Flat stone in a muddy river

As promised, back to the navel gazing rectal examination of the mind’s eye of the heart of the soul.

What can I say, I like to cover all the angles.

I feel a little better today than yesterday. Last night, I spontaneously did an experiment upon myself, where I actually slept during the night for a change.

My usual pattern has me most active between 10 pm and 6 am. It would be perfect if I was a night auditor at a motel or something. But I get the feeling my terrible sleep hygiene is a big part of my depression, and lack of energy, inability to focus, and so on. So I thought, what the hell. I will just do my best to sleep all night.

And I do feel a bit better today, so I guess it kind of worked. But not really. Because the main problem is not when I sleep, but why I sleep, and the reason is generally “to escape life for a while” and fast forward to the next interesting thing (usually a meal, and how sad is that?) while wasting my life away.

I abuse sleep. That is what it boils down to in the end. It is no wonder that it does not serve me well.

A lot of the time, I am not even sleepy. But when I do not know what to do with myself next because I am tired of using the computer and it is not time for another meal + watching something on Netflix then playing Wii yet, I lay down and take a nap anyhow. Lay down, read for a bit, go to sleep. Wake up two or three hours later, a lot closer to a meal event, and then I fuck around on the computer some more, probably playing Dungeon Fighter Online and listening to tunes off of Grooveshark, until said meal. Then eat, watch, play Wii, then back on the computer. Or maybe right into another nap. Could go either way.

I’m crazy like that.

So my life amounts to a very small well worn track between bed, computer, and television. There are maximum security prisoners and people with fatal diseases who have a more active lifestyle than me.

Sure, I go out three times with my friends. To eat. So, another meal, spending money I can’t truly afford because it gives me a minimal amount of social activity and I really enjoy being able to sit with Joe and Julian and Felicity and have our wide-ranging conversations about everything under the sun in a comfy restaurant, eating good food, relaxed and fairly content.

But it eats up most of the money I have each month to spend on myself. And that keeps me from being able to invest in better clothing, or other things I might find eased my life and gave me the sorts of small pleasures which normal people who do not live in a deep dark shadow of poverty use to help shore up their sanity.

I do not get a lot of pleasure in my life, especially physical pleasure. My life is replete with mental pleasure, in fact, arguably, that is all I do with my day. Pursue mental stimulation and mental pleasure. No wonder I have this amazingly complicated and powerful and creative brain.

I use that thing all the time, and I use it for everything!

As for emotional pleasure…. my diet is pretty sparse in that. I do not do much that gives me any sort of emotional satisfaction. There are little bits of emotional satisfaction from chatting with people online and getting a little virtual positive human interaction that way, but it is nothing like the real thing.

And there is the satisfaction when I get when I make progress in a video game. Pretty sad, that, but it is often the closest I get to productivity.

And then there is writing this ridiculous thing every day. Don’t get me wrong, I greatly appreciate everyone reading this and I cannot imagine my life without writing every day any more.

But it is not, currently, getting me anywhere, is it?

And it is not that I do not know what I could do to improve things. I know hundreds of things I could try.

But I just cannot seem to be able to bring myself to do them, and I don’t know why. I am frozen inside by a fear I cannot even name.

And so I sit, like a flat rock in a muddy river, everything surging sluggishly around me with me going nowhere at all as time erodes me down to nothing.

And one day, I will just wash away to nothing, and there will be no sign I was ever here.

Which is for the best, I guess.