Head in the sand

I don’t feel that great today.

That restless and irritable feeling is back. I just don’t feel like living my life right now. I feel like doing anything but, to be honest.

And so I have been taking refuge in sleep. Naughty naughty! I have been trying to avoid doing that. It is a bad habit that only hurts me in the long run.

But it is the easiest and safest thing to do when I just cannot deal.

Oh well, at least I am aware that I am doing that now. Both before and after I do it. I am choosing to sleep the day away and fast-forward my life, with eyes wide open (so to speak) and with full intent.

I had a disturbing moment earlier. I was watching something on TV in which an old man falls asleep while waiting in his doctor’s waiting room.

And I found myself thinking “Gee, that must be nice, to be able to go to sleep at any time, anywhere you are, no matter what. ”

Then suddenly I froze that thought in place and examined it with horrified fascination. Why on Earth would I want that? That actually sounds very bad. If I had that ability, I would probably sleep everywhere and barely stay awake at all. That’s the last thing I need.

So I forced myself to really look at that sentiment so I could find its root. What exactly was it that appealed to me about that thought, at heart?

I think it was the idea of never being very far from the soft and comfortable escape of sleep. The notion of being able to fall asleep anywhere, any time is really the notion of never having to be fully awake. And I have been living life half asleep as a way to (fail to) cope with my emotional problems and my dissatisfaction with my life in general for a long long time.

Having sleep always right there when and where you want it would just be a further extension of always having my bed less than a yard away from me. Sleep as an easy to reach safety blanket that takes all my troubles away and gets me closer to the next interesting thing to happen in my life, which more often than note is a meal.

And all without having to somehow make it through the lonely, anxious hours in between.

Of course, that means I have been sleeping through my life. No wonder it feels like 40 is barreling down at me far faster than it should. It is! I am deliberately bringing it closer with every nap.

And I want to stop doing it. I will not learn who I truly am, or heal my deepest problems, if I just go to sleep whenever things get rough, and avoid situations where sleep is not an option, which is, quite frankly, most of them.

Sad to think that I am that addicted to sleep. It is arguably my primary coping mechanism. I actually find myself getting tenser the longer I have gone without a nap, especially if I lack something at hand into which I can pour all my energies. Like the Internet.

Hello, Internet! I love you, you bitch goddess you.

This is clearly the wrong way to go through life, and if I am going to get anywhere against this vast reservoir of shame and fear and anger that is holding me back and holding me down if I do not force myself to deal with it.

Oh well. There is an OA meeting tonight and I am going (no really, I am!), and that is an excellent exercise in leaving my comfort zone entirely and dealing with the real world.

For an hour and a half. Oh well, it’s a start.

Another depressing but useful realization : the happiest parts of every day are when I am eating.

This realization has been hovering around in my brain for a long time, never quite making it into consciousness because it represented a truth I did not want to face.

And even when it did manage to make it into my conscious mind, I quickly buried it again. But this time, I am bring out into the light and giving it a damn good look.

Given my massive obesity, this should not exactly come as a surprise. If eating did not make me happy, I would probably be skinny. Or at least normal.

But there is a lot of difference between “eating makes me happy” and “I am literally happiest when eating”. It is the difference between being an enthusiast and an addict.

And being an addict is never a good thing. It means you are not fully in control of your life. It means you have that monkey on your back that will kill you if you do not kill it first.

And I know what is going on. Being a depressive, I really need something that hits that reward center of the brain just to keep my head above water and not end up in catastrophic depression.

The kind where you just stare at the wall for hours because you don’t have the energy to kill yourself.

So if I want to free myself from my twin addictions of sleep and food, I need to tunnel through all this pent up resistance and find other things which I will find rewarding in life.

Things that will probably be a lot more work, which is something I will have to learn to deal with. Still working on that whole “you will be happier if you do more things” concept.

Being happier when I expend more effort and not less… sounds weird, but what the hell.

So while these realizations are kind of depressing, they are also heartening, because they at least give me a greater understanding of just what my problems are and what I need to tackle if I want to go forward.

And I do.

Just, you know, stuff

I have been laying down the deepness for a while now, FSW aside. Between my intense navel gazing and my philosophical ramblings, this blog has been dealing with some really heavy stuff.

I mean, this is fucking ponderous, man.

So I figured that it was about time I just kicked back, put my feet up, popped the top on a cool cool pop, and shared some fun stuff with you guys.

After all, life can’t be all navel diving and portentious pondering.

Even Mister Deep Thinker, me, needs to clear the haze and let the sun shine in now and then.

First up, I would be badly remiss if I did not share with you the hot new feel good clip of the day.

God damn, that kid is funny. He really knows how to crack that comedy whip. His timing, his material, his persona, all very honed and precise and the result is COMEDY, baby.

And this is him at just 14 years old. Imagine how funny he will get when he’s older. He has found a field in which his limitations don’t limit him much, and he clearly plans to dominate it.

Speaking of his limitations, I am amazed at how well he speaks for someone with cerebral palsy. My mental image of people with that disease is that they have one hell of a time getting their muscles to obey them well enough to speak, and when they do speak, it is with a thick and distinctive accent that unfortunately makes a lot of people think they are stupid.

But they are not. They are perfectly normal (or in Jack’s case, brilliant) people trapped in bodies that just plain do not do what they are told. What a terrible fate!

But judging by Jack’s clear speech and lack of the involuntary rolling type motions I associate with the disease, it appears that medical science, possibly in the form of the new anti-spasmodic drugs, have allowed people with cerebral palsy to lead far more normal lives these days.

I am very happy to learn this. Any progress against that horrible disease is a miracle and a true liberation for the millions of sufferers.

And sure, he still needs his mobility device, but it seems reasonably compact and would not be a huge hindrance to mobility, unlike the long metal crutches I associate with the disease.

Go for it, Jack!

Now this next item requires a little bit of a setup.

See, there is this email going around the Intarweb lately. It was written by the president of a sorority called Delta Gamma, one Miss Rebecca Martinson, and it has rocketed her into instant Internet infamy.

Apparently, Rebecca was of the opinion that her sorority sisters were not quite acting properly, and became someone miffed at this. So she wrote a little email note to her sorority pals expressing concern.

I ask you to now click this link and scroll down to the section in italics on a pink background to view the text of her epoch-making little missive. Warning : a very high amount of swearing, including the phrase “cunt punt”.

You now have the necessary information to truly enjoy (and be kind of frightened by) the following.

Now that is how you take an Internet story and take it to the next level. Mike Shannon, our impassioned reader above, is apparently a star of Boardwalk Empire. Never seen the show except for the pilot, so I would not know him.

But I love what he did with Ms. Martinson’s little temper tantrum.

I disagree with all the people calling her the “crazy” sorority girl, though. She seems perfectly sane to me. If she had said “And if we piss of the Sigma Nus, they won’t help us fight the Dog Bats of Planet Zenith in time for the Great Awakening”, I would all her crazy.

But as is, she’s not crazy. She’s just being a colossal bitch. Not the same thing.

That said, I would be willing to accept that she was just having a really, really, really bad day.

I mean, I don’t hold Casey Kasem’s rant against him. Everyone loses their cool sometimes.

Oh, and I simply cannot leave “cunt punt” territory without sharing this with you :

That’s from Run Ronnie Run, a sadly obscure movie from the Mister Show team.

And I think it is bloody brilliant.

Finally, I have to share with you the funniest thing to come out of the recent explosions in Boston.

See, amidst the chaos, the confusion, the terror, the heroism, the speculation, the manhunt, the shootouts, and everything else about the Boston attack was one small, insignificant organization that surely knew from the very first day that big changes would be coming their way very soon.

You see, Boston, like any other modern megapolis, has a lot of sports teams, big and small. And if you have a lot of sports teams, you perforce have a lot of sports team names.

And we all know that many sports teams have had to change their names and mascots and logos in order to keep from offending various peoples and groups.

But never has any team been put directly like a certain semi-professional women’s basketball team with a name you simply will not believe.

Go ahead and guess, then click this link.

Yup. The Boston Bombers. The very phrase now describing Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his dead brother. Take a look at their logo :

boston bombers logo

Needless to say, they will be changing everything very, very soon. I am sure that this was a perfectly acceptable team name for many years, and it is only recent events that have rendered it hilariously offensive and inappropriate.

I have not seen someone get fucked by the fickle finger of fate that bad since, well, these people :

And with that, our big bag o’ content is officially empty.

Tune in tomorrow for more of the overwrought and overthought ramblings of my mind!