It’s harder than it sounds.

I could rail against my mind fog. Shake my tiny fist at the sky and yell, “Damn you, mind fog, I wish you’d go away forever!”

But I don’t wish that. Not really.

I know that I’m the source of the fog (remember, everything in your head is you) and that going around constantly in a daze serves a vital purpose, namely acting as a sort of soft focus lens to make reality less scary.

And by scary, I mean overstimulating. I think.

Still working out how overwhelm and anxiety fit together in my mind.

Anyhow, the mind fog blurs everything and makes it seem like things are further away and less intense than they are and thus preserve the inner sanctum of my mind in which I have been hiding for most of my life.

I can feel that duck blind of the mind quite clearly now. I can feel how it has acted as both camouflage to hide me from the world and as a kind of shark cage to protect me from it when the camouflage fails.

Above all else, nothing and nobody touches me. Not the real me. Not the crazy critter who lives inside that cage. He can get extremely close to people without them ever truly touching him and he’s so good at it that they never know that hiding inside all that cuddle warmth and snuggly sensitivity hangs a cage of ice colder than space itself.

And I know that this is a big problem for me. I know that I can confuse the hell out of people with the mixed signals I put out. That’s the main reason I tend to keep everyone at arm’s length – from that distance, I can be Mister Sunshine and nobody can sense the little man on the inside who is scared as hell of pretty much everything.

I know that if I am ever to get into a relationship, I will of course have to get one hell of a lot closer with someone. And I know that it is not in my nature to hold back when connecting with someone – we connect deeply or not at all.

And that means that at some point, that little man may well have to abandon his little shark cage and at long last let someone actually touch him and let the layers of ice around his heart just melt away.

I don’t know what will happen then. I hope I can handle it. I’d like to think I would finally simply surrender to it all and become a more whole person and truly, truly love that person with all my heart and soul.

But given that I can’t seem to handle the intimacy of even falling asleep while I am in physical contact with someone else, I definitely cannot guarantee a good reaction.

Oh well, Everybody has to find out what they are like when they are in love at some point of their lives.

Granted, it’s usually in their teens, not when they are 51, but whatever.

Better latent than never!

That’s the thing. I’ve led such a strange life. For as long as I can remember, I can convincingly act like I am okay, and even pass for normal as long as people don’t look too closely, but it’s all just part of the duck blind.

Deep inside I am frozen in time and detached from everything and scared, and all I can really do is lurk in the shadows most of the time.

I’m doing whatever I can to push against this tendency in me and force myself out of my shell and into the world a little bit more.

And sometimes I can, and sometimes I can’t. And that’s okay.

It’s okay to get frustrated with myself over it sometimes too.

It’s okay to wish winter would end and the sun would visit my sky at last.

Even though I know I don’t really want that fog to burn away.

Because then I’d be exposed.

More after the break.

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The place where it dies

I can feel it when motivation should be happening.

It’s like electricity trying to flow through a broken wire. I can feel a stimulation of my brain but it never makes it to my motivational complex at all.

I’d have more luck trying to pass current through a block of wood.

In fact, that’s more what it feels like : like the wire isn’t broken, it just leads to a large cold block of deadness and apathy and thus gets nowhere near its destination.

And all I can do is just watch and feel it happen from the sidelines. Like I am not even involved. I feel the spark and I feel it get smothered by the deadness and I can’t even feel bad about that.

Because for reasons that are obvious if you think about it, I just don’t care.

Part of it – maybe a big part – is that this is my normal now. Has been for 30 years. Actually being motivated to do things would be weird for me now.

I mean, out of nowhere, feeling like doing something… what’s up with that?

I guess it all leads back to “control”, just like everything else. Almost never acting on my impulses does create a lot of solemn predictability for me.

By treating my own goddamned impulses like alien invaders burst into the room and making irrational demands of me.

I would be far better off being a lot more like a normal, healthy, functional human being who puts the impulses and instincts at the core of their being and everything else gets piled on to that primal id foundation.

I guess this is what happens when the defining trauma of your entire life happens when you are only four year old, your connection to your id gets severed as part of your panicked retreat into the chilly depths of the mind.

I guess I should probably do something about that.

But meh. Whatever.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

In other words, video games.

Beat the main plot in Morrowind for the first time ever a couple of days ago. So that was cool. I killed the fuck out of Dagoth Ur and destroyed his god-machine robot and saved the people of Vvardenfell from the Blight and there was much rejoicing.

I didn’t get a huge sense of accomplishment, I don’t know why. Maybe because they didn’t build up Dagoth Ur as a character at all. He was just a name connected to the bad shit going down until that final confrontation. So there was no real sense of having overcome a difficult foe.

The game did try at the end, though. He got a couple of villain speeches off before I killed him, including the requisite “join me, Luke Skywalker” type speech even though that was totally not actually possible.

Someone should make a mod where you can do that. I mean, morality would dictate that if you do that, it would be game over, but still, it’s nice to have options.

I’ve started a new character and started exploring quest mods and such.

---

The Twilight Zone

I’ve just realized that the scam I have been pulling on myself involves something I already knew about, the fact that I live in a state that is literally and metaphorically never very far from sleep. but what I didn’t know till now is how I use that to keep from ever having to actually do things.

Like, for instance, that third lesson.

This is going to be hard to confess, which is why I’m doing it.

The way the scam works is that I convince myself that I can’t get things done in the morning because I’m too tired and I can’t do them in the evening for – reasons? – so I am totally going to do them tomorrow afternoon!

Bullshit. You’re going to sleep for most of the afternoon and play my vidya games for the rest of the time in which I am not blogging.

The time I really should be setting side for non-gaming non-blogging activities is between around 3 am and 8 am, which is when I am most active.

But of course, that would cut into my video gaming time, which is somehow both incredibly precious and very plentiful at the same time.

A long long time ago, I can still remember how that music used to make me smile…

(It’s a reference to this. – Ed. )

Ahem. What I meant to say was that a long long time ago, I sank deep into the world of Skyrim and its galaxy of mods, and that’s when video games officially took over my life.

I stopped eating meals out in the living room with Julian like we’d done for years. I ate in front of the computer instead. Still do.

Heck, for those first few days, I didn’t eat, drink, or sleep at ALL. I must have entered some kind of hypomanic state because for a while, I really felt like I had somehow transcended physical limitations and did not have to do that shit any more.

In other words, I was delusional.

And that’s when the addiction took hold and displaced everything else in my life. My life became a video game playtime optimization exercise and it’s been that way for so long now that I barely remember the time before that when I might not have been any more functional but at least I did a variety of things with my time.

This addiction has hollowed out my life by jealously monopolizing all my free time and refusing to let me do anything else.

Including that third goddamned lesson.

I feel so very, very lost.

---

More about addiction

When I so much as ponder going without playing games for even an hour of potential game time, I get this feeling like a cold wind blowing across my soul.

As if I was some infinitely delicate creature who will perish if exposed to so much as a mild breeze from the world outside my gaming so-called life.

Now obviously, this is insane. I could throw this computer out the window and move to a yellow yurt in Yalta and I would be fine, at least physically.

The withdrawal would be a bitch, though.

Life without screens? Is that even POSSIBLE?

It’s not that drastic, anyhow. I don’t need to leave all screens behind in order to get my life moving. I just need to develop my ability to step away from the gaming for an hour or two a day so I can get other things done.

I mean, I already do it for blogging. It’s not like the entire time I am blogging to you fine and wonderful people I am mad jonesing for my next fix of Morrowind.

I suppose on some level, I am looking forward to going back to gaming after, But for the most part, tippity tapping on the keys for you folks keeps me occupied.

And that’s the point, I suppose. Keeping this massive mental mansion of mine too occupied with meaningless activities of no consequence for it to get bored and start picking apart my sanity or having it decay away like an unstable isotope.

And of course it strikes me how limited a life that is. I’m sure that there must be tons of other things that could keep me safely distracted. It’s a matter of opening up to them,

But such is the nature of addiction that it does not allow for competition. My addiction simply MUST have every waking hour to itself or it will pitch a fit.

It’s a distressing and disturbing way to live and I know I would be a lot better if I could just let go of the LCD teat of video games long enough to gather some meaning for myself and do things that might actually be good for me.

Maybe I should look on each departure as a little adventure. And like all adventures, you are happy to go out and happy to return as well.

And who knows. Maybe it will turn out that productivity is addictive too.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

My exact level of assertiveness is kind of hard to define.

For example, I am ferociously opinionated. And I will take on anyone, anywhere, and at any time in the arena of public opinion. When it comes to expressing myself in that way, I am utterly fearless and would argue with God Himself if I thought He was wrong.

At the very least, I would request clarification on whether the laws in the Old Testament, and especially that Leviticus bullshit, were ever meant to be His laws too.

I suspect they were not.

And I am also fearless in the defense of others. I am constitutionally incapable of letting injustice happen in front of me without trying to intervene. I will throw myself into the jaws of danger not because I am especially courageous but because to sit by and do nothing is beyond unthinkable to me.

And I know I might make things worse.

But I have got to try.

On the other hand, my social anxiety has been so bad that I found myself unable to signal to my waitress that I wanted a refill on my drink because she looked busy.

And it’s still very hard for me to advocate for myself. To demand things, or even just ask for them. The power of the bad, bad tapes in my head telling me that I do not dare ever ask for anything because people are already only barely tolerating me is still too strong.

I was roundly resented for my entire childhood and it’s taken till now, at the ripe old age of 51, for me to realize it.

It’s not my fault I was a surprise.

So it would be accurate, if somewhat misleading, to say I have a problem with assertiveness. It’s very hard for me to stand up for my own needs and insist upon being treated as an equal.

Because in my head, I’m not equal at all. I am The Thing That Never Should Have Been, a hideous monstrosity utterly repugnant to all and wanted by none.

I mean, I must be, otherwise why did I get treated like I did by everyone? Parents, siblings, teachers, you name it, all clearly viewed me as a something disgusting that they wanted as little to do with as possible.

And yeah, I know they were wrong to do that to me, I know that now. But all that abuse and neglect is still written large upon my soul and I don’t know how to rub it out.

What I need, I suppose, is all of the opposite input that I can get. I need people to tell me that they want me around and that they are happy I am in their life and that they don’t view me as a liability or worse a social leper at all.

Because that feeling that nobody wants me around leads directly to the feeling that people would be better off without me and that leads directly to the bad place.

And I don’t want to go to the bad place.

I might not make it back out.

So let’s try to sum up. I can assert my opinions… just try and stop me. And I can assert myself on behalf of others in order to defend and/or protect them.

But when it just involves me and my fate, I’m as meek as a child.

In fact, it’s only been in recent months that I have even started to wake up to the fact that I am perfectly capable of pursuing my own best interests.

I may not always have the proper brain chemistry to do it – though I am working on that – but I am always capable of going out into the world to find my fun.

I can do it. It’s allowed. I don’t have to worry that someone will get mad at me for trying to do it myself. I don’t have to just passively absorb whatever happens to me like I am no more than a leaf in the wind and my fate is not my own.

I need to accept that I am responsible for myself.

And that being responsible for myself is a good thing.

Because it means I can finally start to grow up.

More after the break..

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I very much enjoyed this gay furry smut-ish comic.

It’s very well written and really touched me on an emotional level. There is such warmth in their relationship and it’s just everything I would want out of love.

For those of you unfond of gay furry smut, there’s just one long sex scene between Ethan and Allan and it’s not important to the plot at all so feel free to skip it.

And this is another good one. It has almost constant nudity but not that much sex per se. And the plot does get kinda wacky.

I hope you enjoy them too.

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A totally different person

That’s what I think (fear) I will be if I get myself sane.

I try to imagine myself without all the anxiety and aversions and escapism and I just can’t. I can grasp “me but happier” as a concept but when I try to imagine what that would actually feel like, I can’t.

It’s like I am trying to see all of a line that goes over my horizon. I just can’t see ahead that far. I don’t know what that would be like, or who I would be.

I’d like to think the end result would be more or less the current me, but with all my best points turned up to 11 because the mental illness isn’t holding me back any more.

So super funny and kind and charismatic and loving and cute, basically.

And able to open myself up and express myself in absolutely massive ways. Ways so big they create a fucking shockwave when they land.

In my heart of hearts, I want to come roaring out of the shadows and on to the world stage with a thunderous TA DA! and wow them all.

And I truly can do that.

If I just get out of my own shadow for a change.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Did the Therapy Thursday thing today.

And it did me a lot of good to talk about my worries for my mental health re : spending all of Christmas all alone with Doctor Costin.

Um, I mean, I talked about my worries with Doctor Costin.

Spending Xmas alone with him seems like a longshot at best.

Though he did say I could call him that day. That’s one advantage of having a therapist who is Jewish. To him, December 25 is just another day.

Because I was able to talk it through with Doctor Costin, I was able to clear the mental fog enough to realize that I can create my own little Xmas for myself.

After all, I could get myself a frozen turkey dinner. maybe some dinner rolls, a nicely naughty (but not TOO naughty) dessert, heck, maybe even some wine.

I would just be keeping with tradition if I got a little drunk and ate turkey and chocolate on Xmas day, that’s what I did at the Devoy residence in years gone past.

I hope Joe’s parents are okay. I know the decision to not do the big Xmas dinner must have been very hard for them, but they are in their 80’s and just can’t manage it now.

Anyhow, I will get myself some special treats to make Xmas feel more special and maybe watch the Alistair Sims version of A Christmas Carol as it is by far my favorite.

And I am sure to get a phone call from my mother, and that will be a joy. I love hearing from my Mom. When I hear her voice, I feel like I’m a little kid sitting at her knee again.

She may not have been a perfect mother, but she will always be my favorite person and a very nice lady and I will always want to bask in the glow of her attention and affection even if she’s around 2676 miles away.

I asked Microsoft Co-Pilot for the distance between Richmond and my hometown of Summerside. That thing is so dang handy!

And I can spend time online with whichever of my fuzzy friends happens to be around on Xmas day.

There’s bound to be more than you might think because a lot of furries work through Xmas, either for the overtime or just out of silent, passive protection against the holiday making them feel lonely and sad.

At least, that’s why I think they do it.

Honestly, it’s what I would do if I had employment. Work seems like a great way to keep yourself occupied and therefore not thinking about what day it is.

Just like how I use video games to keep from thinking about my life. Nope, sorry, I have filled my mind with Morrowind and there’s no room left for depression.

Speaking of which, I hit a serious snag in Morrowind recently. I needed a certain super powerful artifact from a character and the door to that character’s palace was locked and there was nobody there to open it.

So I tried a bunch of different things to try to make it behave itself, but none of them worked, so eventually I used a console command to just give me the damned thing.

I hate to cheat like that but I only ever cheat in video games when the game itself has fucked up and I need to fix it to continue.

So it’s not really cheating. It’s more like making the damned thing behave.

So, yay, I reign victorious. When I play again, I will use the artifact to defeat the bad guy and quite possibly complete the main plot of the game.

At the very least, I can’t imagine what would come after beating this guy. It’s not like I am going to take on Dagoth Ur (basically Satan) myself.

I’m not nearly legendary enough for that!

Not yet, at least.

More after the break.

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Sort of half sick?

I think my body must be fighting off some kind of bug because I have felt off for three days now and it’s got me a tad worried.

In addition to sore ear, nose, throat, and lungs, I have a runny nose and I have felt tired a lot. I have slept an awful lot today and I will definitely be sleeping more because I can already tell I will be going to sleep when I’m done blogging.

One odd thing is that all my symptoms are at their worst in the morning, when I have just woken up.

Which is going to make tomorrow morning’s 8:45 am wound care appointment REAL fun. I may end up having to cancel if I still feel like this.

Whatever bug I am fighting should probably not come to the CCC with me.

All I can say is that this better not turn out to be Covid because I got inoculated for it just last week, along with the flu, and if I end up with Covid anyway I will have to go back to that Shopper’s and demand a refund of the no money it cost me.

Ha ha ha.

More seriously, though, I really am worried about this turning into something worse. I felt worse today than I did yesterday and yesterday was worse than the day before that, so the trend line is not a positive one.

If I do get worse and end up at UC or the ER, it will be, of course, on the weekend. For whatever reason, this shit only ever goes down on the damned weekend.

Maybe fate wants to make sure I have plenty of company in the waiting room.

And so far (knock on wood) I’ve only ever had to go in one time for a high priority thing (chest pain) and if it’s just the serious sniffles this time, that more or less guarantees I will be there for a long ass time because of its low triage score.

So honestly I hope I get better soon, if only to spare me the aggravation!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Because they’re basically the same thing.

The core dynamic is the deeply cowardly act of redirecting anger created by abuse by those above you (and therefore scary) onto those who are not only below you but actually the least powerful and therefore least scary targets around.

Shit flows downhill, as my late father used to say.

And it would be one thing if these people did it with the full knowledge that they are doing something rotten purely because they can get away with it and it feels good.

But of course, they don’t do that, because they are far too weak and timid to take that level of accountability for their actions.

Instead, they go through amazing mental contortions to actually convince themselves that the least powerful (and scary) people are actually to blame for their pain.

Thus the ability of billions of people all over the globe to blame the poorest people in society for things like national debt.

Because make no mistake : modern conservatism is abuse. Its entire underlying structure is about delivering the pleasure of hurting the weak to the masses and everything else is just window dressing.

That’s why it’s all so mean spirited. That’s the entire point. That’s the product. That is the addictive substance.

The right wind pundits and podcasters’ job is to use whatever means are necessary, no matter how blatantly intellectually dishonest, to remove all impediments to that sweet, sweet joy of taking your pain out on the only people you’re sure can’t fight back.

This is also why compassion enrages them so much. Compassion stirs actual tender emotions in people’s hearts and if you’re addicted to the joy of hate, that only reminds you that you’re actually being evil and that ruins all the fun.

The point is to have a great time hurting the very people Christ commands you to care for while also believing that you’re not just a good person but the best kind of person and definitely getting into Heaven ahead of all these heathens

I mean, why let that faggot Jesus spoil all the fun of being Christian, right?

And if you listen carefully, you can detect a solid note of panic in their voices when they are railing against compassionate measures. That’s the panic of a hate junkie who feels like their supply is being threatened.

Imagine the revolution that could be unleashed if all these people could swear off the hatred and became enough of a vertebrate to look above them for the source of their pain and suffering and direct that rage at the people actually hurting them.

But that would take courage and, like I said, these people are cowards. And that’s just as true for conservatives blaming the poor for the deficit as it is for your average schoolyard bully beating up a nerd for daring to be smart when they are dumb.

The entirety of modern conservatism makes a lot more sense when you realize that it’s all just an abuse delivery machine.

I have suffered from this effect myself because my own father would get shit upon and put upon at work by bosses who felt free to make messes they knew he’d clean up and who would dump nearly their entire workloads on him because they knew he would do it for them without a complaint.

And then he’d come home and take it all out on his wife and kids.

My childhood would have been a hell of a lot easier if he’d just had the balls to protest how he was being treated by lodging a complaint with his union, UPSE.

But no. Like a true conservative, he could only vent his rage on people who could not fight back – people he claimed to love – and where he felt the most safe – at home.

Makes you sick to your stomach, doesn’t it?

More after the break.

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The problem of stupidity

Ordered me some Pizza Hut tonight.

A Melts (Bacon Chicken Alfredo, yum) and their new Golden Crispy Waffle Fries (meh, not crispy, boring) cost me only $20.66, which is only a few bucks more than what getting McD’s via Julian costs me. Not bad.

When the delivery arrived, I had to explain the concept of me buzzing her up to my Dasher (seasonally apropos) twice before it sank in.

She did get in eventually, though. Which is good, because I’m home alone and, gimp that I am, I would have been able to get my order if it’d been delivered to the lobby.

Anyhow, the whole thing got me thinking about stupidity and why it’s so infuriating.

Part of it is violation of expectation. You expect a certain degree of mental agility from people and when it’s not there it not only throws you off, it makes whatever you’re doing way harder because now you have to explain things.

And odds are, if this person is truly a dip, it will not be easy.

But in the broader sense, the herd is only as fast as its slowest member and that is certainly truly for society as a whole.

Especially if you’re intellectually gifted like myself. My whole school career was spent bored and frustrated at having to move at the speed of the slowest student in the class when all I wanted to do was rush forward like a heavy locomotive.

But anyone who has been saddled with a particularly dimwitted co-worker gets it.

When you’re as brilliant as I am, in a sense most of the world is that co-worker. On a purely intellectual level, the average person with an average IQ is like a child to you.

And the fact that you are stuck in the world where these children run everything can make even mild mannered liberal intellectuals pull their hair out.

Let alone passionate types like myself.

That’s why so many of us succumb to misanthropy. It’s a natural response to the problem of stupidity because it’s either dedicate yourself to leading the sheep (a job for which we are often ill suited) or resign yourself to being stuck on the same bus as everyone else when you can clearly see that the driver is drunk.

Myself, I reject misanthropy as a matter of deeply held belief. After all, you can’t exactly be a misanthrope and a humanist at the same time.

And I will choose my humanism over mere crankiness every single time.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Yup. More poop talk.

Had another “incident” this morning, though I didn’t realize it at first. I had already muzzily made it to the computer and the fact that there was a fecal odor in the air had made some sort of impression on my sleep-addled brain but it wasn’t until I moved a little and felt a certain kind of moisture under my buttocks that I realized something was seriously amiss in my southern regions.

Got up off the chair and yup, there was a big smear of poop there. I wiped that up with a Kleenex, then sat back down, and only then did it occur to me : um, but what about where that poop came from?

Got up again, and yup, there was a new, smaller smear of poop there. Duh. This time I wiped it up then wiped my ass too.

There was one more surprise waiting, but this one was almost pleasant. I discovered that, like a well trained puppy, I had managed to poop mostly on another very unfortunate McDonald’s bag and not the bed, so cleanup was easy.

So I may still be having “accidents” but at least I’ve learned to go on the paper.

This unpleasant discovery was the deciding factor in my choice to not go to wound care this morning. I had already been feeling poorly – the usual scratchy lungs, throat, and ears – but now I realized that the contents of my intestines were still feeling rather fluid and as bad as literally shitting the bed is, it’s got nothing on it happening in public.

Imagine if it happened in the car.

Insert melodramatic shudder here.

It would actually be better, if it had to happen, if it happened at the Community Care Clinic, because nurses are trained to handle that kind of thing and they certainly always have excellent cleaning supplies on hand.

Perhaps I am overthinking this.

And now we come to the portion of the incident report where I ponder what it all means. This is the second incident in what, three days? four? and that seems to suggest something is afoot down below.

The big worry is that it has something to do with my spine. I do have a hairline fracture on my L4 vertebra, after all, and that’s not good.

I don’t think it’s that, though. I have no other neurological symptoms (well, no new ones anyhow) and the way the contents of my digestive tract keep going gooey suggests that it’s a containment issue, not a spasmodic one.

Oh, one worrying detail : the insufficiently contained substance was not its normal color at all. It was light tan, not the usual dark brown, and that worried me because I seem to recall that possibly indicating a problem with the spleen.

Spleen is a funny word.

I just looked it up. Apparently it can indicate a problem in the gallbladder, pancreas, or liver, which are all part of your “biliary” system which acts as a drain for those organs.

Well obviously it can’t be a gallbladder problem because I ain’t got one. Mine was taken out a very long time ago.

But the other two are up for grabs.

It could be that my untreated umbilical hernia is acting up somehow. That thing’s been on my mind lately as a possible factor in a number of issues that I have had with my digestive and urinary tracts over the years.

I suppose I should at least get someone to look at it to see if it’s time for a surgical intervention or not.

Then again, I have had my lower abdomen imaged a few times in the last five years, so perhaps another look at the hernia would be redundant.

You know I think I’ve had that thing since high school?

More after the break.

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You know, it just occurred to me that two of my favorite chocolate bars when I was a kid were the Skor bar and Crispy Crunch, both of which can shred your palate.

Was I just a masochist? Did I just enjoy my chocolate with a hint of dangerous?

I think I just really liked butter toffee.

I still do!

---

It’s okay to be okay

Let’s gnaw on this topic for a while.

Call it, “Is there a crisis?”, because it has to do with my feeling that there is always something I should be doing, but I don’t know what it is and so I am not doing it.

I’ve had very bad nightmares like that. Some of my worst, in fact.

That feeling has evolved into this sense that my time for making something of myself is running out and I need to get on it NOW NOW NOW before it’s too late.

And that’s just not helpful.

That just creates the very kind of pressure that I hide from and thus it just sends me even deeper into myself and away from any ability to cope with the real world at all.

Ditto for all my talk of being trapped in his shithole life of mine. And my talk about how shitty my life is, come to think of it.

I mean, that all represents genuine anger and frustration in me, granted. I am deeply grief-stricken AND pissed off at how mental illness took thirty fucking years of my life – my entire adulthood so far – and I am just barely waking up from that funk now.

And all those emotions have to go somewhere. Maybe crisis mode is not a good final destination for them but it’s at least a move in the right direction.

I know in my heart that I would be far better off if I could approach life with open-hearted joy and a sense of wonder and enchantment where I greeted every new day with breathless anticipation of all the fun stuff I was going to do.

Um yeah. That’s not going to happen. I am the wrong generation for that shit.

The point, though, is that I need a deep and fundamental shift of attitude to something more accepting and forgiving and thus compatible with my happiness.

Survival isn’t enough. Survival is easy.

It’s thriving that’s hard.

But I’m going to get there, god damn it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

He said to his body.

Feeling somewhat nauseous due to a sinus headache at the moment, but I unclogged an ear to allow the fluids to drain out again and the headache is on the way out

And taking the nausea with it.

Which is good because a “sick headache” is a terrible thing. And I should know, because I have had a lot of them,

It was a happy day when I finally put the whole picture together and realized that my sick headaches were from sinus pressure and that this meant that I could find relief just by unclogging my ear.

Not to be too gross or anything, what is happening is that my nose runs a little bit more of less all the time. First that clogs my sinuses, but then when they fill up, the liquid backs up and starts oozing out my ears via the eustachian tubes.

But when my ears get clogged up too, then the liquid has nowhere to go and that’s when the pressure starts building and the sick headache comes a-calling.

Luckily unclogging an ear is quite easy. All it takes is a finger wiggle. And then the problem magically disappears. Poof!

Otherwise today’s been OK. Had a potentially game-breaking issue come up in my game of Morrowind – a key character’s dialogue was missing. I would talk to her and she would say nothing, just a blank speech window, in return.

How very rude!

And this quest is part of the main storyline, so I can’t just shrug and go do something else like I would if it was a side quest

I Googled the problem. No solutions. I asked Microsoft Co-Pilot about it. It had a number of suggestions, none of which worked. I was beginning to despair. Visions of having to start a whole new character/playthrough to only maybe get around the problem were swimming in my head.

It’s surprisingly damp in there.

But then I restored a game from before I entered the area with the character in question, and this time while invisible I actually bothered to steal the key to said character’s jail cell and used it, and that fixed everything.

I hadn’t done that before because, being part wizard, I could just spring the cell door lock with a spell.

But apparently the game didn’t like that. Go fig.

So yay, problem surmounted. I reign supreme. Feel my technical might. Etc.

I still haven’t done that third lesson. Doesn’t look like it’s going to happen today.. Maybe tomorrow after wound care.

I have to officially admit that I am definitely avoiding it now. It has joined the long and ever-growing list of avoidant aversions that wreck my life and leave me trapped doing the same things over and over again ad infinitum.

So what I need is to summon the mental fortitude to firmly resolve to do it, and other gainful things, at a certain time, and that means no video games during that time.

It also, hopefully, will let me prove to myself that I can overcome these mindless aversions in order to get what I want.

It’s not like there’s a genuine threat here. The worst thing that can happen is I spend an hour or so doing something I don’t enjoy and do not immediately understand.

And the feeling like something terrible is going to happen to me if I leave the fetid embrace of video games is just the addiction talking.

It signifies absolutely nothing. It’s just meaningless electrochemical noise clogging up my synapses and keeping me trapped in the same old negative but predictable cycle.

I swear to God that I will ctrl-break out of this loop.

Or die tryin’.

More after the break.

---

The easy part is over

Last night, both before and during my writing about being all alone this Xmas, I had myself a good cry.

And I am proud of myself for that. I felt all that sadness and pain inside me and I let it out in a healthy way instead of just swallowing it back down and letting it make me depressed and angry.

So far so good. But once I’d gotten all my tears out, I realized that I still had a lot of pain in me and it was not going to yield so easily.

So now I feel like I successfully opened an infected wound and cleaned it and got all that nasty gunk out, which is great, but the wound’s still there and it still hurts and relieving that is going to be a lot more tricky.

The nurse has done her job and now it’s time for surgery.

So I am continuing to poke and prod at the wound. Digging around in it, looking for those pockets of infection that remain, and doing my best to feel it all.

Not an easy task. I have suppressed almost everything for a really long time in order to maintain the delusion of things not being so bad, so all my instincts are wrong and it’s hard to catch myself in the act of repressing myself because it happens so fast.

But I am learning. I have these occasional (but vitally important) moments when the emotions are close enough to the surface that I can give them a little push and have them actually come up and be felt and expressed instead of lurking forever in my all too densely populated subconscious mind.

Seriously, my unexpressed emotions are packed nose to nuts in there.

It’s not as fun as it sounds.

The truth is, I don’t even know how much feeling I have left to do. A lot, presumably.

But I am confident that I will get it all out eventually because I am honing my ability to “lean in” to my emotions and get them over with and take a sense of accomplishment from that as it’s way healthier than the alternative.

For now, my emotions are a vast and waveless underwater sea, dark and mysterious, and I am in the process of learning to swim in it.

At least I’ve stopped drowning.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

The first one is the videos by this guy :

I’ve only watched a few of his videos and I already adore him. As far as I am concerned, his videos are perfect internet contents because :

1. He’s very likable – he seems like the everynerd to me
2. He’s very funny, in a sharp but also self-deprecating way
3. He’s very cute (might be a less big deal for others, idk)
4. The videos are about gaming, and, hello!
5. The videos are informative, interesting, and entertaining
6. I don’t have a sixth point
7. I really love watermelon

Well I’ve never been good at staying on topic.

I like his videos so much that in my mind I am paying them the ultimate compliment of being jealous of them.

I wish I made stuff that good! He’s doing the exact sort of thing I want to do.

Well, one of the things I want to do. I got a million different ideas for what I want to do on YouTube if I ever manage to become functional enough to make videos again.

I can record videos with Microsoft’s Camera app. I’ve gotten that far. But the audio goes out of sync when I try to edit it, so that’s my current gumption trap.

It doesn’t have to be one, though. I could just record the videos all in one go and pop them directly onto YouTube, and then use YouTube’s editor.

Either that or try to figure out why Corel Video Studio is fucking up my vids. In many ways that is preferable because I’d be able to edit video the way I like to do it.

Now where was I? Oh yeah. Scott the Woz and his videos.

You can bet I am taking copious mental notes. His videos make me feel like I am taking a master class in how to make YouTube content and I want in, god damn it.

But would I cover video games? I dunno. It’s such a crowded topic. And I don’t like crowded rooms. I get claustrophobic.

Then again, I’ve already decided that the real product in anything I do will be me. My personality, my charisma, my wit, my unique point of view.

So who knows, maybe I could make gaming videos as good as Scott’s.

Not the same, though. Not only would I never try to directly compete with stuff that good, videos like his take a lot of research, and a researcher I am not.

So I’d be more likely to do game reviews, or stuff about video game design or my hot take on the latest gaming news or whatnot.

I feel like I might find a natural home in soft journalism.

The other discovery is actually a re-discovery of how much I love reading gay furry porn comics. And how good it is for me.

Perhaps it scratches some itch that would normally be satisfied by actually going out into the world and finding romance. And I am considering it.

In the form of trying to become active on some dating site.

But not the hookup apps. I am more interested in people I can talk to than sex. I am just plain not built for casual hookups.

Unless some kind person invites me to an orgy some day.

Anyhow, reading these comics is good for the soul for both a light and a dark reason.

The light reason is that they present a positive, wholesome, fucktastic view of a world where being gay is no big deal and gay romance is just as likely as the straight variety and things are saner and nicer and better overall.

The dark reason is that sometimes they cause this deeply buried powerful aversion reaction I have towards homosexuality, no doubt left there by my childhood rapist,to surface, and I want to bring that shit up as much as I can because only by feeling it and dealing with it will I ever be rid of it and I want that shit gone.

It’s gotten in the way of my having sex far too much.

I deserve to get proper laid, dammit. Like the bottoms in the comics.

And I don’t need old tapes in my head getting in the damned way.

More after the break.

---

Iceberg on the horizon

Julian, please do not discuss any of the following with Joe. Like, at all, I don’t want him to feel bad and I don’t blame him and I’m not mad.

But I have a very large problem coming up and at the moment I cannot think of a solution and that has me worried.

See, Joe hath revealed unto me that his parents are not going to have a big Xmas dinner this year because they are both in their 80s and just aren’t up to it any more.

Fair enough. I am not entirely surprised. At the last Devoy family Xmas dinner I went to, I could tell that his parents were struggling to keep up.

So I completely understand. But it leaves me in dire straits because that Xmas dinner was the one thing keeping me relatively glued together through Xmas eve and Xmas day, and without it I will be spending the entirety of Xmas all alone and I am really not sure how the fuck I will survive that.

I will have to talk to Doctor Costin about it when we do Therapy Thursday this week. And once I am over the shock I can try looking for places online where I might find some kindred spirits that day.

As patient readers know, Xmas is a very psychologically dangerous time for me. Sentimental holidays cut right to the core of my feeling alone and isolated and alienated and worthless and abandoned and bereft and alone.

Yes, I know I said alone twice. It fits.

Were I healthier, I might try volunteering at a soup kitchen or some equally Xmas-y appropriate venue. Were I wealthier, I might rent a hotel room someplace swank and at least be alone in luxury. Were I more socially connected, there might be any number of places willing to let a poor little droop-tailed fox come in from the cold on that wintry day

But I’m none of those things. I’m me. And my usual safety net will, of course, be busy with their own families that day, because unlike me, they still live where they’re from.

But I am all alone and a solo Xmas could leave me feeling awfully depressed and I don’t want to end up in that very bad place.

And unfortunately, I am not able to take the scrooge option. I will always love Xmas, no matter what Xmas does to be in return, because I would rather be miserable than to cut off or shut down the part of me that loves Xmas.

I’m a sentimental fool, and that’s both my nature and my choice.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Okay, time to blog despite being quite sleepy.

At least getting up and making lunch shook some of the cobwebs out of my head. I would not have bet money on that when I was sitting on the bed trying to pull myself together enough to get up and get my day going.

Pretty sure I had a number of microsleeps during this period.

This “sleepy at sundown” thing is getting to be a drag, man. Thank God it won’t be like this all winter or I would have to radically alter my routine.

And I don’t like doing that. It’s so hard for me to do. I have come to realize that I rely heavily on whatever routine I am able to maintain in order to give my life some semblance of order and predictability.

That’s one of the main reasons I still have not done Lesson 3 of my sysadmin course.

More powerful than that, though, is the video game addiction. In order to do the lesson, I have to leave the warm and musty bosom of my video games for an hour or two, and my mind interprets that prospect as my basically going out into the cold naked, and so it’s difficult to get myself to do it.

It doesn’t help that I have not enjoyed the course so far. I was really looking forward to being taught how to do the job of network administrator and thus far all I have gotten from this joker is him loving the sound of his own voice.

That’s probably unfair but my point is that it’s not been fun yet.

I know I can do the job. I’ve got a good head for systems and how they fit together, and I am quite computer literate, so I am sure I can learn how networks work, how to keep them running, what problems I might face, and so forth.

I just need someone to explain it to me, starting with the basic principles and working up to understanding everything as a whole.

Put that way, I’m actually quite looking forward to it. I love that kind of thing.

And honestly, that’s the attitude I need to maintain if I am to make it through the course. I need to forget all about jobs and work and earning and all that scary and depressing stuff and just have fun with it. Treat it all as a game.

That’s probably a good attitude to have about life in general, come to think of it.

I know that I take things way too seriously, and I know that can be a serious impediment to living a happy life.

Especially for me. I’m a free spirit type and too much seriousness just leads to me hiding from life instead of dealing with things.

And that’s some seriously maladaptive shit, man.

If I could just loosen up and go easier on myself instead of being stuck in this cycle of inner abuse and avoidance, I could have the happy cheerful life I desire so much.

But that requires a pretty serious fundamental readjustment of attitude and those do no come easily. In fact, they often don’t come voluntarily.

Being change when they have to, not when they want to.

By default we stay the same.

To be honest, I am not sure how one learns to take life less seriously. When I try to enter that mode I just end up feeling nihilist.

Everything is stupid and nothing matters.

And that’s not a helpful attitude.

I can grasp the concept of treating life as a game easily enough but the actuality of implementing it daunts me. It would involve a major hack of what Nietzsche called my fundamental table of values, and those don’t come easy.

Well I know one thing for sure.

Thinking alone will not get me there.

I need to feel my way around more.

More after the break.

---

It’s nice to forget

Until you remember.

As I nuked myself some nuggets I was pondering something I have pondered before : how the nature of my debility makes it easy for me to forget just how disabled I am for long stretches of time.

After all, whether I am sitting at the computer or lying in bed, the fact my legs don’t work right does not come up, and that’s how I spend most of my day.

Even my occasional trips to the bathroom to empty my receptacle and/or bowels only put the issue into my mind for short bursts most days.

So it’s really only my twice daily trips to the kitchen that remind me that I am not a healthy man. When I get back to this here computer after a relatively short time on my feet and practically collapse into my computer chair because my legs are threatening to just plain give out on me, it’s hard to pretend everything is normal.

But then I am back to my sessile lifestyle where I live like a freaking barnacle, and I can forget my woes for another stretch of time.

And I suppose there’s no way around that. I mean, what’s the alternative? Sit here moping about how fucked up my legs are all the time?

Semi-forgetting at least lets me lead some sort of life. A sad sort, to be sure, but a life.

Then again, perhaps sitting around feeling sad about it all would do me some good in the long run. It might actually inspire me to focus on my life and find the energy to act to make this life of mine a better place to live.

I just feel so… limp most of the time. Like I just don’t have the motive force within my spirit that I would need to get moving and actually change things in my life.

Just thinking about it makes me quail sometimes, like an old maid encountering a burglar in her basement.

And maybe that’s a physical thing, I don’t know. Maybe there is something wrong with my heart that makes it impossible for me to build the force of spirit to do anything except to hold on for dear life to the tiny little life-boat that is my tragic existence and wait for some kind of hope to come along and save me.

Even though I know that’s never going to happen.

But it’s not like I’ve got anything better to do.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Went further than I absolutely had to for my health today, and I am proud of that.

It’s been the usual busy Friday. Did the wound care thing at around 11:30 am, and that went smoothly, as usual.

Had a guy I’ve had a few times before. Dunno his name because I suck, and I don’t know where he’s from originally, but he speaks in this rising-inflection staccato chirp where the syllables just flow like strings of pearls and combined with his tendency to use “bro” talk with me and his strange cadence makes him hard to understand.

But it’s also somewhat charming. And I have had him as my nurse often enough that my ear knows how to parse what he says now.

Every time I am sitting there as a nurse tends my wounds, I wonder if they think I am aloof or superior just because I don’t spontaneously speak.

I respond when spoken to, of course, and I am always my usual pleasant, polite, and affable self, but I don’t start conversational threads.

I feel like at some point, I just lost the ability to do that. Even with my friends. It’s like I used to have a folder in my head marked, “things to talk about” and I either stopped adding to it or deleted it completely.

It bothers me.

The bonus feature came next : getting myself vaccinated.

No biggie. I have no fear of needles. Whatever.

However, to get said vaccination (for the flu and Covid), I had to walker my way from the parking lot all the way through the Shopper’s to the pharmacy in the back and then make that same trip in reverse when I was done.

And this was not good.

I had already presumed upon my sick leg muscles to propel me through wound care and now I had to do this whole other thing?

My body was not happy with me.

In fact, by the time I made it back to the car, I was ready to drop I was panting and sweating and feeling like I was going to fall down.

But hey, at least I am inoculated now and can rest assured that I am protected against the flu and Covid now.

In the long term it will be worth it, but as of right now, I am not sure.

The problem with a prophylactic like a vaccine is that if it’s working, nothing happens. So it’s hard to know if it is even doing anything at all.

That needle could have been full of distilled water and I would never know unless I actually contracted Covid or the flu.

Guess I’ll take their word for it.

The result of all my exertions today is that right now I am so VERY tired. The extra motion plus night falling with a sickening thud has made me want to sleep for like a million and a half years.

This part of the year is always rough on me because of how early it gets dark. The minute the sun goes down, I want to sleep. It triggers the latent sleepiness in me.

And I’ve always got a lot of that lying around.

Other times of the year, sundown does not make me want to sleep. There’s just something special about the run up to the winter solstice, aka Longest Night.

Or “Shortest Day” but nobody calls it that!

I imagine that’s a big holiday with vampires.

It would be like their Christmas!

Oh well, whatever. Now I am going to lay down and zonk out for a couple of hours.

More after the break.

---

Perchance to dream

I am a little worried about how sleepy I have been in the last 36 hours or so.

It feels like no matter how much I sleep, I never actually catch up to my need, and so I stay sleepy. It reminds me of those times when my appetite goes nuts.

Those times when the Demon Hunger is upon me.

I hate that shit. It’s so stressful! Plus I end up eating way more than usual and that throws off my grocery schedule and that disturbs my sense of order.

Such as it is.

I get the feeling that if I was more healthy and focused and energetic, I would be a lot more organized. Because I do like it when everything is neat and tidy.

I just lack the will to make or keep it that way myself.

Hence my heady dreams of having an assistant. It would be their job to keep everything organized and neatly tucked away, ready for me to call on it, whether it’s my favorite pen and paper or the name of someone I met at an industry event.

What the hell, this is my fantasy, so in it I am a big time head writer on a TV show, making fat stacks o’ cash and enjoying the respect of my peers and the knowledge that I am finally doing what I was born to do : make good television.

That’s my ultimate dream. To become a producer like my hero Norman Lear and run my own studio that is known for making the highest quality TV.

Like another of my heroes, Walt Disney, I would want to build a brand synonymous with excellence in every field. Movies, TV, books, lunchboxes, and so on.

My company would naturally not be quite so squeaky clean. In fact, I might even build my brand around entertainment that is just a little more “spicy” that you expect.

I dunno. I know that the real money is in G-rated content but I would not be able to work under such restrictions for long.

My artistic soul yearns to be creative and free!

And really, really smutty sometimes.

In fact, if I had Disney level clout, nothing could keep me from producing my magnum opus of a SUPER smutty X-rated feature length cartoon with an extremely upbeat and cheerful pro-sex message and, of course, lots of cartoon animal sex.

Because I would not just be looking to titillate, although there’s nothing wrong with that.

I’d be looking to liberate people’s minds, souls, and libidos from oppressive ideas and beliefs that keep them frustrated and angry and help them find a way they can embrace their inner pervert and maybe feel it up a little.

It would make Rocky Horror Picture Show look like Mary Poppins.

It would make Fritz the Cat look like Steamboat Willie.

It would make Deep Throat look like a history lecture.

In short, it would be the horniest, filthiest, most overwhelmingly fucktastic film ever made and I would be extremely proud of that.

And who knows, it might even help some people feel seen, and accepted.

I am not, in the traditional sense, an ambitious man.

But creatively speaking, I want to shake the heavens with my art.

It could be so amazing.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.