despair

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“As it is lasting, so be deep!”

Well, it’s Monday again.  It’s also the first day of Hanukkah, which technically started at sundown last night‒which means it started not only at different times for different time zones, but also in different latitudes, since in the winter the sun sets earlier farther north than closer to the equator*.  It also rises later.  This is all due to the curvature of the Earth.

Of course, in summertime, the sun sets later the farther north one goes (or south if one is in the southern hemisphere).  If you’ve ever been in northern Europe in the summertime, you’ll know what I mean.  It can feel very strange for it not to be dark out yet at nearly eleven at night (for instance) if one is from the US, where things aren’t quite so disparate.

Anyway, I’m not really celebrating Hanukkah this year, any more than I celebrated Thanksgiving or any more than I will celebrate Christmas or New Years or any other such holidays.  I have a little stylized menorah graphic that I used to put up on “the board”, with an increasing number of candles with the days and everything, but I don’t think I’m going to do that this year.  It’s actually more depressing to do little superficial things to mark a holiday when one has no one with whom to celebrate.

Speaking of all this, by the way, I’m very sorry if some people are put off when I talk about my depressed and stressed and self-destructive thoughts.  I know they bother some people, though that in itself is a bit curious.  After all, they’re not your depressive and anxious and self-destructive thoughts.  Or maybe they are in a sense.  I don’t know.

I do know, though, that it seems that my dark, morose, and pro-mortalist posts seem to garner higher readership than my ones where I discuss some kind of mathematical or scientific or philosophical or political point. They are certainly more popular than my fiction.

The number of people who reliably read this blog, or at least click on it daily, is greater than the number of people who have ever bought a single one of my books or even my short stories**.  I don’t know why more people click on or “like” the dark posts, but I don’t mind it.  At least I can feel that there are people who hear it, even if there may be little “listening” involved.

Of course I’m heading in to work today.  Things have been slow at the office, and some of the people who work there are going through various events‒some positive, some negative‒that mean that some of them are unable to work as regularly as usual or to work at all in the short term, and it makes things slower and a bit dreary.  Of course, unless I’m sick, I go to the office.  I have nothing better to do (nor, really, anything worse, since that might be tempting also).

I do keep being tempted to go back on antidepressants, but they never seem to quite work out as I would hope, in the sense of actually correcting my depression for any significant length of time.  I’ve tried at least one member of nearly every class of antidepressant, and more than one of some.  They just tend to make me more disconnected and dissociated, honestly.  Maybe ECT would help more, but that’s hard to get nowadays, and the potential memory issues associated are worrisome.

SSRIs do tend to help my anxiety/social discomfort somewhat, but they affect my judgment, with negative outcomes.  For instance, I did not see the fact that I could end up a guest of the Florida DOC for 3 years when I was only trying to help others who also had chronic pain, like I have.  And therapy has never given me many durable results‒this is, I’m led to understand, not uncommon in people with ASD‒though it was often nice to have someone with whom I could speak freely and who would at least give me sympathy.  Still, it was pricey.

I certainly don’t want to disrespect my various therapists‒I do very much respect them, and they did their best for me, I’ve no doubt about that‒but I might have done as well having weekly visits to a sex worker.  I don’t think I would have wanted to partake in their regular “services” though; I think the prospect of having sex with someone you don’t know, let alone to whom you have any deep attachment, is very strange and seems uncomfortable.

It might sound like it could be good, but I think it would be unworkable if I tried it.  I don’t even like being patted on the shoulder by people with whom I am not close, and sometimes, depending on my mood, even by people with whom I am close.  But still, one hears stories of men who go to sex workers largely to have someone with whom they can freely just talk.

That would probably cost more, though, and possibly lead to legal problems, not to mention the facts of exploitation and so on, in which I have no desire to participate.

I don’t know what I’m getting at.  But it doesn’t matter.  I’m just tired of all this.  I don’t want to do it anymore.  I just want to sleep.

Anyway, I hope you have a good day.  And Happy Hanukkah, if you celebrate it.

*The mirror image of all this occurs in the southern hemisphere.

**Though people who actually read my stories do seem to enjoy them.  I’m just really not good at promoting myself.  This is probably tied to my whole self-hatred, self-destructive attribute cluster.

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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“I have seen the writing on the wall…”

It’s Monday again, unfortunately, and‒also unfortunately, certainly for you‒I am writing another blog post.  I thought that I had brought the mini lapcom back to the house with me on Friday, but apparently I didn’t do that.  I remember thinking about bringing it, but evidently that’s as far as I got.  I guess it’s not too important except for the fact that writing on the smartphone really seems to be exacerbating the arthropathy in my thumbs.

As far as I know, no one can tell any difference between my writing on the phone versus the computer anyway.  Maybe that shit’s all in my head, like all the rest of the shit of which my head is full.  Still, if I want my thumbs to recover, I should probably give myself a break from writing on the smartphone.

Of course, what I probably should do is stop wasting everyone’s time with this stupid blog.  I’m quite sure that some if not all of the people who read my posts do so out of politeness.  If I stop writing them, there will probably be a few people who will feel at least a small‒perhaps unnoticed but nevertheless real‒sense of relief.  I know that many of the things we all regularly do are pretty much pointless and are pursued out of a sense of duty or just politeness.

Not that I’m against politeness in general.  I have a few general attitudes toward things that I express as aphorisms, and two of them are:  Written language is the lifeblood of civilization, and courtesy is the lubricant of civilization.  But some things we are trained to think of as courtesy‒like where the utensils go in a place setting, or to greet other people with false* questions about their health and wellbeing‒are just customs, not really ways of avoiding abrasion in one’s interactions.

Anyway, the pointless that I’m making is, I suspect that not only am I doing something here that’s literally futile, it’s probably actually detrimental, as with so many of the things I do when I try to be positive.  I’m chewing up at least a little bit of my readers’ necessarily finite bandwidth, or RAM, or whatever metaphor you prefer, with my personal chaos.  I’m injecting negativity into the worldviews of anyone who reads my stuff seriously, and though I don’t think I’m wrong in my negative outlook, I know there are other perspectives that are more uplifting while nevertheless not being entirely delusional.

How’s that for a left-handed compliment?

Okay, well, what else do I have to say?  Not very much, I fear.  I am quite tempted just to stop doing this‒in case you can’t tell‒but not in order to free up my time or energy to write fiction or do music or art or anything creative.  I just sometimes feel that I ought to go quiet, just shut up and stop inflicting myself upon the world, in however small a way.  It’s often been the case that when I try to do good things, or creative things, in the long term it ends up blowing up in my and everyone else’s face(s).

If I just stop writing this‒if I just stop everything‒I wonder how long it would take for anyone really to notice.  I don’t ever seem to be good at getting attention when I’m hoping to do so.  Would the converse happen if I were to try not to get attention?  Or would it be more of the same?

Or am I, by speculating on such things, recognizing that I am trying to get attention by trying not to get attention, if that makes sense?

Who knows?  Who cares?  Why bother?

Not me.  I don’t know.  And I don’t have any good reason.

I hope you have a good day.

*I say “false” because, when people ask you how you’re doing or what have you, they don’t really want to know if you’re feeling any way but fine or great, and they certainly aren’t interested in hearing about any problems you might have, especially if you could actually use some help.

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No songs or pictures, just pathetic words of despite and destruction and despair

Well, it’s Tuesday.  I think my stunt (or whatever you might call it) yesterday has failed miserably.  I don’t know why I’m surprised, let alone disappointed.  I’m either just not good at that sort of thing, or I’m just not worthy of that sort of thing.

I don’t know if that quite made sense just now.  I’m apparently very bad at getting my feelings across, on top of the fact that, a lot of the time, I’m not quite sure specifically what I’m feeling.  They’re just a bunch of swirling, overpowering sensations that don’t ever seem to show on my face or in my voice.

Anyway, I have no subject on which to speak (so to speak) today, and it doesn’t really matter, because I seem incapable of conveying anything important to anyone for whom it could possibly matter.  It’s fine.  As Thomas Covenant said (before he ever went to the Land) this is what people are like:  futile.  He would change his point of view on that after many grueling and heartbreaking yet inspiring experiences, but I think he was onto something.

I’ve always had a bit of sympathy for Lord Foul in those books.  Part of this was just because he was so eloquent‒I’m a bit of a sucker for a good speaker‒but especially after I learned that he was trapped inside the arch of time, inside the Land, and he literally cannot possibly die or be permanently defeated while trapped there.  He hates everything in the Land and its world not just because it’s his nature to hate, but because he is trapped by and with everything there, potentially forever.  So if he is ever to be free to go anywhere else‒even to die‒he has to destroy the arch of time and thus that world.  It is personal to him, of course‒he’s not called the Despiser for nothing‒but it needn’t be.

Anyway, I am not trapped in the arch of time, or at least I’m not constrained from ever dying within it.  Or maybe my own arch of time is just that span of moments that began at birth (or conception) and will reach its other end at my death.  If that’s the case, I wouldn’t need to destroy the arch, just…complete it.

This is all metaphorical bullshit, I know.  Don’t misunderstand me.  I don’t have any misgiving that any of that could be real.  But the stories were good, at least the first two trilogies; I’ve never finished the last 4 books.  There is no denying that The Lord of the Rings is better, and much more inspiring and uplifting.  But the Thomas Covenant books do a better job of capturing the horror and despair and terror of not just fighting evil, but of being evil.

That’s probably why it appealed to me.  My innate tendency is to be, well, perhaps not evil, but destructive.  I feel terribly angry so much, so often, and I just want to break and burn this world, this life, that is so bloody uncomfortable.  But I know that I don’t have any business hurting other people, almost none of whom are ever deliberately hurting me.  So I bottle it up and try to calm it, and I don’t act on it.

But like I said in my reversal of Nebula’s last line to Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3, I wasn’t born to be a dad, I was born to be a destroyer.  I’ve just always tried to fight against that, and I have in some small ways succeeded.  I even swung things in the other direction at times, becoming a doctor and a dad.  Of course, I eventually failed miserably at both of those things, as usual, but I did some good in the meantime.

And there is one being I have a proprietary right to destroy.  I just need to quit the foreplay.

Anyway, this has been weird, I suspect, but what else is new?  I hope you all have a good day.

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Six songs to try to express a little bit of how I am doing

I don’t have the energy or will or “spoons” to write much today.  I’m just about ready to tap out.  My “executive function” is so low that I think the only thing I’m capable of executing is myself, and even that is difficult.  I certainly don’t have the capacity to act to save myself.  I keep trying to express just how fucking horrible I am doing, but I don’t think it’s coming across.  I guess it doesn’t matter much.

Anyway, today I figure I’ll embed some songs I’ve recorded myself performing that do something to convey my difficulties.  Some are originals, some are covers.  I don’t know if they will work, either.

It doesn’t really matter.  I don’t have the will to take any action about anything.  I can only do what I do every day, automatically, and I am getting closer and closer to being unable to do even that.  I think I’m pretty nearly completely out of gas, and I am basically only a burden to the world.  It doesn’t help that we’re moving offices this month, which I hate, but that’s just a little insult to add to the injuries that are leading to the end of things.

Anyway, here are the songs.

It’s not a perfect expression or set of expressions, but it’s about all I’m capable of, even after a weekend “off”.  It doesn’t matter.  I’ve basically given up.  I’m so tired already and it’s just Monday morning.

I hope you each have a great day, individually, and that you all have a great day, collectively.

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No April foolishness in this post

I am not making any jokes or or otherwise messing about in an “April Fools” sense here today.  I despise “pranks” of the sort that people tend to pull on April Fools’ Day, and think people who do them should be castrated/spayed/neutered immediately.  No, I’m not kidding.  Maybe I wouldn’t ever actually carry out that sort of penalty‒I am a bit of a softy sometimes‒but that is my urge when even merely contemplating such deliberate, quasi-malicious trickery.  Actually, that’s my restrained, milder response.  Most of the time I feel murderous at pranks, even when I’m not the target.

It’s the start of a new month, and I am not enthusiastic about it.  Still, it’s not as though I can do much to avoid it.  It’s one of those stupid, inexorable things in the world that make it so often so repugnant.

I think I’m going to try to avoid discussing updates about my ongoing “plan” from now on.  It just seems to make other people upset or sad or concerned, but it doesn’t actually motivate any kind of active response of any kind.  It’s like the memes say, when someone’s mental illness‒especially suicidal thoughts‒is made open and discussed, such people are avoided, they are called “attention-seeking”, they are told to toughen up or stop complaining, to smile, to get out and exercise, to seek support of friends and those who love you‒as if those weren’t the very people you want to avoid burdening or inconveniencing.

It’s only after someone actually commits suicide that people start saying things like “I wish I could have done something,” or saying that they didn’t know, that they didn’t see it coming and so on.  But of course, they had warning, they had information, if not awareness, and they could have done something.  But they figured it was up to the person having the trouble to seek help.  As if someone whose brain is not functioning properly has the wherewithal to help themselves, especially when they are on their own and have no local support system whatsoever, and other issues including chronic pain, insomnia, and neurodevelopmental issues.

They might as well tell someone with liver failure to just buck up and for crying out loud get back to using that liver to cleanse the various toxins from their blood and to process their food and maintain the biliary system and all that goes with the liver, when it’s the liver that is failing.

I’m not saying that all people are like that, of course.  There are people who definitely try to do what they can.  They are few and far between, however.

It doesn’t matter, I guess.  Nothing does.  And I am certainly no one’s idea of a worthy cause, to be honest.  So I guess I shouldn’t feel snippy about the fact that there’s no way for me to be rescued.

I don’t know what else to write about, otherwise.  Maybe I shouldn’t write about anything.  Maybe I should just quit writing.  Maybe I should quit trying to pretend that anything I say or do is of any importance or even interest.  It’s a bit pathetic.

I’m just tired.  I’m tired of trying to “fit in”, tired of trying to pretend to be positive, tired of trying to pretend to be healthy so that I don’t inconvenience other people too much.  It’s all bullshit.  I’m not healthy, I’m not happy, and I haven’t been in years.  I see no positive future for me.  There is only an ongoing stretch of years, decades, who knows how long, alone, depressed, in pain, an outsider, an alien, a stranger, who will die alone in the end.

I have often been the one providing support for others throughout my life.  I always tried to be there for people.  I volunteered in various places, tutored and helped out first other kids and then younger people, and of course, I went to medical school and became a doctor.  Even in prison I worked in education, trying to help other prisoners get their GEDs.  Maybe some part of me was thinking that was an investment‒that if I tried to be and do good, to help others, when it was my time to need help, I would be worthy of getting it, worthy of rescue.

Of course, that’s not how the universe works.  If anything, when left to its own devices, the universe rewards selfish assholes, at least in the short term.  In the long term, everyone dies anyway, good or bad, and how much a person suffers in the meantime is in no way dependent upon how good or evil a person is.  And there is no credible reason I have ever encountered to suspect that matters will be set right in some form of afterlife.  It’s all just futile and maddening.

Anyway, that’s enough for now.  Obviously I’m very grumpy, and I’m still sick (though maybe slightly less so than yesterday), and I don’t want to deal with anything!  I want to rest.  I want to escape.  There’s nothing for me here.  “I don’t want to spoil the party, so I’ll go.”  Or at least, I ought to go.

I don’t know.  I am at a loss.

I hope you all are doing and feeling far better than I am and do.  Please try to have a good day and a good month.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TTFN

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I want this all to end

It’s Tuesday now, and I’m writing this blog post on my laptop computer (the little one, not the regular sized one).  The laptop is slightly more awkward for typing on when there are bumps and shakes in a vehicle, but the vastly greater speed with which I’m able to type on it more than makes up for that—though it does not assuage the frustration.

I’m already exhausted (mentally) after only one day of work.  I don’t think it’s the work per se that’s so exhausting, it’s the environment, the people, the noise, the frustrations, the fact that other people arrive late or not at all, so many little frustrations.  There’s so little predictability in their behavior, and what there is is so often illogical.

I have, in general, identified more with Melkor than with Sauron in Tolkien’s universe—largely because he’s the Big Boss—but sometimes I can understand Sauron’s desire for order, and for forcing other creatures to be more orderly.  Of course, the way he goes about that is pretty stupid, but whataya gonna do?  As Gandalf said, he is a “wise fool” (a great expression).

Anyway, I like Lord Foul better than either of those two, and I like Doctor Doom most of all.  Doctor Doom is the sort of character about whom Christopher Nolan could make a movie trilogy, presenting him in a more down-to-earth fashion in a nearly realistic story, as he did with Batman, because Doom is not the product of radioactive spider bites, nor is he the last survivor of a star faring people with powers because of his alien nature, nor is he otherwise enhanced.  He is a human, but with a brilliant, inventive intellect and an obsessive drive.

Why am I writing about this stuff right now?  I have now idea.  This is all stream of consciousness, and that stream flows faster when I’m typing.  I’ve written all this so far in less than ten minutes (first draft), and I’m already almost halfway to my target word count.  I have to set a target, not so that I don’t go below it, but so that I don’t go too far over it.  I could probably gabble on here interminably.

But I want it to end.  I’m so very, very tired, and I have very little joy in my life.  I mean, I’m pleased that The Chasm and the Collision is still an enjoyable read even now.  But of course, I’m probably one of two people in the world who has actually read it.  My mother died just days after it was published—I tried to read some of it to her in her hospice bed, from her own miniature Kindle, but it was clear she wasn’t even following.  That’s too bad.  I think she really would have liked it.  I think she had been looking forward to reading it.

It’s such a me fact that my most wholesome, family-friendly story involves a threat of destruction to two universes and a villain who is unknowingly in the thrall of a much greater, larger scale “villain” or destructive force that threatens all universes, potentially.  That’s my meta-level villain; its influence is felt in many of my other stories, though I don’t always make that explicit.  I have so many ideas for my large-scale omniverse (formerly thought of as a “metaverse” before Schmuckerberg stole my term), so much backstory and intersections and connections and so on, but none of that is ever going to happen or be revealed or anything.  It’s sad, but, as a character in my darkest ever story says, “Life’s like that, I suppose.”

I wish I could sleep for a really long time, just to rest and recreate myself, but that’s not an available option.  I don’t simply long for “suspended animation” because that’s just like pausing a game; you wake up in the same state you were in when you laid down.  The only point to that would be living to see a future you wouldn’t otherwise have seen.  It’s not any kind of a cocoon, a chrysalis, an Adam Warlock kind of thing, where you change and grow and heal.

I don’t know why I’m writing about comic books and other wildly fictional characters.  Perhaps it’s because the real world is not only so stressful but is also so stupid.  This emergent system that is the whole human race interacting with itself is just an astonishing example of idiocy on performance enhancers.  I really am sick of them.

If I were Doom, I would decide to commit myself to saving them, correcting them, trying to make the world as good as I know it could be.  But of course, that leads Doom to be thought of as a villain (he has other psychopathology that contributes to that, of course).

Okay, well, I’m approaching my target, and obviously I have nothing to say, but that doesn’t stop me.  I’m really tired and depressed and discouraged.  I cannot go on like this for long.  Right now, I’m trying to hold on until at least next Friday, when I’m finally getting an autism assessment, but I don’t even know if that’s enough to cling to even for so short a time.

We shall see.

by

I don’t have the energy to do a Shakespeare quote title

Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday, and this is technically the 4th blog post of the week, though yesterday’s post felt a bit disjointed and erratic.  I didn’t edit it much, and frankly, I’m not sure I had anything to say 

I did, though, get the “inspiration”, or perhaps the geas, to throw together that little slide-show-style video to the tune of Another Brick in the Wall Part 3 that I shared yesterday.  I did the whole thing in the morning before I posted, and threw it up on here and on Instagram.  I didn’t share a version of it to YouTube, because I figured it might get blocked.  I know it wouldn’t be monetized, but my channel isn’t monetized, anyway.

I don’t know if anyone really caught the meaning I was conveying.  Basically it’s a montage of pictures from my former life, of the people I love whom I no longer see, some of whom are dead, and basically all of whom are gone from my life.  Early on, the pictures are dominated by, or at least include, people who are dead.  Then there are loads of shots of my kids, some including my ex-wife and even me, then some of my coworkers and so on, switching from one to the next to the beat of the song.  Then, at the end, there’s a massively altered picture of me that looks just a bit like I’m made out of bricks:

The point is that, as the song sings, “I don’t need no arms around me…”  It’s showing all the people whose arms are not around me* and probably never will be again, and so on.  It’s appropriate and it is just, though; I’m not a person who is worth embracing.

Anyway, those last two songs on the first album of The Wall have always meant a lot to me, albeit in a very dark way.  They’re basically about giving up, about recognizing that you’re alone and you’re always going to be alone, and that’s just the way it is.  Also, relationships are perilous, especially if you’re the sort of person people tend to end up leaving.  To quote a different song that I’ve already covered, “Everyone I know goes away in the end.”  How can you not want to build a wall?

Some of us come with some sort of pre-built wall that requires active and sustained effort to lower, and which spontaneously regenerates even as you try to break it down.  It gets terribly exhausting.

Of course, it’s the following song from The Wall that’s most prominent to me, and I am going to start working on a video for that, but it won’t be a one morning thing made in a sort of compulsive fever dream state like this last one was.

Yesterday I was so wound up by the time I posted my “video” I had to close my little office door before work because I couldn’t stop crying for a while.  It wasn’t anything extravagant; I wasn’t sobbing or anything.  I was just sort of quietly crying, but it didn’t want to stop, and I didn’t want the people in the office to see me when they arrived.

I’m beginning the final novel of the light novel series I mentioned before, after which I’ll be pretty much done with every book I can find any interest in reading.  I cannot even sustain my interest in the e-book version I found of Susan Kay’s Phantom, which is one of my favorite books.

None of the hundreds of fiction or nonfiction books in my Kindle library catch my attention; they all seem boring.  And none of the books on Amazon seem interesting at all.  Many of them seem just frankly moronic.  To quote another song from The Wall, “…nothing is very much fun anymore.  And I…can…feel…one of my turns coming on.”

I haven’t played any guitar so far this week.  I certainly haven’t written any fiction.  I haven’t drawn anything apart from a weird doodle of a sort of demonic cartoon caterpillar on the top of one of our deal sheets.

I used to do that sort of thing all the time.  In undergrad and in med school, though I always brought a notebook and tried to take notes, that’s never really been the way I learn things.  So, my college and medical school notebooks are a smorgasbord of doodles‒some comical, some dark, some frankly horrifying, some very rough and some rather artistic.  I don’t know what has happened to any of them.

I feel as though I’m approaching the end of all this.  And so, I intend to make a sort of video to the song Goodbye, Cruel World, the last song on the first album of The Wall, and maybe release it as a message.  It’s not an iff** sort of statement.  For instance, I might not finish or post a video and yet still kill myself.  I came pretty close yesterday.  But no one seems to have noticed.

And, of course, even if I post it, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I will kill myself or have killed myself.  I might fail, even if I try.  And someone might even stop me.

Ha ha, just kidding.  That last scenario is definitely not gonna happen.

Anyway, that’s it for today.  I hope (and trust) that almost all of you are feeling much better than I am.

TTFN

*Actually, technically, if I were to show pictures of everyone whose arms are not around me and will not be, I’d have to show pictures of everyone in the world, which would take too much time.

**That’s mathematics-speak for “if and only if”.

by

No more Shakespeare quotes for now – they’re just pretentious and irritating, anyway

Hello and good morning.  I don’t really know what I’m going to write about today—even more so than usual.  As you may be aware, I don’t tend to begin my blog posts with any clear subject matter in mind; I just start writing.

This is not, by the way, how I write my fiction.  There, I tend to have the basic plot in my head from the start, but I don’t outline or anything along those lines, except in my head.  I just write the story as it comes to me, but it’s clear that it develops below the surface when I do it.

I must say, I’ve become very frustrated recently with the process of trying to share my books and/or music with different people via, for instance, Instagram and Threads, which I mentioned earlier this week (I think).  I briefly even rather liked interacting on Threads, because it seemed like there were a lot of interesting but otherwise “normal” people there—normal to me, anyway.  I left occasional comments here and there that got shared and “liked” and to which people responded more positively than negatively.  I even had one person comment, on something I’d written:  “Nicest.  Reply.  Ever.”  Really.

Well, now I’m blocked (temporarily) from posting and replying or anything on Instagram and Threads, but when I was shown that there was some kind of suspension and I “appealed”, it said something along the lines of “Oh, so sorry, that was a mistake.  You haven’t done anything wrong.”  I don’t know if something had been flagged because I sometimes had the page open on a computer still when I looked at it on my phone or something and commented from more than one machine in quick succession, or what.

Anyway, I’m still blocked from sharing or commenting—supposedly through the 17th, though it’s unclear whether that means the beginning of the 17th or the end thereof.  And it’s kind of taking the wind out of my sails.  I don’t actually think that the universe “sends messages” to people, but nevertheless, it is possible to learn about the nature of things from the consistent pattern of events.  Once bitten, twice shy, they say, and I’ve been bitten too often.

There’s the old saying about the fact that a cat that walks once on a hot stove will never do so again, but will also never walk on a cold stove.  Often this is presented in a derogatory fashion—oh, those poor, simple-minded, overly risk-averse creatures who cannot understand how stoves work!

But cats are no more foolish for avoiding stovetops than a human would be for looking both ways before running into a usually non-busy street.  You might rush into such a road a thousand times without incident, but that doesn’t matter if on the thousand-and-first time you’re killed or maimed for life.

There are some things in the world, of course, that are well worth at least some risk of burning your feet or getting hit by a car, but being able to interact on Instagram and Threads with people who seem interesting or, at least, seem to be members of a species distantly related to mine, is not one of those things.  And it’s certainly not worth it just to try vainly to spread word about my books and music.  The world will little note nor long remember much of anything, and it will certainly not remember anything about me.

So, anyway, it was a stupid idea, but it was briefly slightly exciting, at least on the level that something counts as “exciting” for me—meaning that I’ve had a few quiet chuckles here and there, encountered some people who shared some potentially useful resources (I doubt I’ll be taking advantage of them, given how that inquiry has worked out) and even looked forward to people’s responses on the few occasions they happen.

Most of the people who “liked” my shared songs* and books and whatnot are probably bots, anyway.

Oh, and by the way, to the “brilliant” people who run Brilliant dot org—when a person comes back to your site to study and learn about things, and then is immediately afterward bombarded with emailed warnings and pop-up alerts about “your streak is about to end” in clear attempt to cajole them to come on more frequently, for people like me, it makes me want to avoid the fucking thing, which is what I’ve ended up doing for long stretches several times now.  That’s particularly frustrating, because otherwise I like Brilliant.org a lot, and think it is a good learning venue, at least a supplemental one.

I also just finished the latest volume of a light novel series I’ve been reading that was pretty good, and that’s frustrating, because there’s not even a scheduled release date for the next volume, and I can’t seem to find anything else interesting to read.  So, life continues to be a quiet, subtle, understated Hell, that burns not with open flame but with slow, steady friction as if one were constantly being rubbed by burlap and sandpaper.

Oh, well.

TTFN

*One of which, ironically, was “Like and Share”.