life

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“Try to kill it all away, but I remember everything.”

It’s Tuesday morning, and I’m writing this blog post on my laptop computer because I wanted to write in a way that felt more natural (to me) than does poking away at the stupid smartphone (oxymoron?) with my sore thumbs.

I’m still on the recovery arc of my respiratory infection; I’m coughing somewhat less, and I’m not really bringing much phlegm up anymore, but the cough is still there and is more than slightly annoying.

I sometimes wonder if I could have some fungal infestation in my lungs that won’t go away on its own*, or even if I could be developing lung cancer or laryngeal cancer.  To be honest, that latter two possibilities aren’t entirely negative.  They feel more wholesome than a fungus, since I really dislike even the smell of mushrooms or mildew, and cancer would be a good, relatively slow death sentence, since I have neither the health insurance nor the inclination to seek any treatment if I were to develop cancer.

This is on my mind rather prominently because, starting last night, rather out of the blue, and for the first time ever, I thought what is truly and literally the most horrible thought that I’ve ever had in my life:  I wished that I would simply forget that I had ever met my ex-wife, and thus that we had ever gotten married and, of course, that we had ever had any children.

I cannot wish never to have actually met her and had children—I would not wish for anything that would imply their nonexistence, even though all such wishes are trivial and powerless.  I just wish I could forget all of it, because it’s all just a source of pain for me now, and it’s indisputably the case that I provide no benefit to my children (let alone my ex-wife) anymore.

I guess it’s a little like that movie The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which I’ve never seen** and never intend to see.  Make no mistake, if I could eliminate my memories of my ex-wife and my kids, I don’t think it would solve any problems.  I doubt it would make me any less depressed.  But at least I wouldn’t just keep missing them and thinking about them and about what a failure I am at the things that matter by far the most to me, and how the people I’ve loved most in my life have all left of their own accord sooner or later, because being around me for too long is literally detrimental.

Of course, the fact that I am living in Florida would require some kind of retroactive justification.  Though I could surely confabulate some manner of explanation—I’m nothing if not good at conjuring stories—it would probably nag at me, and I’d try to look into what really happened in all the missing time between when I first met my ex and when I last saw any of my former family in person, about twelve years ago.

When I first got out of prison and went up to visit my parents and sister, my Dad specifically said that I was welcome to stay with them.  He knew that I was writing my books, and my parents both supported the idea of me being an author (they were avid readers).  But at the time, though I was grateful for the offer—I’m not sure I adequately expressed that gratitude, but I felt it—I wanted to come back down to Florida, to live where I live now, because my kids were here and I wanted to be close to them so I could be part of their lives.

Of course, it was they who didn’t really want me to be part of their lives, and indeed, my son didn’t/doesn’t even want to interact with me at all.  So, I’ve been completely wasting my time down here.  Sure, I’ve written stories and wrote and played some music, and I’ve been writing this stupid, pointless, useless, valueless*** blog most days—but all of that, when added to a buck fifty, won’t even buy you the cheapest cup of coffee at Starbuck’s.

I wonder how my writing and stories would have been different if I forgot my family.  I wonder how my life would be different.  Almost certainly, it would be no better; the tendency to fuck everything up is inherent in me, so it probably doesn’t matter what my circumstances are.

I hate my life and I hate myself, and the only person from whom I cannot be separated is myself, the person I hate most in all the universe.  I guess what I really want to have erased is not just my memory of my ex-wife and my children, but me.

Unfortunately, though I do not consider suicide immoral, I do find it difficult, due to powerful biological drives that cannot simply be voluntarily overcome by effort of will, any more than I can choose not to digest food or not to breathe.  Thus, not conscience, but an evolutionarily selected drive, makes a coward of me.

Come on, cancer!  Heck, I’d be willing to embrace the fungus****, I think.  I’ll even settle for just an accident, as long as it doesn’t get innocent people hurt.  This whole continued existence thing was ill-advised from the first, and now I’m just throwing good money after bad, one of the classic logical and behavioral fallacies.  Something needs to be done.

Oh, well.  I hope all of you, at least, have a good day.

*I know, I know, it hasn’t been very long, it’s just that these are the sorts of things that go through my excuse for a mind.

**As far as I can recall, anyway.

***To say nothing of “redundant”.

****”Embrace the fungus” almost sounds like a catchphrase, but I don’t think it’ll ever become popular.

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This is the title, not a deed

It’s Monday morning again, despite popular demand, and here I am again, writing a blog post to start the week (despite lack of more or less any demand).  Welcome!

It’s already stupidly muggy here in south Florida, even though it’s only the last day of the first week (the first seven day stretch, not the first Sunday through Saturday period) of April.  And, of course, the world is stupid overall.

But what else is new?  Individual humans can be quite intelligent (in my experience, often far more so than they would credit themselves to be) but humans in large numbers tend to be dragged down by the lowest common denominators or the weakest links or whatever other metaphor you want to use for the least impressive aspects of human beings, either between or within individuals (or both).

As for anything else, well, I’m steadily getting better from my bronchitis, which is certainly something I prefer to continuing to have it.  I’m also trying some newish shoes (not a new make or model, but a slightly tweaked size) that seems to be better for walking than some of my prior ones.

I haven’t read anything from any books in the last 10 days or so‒more or less since I started getting sick‒and though it’s weird, it may be a useful mental break.  To be honest, I’ve had a hard time getting into any books recently, whether fiction or nonfiction, and maybe I just need to clear my head before starting back into things.

Of course, I could go and do some Brilliant dot org stuff and really bone up on my STEM* knowledge.  I could also work on learning some new languages using Babbel, of which I am a subscriber.  I had thought about learning Russian‒women speaking Russian just sound really…good for some reason, and I thought it might be nice to be able to converse with such women‒but given recent politics and conflicts, it’s slightly awkward to be learning Russian right now.  I’d also love to learn more German, or maybe French, and I could use a bit of refreshing on my Spanish, which is rusty.

Unfortunately, Babbel doesn’t really have any Asian languages, or I’d want to use it to improve my Japanese.  I’m a fan and proponent of learning other languages‒I think doing so helps one understand one’s own native language better and to grasp the structure and nature of languages and of thought itself, or at least the logical conveyance thereof.

More likely and more seriously, I’ve been thinking about doing some more deep learning on, well, deep learning, neural nets, as well as general neuroscience and computer science.  I have some background in many of these areas‒for instance, we had a truly wonderful neuroscience textbook in med school that I really loved‒but I would like to understand more.  I’m also interested in complexity and chaos theory and information theory in general.

Who knows whether any of this will ever come to fruition or if I will ever learn enough for it to matter?  It would be nice to make some contribution to human knowledge in some way, and not just by random pontifications here on a blog that’s read by maybe 30 people on a good day.

This is probably all pie in the sky stuff, anyway.  I don’t know what I’m actually going to do, except that if I’m not able to improve my chronic pain significantly, then all other bets are off.  In the meantime, I almost want to put out an appeal for requests (or a request for appeals) from readers.  It’s the sort of thing people with YouTube channels (and similar) do by getting Patreon accounts, where people pay some nominal amount to be patrons and are supposed to get some form of extra benefits through that, like recommending movies to which to react, or asking “ask me anything” type questions, that sort of thing.

I guess I wouldn’t mind people asking me to write about certain topics or subjects‒it might be better than just shouting into the vacuum, hoping someone notices.  Maybe it would get me more readers.

So , if any of you have any requests about things you want me to discuss‒within reason, of course‒then feel free to mention it in the comments below.  And by below, I mean below here on the website robertelessar.com, not on the website formerly known as Twitter or on Facebook or Bluesky or Threads or whatever.  Maybe if I were doing this as a full time job, I could commit to monitoring such venues thoroughly, but unless there is someone out there who really does want to be my patron, then I can only do this in my spare time‒like now, while I’m commuting to the office.  So please, if you actually want to give me feedback, come here to do it.

Thanks.  In the meantime, I hope you have a good week.

*I recently saw someone recommend the STEM acronym be changed to STEAM in one video from Computerphile, I think‒maybe it was Bill Maher‒because the person was pointing out that we need to have exposure to the “arts” (and humanities in general) if we want people to get exposed to interesting ideas and creativity to apply to their science, technology, engineering, and math stuff.  The argument was well made, and I’m not going to do it justice here, just bringing it up.

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I was out sick yesterday

It’s Friday, and I apologize, but I did not write a blog post yesterday (Thursday).  I also did not go into the office yesterday.  I was feeling a bit on the mend Wednesday morning, but by the evening, I was totally wiped out, and yesterday morning, I realized that I did not really have the strength to go to the office.  So I stayed at the house.

Believe me, I would have preferred otherwise.  I don’t really like the room where I live.  The only really positive things about it are, it’s where my stuff is, for what that’s worth, and it’s where I can’t randomly have people intruding on my time and energy.

It’s a bit of a paradox, or at least it’s a state with competing/conflicting forces and pressures acting upon it.  On the one hand, I am very lonely, and I really wish I had friends with whom I could speak and interact comfortably, and with whom I could do fun things.  But on the other hand, social interactions have just gotten more and more stressful for me over time, and I always feel like every relationship of any depth, that I have ever had in my life, I have screwed up, and that any future ones will likewise fall apart and fill me with regret will make my depression and loneliness even worse.

I’ve said it here before, but I am most certainly not convinced that it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.  There should be caveats about that skepticism, though, since simple answers are almost always incomplete.  The answer to that issue can depend very much on how one lost one’s love.  If one lost it because of basic force majeure, something beyond anyone’s control, it might not lead to a state of absolute regret, and is much less likely to engender (or worsen) self-loathing.

But if one loses love because the person one loves, and to whom one is dedicated, decides that one is just not worth it, that they don’t want to be with one anymore despite years of time together, because one is…challenged by various issues‒well, it can be hard to blame the other person for wanting to leave, or to blame anyone else for wanting to leave, and so it can be all the more devastating, making an already tenuous self-image ever worse.

And of course, romantic relationships are intrinsically difficult.  They are also very important in many ways, though I suppose that in a brutally “red in tooth and claw” world they would be a luxury at best.

I don’t know what point I’m making.  How did I even get on this subject?  Oh, right, I was discussing the fact that I don’t like the room in which I live but that at least I’m relatively free from having other people interlope without my invitation.

The prospect of moving somewhere else also feels too stressful to contemplate, frankly.  Again, this sort of stuff is easier if one has friends and loved ones/companions.  Even if they don’t contribute to a process, just having someone with whom to be able to relax is beneficial.

I didn’t realize how lucky I was in my young life to have been the third born of three kids, so I always had people older than I looking out for me.  I also stayed in the same school system from kindergarten through senior year of high school.  Then I stayed with a new, basic friend group through college, and that was helpful, especially since they were all people with similar interests and intelligence levels.

Then, of course, after college I got married and (apart from medical school) my wife was basically my “special interest”.  I think that’s sort of the way I am, at least about friendships and romantic relationships (though there is a very small sample size of the latter).

So, I didn’t really seek out or desire any serious other friendships while I was married.  Unfortunately, that meant that, once my wife “broke up” with me, I didn’t really have anyone around for support.  But there were people who were more than willing to take advantage of the things I was good at and who relied on the fact that I was not good at recognizing manipulations and ulterior motives and so on.

Then, of course, I ended up being a guest of the Florida DOC, precisely because I was such a handy sucker/fool.

I don’t know why I’m going into all this nonsense.  I don’t think it’s likely to achieve anything, except to convey the fact that I know I have gradually lost a lot of good things that I had that made me able to tolerate and even enjoy living in the human world.  But I didn’t know they served that function, and now that they are gone, I don’t know how to do it on my own.

Oh, well, it’s not like anyone is guaranteed any good things when they’re born, and even most of the things we think of as “rights” are not really something any part of nature lets us take for granted, apart from death itself.

On that upbeat note, have a good day, please.

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“Don’t you know you’re gonna…”

It’s Friday morning, at last.  I don’t know whether or not I’ll be working tomorrow, but either way, I’m glad the main week is done.  I feel as though these five days have lasted for months.

My pain seems to be creeping back toward its baseline level, which still sucks, but it’s way better than it has been earlier this week.  I hope it doesn’t just bounce back up once I’ve become relieved (relatively).  That would really bite.

I’ve been trying to exercise carefully and consistently, and that’s at least been okay.  I’m also always trying to adjust my shoes and socks from day to day, just to see if they make any difference.  Sometimes they seem to do so.  Of course, I’m being quite unscientific about this, changing more than one variable at once (and of course it’s very hard to do blinded studies, let alone double-blinded ones, when one is working on oneself).  There is a fair amount of desperation involved in all of this, which is probably not too surprising when one is trying to relieve or at least diminish pain.

I have had no ideas or inclination regarding any new stories, nor have I even touched a guitar.  I’ve spent a fair amount of time puttering through Threads and occasionally Instagram to distract myself (and sometimes BlueSky and the other one).  I’m following them at least partly out of novelty; they are websites I’ve never really used prior to recent weeks to months, so they haven’t gotten too boring yet.  Also, it was through Threads that I found the place that did my autism assessment, so that’s a real benefit.  But such short-format, chaotic sites discourage (albeit unintentionally) any depth and nuance of discussion.

Of course the Website Formerly Known As Twitter has always been a bit of a cesspool, precisely because it just encourages the equivalent of interaction via sound bite.  And since Musk®, by Elon™  has taken it over, both it and he have gotten worse.  I almost cannot believe that he indulges himself in such illogic and irrationality as he seems to do on the site, and that it has so leaked over into his real life.  Then again, even Ayn Rand, a fierce advocate of reason, fell victim to her own personality cult.

These are examples of the fact that it can be very difficult to maintain one’s clear-headedness without any input from others, and firm input at that.  This is why we have peer review in science (and various incentives to disprove each other in rigorous ways).

No great mind is ever error free, not even the greatest, whoever that might be.  It’s probably not possible for any finite mind to be error free*, and I’m not sure that even an infinite mind, if such an idea makes sense, could be error free.

Of course, none of it really matters in the long run, but in the short run there is much needless suffering in the world that could at least be mitigated if people would just calm down a bit and try to let reason govern them.  Alas, that’s an awful lot to ask of naked house apes.  They are saddled with all the evolutionary history that leads such jumped-up monkeys to hurl their feces at each other more often than to seek mutual understanding.

They also have a regrettable tendency to feel that they are right, that they just know something, and to be aggressively opposed to self-doubt.  That, I suspect, may be the attribute that will lead to the demise of the human race and possibly all other life on this planet.

I know the studies have been inconsistently replicated, but there are some experiments that indicate that people with depression evaluate themselves (and presumably the world) more realistically than those who are not prone to it.  Other people all tend to rate themselves above the median in most things**, whereas depressed people seem inclined to accuracy, not merely to downgrade themselves (at least when not actively depressed).

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, self-confidence beyond a certain minimum requirement is inherently suspect.  I don’t trust people who trust themselves too much; they are much more likely to make errors and not to correct them, and then to compound and double down on such errors.  Current US politics is awash with this monkey-work, as is big business, and it can only be sustained for so long before the bubble must burst, and a bursting bubble is a violent event that can cause a great deal of harm.

This dysfunction of thought and communication is not isolated in the political right, though currently their pathologies are more immediately consequential and potentially disastrous.  But the left has its share of unthinking monkeys, too, and they often encourage and trigger the monkeys on the right.

As for me, I don’t consider myself a member of either camp.  I am orthogonal overall to the left-right axis of human politics.

And with that peculiar statement, I’ll bring this post, and hopefully this week, to a close.  If I work tomorrow, I’ll probably write a post.  Either way, please try to have a good day and a good weekend.

*Though errors are free in that you don’t have to pay for them in advance‒but they can cost you after the fact.

**It’s possible, in principle, for most people to be above average, when by average you refer to the arithmetic mean, but it is not possible‒by definition‒for the majority of people to be above the median.

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I can’t think of a Shakespeare based title right now

Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday, and I’m writing this blog post on my laptop computer instead of on my smartphone, because yesterday when leaving the office, I felt like carrying my laptop computer with me.  That’s it.  There’s no better reason than that.  I was still in a lot of pain, but since trying to be careful with my back wasn’t making any difference, I figured the extra load of a pound or two couldn’t matter much.  It didn’t, as far as I can tell.

I don’t have any subject about which to write at the moment, and that’s beginning to get troubling, though I’m not entirely sure why that should be; certainly, it’s never slowed me down before.  I can always seem to write, the way some people can always seem to talk, and the good thing about writing is that I can go on and on about whatever subject I choose, just indulging myself, and I don’t have to stammer to a stop at some point because I realize that no one nearby has any interest in—and often no idea about—whatever I’m trying to discuss.

For the most part, people try to be patient with me, and for the most part, I try to pay attention to when people are obviously getting bored.  But it’s nice not to have to worry about it.  Anyone who isn’t interested in what I’m writing simply doesn’t have to read.

My pain is slightly less intrusive this morning.  I can move a bit more easily than yesterday without having to stop and hold still for a bit every time as if I’ve been stabbed or something.  It still hurts, but then, it always hurts.

I kept having an idea go through my head yesterday—it’s not a new idea—about possibly trying to write a new story, starting and finishing entirely on my smartphone using Google Docs.  I don’t know whether I would enjoy it or not, or if I would even do it; currently I don’t so much as have a candidate idea for a new story.  And, of course, those of you who have followed this blog for a while will recall that I recently wrote a new novella, called Extra Body, but that after an edit or two I lost interest in it and just published it here.  If you haven’t already, you can read it here.  If you like it, maybe you’ll look into some of my other stories.  Heck, maybe you can share and maybe tell some friends and followers.

Still, the prospect of writing a new story, which ought to be at least a little exciting, is just a dull and even an unpleasant thought to me, because I would expect to put in the effort of writing and then have barely anyone read what I wrote and have to watch it just sit out there, pointless and inert.

So, I don’t know if I’m going to write anything.  I guess I could look through my old story ideas and see if anything jumps out at me.  I haven’t had any new story ideas in a while, or at least, I haven’t written any down that come to me (they still do come).  There doesn’t seem to be much point in doing it.

My coworker is going to be away tomorrow and Monday because it’s his wife’s birthday and they’re going on a short trip, so it’s going to be slightly more stressful than usual at work.

I don’t understand it, really.  Who, as an adult, goes on a trip when they have a birthday?  I don’t recall ever going on a trip for my birthday, to be honest.  I don’t think I would want to do so, but even if I did, I don’t think it would happen.

I don’t have anyone with whom to go on a trip nowadays, or frankly, even with whom to go to see a movie or watch a TV show or whatever.  I’m actually very lonely, but it’s not as though I’m just able to make friends with just anyone and just start hanging out with someone.  The process of meeting someone new and getting used to someone and being comfortable making plans with another person is very difficult and ridiculously anxiety-provoking even to contemplate.

It’s very much a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation.  And so, I’m just blah, just a dust mote floating in nothingness.  Unfortunately, it’s not a free-fall kind of nothingness, so there is net gravitational force on me at all times, and that causes my various pains to continue to act up.

I’m sure it’s probably nothing that I don’t deserve.  Goodness knows that I’m hard for other people to get close to, or even to tolerate, since I get so awkward around other people and have such a hard time feeling any common ground.  Also, I’m pretty fucking weird.

Anyway, that’s about it for today.  I don’t think I’ve said anything that’s of any use to anyone, except perhaps as a way to pass a few moments’ time on our mutual path to oblivion—or, as David Mitchell put it, “Whiling away our finite time before the grave.”

He says this at approximate time stamp 10:15 in the linked video.  It’s worth watching; it’s quite funny.

I don’t know if I’ll put a picture here or do a Shakespeare-based title.  I guess you’ll already know the answer long before you read this part of the post, won’t you?  I envy you.  I wish I’d already decided.

I guess beggars can’t be choosers.  And we’re all beggars here, when you get right down to it.  No one was born because they deserved to be born, so to speak; you can’t earn your existence before you exist.  You can’t choose your parents/genes, your place of origin, your time of origin, or your developmental influences.  And if you could choose, the odds of you (or anyone else) choosing wisely seem pretty low.

In the meantime, just…try to have a good day if you can.

TTFN

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“…the only thing that’s real.”

It’s Wednesday morning, and I’m writing this on my smartphone instead of the laptop computer.  There’s no important rationale for this choice, it’s just the way it turned out.  There are causes for everything that happens, but there aren’t necessarily reasons.

I was terribly stressed out yesterday, though arguably nothing too Earth-shattering happened.  Just quite a few unexpected and frustrating but relatively little things occurred that led me to want to hurt myself, and I wanted just to give away my black Strat at the office as well as a very cool piece of hiking equipment that I have that my boss really admires*.  I just wanted to divest myself of everything and go off and, I don’t know, try to swim to Morocco or something**.

I don’t feel much better this morning, but at least it’s been going reasonably “according to plan”.  I’m still in stupid amounts of pain, since right when I woke up.  Nevertheless, I did my morning exercises and got ready for work, though I feel almost as though my upper body and my lower body are hanging by a thread from each other.  Only nerves seem to connect the two sometimes; otherwise it feels as though my upper half is merely balanced atop my lower half, and as I sit, stand, lie down, walk, and so on, it wants to fall off its perch, and that process hurts.

I haven’t actually played guitar in weeks.  I’ve “wanted” to, intellectually.  I even got the red Strat out at the house, putting away the SG, because the Strat is my second favorite***.  However, that hasn’t led to me playing it, though I came close at least once over the weekend.

I of course also haven’t played piano/keyboards, partly because my keyboard is covered with superfluous clothes and other things that just need a place to be.  It’s shameful, I know, but I have little room for storage.

I also haven’t written any fiction or done any drawing, and I don’t even have any modeling clay, though the discussion of my pain made me think of when I used to play with clay every day (hey hey!).  Occasionally, one would get a single hair mixed in with the clay by accident, and then if you were splitting the clay, the two bits would sometimes be held together only by that hair; that’s how my back feels a lot of the time.

When I shift a little, at the wrong moment, in the wrong way, it feels as though my upper and lower halves want to separate, but they’re held together by the collected nerve fibers that carry all that lovely pain and spasm and electrical sensation back and forth to and from my brain.

I won’t say I wouldn’t wish this pain on anyone‒there are quite a few people in the world who merit such pain and much, much more, and yet they live with impunity.  Many of them have been doing their dirty deeds for quite a long time, and even if they were to die violent deaths tomorrow, they would already have gotten away with nearly a lifetime of successful villainy and will suffer no more than most people are near the end of their lives.  Indeed, these people will probably have better, more attentive health care in their final moments than most people who have done no willing harm to anyone.

Lovely universe you’ve got here.  (It wouldn’t) be a shame if something happened to it.

Also, you can’t threaten such people with stupid points like “history will judge you”, because such people don’t tend to give a shit about that kind of thing.  Many of them probably secretly believe themselves to be immortal; they certainly don’t care about what the milling masses think of them after they’re dead.  And any concept they may have of an afterlife is clearly not worrisome to them, or not enough so to deter their foul deeds.

And here I am, feeling like I am slipping very painfully off my lower half even as I write this, despite aspirin and naproxen and Tylenol and heating pads and Icy Hot and Voltaren cream and CBD and Delta-9 gummies and all that.

It’s too much.  If I cannot get this to improve soon, I may move up the deadline of my plan, because I am tired of being not only depressed and anxious and autistic (with all that that entails) but also just in chronic fucking pain every fucking second of every fucking day for more than 20 fucking years!!!  There is no sign of it abating.

Have a good day if you can, and thank you for reading.

*It’s a machete; I don’t know why I’m being coy.  It’s a beautifully designed and made machete, no cheap throw-away crap.  This is the sort of tool one could see being handed down with pride from generation to generation.  I bought it because of the aesthetics; I rarely need a machete for practical purposes.

**I would not succeed.  I am not that good of a swimmer, but even if I were, I don’t think any human or humanoid swimmer ever could swim across the Atlantic Ocean.

***My favorite is my Les Paul (see above), which was also, like my red Strat, made by my former housemate.  That guitar has such a beautiful sound, but it is very heavy.  It’s what I used for all the guitar parts, including the little arpeggios and whatnot, on Like and Share, and also for my cover of Something, with no pedals and only a little delay.  I used the red Strat almost entirely for Schrodinger’s Head and for much of Catechism, including the solos.  I used the black Strat for the solo in the middle of Breaking Me Down.  I have not recorded anything using the SG.  That’s no criticism of it; the timing was just wrong.

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It seems to me most strange that men should blog

Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday, so I’m writing yet another blog post.  I’m also writing this on my miniature laptop computer, though it has seen better days and is getting a little bit laggy.

I don’t have anything in particular about which to write.  Certainly, I have no subject like yesterday’s, though I do wish to make clear that I was not joking in my previous blog post, and I am every bit as resolved today as I was yesterday to carry out my plan.  I’ve already begun, in fact, in the sense that yesterday I was very specific about what I ate.

Of course, I didn’t sleep very well last night, and I feel very, very tired, but what else is new?  I’ve been tired for almost as long as I can remember.  This fact gets tiring in its own right, which seems to be, well, not a contradiction, and certainly not ironic, but a positive (yet not positive, if you see what I mean) feedback loop.  Being tired is exhausting of morale, or poisonous to the will, or however you want to put it.

I think you probably worry too much about such things, though.  You should be like me, a catch as catch can, go with the flow, Hippy Dippy Dan sort of guy.

Ha ha, that’s a joke, of course.  I am not a laid-back person, and I don’t know that I ever have been.  I’m wound so tightly that only dogs and bats can hear me vibrating.  There were at least three times yesterday in the office when I literally jumped at sudden noises*.  It’s not such a surprise, I guess, that I get along well with cats—at least as well as most cats do with each other.

As an aside, since I’m writing this on the laptop computer for the first time in a while, might I say that if any of you have any avenues by which to address the movers and shakers of Microsoft, please tell them to do something about that stupid little icon that relates to their “AI”** which is there because, apparently, most people feel the need to have some electronic pseudo-entity hold their hands while they write something on a frikking word processor.

It’s pathetic and irritating.  If you know a way simply to turn that process off voluntarily, please let me know.  I haven’t looked for how to do it, but if it’s anything like how readily one can change from their new, horrible default font, there may be no readily available avenue.

I don’t need an AI to help me write.  I’ve been writing since before the effing TRS-80 came out.  I correct AI editing suggestions more often than they correct me.

I’m all in favor of spelling and grammar checkers, especially the ones that work after the fact, not while one is still writing (which can be quite distracting and annoying).  After all, pretty much everyone makes some errors in a first draft.  But I don’t need a machine to help create my writing for me, any more than I want one to help me come up with a tune or draw a picture from scratch.

My boss once said of me, when a few of us were discussing such things in passing in the office, “Doc is an AI.”  I guess that’s a compliment, and I took it as such, but if he was only thinking of our current generation of such things, it’s a bit insulting (though he didn’t mean it thus, I’m quite sure).

Anyway, that’s all as may be.  I got the payroll done efficiently yesterday, and honestly, I felt relatively upbeat in the office.  I haven’t yet revealed my plan to anyone there, yet; the time wasn’t really right, and I don’t want people to get distracted.  But there was a certain freedom of mind associated with having come to a decision, and having declared it publicly, that if I cannot in fairly short order get thinner and reduce my pain, I will kill myself.

Perhaps it’s just the sense of having an available escape that made me feel a bit less stressed.  As Radiohead sang in “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi”, “Yeah, I…I hit the bottom…hit the bottom and escape.  Escape.”  Hitting the bottom can be freeing sometimes, and the availability of an escape can be soothing.

It’s not ideal, of course.  It would be much better if people didn’t ever need to feel that they needed an escape.  But reality was not made for us, and we were not so much made for it as made by it, and quite by accident, as far as I can see.  In a way, if there were a designer that made us for reality, there would be more about which to complain, because that designer clearly fucked up many times.

I am surely one of those fuckups.

Anyway, that’ll do for now.  I hope you all have a good day, or at least as good a day as you can.  I’m going to have a usual, typical day for me, probably, which is nothing about which to write home.  And I don’t think I’ll write about it here.

TTFN

*My recording of a sudden versus not-so-sudden noise.

**That looks like the name Al, doesn’t it?  Can you tell the difference without context?

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I have a plan, though I have no dream

It’s Wednesday, which is payroll day.  This means that today at the office will be relatively stressful, especially since the largest of the relevant weekly reports didn’t arrive until just before closing time yesterday, so I didn’t get the chance to start to work through it.  Still, that’s okay.  It’s been a weirdly slow week at the office, all things considered (even on Monday, when I wasn’t there), so it won’t be as bad as it might be.

In the meantime, I’ve come to a tentative‒well, not all that tentative, really, but like all rational conclusions it is in principle provisional‒plan or goal set or determination or whatever the most appropriate term might be.

Here it is:

Within a fairly short period of time (I don’t have a specific amount laid aside, but it will certainly be well before my next birthday*) one of three things will have happened.

1)  I will have lost a significant amount of weight and it will help reduce my chronic pain.

2)  I will have lost a significant amount of weight and it will not help reduce my chronic pain.

3)  I will fail to lose a significant amount of weight.

It’s not that I’m horribly overweight, but I am nearly the heaviest I have ever been, and that’s not cool, so to speak.  It certainly isn’t likely to be helping my chronic pain.

Anyway, the upshot of the plan is, if the first thing happens, I will then try to reassess my depression and anxiety and my lifestyle and my ASD and see where to go from there.

If one of the latter two outcomes occurs, I will kill myself.

I’m not sure by what means I will do so, and whether I will make it public or not, or if I will try to make it some kind of statement; I just don’t know.  I try not to box myself in with too many specifics about things I’m going to do, because to do so would limit me; the best means and methods might reveal themselves only in the future.

I think this plan makes good sense.  At the very least, I would like to try to reduce my chronic pain, and though I doubt that all of it would go away with a significant reduction in weight, I expect at least some of it will improve.  Whatever else is the case, if I lose a significant amount of weight and it doesn’t help my pain, well, at least I will have lost weight and will not die as quite the disgusting creature that I currently am.

I intend at least tacitly to inform some of the people at the office of this plan‒at least the people who are smart enough to take it seriously.  That way I can hopefully avoid anyone unwittingly sabotaging my goals by offering me food of various kinds that will get in the way of weight loss; it can be very difficult to resist temptation in any given moment.  And, of course, people who know my intention and who for whatever reason are willing to sabotage it, will be thereby revealed to be my enemies.

Now, enemies are not as troubling a thing for someone who is depressed and suicidal (Oh, what are you going to do to me, keep me alive?) but I do not promise that, if I fail and have just to kill myself, that I will not take the opportunity to take vengeance on those who deserve it.

Of course, I also do not promise that I will take vengeance upon anyone at all.  For the most part, in my life, the opinions, nature, state of being, and other aspects of people I don’t like (or who don’t like me) are not very important.  I suppose that’s one positive aspect of autism spectrum disorder:  no one really lives in my head rent-free, as the saying goes.

People who are literally in my presence impinge upon my consciousness, but I don’t actually ever really even imagine what other people are thinking or doing when I’m not with them**.  As long as they just leave me alone and don’t bother me, I generally don’t tend to hold grudges.  Just because I consider someone my enemy, doesn’t mean I consider myself their enemy.

That may be a subtle distinction, but it’s significant.  If someone is my enemy, it’s something I may need to take into account in my dealings, depending on the situation, but then, so is infectious disease and shower mildew.  It’s not personally significant to me.

But if I declare myself someone else’s enemy, then I will do my best to merit the title “The Enemy” like Sauron and Morgoth, like Doom and Lord Foul (and worse than Voldemort).

Well, I would be worse than the wizard formerly known as Tom Riddle in general, but like him, and less like the others, I would not tend to want to torment my enemies.  There would be no clever deathtraps and torture chambers (physical or psychological) from which one’s targets can potentially escape.  I prefer the style of the Terminator or The Accountant; just wipe the subject from existence as completely and efficiently as possible.

Anyway, that’s a digression.  I wouldn’t do to others what I’m not willing to do to myself, and the only person I’m at all likely to kill is me, which seems fair.  So, that’s the plan:  Try to do something that has at least some chance of reducing my chronic pain, and if I fail, die in short order.

I’m not completely sure which outcome I prefer.

*I’m thinking of setting it at no later than what would have been my next wedding anniversary if I were still married.

**This is probably related to deficits in the so-called theory of mind that are a frequent part of ASD.

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What shall I do now?

I wrote the beginning of a first draft of a post for yesterday (which was Monday, since today is Tuesday) before it became obvious as I was getting ready for work that something in my GI tract, something that I had eaten, was taking its vengeance upon me.

I ended up not going to the office yesterday, and I ended up not even posting the draft, which I considered posting as was*.  However, there was really not much substance to it.  I think I realized as I was writing that it was St. Patrick’s Day, so I mentioned that in passing, but it’s never been a holiday that means much to me, at least not now that I cannot eat my mother’s homemade corned beef and cabbage.

Anyway, that’s a lot of the gist of yesterday’s post, at least if I recall correctly.  Oh, right, I also mentioned that, starting yesterday morning, I am not taking St. John’s Wort anymore.  I gave it well over the 6 week potential time frame for antidepressants at least to start to make a noticeable difference.  Some enterprising reader can‒if you are so inclined‒try to work out based on mentions in my posts roughly how long I’ve been going, but clearly it’s not been making my depression diminish; I think we can all agree about that.

I was also worried, probably unnecessarily, that it might be contributing to the recent apparent worsening of my chronic pain.  I don’t think that’s the case, but it’s a bit too soon to tell, and the matter is muddied by my recent GI trouble, which still leaves me feeling a bit bloated and sore this morning.

As for anything else, well, I don’t know.  What else do I have about which to write other than depression and illness and pain and insomnia?  I suppose I could write more about autism spectrum disorder, but I feel that would be a bit presumptuous of me.

Of course, I’ve learned a fair amount about autism in the research that eventually led me to seek a diagnosis, and my medical and scientific background gives me other advantages in understanding.  But I have been someone diagnosed with autism (level 2, not just level 1, so apparently I need significant support**) only for a few weeks now, so I don’t know about what even to talk.  What of the people, places, and events of my life are explained or explicated by the autism diagnosis?  Does it, or will it, help me come to terms with any of it?  I don’t know.

I certainly don’t feel that I can just waltz into any discussions of or by people with autism, or communities of such people, and have anything useful to say.  I also don’t feel that I have found “my people”, though I certainly can “get” at least some of the things they discuss better than I can some of the things that other people discuss.  But I still feel very much like an alien, an outsider, a changeling, a replicant, something that doesn’t belong on this planet‒even when I’m interacting with neurodivergent people.

So, I guess we’ll see what happens with the DCing of the Wort.  I doubt it will really affect my pain, though it may pain my affect*** if my depression worsens even from where it is now thanks to stopping it.  In any case, it really doesn’t matter, because I really don’t matter, so Batman knows what will happen.  If I implode completely, or if I crash and burn, or whatever figure of speech you want to use, there will be no significant loss, not even to me.

I don’t know what else to say.  I’m not doing anything creative or artistic.  I haven’t played guitar (or any other instrument) in weeks now, and I haven’t written fiction, and I haven’t drawn.  I’ve barely read anything other than rereading my own stuff to try to inspire or at least trigger myself.  That hasn’t worked.

So, who knows what will happen?  I certainly don’t.  But in the meanwhile, I hope you have a good day.

*The past tense of “as is”.

**I don’t really have that support, but just because someone needs something to be able to thrive doesn’t mean that thing is available to them.  Reality is heartless.

***Ha ha.

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Pi and the sky

It’s Friday and it’s Pi Day (i.e., in the American way of writing dates, it is 3-14, the first 3 digits of pi, the mathematical constant).  There was also a full moon last night, as well as a lunar eclipse.  Incidentally, lunar eclipses only happen during full moons (and solar eclipses only happen during “new” moons).

Okay, that’s probably the only even arguably interesting thing I have to say, so if you want, you can stop reading now.

I’m not really feeling any better today than yesterday.  I’ve had really bad pain, and walking is making things worse rather than better at the moment.  I’m not sure what to do about all of it.  Maybe there’s nothing to do about any of it.  Not all problems are solvable in the short term, with locally available knowledge and resources.

I do know that my general misanthropy, and indeed, my panantipathy, has been strengthened in recent months and weeks and days and even hours.  This is not meant to imply that every bit of incoming information has been confirmatory of my general disgust with humans and with reality in general.  That would be extraordinarily improbable.  If that were to appear to be the case, it would more likely indicate severe biases on my part than that reality is entirely negative.  Still the state of the world is overall pretty rancid, and so many people behave so stupidly.

Now, I would never expect anyone to be free from stupidity‒I’ve said before that intelligence and knowledge are always finite, while ignorance is always infinite.  Batman knows I’m plenty stupid, myself, and indeed, I berate myself more in a single average day (often combined with literal physical abuse) than I’ve probably berated other people in any given week, and possibly months or longer.  Also, I rarely berate other people as viciously or nastily as I do myself.  But that’s because I spend every waking moment with myself, so I have no respite from my own stupidity.

I don’t think I have much to say, otherwise.  The world is shit, overall, or at least that’s my provisional conclusion.  I’m open to countervailing evidence and argument, but I’m not seeking it out or asking for it.  I’ve spent a lot of my life looking for and trying to focus on the good things about reality, trying to find the arguments for optimism and reasons to continue, with far less success than I might have hoped*.  So please don’t try to persuade me unless you have something you think is original to say.

That’s enough for today.  I have nothing new to add at the moment.  I don’t know whether I’ll be working tomorrow‒there aren’t very many people available to come in, so I don’t know what the decision will be‒so I don’t know whether I will even consider writing a blog post.  Even if I do work, I don’t know if I will write a post.  I probably shouldn’t have bothered writing this one.  It’s not very good, and it’s certainly not uplifting or inspiring or edifying in any reasonable sense.

Oh, well, that’s pretty much a good description of reality, and it comes full circle to my point.  Whatever the case, whether it’s meaningless or not, I hope you have a good day and a good weekend.

*One might say that the search for reasons to be optimistic is itself a sign of optimism, and it’s not an entirely meritless point, but it’s not enough.  The desire to desire to live is not the same as the actual desire to live.  The wish to see if there is any worthwhile purpose to anything is not the same as having a worthwhile purpose.