As you know, lately, I have been concerned about my sleep. Seemed like I could not stay asleep more than two and a quarter hours.

And that’s not enough for healthy sleep.

So last night I took a Trazodone for the first time in weeks. And it worked. Slept a good five hours or so. Presumably got caught up on some serious REM sleep.

But oy, is it hard for me to wake up now. I did not miss waking up in a dense mental fog that makes me want to go right back to sleep for like, a year.

Makes writing these words quite the struggle, too. I keep drifting off into semi-waking reverie. Then I have to drag myself back to full reality and get some words written before the tide takes me out to sea again.

Oh well. I will get my 500 done and then do the other 500 later.

Still somwhat depressed. That tense and irritable mood persist. I think it comes from an accumulation of background anxiety. Little anxiety prompts  get shoved out of consciousness by my overpowered superego and add to my overall agitation level and eventually the anxiety level gets too high to remain entirely unconscious so I end up feeling a low level adrenal response in the form of anxiety, irritation, agitation, and of course, good ol’ depression.

That would explain why this often feel like I am trapped. I am experiencing the urge to flee but my ennui and emotional inertia prevent that from happened and voila, trapped.

And gnawing my own leg off won’t free me. This time.

The secret, then, is to find a way to vent the pent up energies. I thik that begins when I start thinking of that emotional state as an opportunity instead of a crisis.

After all, it means I have energy to spare. In theory, I could use said energy in order to accomplish some task I am normally too lethargic to manage.

SO far I am not quite ‘there’ yet, but I am getting there. I’ve taken that tension and redirected it into something more wholesome and productive a number of times now and it has always made me feel a lot better.

I will ponder this wisdom and try to integrate it emotionally as well as intellectually.

The radio in my head seems quite loud today. That’s stressful. All the different thoughts that I suppress trying to talk to me at the same time. Thought processes never resolved babble away mindlessly. Suppressed emotions battle it out in a swirling maelstom as they jockey for position and do their best to get expressed.

I really wish that goddamned radio had an off switch. It would be so nice to be free of the babble for a while. At least long enough for me to get a good night’s sleep.

Because this shit happens when I am asleep too. No wonder I need goddamned pills in order to sleep a decent amount.

My life can be so hard.

I’ve slept 8 hours total and I am still sleepy. God damn it.

I suppose it’s possible that I need this sleep. And that fighting it is kind of pointless and I should just trust that my body knows what it’s doing and surrender to Mister Sandman.

But I can’t help it. I’m an ornery cuss. I don’t want to spend all my time sleeping. I want to do things. I want to be awake and alive. I don’t want to sleep my life away.

Not in a literal sense, anyhow.

Metaphorically, that is kind of what depression makes me do. It doesn’t (usually) make me literally sleep all the time but it keeps me away from things which will wake me up too much because that will wake up my anxiety and I will end up freaking out.

God I wish I could just go back to sleep right now. But I have things to do.

So in a sense, I sleepwalk through life. When one is afraid of one’s own adrenal response, you kind of have no choice. I would rather be able to throw open my arms and my heart and embrace life, but I can’t do that until it stops scaring me so much.

Anxiety’s a bitch.

Still, I am definitely improving. I have good periods now, where I am confident and cocky and ready to take on the world… from the comfort of my computer chair.

hey, it’s a pretty good start. Applying for various gigs via UpWork is a big deal for me. I can tell, because it scares the bejesus out of me if I think about it too much. It involves opening myself up to the world and forces beyond my control that will definitely pull me out of my hidey hole and force me to focus and concentrate and get things DONE.

On the other hand, money. Actual earned income. That’s something that, when I am feeling down like I am now, seems like a magical and unobtainable substance that is not for people like me.

Doesn’t make any sense, but that’s why they call me crazy. Mentally ill. I feel a lot of things which make no fucking sense whatsoever, and yet knowing this does not make those feelings go away.

Logic cannot always modify emotion. In fact, it almost never does. Usually emotion leads and logic stumbles after it, making up reasons for things afterwards.

Kind of makes me wish I had spent more time developing my non-logical, irrational, intuitive side instead of building a ridiculously overpowered and overbuilt logic system that often does me more harm than good.

Maybe if I wasn’t so lopsided, I would be able to simply let my mind heal itself without constant interference from the rational mind. I would not worry so much about what is True and what makes sense and I wouldn’t reject all the parts of life that do not immediately fit into that massive magnificent model of the world in my mind.

Well it’s not too late. I’m learning to relax the “smart” part of the brain now and then and just let go and enjoy myself.

It’s tough going, but I will get there. The journey may be hard but the rewards are rich.

And when I get there, I will finally be able to be a real little boy, and not the brittle robot that currently walks around in my skin.

After that, I will worry about growing up.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

So today I feel depressed.

It’s the usual combination of anger. frustration, boredom, irritability, and feeling like I am a mighty beast kept in too small of a cage, and I am pacing back and forth and plotting my ultimate revenge.

That got oddly specific.

I think I am just going through one of the phases of my recovery, namely the frustration phase. My energies have been aroused (and my arousal has been energized), and those energies want out. But there is still too much depression standing in the way.

Still, I have had enough of these phases and have achieved enough clarity about them to know that they often prove to be good in the long term. It is by the power of all that pent up emotion that new growth is forced to the surface like molten lava..

So I guess, to run with that metaphor as you know I must, right now I am experiencing the eruption. And being around the eruption sucks. It’s hot, there’s smoke and ash in the air. the air smells gross and weird, oh, and there’s a slow moving river of molten rock destroying everything in its path.

Protip : do not be in its path. It is bad.

But after the eruption, things go back to normal, more or less, but the island is just a little bit bigger.

And who knows, maybe some day it will be big enough for me to swim to the mainland and escape my little island prison forever.

Or at least make it fucking optional.

Applied for a job helping someone edit their book about an atheist learning the true meaning of Xmas. I have no problem with that. I have a lot of issues with modern atheism. I think people whom I otherwise admire and respect, like Neil Degrasse Tyson, have turned atheism into a hate group. And I have a lot to say on the subject.

And I have no problem promoting Xmas either. I adore Xmas and I am quite happy to spread its true meaning. Granted. my version of the true meaning skips the Jesus parts, which is why it’s Xmas to me. but the message of love, compassion, caring, and joy is one I will wholeheartedly endorse till the day I die.

It’s a longshot, though. I have no relevant experience and it could be said that I am qualified for the job only in theory. There are bound to be a bunch of people who can actually establish real bona fides applying too.

But what the hell. The job pays $500. So it’s worth a shot.

Wow, someone who understands that if you want top talent, you pay top dollar. I have gotten to businessmen thinking they are entitled to unlimited labour for crap wages (and then complaining that they only get low quality workers like that’s somehow the government’s fault) that seeing anyone who actually goddamned understands capitalism feels like a breath of fresh fucking air by comparison, god dammit.

Sorry. I was just watching Samanta Bee with J&J. It’s got me all riled up.

I love her show because she actually expresses the sheer rage at the insanity that is the world of today and makes no apologies for it. Neither Trevor Noah or Stephen Colbert can afford to do that. For one, they are meant for a broad audience and I am sure sheer cataclysmic rage does not “test well”.

But the more important factor is that Trevor and Stephen (sounds like a charming gay couple) have to pace themselves because they have to go out there four or five times a week. Sam’s show is weekly, so she can save it all up for the camera.

I also think her being a woman helps a little too. People expect women to express their emotions a lot more overtly than men. And more verbally. Plus, I think that because she fundamentally comes across as an average blonde white lady a lot like a ton of other blonde white ladies you know, her voice carries that special kind of authority that convinces otherwise sane police officers to investigate black people just because some white lady on the phone sounded really scared.

Not that she’d do that. It’s just an example.

The other person that benefits from only being on once a wek is John Oliver, and he does a better job of expressing the rage too. but being British and male, he is genetically unable to express it in any form except sarcasm and mockery.

And that works for him because the British have been refining and weaponizing sarcasm for hundreds of years and that’s art of his cultural inheritance.

Plus, you have to admit, sarcasm sounds best delivered in that accent. It really makes the target of the sarcasm look like an idiot.

I wonder if that connects with why so many villains in things are British. Isaac Asimov had a theory that our basic heroic storytelling model is inherently anti-intellectual, which is why the hero is always a wielder of brute force (a barbarian, a knight, an everyman figure who is good at punching, etc) and the bad guy is always a wielder of intellectual force (a wizard, an evil scientist, that asshole in the coffee shop in Good Will Hunting).

You might get something where the hero is a wizard (like Harry Potter) but you almost never see something where the bad guy is a simple wielder of brute force.

Why? Because it would feel too much like you’re punching down, I think. On some level, we understand that intellectual power beats brute force hands down. Society makes that clear. Being the stronger,. faster, better warrior means almost nothing in modern society. But being the smartest guy in the room might make you rich and assuredly gives you the potential to do the highest status jobs around, like doctor, lawyer, financier, and duck wrangler.

Seriously. Those guy get paid so well. Because ducks are assholes.

I feel somewhat better now, around three hours since I started writing this thing. That’s the thing about depression. It comes and goes, just like the weather.

Let’s hope for clearer skies ahead.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.