hand had to be restranscribed and brought up an octave and I don’t enjoy it quite as much).  This has long been one of my favorite piano pieces to play, though I am way too rusty to play it now on a keyboard.  I used to like it so much that, whenever I was antsy, I would find a surface with an edge and “play” that Bach piece.  I guess I have always been a “stimmer”.

Anyway, all this crap isn’t really here or there, it’s just silly trivia that I’m spouting in lieu of having anything substantive to say.  I’m sorry if it’s boring or all over the place.  My mind has not been doing well lately, in case you haven’t noticed (or just haven’t read my blog lately).

I was just thinking recently about whether it would be workable for me to start going back to writing fiction maybe say two or three days a week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday for instance) and blogging only on the other days.  I don’t know if that would lose me readers on the blog or perhaps bring more people in, but it’s not as though I ever have more than a few dozen people coming to the blog in the first place.

Then again, no one’s exactly champing at the bit to read any of my fiction, either.  This is mainly just a self-indulgent, foolish exercise, a lab sample of concentrated futility.  Come to think of it, that could actually be said about pretty much my entire life since roughly 2013 (at the latest).  Trying to find any meaningfulness in my life since then is like wandering through the ruins of an ancient Egyptian city, looking for a 7-11.

Anyway, that’s enough of my stupidity for now.  Not that my stupidity will stop, but at least I won’t spew any more of it on you for the moment.  I hope you have a day that improves after you finish reading this; it’s unlikely to be much worse, right?

TTFN

*This is not terribly improbable; it will happen in one out of 2 to the 4th, or 1 in 16, runs of four coin flips.

by

Don’t make such a phus, you Sisy

Well, it’s Saturday and, as I predicted, I am writing a blog post.  I’m writing it on my smartphone, because I felt lazy about bringing the mini lapcom along with me when I left the office yesterday.

I’m still in pain, of course, but it’s not as bad as it was Thursday, and combinations of NSAIDs and Tylenol and some cbd related medicine makes me able to tolerate it‒though the latter leaves me a bit loopy and slightly foggy.

Anyway, it’s Saturday, and I won’t be working as late today as during the week, so that’s good as far as it goes.  It’s not much good, though, because the day is pretty much still used up, especially given my commute.  One certainly cannot rest very well.  Then, of course, tomorrow is the one day in which I can get things done around the house‒or around the room, as I should say, since I live in one room with an attached bathroom.  So, Sunday is laundry day, among other things, and then it’s back to work on Monday.

What a lovely boulder that is, Mr. Sisyphus‒but what on Earth do you mean to do with it?  It’s not actually doing anyone any good, you know.  Initially, constantly rolling it up that hill made your body stronger, but you’ve long since passed the point of diminishing marginal returns and entered full-tilt into the negative returns stage, where you’re wearing yourself down.

It’s sort of like a ballistic arc:  for a bit of time it goes up nicely, but it slows and slows, then it goes around the point of zero velocity and starts going down at an ever-accelerating rate.  We all know the eventual outcome.  As Radiohead sang, gravity always wins.

Forget Atlas Shrugged.  What about Sisyphus Shrugged?  It could be a story about what happens when people give up on just rolling their daily boulders to the top of the hill only for them to roll back down again, to start everything over again.

Of course, what’s-his-name‒Camus, that’s his name‒would argue, indeed he did argue, that though Sisyphus’s actions are ultimately futile as well as futile from moment to moment, Sisyphus is okay.  I think his (translated) words are “we must imagine Sisyphus happy*”

Must we?  I don’t know, maybe.  Certainly he has a felt purpose.  He has been given some drive to push the boulder up, over and over, and it’s clearly an overwhelming drive.  I suppose acting on such an impulse can at least give one the satisfaction of being able to act on one’s drives**, which is almost certainly better than having strong drives and being unable to act on them.  See Harlan Ellison’s classic, I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.

Have pity indeed for a truly celibate priest, though at least he imagines he will be rewarded for his abstinence (though I’m pretty darn sure his only reward will be oblivion…which is not without its charms).  Have even more compassion for those who are truly starving.

Or, if you want the personal experience, turned up to eleven, you can try having someone waterboard you.  Cutting off one’s ability to follow the urge to breathe, even for a few seconds, is (empirically) the most terrifying and stressful situation for humans.  Trust me, if you ever want to have all other concerns vanish from your mind, just start suffocating*** for a few seconds‒true perspective fall on you like a very massive boulder indeed.

Anyway, even if Sisyphus does have this drive, this motivation, and can act on it, that doesn’t guarantee any form of happiness.  If you’ve ever known anyone with bad OCD, you know that having irresistible and pointless drives does not tend to make someone happy.  It’s not joy such people are feeling, it’s profound anxiety, which let’s face it, is just a comparatively pretty term we use to try to polish the turd, fear.

And fear is, by nature‒I almost could say by design‒unpleasant.  It’s not evolved for you to be able to ignore it.

But people with OCD don’t get any lasting satisfaction by carrying out their rituals; they just get a brief lessening of their fear.  That is undoubtedly better than non-lessening fear, or worsening fear, but that isn’t saying much.  Losing a toe is better than losing a whole foot, but you would rather avoid both if you could.

I don’t know what point I’m making; these are just my random, stochastic thoughts.  But they do seem focused on the fact that people are somehow able to keep going and doing like Sisyphus does, despite there being no evident point or benefit, and indeed, despite their existence and actions seeming like an almost comedic curse from the non-existent gods.

Some people console themselves with fairy tales about Heaven (and Hell, of course, because humans always want a “bad guy” in their stories), and maybe that’s not horrible, as long as they don’t fuck around with other peoples’ lives as part of their delusion.  As far as the afterlife stuff, well, if they’re right, and it’s a good one, then hey, that’s great for them.  Thumbs up.  And if they’re wrong, they’ll never know it, so “whatevs”.

But it would be nice if people overall could reassess the nature of our existence, now that we’re not solely constrained by the blind idiot god, Evolution.  Maybe we can develop actual, real purposes that will make people feel joyful but won’t be driven by fear‒though I suspect this will not be an “evolutionarily stable strategy”, whether for biologically evolved minds or even other kinds of minds one finds.

Humans will probably be replaced by AI, anyway, and it’s looking like it’s going to happen sooner than expected.  Even if AI ends up being entirely aligned with human interests‒a very tiny region in the space of possible or even likely AGIs‒it will still be doing the thinking, the designing, the making, the growing.  Humans, previously the cleverest things they knew, will become little more than pets in such a scenario.  They could be beloved pets, maybe‒pampered and even spoiled‒but still just pets.

Maybe some people would be okay with that.  It’s certainly not the worst possible outcome.  Most other possibilities are not nearly so nice, and we don’t even really know how to steer the future toward which kind of AGI we want because we don’t know how to know what kind of AGI we want.  We don’t even know how to make our own**** wants align with each other’s wants, and we don’t really know in detail what’s happening inside these minds we’re growing so aggressively and haphazardly (not much more than we know our own or others’ more typical minds).

Oh, well.  Whataya gonna do?  Civilization:  it wasn’t very nice while it lasted, but it was probably better than what preceded it and what’s to come, at least for those not running on huge banks of GPUs.  But by all means, old Sisyphumans, let that boulder roll.

*I originally made the typo “we must imagine Sisyphus bappy”, which is a whole ‘nother way of thinking about Sisyphus.

**Utterly unrelated parenthetical:  I had a weird thought just while writing this sentence about whether there are any raps in a true 3 / 4 time signature, since it occurred to me that even the ones that had patterns of three syllables repeated ended up being something like three beats and a rest beat or two beats then a half note (a held double beat), but remained in 4 / 4 time.  It turns out that there are a few, but it’s said (by Google’s AI) that such a time signature is not as popular because it produces difficult songs to which to dance.  Evidently, rap fans don’t like the waltz.

***A crucial part of this is the inability to blow off CO2, since that is the primary and almost sole driver of respiration, not the absence of oxygen.  This is why, in a pure nitrogen atmosphere, people don’t even realize that they’re suffocating, or asphyxiating, or whatever the official term is.  All their CO2 is getting breathed out nicely, so they feel no panic or horror as they merely get lightheaded and lose consciousness and…well, that’s it, unless they are rescued.  It doesn’t sound all that bad, does it?

****I know, I know.  I’m speaking, just for the sake of argument, as if I were human.

by

Since “Evian” is “naive” spelled backwards, are its drinkers wise and sophisticated?

(This post has nothing to do with the headline, just in case you’re wondering.)

I’m not quite ready to reveal the truth about yesterday’s blog post; I’m kind of hoping that someone who doesn’t usually comment might throw their hat into the ring* and make a guess.  I don’t know who such a person might be, but it would be nice to have ever more comments.

For this post, though, I will reveal that it is being written on my smartphone.  I didn’t bring along the lapcom because I was very fatigued by the end of the day yesterday.  This was mainly mental fatigue, but that translates into low physical energy as well, since it’s the functions of the brain that largely determine the movement of the body.

Which is not meant to imply that the brain is not part of the body; it very much is.  I am no dualist in any sense of the word.  The brain is an organ, and like all other organs, it has its attributes and vulnerabilities and dysfunctions.  Trust me on that last score.

Or don’t trust me, that’s entirely up to you.  I wouldn’t be inclined to try to cajole someone into trusting me.  I’m not a huge fan of presumptive trust anymore than of giving someone presumptive “respect”.  To me, respect, like trust, has to be earned, through the outcomes of interactions, and it can never really, reasonably, be complete.

Everything is always a calculated risk, including trust, even if the calculations are…not very rigorous or conscious, and even if people claim to have it absolutely.  Those who make such claims are wrong or lying or both.  One cannot even trust oneself absolutely.  Trust me on that.  Ha ha.

Anyway…

That’s just some typical nonsense or bullshit or whatever you want to call it from me.  I don’t have any intention here‒not one of which I am aware‒other than just “to write another blog post”.  How’s that for a positive, beneficial purpose or undertaking?  How’s that for something to try to give oneself a sense of purpose or meaning or belonging?  It’s pretty unimpressive, really.

As for belonging, in particular, it’s a fairly laughable notion for me.  I don’t belong anywhere.  Maybe no one does.  Maybe the very notion of “belonging” in the social sense is and has always been a cognitive and emotional illusion.

Like individual atoms that exist within water molecules in the ocean, a person can technically be part of something bigger without any actual real involvement in that bigger thing, and without losing any nature of separateness.

Any electron in the outer portion of any atom, or anywhere else, is just an electron and‒barring highly energetic interactions‒is going to remain an electron** forever, as far as we can tell.  And it is literally identical in characteristics to every other electron that exists, and they are all entirely fungible, just like the individual cents in your electronically recorded and maintained bank account.

Of course, people, despite being composed of countless numbers of such tiny, fungible particles, are not fungible.  They are too complicated, there are too many ways to put electrons and quarks together to make a person for any two to have even a nanoscopically tiny chance to be identical in all pertinent senses.

Okay, I don’t know what point, if any, I’m trying to make here.  Probably there is none.  Or if there is, it is probably some desperate, quietly terrified attempt to connect somehow with some kindred spirit(s) somewhere.  However, I am getting weirder and weirder all the time, or so it seems to me, so it seems ever more unlikely that kindred spirits exist for me, if they ever did.

Like Melkor, I’m looking to find something or someone in the Void, but alas, it is just…void.  And my thoughts continue to be unlike those of my brethren, and, like Melkor, I become ever more dispirited and spiteful, though at least I’m not trying to conquer or destroy Arda.  I went through that phase back when I was a preteen and teenager.

I’m not saying I was necessarily wrong when I recognized that people are absolutely shit at trying to create and run civilization well.  I just don’t think it’s probably worth the effort to correct things, because it would be a neverending effort.

Oh, well.  That’s enough of my spewing words for the moment.  There seem to be brush fires down in south Florida‒we can all smell the smoke‒but it seems unlikely that they will contribute much to the destruction of current human society.

Is that good?  Is it bad?

I don’t know.

I hope you have a good day.

*Would such a hat become invisible?  Would it, if it were strong enough, gain the power to sense and dominate the wearers of all the other rings?  Would it inevitably become evil?

**The same cannot be said for muons, let alone taus, the two higher mass “species” in the electron family.  They are unstable and rapidly decay to smaller particles, but they have the same charge and spin as an electron.  Electrons, on the other hand, appear to be at some manner of ground state; they are too “light” to decay into anything smaller spontaneously, and any changes they do undergo cannot violate the conservation of charge, so they are limited.

by

I forgot to give this a title at first

This is another lapcom post.  That’s three in a row!

It’s Wednesday now, though why today is named after the “Allfather” is far from clear to me.  Maybe because it’s the “middle” of the week, and Odin (AKA Wodin  AKA Wotan, etc.) supports the weight of time or some such.  I don’t know.  That sort of sounds good, at least.

Anyway, of course, I’m going to work.  It’s payroll day, and the boss should be back from a brief vacation.  It’s remarkable to me how often some people take vacations and so forth.  I’m not against vacations, don’t get me wrong.  But it’s quite annoying when someone takes a vacation while everyone else is working after having asked us to work on days when other people are taking a day off (e.g., Memorial Day).

It doesn’t really matter, I guess.  I have nothing to do on days off, let alone during any prolonged vacation, anyway.  I certainly have no one with whom to spend my time off, whatever it may be, except in rare snippets.

I don’t know.  I suppose some people out there might think I ought to do something about that, but the fact is, I don’t feel good about myself, whatever that might mean, and it is hard to try to inflict myself upon other people; this blog alone already feels presumptuous and probably annoying.

It is a persistent aspect of my experience of myself and the world that I feel strong self-disgust and self-contempt.  This is quite contrary to the concept of “self-compassion” often touted in discussions of getting an autism diagnosis as an adult and learning about it and some of why your experience in life has been the way it has been.

Getting diagnosed and learning more hasn’t given me any more generous attitude toward myself, at least not so far.  Maybe if there were more resources and support available, I might be doing better with it*.

I have also read suggestions about finding discussion or support groups or online meetups or even in person meetups.  This seems a slightly contradictory suggestion for people who are, as part of the very description of the disorder, socially troubled.  I even get tense whenever new people come to work in the office, until I get used to them.  I certainly don’t see myself trying to interact with groups of strangers, even if they are neurodivergent.

I had a little bit of connection on Instagram with some sort-of communities.  At least, there were other people there with some degree of similar experiences, though interaction was minimal and artificial.  Anyway, Meta arbitrarily kicked me off their platforms without telling me why, so fuck them to death.

I used to be better at this socialization sort of thing.  I probably would be better at a lot of it if not for chronic pain, but it’s rather futile to dwell on that very much.  In this, I try to follow the recommendations of the Stoics.  But sometimes I dwell on it, nevertheless.  Sue me, Marcus Aurelius.

Anyway, I don’t think I have anything productive to discuss today—not that yesterday’s weird, meandering post, which ended up focusing on prime factorizations somehow, was productive—and I don’t know that anything is likely to spill out of me at this point that’s going to be of any use to anyone, even for entertainment.  Sorry.

I did a brief audio recording yesterday about something that was nagging me relating to Sean Carroll’s answer to a listener question on his Mindscape podcast.  He does an “Ask Me Anything” podcast every month; it’s usually more than 3 hours long and is a real treasure trove of thoughts and insights about many things, since he’s a smart guy and a professional physicist and philosopher.  I was somewhat disappointed and therefore annoyed by his mentioning of Sam Harris and free will, because he somewhat misrepresented the arguments Sam has made.  I also thought he didn’t quite give adequate serious thought to the existential threat posed by AGI, though he certainly recognizes many potential drawbacks.

Anyway, I just recorded aloud my thoughts in response.  They may or may not be coherent to anyone else, let alone be very interesting.  Nevertheless, I’ll include the recording below.  I think it’s about ten minutes long.

In the past, I’ve been known to turn these audio recordings into “videos” to be posted on YouTube, but I don’t know how many people, if any, ever watch any of them.  But if any of you, listening to these audio files, think I should make them into “videos” too, please let me know.

I did get at least one person replying to a comment I made on another site that they miss my YouTube channel.  That surprised me.  It still exists, of course, but I haven’t added to it in a long time.

Maybe I will.  But it’s so hard to summon the will to do very much.  Maybe my will can become stronger, I don’t know.  Much of my effort and energy in that area is spent just getting through the day while dealing with pain and being alone and anxiety/stress and depression, frankly.

Oh, well, enough moaning.  My apologies.  I’ll try to make tomorrow’s post better, assuming I do one.  I hope you all have an excellent day by your own standards.

*I am diagnosed as Level 2, which is supposed to mean “requiring moderate support”, rather than level 1, which says someone only needs minimal support or some such.  So I’m not even expected to be able to make it very well on my own.

by

“Please could you stop the noise, I’m trying to get some rest…”

I’m writing this blog post on my mini lapcom today.  It’s the first time I’ve written one on the lapcom in over a month—since May 1st, in fact.  I’m not entirely sure why I decided to bring the lapcom with me when I left the office on Saturday, but bring it with me I did.  I think partly I just wanted to spare my thumbs, which are not as bad as they were, but are still quite sore a lot of the time when and after I write.

Also—and this is stupid—I wonder if people who see me writing my posts on my smartphone imagine that I’m just playing some game or scrolling through one of the social media all the while.  It certainly shouldn’t matter to me whether anyone thinks that, but I’m a somewhat mature-looking man (so to speak) and I don’t want to set a bad example.  I also don’t want to leave my lapcom feeling too lonely and neglected for too long.

I know, that’s very silly.  I have no reason to suspect that my lapcom experiences anything at all—it’s not that kind of computer and it’s not running any of that kind of programming (largely because no one knows how to write such a program).  But still, I often feel a weird, imaginary empathy for things that I know pretty well don’t have any qualia, as the philosophers of mind call it.

I even used to feel bad if I accidentally mistreated one of my stuffed animals when I was little, such as by sitting on it or something.  I guess that’s not really that unusual for a young child, is it?  Still, I have retained something of that all my life.

Don’t even get me started on actual other people’s feelings.  Those are cacophonic!  That’s part of why being around a lot of people is just a bit overwhelming.

Of course, real, physical noise also is irritating, especially something like background music when you’re trying to work.  That’s one thing that’s annoying at the office.  There is constant overhead music playing, just to keep people from overhearing each other on the phone and becoming distracted.  But to me it’s like listening to the sounds of the world beyond the gateway in Event Horizon, or the noises in that recovered record they deciphered.  Ugh.  I’ve sometimes thought of just playing construction noises for them so they can see what it feels like to me.

Oh, I also brought the lapcom in case I felt the urge to write some fiction.  But that’s a pipe dream, I suspect.  Also, I don’t see how I could manage the time to write fiction and still do my daily blog.  There are only so many spoons (as they say) that I can bring to bear on anything at any time, and the supply is largely used up just grinding through days in pain and whatnot, to say nothing of the sensory and social stresses that also accumulate.

Even so, I honestly feel quite sad being alone a lot of the time, though I do my best to distract myself.  I would like to have good friends, someone to hang out with and so on, but unfortunately, the sorts of people at work, while perfectly nice and tolerable people, are not really the kinds of people I think I could hang out with much.  I don’t think anyone in the office, including the boss, reads more than a book a year or so.  I think I would have a hard time being a close friend of someone who doesn’t really read, at least at this point in my life.

And that’s also something that I would definitely find a deal-breaker in any kind of “significant other” kind of relationship.  Obviously such a thing would be nice, but again, I don’t think I could be very close to someone who didn’t read a reasonably significant amount.

All this is moot, of course.  Most of these possibilities and wishes are irrelevant, because no one really wants to be friends with me, let alone any kind of romantic thingy.  I don’t blame them.  Why would they want to do or be such a thing?

Even when I’m at the office, I’m basically alone.  I mean, I have a few “work friends”, of course, some of whom are quite good work friends.  But we do not ever do anything together outside of work.  I probably wouldn’t be able to have fun doing such a thing, even if anyone wanted to do it; we tend to have office holiday dinner parties of sorts at restaurants around Christmas/New Years time, and those get me so stressed out that I have to start drinking as soon as I arrive.  It’s not good.

Anyway, that’s over 700 words already, and I’ve just been moaning the whole time.  I apologize.  But I do spend a good deal of my time hating the world, hating my life, and especially hating myself.  Of course, the “hating the world” part is really projection—I hate the world because I hate my life and myself.

It’s a low-flying, subacute kind of hate, though, nothing florid.  I don’t spend as much time deliberately damaging myself as I used to, unless you count all the OTC meds I take for pain.  But, of course, those aren’t intended as self harm; quite the opposite.  But I have no doubt they are doing their thing on my kidneys and stomach and liver and so on.

Oh, well.  Whataya gonna do?  The universe was not made for me, and it was certainly not made by me.  It never promised but one thing, so to speak.

All right, that’s enough of me bringing you guys down—and on a Monday morning of all things, when you probably want something to boost your spirits.  So here, if you have spirits that need boosting, wait till they’re haunting you and feeling miserable and come out with, “Don’t feel too bad.  If you need a boost, well…here, use this, it’s my stepladder.”  Then, put on a wistful expression and add, “I never knew my real ladder.  And my mother left us before I was even born.”

Ba-dump-bump.

That ought to make them glad to be dead.

by

Tir’d with all these, for restful death I cry, as, to behold desert a blogger born

Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday.  Further bulletins as events warrant.

I don’t know what to write today.  I’m really, really mentally fatigued.  I feel as if I’ve been working for forty days straight instead of just four.

I guess that’s at least slightly biblical, if you care about such things.  You know, raining forty days (and forty nights) or wandering in the desert for forty days while occasionally getting tempted by the devil and whatnot.

It’s all rather silly, of course, but it is memorable.  Anyway, I write stories about supernatural entities attacking college towns or trapping the spirit of a dead addict in a train station or about whole universes potentially colliding or teenagers becoming demi-vampires.  I can hardly complain if other people’s stories aren’t realistic.  Though, at least I don’t claim, let alone believe, that mine really happened.

Anyway, I haven’t written any new fiction in quite a while, and that is severely demoralizing.  I also haven’t played my guitar or even listened to any music this week.

I have listened to/am listening to Sean Carroll’s Mindscape podcast, because the first one of every month is his “Ask Me Anything” podcast, which lasts over 3 hours and is almost always very interesting.  If you like physics with a bit of philosophy thrown in, you might enjoy it.

Of course, what I should be doing‒or, rather, what I want to want fervently to be doing‒is reading Professor Carroll’s General Relativity textbook, Spacetime and Geometry, as well as other similar sources.  Or I want to wish to go on Brilliant dot org and work through their mathematics and physics and CS courses as completely as I can.  Or I want to yearn to get to work on the Babbel app, learning some German or some Russian or some French‒it doesn’t seem to have any Asian languages (last time I checked), so I can’t use it to bone up on my Japanese, nor to try to learn Cantonese or Mandarin or what have you.

But my mind is so tired.  I don’t even do any singing, let alone playing, like I said.

I know why I’m so tired, or at least, I know a big part of it:  chronic pain.  For just about a quarter of a century‒nearly half of my life‒I have been in pain every day, all day, except for those brief moments when I have had enough medications on board to do their own damage to my mind and my body (depending on which of the many medications it is that I’ve taken).

I’m also always grumpy nowadays, which is really disappointing.  This probably goes back to when my chronic pain really became chronic and exacerbated my depression and everything, but it’s become more persistent over time, and now it seems to be my default state.

The people who know me now just think of me as a grumpy and ornery person by nature; it’s even a bit of a joke, since I know that I am grumpy* and at least retain the capacity to be self-deprecating and not to hold it against people.

But that’s not the way I used to be!  That’s not who I was before my chronic pain started.  I did have trouble with depression (and I was, apparently, always autistic), and that probably sometimes made me irritable, but not like now.  I think‒I recall‒that I was usually a fairly upbeat and enthusiastic person, reasonably friendly and kind whenever I could be.

Anyone reading who knew me in the past, feel free to disabuse me of that notion if it’s wrong.  In some weird way, it might be comforting to learn that I’ve always been just an asshole, I simply didn’t know it back then.

Oh, and teeth; I used to have great teeth.  I took good care of them, flossed all the time and everything.  I had dentists tell me that I was a very boring patient.  But various of the meds I’ve taken (and the mental states into which I’ve fallen, to say nothing of the state prisons into which I’ve fallen) since my chronic pain started have more than decimated my oral hygiene, despite regular, frequent brushing and flossing.

I am a shambles.  I’m a twisted wreck of what I used to be, with only just enough in common with that self to remind me of it.  Or so it seems to me.

I don’t think I’m going to last much longer.  I do not want to last much longer‒not like this.  Every day is a trial by endurance, like the stupid “touch the truck” thing, but as far as I can see, there’s no prize…not even a stupid truck.

It’s more like Space Invaders:  see how long you can keep shooting down all the things that are trying to destroy you, but as you succeed, the onslaught becomes more and more difficult, and it never lets up except for brief seconds when it’s about to send a new, harder wave at you.

And then, once you finally, inevitably fail, it’s just…game over.  It might as well not have happened.  Maybe you can put your initials up if you lasted unusually long (thereby scoring more points than others), but no one really cares, and your mark will be displaced very soon anyway.

It reminds me of the final words of my story Solitaire, which you can get as a stand-alone story or in Kindle format or hard cover in Dr. Elessar’s Cabinet of Curiosities.  Now that’s a story that’s not silly, but it is very dark and horrifying.  It’s also short, so if you’re interested, it won’t take much of your time.

Okay, well, that’s it for now.  Unless you’re lucky, I’ll write a post tomorrow and also on Saturday.

TTFN

*I sometimes say that I am an amalgam of the Seven Dwarves:  I’m occasionally happy, I am sometimes sneezy, I’m quite bashful in many situations, I’m frequently sleepy but rarely enough to stay asleep for long, I’m definitely often dopey, I’m usually grumpy…but I’m always Doc.

by

Time, whose millioned accidents creep in betwixt blogs

Hello and good morning.

It’s Thursday, the 28th of May, which fact implies that May must have started on a Friday.  There are 7 days in a week, so the 28th is the final day of the 4th full week of the month.  Thus, the next day must be the beginning of a “new” week from the perspective of the month.  I’m pretty sure I’m right about this, but I’m not as confident as I ought to feel.  I could go check, of course‒and later, I probably will do so*‒but for now I want to sit with my postdiction.

I have this mental issue in which I feel significantly unsure even of straightforward things for which I “know” the outcome.  For instance, I have to keep track of the money value of sales and who gets the credit (and thus who gets paid and how much) for given sales.  Often, two people work on a sale, and the value is split between them evenly.  I do the splitting in my head, even when they sell for bizarre amounts that make no sense (don’t get me started).  Then I update “the board” and add all the various totals up:  the running total for the particular agents, the total amount sold of each package, the overall total for the day and the overall total for the week.  I do all this in my head, because I know I can, and it’s faster than using the calculator (for logistical, not computational reasons‒I cannot actually do arithmetic faster than a calculator).

But in the end, I check over all the numbers using Excel’s various auto-totaling functions.  This is not merely for the sake of thoroughness and to confirm accuracy, though it serves those purposes.  It’s also because I never feel sure.  Even if I’m splitting a 500 dollar deal two ways, I feel unsure that it’s 250 per person.

It is 250 per person, of course.  That’s basic, simple division.  It’s definitely correct.  I know that intellectually.  But I feel unsure.  It can be terribly annoying, to say nothing of producing anxiety and stress.

It might not bother me so much if I didn’t see so many people expressing and acting upon secure confidence in so many things which they cannot know and things that I know are not so.  Of course, I’m sure at least some of such seeming confidence is bluster and bravado; people are encouraged to act confident because other people respond to it.

There are probably sensible evolutionary reasons for this proclivity.  But there are also evolutionary reasons why young men are more likely to do risky things that get them hurt and/or killed, as well as to get in fights (sometimes lethal ones) with other young men, but that doesn’t mean we want to encourage such behaviors in the modern world.

I don’t really know what point I’m trying to make.  But then again, I don’t really know the point of anything or anybody.  As far as I can tell, there is no point, other than the fact that all this shit just is.  People can make up reasons and purposes and so on, they can imagine telos behind the universe, but pretty much every such proposed idea I’ve encountered has been just plain idiotic.  The infantile, simple-minded, wish-laden fairy tales into which people buy at all levels are just astonishing.  It would be funny, even hilarious, if it were not just so pathetic.

Even the writer of Ecclesiastes recognized that all is vanity.  Sure, he** probably went on to do some sophistry to try to convince himself to obey “YHWH”; it’s been a long time since I read the book.  But I get the feeling that the “all is vanity” point was what really stuck around in the foundations of his heart.

And I think he was probably right.  There probably is no deeper inherent meaning to anything, beyond the laws of Quantum Field Theory and General Relativity and whatever mathematical and physical structures underlie those structures.  I don’t expect that, as we drill down deeper into the nature of reality at its roots, we will find any implied meaning to anything, in the human sense.  But we will find out more about how to shape the universe to the degree that we can do it, so from a practical point of view it’s definitely worth learning as much as possible.  One never even begins to know what potential will be revealed by some fact of nature until one has that fact.

Anyway, enough of this.  Like everything else, this blog post has no point and I’m getting sick of it.  I hope you all have enjoyable days.  There’s no good reason for you not to try to do so.

TTFN

*I did, and I was correct.

**I feel reasonably confident in saying that essentially all of the books of the “Bible”, original and sequel, were written by men.  Supposedly, there was a Gospel according to Mary Magdalene, but the Lateran council or the council of Trent or one of those other goofy get-togethers where a bunch of ignorant but self-important men decided which stuff actually should be put in the Bible kept it out, as well as the apparent “Doubting Thomas” gospel or what have you.  I have to admit, I would be interested in reading at least part of Mary Magdalene’s take on things…that is, if I thought any of those writings were accurate or were likely to be hers, or that she even existed, or that any of the events they described actually happened.