mental health

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Don’t be afraid of “scare quotes”; they are–as am I–here to “help”

It’s Friday at last, the last day of a work week that has lasted at least 12 days already (subjectively speaking).  I am not working tomorrow, so there will be no blog post made again until Monday, barring‒as must always be the case‒the unforeseen.

I will try to remember to send myself the audio files for my last two audio blogs‒or perhaps it was three‒to turn into “videos” over the weekend.  I haven’t downloaded clipchamp or whatever it is to my home computer, but it should be no more difficult to do there than it was at work.  Of course, I may not do that, so don’t make any plans that depend upon my doing it‒goodness knows what such plans might be.

I’m not sure if anyone really likes those “video” versions of my audio blogs or is just as happy with the plain audio.  I’ve noted before that storage on YouTube is functionally limitless (as opposed to WordPress) but if I’m loading them here first, anyway, that’s a moot point at best.

You may have noticed that I tend to put quotation marks around the word “video” when I refer to the above, because though technically they are indeed video files, the visual portion is just a static image.  I’m a big fan of so-called scare quotes.  I think we should use them far more often than we do.  People often arrogate terms to themselves, or use epithets against others, as a means of manipulation, as if invoking some sequence of letters or sounds causes a thing actually to be the case, and I think it’s important to point out when one is unconvinced that the term is being used properly or accurately.

Perhaps the most prominent and pointed such ill-use might be regarding “progressives” and “conservatives”.  Both groups inherited the terms from people who came before, and who perhaps more accurately embodied the general meanings of the words, but they are now simply camouflage uniforms, at least in many cases.  You can call yourself a “freedom fighter” if you want, but using that term doesn’t mean you’re not a terrorist or that you’re actually interested in any legitimate form of freedom.

Of course, real conservatives and progressives being at hostile odds with one another doesn’t make much sense if one is considering the usual meanings of the terms rather than claiming them as team names in some tribal contest of primate dominance.  It makes sense to conserve those things in a society that are effective, that have been tested by time and found to be useful, but it’s just as reasonable that everyone should want to make actual progress whenever possible, to improve life and prosperity for everyone as much as is feasible.

The real, useful discussion would be about which things are working well and should be conserved, and which things require improvement and how to go about it.  There will be substantial disagreement on such questions, of course, and part of the discussion must always be how to decide what best to keep as it is and what is the most fruitful area in which to improve things

People of good will‒who do not think in terms of “us” versus “them” but in terms of usefulness and effectiveness and trying to get the best outcome for as big an “us” as possible‒can work in ways that will be beneficial by whatever measures one might want to use, keeping in mind always that all conclusions are in principle provisional and all processes and people are fallible, but that all problems are in principal soluble.

I’m not sure humans are clever enough primates to achieve such matters for long.  They seem to devolve so readily into conflicting tribes.  I guess this makes sense given the ancestral environment, with groups of only on the order of perhaps about 150 people living together.  But there’s no good excuse for not recognizing that tribal modes cannot function ideally in a setting in which 8 billion people are interacting in a massive and incredibly productive and complex economy and polity.  At higher levels of complexity, newer “rules” are going to tend to be required.

Humans aren’t necessarily all that good at adjusting to such things, though.  I often think that it will require a new and ongoing external threat, such as a supervillain or an alien invasion, to bring humanity together in total.  I’ve often been tempted to volunteer myself for the position, since humanity really can be contemptible and infuriating to me.

It’s not that humans are worse than the other life forms on Earth; I don’t think they are.  Life in general is frequently vicious and cruel and wretched, with all living things riding the knife edge of death and extinction much, perhaps most, of the time.  Nature’s equilibria are not achieved by some beautiful, fairy tale cooperation and self-restraint between forest creatures or what have you.  Equilibria are maintained by disease and death, by starvation and predation.  Agent Smith was just wrong, dead wrong, in his assessment of life’s tendency to form such natural equilibria.  He was too generous in his assessment of non-human forms of life.

Humans, however, are more competent than other animals.  They are also the only ones even capable of seriously planning ahead to strike a flexible and ever-changing balance between conservatism and progress.  It’s that they so often fail even to try to rise above their lizard-monkey minds that is so infuriating, and they themselves are among the worst of their victims.

Sometimes I think just wiping them all out would be a kindness‒not to the rest of the living world, which is certainly no more admirable or worthy of kindness than humans, but to humans themselves.  After all, if a function in time is always negative, then integrating the area “under” the curve will always yield a negative, and a permanent regression to zero would be a gain.  Maybe the universe, or at least the Earth, would be kinder in aggregate if it were sterile.

It’s food for thought, at least, and it is tempting.  What do you all think?  I’m not asking what you feel.  I hate feelings*.  But when you are as close to dispassionate and disinterested as you can make yourself, what do you think?  Does the human race (and by reflection, life itself) require an enemy to bring out its best?  If so, does it not then “deserve” that enemy?  And if it cannot defeat that enemy, does it not “deserve” to be destroyed?

I suspect that might be the case.

*Ha ha, that’s a little joke.

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Monday, Monday, heavy as a ton day (why is there no Qunday?)

It’s another Monday morning at the train station, and I’m waiting for my morning train.  I don’t feel much like writing today. but I don’t feel like passing my time doing nothing, either.  Similarly, I really don’t have any wish to go to the office, but I likewise have no desire to stay at the house.  I have very little desire for anything.

I have not yet turned either of my two previous “audio blogs” into “video audio blogs” yet.  Perhaps I’ll do that today.  Probably not.

I do sometimes (as I’ve noted before) get irked by the terrible waste of storage space necessary for audio and especially for video, given that written language is such a storage-efficient means of communication once mastered*.  Also, one doesn’t need a microphone or a camera if one chooses to write.  I suppose it may be easier to convey emotions in some sense through audio and video, but I don’t seem to be very good at conveying my emotions in any format, even in person; hell, I often don’t recognize them, myself.

I admit that writing on my phone, as I am doing now, is not nearly as satisfying as doing so on my laptop computer; it is also slower.  Additionally, I make far more typos, since the keys are so small, and the autocorrect is often wildly and stupidly incorrect in its suggestions.  Using the phone likewise exacerbates whatever arthropathy I have at the base of my thumbs.  But I’m always in pain, anyway, so that doesn’t matter very much.

I’ve been thinking lately that maybe I ought to get a new bicycle (a mountain bike style one) to try once again to do my morning and evening train station runs on the bike.  I never did fix the previous one’s front tire, but that was partly because riding it hurt my back.  In fact, I put that one out for the large trash pickup day last week, and it was gone within an hour.  This is something that makes me glad.  I hope whoever picked it up makes good use of it.

I’ve had mountain bikes before and they didn’t seem to hurt my back.  Maybe that style of bike would just work better for me.  Plus, they come in a wide range of prices.  The thing that keeps bringing it back up in my mind is that it would give me greater mobility in more reasonable time than walking gives me.  But bikes are frustrating because they require maintenance, and I’m not great with that sort of thing.  I can readily enough do the work once I start it‒it’s nothing terribly arcane, after all.  But I simply have no motivation to do so.

In unrelated news, I got a calculus problem and solution review book that was free through Kindle unlimited last week, and on Saturday I worked through the problems in the first chapter.  There weren’t very many, and they were pretty easy‒it is chapter one‒but it was also rather unsatisfying to do problems though a Kindle book on a Samsung tablet (I used pencil and paper to do the problems); I just find a physical text more satisfying, probably because that’s the way I did such things throughout my life before.  I don’t know if I’ll do any more of them, though.

Everything seems almost completely dreary and uninteresting, and I feel rotten to the core‒by which I don’t mean that I feel sick**, but that I feel that I am a horrible, horrible person, who tends to bring pain and heartache to the people closest to him, to those about whom he cares the most.  And so, because of that, I am alone.  Which really sucks, but is at least appropriate.

On the way back from work on Saturday, I stopped in at the Yellow Green Farmers Market, which I’ve been meaning to visit, and it was indeed all that I expected:  a lovely place full of stalls and stands and local musicians, just the sort of thing I would really have loved if I had someone with whom to share the experience.  By myself, although it was interesting, it was also rather hollow and depressing.  I didn’t stay for long, and I didn’t buy anything.

I’ve gradually come to realize that things like movies and TV shows and farmers markets and malls and so on are all things that, at least partly, I’ve enjoyed because they let me connect with other people.  I don’t know how to connect directly, but even work and school and reading were and are conduits through which I could actually have friends and be able to interact because there was something about which to interact.  Without such conduits, I seem to tend to involute and wither away.

Even now, once I’ve watched an episode of Doctor Who, which is the only new show I’ve enjoyed since The Big Bang Theory (though that got boring after a few seasons), what I like to do after is just watch other people’s “reaction videos” to Doctor Who episodes.  It’s almost like having friends with whom you’re sharing an interest in something, except there’s no actual back and forth.

Anyway, that’s enough about nothing.  I’m already tired and I’ve just barely started on the way to the office.  Every day is more pointless than the previous one, if such a thing is possible.  The most interesting thing that I’ve done lately is that yesterday I made a makeshift “flame-squirter” as I call it.  It’s pretty neat, but it’s not as intimidating to raccoons as you might expect, and I’m not ready actually to use it on them.  They would probably make a really annoying amount of noise.  And then, of course, they might join the Guardians of the Galaxy or something, I don’t know.  Anyway, the cats I try to feed are hanging around less often these days‒maybe they’re finding food that they prefer somewhere else, and seeing me is certainly not a good enough reason to come to the yard.  If I had any choice in the matter, I wouldn’t even see myself.  So, let the raccoons eat a bit.

Oh, well.  Try to have a good day.

*This despite the fact that the English language is a quite redundant code.  For instance, you will almost never see a “q” that is not immediately followed by a “u”.  When it does happen, you will probably be inclined to notice it, precisely because it is so rare, and so, a q without a u is probably even less common than you imagine it is.

**Apart from in the head.  I feel quite sick in the head, honestly, but I haven’t been able to find any way to treat that.

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…sore labor’s bath, balm of hurt minds…

It’s Friday, but I work tomorrow, so the fact that it’s the last regular workday of the week means little to me.  I hope all of you (or y’all) are looking forward to the weekend.

Thanks for the kind words about my taking the day off from doing any writing or speaking yesterday.  I had a weird Wednesday afternoon to Thursday morning, so I was not really up to trying to write anything other than my note about how I wasn’t going to write anything.

I felt a strange surge of somewhat reckless energy on Wednesday afternoon‒possibly because I had finished payroll, possibly for some other reason‒and decided that it might be neat to try to walk all the way back from the office to the house.  It’s 30 miles, so I didn’t expect to be able to make it the whole distance, but I figured I’d get as far as I could and then Uber the rest of the way.  I really meant to do it.

Then, late in the afternoon, my sort of subacute-bordering-on-chronic lower GI discomfort came to a head, and I had to use the head several times in quick succession.  I realized that this would not be a good time to attempt my feat of endurance; I had no wish to be “caught short” on the streets of south Florida…or in some poor Uber driver’s car, for that matter.

So, instead, I waited at the office even after everyone left‒the train also not being a good place for GI emergencies‒and took some Imodium.  By the time everything settled, it was quite late, and so I just slept at the office.

Oddly enough, I slept better there than I usually do, and I half hoped that I might feel pretty good for the day.  That didn’t really pan out, and as you know, I didn’t even feel enough energy to write a post or do a voice recording.  I know I had already said that I’m not sure I’m going to continue this blog at all, but since I have been tending at least to post something on these days, I figured it would be polite to give notice.

It all just seems quite futile, though.  Of course it seems futile.  Everything seems‒and it may turn out to be feels‒that it will undoubtedly looks‒futile.  I don’t see any point in my continued life whatsoever.  I still haven’t gotten or even seriously investigated health insurance, partly because of the very severe tension and anxiety I have about initiating the process, but also because of my lack of desire to protect my health.

I really didn’t expect to be alive to see this year‒I didn’t plan to be alive, anyway.  Several times in the relatively recent past, I made plans to enact the end of my life, but one thing after another has gotten in the way.

I suspect there will be people who will say that I let things get in the way because I didn’t really want to die, and of course, at some level that was true.  I didn’t so much want to die as I wanted to be dead, but since there’s no quantum tunneling-style option, the one has to lead to the other.

I’ve often pointed out that the biological drive to survive can be absurd but is doggedly persistent, and it is very difficult to overcome via conscious thought.  I’ve tried.  I threw away a bunch of things I owned, I gave away some other things, and just in general attempted to put my house in order, so to speak.  I even wrote a draft of a will, of sorts, which I’ve updated a few times since.  But many things got in the way, not least the simple wish not to make things too inconvenient for other people.

And there’s the fact that, as I noted earlier, rather than say “I want to die”, it makes more sense to say “I want to be dead.”  If I had an “off” switch that could just be flipped, that might be the best thing.  But, of course, that’s not how biological organisms tend to operate, and the process of dying tends to be extremely unpleasant, for good, sound, biological reasons.

Sometimes I think if I could just get actual, restful sleep, that might be enough.  The last restful night of sleep I remember happened in the mid-1990s, and I remember it because it was such an outlier.  I was not used to waking up and feeling refreshed and rested and alive.  It was glorious.

Sleep clearly serves some important biological function; probably it serves more than one.  What it does is clearly complex, but I sometimes imagine it as a kind of automated pipe-scrubbing system in some intricate network of steam-punk machinery.  Every day, the system goes into idle, and the pipe-scrubbing/exhaust clearing system goes to work.  But my auto-maintenance, pipe-clearing system is faulty.  It doesn’t ever completely clear out the day’s accumulated debris and grime.

When the system is relatively new‒when one is young‒it’s possible for things to work relatively well, even if all the grime of a given day is never quite cleared away.  But the grime accumulates, the system accrues varying levels of obstruction, its auto-repair doesn’t work as well as it should, and gradually, over time, everything builds up, pipes get leaky, some junctions and connections get severely constricted and some fail altogether, and it gets harder and harder for the system to continue to function well.

People think I’m fairly smart; just imagine how clever I might be if I could just get a decent night’s sleep once in a while.

Probably the lack of sleep contributes to my chronic pain‒and then, of course, the chronic pain contributes to my sleep problems, which is not a paradox, but is actually an almost predictable occurrence in such spontaneously self-assembling, complex adaptive systems with all sorts of internal feedback systems and self interaction and all that.

“For want of a horseshoe nail, the kingdom was lost.”

“For want of the price of tea and a slice, the old man died.”

Oh, well.  Since I work tomorrow, I think I might try my walking home quest after work, then.  I have new socks that I ordered for just such a thing after Wednesday.  It would be cool if they help.  Perhaps I would sleep really well afterwards.  Or, hey, who knows, maybe I’ll get hit by a car (or other vehicle) on the way, and this will all be taken out of my hands.

There are worse things I can imagine.  One of them is simply my life continuing, as it currently is, indefinitely into the future.  The prospect of facing several thousand pounds of rapidly moving metal, perhaps steered by someone who has been drinking, seems much less unpleasant than that other, more banal and yet supposedly desirable alternative. 

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My gruntlement is low today

It’s Tuesday morning.  I wasn’t actually planning to write anything when I got up today, but then I remembered that, more or less on a whim, I had brought my little laptop computer with me, so I figured I might as well write something.

For one thing, I’ll embed the “video” of my last audio blog—the one about Morgoth and whatnot—below, so if anyone prefers to do their listening via YouTube, they can do so.  Evidently, the Google podcast app is going to be phased out, and one is going to have to listen to podcasts via YouTube Music at some point in the future (or use some other service/app).  That’s a bit frustrating, because there’s at least one podcast that I get via subscription that one cannot get in its entirety on YouTube, but can get through the app.  I guess they’ll figure out a way to deliver that, but it’s irritating to have to change my settings once again.

I guess it shouldn’t matter.  I should just cancel all my subscriptions and services and platforms and even cable and internet.  They’re not really doing me any good, and they cost money, and honestly, I really would expect not to be alive starting sometime soon.  I’ve been expecting that for a long time, now, though, and I haven’t really been able to work up the gumption to bring it about.

I have at least been creeping my way in that direction.  I have flammable liquids for potential immolation—useful for other, more traditional things as well, of course.  I have scalpels and utility knives, useful for cutting various things, including oneself, but of course, they’re also generally useful for many things.  And recently I bought a nice length of rope—too long, really—and learned how to tie a hangman’s knot.  That last bit is rather surprisingly easy, and it’s a pleasant and useful knot, it turns out, especially to someone who used to be in the Boy Scouts a lifetime ago.  Ironically, it has many similarities to an informal necktie knot.

But, I’m still alive for the moment, though I’m very uncomfortable and unhappy in general, and I still haven’t gotten health insurance.  I get a near-panic feeling when I even think seriously about getting insurance.  I’m not entirely sure why that is.

Yesterday morning I felt really horrible, and I think it’s because I was trying to reintroduce some things I like into my diet to see if I can tolerate them.  I guess I can’t, at least not in the state I’m in (Florida).  It seems I can’t even enjoy the things I like to eat, but then again, I can’t expect nature to be there for my convenience.

I could try to work against nature’s convenience, in return, I guess.  At the very least, I could do my best to add to global warming and disrupt the biosphere and cause toxins and pollutants to accumulate, as a silly sort of revenge.  It might be fun.

I did feel less bad as the afternoon wore on and I avoided any indulgences, to the point where, near the end of the day, in idle moments, I got out Spacetime and Geometry, Gravitation, Euclidean Quantum Gravity, and even the old Thomas and Finney calculus text—the latter because sometimes I feel like I want to re-hone and improve my skills with mathematics, and Brilliant, for all that it’s a wonderful site, just doesn’t seem to work for me for some things.

I did find the two physics texts (which I opened in the middle, since I was looking for rather specific information relating to Λ, the cosmological constant) much more accessible and relatively easy to follow compared to what I was expecting.  Gravitation, in particular, is an intimidatingly large tome, but is nevertheless a bit of a “my first reader” in overall impression when compared to Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine.  I didn’t get very far in any of them in the time I had yesterday, but it was nice to realize that—though some mathematical formalisms are beyond my current expertise (thus the Thomas and Finney)—all of it made sense to me.  Credit the writers as much as my own cleverness, but I do give myself some credit.

Maybe I should get a biology textbook, just to reinvigorate my interest in that general subject as well.  I’m more of a literal expert in that subject than I am in GR or quantum mechanics or mathematics, though, so maybe a basic college text would be too repetitive?  I don’t know.

I’m having a bit of trouble with my laptop today; Word has frozen up on me twice this morning, which is a bit frustrating.  I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.  I’m not sure how long I’ve had this laptop, but it’s been a few years, at least.  Ordinarily, I would think of getting a new one to replace it, but that seems like entirely too much work, and is rather pointless.  I don’t expect to write any more fiction.

The thing that led me to bring the laptop computer back with me last night was the thought of maybe at least rereading what I have so far of Outlaw’s Mind and maybe even DFandD.  I talked to my sister on Sunday and gave her a bit of a (probably rather tedious) rundown of how those stories, especially the former, interconnect with the larger universe of my books, including particularly The Chasm and the Collision, and the potential novel Changeling in a Shadow World, and other stories, all going back to the first novel I ever “finished”, back in high school—Ends of the Maelstrom—which I could probably recreate* if I had the gumption.  I certainly still know all the main characters’ names and stories and arcs and all.  I even remember my opening line:  “Horraban was happy now.”  I also remember my rather ominous ending, though not the precise words.

Many of the universes of my stories are connected to each other.  In effect, I suppose, they’re all connected via what the wizard in DFandD refers to as the “omniverse”.  I had long thought of it as the metaverse, but then Mark Fuckerberg arrogated that term to his pathetic attempt at virtual reality, and so I had to find another term.  I guess “omniverse” is actually more accurate and descriptive, but I thought the other sounded cooler.  Now it doesn’t.

Anyway, I have scads of potential stories I could write, some interconnected and some stand-alone, but I doubt that I will ever write any of them.  I just don’t have the energy nor do I have the motivation.  Merely going to work and getting back to the house uses up all the mental energy I have, and then some; much of my mental energy I need is sucked from my future, shortening my potential span of mental life as I go.

I suppose if some wealthy benefactor were to show up and offer to pay my expenses in return for getting me to write full time, I might do so.  Perhaps that could happen, but I won’t hold my breath, and I don’t encourage you to do so either.

In the meantime, though, here is the “video” from my last audio blog.  If you watch it on YouTube, please give a thumbs up, and subscribe, and share, and all that, if you’re at all willing to do so.  Thanks.

*It was 574 pages (and roughly 250,000 words, I think), handwritten on thin-ruled notebook paper, with many additions that ran into the margins, though some of these were tattered because I habitually ate paper from the edges of notebook sheets back then.  Anyway, I lost that original book when I lost all my belongings thanks to the depredations of the counties and state of Florida.  For that, I hold at least something of a grudge.

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Another pointless blog post on another pointless day

I’m writing a blog post today—a “formal” one, not merely sharing audio and embedding video, which is what I’ve done in the previous few—not because I have anything in particular to say*, but because I decided to bring my little laptop computer along with me yesterday.  I felt that I was neglecting it, and it was probably getting lonely and sad and rather depressed, like its owner.  Then again, if I were your owner, you probably would be depressed, no matter what type of mechanism you might be, and no matter whether or how often I used you.

Of course, I know that the computer does not experience such emotions; it doesn’t experience any true emotions, though I suppose one could make the argument that its automatic functions, the ones that it does all the time—such as recommending that you install updates and its tendency to go into sleep mode when left idle—might be in some ways analogous to the basic emotions and drives of so-called higher life forms.

Anyway, I’ve done a lot of things on this computer and especially on its nearly-identical predecessors, including writing quite a few stories and some books and the like.  It’s a shame to leave it completely fallow while I’m alive (Once I’m not alive, there won’t be much I can do for it or to it, one way or the other—that’s the way that whole “not being alive” thing works).

I’m weird that way; I tend to feel a serious loyalty not merely to people, but to inanimate objects that I know don’t have any actual reciprocal loyalty inherent in them**.  People are, to be honest, less reliable than things like computers, and they have their own agendas, anyway, so it’s not as though they need (or want) my loyalty, unless they’re people who want to use me for their own benefit, in which case, screw them.

That reminds me a bit of the old “riddle of steel” that ran through the movie Conan the Barbarian, and which I think was reasonably profound for such a movie.  In the beginning of the film, we see very young Conan with his father, who is telling him what turns out to be the first part of the riddle of steel, which is that in this life, there is no living being—men, gods, what have you—that you can trust.  But that you can trust steel.  I suppose you can also rust steel, but even though it can rust, that’s a slow, predictable process, and it can be staved off if you care for the steel appropriately.

Then, of course, near the end of the movie, Thulsa Doom reveals to Conan the other half of the riddle of steel, telling him that steel is not strong, flesh is stronger.  Only living beings have drive and will and the capacity to achieve things like revenge or religion or things like that.  It’s an interesting contrast, and like I said, it’s surprisingly deep for a sword and sorcery movie.

The sequel was nothing like as good.

Anyway, that’s part of the thinking process, or something like it, that leads me to feel literal loyalty and sorrow for inanimate objects that are mine—though it seems a bit unreasonable to call a computer an inanimate object, considering that it can do many extremely sophisticated and complex things, some of them without direct human intervention.

I remember when I was little that I felt something like a real, personal, almost familial attachment to some of my toys and stuffed animals—particularly Kermit the Frog*** now that I think about it—and if I dropped them or played with them roughly, I felt bad and would even apologize.  Again, I never actually thought they had feelings or thoughts or anything, but then again, I often can’t grasp other people’s feelings or thoughts, so it makes as much intuitive sense to assume them in stuffed animals as it does with humans.

I certainly don’t have any good, intuitive sense of what goes on in the heads of humans, though I often cannot help feeling their emotions and so on, when they are nearby.  And I try to discern their patterns and their meanings through various informal algorithms, and of course by paying attention to their literal words and actions.  I find this often gives me as good a result as those of the more “normal” people around me.

People don’t seem to do a very good job of reading or understanding each other, frankly, regardless of their supposed intuitive ability to understand social cues and mores and to be able to express and receive affection.  Well, okay, that latter one is something other people are definitely much better at than I am.  I have almost no comfort level with showing or receiving affection, even with people I know well, even with people I truly, deeply love.  It makes me feel very tense, which doesn’t help, and it certainly goes a long way toward explaining why I’m alone.

By the way, I still haven’t set up any health insurance.  I haven’t been able to bring myself to call either of the two brokers for whom I have contact information.  It’s quite troubling, at some level—it’s weird not to be able to get oneself to do something so mundane.  Then again, it was never my idea to get insurance, and I don’t particularly feel that I deserve to receive health care or that I want to take care of my own health.  But that strong, uncomfortable, unpleasant resistance is nevertheless rather strange.

Oh, well.  Who knows what I’ll do?  I don’t.  I don’t know if I’ll live long enough to need health insurance, anyway.  I don’t find any joy or happiness in being alive, and I haven’t done so for quite a long time.  It’s merely the automatic functions that keep me in motion; there’s no anima, no joy, no goal of any kind.  There is certainly no meaning.

Well, my train should be coming soon.  I’ll embed the “video” of yesterday’s audio here below, for those of you who want to experience it.  I don’t really remember what I talked about, so if anyone listens, do please feel free to let me know.  And try to have a good day, if you can.

*The things I do have to say I feel that I’ve said ad nauseam nearly every day, and they haven’t appeared to do anything at all other than to make other people feel depressed along with me, rather than to garner for me any help or relief or anything like that.

**Though there are other things, such as vehicles and other practical items, toward which I feel less loyalty and affection than other people seem to feel.  For instance, I couldn’t care less about the cosmetic appearance of any vehicle I own (not that I currently own any), or whether it’s any kind of status symbol or anything.  I can admire some kinds of vehicles, such as sports cars and so on, but if I owned one, anything but basic maintenance would be entirely neglected, and it wouldn’t really bother me.  Likewise for musical instruments:  as long as they perform their basic functions, I cannot care about their appearance or any special bells and whistles—not that I am any good at playing bells or whistles.

***But come on, who wouldn’t feel loyalty to Kermit?  He’s a righteous dude.

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TTFN

I think I’m going to take a break from writing these blog posts, and I may quit doing them entirely.

They aren’t doing me any good‒they’re certainly not encouraging anyone to buy my books or to listen to my music.  They also aren’t functioning successfully as any sort of therapy, which was a large part of my hope.

Of course, it’s possible that my mental health would have been even worse if I hadn’t been doing this blog, but it couldn’t have been that much worse‒almost by definition‒and maybe I would have reached a catastrophic failure at some point sooner than it’s going to happen now, and at least I wouldn’t have had to suffer through the extra time I have in this branch of reality.

And finally, not least, this blog certainly isn’t working as any kind of cry for help for me, though I’ve tried to use it that way.  Perhaps there’s just too much of a “bystander effect” for this to function effectively in that mode.

I’m pretty sure these posts are not doing any good for anyone out there in the world.  There are people who are entertained by them sometimes, of course, and they tell me so, and I appreciate that.  But that’s not a strong enough motivation to keep going.  My apologies; I do not intend to denigrate you in any way, my readers.  It’s just that my strength is running out, and I feel horrible, physically and mentally.

I’ve been doing this blog at least partly as a habit, continuing the morning writing I did for years when working on my fiction.  I’m not writing fiction anymore.  It just feels too futile.

I don’t think my stories are bad.  I think some of them are pretty darn good.  But only a handful of people will ever read any of them, and though many people will say that one does art mainly for oneself‒and at some level, that is definitely true‒one also really wants to be appreciated.  Likewise for music.

I mean, yes, Van Gogh painted many paintings in his lifetime, though he only sold one…but then again, he did cut off his ear and end up killing himself, too (I knew he was a genius).

Anyway, although even Stephen King writes because he must‒so he says, and I don’t doubt him‒I don’t think he would have written nearly as many books if no one were buying them.  It just gets discouraging after a while.

I may do some little audio snippets here and there and share them on this blog.  Sometimes those can be rewarding, and they’re usually brief, and as long as I keep the editing to a minimum, they’re not too much effort.  I have a few little rants I’d like to go on sometime soon.  So those will probably appear here, if I end up doing them.  But otherwise, I don’t see the point in much else.

I honestly don’t want to go to work anymore.  Of course, today is payroll day, so I’m going, because people would be left in the lurch if I didn’t.  But it’s not rewarding, except in the obvious and banal way.  I mean, there are people at the office with whom I get along, but as has been the case most of my adult life, people mainly spend time with me because I’m useful.

I am useful, in many ways.  And it is nice to be useful.  But it has its limits.  Even at work, I try to get across to people how much distress I’m in, without being too melodramatic, but nobody seems really to take me seriously.

I guess that’s one of the drawbacks of having a dark and odd sense of humor and also having difficulty expressing one’s emotions.  Even if you talk about trying to stretch the pain out of your back by using a noose‒as I did yesterday, which was a particularly painful day‒people don’t seem to realize that really, suicide seems more and more attractive all the time.

I can’t easily participate in the comments anymore on a website I’ve followed for a long time, and I don’t think the host likes me, anyway, though I admire and like him and have enjoyed following his website, and recommend it readily.  To be fair, I am weird, and I am dark, and I tend to bring people down.  Does the fact that I get on some people’s nerves surprise anyone?

So, yeah, I don’t think I’m going to be writing any more blog posts for a while, and I may not write any ever again.  And, again, I may put audio stuff up here‒and I may turn some or all of them into “videos” as well, and put those on YouTube‒but I don’t have a planned schedule for those things right now, so we’ll have to see what happens.

Anyway, I’m feeling queasy/nauseated (and probably nauseous, but that’s for you all to judge) right now, and my train will be here soon.  Try to have a good day, and a good year, and a good rest of your lives.  Somebody ought to do it, and it’s not likely to be me.

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“…out there in the cold, getting lonely, getting old…”

It’s Tuesday, the “two day” of January of 2024 AD and the “two day” of the year.  That little, rather forced play on words is about as much good as I can say about the day.

I’m at the train station, soon to be headed in to the office for the day, but I did not go in yesterday, though the office was open.  If I had been feeling healthy, I suppose I might have gone in even though I resented the fact that the office was open.  I’m weird that way.  It’s not as though I had anything better to do with my time, had I been feeling healthy.

But, of course, I felt sick, still, albeit not nearly as bad as I did on Friday or even Saturday, or even Sunday.  By that progression, you may be able to deduce that my physical health was gradually improving, and though I am not fully back to usual (let alone optimal) health, I did at least get some rest.  There were quite a few annoyances related to the other people in the house, who had a huge New Year family get-together of some some kind, and were up waaaay past midnight, including some young children who were‒as sleep deprived children tend to be‒evidently quite grumpy and vociferous.

As for my mental health, well, despite my brief rest, it’s still rotten.  I don’t think there’s any reason for anyone to imagine that it would have improved.  I got enough rest that I even had a few dreams this morning, which is unusual‒I almost never have any remembered dreams‒but they were just weird, irritating dreams involving a B-list Hollywood star about whom I know almost nothing.  I have no idea how that person infiltrated my subconscious.

The holidays are over now, of course, and even though I had no cause for celebration in the first place, there is still a bit of melancholy involved in their passing.  There’s nothing even nominally to celebrate for months to come, frankly, and precious little cause for major joy in the world.  But of course, my main problems are internal; my hardware and software are dysfunctional.

I sometimes may give the impression that I’m some form of purely philosophical pro-mortalist or nihilist, that my sense of the pointlessness and worthlessness of my life are simply reasoned conclusions, arrived at logically, quite convincing.  That probably makes some people feel that there really is no point in trying to do or say anything to change my outlook.  I make impressive sounding arguments in favor of nihilism and despair and pointlessness at times.  But that’s really just the left side of my brain acting as an attorney, arguing the case and providing “justifications” for the products of my dysfunctional mood and sensory and motivational systems.

It’s all sophistry.  My depression‒as with any other, preexisting neurodevelopmental and possible neurohormonal issues I have‒is a disease, a malfunction; my dysthymia is in a way a real disability, at least by some definitions.  These diseases are killing me, and it’s not a good death, nor even a mediocre or middling death.  It’s a bad, slow, drawn-out, miserable, torturous death.  Just consider the fact that I often wish I would develop cancer, because that would probably be a better way to die; certainly there would be more support and sympathy involved.  And I’m a medical doctor.  I’ve treated many people who have cancer, and I’ve lost loved ones to cancer; I know what it is and what it entails.

I’m trying to say that I really could use actual help.  I’m not able to do self-care well at all.  I’m very smart and creative and capable in some ways, but I cannot save myself nor even take very good care of myself, not with only myself as my motivation.  I find the upkeep involved in having and using a bicycle daunting and awful, let alone other ordinary tasks of personal and general maintenance.

I am eroding and decaying and rotting, both metaphorically and literally, in various ways.

I do not want to feel depressed.  I do not like being depressed‒that would be frankly contradictory‒and I do not like feeling horrible anxiety and hostility and confusion.  I do not like not having anyone with whom to do anything.  I don’t like hating my own presence and company.  I would like to like myself and to like my life and to feel that I deserved something, anything, good to happen to me.

Robert Sapolsky has pointed out that one cannot simply will oneself to have a stronger will.  Similarly, one cannot simply stop being depressed by choosing to be optimistic and to love oneself.  One cannot simply choose to be able to integrate into the human world effortlessly and seamlessly when one simply does not feel human.

One cannot eliminate anxiety just by saying that there’s nothing to fear.  And, of course, one cannot simply choose not to be in pain, if one is in pain.  Nature does not select for that capability.  If one could simply deactivate one’s pain and one’s fear, then one would probably do so; pain and fear are, by nature, unpleasant.  But then one would not flee danger or avoid injury.

Anyway, that’s my New Year’s message about me, I guess:  I’m depressed and despairing, not by choice, and I cannot simply snap out of it, nor can I save my life on my own.  And I don’t know of anyone else out there who has the wherewithal to help me, so I don’t expect my life to be saved.  I expect it to be lost, and soon; frankly, I expected it to be gone, already.  I’m amazed and rather appalled that I’m still alive to write this.  I don’t consider it an accomplishment.

Oh, yeah, by the way:  Happy New Year.

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“Check it and see…”

Well, I’m writing a post today, again, for some unknown and unholy reason, and I’m doing it on my smartphone, because I did not bring my laptop computer back to the house with me last night.  I was not up to carrying it.

I’m writing in the back of an Uber that’s bringing me to the gas station near the office, because I am feeling quite under the weather and do not want to face any train travel today.  I spiked a fever overnight‒not a huge one, but my pulse really raced for a bit there (about 136 at rest).  I don’t have much in the way of specific symptoms, other than a general achiness and malaise that is different from the general elevated pain I’ve been having lately.  Also, I feel just a slight sense of breathlessness.  It’s not literally difficulty breathing, but just a feeling as if I were exerting myself even while sitting still.  My pulse ox is fine*.

You may wonder why I am going to the office at all, if I am sick, and you are not foolish to wonder this.  Unfortunately, my coworker who shares some of my roles was out yesterday because his wife and baby are both sick, so I had to pick up the slack, such as it is, despite exacerbations of chronic pain and being suicidally depressed.  And I don’t know if he’s going to be out again, today, but by the time I find out, it will be too late for me to get to the office on time from where I “live”.

I feel just a little bit queasy, now, also.  It’s not like I’m in danger of throwing up, as far as I can tell.  It’s just a bit unpleasant.

No matter what, I swear I am not going to switch and fill in tomorrow, even if my coworker cannot make it.  The boss will just have to figure something out.  Or he’ll have to close the office.

Sorry, I know this is all boring.  I don’t know what you’re hoping for from me, but this is probably not it.

Oh, I took delivery yesterday of a four part book collection compiled from the writers of the Less Wrong website.  Collectively, the set is called The Engines of Cognition, and their individual titles are: 

Trust

Modularity

Incentives

Failure

In the inside front of each book, on the first page, there is a little quote from some famous thinker, such as Richard Feynman.  This is particularly fun because, in the first volume, the quote is uncredited, but I knew right away Who had said it.  The quote was, “If I always told you the truth, I wouldn’t need you to trust me.”

That quote is from the 11th Doctor, in series 5, episode 5, “Flesh and Stone”.  I think it’s cool that the luminaries from Less Wrong chose a Doctor Who quote for the inside of this book.  There’s a bit of a spoiler associated with the quote in the show, so I won’t get into it any further.  Maybe some of you will eventually want to watch Doctor Who, and I wouldn’t want to mess you up with spoilers‒though that’s always a potential part of any time travel adventure, I guess.

Here’s a related thought:  I don’t understand why more of the companions in Doctor Who don’t ask to learn about the science of the TARDIS and the Time Lords in general.  The TARDIS is “bigger on the inside”’ thanks to “dimensional engineering” but how is that actually accomplished?  How does time travel work?  If the past can be rewritten, what does that say about the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics?  If the past can be changed and have within-universe consequences, just rewriting reality, then why (and how) are there parallel, nearly identical universes, such as the one to which Rose was sent?

I know, the writers have no idea of the answers to such questions.  But why aren’t the characters curious about them?

Anyway, that’s enough of that.  I’ll just close by mentioning something related to health insurance.  My sister said (in a comment on Facebook instead of here‒I’m not sure why) that she would very kindly help me with filling out forms.  Unfortunately, the forms aren’t my issue, really.  It’s the actual starting of the process, the picking up of the phone and the calling of the insurance broker.  That’s the main barrier, partly due to social anxiety‒though that feels like too mild a term‒and partly just my resistance to taking care of my health.  I mean, think about it:  how hard would you work to help protect the worst person you know, your least favorite person in the world?

Those are rhetorical questions, of course.  But I would like to remind people that I prefer it if they leave comments here rather than on Facebook or other social media.  For one thing, it apparently helps boost my blog via whatever the WordPress algorithm is.  And I don’t really need my personal Facebook page boosted.

I suppose it matters very little.  Maybe this illness I’m fighting now will end up killing me, and everything else will be moot.  🙂

I doubt it.  It just feels like an ordinary virus.  But who knows?  Maybe I’ll get lucky.  And, as part of that, maybe all of you who read my blog out of kindness and/or obligation, will get lucky and not have to do so anymore.  It would be appropriate for it to happen on the weekend of New Year’s.

Fingers crossed!

*Of course I have my own pulse oximeter.

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The undiscovered country from whose blog no traveler returns

Hello and good morning and all the rest of that stupid bullshit.

I’m writing a blog post today—obviously—which means I’m going in to the office today, which means that, unfortunately, I am still alive.  I cannot give you any good reasons for these facts.  They simply are the case.

There are explanations, of course, as there are for all things, but they entail nothing more than the mindless churning of physical and, at the next level biological, and, at the next level psychological forces that happen more or less on their own.  They carry a certain metaphorical inertia; to divert them requires a deliberate application of some manner of force.  But since they are not literal, straightforward cases of inertia, it’s not always easy to tell just what the proper application of what “forces” should be to cause them to change their direction into one which one might prefer.

I’m at the train station now, waiting for the 2nd train of the day.  I had a terrible day yesterday, pain-wise.  It let up ever-so-slightly in the afternoon to evening, thanks to lots of Aspirin and Tylenol and Icy-Hot and all that stuff, but it still felt as though I had recently tried to do some fairly serious acrobatics without stretching and had not only failed, but had fallen hard on barely-padded ground.  I still feel stiff and sore.  Also, the bases of my thumbs ache severely; for that reason, among others, I’m typing this on my laptop computer rather than my cell phone.

I don’t have much else to report, and I certainly have nothing positive to relay to you.  As my pain eased slightly yesterday, my mood improved slightly, but it was never very good, and it’s now nearly as low as it was yesterday morning.

I’m also a bit nauseated.  That’s probably partly because of the excessive use of analgesics over the last 24 hours, even beyond my ordinary intake.

I really feel horrible, and I don’t know what to do.  I feel no sense of any future other than one of stress and pain and further alienation, or alternatively, of being a burden to people I have no right to bother.  I wish, I wish I had the strength of will just to stop eating and waste away until I die.  That wouldn’t be so bad.  After a while without food, once one gets into deep ketosis, there is little or no real pain, just lassitude.  And I have lassitude anyway, so I don’t think it would be all that much worse.

But it’s very difficult just to say “no” to food when it is available; billions of years of evolution has sifted things so that not eating when food is available is quite difficult.  I’m probably going to have to find some other way.

I’ve looked into things like hemlock—it seems like it might be nice and “classical” to go the way of Socrates—but although some descriptions of his death involve acceptance and serenity and the like, it seems they are highly fictionalized, which should come as no surprise.  Apparently, actual death caused by hemlock poisoning is quite uncomfortable, and associated with nausea and cramping and neurological symptoms of various kinds that might lead one to seek “help”.

Likewise, unripe ackee fruit—which grows in abundance around the house in which I live—is associated with quite uncomfortable symptoms and is not even close to universally fatal.  And again, the urge to try to relieve one’s symptoms might lead to one aborting the whole project.

Of course, asphyxiation via inhaling pure nitrogen or pure helium (for instance) is actually quite benign, since it is not associated with any feeling of suffocation—especially if one has a non-rebreather mask, so one does not retain carbon dioxide, which is the actual source of the feeling of not being able to breathe, and is indeed the primary driver of respiration.  I have two non-rebreather masks, and tubing, and even a regulator valve, but though I ordered helium tanks, I couldn’t figure out how to hook up the party-type helium tank output valve with the tubing and respirator mask—so I let people use the helium for balloons.

Also, one really needs a decent space and privacy for something like that, and one needs to make sure one’s mask doesn’t slip as one loses consciousness.  If that happens, one could live but have hypoxemic brain injury.

I’ve looked into ordering nitrogen tanks, but you can’t just get them delivered already filled; you have to go to some welding supply place or similar to get the nitrogen, and it’s hard to cart a nitrogen tank around when one does not have a vehicle.  There are similar problems with liquid nitrogen.  You can order a crucible (or whatever the term is) in which to carry it from Amazon (as you can the gas tanks) but to get the liquid you need to go to restaurant supply places or medical supply places or similar.  And, again, it’s hard to carry such things around without a vehicle.

Of course, there’s always simple use of blades—the proverbial bare bodkin—but though I am not afraid of cutting myself, to cause life-threatening bleeding thereby is not easy, and it is also supremely messy, leaving behind a horrible spectacle for some poor slob to find.  It’s likewise not entirely reliable and requires privacy.  I could lay down in my shower with water running and do it, but then my “housemates” and the landlord would eventually have to deal with the situation—at the latest by the time I started smelling—and that would be inconsiderate and traumatic.

When I think of the people I’ve known in recent years who have died of overdoses of narcotics—usually heroin—I again find myself wishing I had a drug problem.  But I don’t like opiates, though I was prescribed them for a few years for my chronic pain.  They didn’t work as well as I would hope, and the side-effects were annoying and unpleasant.  Of course, a goodly dose of an opiate plus a goodly dose of a benzodiazepine has a goodly chance of shutting down one’s respiratory drive, but as with asphyxiation above, that can sometimes just lead to brain damage.

My brain is dysfunctional enough.

A good fall from a high building (or mountain or cliff or bridge) is pretty reliable, of course, if one can muster the courage to throw oneself off.  However, there aren’t very many buildings or similar near me that are aesthetically high enough, and I don’t really have access to any of them, anyway.  Also, again, it leads to one making a mess for innocent passersby, and I would rather not do that.

There’s always the prospect of just swimming out into the Atlantic, which is truly close at hand, until exhaustion leads inevitably to drowning.  There’s not much mess that way, and most of what there is might be cleaned up by ocean life.  If I were more comfortable in the water, that might be a good option, and I still do consider it.  But it requires real determination, and I am not all that strong a swimmer.  I mean, I’m a good enough swimmer to swim out far enough to drown, but there’s enough stupid animal fear built into this operating system that I worry I wouldn’t be able to force my way through it.

I really don’t know what to do, or what I should do.  I’m still brainstorming ideas.  Meanwhile, I’ve really got loads of physical pain…but the psychological pain is worse.  The former wears down and eradicates one’s resistance to the latter, and the latter makes it difficult to keep a useful attitude about the former.  And I have so much trouble sleeping.  I’m really very tired all the time.

TTFN

standing on ledge newer

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moans and whines and cries for help, doodah, doodah

It’s Monday morning again; it keeps doing that, even though I’ve made it clear that I think it’s a bad idea.

My back has really been acting up this weekend; it’s particularly uncomfortable right now, as I wait at the train station.  I would have just stayed “home” today, except that there is an office holiday party this evening, to which I said I would go.  Then again, I said I would get health insurance by last Friday, and I just couldn’t bring myself to do that, even though I know it’s not really all that hard.  Yet, when I try to bring myself to do it, it’s a bit like trying to force myself to lay my hand flat on a red hot stove top*.

Partly my resistance is because I feel like I’m being set up for something, though I know that’s paranoid and silly.  I’ve just had so many things blow up in my face when I thought I was doing perfectly reasonable, harmless, and even beneficial (and certainly well-intended) things.  It’s pretty ironic, when one has always felt affinity with the bad guys in many stories, but one recognizes that it’s not ethically justifiable to be a bad guy, so one tries very hard to be a good guy and to do good things in the world…and one ends up being punished as if one were a bad guy, and has one’s life shredded and pulped and jack-hammered into so much twisted rubble, maimed and deformed into a shambling, undead mockery of itself.

Maybe I should have just tried to be a bad guy.  I probably would have won the Nobel Peace Prize or something.

Anyway, I’m feeling very stressed and unsafe about all of it, more than I was already.  And it’s not as though my chronic depression is any better than usual, not at this time of the year, when it’s dark more than not.  I generally like darkness, of course, but a dearth of sunshine does seem to impact my mood.

Also, there’s that big holiday coming up in a week, which is sure to be just wonderful for my general outlook.  It comes right after the solstice, so by then the days will be creeping towards longer again, but it will be a very long time before the change is noticeable.

I say “very long time” but of course that’s scale-dependent.  On the scale of the age of the universe or even of Earth, it’s very tiny, and even on the scale of an ordinary human life, it’s pretty negligible.  But on the Planck time scale it’s an absurdly long period, way longer than any of the epochs of the immediately-post-inflationary universe (assuming inflation happened).  And on the scale of a person with chronic and exacerbating depression, with chronic tension and anxiety and anger and pain, and with very few social supports and no future to which to look forward, it is a very long time indeed.

I’ll be working this coming Saturday, though I rather expect that business will be quite slow.  I guess that’s a good day to work, but it’s also a bit dreary.  But lying around at the house or lolling about at work are equally bland and gray and stale.  At least this last weekend I got some rest.  I took a fair amount of Benadryl, since there was nothing that I needed to do.

This blog is getting really boring, too.  It’s better than many other things, of course—it’s the only thing arising from my internal motivation, though it’s never achieved any of its intentions, which included originally trying to promote my writing/books/stories, and then providing me some kind of therapeutic outlet, as well as a cry for help, as the expression goes.

None of these goals has been accomplished.  Well, I suppose I’ve succeeded in making a cry for help, but it’s turned out to be just that old biblical “voice crying out in the wilderness” thing.  So it’s basically been a really shitty and ineffectual cry for help.

That’s about par for my course, though.  I only seem to succeed really well at things that don’t matter much to me.  I don’t know why that is, whether it’s related to the whole hypothetical ASD thing, or to my depression, or some kind of pathological demand avoidance (or whatever that term is), or anxiety, or just my general self-loathing.  I seem to have a very strong tendency to fuck up the things that matter to me the most, and to alienate the people I love the most (this last isn’t a universal thing, though…I still get along fine with my sister and brother, but they are special cases, and they are also very far away).

Anyway, I’m tired of the blog.  I did a little recording on Friday of a few minutes of a rant about the useless updates that the various software sites keep undergoing.  I’ll embed the audio of that here for those to listen who wish to do so.  See if you agree with me, or if you think I’m being too much of a curmudgeon.

That’s enough for today.  I may come back to the office and sleep there after the work event tonight, since it’s a very long way back to the house just to lie down and get back up in a few hours to come back to the office.  I mean, I feel that way most days, but it’s going to be worse tonight.

I hope you’re all having a better holiday season than I’m having.  For anyone who’s having a worse one—and I’m sure there are far too many just people for anyone’s comfort—I can only offer my sympathy and good wishes.  Coming from me, that’s sure to be worthless or worse, but it’s all I have to offer.

*Knowing me, the stove thing might even be the easier of the two things.  Goodness knows I’ve deliberately burned myself quite a few times before.  Never on my palms, though.  Back of the hand, yes, but not the palms.  I don’t know why that feels psychologically different.