Here I am, dragging myself ashore and flopping down on the sand like so much flotsam (or jetsam) after a sad and soggy slog through the waist deep waters of my silty and salty subconscious.

Woke up earlier today with a great tune in my head. But by the time I was fully awake, it was gone. Damn I wish I was musically literate so I could have just written it down.

Last few days have been pretty groovy. Had a nice night visiting someone on Friday night. Made a nice change from the usual Denny’s trip (not that I am knocking Denny’s).

We ended up watching the original Total Recall (the Arnie one, not the stupid and highly unnecessary recent remake) and I really enjoyed it. It’s Arnold Schwarzenegger’s best movie, in my honest opinion. Unlike a lot of supposed science fiction movies that devolve into action movies and never come back, Total Recall is a solid science fiction movie which happens to have some pretty bitchin’ action sequences too.

And of course, we owe it all to Dick. As I have said before, I am a huge fan of Dick and so pretty much anything Dick based will appeal to me.

And Total Recall is full of Dick. Dick themes and Dick language pervade it. And the proof of the awesomeness of Dick is how people just keep making money off of Dick.

I am talking, of course, of Philip K. Dick, who is one of my favorite all time science fiction writers despite my only having read one of his novels and one short story compilation.

But the novel was Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep, the basis for the truly awesome science fiction movie Blade Runner, and it is one of my favorite science fiction novels of all time, along with Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke and Dune by Frank Herbert.

I’m too lazy to go get the links for those two. Sue me.

And the short story collection was Beyond Lies The Wub, which just happened to contain We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, the short story upon which Total Recall is based.

What makes Total Recall so Dickish is its themes of unreliable reality, where the protagonist (and by extension, the reader) does not know what is truly real as opposed to what is just an illusion, a delusion, or a trick.

In writing about that, Dick extended the Cold War paranoia about mind trickery into the science fiction realm, presenting worlds in which the machinations of corrupt or downright malign authority figures might cause you to doubt everything you think you know about the world or yourself.

I find it hard to relate to that era’s level of paranoia about authority. I have a healthy suspicion of authority and I am not one who easily trusts those in power to be competent or honorable, but dring a certain era of science fiction, they seemed very worried that the Powers That Be were going to get into our very minds and turn us into sheeplike zombie people.

Perhaps it takes a certain core belief in authority in the first place in order for the realization that it is imperfect and all too human to shake you to the core and make you doubt everything.

But we Generation X types grew up in the post-authority era. Watergate happened when I was still pronouncing it “pasketti” and thought this song was called “Calling Octopus”. I was never taught respect for authority, or that authority (or The System) would be there for me and I should be there for it.

That kind of security was denied us by our disillusioned parents. We grew up with the message “you are on your own”, and some of us did not take it so well.

Anyhow. Sound effect of me forcibly dragging myself back to the point. Friday was nice.

Ended up staying up till the wee hours of the morning just chatting with all my friends. It ended up being quite the impromptu group therapy session, to be honest, and that brings people closer together. I am very happy it all happened.

Saturday was its usual quiet, boring, comfortable self. After socializing on Friday night, it is always nice for an introvert like me to have a day to recover and recharge my social batteries.

Honestly, given how tired I feel right now despite a day of sleep, I could probably use another. But there is a BCSFA meeting tonight and I want to be there. So I am going to try to keep it together to get there and enjoy company and snacks.

Then I can go back to my usual solitary self tomorrow and process the whole thing and enjoy the fruits of breaking my usual isolation for a change.

But boy would I love to slip into an alternate dimension outside of time and take about a three hour nap right about now. This is one of those days where I am so tired that I have to sleep all day just to have enough energy to actually get some real sleep later on.

Not sure why my sleep is kind of sucky lately. Perhaps because the winter is forcing me to sleep with my window closed most of the time, and I am therefore not getting the fresh air that is my weakass version of CPAP therapy for my sleep apnea.

Sounds plausible, and it might even be true. Plus, caffeine, whatever.

I had a full 2L of Diet Coke over Saturday, and that might lead to this crash of mine. Ironically, I was not even sure I needed a nap after lunch today, but I took one “just in case”.

Outcome : I am actually much more sleepy as a result. How fucked up is that? Sleep making you sleepier?

Right now, I think I will go take a micro-nap and try to get those batteries of mine to hold a charge and be ready for tonight.

You would think by this age, I would be better at, like…. sleep.

But you would be wrong.

Still feeling pretty shitty. It is increasingly obvious that all this anger that I am getting in touch with is really upsettting the applecart inside. I feel so much anger and bitterness and resentment and frustration and digust and contempt lately.

Basically, if it is anywhere on the anger spectrum, I have felt it in the last three days. It is straining (but not breaking (yet)) my faith that connecting with all this anger is a good thing and that it will lead to greater sanity and happiness and strength in the long run.

Because let me tell you, in the short run, I feel like I am losing my mind. I just want to lash out somehow. I really wish I could just go to a gym, put on some gloves, and beat the shit out of a heavy bag for a while, just to get out the frustration.

But the real problem is that my externalization function is broken. There are always plenty of ways I could be letting things out or getting things done, but deep inside I am still that scared animal that freezes at the slightest sign of trouble and waits for the scary thing to go away.

It is that anti-action bias that really dooms me. Without the ability to take action on nearly anything, with all my energies tied up in this insane self-strangling paranoia that even the smallest of actions will somehow bring terrible things down on me because then I will be noticed, all this navel-gazing is just so much mental masturbation bullshit.

I am just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, only this ship is getting nowhere. Just a long straight cruise to death.

Exciting, and new! Wait no… boring, and old.

So without an outlet, the madness just swirls and swirls around inside me. Maybe I will find some way to let it out at therapy tomorrow. Maybe not. I don’t fucking know and I barely fucking care.

I suppose rage is better than despair, at least on paper. Right now it sure as fuck doesn’t feel that way. I feel like I am on fire inside and the fire is just going to grow and grow until it consumes my sanity and all that is left of me is some sort of screaming, babbling, shrieking lunatic in a rubber room somewhere, locked away for good because of his heinous and bizarre crimes.

And all because I can’t seem to get myself going and so all that angry energy had nowhere to go. How pathetic would that be?

“Sure, I burned down that kindergarten, but to be fair, your honor, doing things is scary!”

It is like I have this deep inner hypnosis where I just stare myself into immobility. Like the stare of the basilisk, it turns me into stone, freezes me in place. It keeps me from ever truly growing or living a natural, relaxed, integrated life.

And it makes things so god damned cold inside.

So maybe it is good that some heat is breaking through the ice and all of this is just a reckoning between two sides that have been apart far too long.

Like mixing hot water and cold water, eventually, you will end up with warm water and all the steaming and cracking will be done, especially if you add some agitation to help the sides intermix.

The agitation in this latest metaphor would be therapy, I suppose.

But the pain while this mixing occurs is quite real and quite a lot to deal with. Like I said before, I have been saying in bed all day mostly just because I am sick and tired of dealing with my stupid pointless lameass pathetic life lately. Everything I normally do seems completely meaningless. I keep getting this urge to just smash everything I own in a giant orgy of self-destruction. Force some renewal on myself instead of this eternal filthy recycling.

I deserve so much better than this. I am a sweet, smart, talented guy. I deserve more than this pathetic $8K/year existence. But I am so blocked up inside that in a world full of possibilities for a guy like me, I just sit here and rot inside my shell and slither sadly towards an ignominious and unmourned death.

And I just want to scream and scream and scream until my soul shatters and my mind melts and there is nothing left of me but a jumble of broken glass and dirty half-melted snow and broken shards of tooth and a scrap of fake fur.

All the rest would be consumed in a white hot blaze from all that anger that I buried deep inside suddenly reaching critical mass and exploding like a supernova.

Hey, at least it would be visual. Right?

Maybe words are really the only way for me to express all this anger. If so, I am kind of afraid of the sorts of things I am going to write when I am in this kind of mood.

I am thinking horror. Or political screed, I suppose, but honestly, I care too much about politics to go ruining any future credibility I might have in the world by pushing out some crazy ass “kill the fuckers” manifesto that could only get me in trouble.

Or worse, have no effect at all. And when aggression has no effect, you escalate, right?

That is what I learned from my little buddies, the sparrows. Right now, I could totally rip the head off a bitch, too, just for crossing me.

Oddly, my dreams aren’t any more violent than usual. Perhaps that is to come, I don’t know. You would think that if there was any time for me to have one of my rare but memorable super bloody violent dreams, it would be approximately now.

But no, so far it has been the same old tired tropes.

Oh well. Enough angry regurgitation for today. I will bring this up with my therapist tomorrow.

Wish me well.

Bleh. That is my one word summation of today. Bleh.

Spent another day sleeping too much and dreaming too hard and waking up soaked in sweat feeling deeply disoriented and distinctly ill.

It is kind of a drag, you know?

But what the hell, here I am, alive another day on Planet Earth, thankful that I am who I am and not someone who truly has it hard in life.

After all, my main problem is finding something meaningful to do with my life and finding some kind of connection with others.

Well, and money.

That is way better than worrying about whether I will eat tomorrow or whether I will still be alive when the rainy season ends. So I am glad for that.

As much as my life sucks and does not suit me, it could be a hell of a lot worse.

Still, this sleepy shit always gets me down eventually.

It is almost fun at first, or at least nice. I am relaxed and calm and sleepy, and I just snooze away contently, not really feeling bad when I wake up, just soft and gray and lazy.

But sooner or later I get real sick and tired of being sick and tired, and I start to fight the sleepiness because I want to, you know, do stuff, and that is when it gets unpleasantly like treading water and desperately trying to get back to shore, but the tide keeps taking you further out to sea.

It’s just that there’s so much to do and I’m tired of sleeping!

But meh. Whatever. Local adventures include a dream in which Felicity and I were driving around my home town in a massive APC urban assault vehicle which had all kinds of cool stuff like a lever you pulled to make little fold-out personal riot shields pop out, the sort of thing that would protect you from small caliber fire or thrown items but not any serious fire.

Why we were driving something like that around is anyone’s guess. She just showed up to pick me up in it, and I got in like it was nothing.

Dreams are cool like that.

And so there we were, cruising around Summerside, and (as has to happen in every Summerside dream) we went past the house I grew up in.

But in my dream world, one absolutely reliable feature is that in dream Summerside, that house is just plain not there any more, although in my dream world, I rarely remember that until I actually get to where it is supposed to be and then there is some totally different house there, or nothing at all.

And then I think “Oh right, it’s not there any more, and if I am trying to get ‘home’, I have to go to my grandparent’s house, which is where Mom and Dave live now. ”

And that always makes me a little sad, and in some dreams, it is a serious bitch because that means I have to go all the way from where I grew up to where my mother and brother live now (still think of it as my grandparents’ house, though they are long gone) and that means a long long walk uphill through pretty much my entire town.

And depending on the conditions of the dream, that might be very hard. I have had dreams where I have to try to do this through a blizzard, or a flood, or some vague but terrible Apocalypse.

But the interesting thing is that the house I grew up and that was my own safe place in the world is always gone, gone, gone, which is a lot easier for my to deal with than the fact that it is still there in the real world, just full of strangers living totally different lives with totally different furniture and appliances and bedroom assignments and everything.

That is just plain not fair. I was told by my parents that that house at 135 Belmont Street would always be there for me no matter what happens to me in the big mean adult world.

But then the divorced happened, and my parents sold the house, and so that is just another promise my parents did not keep to me, like paying for a full college education, and being there for me when I needed them, or that they would protect and care for me.

They ended up being less parents and more caretakers. Wait, no, those actually look after you when you are having troubles. Hmm, let’s see.

They were more like negligent pet owners who keep the food and water bowls full, but otherwise ignore their pet and get irritated with it any time it has any problems that force them to remember they have it.

And you know what? When you only pay attention to something when its problems force you to, it is really easy (and fun!) to start thinking of it as “only being a burden” and thus justify your continued neglect.

I mean, why pay attention to that disgusting, messy animal when all they do is cringe and hide, or occasionally pathetically try to please you when you show it the slightest attention?

Even getting rid of it would be mean paying more attention than you feel it’s worth. And it’s not technically sick or starving or anything, so you are a perfectly adequate pet owner, right?

And most of the time, you can ignore it. So as far as you are concerned, everything is fine.

And it is… for everyone who counts.

Yup. That’s another good metaphor I just made. Damn I am good at those.

I just have to keep saying to myself : I did not deserve to be treated like that. Nobody deserves that kind of emotional neglect. Being the last along and unplanned does not mean I deserved to be treated like a pet they never wanted and preferred to pretend was not there.

If I keep saying it, I will eventually believe it.

But reaching for the stars!

Meh. Maybe not.

Feeling pretty crappy today, all bored and restless and irritable and impatient and brooding. Spent a great deal of today in bed not because I was sleepy but because I just did not want to face my stupid pointless life when it is easier to just sleep.

Sad, I know. But this too shall pass.

This is just one of my periodic low periods. I will bottom out and then begin to rise again. Right now I feel pent up and bottled up and frustrated and caged and grumpy.

But I know I will not feel like this forever. I feel like my energies are trying to rise, but my usual spiritual constipation is blocking the way. I want to rise up, but that big old block of cold dead weight that is depression is holding me down.

I usually think of it as fear. And not one specific fear, either, more like an enormous block of that which fear is made of (parasympathetic chemical activity?) that makes me fearful across the board of doing anything that takes me out of my stupid little tiny world.

It is like I am stuck on my own tiny lonely planet and I hate it here, and desperately want to escape, but I am too scared of floating off into space forever to try to leave.

After all, this little pathetic world of mine might not be much, but things can always get worse. It would be worse to be lost between worlds with no predictability or reliability or anything to hold on to.

Or would it? Maybe then I would learn to fire these jets of mine and get around on my own instead of just drifting through the cosmos never really getting anywhere while other people’s bigger, more colorful, more vibrantly alive planets form meaningful constellations far, far away from me.

I can see their lights but I cannot feel their warmth. I can barely feel the heat of my own feeble star. Truth be told, I can only feel it at all when it is reflected off another planet, and I don’t let those get close enough for that to provide much warmth.

I feel dumb and distracted and sort of toxic. I feel like if the people on Bones or CSI did a tox screen on me, besides them noticing just how many freaking drugs I am on, they would notice my tissues are suffused with a strange toxic made from my own tears.

Well, the only cure for that is to get that shit out of your system, and the only way to do that is to externalize the bad stuff.

I am still pondering how to do that. My therapist says the way to get rid of the depression is to get rid of the anger, and I think he is right. And I want to get rid of that anger and all the sadness and badness and radioactive milliradness locked up with it, but I don’t know how.

Or, alternatively, I know exactly how to do it but I am just afraid. It can be very hard to tell from inside this filthy little shell of mine.

I am telling you, dude… it’s a jungle in here. Crazy shit going on all the time. No wonder I cling to hyper-regularity. My internal life is so unstable.

Whatever regularity I have is imposed upon it by sheer force of will and a deadly determination not to pay attention to this unwholesome circus riot going on inside me at all times.

And that is probably the problem. I should be listening to it all and trying to understand what my emotions are trying to tell me instead of just clamping the lid down tight on the whole thing and pretending like nothing is going on.

If only I could just let go of this desire to impose order and regularity inside myself and just let the pieces fall where they may inside me, I might be freed of my burden.

But I am terrified of going into the unknown like that. I am so desperately dependent on the powerful light of my overbearing intellect that I have no idea who I am outside of it. A deep animal fear inside me insists, despite all probability, that if I let that light go out for even a second, it will never come back and I will be lost in the dark forever.

And I know that this is not true. Being intelligent like I am is not some juggling act I started at some point without understanding how it works and if the balls drop, I will never get them going again.

It is a deep part of who I am, and the light of my mind is not my mind. A lamp is still there even when it is turned off. The sun still shines even when we can’t see it. If I turn the light out to let the bulb cool down and maybe give my eyes a rest, it will come back on again when I need it.

And like I told myself as a child to get over a more literal fear of the dark, there is nothing there in the dark that was not there in the light.

So maybe it is possible to let go of all my old emotions like a million balloons released all at once.

Or maybe the best I can do is fill one balloon each day on this blog, and release it into the sky to disappear forever across the far horizon.

It might take a long time to get anywhere that way, but it is better than nothing. Barely. I think.

But am I bailing out faster than the water is leaking in? Or am I just sinking a little more slowly than if I did nothing at all?

One thing is absolutely sure in all of this :

I will never, ever run out of metaphors.

Feeling a little bereft of impetus at the moment. Not really feeling like there is anything for me to write about at the moment, and yet, write I must.

So prepare yourself. Put on your yellow ducky boots because we will be wading into my stream of consciousness today, and trust me, you don’t want to get any of that on ya.

Not unless you’ve had your shots. (I suggest vodka. )

Been having a sleepy day, which might explain the someone barren state of my consciousness. Usually my mental state is overrun with thoughts, notions, ideas, and emotions, all crawling all over each other trying to get out and making a terrible mess.

But right now, I think most of them are still asleep. Truth be told, I do not feel much like writing right now, but it has to be done. Writing on this blog every day is the one thing that adds purpose to my otherwise barren and pointless life, and I am long past the point where I feel like doing this writing every day is a choice.

The very thought of missing a day fills me with horror. So yup. Gotta write.

And there is much truth to the idea that the one thing it takes to be a writer is writing. If you write, you are a writer. It seems childishly obvious, but it’s true, and it is a surprisingly easy thing to lose track of, especially for younger writers.

It is all too easy to think you are a writer when all you do is think about the things you would write or could writer or are going to write some day.

But that is the easy part. Ideas are easy. I am not saying they are all equal, mind you, but having ideas requires very little effort when you are a creative type person.

Writing is the act of taking those ideas and turning them into reality. That is true of all art. Artists create their art. It doesn’t matter whether that art sells or whether what is made is perfect or whether it is exactly how you imagined it.

If you are trying, you are an artist, or in my case, a writer. Period. Stop, and you go back to being a would-be, a wannabee, and it is only when you stop trying that you start truly failing.

As I say this, my lazy artistic conscience pricks me with its pitchfork and reminds me that I have not written any fiction since last November. And so while this daily blather counts, I am not truly being a writer except in the most literal of senses.

I am like an athlete who trains and trains but never competes. Sure, spending a few hours a day at the patting cage is technically sort of playing baseball. But not really.

So I will try to nudge myself towards sending out my stories to various outlets for rejection. Rejection is progress when you are a writer.

All the great ones got tons of rejections before they even sold a thing. So really, it is time to go out there and get hurt. Earn some scars, pay my dues.

It’s just so much easier to just fuck around like this all day.

And the real trap is losing your ability to resist the path of least resistance. It is always easier to just go with the flow. Do it long enough, and you become a passive participant in your own life, unable to make any real choices and ended up bruised and battered and worn down by the obstacles in life that you just helplessly rammed into because you lost your ability to steer around them.

And to the outside world, you are entirely the author of your own sad fate. But you know that it is not that simple. Mental illness makes it so hard to cope with the world. Most days it is hard enough just to cope with your own inner world. Actual reality is out of the question.

So you just huddle down in your little boat, making yourself as small as possible so that the sides of the boat block out your view of the horrible outside world, and when your lack of view or control causes your craft to crash on easily avoided rocks, you just bury your face against the keel of your boat and cover your ears and wait for it all to go away.

And hey, for long stretches of time (between crashes), it is smooth sailing and no trouble. And that is all the reinforcement your passive victim lifestyle needs.

Sure, it sucks, but you keep doing it anyway, so you must think it is better than any of the alternatives, such as actually sitting up in the boat, grabbing the oars, and taking responsibility for your life.

After all, either way, your life is the result of the choices you have made. You are in charge of your boat no matter what. After all, there’s nobody there but you. Whether you choose to grab those oars or choose to lay on the keel with your eyes closed, you are still making a choice.

So if you continue to lay there with your hands over your ears, you must think that this is what will nake you the happiest. That getting up and steering is so bad, that the illusion of non-control is so precious, that no other option is preferable.

Or maybe you think there are no other options. That this is the best you could do. And maybe you are right. Maybe you are not capable of anything else.

But ask yourself this : do you want to be capable of steering? Do you want to be stronger and more capable and ready to take charge of your self and your life?

Or could the truth be that even if you had the option of steering, you would reject it and then forget that you even knew about it because it frightens you so much?

After all, if you could do something… well, then you’d have to do it, right?

Thank goodness you are helpless, then.

Or are you?