I’m not feeling it.

Mostly because I know that I’m not getting much of a Xmas at all this year. No dinner with Joe’s parents and sister, no gifts from my mother n’ brother, and just the usual dinner at Denny’s for me and my tight knit little friend group.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m always happy to do Denny’s with Le Gang, and this time, it comes with gifts, and I love giving gifts.

I like getting them too, of course. I’m as greedy for the loot as the next guy. But for me, the greater pleasure has always been in the giving.

What can I say? I love making people happy. Especially those I love.

But yeah, other than tonight, I’m not getting an Xmas this year unless I make one for myself, and so far I have not been able to get my shit together enough to provide one for myself this year.

I’ve never had to do it on my own before. I don’t know where to begin.

The only thing I have planned is ordering a turkey dinner from Denny’s for supper on Xmas day. Woop de frigging do.

In theory, I know things I could do to make things more festive. I could decorate my room. I could watch the Alistair Sims version of A Christmas Carol. I could order myself a box of sugar free chocolates.

Or maybe some not-too-sugary naughty treats, even.

But meh. I just don’t have the motive power for any of that. It all comes back to the main core issue that I don’t find my own welfare to be particularly motivating.

I am still in the grips of internalized neglect and learned helplessness. I can imagine all kinds of solo holiday activities and I can even imagine enjoying them but it all just seems so sad and pathetic to me that I’m not sure that it wouldn’t make things worse in the long run.

Thus my thinking uncharacteristic thoughts like, “it’s just a day and soon it will be over”.

That’s far more Grinch-like than I have ever been before. Patient readers know that I have always kept Xmas in my heart despite the inherent dangers to my fragile psychological state and tender, sweet little heart.

But I’ve always had dinner with the Devoys to anchor me before. It’s hard to even fathom just how much having something to look forward to means to me. I could see my way through a lonely Xmas Eve knowing I would have Xmas Dinner with a lovely family to look forward to.

But now, alas, I have nothing, and no experience with spending Xmas alone and somehow making it feel festive and special.

I’m not good on my own. The last time I lived alone, I lost my frigging mind to depression, and that was when I was a lot younger and healthier.

I could investigate places to go for us lonely souls on Xmas Eve and/or Day. I am sure there must be something in this big ol’ GVRD of ours.

But there would be no point as there would be nobody to drive me there. My friends will all be with their families on Xmas Eve and Day.

I suppose I could finally get around to looking up what would be involved in taking HandyDart to places.

For those who dunno, that’s a kind of specialized bus service/taxi for us gimps. It can take you door to door to things like doctor’s appointments, shopping, social events, and all the rest.

I’ve never taken it before because I’ve always had wonderful Julian to take me the places I needed to go.

And I could look it up, and research places I might go, and do all kinds of wonderful things to make life happier for me.

But first I’d have to convince myself that I am worth the effort and expense.

And that’s a pretty tall order.

More after the break.

---

More gay furry smut recommendations!

Leo the Magician

Well, furries plus whatever the heck Leo is.

I love Leo the Magician because it has everything I love – it’s warm and sweet and funny with seriousness peppered in and it is quite joyously pro-sex to boot.

Its entirely sensibility is very very “me”, plus I love how the art style eschews any pretense of realism for good, solid, appealing, cartoonish character design.

And that’s very “me” as well. If I had a webcomic (again), that’s the style I would want to to be in, albeit maybe slightly more detailed.

But the most important factor is the characters and their expressiveness and appeal.

Lights Out by Funkybun

I love how well written and developed it is. I can feel the emotion in it so clearly! And that makes it super sexy to me.

Even though “all they do is give each other handjobs”. Pshaw. I am way past the age where specific sex acts or combinations of genders and genitals will mean very much to me at all. For me, it’s the emotional intensity and context that turns me on.

And Funkybun’s stuff is so well written! They understand that lust is an emotion and therefore emotion matters in smut just like it matters everywhere else.

And I so totally identify with our, shall we say, more experienced critter. I can totally imagine doing the same thing in the same situation myself.

Maybe it’s my trickster nature. I dunno.

---

Farewell to Xmas 2024

”But wait! ” the version of you in my head cries, “Xmas isn’t until the 25th! How can you be saying goodbye to it on the 22nd?”

Because my Xmas is over. I did Denny’s with Le Gang and we exchanged gifts and I got a few nice things and that was pretty much it.

I loved every second of it, but that was it for me this year unless I can somehow find it within myself to arrange something better.

And it’s not looking too good for that.

I am at least going to do some extra grocery shopping so that I have nice things to eat on Tuesday night and Wednesday afternoon.

And I will order something nice for myself for my personal Xmas dinner. Just to be on the safe side, I had my turkey dinner at Denny’s tonight. So in theory that leaves things wide open for Xmas dinner.

Maybe it will be more Denny’s. Maybe I will see what White Spot is serving up. Maybe I will go totally random excess and have some festive Xmas donairs.

We will see what I feel like at the time.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Well for fuck’s sake.

After my computer crashed while I was not even using it (thanks, Salad), I of course rebooted. And my computer came back online.

But it came back wrong!

Apparently, out internet is out, which is why I am typing this into a Libre Office document and not the WordPress interface for my blog as God intended.

My computer connects to the network fine, but the network can’t seem to reach the internet at large at all, and my uninformed guess is that this is a Shaw Cable problem, not an us problem.

I have rebooted several times with no useful result. Once I get enough words out of my system to calm down enough to even think about doing a totally cold reboot where I turn the power off at the power supply (basically unplugging the whole thing) then boot up from THERE, I will have some kind of definitive answer as to where the fault lies.

Not in our stars but in ourselves, as Shakespeare wrote.

It’s just aggravating as a lot of fuck to have to fight this hard just to get back to normal. I should not have to toil and wait and toil again just to get back to where I fucking started.

Not that this is a particularly useful kind of “should” or “shouldn’t”. Whether something should or should not have happened is irrelevant to the problem at hand and can divert important mental resources from the task of actually solving the problem.

But even a paragon of logical analysis like myself (sic) has to give in to the urge to shake his fist at the sky and curse the gods now and then, whether or not it “makes sense”.

It vents emotion, and that’s all the sense I need it to make.

---

Well I did the fully cold boot and it didn’t fix anything. I am still at the “connected to the network but the network isn’t on the internet right now” phase.

Lovely. Because life didn’t suck enough yet, apparently.

Oh well, I can at least still play some of my video games. Offhand, I can’t think of any of my currently installed games which would have reason to need to be online all the time.

That doesn’t mean they won’t require it, of course. Video game companies love requiring an internet connection so that they can continually monitor you to make sure you’re not pirating games.

Which is downright creepy, now that I think of it. We must watch you constantly to make sure you are not breaking the law, Citizen.

But really, it’s for your own protection. From, i dunno, scammers or whatever.

Trust us, we wouldn’t violate your privacy just because we live in a culture of corporate paranoia where everyone is guilty until proven innocent, and even then we assume you’re guilty as hell and are only eluding our greedy grasp because of the mere technicality that you didn’t do it.

A likely story. That’s what they all say!

I just asked Julian to reset our WiFi router. Hopefully that will resolve the problem. If it doesn’t, then we will have to escalate to actually calling Shaw and asking WTF.

I hope that does not prove necessary as it will be a lot of hassle. As with nearly everything, I would rather deal with it all by myself.

It’s so much less complicated that way. Involving other people in things always makes this so much slower and clumsier and stupider.

I did not and never will enjoy group work. Just give me a task and let me get at it.

I can been incredibly productive that way. Don’t make me slow down to the speed of

the slowest sheep in the flock. Let me FLY.
More after the break.

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The return of the kid

Well rebooting the router restored our internet access, so say for that.

I’m still writing this in LibreOffice because at this point it’s marginally easier. Plus I like how Libre provides me with a constant word count as opposed to WordPress, which makes me press a button to see how much I’ve written.

Oh, how I have suffered.

Other than my computer and internet issues, today’s been okayish. I have my Xmas shopping on the way to being done.

My credit card is glowing red hot from overuse, but whose isn’t this time of year?

Hopefully Joe’s gift from me will arrive before Denny’s tomorrow. We don’t leave for Denny’s until 7:10 pm or so, so the odds are good.

Physically, I feel fairy rotten today. My cold or flu like symptoms are back. Runny nose, sore ear nose and throat, and all the rest.
I’m starting to wonder if it’s not anything viral at all but rather how dehydration presents in me. If so, then all my talk of upping my hydration game gains a brand new urgency.

Because I sure as fuck hate feeling like this.

The muscle soreness and stiffness in particular has been kicking my ass today. That awful back pain I get where it feels like a giant is squeezing my spine is back and it’s not playing around.

I’ve been taking my muscle relaxants to try to fix it. Hard to know if they actually help because the problem happens mostly when I have just gotten out of bed and for obvious reasons, I have not taken a pill in a while when that happens.

The pills do seem to help me get to sleep and stay asleep thought. So there’s that.

Emotionally, right now I feel tired and anxious and low key depressed. I feel very isolated and alone and abandoned, which is a feeling to which I am sadly quite prone.

When depression’s deadly chill comes down it’s like interstellar space inside me. I try my best to remember that no matter what my electrochemical imbalances tell me, the people who love me are still out there and still care about me and want me to be happy.

I guess it’s just easier to feel forsaken and forlorn.

Not better. Just easier.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Lately I have been getting a lot of pain in the muscles in my arms when I use the walker.

i guess it’s finally come to this. My mysterious ailment has been degrading the muscles in my arms for a long time and now it’s getting hard to ignore.

And it happens the moment I start using the outdoor walker. For whatever reason, with my indoor walker, the pain is not as bad.

But when I go out, oh lordy.

It would be ironic if what puts me into a wheelchair at long last is my arms, not my legs. That’s the only solution I can see if my arms won’t hold me up any more.

And it would have to be an electric one, with a motor, because if my arms can’t hold me up for using the walker, they sure as hell can’t propel the wheels of a classic wheelchair.

Like with the pain in my legs, it tends to be at its worst when I first start out. Once the muscles warm up, and the endorphins kick in, the muscles get this cold numb feeling that reduces the pain a fair bit.

Yay for that, I guess.

But I am, obviously, very worried about this development. I don’t want to end up in a wheelchair and I super duper double dog don’t want to lose the use of my arms.

Right now, normal household use doesn’t cause my arms much pain, so phew for that. I get little twinges now and then, and I feel it if I try to move something heavy, but for the most part it’s not a problem. Yet.

As long as I can still use the keyboard and mouse, I can deal with it. That’s what I do with most of my day anyhow, whether it’s video games or blogging.

But it would really suck if I, say, need a lot more help from Julian because I can’t use my arms for much of anything anymore. I would hate it so much if, for example, I couldn’t make my own dead simple meals any more.

I already have a diet that is somewhat circumscribed by the fact that I can’t stay on my feet for very long. There’s all kinds of foods I can’t make for myself because they would require me to stand over a hot stove for too long, or cannot easily be transported via the saddlebags of my indoor walker.

I would love to get back into eating soup again, for example. But how the heck do I carry soup from the kitchen to my room?

Maybe I should buy myself a big ol’ Thermos for Xmas.

Speaking of which, I have 2/3 of my Xmas shopping done. So yay that. And I did my usual Friday grocery shopping online and got myself some extra treats for the holidays, like some of those little pot pies I love and some sugar free vanilla ice cream.

I think I’ll be making an Amazon order soon. If I do, I will see about ordering some sugar free chocolate syrup (yes that’s a thing!) along with the other stuff.

Then I’ll be able to have a chocolate sundae!

I might yet invest in some genuinely naughty treats too. But not too naughty or it will make me feel sick. So I will have to choose carefully.

For instance, I’d really like a doughnut or some Timbits, and my fave in both cases is the old fashioned glazed kind.

But that glaze might do me in.

I will work things out. Tim Horton’s might get some of my money somehow.

More after the break.

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Stupid frigging Chrome

I am increasingly running into things which do not work in Chrome. And it’s beginning to get on my nerves.

I should not have to use Microsoft Edge to check the balance on my card or add a new card to my Amazon account.

And it’s this kind of bullshit that made me flee Firefox and go Chrome in the first place.

So what the hell. I might just switch to Microsoft Edge. The 90’s internet rebel living inside me balks at the idea of surrendering to Microsoft like that – it was our sworn duty to hate Bill Gates back then – but the lazy, tired old person that I am now can probably override that younger version of me.

There are other alternatives. Opera the web browser is still out there, amazingly. As is Tor, the web browser of choice for people for whom Incognito Mode is not nearly secretive and shady enough. And I am sure there are other browsers out there I could choose from if I chose to.

But meh. Edge is already there.

Got another new game. I was browsing a sale on games by the game studio Larian and realized that while I had played their game Divinity : Original Sin 2 for a whopping 770+ hours, I had never played the original.

And I could get the original for $5. Sold!

Sure, the odds are it won’t be quite as good as the sequel, but if the sequel was good for almost 800 hours of gameplay, and this one only cost me $5, then I will be happy if I get even as little as 200 hours out of it.

And so far it’s fun. I was thrown off at first by the fact that it wanted me to create TWO characters, one male and one female, at the beginning, but that was just so that there would be two characters in my starting party instead of one.

I’ve picked up a third now, a mercenary with a Southern belle accent, which seems incongruous for no logical reason.

I mean, this is a fantasy universe. There’s no reason characters can’t have any accent in the world, whether it’s Southern, Brooklyn, or Jordy.

We’re just used to fantasy being dominated by either neutral American accents or various form of British accents.

I’d love to know exactly when we collectively decided dwarves were Scottish.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Just another brush with death.

Needed to get a potato out of the crisper drawer of the fridge. Bent down the wrong way. Bad circulation in my legs means that if I bend down the wrong way, it cuts the blood flow to my brain and I instantly become deathly dizzy.

So I then had to push myself off the bottom section of the fridge, the shelf on top of the crisper drawers, in order to get back up to where the blood could reach my brain again.

Turns out that’s really important.

But that’d my life. Death lurks everywhere, and I can’t look everywhere at once, so one of these days catastrophe will stop playing with me and go in for the kill.

I wish I could say that this truth galvanized me into being more determined than ever to live my life to the fullest and get the most out of every fleeting moment of it.

But it does not. Rather the opposite, actually. It just makes me want to withdraw even deeper into myself and wait for it all to be over.

The whole idea of living life to the fullest seems flawed and doomed to me. How on Earth would I even know if I’m living life to the fullest? How could I possibly know that out of the billions of things I could be doing right now, the one I am doing is the one which will bring me the most joy?

To me, that just sounds like a recipe for constant dissatisfaction as you worry and wonder whether you could be living a fuller life right now.

For some of us, that positive shit just doesn’t work.

Like, take for example Doctor Scott‘s recent video about the third way to fight depression that isn’t therapy or drugs but works just as well as them!

I saw that title, and immediately said to myself, “It’s exercise, isn’t it?”

Yup. He wanted to sell me on the idea of exercising my way out of my despair and I had to laugh a bitter, mirthless laugh at that because if I can barely find the motivation to get out of bed to go to the bathroom some days, how the fuck am I supposed to find the motivation to do something that will actively hurt the entire time (but for “only” 20 minutes!) and then leave me feeling horrible after?

The level of delusion in that kind of thinking is atrocious.

This kind of thing is why I am thinking of not following Doctor Scott on YouTube any more because he seems like a great guy and I believe he is entirely earnest and sincere and really did go through depressive hell too, but despite all that, his videos keep making me really angry because it’s like he has no idea what it’s like to be someone like me and his advice is always this perky bullshit that feels like it’s from another planet.

The Planet of the Ryans, where Ryan Gosling and Ryan Reynolds are from.

I’ve had the same problem with other YouTube therapists as well. They are sincerely trying to help but they clearly have no idea of what it’s truly like to dwell in the darkness feeling so numb from the hard edged chill inside you that sometimes it is hard to remember why you do literally anything.

I mean seriously. Fuck you people. You clearly don’t get it, and if you don’t get it, get OUT. Get out of my fucking head space because you’re worse than useless and I was happier before you came in and dispensed your insipid advice.

If I am ever institutionalized, I will definitely be a “problematic” patient. Kind of like Will in Good Will Hunting. When I am angry, I lash out both intellectually and verbally, and I could easily see myself just destroying therapist after therapist.

“And we’re going to keep going through this until you bring me someone who isn’t a useless god damned idiot!”.

Yeah I can totally see that happening.

I even have to restrain myself so that I stay within the margins of what Doctor Costin can provide me. If I truly unloaded on him, it would kill him.

I mean, dude’s in his 80s.

So instead, I just stay in my tiny little cage.

It’s not like I am in a position to make any demands of people.

More after the break.

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Borrowing health from the future

I feel like when you have an unhealthy lifestyle when you are young, you are essentially mortgaging your future to pay for your present.

It’s a raw deal but no young person is ever going to be convinced not to do what they want to do based on how they will feel in their forties and fifties.

That’s like forever from now. Who cares?

I sure as hell ate like a total fool a lot when I was younger. Junk food was my favorite side dish. Meals were always accompanied by chips, pretzels, Cheesies, or whatever.

And even after my diabetes diagnosis, I would still eat the sweet stuff sometimes. After all, diabetes didn’t hurt (yet) and I had no other physical symptoms, so how big of a deal could it really be?

Quite big, as it turns out.

And I would love to be able to warn younger fat dudes that they are heading for a brick wall at top speed and it’s up to them whether they crash into it or only nudge it, but I know it would not do any good.

The future isn’t real when you’re young. In general, human beings are not great at reacting to any threat that is too far in the future and/or too abstract.

By the time the operant conditioning of getting a sick, teeth-aching headache within minutes of eating the wrong thing kicked in, it was already too late.

And even today, I have to remain vigilant. I suffer the consequences of my earlier self-neglect, like the nerve damage to my fingertips or whatever the fuck is happening to the muscles in my legs and arms, and yet I still leer longingly at my fave chocolate bars when I see them on DoorDash and I know that if I slipped up, that slope would slide me directly into hell and a premature and very stupid death.

The only way to be safe from that slippery slope is to never set foot on it again. Discipline is repetition and the more often you say no to that self-destructive voice tempting you to doom yourself, the easier it gets.

I still miss all those lovely sweet treats from long ago. But I can’t say I am actually tempted by them. I know they would just make me sick.

And I have sugar free treats I can eat if I feel the need for something sweet.

So why bother sinning against my future health?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Didn’t make it to the orthopedic shoe place today because I’m sick.

Feels like someone’s sitting on my chest. My breathing is a little impaired too. I got the soreness in my ears and throat and of course, I feel like used food.

SoI guess my shoes will have to wait. We’re now going to be going there on January 6 of the new year, which, coincidentally, was my late father’s birthday.

I am moderately worried about my symptoms. It could be just another flareup of that peekaboo plague that seemingly comes and goes at random, but it could actually be something seriously viral instead.

The demon on my chest feeling and impaired breathing are new. That’s what has me concerned. And, of course, the persistent malaise.

Oy, the malaise.

I feel very dragged out and slow right now. Like I am lightly sedated, only less fun.

It’s bad enough that I am having some trouble stringing the words together. My concentration is shot. Staying focused on what I am doing takes constant effort because my mind just wants to drift off back into sleep.

Ah, sleep. Like death without the commitment. You don’t have to be yourself when you’re asleep. You don’t have to be anybody.

And that means a lot to me.

My self-esteem has improved a lot over the years but it’s still not great. The rage and turmoil I once vented on myself via self-loathing are still there, waiting for someplace to go, and my belief in my worth is hardly stable.

If only I could escape this cage of mine. But in order to get out, I would have to let the world in, and I am still deathly afraid of the overwhelm.

The only cure for being overwhelmed by increased stimulation is exposure. I would have to increase the level gradually, giving myself plenty of time to adjust.

Although part of me wants to just toss myself into the deep end so that I have to deal with the issue and overcome the overwhelm or perish.

But I might choose to perish. Because it’s easier.

Not better. Just easier.

Death is, after all, the ultimate escape. An escape from literally everything.

And it has its allure. But I don’t really want to die. That’s just the weariness and depression talking. What I want is to live and thrive and grow and maybe even finally become a marginally competent adult.

It could happen.

But my dreams of basic maturity will have to wait because I am way too tired to think about them right now. It’s all I can do to deal with my own challenge free life right now.

Unrelatedly, a friend (a very cute bat named Windchaser) gave me a code for a game called Spelunky and I have been giving it a try.

It’s a game where you explore randomized levels looking for treasure while trying not to die in myriad ways.

It’s a roguelike, which means that the goal is to see how far you can make it without dying because when you die, that’s it, game over, start at the beginning again.

There doesn’t seem to be a mechanism for permanent progress of any sort and that’s very problematic for me.

The game is beloved by many and makes a lot of top games of all time lists so I am willing to give it a try but so far, I’m not getting it.

Sure, the levels are randomly generated, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t essentially the same. It’s just the same basic building blocks rearranged and that does not make the game any more interesting to me.

And so far I have not seen any of the “brilliant” things that purportedly happen all the time in the game. Unless your idea of brilliance is, “wow, this time the floating platforms are BEFORE the spike pit!”.

Big freaking deal.

More after the break.

---

Another dang gme

Decided, on a whim (yay), to reinstall a game called Warframe.

It’s a multiplayer online game that has a fairly intricate science fiction setting where you control a kind of alien robot body in order to beam down to planets and do simple FPS missions like “protect this structure” or “get this thing” or “kill this dude”.

There’s PVP content too, but I don’t give a crap about that. I’m just not a competitive person. I don’t even like competition when I am fairly certain I’ll win.

I’d rather just avoid the whole ugly business altogether.

Before I got to play it again, I had a bunch of the usual security bullshit to go through. I even had to enable two factor authentication, even thought I didn’t wanna.

Luckily, it wasn’t like the Facebook 2FA where it is impossible to log in without a smartphone. I ain’t got one of those.

A dumbphone is enough for me.

Unsurprisingly, between the fact that I hadn’t played it since 2018^[1] so I didn’t remember much of it and the fact that a lot has changed in the game since way back when, I was utterly confused.

And as I feared, like in all these multiplayer games, there is no way to go back and do the basic tutorial again. So I’ve had to wing it.

Luckily, it’s not as complicated as it seems at first. Once I once more figured out how to start a mission (turns out, it was the Navigation menu). I beamed down to some jungle and started kicking butt.

I still dunno how long I’ll keep playing. I’m as impressed with the game as I was the first time I played it when I was but a 45 year old stripling, and according to Steam, back then I like it enough to play it for almost 120 hours, but I am six years older and slower and less able to keep up with high intensity fast paced combat, so I get the feeling it may not last another 120 hours on my HD.

Still, it felt good to stretch my mental muscles a bit by playing something “new”.

If Warframe doesn’t last, I will give No Man’s Sky another try. I haven’t played it in a bit over a year and there’s been a bunch of free expansions since then.

It’s kind of like making progress. At least I am trying new(ish) things!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I’ve been trying to learn to be more impulsive but it’s rough.

My inherent Taurus caution is going to fight me the whole way.

Note that I am seeking to be more impulsive, not impulsive full stop. I will never be an impulsive person. That’s way too big a stretch.

No, I just want to open myself up to my impulses more so that I can sometimes act on them and thus reinforce and strengthen them.

Impulses, it turns out, need to be fed in order for them to stay healthy. And the only way to feed them is to act on them immediately instead of making them wait for the conscious mind to carefully weigh the options.

If you always do that, the impulses die and with them the main spark plug for your whole motivational engine. You lose your esprit, your life force, your vim and vigor.

I recognize the truth of all of this. You don’t have to be Freud to realize that a balance between id and ego must be maintained by the superego and that an imbalance in either direction is a recipe for neurosis.

But knowing something is true and truly believing it are radically different things. Knowing I need to relax and be more flexible and open to impulsive action does not, in itself, make it happen.

And trying to change my deeply ingrained habits of thought can often feel like I am trying to bend steel with my bare hands.

And I’m no Superman.

If I’m to become more impulsive, I’m going to have to alter my relationship with regret.

Take my recent impulsive acquisition of a game called A Plague’s Tale : Requiem.

I got it on impulse purely based on the text description of it and the fact that I knew the game had a lot of passionate fans and was a critical darling.

This was an objectively stupid way to spend nearly of my carefully saved up Salad money. I really should have dug deeper to find out what the game is actually like.

Because I hate the fucking thing.

I’ve played enough of it now to know that what I thought (hoped) was just a tutorial was, in fact, the game, and all I could expect was more of the same slow, plodding, walking simulator gameplay punctuated by brutally unforgiving action sequences based largely around stealth, at which I suck.

It says a lot about me that when my character finally gets her sling back and I could actually kill (or knock out) enemies, I suddenly started progressing WAY faster.

I am good at combat. But stealth eludes me. I’m just not patient enough to do things slowly and silently in the shadows, nor am I observant enough.

So now I am stuck with a game I can’t stand and that cost like six months’ worth of Salad earnings and I can’t help but deeply regret my impulsivity.

Presumably, people who are actually impulsive don’t regret things for very long. They shrug, chalk it up to experience, and just keep going without giving it another thought.

And maybe they are a little wiser in the future, and maybe not. But I envy their ability to maintain their forward momentum regardless.

Me, I know I will be obsessing over this errant purchase for days on end, berating myself and hating myself and wishing I could go back and choose better this time.

Futile, I know. The past is fixed. You can’t change it. Once it happens, it happened.

Maybe if I had more money, I could afford to be more impulsive.

But for now, I just have regret.

More after the break.

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What’s going on with me

Well let’s see.

Did Wound Care this afternoon. Yes, you read that right, the AFTERNOON. The appointment was at 2:30 pm, which would have been impossible to make if Joe was working but as is, it made for a nice change of pace.

At Wound Care, the nurse and I discovered that the wound on my right foot is actually healing up nicely and (fingers crossed) might actually be on its way out.

That would be nice.

The foot itself is looking pink and healthy too. Presumably the circulation in that foot has improved. Before it was looking kind of clammy and… ashen.

But now, IT LIVES!

This was also a callous paring day. Linda, the Wound Care Clinician, visited me once again to “debride” my wounds and clear things up in general.

So she abraded the callous buildup away with her neat little “sharp ball on a stick” tool. This means that right now I have a slight burning sensation in the soles of my feet where the debridement was done because that’s what it feels like when those areas start to heal and, presumably, starts rebuilding the dang callous.

It’s a cycle.

Tomorrow, Julian and I must make a pilgrimage back to that orthotics place in Vancouver for… a reason.

Honestly, it’s been so long since the previous appointment, where they took casts of my feet, that I have no idea what this second appointment is for.

Hopefully they will just hand me the new shoes. But I am not sure. I think the nice British lady who did the casting said something about a follow up appointment. But she also said she thought I’d have my shoes before Xmas. So I dunno.

So it will be a journey into mystery!

I am not looking forward to it. I had completely forgotten about the appointment until I happened to check my email today and there was a reminder there.

And thank God for that because otherwise we would not have shown up and I would have another “absence due to absence of mind” on my record.

I can be such an airhead! I am living proof that you can be brilliant and clueless at the same time. I wish I was the sort of person who had followers or an assistant so they could keep me on track and organized.

That way I could concentrate on thinking the big thoughts.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Just had a small urinary oopsie.

I didn’t think I needed to pee that bad, but apparently I was wrong. Because on the way back to my room from the kitchen, the contents of my bladder sloshed against what I guess you’d call the urinary sphincter, and a little leaked out.

That’s not good. That’s not good at ALL.

Add that to the list of things I really should take to Doctor Chao. But that’s unlikely to happen soon because it takes more than a week just to get a phone appointment with him, and I find that quite discouraging.

If I have an issue, what are the odds it will still be there a week from now? Given how frail and variable my health has become, the odds aren’t good.

Even pharmacists are now saying, “You should probably just go to Urgent Care. ”

I still feel weak and I am still worried that the cause might be physical. It’s occurred to me that I have been sick for so long that I no longer have any solid frame of reference for what I should and should not be feeling in my body.

I know I have felt weak and low for a long time and that it really seems like my body starts to gear up to get going then something happens and all the energy flows out of the system again, like a car when the engine won’t turn over.

For all these years I have attributed that to my ruptured psyche, but it’s entirely possible that the problem is, in fact, my wounded heart.

I mean, how would I know?

I am trying to remember the last time my heart got looked at in a medical sense. I am pretty sure it was at least two years ago. Maybe more.

Couldn’t hurt to ring the bell on that sometime soon. What the heck.

Wouldn’t it be amazing to find out that it’s been a physical issue all this time and that an operation or procedure can fix it?

It would do wonders for my deep feelings of guilt and shame about having not lived a grownup life at all despite being 51.

See, it wasn’t a moral failing. I don’t lack character and grit.

I just had a bum ticker.

It’s still a longshot but it’s something worth considering, at least.

And yeah, I know I’m not supposed to feel utterly terrible about how my life has turned out and I am especially not supposed to feel like a complete and utter failure.

What I should be doing is forgiving myself and accepting that I am who I am and I am where I am in life and the best I can do is make the best of the time I have left on this mortal plane and just try to relax and enjoy myself.

Blah blah blah. Knowing what I am supposed to be feeling doesn’t make it happen, it just makes me acutely aware of something else about me that is broken and wrong.

And I’m not supposed to be feeling that either.

But I do. I feel it all. The guilt and shame are crippling. I cringe inwardly at the thought of being in any social situation where I have to admit to completely failing at life.

Nope, no job stories. I have no idea what it’s like to work for a living. Sorry, can’t relate.

No relationship stories either. No idea what it’s like to be in one of those either.

I’ve just lived the same pathetic existence in one place or another (doesn’t really matter where) for the last 30 years or so.

And yet, to the outside world, I don’t seem sick. I never let it show. If it wasn’t for this blessed blog of mine, the world would have no idea anything was wrong with me.

I can’t even come close to truly baring all even with my therapist.

Around other people, my smooth persona is in place and I seem just fine and dandy.

When I grew up, it was definitely not okay to not be okay.

Because when there’s nobody to catch you, you better not fall.

More after the break.

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The other “shoe”

Well it start with the same letters, anyhow.

Having peed myself earlier, I had to complete the set and shit the bed.

The usual circumstances : I was asleep, was woken up by the need to poop. Or rather, by the horrible realization that I had um…. already started.

Then I was stuck trying to get to the bathroom without squeezing the toothpaste tube too much, so to speak.

A futile endeavour, to be sure, but I had to try.

I got my dirty ass into the bathroom and onto the throne and inspected the damage. Turns out I had done a much better job with the toothpaste tube than I had thought. The amount of substance in my pants was fairly small.

I didn’t think I needed to “go” when I lay down to nap. The lesson to never ignore that need in favour of sleep in order to prevent this very thing has finally sunk in.

But who knows, I might have ignored the warning signs. That would be better than the other possibility, that my condition has gotten even worse and there is now nothing I can do to keep from needing Depends when I sleep.

God, I hope that’s not it.

Oh, and I got my second needle to the eye from the folks at West Coast Retina Consultants this morning. This time it was the right eye.

I brought a book because last time we were there, last Tuesday, we were there for at least an hour and a half.

But today it took less than half an hour. I guess they didn’t feel the need to do all the forms of testing they did the first time.

How much could my eyes have changed in six days?

So the shot hurt the same but the wait? I barely felt it at all.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Been having one bitch of a “sleepy day” today.

I’ve slept for around 12 of the last 16 hours. And I am still sleepy. I could easily lay down and go right back to sleep, no problem.

I am just glad that I will be drinking fully caffeinated Diet Coke at Denny’s tonight. That should be enough to keep me going for a while at least.

But being this sleepy for this long is really a drag, man. I don’t want to be sleeping, I want to be awake and doing stuff!

Even if said “stuff” is just me playing video games.

Speaking of which, I have acquired a new one. I was moping about getting burned out on Morrowind this morning and decided to check out what I could get for my nearly $8 of carefully hoarded Salad money.

One of the games on offer was A Plague Tale : Requiem, and I had heard good things about that game and its predecessor, A Plague Tale : Innocence, so I decided to give it a shot for $7.

And I am regretting this decision, which unfortunately cannot be reversed.

I can only assume that I am in the midst of a VERY long tutorial section because all I have experienced so far is tiny bits of gameplay in between a zillion Quick Time Events (QTEs^[1]) and that makes for a simply terrible user experience chez moi.

And I am almost positive the blurb for the game said it was an open world game and so far the world has been very closed, hence my assumption (and hope) that all I have experienced so far is a tutorial.

I suppose I could blame myself for not taking all that long to pick a game from the Salad store, but honestly there’s no guarantee that would have led to a better choice given my issues with being easily overwhelmed.

In fact, if I had mulled it over carefully, as my inherent caution bids me to do, it’s far more likely that I would have collapsed under the weight of all the attractive options and not been able to pick anything at all.

Still, it’s sad to see that Salad money go. It took six months for my account to accumulate that $7, and I can’t get a refund because it wasn’t sold to me by Steam themselves, so if I don’t like the game, I am SSOL^[2].

Oh well, no use dwelling on it. I will play the game at least until I have either finished the tutorial or determined that this is, in fact, all the game has to offer before uninstalling it in a huff and bitching about it to Maelkoth.

Luckily, I still have $20 and a bit in my Steam wallet, left over from previous months, so I can give the whole “a new game for Fruvous” thing a try. I could even buy a game that costs a little more than that as an Xmas gift to myself.

Maybe I should save that for Xmas day, though, so that I have something to “open” (install and play) on that day.

I am wondering if I should order my own little Xmas dinner from a restaurant instead of getting it via my groceries. But then I would have to find a place that is open on Xmas day and serving turkey et al.

Denny’s might work for that.

Presumably a restaurant meal would be better than what I can kludge together, given how limited my kitchen time is.

A TV dinner is looking like the smartest option on that front. Plus something naughty (but not TOO naughty) I can have for dessert.

Details aside, it’s up to me to make my own little Xmas this year, and I am determined to do so rather than what I would normally do, which is just withdraw with a vengeance until the whole thing is over.

I can make things better for myself if I just try. Invest some effort in myself.

After all, ’tis the season!

More after the break.

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Live another life

Hah. If only. But life ain’t got no reset button.

Unless you believe in reincarnation, in which case it does have one but you lose all your items, progress, and save games, so you’re really no further ahead.

No, the reset everyone wants is to be able to live your life again knowing what you know now, and that’s not an option, as far as we know.

The best we can do is try to pass what we know on to the next generation so that they don’t have to learn the same hard lessons we did.

But that rarely works because our frames of reference are so different. When I was young the advice Boomers wanted to give us Gen X kids seemed like it came from another planet. They clearly had no idea what we were going through.

And I have only a dim half-notion what our Millennial kids went through, and considerably less about what Gen Z went through,

All we can do is stand on the sidelines and give what help we can when it’s relevant but mostly just watch them stumble over excitingly new yet predictable roadblocks.

I hope a little of what we have to tell them sinks in and proves useful. I’m painfully aware of how little comfort us bitter, cynical Gen X folk can offer to Millennials and their injured idealism and their feelings of betrayal and premature ejection into adulthood.

We raised them for a world that stopped existing. Now they are raising kids desperate for something, anything, to believe in.

And I got nothin’.

We of the Generation of X are products of the death of Boomer hippie idealism as it rotted into Seventies moral nihilism and Eighties selfishness, and so we learned to live without ideals or beliefs or trust in anything at all.

And I was happy when I read that the Millennials were earnest and idealistic because the world needed that and we sure as shit couldn’t provide it.

And then that world stabbed them in the back.

I’m so, so sorry kids.

The world today is one fucked up place and we can’t blame it all on the Boomers any more. We’re the generation in charge now.

And how fucked up is that?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I got nothin’ going on in the real world, so let’s talk about my actual life : video games.

They’re the addiction that is ruining my life, after all. If I could just pry open the jaws of this goddamned beast enough for me to get a few actually productive hours a day in, I might actually get my life moving at long last.

I’m this phenomenally talented and brilliant dude and yet I waste almost every waking hour of the day burning my brain cells with fucking video games.

It really is a tragedy. I could be doing so much good in the world. And making so much god damned money. And having so much hot fucking sex.

I have many layers of motivation.

I know this cage I live in will disappear when I stop needing it. I am entombed by my own desperate fears from long ago. The idea of true exposure to the world, without the cage, makes me feel like I am going to die.

Like it would kill me the same way sunlight kills Dracula.

And it’s very hard for me to truly get a grip on those fears because they are such a fundamental part of who I am. The rape that made me the “man” I am today happened when I was only 4 years old and absolutely everything about me is built on that foundation. That makes it not being there literally unthinkable for me.

I want to heal that brutal untreated trauma from a long time ago. But what can you do when your entire being has been warped and distorted by a single brutal act?

And how can I hope to function as an actual grownup when so much of me is locked away along with the memories of that terrible event? When I was raped, I withdrew deep into my mind to escape what was happening to me, and left only the bare minimum of my being still out in the real world in order to navigate life.

And I have lived primarily in my head ever since.

Maybe that’s how I got so god damned smart. I mean, I was a bright kid before the rape – learned to read when I was 3 – but it might have been the rape that, by driving me so deep into my own mind, made me develop so fast on the mental side of things.

And barely at all on the emotional and social sides of things.

No wonder I always feel so weak. Like something vital, some fundamental fuel, is missing and without it I can’t pull myself together at all, let alone do stuff.

Every now and then the mists part and the sun shines and I can feel okay for a little while. But most of the time I am huddling all hunched up inside, dying from the cold.

And I don’t know. Maybe my problem is physical. Maybe my heart just can’t generate the horsepower I need in order to get things done. Maybe my diabetes ridden circulatory system can’t handle the strain of actual motivation. Maybe I am just too god damned old and decrepit to grow up.

Maybe I just missed the fucking boat entirely.

But maybe it’s psychological too. With so much of my being packed away deep inside of me, I just don’t have enough me to rescue myself.

And nobody else can do it. Nobody is going to stop to pick that sad little fat kid up out of that snowbank and take him someplace warm and show him that he’s loved.

And don’t fucking tell me to do it for myself. That’s not possible. There is no part of me that is strong enough and has its feet planted on solid ground enough to do that.

So I dunno WTF. I am extremely pent up, stopped up, and frustrated, and some day that might just kill me.

But what else can I do?

More after the break.

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Sex Ed with your Digimon

Sex Ed with your Digimon. I know nothing about the show but from the smut I have seen that cute red lizard Guilmon is SUPER popular.

But what I like about this one is the clear warmth and affection mixed in with the lust and the gentle exploration of it all.

It all adds up to a VERY sexy package for yours truly.

And for you too, maybe!

And remember, Guilmon can talk, so it’s not technically bestiality!

---

Anyhow, video games

Another try to talk about what I meant to talk about in Part I. 

I think I’m getting kinda burned out on Morrowind. There’s tons of the game I have yet to see but it’s all starting to feel kinda same-y. 

There’s tons of mods, too, so I am going with those for now. Plus I started a new playthrough after my momentum with my Argonian spearman petered out. 

It seemed like a good idea to install Tamriel Rebuilt, a huge mod that basically doubles the landmass of the game, with more cities and quests and so on. 

But what I found was that the quests were mostly what I call “city quests”, where you just go from point A to point B, do a thing, proceed to point C, and so on. 

There’s no combat, no dungeon crawling, no figuring things out. Just a whole lot of travel and text interactions. 

Yawn. I need more than that to keep my interest. Even the one or two dungeons I found were pretty underwhelming. 

I get the feeling the maker(s) were more interested in quantity than quality. 

So I uninstalled the thing and started a new game as a spell chucking High Elf. Dunno if that will last, though. I am wondering what a stealth playthrough would be like. 

Probably terrible, at least at first, given how much I suck at stealth. 

But it might be worth a try, just to get some more play out of the game. 

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow. 

 

 

 

 

ALL RIGHT. Time to get this done the way I always do, by talking it out in my blog.

The ground rules have changed a little. I will now accept cash donations as long as they are contributions towards a specific thing.

Well I guess I’d always accept cash. But you get the idea.

One thing that someone could get me is my new glasses. I keep putting off ordering them for some reason, even though I know I have the budget for it.

Well someone could give me $25 towards a new pair o’ specs. I have my prescription so all I need to do is order them off of Holy Shit Are These Glasses Cheap.com or whatever, and they’ll be on the way.

By UPS, thankfully. You know, all the postal workers are really accomplishing, besides making us all loathe them for taking Xmas hostage, is teaching people how completely unnecessary they are.

Sure, couriers are more expensive than a stamp, but who the fuck sends letters any more? Everybody just gets stuff off Amazon, and they use UPS.

Anyhow, moving on, someone could also give me a contribution toward my Steam account. I have finally accepted that, against all logic and reason, the actual physical Steam gift cards are a myth and a fantasy and so I will need to act as an intermediary via good old cashola.

Either that, or someone with a credit card could probably send me a virtual gift card. I assume Steam are smart enough to have those available.

Let’s see. I could use a new pair o’ pants. Joe presumably knows my size because he’s bought me pants from them Big n’ Tall guys downtown before.

One of my current pairs is on its last legs (last threads?), Almost all the belt loops are busted and there’s a hole forming in the seat that will hit the illegal parts of my butt any day now, so it’s going to go.

Getting them repaired is also an option.

What else. Well, of course, sugar free treats are always nice. They would make great “stocking stuffer” level gifts. Russel Stover, bless his corporate heart, has an extensive line of sugar free candies and chocolates.

I really like the Starlight Mints and the Fruit Mix in hard candies. Or the sugar free version of Werther’s Originals.

So much better than Werther’s Derivatives.

Now what? Hmmm. It’s a testament to how empty my life is that I can’t think of much that I need outside of food, clothes, and video games.

It’s not like someone could get me a job for Xmas.

I’m trying to think of something that would make my life easier. But to be frank, my life is already pretty easy.

Terrible. But easy.

The problem is that a lot of what I want is too expensive. Like computer parts. I still need to upgrade the power supply in my computer so it can handle all the other fancy schmancy other stuff I have installed in there.

I’ll try to think of something during the break.

More after the break.

---

This could totally be about Fruvous

I’m the blue doggy.

I have a history of approaching very scary looking fursonas and winning them over by the sheer power of my vulpine charm and cuteness.

You know, there can be a lot of power in being nonthreatening and adorable. Often the scary fur is tickled that someone like me is approaching them at all.

It’s good to be cute.

This could be about Fru too, but fair warning, its entirely smut with a cute premise. And he’s the wrong color of fox. But I love how happy he is!

---

More gift ideas

OK, now I really have to cudgel my brain.

The problem is that I always just make do with what I have and I don’t think about what I want but do not have.

I’m adaptable to a fault.

Well let’s see. I could use another “super easy” songbook so I could learn to play stuff on my synthesizer. I think I’d like the Simon and Garfunkel one next. I already have one for the Beatles.

And by “super easy” I mean the letter name of the note (A, B,C, etc.) is printed right on the note so I don’t have to be able to tell if a note is on a line or in a space.

Given that assistance, I can piece together how to play the song if I already know the song well from having listened to it many times.

Hmm. I would also like one for the Tragically Hip, or Jethro Tull, or maybe Cat Stevens. I am trying to pick artists where I know a lot of their songs.

I mean, most of my entertainment comes from YouTube and that’s free. Hmm.

Oh! A clothes hamper would be nice, as would a nice BIG trash pail for my garbage in my room, or one of those sealed containers for the recyclables like the one that we have in the kitchen.

I need help keeping this room clean. Well, cleaner, anyhow.

And lastly, and always, books. What books? I’m not sure. I will see if I can put together an Amazon wishlist to guide people.

Of course, this all assumes anyone actually cares what I want enough to actually shop for a gift for me. Historically this has not been the case.

Not that I’m bitter.

Now that I have some sort of list started, I have to think about what I want to get my friends. Obviously, I’m not going to speculate about that here and ruin the surprise.

I’ve been anxious about the upcoming holiday, even though I have no real reason to be. I will order gifts from Amazon and they will be here in time. I don’t have to stress.

I think at this stage in my recovery, I need to learn to commit more of myself into the things I do, and I need to do more things which benefit from that level of commitment.

I can do this. I can take some of that video game energy and invest it in a new kind of game, a creative game, where I have a lot of fun making things.

This can be a beautiful world if you want it to be.

But first, you have to change.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.