It has been pretty damned rocky inside this skull of mine lately.

I am going through one of my periods where I feel restless and angry and hate my life. Everything seems stupid or pointless, nothing really makes me happy, and find myself wondering, over and over again, why I do anything.

This means I am either going through emotional puberty at long last, or I am experiencing male PMS.

Don’t laugh. I’m a gender-weird fag, anything’s possible.

What I most likely need is exercise. The sun is shining and the weather is quite lovely and even an indolent mass of sedentary blubber like myself feels spring’s fancy stirring within what he assumes are his loins.

Never been entirely sure what loins are.

So tomorrow, I will kick myself out of the house (so to speak) and go next door to Safeway to get myself some fun things for supper, like pot pies, burritos, or perogies.

I might even get some of those McCain mini-pizzas I got before. Now that I am over the shock of discovering that they are not microwave pizzas, I can see that they are pretty tasty and not such a hassle to make that it would be pointless to buy them. And they don’t have whatever it is in the Pillsbury pizza-based stuff that makes me wanna gag.

So that’s good.

Of course, I could also be sexually frustrated. Luckily, that is easy to fix. Yay porn!

Deep down, I am hoping that this current grumpy mood is part of my shedding another layer of illness inside me. Reference : that whole iceberg thing I go on about. Another big piece of the glacier breaks off and floats south till it melts.

And like with real glaciers, you never know what you are going to find when it melts. Things can be frozen in there for a very long time. There could be anything in there.

It’s not like I was particularly picky about what I put in there. (We’re leaving the glacier metaphor now.). I lived a very long time pretending that I had no idea there was anything in there and that reality and my consciousness were one and the same. I didn’t know why I had the problems I did, and the weird thing is, I didn’t really think about it much.

I guess I just thought I was a broken, terrible, lazy, disgusting thing, and was too weak and fearful to really examine myself. I just made it through life however I could.

And to be honest, sometimes I miss those day, and wonder if I was happier then. I know that is irrational and that I was not a happy functional person back then. Life was simpler, but not better, necessarily. There were good times (college) and bad times (nearly everything else), but I am on a journey towards true health, beyond mere survival, and that is not a smooth or easy road. It means I have to deal with things instead of just putting them out of my mind.

And there are quite a lot of things to deal with by now.

But I look back to as recently as last October, when I was doing a video a day in addition to my blogging, and wonder if I was healthier and more functional back then. If so, I have, in a sense, gotten worse since then.

I keep telling myself that I can resume making videos any time I want. It’s not like my afternoons are filled with activity and fulfillment now. There is very little stopping me from making more of them, in theory.

But in practice… I honestly don’t feel like it. I feel like I reached a kind of creative dead end with the videos and I need a fresh inspiration for what I can do with them before I return to the form.

Blogging is easy. I just type my thoughts. I don’t have to figure anything out beforehand. That is both good and bad. Good, because I need a place to journal and express my inner self. But bad, because it does not give me much of a creative workout and so I still end up with a lot of creative energy bouncing around inside my head.

Perhaps I need to come up with a Third Thing so I can pour my energies into that. Podcasting is a possible candidate for that, although it seems like sort of a step backwards after video. Like going from being on TV to being on radio.

Podcasting is its own thing, though. It is a lot like radio, but it’s not radio. It’s like radio plus. And I have to admit, the ability to do things with sound effects that would be insanely hard to do in video is appealing. There is no reason I could not do a skit comedy show via podcast.

Heck, I could even do it by myself. Might be a fun stimulus to expand my vocal abilities. After all, if you are doing the whole show yourself, you have to do all the voices. And that could be a lot of fun in a Mel Blanc way.

I would want to be absolutely sure that I can get clear, clean audio though. Every word has to be crystal clear in order for the whole audio skit show thing to work. I cannot abide poor quality audio and I would be terribly embarrassed if people could not make out my brilliant, hilarious words.

And as I understand it, you need to spend serious money on microphones if you want top quality audio. I can afford that, but I honestly would not know which one to choose.

I tried to get advice on what microphone to use to record speech, but the person I asked didn’t know. Everything she knew was based on live performance.

I guess I need someone who understands the technical side of radio.

Or I could read my Podcasting For Dummies book……. nah.

Well that’s all for today folks! See you again tomorrow.

Stars, rusty automobile parts, chickens with weird accents…. point is, I got a lot going on under my hat.

Had an attack of free-floating anxiety recently, which manifested itself in an attack of my old enemy hypochondria. My traitorous mind seized upon my feeling a little weak and tired and out of sorts and inflated into a sure sign that I had finally just plain broken down and my neglect of myself was finally leading to me ending up in a far worse state, a state bad enough so that my life before it will seem like happy golden years by comparison.

My neuroses have quite a way with words.

I feel better today, and the whole thing seems kind of silly now. I can say that I am going through one of my sleepy phases and that always complicates life, but I am no sicker than usual, and that’s as close to “well” as I usually get.

But I know I don’t take good care of myself at all, and so that provides the nucleus for the neurosis. I never test my blood, I have untreated sleep apnea, I eat the wrong things sometimes, and of course, I get absolutely no exercise.

All things I want to change, but the beast that is my depression gets in the way. Once again, I just have to be patient and have faith that the process known as recovery will deliver me to my promised land eventually.

I have seen the mountaintop. But as is the way with mountains, it’s hard to tell how far away it is or whether or not you are actually getting any closer.

Sometimes it feels like I am gambling with my life, betting that my mental health problems can be fixed before my physicval health problems kill me. But I don’t see that I have much of a choice.

To be honest, I am just too crazy to take care of myself. It makes me wonder if I would quality for some sort of caretaker. But I don’t know. It’s not like I am physically incapable of doing the things that would improve my health.

The problem is all between my ears. Every day, I cling to sanity. And that clinging works, it is the main reason that I have not ended up in a hospital psych ward or ever attempted suicide. It might look like stasis from the outside, but on the inside, it is a day to day fight against the darkness inside me.

So I keep myself out of the psych ward and out of the emergency room, but the cost is that it is very hard for me to do anything which is outside my very very small comfort zone. Anything I try to do outside of just hanging around on the computer all day in one form or another activates my very potent anxieties and that sets the neurosis clock ticking down to the inevitable point where my escapist instincts compel me to abandon whatever it is and go back to my tiny island again.

Such is my life. The fear destroys everything but the hyper-familiar most of the time. It takes a lot of effort and a certain amount of luck for me to change anything about my life.

And it’s not even the reality of the fear. It’s the anticipation of it. Over and over again, the sort of thing that my anxieties tell me would be far too scary to do turns out to be fine. More than fine, I end up actually enjoying it. No big anxiety attack on the bus, no panic at White Spot, nothing. And I feel a lot better afterward, too.

But somehow, that contrary data does not counter the clearly erroneous fears. I feel like there is this huge reservoir of fear within me that is always seeking expression, and that what seems like progress in reducing the fear is simply a better method for controlling it.

I want to drain that swamp, not just hold it back.

And when I call it fear, I really mean just plain emotional energy. It is looking to come out in one form or another, and because I don’t let it out in the form of anger or sadness, fear is its default state.

I crave catharsis. But I don’t seek it. It has to find me somehow. At most, this desire to express all this raw emotion within me informs my subconscious decisions when I choose what to watch on Netflix, leading me to sometimes find the exact cathartic catalyst that I need in something I watch.

But usually, it is entirely up to chance. Like just waiting for an iceberg of emotion to snap off the glacier of my depression and float into warmer climes to melt away and release its burden of suppressed feelings.

It seems absurd to my forceful rational mind that this is something I cannot just choose to do. I can’t rationally decide to unleash all of my emotions at once and get the damned thing over with. I have to wait on this slow and unknowable, unpredictable internal process for however long it takes for the healing to complete.

My gigawatt bright rational mind just can’t stand the idea of leaving something so important in the hands of the mysterious and inscrutable forces of the darkness that is the right half of the brain. The very idea of trusting without knowing, otherwise known as “faith”, is alien to me. My powerful mind has always allowed me to know things, things that other people don’t know. Things which are mysteries to others are known by me. That is my primary defense mechanism.

But we are all doomed by our strengths. No matter how powerful the hammer, it will always be doomed by the things that just cannot be treated like nails. And then you have to adapt.

I don’t know how to develop faith.

I guess it is, by its nature, unknowable.

See you tomorrow, folks!

Okay, so I couldn’t think of a decent title today.

Watched a very cool documentary yesterday called Mortified Nation. It’s about this event where people get up on stage and read from their childhood/teenage diaries.

It’s one of those genius simple humanist ideas that make me so happy about the current generation. Us Gen X types would never even think to do this. We are all too sullen and defensive. We’re the generation that took irony into our hearts as our great defense against the world and paid a heavy price in terms of atomization, isolation, and fear of sincerity.

Our kids, thank goodness, are embracing sincerity and emotional connectedness, and I could not be happier about it. The world desperately needs it. We have taken individualism far past its absurd conclusion and it is high time we start realizing that we are not alone, that we are in fact more connected and interdependent than ever before, and that together, we can do anything.

But enough rhapsodizing. Back to the documentary.

What happens when people read the diaries of their youth to an audience is quite magical. For starters, obviously, they are hysterically funny. The pretentiousness and lack of perspective of youth is prime grade A comedy fuel, and hearing these people read them in their own voices makes it even more magic.

They are choosing to reveal themselves like this, and thus they are giving permission to laugh. But they are also giving you permission to relate, and that is the real genius of the project. It gives people a glimpse into other people’s lives in order to show them that no matter who we are or how weird and isolated we thought we were as a younger person, everyone else was going through the exact same thing, and we are actually all more alike than we are different.

That is a basic humanist message, and it is wonderful to see the children of my generation reaching out to one another like this and finding connection on their own.

Because God knows, we can’t teach it to them.

It makes sense that this is the connection generation, of course. They grew up with the Internet in their pockets. They are the generation that is obsessively interconnected with their tightly knit group of friends, something incomprehensible to my generation. Every time they check their email or text a friend, they are strengthening their ties to one another and making community for themselves.

I could not wish for a better next step.

I don’t have any kind of teenage diary. I started one a bunch of times but never developed the habit. I kept my thoughts to myself when I was a teen, which in retrospect was probably a bad thing.

If I had been able to put it all on the Internet like I do now, maybe I would have pierced my sense of isolation and kepts me from becoming so emotionally ingrown.

I did write poetry when I was a teen, which I am sure would be quite hilarious now. One of the performers read out some of his teenage poetry and it was magnificent. A lot of stuff about “the tormentors” and “the head coward” and such. It was a marvelous distillation of teenage rage and pretentiousness. I was in awe, and a little jealous.

I could never take myself seriously enough to be that emo.

But my fave, the guy directly after my own heart, was the dude who created this heavy metal band in his head called LIVE EVIL (hey, that’s a palindrome!) and created posters, tour schedules, magazine articles, and had their whole career plotted out without ever trying to learn an instrument or even asking anyone else to join the band.

But what he DID do was write, get this, 120 songs for his imaginary band. And this was happening in the eighties and he was getting his knowledge about women from Motley Crue, so the songs are all horribly, humiliatingly misogynistic.

And thus hilarious, of course. Of all the performers, I think he showed the most courage because the songs are just awful. Totally politically incorrect. And he was reading the lyrics out loud to an audience which was presumably half women, so I could see him thinking they were going to string him up on the spot.

Instead, they pulled major awesomeness and got him an actual band so that, for just that night, he WAS the lead singer of LIVE EVIL, the rock star he had always wanted to be. A pair of cool shades transformed him from nebbishy little nerdy dude to guy who could totally be from the record label, and he rocked out.

That is pure fucking gold, there.

I should mention the nature of the house band. The producer and creator of the event decided it needed a band, so what he did was get together people to play the instruments they were forced to learn as a child, but to play the music they wish they had been allowed to play back then.

That fits perfectly with the nature of the event. I love it.

There are Mortified events all over the world now, because that is just way too good an idea to stay in one place. I would love to attend one. They seem like totally my kind of scene.

But being the ham that I am, I would be kind of jealous of the performers because I don’t have a diary or poetry or atrocious heavy metal lyrics to share. I would want to be the person on the stage being candid and hilarious.

That’s just me though. Part of me is a frustrated stand-up comedian. I have loved performing every time I have done it, and what the heck, I am a funny guy.

Speaking of stand up, I am going to Stand Up For Mental Health tonight to watch the comedy debut of my friend Ray Seredin. It’s an event that encourages people with mental health issues to learn to do standup as a way to build confidence.

Truth be told, it is something I am kind of interested in doing myself. So I have multiple motives to attend.

Well, that’s all for me for today, folks. Talk to you tomorrow.

I did something I am very proud of tonight, something that would be utterly mundane and un-noteworthy to a mentally healthy person but for me marks real progress.

I ordered $30 worth of Chinese food. Not because I had to, not because I was sharing it with someone, not because I was rewarding myself for anything in particular, not because it was some sort of special occasion.

Just because I wanted to. Because I felt like it. Because I didn’t feel like having another blah meal of peanut butter and jelly sandwich, junk food, and fruit tonight. I wanted something more fun. So I ordered it, and I got it.

That is a big breakthrough for me. I have spent so long either having no cash of my own (horrible) or not having any I could spare on spur of the moment things (not as bad, but bad) that I can’t remember a time when I could want something and just get it. Just like that. Just because I wanted it.

As a result of such long term deprivation, I have led a very cloistered kind of life. Not just because of my social anxiety keeping me housebound, but because I had a life with very little in the way of physical pleasures.

Like a monk in a cell, I got by with the bare minimum of earthly pleasures and instead dedicated myself to the pursuit of the higher pleasures of the mind and the spirit.

After all, that’s all the Internet can provide.

And the thing about such a cramped little life is that if you are in that tiny little box long enough, it becomes very difficult to adjust to a bigger box.

You’re like an animal who has been caged for so long that even if you give it a much bigger cage, for a long time it just sort of sits there and blinks because it has long since forgotten that anything but that tiny cage was even possible. Their universe shrank to the size of that cage, and this new, bigger world is hard for them to grasp.

So that’s me, all cramped up from keeping myself in a tiny little cage for so long. Part of me, I suppose, is afraid of this brave new financial world. So many possibilities! Option paralysis. And what if I choose the wrong thing? Then I will get hurt! Better to make no choice at all and just sit here like a lump.

But also, I think part of me is afraid to truly believe that I can, sometimes, have what I want now. I can afford things. Not everything has to be planned out down to the last penny (woops, nickel) in order to make sure I make it through the month without going totally broke.

I started today with $500 in my pocket. That has to last me five weeks. (A five week month, yay. ) That means I have $100/week for spending cash. Of which I have spent $30, which means I have $70 to last me till next Wednesday.

For me, that is an absurd amount of money. I will end up spending, at most, $40 of it. So I am doing just fine. My little foray into spontaneity did not sink my financial ship or cause my world to explode into rack and ruin around me.

On top of all that, I have $200 just waiting on my secured Visa to be spent on keen stuff to improve my life. I have been working on a little shopping list for a couple of days now. Here is what I have on it so far :

Tablet to RCA cord. By this, I mean a USB cord to connect my tablet to the RCA inputs of our entertainment system so we have Internet on the big TV again. Not sure what use we will have for it, but it’s still good to have.

Summer weight jacket. I have a truly great leather jacket, but it is way too warm for summer use. I need something more like a windbreaker for use on summer nights.

Wifi signal booster. Because I am SO FUCKING TIRED of the crappy WiFi reception in my room, always cutting in and out. I am determined to find a solution to that, even if it means boosting the signal so hard the people on the ISS can use my Internets.

Microphone(s) for podcasting (lapel mics?). I am still thinking of putting together a crazy wacky podcast in the spirit of Frantic Times, the show that gave The Frantics their start on CBC radio. Skit comedy, but all audio. I am pretty sure I can write stuff like that or modify existing stuff, and at the moment. I am thinking some decent lapel mics for me and my potential cohorts would be the best way to go for audio recording without a lot of technical complications.

I am sure there is a bunch of stuff I want or need that I am forgetting, which is the exact reason I am keeping a list.

Oh, and my tale of tonight’s adventures would not be complete without telling you of the twenty minute fucking saga of getting my food actually delivered.

For some reason, delivery people around here are unfamiliar with the idea of an apartment complex, so whenever I order in, I end up getting this phone call from the deliverer saying they are at my address but they can’t find my apartment.

That is because they are out on Francis street trying to find my place in the one building of this complex that is actually on Francis road. The rest of the buildings are only accessible if you go down this little road here :

Click here to see where I live!

And delivery people can’t get this, which is understandable I suppose, but the problem is I can never seem to describe it to them in a way they understand.

I am very skilled with the English language, but this is Richmond, so…. they are not.

So it took twenty frustrating (and hungry!) minutes of telling the delivery guy that he was at the wrong door again before I got my goddamned food tonight.

It’s good that I have a large reserve of patience and tolerance, otherwise I would have snapped at the guy. But hey, this was no more fun for him than it was for me.

Oh, and get this… the place I ordered from (the Wing Kee) offers free delivery…. but added a $4 “tip” for the driver to my bill. Next time I order from them, I will ask them if I still get the food if I don’t pay this “tip”.

If the answer is “no”, then guess what, that’s a fucking delivery fee and that means you do not, in fact, offer free delivery.

Needless to say, I didn’t tip the driver over and above what had already been tacked on to my bill. Four bucks is plenty for a simple delivery like mine. The fact that I had to practically roll a red carpet up to my door for him to find it did not exactly make me feel extra generous either.

So that was stress I didn’t need. But the food was good, other than a bit of noodle getting stuck between my teeth so hard it took both hands to get it out.

I was gonna talk about this awesome documentary I watched, but that will have to wait. I have babbled on about Chinese food and shopping plans for way too long.

Seeya tomorrow, all you nice people!

I had one of my little epiphanies today, of a particular sort, and I am not exactly sure what it means, so I thought I would talk about it with you nice people and try to figure it out.

This particular kind of epiphany happens when my subconscious mind puts a word or a phrase into my head that is immediately invested with enormous meaning because it is the nucleus around which a lot of my recent thinking crystallizes.

Before, it was the question “What if I really am a giant? What then?”.

Today it was the idea that I am a wildcard.

I don’t know why that word instantly appealed to me when it popped into my head, but it just seems to fit. I was born a wildcard, a fluke, an unpredictable and variable effect. A mystery wrapped in an enigma and stuffed inside a joke. I was born to stand just a little outside normal reality (okay, a lot outside) and both challenge and entertain people.

It’s a trickster thing. I have never been comfortable with my trickster nature because, on the surface of it, the trickster can seem kind of evil. Certainly to people who are not chaotic by nature and who have been the victim of other people’s malicious “tricks”, the jester-trickster seems like a total asshole. A leering, mocking, cruel clown who does awful things to people and gets away with it by calling it humour and being too clever to ever be pinned down to a crime.

Yeah, I am more or less talking about The Joker.

But the trickster, or in my case the wildcard, need not be malicious. A comedian is just as much a trickster as the Joker. Part of the trickster’s job has always been to entertain. To reduce tension with clever jokes or just plain silliness, to help people cope with the gravity of reality by offering the levity of wit, to ease people’s cognitive dissonance by using satire to help them reconcile conflicting ideas, even to help them understand new ideas and maybe even expand their minds a little by presenting new thoughts in a light and entertaining form.

That is how I view my own trickster nature. (Maybe the problem is the name. Trickster. Tricks. Tricking people. Sounds bad. )

This wildcard idea though, it appeals to me too strongly for me to ignore just because I don’t understand it yet. I will figure it out in time. I have faith that this is leading me somewhere I really need to go.

I know that for me, comedy is not just a game or a trick. I believe in comedy. Comedy, to me, is almost like a religion in that it is through comedy that I have felt the greatest sense of connectedness and comfort, and I have seen how comedy can sooth the soul and even make the world seem like a better place to people. Comedy can transform tension into pleasure, pain into joy, enemies into friends. It can bridge the gap between people, between tribes, between nations.

It can even help heal the body by healing the spirit. Yes, I think I can safely say that I believe in comedy.

And that is sort of trickster-like. But this wildcard idea is bigger than that. It is part trickster but also something else. When I think of the word now, with all its brand new and electrically thrilling connections, I am not seeing a playing card or a jester with bells on his feet, even though that is literally what a wildcard usually is in this culture.

It is something more nebulous but far far more potent than that. It is more like a shining, shimmering, scintillating star with a bright shiny beautiful jewel at its center, eternally brilliant, fascinating, and wonderful. Its colors shifting and shimmering, never the exact same twice, but always wondrously beautiful and magnificently rich and deep. The sort of thing that soothes the mind by stimulating it. The kind of thing that can light the way to a whole new way of thinking, feeling, and being for the whole world, and do so with grace, wit, and supreme gentleness.

And I think the gem is me.

Or rather, my idea self. The one I am trying to birth into the world. The self that has the confidence and receptivity to open the doors wide to the world and share all the wonders that reside within me. Someone who is not closed off by fear but motivated by joy and a great and ever-flowing love for life. Someone who can walk tall through the world, unashamed, and greet the world with a smile and a hug and a hearty how-do-you-do.

Someone whose spirit has finally grown big and strong enough to support that big bad brain of his.

Why this all attaches to the world “wildcard” is beyond me at the moment. Perhaps it was a revelation whose time had come and “wildcard” was the closest thing to a word to describe it that my brain could come up with at that moment.

A wildcard in the sense of something undefined, unlimited, unknowable, uncontrolled, something that can be whatever it needs to be when the time comes and is not forced to choose one form and stick with it for eternity. Something pure and beautiful, untouched and eternal, shining brightly for all to see.

Despite that extraordinarily vague definition, I feel like I got in touch with a big part of myself today. I crossed some vital divide and integrated a big piece of myself back into the new wholeness I am creating.

I am all about the decompartmentalization now. Time to take everything out of its boxes and put it all together.

It is the only way that I can become a real little boy.

You know, I just might be on a spiritual journey now.

Keen. I didn’t think us materialists got those.

See you tomorrow, all you wonderful people!

That is my new motto. They were wrong.

All the people who bullied me and hurt in elementary school…. they were wrong. They were morally wrong to do it and factually wrong to thing I deserved it. I don’t have to own their abuse of me because they were wrong.

The teachers that ignored me, kept me at arm’s-length, or worst of all turned a blind eye to all the abuse I suffered because, deep down, they felt I brought it on myself for being so weird and difficult… they were wrong too. I was a unique kid but that didn’t give them the right to treat me that way and it certainly did not absolve them of responsibility to make sure school was as safe a place for me as it was for all the other students. I don’t have to cosign their neglect of me. I don’t have to go on believing they were right to do so, because they were wrong.

The people in that little town in a tiny province that was too small for the kind of person I was born to be… they were wrong too. I was born special. They should have been able to handle me anyway. But the system failed me spectacularly, and it is not my fault. They were wrong to treat me like that, making me feel like I was a repulsive alien just because I didn’t walk around half-asleep like they did. They were wrong.

Now we get into the real meat. My family was wrong to treat me like it did as well. I was treated like a neglected pet, ignored and degraded and desperate for any kind of positive attention. It was never my fault that I was unplanned… an accident. I didn’t ask to show up four years after my parents thought they were done having kids. It’s not my fault that my arrival messed up their carefully laid plans. I did not deserve to be treated like an afterthought. I did not deserve to be treated like I should be glad I get anything. I deserved to be treated like an equal, not a second class citizen in my own home. I didn’t deserve to feel like I was always running to catch up for fear of being left behind. They treated me like an unwelcome guest, and gave me a lifelong feeling of guilt for even existing, and that was wrong. They were wrong.

And that includes my parents, obvious. My father was wrong to have such a big rage issue and make us all afraid of him. He was wrong to take his issues out on his family. And he was especially super wrong to molest me at The Spa. I didn’t deserve any of that and it is not my fault that any of it happened. These things did not happen to me because there is something wrong with me. They happened because they happened, because there is injustice everywhere and some of it happened to land on me. I didn’t deserve for any of it to happen. I didn’t ask to grow up with absolutely no sense that there was anyone looking out for me. My parents were wrong to let these things happen to me, they were wrong to basically ignore me and assume nothing was wrong because I didn’t complain about anything (after teaching me never to complain), they were wrong to abandon me to my own devices in life because it suited their lifestyles, and they were wrong to fuck my adult life over completely by withdrawing funding from my university education halfway through college.

And that includes my mother. I have, in a secular sense, viewed her as a saint my entire life, and she honestly doesn’t deserve it. Don’t get me wrong, she is a sweet and wonderful person. But she ignored me like the others, especially after going back to work. She never really had time or energy for me. And she just sat there and cried while my father verbally abused his children right in front of her when she should have been a mama lion protecting her cubs. Apparently, she thought it was acceptable to just cry rather than feeling there was something she could do about it. Well she was wrong, and none of us deserved to be abandoned to my father’s rage. And I didn’t deserve to end up in the patently absurd situation of being moderator and diplomat despite being the youngest by four years. She was wrong to treat me like that, same as my father and my siblings. They were wrong.

I have been the victim of a long series of egregious injustices, and it time I stopped owning all the resulting garbage like it says something about me as a person. All those people who hurt me were wrong to do it. What they did says a lot more about them and their failings that it says about me and my own.

It’s time I stand up straight, look the world in the eye, and say “I am here. I deserve to be here. I have nothing to be ashamed of. The bad things that happened to me were bad luck and nothing else. It is fully within my power to just plain leave all that bullshit behind me as I walk tall into the future.”

The lesson is not over. I am going to have to repeat this one over and over again to make it truly sink in. The existing structure of my mind is going to resist such a fundamental change in outlook and so I will need to pound it into my thick skull with as many hammer blows as it takes.

But for now, I am confident. I have a real grip on my demons and I stand a very good chance of killing them once and for all, and then finally being able to close this big festering wound in my mind.

They were wrong. All of them.

And now I know it.

See you tomorrow folks.

“She has arrived, your Majesty. ”
Emperor Pell scowled for a moment. But then brightened. “Oh well, I suppose I had best get this over with right away. No point in dillydallying. The sooner done, the better. ”
“Yes, your Majesty. ”
“I will meet her in the usual place.”
“Of course, your Majesty. ”
“And see that it is… that it’s made…. just see to it that everything goes smoothly while I make my.. trip. ”
“Yes, your Majesty. The way has already been prepared. None will see you enter or leave. Not even I, my lord. ”
“Excellent…. the less said about this, the better. Fetch me my scepter and my…. on second thought, never mind. I suppose it doesn’t matter what I bring. ”
“As you like, sire. ”
“Well then… I guess I’d best be off, then. ”

<------------------------------------------------------------------------------------>

As he always did at these times. Emperor Pell found himself walking very slowly and admiring his castle and its contents as though seeing them for the first time.
There was the Hall of Legend, where all his heroic exploits were depicted in magnificent detail on tapestries of the finest, richest cloth in all the Kingdoms. The Battle of Greycastle, where he had slain the demon-lord Draconis. The Vanquishing of the Mirror Ghosts who drove people mad by trapping them in their own memories. The College of Wizards he had built with his own two hands when unbound wizardry had threatened the stability of his lands. And dozens more. All deeds to swell any man’s heart with pride, but Pell just looked upon them as things that had needed to be done to protect his kingdom.

Next came the Banquet Hall, where the magical Table of Transformation turned the base gruel that was the standard fare of the Kingdom into the most sumptuous, delectable, senses-pleasing meals imaginable. Meals made still the more wonderful because the magical food did not fill one up, so one could feast through the night unimpeded.

Then came the Armory, where his Sword of the One True Kingdom hung. It was with this sword he had conquered the rebellious and treacherous Outer Lands once and for all. One by one, he had subdued them, and with the power of the sword and his true and unyielding will, remade them in his own image and according to his own designs.

The Outer Lands had lain quiescent for many a year after that. But now….

After the Armory came the Treasury. In it lay many a treasure from the Outer Kingdoms, things which he had found there which pleased him. The rest, he burned, so that there be no trace left of those foul and wicked places.

In it was a battered old tome full of numbers and symbols that he found soothing. There was also a large slate upon which chalk looked especially pretty. A Noble Prize he had won in the days of his youth, before his Kingdom even existed. Such things are precious to old men.

But no matter how slowly one walks, one eventually arrives, and it was with a heavy heart that Pell came to his destination, a plain and ugly door of clear glass and metal. He took a deep breath, opened the door, shielded his eyes from the bright glare within, and went inside.

<------------------------------------------------------------------------------------>

Inside was a Spartan room consisting of only a simple cot, a worn old wooden chair, and four bare concrete walls painted white. With great caution, Pell took off all his clothing, changed into the same pale blue pajamas that always awaited him here, and lay as still as he could despite his trembling.

Soon it will be over, he told himself. She will visit, we will talk, and then she and this horrible pressure in my head will be gone, and my Kingdom will be safe again.

He closed his eyes as tightly as he could as the pressure built and built, and despite himself, the Emperor of the Central Kingdoms could not keep himself from whimpering from the pain.

Finally, the pressure stopped, relief and gratitude flooded his soul, and when he opened his eyes, she was there.

<------------------------------------------------------------------------------------>

Pell squinted at the florescent bulbs on the ceiling, and shook his head. “I don’t know how you people put up with those. ”

“Put up with what, Mr. Pell?” she said.

“Those… lights, up there. Such a harsh and unfriendly light they shine. We have nothing like them in my kingdom. I would never tolerate something so… disrespectful. ”

“They only show what is there, Mister Pell. ”

“That’s one way of looking at it. Anyhow, I suppose we had better get started. Hello again, Dame Dumont. ”

“It’s Mrs. Dumont here, Mr Pell, as you well know. I thought we had agreed that you would honor the customs of this world while you were in it? ”

“Oh yes. How silly of me to forget. Forgive my lapse in decorum. Hello again Mrs. Dumont. ”

“Hello again, Mister Pell. So nice of you to join me for this meeting. ”

Pell harumphed. “Your foul magics do not give me much choice, madam. I either meet with you or go mad from the pain. ”

“A regrettable necessity, Mr. Pell, but I did warn you that you would pay a price for your continued… obstinacy. ”

“Hah. Is that what you call it? I call it loyalty to my kingdom. ”

“This was once your kingdom as well, Mr. Pell. ”

Pell leaped to his feet, eyes ablaze. “That is a foul and contemptible lie! I have never had any part in this cruel and heartless realm. By the grace of God, I was born fresh and without sin into this Realm some twenty years ago, and I have led an exemplary life since there. There is not the slightest trace of your Outermost Kingdom in me, and I will thank you, madam, to remember that and keep a civil tongue in your head. ”

Lightning flashed and sirens screamed around Pell, so great was his rage. The air was filled with a cacophony of shrieks, clangs, and alarums, and Pell felt the hot blood in his chest.

“Very well, Mister Pell. I will not speak of it again. Please, sit back down and calm yourself. Such fits of rage do not serve either of us well, Mister Pell. ”

Pell gratefully lay down on the cot once more. Suddenly he felt weak. His rage had worn him out. “Very well, Mrs. Dumont. Perhaps we have both made mistakes in etiquette today. ”

“Indeed, Mister Pell. Now, I believe that when last we spoke, we were discussing possible terms for cooperation. ”

“You mean terms of surrender. You know that I could never do what you ask of me. I could never turn my back on my Kingdom and let you destroy it and the people within it for my own personal advancement, no matter the prize. Just out of curiosity, what are you offering this time?”

“The same as always, Mister Pell. Wealth, fame, public accolades, the love and gratitude of millions. The freedom to pursue whatever you wish. ”

Pell laughed. “And for this you would have me forsake my kingdom? I already have those things, and in greater amount than your cold and pitiless kingdom could ever offer. You would have me trade gold for copper, madam, and low grade copper to boot. ”

“As you say, Mr. Pell, but what we offer has one unbeatable advantage over what you already have. ”

Pell knew what she would say in reply, but asked anyhow : “And what is that?”

“It’s real, Mister Pell. Actually real. You and I both know that your Kingdom and its inhabitants are not truly real. ”

“They’re real enough to me!” he replied. “And they are a damned sight better than anything I could find in your blackhearted realm. I made my Kingdom, and I made it right. Everything is perfect here. Nobody goes hungry, nobody worries that they will killed on the way to work by some street thug, everything is safe and there is never any kind of… ”

“Any kind of what, Mister Pell?”

“Never mind. It’s not important. What is important is that I have all I need here and there is nothing your so called ‘real’ world has to offer me. I decide what is real here. ”

“And that’s the problem, Mister Pell. You have to decide everything. You have to create everything. You have to keep track of it all in your mind, and keep it alive by remembering it. Don’t you ever get tired? Don’t you ever want to just let it all go so you can rest? When was the last time you really slept, Mister Pell?”

Pell looked small and confused. “Sleep… I…. I have a wonderful bed, made of gold and jewels and the softest fabrics in all the…. the feathers, they come from….. a giant… ”

“I am not asking about your bed, Mister Pell. I was asking about your sleep. When was the last time you slept in that bed?”

“I can’t… I’m sure I must have…. sometimes, I spend whole mornings just laying there and reading… ”

“But do you SLEEP there, Mister Pell? Have you slept a single time since your arrival in your kingdom? When was the last time you can remember going to sleep? ”

“I… I must have…. but I can’t remember any… ”

“So in all the twenty years you have lived, you haven’t slept once? That’s hardly normal, is it? Wouldn’t you like to sleep again? If you come with me, I promise you that you can rest. Just come with me, Mister Pell…. Jeremy. Come with me and you can finally rest again. ”

With that, Mrs. Dumont put a hand on Pell’s, and the hand was cool and soft and solid and very, very real. Pell looked up at her with such longing and confusion that she gasped. “Could I really….can you really do it?”

“Yes I can, Jeremy. The machine that brought you here can take you home. But only if you let go. You have to decide to come with me, Jeremy, or it will never work. Come with me. It is time you came home. ”

“HOME?” shouted Pell. The confusion and longing were gone, and the arrogance and anger were back. “My home is my kingdom, you treacherous bitch! Oh, you are wily, I will give you that. You almost had me confused enough to hand you victory. But I will never succumb to your witch’s ways, do you hear me? ”

“Now Jeremy… Mister Pell… ”

“This interview is over, madam. You can turn that infernal machine up to twenty five for all I care, You will not get another word from me ever again. GOOD DAY, madam!”

Pell turned toward the wall, and steadfastly refused to turn back until he knew she was gone.

<------------------------------------------------------------------------------------>

“So how did it go?”
Doctor Suzanne Dumont sighed as she took the electrode cap off her sweat-soaked head. “I don’t know, Lacey. It really seemed like I was close to breaking through there at the end, but then he clamped down again, and hard. Harder than ever before. So I don’t know whether I am inches from freeing the greatest mind of this century from its coma, or inches from shattering his sanity completely by robbing it of its defense mechanism. ”

Nurse-Technician Lacey Templeton smiled at Doctor Dumont. “In one ear and out the other, Doc. Sorry. I never had the head for that psychological stuff. But we sure got a scare when his vitals shot up like that. ”
“That was my fault. I pushed too hard at the beginning. That’s always been my problem, barreling in like a herd of buffalo when I should be walking soft like a cat. When will he be ready for another treatment?”

“Gosh, Doc, I don’t know. I am looking at his liveMRI and it is all over the place. His pathways are going to be twitching for a long time after this. I’d say at least a week, maybe ten days. ”

“That’s okay, I will probably sleep that long after this anyway. ”

They both laughed. “I have to ask, Doc… how long has Professor Pell been like that?”

“Almost a year. Ever since the day he killed his wife. Shoved her down a flight of stairs. ” Seeing the look of horror and disbelief on Nurse Lacey’s face, she added “Oh, I know everyone thinks he’s the sweet funny man they saw on TV, but he was always very fragile. When his wife said she wanted a divorce, he snapped. They say she was dead before she hit the landing. They found him at the top of the stairs just how you see him now and he has been catatonic ever since. I guess he just couldn’t live with what he had done. ”

Nurse Lacey looked shocked and overawed. “But that…. that’s just terrible. And here you are, inventing a whole new form of cranial stimulation just to save a murderer? Why?”

Doctor Dumont smiled tiredly. “Because he was my best friend. They both were. Can you finish the cleanup for me? I am pretty sure I will be asleep twenty minutes from now and I would rather be home in bed when it happens. ”

“Well okay, but you better bring the donuts next time. Remember, I like the… ”

“Apple-Cherry Fritters, I know. See you next week, Lacey. ”

Feeling a little unreal herself, Doctor Dumont drove the five blocks to her home, and put herself to bed.

<------------------------------------------------------------------------------------>

“What troubles you, sire?”
“Oh… nothing. Nothing. Just tired. Listen… this will seem like a strange question but… when was the last time I slept?”
“My Lord? You are abed every night at ten, and ring for your breakfast every day at six in the morn, rain or shine. ”
And I don’t allow servants in my bedchambers, so as far as you know, I am asleep that whole time, thought Pell. But I don’t sleep. I don’t know what I do during those hours, but it’s not sleep. It’s like that time just… doesn’t exist.
“Listen… Jenkins, is it? Next time I go to bed, I want you to very quietly peek into my bedroom and see what I am doing, then tell me when I ring for breakfast in the morning. ”
“It’s Jayne, sir. I will of course do as you wish, sir, but… may I ask why?”
“No, you may not. Just do as you are told. I am your King!”
“Yes sir. Will you have your tea now?”
“Of course… actually, on second thought, no. I… just don’t feel like having tea right now. ”
“As you wish, sire. May I be dismissed, then? ”
“Yes, yes… go. And tell the others I am to be left alone for now.”

<------------------------------------------------------------------------------------>

Pell wandered his castle restlessly, in search of what, he did not know. But suddenly the castle and servants which had pleased him for so long now filled him with disgust. It all seemed so pointless now. All the splendor, all the honour, all the legends, and all the glory just seemed like nothing more than a child’s game to him now. He needed something MORE.

Eventually, he wandered into the Treasury. He picked up the old battered tome and flipped through its pages. The symbols and numbers inside had always baffled him before. But now he thought he could almost make a kind of sense of them.

Pell stared off into nothingness, book in hand, for a long time. Then he abruptly put the book down and picked up a piece of chalk, and stood before the staring, staring at it.

And then, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, he began writing equations on the slate.

And that made him feel a lot better.

Okay, this is going to be another blog where I sound like a raving egomaniac, so… consider yourself warned.

Here goes. What if I really am a giant?

Intellectually speaking, that is. Physically, I’m just a bit taller than average, and a lot heavier.

But what if I really am a mental giant? What if I actually am as smart as I sometimes think I am? What then? Just asking the questions makes me feel like I am tempting fate, but the question occurred to me last night and that genie is definitely not going back in its bottle.

I have no choice but to think about it and try to answer the question now. I need to know. This is a crossroads in my identity development and thus my recovery, so it is an issue that must be resolved before I go forward.

To start, let me talk about why I have resisted truly accepting that I am exceptionally intelligent.

I talked yesterday about responsibility, and that is a big part of it. Having to take responsibility for that much power is a terrifying prospect for me. I take responsibility too seriously to treat it in a cavalier, “the world better watch out” kind of way.

But there is also the matter of my connection with others. As you all know, I was a very lonely and scared kid all through elementary school. I had no friends, I was bullied constantly, and I just could not relate to my fellow students. I was light years ahead of them intellectually, and very cerebral to boot, and I just could not understand why they did what they did.

And the thing about a lonely childhood is that once you are a lonely and alienated child, you stop getting any of the social inputs that might have lead to the kind of social adjustment that would lead to reintegration. I tried, in my own way, to understand and connect with my fellow students, but I lacked the social matrix required. I attacked things logically and intellectually, and that does not work with social situations, especially in childhood.

Kids can’t tell you what you are doing wrong. They just know you’re weird.

So very early on, I internalized the idea that there was something I had called “intelligence” and that was why I could not connect with my fellow students, no matter how much I wanted to do so.

And this separation really hurt. I desperately want to connect with people and share social warmth and positive interaction with them. I have been a lonely person for a very long time and all that time, I was starving for attention and connection.

Thus, from a very early age, I resented my intelligence at least as much as I enjoyed it. It was what kept me apart from others and I always felt like the lonely giant who doesn’t mean to scare people away.

Certainly, it made school work easy (pathetically so), but that just meant I was bored as hell a lot of the time. The work was so easy for me that I couldn’t see the value in it. It is only as an adult that I can look back and appreciate all the pain and suffering I avoided by being so bright.

School was a lot harder for others. Most of them struggled with the work at least part of the time, and the ones who were bright like me were usually overachievers so it’s not like it made their lives any easier. If anything, it just ratcheted up the pressure on them.

So I am glad for my ability to not sweat the academic side of things, but on the other hand, I was isolated, frightened and bored, and so for me, my intelligence was at best a mixed blessing.

This is why I learned to crouch. If being a giant is what is isolating you, you learn to slouch down and try to get closer to people that way. The last thing you would want to do is straighten yourself up to your full intellectual height, because that would take you even further from everyone else and that is just plain unthinkable.

And it must be said, there have been times when I have been terrified that if I got any further from others, I would lose my mind completely. Get sucked up into my own mental realm and never come back. Float away like an untethered balloon and sail off into the sky till I disappeared from sight.

So, that is how it has been. But I have crossed the Rubicon now and I have to deal with how it is now. And the truth is, I will need to accept that I am a giant, a gentle and friendly one but a giant nonetheless, and it does me no good and a lot of harm to pretend otherwise and spend my life bent over like a hunchback.

Giants can have their head in the clouds and their feet on the ground at the same time, after all. No drifting off.

But what are the ways of giants? How does one live like one? How do you handle the knowledge that you are both quantitatively and qualitatively smarter than most people? How can you live knowing that the average person is a child compared to you?

I have embraced egalitarianism my entire life. I have never wanted to feel better than anyone else. My desired position is always, always equality. I want to relate to others on their own level. Anything else feels very very wrong. How can you relate to someone and understand their point of view when your head is so far above theirs?

And the thing is, you can’t talk to anyone about this either because the moment you start talking about how smart you are, people immediately close off and you become the enemy. By saying you are highly intelligent, you are, to most people, saying “I am socially dominant over you”, and if there is one thing that shuts off empathy as quickly as disgust, it’s envy.

I can only surmise that I have been envied by at least one person my entire life. The fact that I never think in those terms (I want to be equal, remember) does not change the fact that envy happens, and it could very well be a big part of why I have not been able to relate to others.

And to make things worse, I give off mixed signals. High intelligence, articulacy, and so on are all dominance signals. But I am also a slouching sloppy slob of a person who gives out nearly every other signal of social inferiority, including not having any pride in myself.

So by, in an attempt to relate to others, not embracing my intellect and the ego boost it might justify, I am actually making myself harder to respect and thus perpetuate the isolation.

Being a nice guy makes people like you, but it doesn’t make them respect you. And I need respect. People do not want to be around people they don’t respect.

As hard as it is for me to accept… I have to become more respectable.

And a big part of that will be making some sort of peace with being an intellectual giant.

And there’s nowhere I can turn in order to get advice in how to do so. Certainly I can’t turn to my fellow intellectuals and nerds… they are the people most likely to take umbrage at my declaring myself to be highly intelligent. Even if I use absolutely no words that imply any sort of quantitatively comparable measure of intelligence, my fellow eggheads instantly and instinctively react to any talk of one’s own intelligence like you are saying you are smarter than them.

And then the head-butting and competition and testing start, which is the last thing I want. I don’t want to compete with anyone, I just want to find people who have been through what I have been through and have some sort of insight on how to be an exceptionally intelligent yet still friendly and egalitarian mental giant.

But where do you go for that? Mensa? They seem highly elitist to me. I certainly can’t go posting to some forum about it, that will just make people descend on me like villagers pursuing Frankenstein.

And it’s not like I can just buy “Being A Genius For Dummies” from Amazon.

How do friendly giants find one another? How do I embrace my gifts without losing touch with others completely and having no choice but to retreat into elitism because I have nobody left but myself?

I have known, intellectually, that I am very bright for most of my life, but I never embraced it at all. How do I embrace this without either becoming a nastier person or becoming even more isolated?

If anyone out there knows, please tell me.

And please, please, please don’t hate me or resent me for talking like this. Don’t react to this like a challenge to your own intelligence and figure it is your job to bring me down to reality by taking me down a peg (and thus neutralize the threat).

Just try to understand that I am not challenging anyone. For all I know, you are twice as smart as me. I don’t care.

I just want to know how to be who I really am without losing sight of who I want to be.

That’s all for tonight, folks. Talk to you again tomorrow.

I just finished watching the excellent documentary called Gonzo about troubled muppet Gonzo the Great infamous writer Hunter S. Thompson, and it has really got me thinking about this whole writer thing.

I have mentioned the power of the ariculator before. There is enormous power in putting into words the things that everyone is thinking but nobody can put into words. By saying what everyone is thinking, and saying it in a compact, direct, and evocative way, the articulator helps the people bridge the gap between thought and action.

All that is old new, philosophically thinking. But lately, it has been occurring to me that it is not just possible to articulate for the public, but that I am drawn to do it and that it is one of the things that can truly change the world.

It started when I was watching a biography of Doctor Martin Luther King, and people kept talking about the power of his words and how his words had changed America and been the focal point of the civil rights movement. And I just kept thinking, he did that with words. He did that with speech. He didn’t need any other skills, just deep and powerful communication skills.

And I have those.

Hunter had them too. He could, like any good articulator, turns his words into powerful and eloquent distillations of the anger and pain of an agonized world, and aim the flaming arrows of passionate truth directly at the heart of evil.

I could probably do that too.

Or take the Bible. The power of its words is such that whole nations have been held in its sway and, despite its many flaws and contradictions, continues to be a central text for billions of people.

And it’s just words. Ink on paper. But look at their power.

I have always instinctively resisted pondering my own potential power as an articulator. For a long time, I had no idea why. After all, being a powerful writer would be a good thing, right? Fame, money, talk show appearances, and so on.

But eventually, I figured out that I was terrified of having that kind of power, because for me power is always precisely proportionate to responsibility and honestly, I am scared of having that much responsibility.

It seems like a trap. In the Gonzo documentary, they even talk about how Hunter became trapped by his own image (helped greatly by Garry Trudeau) and didn’t know who the real Hunter S. Thompson was any more.

That prospect scared the bejesus out of me.

Plus, of course, there is my fear of having to choose. My talents could take me in so many different directions and it feels so hard to just choose one of them and stick with it. I just can’t image making that kind of commitment and sticking to it. I would, in a way, prefer to have that choice made for me.

But there’s nobody in my life to do that, so I am left, as always, in the mire of my own option paralysis. Who to become? What persona truly fits me? What if I choose the wrong one and then I am stuck with it with no way out?

Said out loud in black and white, it all sounds quite absurd, like I am a rich person wracked with indecision over what to buy. The most natural and obvious advice to give me would be to say “Just pick something and try it, and if it doesn’t work out, try something else!”.

Marvelous advice, but it is just plain not that simple. Like with all things, I am hemmed in by my anxieties. Just the thought of picking something makes my adrenaline jump.

And maybe that’s anxiety. But maybe it is something deeper : the fear of being real. As long as I am this semi-fictional version of myself only known by a few, I don’t really have to face reality and I can stay in my dark and cold palace and not ever have to leave.

But once I get involved with the real world, that is it. I will be stuck dealing with it for the rest of my life. Or at least that is how it feels. Part of me is still too scared of the world to leave that deadly inner comfort zone lest I get trapped outside its doors and can never return to its fatally soothing touch again.

This is the main reason why I never do any of the brilliant things I think up. Doing things invariably involves stepping outside the door of my cozy little cottage of doom and I am still too scared of the door closing behind me.

I know that it is way way way past time I got over myself, grew up, and went out to find my place in the world. Pick one way of being a writer and stick with it, or try them all and go with whatever succeeds. Either way, it is time to man up, stride confidently out of my comfort zone, and never look back.

Again, it’s not that simple. I still have so much unexpressed pain and anger. Leaving my comfort zone seems more possible now than it did a year ago, and day by day my confidence grows, but I am still not quite there.

Some day, I could be a hell of a writer. But it hurts so much to write powerful words and have nobody hear them. It is hard to devote too much of your precious internal resources to something that might never get read, or at least, not get read in a way that has much impact on your life or anyone else’s.

I guess if I knew there was enough people listening, I would say all kinds of amazing things. But that is not how it works in today’s media saturated world. You have to get people’s attention first and then convince them to listen.

And I just can’t do that yet.

Talk to you tomorrow, folks!