Freshly awoken and feeling like death warmed over in a microwave.

And speaking of microwaves, ours is dying. It took me a while to figure this out. For a long time, I had this growing feeling in the back of my mind that I was somehow getting less popped corn per bag of my beloved microwave popcorn, but it didn’t cross the threshold into conscious thought until recently when I finished the popcorn from a bag and saw that there was this huge pile of unpopped kernels left.

And suddenly I realized that I had been being denied popcorn for a really long time. And by God, I was going to find out why!

Well maybe not. The reason why was obvious. But still. I was a lil pissed off.

This has led to a period where every time I pop a bag, I increase the time. For ages, putting the bag in the microwave for 4 minutes and 20 seconds was ideal. Popped almost all of the kernels. But right now, I am up to 6 minutes and there are still a lot of unpopped kernels. Who knows where this will end?

Feeling somewhat lazy. That;s probably because I am naked. Like I have said in this space before, I learned from my experience living with nudists that I need to get dressed in order to start my day. It’s the little ritual that tells my body and my mind that it is time to wake up, get focused, and get going.

Otherwise, I end up staying in the vague grey mode that I am in when I wake up all day. I never truly wake up. And because it’s such a undefined and structureless mood, over time it degrades into depression.

Kind of how a cloud of smoke disperses over time.

It’s hard for me to relate to now, but there was a time in my life where I would spend most of most days naked. My roomates will remember this time, for obvious reasons. I stayed in that vague grey state of not really being awake almost all the time because it was my defense against my anxiety.

It worked, kind of, because in the short term, it can be a very pleasant state. In it, I feel relaxed and cozy and safe. It’s like I never quite commit to being awake and thus can retreat into sleep whenever I like.

So it took me a while to realize that in the longer term, that led to feeling depressed. The mind and body inherently want to activate and get going. It’s part of the natural waking sequence. When I denied myself that, the pressure to do so built up in my mind, and without release, that translated into mental pain.

I think a lot of depression works like that.

It’s hard for me to relate to now, but in the bad old days before Trazadone, I would spend all day staying up for two hours then sleeping two hours, over and over again, all day long, ad infinitum.

At the beginning of my Skyrim addiction, I fell into that pattern again for a couple of days. I wasn’t taking any of my meds (unbelievable) and so I didn’t get my Trazadone sleep. And at first that didn’t matter, or at least, didn’t matter enough to overcome the power of my freshly acquired obsession.

But as time passed, I could feel that something vital was draining from my mind. It’s easy for me to see what was going on. When we don’t get enough REM sleep, the process of moving memories from our short term memory into long term storage doesn’t have enough time to complete, and so our short term memory fills up and starts displacing our working memory.

So that’s what was “draining away”: space in my working memory. And my mind’s subconscious processes use up a lot of my working memory even when I am fully awake, so any further strain on it can be catastrophic.

It’s like my mind is a web browser with a zillion tabs open, and my conscious mind is only one of them. The rest run in the background and slow everything down.

And ot think, I lived that way for my entire adult life until a few years ago when I finally got someone (namely my therapist) to prescribe me some sleeping pills.

I had asked for them from every GP I had before that, but they wouldn’t give them to me. Admittedly, I didn’t ask for them very assertively and so it was easy to brush me off and give me advice on proper sleep practices instead.

Maybe they thought I was looking for street drugs. I dunno.

Bu finally, I managed to spit it out to my therapist and he agreed that it was a big problem and it needed to be tackled.

First he started me off on zopiclone, but that didn’t have much effect. Then he switched me to another whose name escapes me at the moment, and that worked a little. Then he added the Trazadone and now I could finally stay asleep for a whopping five and a half hours when the drugs were working right.

Eventually I dropped that other drug because I accidentally took only the Trazadone one night and ended upgetting just as much good sleep but found it way easier ti wake up and stay awake the next day.

And it took me a while to learn to work WITH the Trazadone because, despite its reputation as strong stuff, I can shrug off its effects easily. So I have ot make sure that I do not do anything mentally stimulating after taking it or my mind will simply disregard its effects in order to keepo doing what I am doing.

So it’s still not the sleeping pill of my dreams, which would be one that was so strong that it knocks me out without asking for my mind’s permission. Something strong enough to overpower all the stuff going on in my mind and force me to slee.

That way, I could choose to sleep by taking the pill(s) and past that point, there would be nothing my babbling brain could do about it.

Instead, I have to sort of baby the process along, knowing that one wrong move and the drug’s effects will evaporate and I will be wide awake again.

So mostly, Trazadone helps me stay asleep.

But what I want is something that helps me GET to sleep.

And so far, nothing can do THAT.

I will talk to your nice people again tomorrow.

I am slowly making progress toward being able to handle the truth of my extraordinary gifts. Thinking about it doesn’t scare me as much any more.

So tonight, I am going to venture into that territory and see what treasures I can find in the arctic squall I call my soul.

In the unlikely event that someone who already thinks I am a smug, self-satisfied asshole, this post will only make you more unhappy with me, so feel free to leave.

Also, fuck off.

Oh, and be warned, my patient readers. that this is still a scary subject for me so I might go rambling off into some intellectual discussion and leave the emotional stuff behind.

I will be monitoring myself for just such a digression, but I can’t promise success, because my issues are very sneaky, and might show up in the form of an anecdote, a theory of mine, or an overlong introduction to the blog entry.

Nah, that would never happen.

Let’s start from this : I avoifd thinking and talking about this subject because it frightens me. I am scared of my own powers. When I think about them,. I feel the pressure of the elitism trying to form in my mind and it scares me and I reject it.

Plus,. like I have said before, the feeling of power feels like it is trying to tear me away from the rest of humanity and I have a very tenuous connection to my fellow humans as is and the thought of losing that scares the hell out of me.

I’ve had nightmares many times in my life where I become very light like a balloon and have to cling very hard to some object in order to avoid floating away from everything I know and love and getting swallowed up by the sky, never to return.

That’s exactly what I am afraid of when I contemplate my “powers”.

And they really do feel like magic powers sometimes. That’s why I keep coming back to imagining myself to be a wizard. And like a classic D&D wizard, I have amazing abilities but I am otherwise rather useless.

Perhaps I need to level up.

So what are my powers? Let’s start a list.

1. Creativity.  I am a fountain of ideas. My mind produces them as easily as my lungs produce CO2. Everything I experience goes into the bubbling cauldron of my creativity, and out of that primordial goo, ideas crystallize. This gives me the usual kind of creative skill, in my case writing, but it also makes me w hiz at creative problem solving when combined with my…/
2. Incision. Over the years, I have honed my mind to the point where I cut right to the heart of things without even trying. My mind automatically reduces things to their essence and throws away the extraneous bullshit. What’s left gets integrated into my existing body of knowledge and experience. This gives me great…
3. Insight. I see a lot more than other people with my inner sight. I can see how things really work and what ideas work  (or don’t). I am especially good at understanding what makes people tick. To me, most people’s minds are an open book, and that’s a heck of a power, especially when combined with my,….
4. Sensitivity. .  I’m higly empathic. I pick up other people’s emotions like a radio picks up radio stations. It gives me a deep, emotional understanding of the inner worlds of other people and makes me very…
5. Understanding. You can’t see the world as I do and remain judgmental because I can see how fragile and human we all are. Even the worst villains are acting out of an inner pain that is so great that they have to externalize it. That doesn’t mean I suspend all judgment. It just means I see more shades of grey than others. Perhaps that’s why I have such a great…
6. Personality.  I am a sweet, gentle, funny guy who sincerely loving helping people and wants to make everyone around him happy. I have a strong presence and force of personality. I have charisma and a talent for being likeable. I am a gentle giant, a big ol’ teddy bear, and people respond well to that. Of course, all of this is powered by my mightly..
7. Intellgence.  I have an IQ of 161. School was almost always easy for me. I aced all the academic subjects without even trying. My mind moves so fast that sometimes it takes my breath away. What others struggle with, I learn instantly and retain forever. By all the usual standards, I am a genius.

I think that’s enough for now. I am probably forgetting a whole lot of things but this journey into sensitive areas of my mind is already making me feel sort of bruised and nauseous, so I am going to stop there.

Now if you didn’t know me, that list would seem incredible and there would be no doubt in your mind that, if it was all true, I would have everything I needed to have an amazing life and make a lot of money.

But here I sit, 44 years old,. on the dole, with very little money and a life that bears no relation to the amount of potential I have described.

And that’s the final reason I find this subject so hard to think about or deal with. It’s not just that I am afraid of eilitsim taking hold and turning me into the sort of person I hate, and it’s not just the feeling that I have to cling hard to my connection to humanity lest I disappear into the stratosphere.

Nor is it just a fear of the responsibility implied by such power, or the my deep fear of hurting people with my mighty mental muscles.

It’s also that the whole subject depresses the hell out of me because, if I think about all my gifts, it makes me feel like even more of a loser for having the life I have.

And that’s something that is really hard to take.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.