Dammit. I was trying so hard to get out here on time! But no. I just HAD to finish the episode of Scrubs I was watching because I am a compulsive completer and not in full control of myself.

So now I will have to wait for the next bus, and be late for class and miss stuff.

And I HATE missing stuff.

Especially because we are doing such neat stuff lately. Last week it was vision and hearing. This week it’s memory. Keen gear!

So I am sitting hear willing a 405 to show up. The one I missed was the 12:24, so I am hoping the next is at 12:44. But even if it’s 12:54, I will be at the school by 1 or so, so I will not miss much.

(—)

Waiting for the bus home now. That was quick.

Turns out the next bus was at 12:44, so no worries there. In fact, I should change my schedule to 12:44. Dunno why I would want to get to school at 12:30 anyhow, unless I wanted to eat lunch there.

Not too likely.

Turn out we had an exam today. We had two an a quarter hours to finish it. Took me less than half an hour. In fact, I missed being the first one done by a matter of seconds. Some smugly pleased with herself girl finished right before me. I would like to think I would have handled being first with a little more dignity and restraint, but that is by no means guaranteed.

I wouldn’t have done a half-pirouette when turning away from the prof, though. That i know  for sure.

Not even on my good leg.

I, obviously, did not study for this exam. How could I? The first inkling I had that there was an exam today was when I walked into the classroom  and felt all the tension and fear in the room.

I am so glad I don’t get that way myself.

(—)

Back home, had supper and a nap, ready to resume blogging.

I wanted to resume the moment I got home, but I decided I would be better off waiting till after supper, because once I have blogged, that’s it for today. I have no homework outstanding and I don’t have anything I need to do besides laundry that I can think of offhand. So I have to be careful about when I do the blog entry thing.

Time it right, and the rest of the night will feel like time off. Get it wrong, and I do it too late and end up not enjoying it as much because I feel like I am working against the clock, or I do it too early and the rest of the day feels like a burden instead of a vacation.

Just more senseless hours to slog through. Think I will take a nap.

Doing after supper seems about right. I eat, relax, watch stuff on Netflix, drink my Diet Coke, then come into blogging with a head of enthusiasm/caffeine.

They’re sort of the same thing.

At least, when I can be at one with the caffeine, it’s the same thing. Most of my life, caffeine and I had a troubled and distant relationship. I avoided colas for the most part and never got into coffee or tea. Hell, that would probably still be my preference if I hadn’t developed Type II diabetes and had to switch to drinking Diet Coke when I am out.

See, before that, I avoided caff because it did bad things to me. It made me tense and nervous and gave me a headache. Sometimes it would give me a full blown panic attack.

More on that later.

But once the diabetic Diet Coke thing happened, I sort of had to deal with it, and eventually I realized that the problem was that I had this passive numb paralyzed personality that was, in effect, too heavy for the caffeine to lift. I inherently resisted anything that prompted me toward action, and well, all that energy has to go somewhere. So it went into making me miserable.

It’s like a microcosm of depression itself.

Nowadays, I can ride the black tide of caffeine at least some of the time. It’s really a matter of opening the door to it in my mind. And putting the energy to use ASAP, so it doesn’t have a chance to turn into something ugly.

Honestly, I think that’s a big part of dealing with depression in the first place. They say depression is anger turned inward, and they are totally right. I have written before about how depression makes you both the torture victim and the tortured, the abused and the abuser. You take it out on yourself because that’s easier and safer than actually confronting your problems.

And ever so convenient.

But I think that to a lesser extent, everything gets turned inwards. Your energy, your inspiration, your emotions, everything is trapped within you, and that makes the pressure rise within you. If that happens for long enough, you end up so full of unexpressed everything that you feel like a overfilled water balloon. And that makes you feel like you have to move slowly and carefully or you will burst.

Oh, one last thing. On the subject of panic attacks. This cracked article made me realize the difference between panic attacks and depression with panic expression in a big way.

I mean holy SHIT. Makes me glad for the problems I do not have, let me tell ya that. I have had some pretty serious panic attacks, but none so bad they made me scream for help and end up in Emergency. Also, they have rarely come out of the blue. They usually had a very clear stimulus, namely social pressure. And there was a medicine, Paxil, that has worked extremely well with relatively minor side effects.

That article, then, makes me thank my lucky stars that I am as relaxed and functional as I am.

We all can use a little perspective on our own troubles now and then.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I don’t know what to call that. Vlogging is already take. Videologging?

First off… Music from Mars!

Not frigging bad, me! Slow, thoughtful, funky but also enjoyably creepy. Apart from the 2001 quotes (HAL lives!) it could easily be the intro song of some Art Bell type show. Like at the end, you would hear “Good evening, and welcome to Fringe Element, a podcast that explores the outer limits of human knowledge… ”

I picture that being said in a quiet, gentle, sexy male voice of some earnest liberal arts major at a small but groovy college somewhere in Northern Ontario.

I have listened to SO MUCH CBC.

Next, we have the last entry in my epic four flavour journey through the last round of interesting Lay’s flavours.

Isn’t that exciting, kids?

Did the therapy thing today. No major motion there. I told him about my latest doofus move. On the way there, I thought it would be really hard to tell him about it because it would mean that I had neglected the documents we both (him more than me) worked hard on for a whole session, namely that disability shite, for like, two months.

Then I got there and it wasn’t even a thing. I told him, it was way easier than I thought it would be, and I suffered absolutely zero consequences from the act. Like I said, it wasn’t even a thing.

That made me realize that the whole mode of thinking that led me to be worried is flawed and self-destructive.

More after a video.

God that show was a waste of time.

The thought process that led to me being all worried that I was going to offend him somehow with my lack of submitting that disability form is bogus. Its error is the classic mistake of vastly overestimating how much other people’s lives revolve around you and what you do. Maybe somewhere within Costin’s mind, he was a little miffed at me. But it’s a trivial matter. And he’s a professional, and primarily concerned with my mental health and wellbeing, not the minutiae of my life. I was worried over absoluting nothing and for no good reason.

I feel like my task now is to follow this malfunctioning cognitive function to its roots, and cut it out there. Strike at the heart of the beast, and so on. Add this error to my list of Cognitive Errors To Look Out for.

My overactive superego loves that kind of thing.

And now, a video from a really dark part of my life.

Namely, when I was watching that goddamned Residue show. This was months ago, and yet the wounds seem very fresh. Hours of my life wasted on something that went nowhere, did nothing, and gave nothing back to the viewer. Grr!

Perhaps one day, I will look back upon that blighted era and laugh. Laugh at how silly it all seems now, and wonder that I could ever take something as trivial as a science fiction (ish) TV show so seriously.

But that time has not yet come.

The thing is, metacognitive solutions are inherently cognitive and thus superego-driven. I am too cerebral and uncomfortable with things I don’t understand and can’t predict for an entirely id-based solution, even though I know that the road to recovery for me depends on my connecting with and reviving my sadly neglected id.

I really need some fancy transporter mechanics to put my two Kirks back together.

So I have to take the slower and more cautious cognitive approach to fixing my brain, where each step makes sense to me and I feel like I am in control.

It’s kind of sad, really,

And now, more creepy music.

Wow, that accelerated quickly, didn’t it? Can’t say it’s one of my best, but it’s decent. It’s musically interesting, which is the next best thing to being musically successful. If not else, it’s unpredictable.

And my stuff usually isn’t. At least, not to me. For obvious reasons.

I wish merging with my id was as simple as hooking up a VCR. Just run some RCA cabling between the id and the ego/superego complex, and turn it on. Bingo! Fully integrated personality.

But of course, that would involve a lot of unpredictable things that don’t make sense happening in my mind, and I can’t handle that. At least, not yet. I have suppressed myself so hard for so long that if someone were to say “Just do what you feel like doing!”, I honestly would have no idea what that was.

Something involving good food and a good massage, I guess. But it’s only a guess.

I mean, who the fuck am I? What do I want? What do I crave? What inspires me? What takes me in the direction of happiness? What draws me to it?

What the hell is going on around here, anyway?

Next clip : a longish talker.

I’d like to add that the people shushing the little boy in my version don’t know why they are doing it. They would be unable to articulate what exactly the little boy did wrong. They would only know that they were angry and embarrassed (especially his parents) and felt a very deep disturbance in the waters of their life, and it was the little boy’s fault.

They don’t have to know how you are shaking the tree they are all in. They don’t have to know why, either. They just have to feel the shaking and do whatever it takes to make it stop.

It is really that simple. These people are acting on instinct and emotion. Even if your parents are highly intelligent and educated, like mine are, they are still going to act to maintain social stability, no matter how pure the little boy’s intentions were when he pointing at the Emperor’s danglies and laughed.

I think that’s something all us nerdy types go through growing up. You’ve embarrassed your parent and they are mad at you and you don’t understand why.

The sad thing is…. some people never make it out of that stage.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.