I really need to learn to deal with pressure, especially the kind I put on myself.

It’s all a scam, really. More bullshit from my depression. Something to keep me in its grips. The pressure comes and frightens and flattens me and what do you know, I end up not doing things that might help me escape this wretched existance of mine.

The video game addiction adds to the annihilation too. It’s always so tempting to play video games and escape the pressure and the shocks and horrors of reality by doing something I know will keep me content for hours at a time.

I’d be a lot better off if I kicked that habit. But I don’t feel strong enough to face all those endless empty hours without games.

Being disabled really sucks.

I’d much rather be capable and healthy and strong so that I could be out there in the world living life and growing as a person. Be a real person, with a career and a family and a husband and land.

To me, that seems like paradise, even though to the vast majority of humanity, that’s normal everyday life.

Count your blessings, folks. No matter how much you think your life sucks, there is someone out there for whom it would be Heaven.

And that’s true even of someone like me. I might be near the bottom of the ladder in modern society but there’s a billion people in the world living in extreme poverty and they would love to live indoors in a heated apartment with plenty of food and a computer and all the rest.

And as generous and self-sacrificing as I tend to be, I sure as fuck wouldn’t want to swap with them.

I can think of a few solutions to my problems with pressure :

1. Learn to do things anyway. Also known as the “true grit” approach. The pressure stops being a problem if it no longer keeps me from doing things. This is definitely my long term goal.
2. Stop the pressure before it is applied. AKA the “what problem?” approach. This approach has the appeal of efficiency – what could be more efficient than preventing the problem from even becoming a problem? But when you get down into the nitty gritty of it all, trying to “catch” myself before the pressure attaches to a task is like trying to catch a bullet. It all happens too fast. So while I will keep trying to do it, I doubt it will happen any time soon.
3. Respond to pressure with ego. Known to its friends as the “Mister Awesome” approach. Instead of enduring or preventing the pressure, this approach responds by applying a countervaling force, namely, egotism. I am, after all, pretty freaking amazing, and if I can just remind myself of that when I am feeling powerless and small, I might just be able to power my way out of the quagmire. This could lead to my becoming an egotistical asshole, but if it leads me to being a successful egotistical asshole, I will consider that a price worth paying.

That last one is the most…. bizarre. But it seems to work for a lot of people. And I rather like the idea of dealing with pressure by sayng “Pressure? Fuck pressure. I don’t give a shit about pressure. Because I am FREAKING AMAZING. “

It’s worth trying.

More on this (or, more likely, something totally different) later.

---

I keep alternating between feeling sick and feeling fine and it’s driving me up and down a long series of heavily textured walls.

I know I have an infection. Warning, the following will be kinda gross.

Anyhow. I have this skin lesion that sponteneouly appeared. It is, as far as I know, my third. I have one on my right arm which has been slowly healing. I have another on the left side of my left leg, near the kneee.

And I have Number Three, which is right around the corner from Number Two, just under the knee.

And that’s the one that I only realized yesterday is definitely inflected.

It has all the signs. Hot to the touch? Check. Painful to touch? Check. Inflamed? Oh yeah. Palpation shows fluid inside? Um yeah, definitely.

So clearly I need to get my ass to the doctor and get some antibiotics for this shit. Actually, this morning, I felt so bad I was going to ask Joe to drop me off at the ER.

But then I got some sleep and felt better, so no.

Still, this really highlights how I do not take my health seriously enough. Spontaneous skin lesions are, like, bad. They are the sort of thing that should alarm me into immediately going to see my GP.

But here’s the thing. I did go to my GP with Number One. He hurriedly wrote me a prescription for antibiotics and showed me the door.

Antibiotics didn’t do jack shit. Came back when they ran out. He hurriedly wrote me the exact same prescription after declaring that it just hadn’t had a long time to work.

And this always happens to me. Sooner or later, doctors start using me to catch up to their schedule. They figure out that I am both tragically passive and someone who does not absorb new information rapidly when he’s feeling fragile, and then steamroller right over me, getting me in and out as fast as possible and barely listening to a word I say.

And even if I go in there determined not to let that happen this time, everything happens so fast that before I know it, the whole thing is over.

And let me tell you, not being taken seriously by your doctor is really depressing, especially when you are someone with serious health issues and said doctor is supposed to be your lifeline to not dying and such.

And there’s no easy solution. To fix it, I would have to go into that appointment with guns blazing and tell him he’s gonna slow down and he’s going to listen to what I have to say and he’s actually going to give my complains some serious thought instead of leaping to whatever conclusion will get me out the door fastest.

That’s not the kind of thing I want to do. But it might be what I have to do. I could get a new GP – there’s plenty in this neighborhood – but I would just end up in the same place again, sooner or later.

So if I want to solve the problem, I have to super strongly advocate for myself even though an inability to do that effectives is one of the symptoms of one of the very illnesses he’s supposedly treating me for.

I just can’t catch a fucking break.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I’m feeling very low on spoons right now.

The usual bad sleep stuff is going on. Plus I feel really dragged out and tired.

Moreso than usual, that is.

I suppose it’s possible that I am coming down with something. That cold I thought I was getting last week never did go entirely away. I can still feel a vague scratchjiness in my throat and lungs.

Then again, maybe it’s just bad sleep klicking my ass. In this case, I think I have been catching up on all the REM sleep I tend to miss by only ever sleeping in two hour naps, and I ain’t done yet.

I feel stupid, and small, and weak. When I try to contemplate the immediate future, it makes me feel like I am facing a huge raging screaming monster I can’t possibly defeat.

And that’s wrong. There’s nothing in my immediate future that is big and scary and that I cannot handle. It’s all pretty doable stuff, at least on the surface.

That big bad monster, then, is an illusion, and I am pretty sure I know what part of my mind it’s coming from.

My goddamned video game addiction.

It wants me all to itself. It hates the idea of me doing other things.Productive things. Things that might lead me further away from its clutches. It wants me to keep being someone who spends almost all their free waking hours playing games.

So it demonizes everything else. And when I do escape it for a while, it is waiting there to hit me with every trick in the book in order to get me to quit.

And that’s not who I want to be. That’s not who I really am.

I remember being quite happy to write skits and do other productive things for hours on end. Heck, it feels like yesterday that I was full of determination to conquer the world of freelance writing and become a highly paid and sought after freelancer.

But then something died in me.

And then came Skyrim, that opportunistic infection.

The urge to re-install Skyrim has been strong lately. Part of me – the sick, self-destructive part – wants to flee from reality that hard again.

I will probably give in eventually. Well, maybe. And then the trick will be summoning up the self-control to not let it take over my life again.

If only I had the internal integrity to make playing video games the reward for having gotten productive things done. That could turn this whole thing into a plus.

But that’s like one of those glib ideas from self-help books that sounds perfectly reasonable and wonderful but doesn’t really help at all.

Surem solvinbg my problems would be easy if I were a totally different kind of person.

Why didn’t I think of that before? I’ll just rewrite my personality!

Well, okay, maybe that’s a mite hyperbolic. It’s how I feel right now but it’s not real. It’s just a way to express some of that bitterness and anger stewing inside me.

And on that note, I will go back to bed.

---

Still feeling pretty crappy. Hasn’t been much improvement, really.

I know that, in part, this is due to the reduction in my Paxil. I went from 50 mg to 45 mg a day recently and that means I am feeling things more strongly now.

I knew this would happen and I am down with it. Better to feel something than nothing. Better to have a pianful broken leg than a painless paralyzed one. Better to experience life as it really is so I can learn to goddamned cope with it.

I have been far too good at hiding for my own good. It’s time to stop. All the evasion has gotten me is this wildly unfulfilling life of mine where I am a 46 year old user ywho has never supported himself or even had a boyfriend and where I waste my life playing video games and rotting away in my box of filth.

And I feel so wear most of the time. Like there is nothing solid within me and I am left doggy paddling around the sulphurous wetlands of my fractured psyche.

Without solid ground to stand on, I can’t push against my problems. I can’t resist. The forces within me, the bad ones, can push me around all they want because I am as helpless as a dinghy in a tsunami.

I feel like I am losing the fight against my issues. I know I will never stop fighting – that’s unthinkable – but lately I have felt like I am not getting anywhere and that I might actually be losing ground in the long run.

On a good day, I can still focus some of my untapped rage towards the depression and picture myself as a ruthless kamikaze commando fighting a vast clandestine army with nothing but his wit, grit, and not giving a shit.

On bad days, the very thought of exerting that much effort makes me cringe.

I know that part of my problem is my diet. I don’t get nearly enough protein and I am pretty sure my electrolytes are fucked up by default at this point.

I get most of my vitamins and minerals okay because I eat a piece of fruit with all meals that I eat at home.

But I have very little dairy in my diet, and what dairy I do have tends to be accidental – I get some one trip to McD’s because I have the Big Mac and not the next time because I opted for McNuggets instead.

And I eat too many goddamned carbs. They are the worst things for my diabetes besides sugar and they are killing me and yet I stuff my face with them anyhow.

And the thing is, I know my body wants healthier food. I remember what it was like when I was in the hospital with pneumonia and my appetite was gone, but in its place was a much deeper and more demanding cry for NUTRIENTS.

That’s why I made myself eat everything on my tray I could remotely stand. I wasn’t eating for pleasure. I was eating to fuel my body.

That’s the only reason I can think of why I ate that godawful oatmeal.

I’d be better off living that way now. But that would be a fairly radical live change. I would probably have to start buying my own groceries instead of participating in the group Costco groceries run.

And like I said before, I would eat only things that made me feel good.

Who knows, my body might know what it’s talking about.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.,

Going to do a deep dive into tricky territory tonight.

For reasons I don’t want to go into, there are currently things I should be doing.

Because I should be doing them, I have been avoiding them. I was “supposed” to do them this afternoon but ended up alternating between sleep and video games just like I normally do instead.

I told myself I was too sleepy and incoherent to do the things, and that’s true up to a point, but past that point it is total bullshit.

I could have gotten up, walked around a bit, got some hydration, and done all kinds of other things to wake myself up.

Or barring that, I could have just thrown myself into my tasks in the hope that doing them would wake me up enough to get them done.

But I didn’t do that. I did what I normally do because that was what was easier : repeating routine like a robot in a rut.

And the day ain’t over. I still can do the things. All I have to do is override that insane voice in me that will insist it is “too late now” (why?) and that I will “totally do it tomorrow afternoon”, even though I know that is bullshit because tomorrow afternoon will be pretty much exactly the same as today.

Later is not actually better. In fact, it is usually worse. Its only virtue is not being now, and unless you are willing to admit to yourself that you are never going to do the thing, you have to agree that doing it now is better because then it will be done and you can stop worrying about it, and won’t that feel good?

It’s not like you will feel any more like doing it later. You will, in fact, feel exactly the same about it because nothing has changed.

The task hasn’t changed. You haven’t changed. So unless you can imagine a scenario in which you totally feel like doing the thing, putting it off until later is just another way of lying your way into being a total loser.

And that’s my worry about myself. I know that to overcome my loser-ness, I need to stop pretending like I can have a happy life without effort, courage, or pain. I need to accept the basic truth that life is suffering and you can’t get anywhere in life without facing the facts and doing something about them.

I have bullshitted myself into my current unhappy life and I am damned sick of it. At some point down the line, I learned to make excuses instead of changes, and doing that is more or less the definition of loserdom.

And I am not a loser. I am a strong, capable, competent man who deserves a lot better out of life than what he has gotten so far, and who is perfectly capable of straightening himself out and going after what he wants.

I’ve just got to rid myself of some bad habits first.

It’s all about your response to challenge. Winners respond to life challenges by increasing their commitment to overcoming them – the challenge stimulates them into overcoming it and they get ahead in life.

Losers respond to challenge by withdrawing their commitment to the situation and attacking the problem with excuses and evasions instead.

If your first response to life challenges is to complain about how unfair it all is, congratulations, you are a loser.

If you can think of a dozen reasons not to do things and no reasons to do them, guess what, you are a loser.

And if your first response to someone trying to help you do the things you keep saying you want to do is to, in a panic, shoot down all their offers of assistance with excuses as to how it would never work or why you can’t do it, A LOSER IS YOU.

Sorry if tht seems harsh to you. But ask yourself this : why do these ideas upset you so much? If you think them wrong, then what’s there to be upset about?

But if you think I might be right – ask yourself how much you are willing to sacrifice in order to crawl back into that hole you’ve been hiding in and go back to pretending it’s the fundamental unfairness of the world to blame.

Then ask how much you have already sacrificed to that goal.

Does it still seem like it’s worth it?

Back to first-person me. All that macho talk does a lot to make me feel better about myself – sometimes the only way to get the stern talking-to you need is to give it to yourself in the second person.

But what am I going to do about it?

The million dollar ticket for me is to separate my motivation from my tendency to put pressure on myself.

Right now, there’s a strong self-destructive pathway that, the moment my back is turned, transforms my excitement about doing something directly into a feeling of scary pressure that makes me highly avoidant of the thing I was just happy to be doing. 

It’s a sickening kind of emotional alchemy and quite frankly, I have had it with it.

The only solution I can think of is to steer directly into the heart of the pressure. That will shatter its hold on me by proving that I don’t have to do what my fears tell me.

They don’t know what the fuck they are talking about anyway.

So here’s the deal : when I am done here, I will lie down like I always do after blogging. It gives my brain a chance to recharge after the discharge that is writing.

And then I am going to get up and do my things. That’s a promise.

And the old me can recoil in horror and try to flee the intensity of the moment and pull all its old tricks, and it won’t make a bit of difference.

Because that’s not the real me. The real me is strong, and capable, and competent, and has everything he needs in order to get what he wants out of the world.

Because not only is he strong, capable, and competent.

He’s also fucking amazing.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow,.

I might seem OK on the outside.

But on the inside….

So let’s examine the relevant bullshit.

Why do I have trouble admitting that things are not currently ^[1]okay :

Vulnerability, primarily. All of us North American men have a certain amount of trouble revealing vulnerability, but for me it goes deeper than that.

I don’t worry about loss of face or anything like that. Not consciously, anyhow. As a gay man, my social status amongst fellow males is somewhat of a wildcard.

No, my main fear is that if I reveal weakness to others, they just won’t care. And I will be made to feel bad for even bothering them with my problems.

Plus there’s that time-worn problem I have where I like to pretend I am someone far healthier and stronger than I really am. And if I can convince others of that, it makes believing it myself so much easier.

I really need to stop doing that, I suppose. But I can’t even imagine what life would be like if I always acted exactly how I feel.

I’d be a heck of a lot less fun to be around, that’s for sure.

Now, about my current feeling of argh :

I have that weird free-floating anxiety going on. I think there is some kind of energy trying to rise and find expression in me, only to get shut down by my usual secret police’s suppression tactics.

Those are getting weaker by the minute, though. So who knows, some day soon I might actually do something out of spontaneous inspiration.

I’m planning on it! *canned laughter*

What happens when the energy gets cut off like that is that it turns into anxiety. Free floatuing anxiety comes from energy with nowhere else to go revving up my adrenal state to make me nervous for no reason.

Then that nervousness waits around for something to attach to and turn into an anxiety attack, which is ALSO suppressed by the inner police.

Hmmm. Perhaps the whole reason those inner police evolved was to shut down my anxiety attacks but they do it by suppressing any kind of surge of emotion in me, including things like a surge of inspiration to act, and so they are a cure that is at least as bad as the disease.

Maybe I would be better off in the long run if I just let myself freak out now and then.

Might not be pleasant, but at least it would be over for a while.

Man the words are coming slow today. Kinda feels like this :

Hard to tell if it’s that my writing has slowed down or because my brain has sped up.

You laugh, but that’s a serious concern for me. I have a high performance brain and sometimes the whole CPU accelerates at the same time and it makes time seem like it is slowing down.

Kind of like those cameras that take a zillion frames per second.

I don’t usually do this on Sundays, but I think I will take a break now.

Turns out that I can do spontaneous things if they are lazy!

---

Well that nap sure as fuck didn’t help.

You would think I’d learn. Afternoon naps in the summer always leave me all fucked up. now I am all groggy and dizzy and all the rest and it’s just two hours until FRED.

I try not to say it but I am saying it : I hate my fucking life.

Or at least, I hate it right now, in this moment.

Time for my second Aleve of the day in order to deal with the army of gnome in steel clogs line dancing in my skull right now.

For those of you who have trouble keeping up. that means I have a throbbing headache. Don’t worry I haven’t started hallicinating yet.

Seems tempting sometimes. It would surely keep me entertained. Honestly, if there was a way to go insane on a temporary., recreation basis, I would go for.

Guess that’s what street drugs are for.

I was pondering that just the other night, and how if I was offered anything stronger that pot, I would stil Just Say No. Not because of some bullshit Nancy Reagan said, or all those well intentioned lies I was fed as a kid in the 80’s.

No, I would say no because I do not feel safe taking those kind of chances with my sanity. That’s my anti-drug. I am not going to gamble with my very fragile and unstable mental state for the chances at a temporary high.

No shade on others. Feel free to alter your blood chemistry all you want. It’s your body and you have the right to do what you want to with it as long as you are not hurting anyone else in the process.

I would legalize, tax, and regulate everything like Portugal did if I could. And the tax money would go to pay for rehab for whoever needs it.

Makes sense, doesn’t it?

When I am done blogging (named after famed Scottish landmark Dun Bloggin), what I will want to do is, ironically, get more sleep. I feel so wiped out right now.

But I can’t do that because I don’t currently have an alarm clock and that means I can’t be sure I will wake up at 6:30 pm so I can get in the shower to be read to leave for FRED at 6:45 pm or so.

And that suuuuucks, I hate having to stay awake when I am this tired. It’s so stressful because I am too tired to think straight and I need a fairly high level of mental clarity in order to function.

Perhaps I will risk a semi-nap, where I stop resisting sleep but put myself in an uncomfortable position so I can’t REALLY fall asleep.

Yeah. That sounds good. Think I will go do that now.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Well you heard him, gentlemen. If he doesn’t find him a honey to help him spend his money, he’s going to have to blow this town.

So please line up in an orderly fashion for your chance at a genuine Cat Stevens blowjob. You will be served in order of cock size/tastiness.

Hey there folks. Here we are, you and me, on yet another Saurday night. I have ordered my food (Pizza Hut, this time) and now I am typing away to you nice folk.

Because I love you. Never forget that.

If you love me, read me.

When putting together my order on the Pizza Hut (or as we called it when I was a kid, Pizza Slut), I was very tempted to order one of their devastatingly delicious desserts, like the Hershey Chipits Cookie or the Hershey Chipits Brownie or the Cinnaparts.

So I had to remind myself that no matter how good those things look and how tantalizingly easy it would be to get them, eating them would immediately make me feel very bad and regret my poor life choice.

No food is tempting when you know it will immediately make you ill.

But it was close. Definitely a case where reason had to step in and take a firm stance against the foolish and self-destructive thing emotion wanted me to do.

Not sure why I was tempted, though. Other times, it has been easy to resist for the exact reasons I listed above. But tonight…. I almost slipped.

Perhaps my blood sugar is low. That’s been the culprit before. My blood sugar runs low and my body starts craving that which it knows will solve the problem the fastest.

Bodies are so impatient.

Or it could be that my mind wants pleasure. I have been under a bit of stress lately over things I don’t feel like going into at the moment, so it is positive that said stress created the sort of pleasure deficit that leads people to do all the things they do in order to activate the reward center of their brain.

Like eating junk food, or gambling, or sex.

Speaking of sex (what a segue), my libido has been running pretty hot lately.

Guess it’s that time of the month. You know…. bills.

And it’s occurred to me that I do not handle myself often enough very maturely when it comes to my sexuality.

For the most part, I ignore it. That’s not entirely by choice. I would rather have the active libido I had in my twenties, where I had so much fun cybersexing with other fuzzy dudes on good old FurryMUCK.

Those were the days.

And you knew who you were then…. girls were boys and boys were men.

I’m so old!

Anyhoo, my libido (and worse, my ability to fulfill it) is suppressed by my antidepressants, so it doesn’t really matter how often I want to masturbate to release, it’s just not an option.

Instead, I can get off maybe two to three times a month. No lie.

And that’s pretty sad, isn’t it?

I hold out hope that maybe I could up my penis output average if I found a superior source of stimulation, like, for instance, a partner.

That comes with it own massive boatload of issues though. Every time I have ever had sex with another dude, it has been in the midst of a panic attack. No matter how horny I am or how much I want to get it on with my partner, part of me freaks the fuck out when actual gay sex is occurring and there’s nothing I can do about it.

Well, apart from the therapy I am already doing about it.

I assume it’s due to my being raped by a stranger at the age of 4. The same rape that broke me in a deep and terrible way that I don’t think will ever heal.

Heck, that rape might be the whole reason I am gay. Wouldn’t that be ironic? Don’t you think? A little too ironic?

Yeah I really do think.

I have never quite entirely bought the idea of there being a biological origin to homosexuality. To me, it’s too complex a phenomenon to reduce to that level of simplicity. I think most nature and nurture must be involved.

Obviously, for legal and political reasons, we in the GLBT community have had to take the biological destiny stance because that’s the strongest position to argue from.

Nobody in the modern world can sustain an argument against a group if belonging to that group is genetically predetermined.

That’s too much like racism or sexism.

But in my opinion, it can’t be all nature or all nurture. My best guess is that it falls in line with modern genetic medicine in that there may be a genetic predisposition towards it in some people’s genome, but whether that predisposition manifests itself as the phenomena in question depends on life experiences.

Sort of like how some people have a genetic predisposition towards heart disease, or alcoholism, or algebra., but not all of those people develop the symptoms.

Only way more fun.

My position has always been that whether it’s a choice or predetermined doesn’t matter because the issue is none of your damned business.

Whether I sleep with dudes or chicks or a candy-striped Fleshlight is both morally and legally private and has absolutely no legal or moral importance.

So whether it’s genetic (like blue eyes) or a choice (like religion) is meaningless. Either way, keep your prying eyes out of my private life unless you want me judging you on what you do in private with other consenting adults.

Obviously, this is not how most people see it. But I am used to that. My point of view on most things is quite unusual. Social isolation sucks in most ways, but the air is very clear up here on my philosopher’s mountaintop perch, and I can see everything.

For some of us, blissful ignorance is simply not an option. We see and understand too much for that.

But it sure gets mightly cold up here sometimes.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Full disclosure : my roomies and I got way behind on our Colberts and Shows Daily so I am just catching up to last week’s Democratic debates now.

And holy shit, Kamala Harris. Holy SHIT.

She fucking OWNED that debate. And not just on logic and rhetoric, the classical diad of debate. She projected such force, energy, and righteousness that even Bernie Sanders was cowed by it.

And that’s his jam, dog!

The flashbulb moment, of course, was this :

Hoe. Lee. Sheeeeeeyit.

Never in my life have I seen a political killshot like that. There was no way for Biden to recover from that, although like the heavyweight political prizefighter he is, he didn’t fall and kept on punching back.

The only way he could have neutralized even part of the power of that moment is if he had instantly and completely admitted he was wrong back then. That would have blunted the attack considerably.

But that was never in the cards for Biden. For one, that would take the kind of cold-blooded calculation that is anathema to his warmhearted style. For another, he is a fighter and his instinct is always to punch back, and this was one of those rare situations where the only way to win is to surrender.

And for third, well, he’s an old white dude in his 70’s, and no matter how smart they are, those guys simply don’t have the mental manueverability for such things any more.

I feel a little bad for Biden. But only a little. Because he has made it clear that he is the no-change phony liberalism candidate and so I want him to go down.

But I like the guy, so it’s painful to watch it happen.

Surprising nonstarter : Buttigieg. The man is a living monument to human achievement whose resume reads like a hiring officer’s wet dream, but I totally understand how mild mannered Mayor Pete was simply not ready for the high voltage atmosphere of that night of debate.

I’m not sure I would have done any better, and I’m a big fat loudmouth. Normally, a debate stage like that would be where I could shine.

But that stage was no fit place for a Canadian. We are not cut out for that kind of bare knuckled political scrapping.

I would probably have made one try to get a good shot in, and if that didn’t work, I would have just let the big dogs fight it out.

Unless someone said something blatantly stupid. Like that self-help chick. What the fuck was she even doing there? Talk about a lightweight.

And the one time she was on a roll and going on about how Trump didn’t win with plans but by just saying “Make America Great Again” – absolutely true, and pointed to one of the Democrats’ biggest weaknesses – she then shot herself in the foot by saying something about it not being about “superficial things like plans”.

Um…. what the cinnamon toast fuck was that?

Plans themselves are good. What she should have said was that if all the Democrats do is wank on about plans when the election comes around, they are going to lose a lot of people whose hearts might be with them but to whom they make no sense.

Those are the people who need emotional leadership. They need someone to connect with them emotionally and inspire them into action. When you talk to those people in detailed policy wonk terms, all they hear is the muted trumpet sounds from when the adults spoke in the Charlie Brown specials and the message they take away is “This person is not speaking my language and doesn’t know or care if they connect with me and my issues” and that person essentially ceases to exist for them.

And then they go looking for someone who DOES speak in a language they understand, and if that happens to be a Satan like Trump, so be it.

And it’s not that these people are somehow too lazy or too apathetic to figure out what the Dems are talking about.

It’s that they are literally incapable of understanding that kind of talk. It’s too complicated, it is based on a presumed shared knowledge base that a lot of people simply do not have, and it moves far too fast and at too high a density.

It’s how liberal intellectuals speak to each other – but it’s not how normal people talk.

What else…. what the fuck is wrong with Chuck Todd?

Seriously, what a fucking dipshit asshole of the month club selection. He clearly wanted to make this all about him and got all pissy when people held a debate instead.

Oh, I am sorry, Chuckie, do you need an Equal Attention Cake?

And the thing is, something Chris Christie said on Colbert seemed to indicate that Chucklefuck Todd has been like that for a long time.

Well his performance at the debates has soured me on him pretty much forever, and I am pretty sure I am not the only one. So I would say his “brand” is tainted now and MSNBC should dump the chump.

Or at least make him apologize and promise to rein himself in from now on.

Dammmit, now I can’t get that asshole kid at the birthday party out of my head. I can see his face so clearly. Big eyes, small nose, semi-permanent pout (never a good sign), curly black hair, wearing a kid-sized dress shirt and slacks.

It was a traumatic experience for me – I was seven at the time I think – because I had never experienced that kind of thing before. That sort of selfishness and pettiness was unknown to me at the time. At first, I couldn’t even understand what was going on. I had no boxes in my head for that kind of information.

Guess I lost some innocence that day.

And the thing is, I didn’t know this kid. He wasn’t from my neighborhood, that’s for sure. A few of the other attendees were from my neighborhood, but not him.

Looking back, I ended up sort of swept up into a lot of kids’ birthday parties.

I dunno how the hell that worked. Did ambitious parents just gather us up like it was roundup time at the sheep station?

Imagine if you tried that today.

Anyhow, um…. where was I…. oh right, politics.

Fuck Joe Biden (sorry Joe). Yay Kamala Harris.

Could you imagine the impact a Kamala Harris/Elizabeth Warren ticket would have?

All the old white dudes would be shitting their Depends full because they would know, without a shadow of a doubt, that their era was over.

They would be oh so keenly aware that they were the dinosaurs – and Harris/Warren was their asteroid.

And with that happy thought, I bid you adieu.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Gah, do I ever not feel like taking the bus to get to therapy today.

In fact, I strongly intuit that I will be taking a cab I can ill afford.

Oh well. If it comes to that, I got $413 saved up on my reloadable VISA, and what are savings for if not unexpected expenses?

Even if said expenses are, technically speaking, optional.

At least this once, Joe will be picking me up after, so I don’t “have to” pay for a taxi home, or take the bus home.

Actually, it appears that Joe stayed home sick today. So I might get a ride each way after all. Glee!

Of course, as has become traditional, I must now tell you how crappy I feel. This is what comes of my schedule (and Joe’s) shifting in such a way that I end up doing the first half of my blogging with lunch, and therefore when I am fairly recently awoken.

And yes, I know that the first meal after waking is, to some narrow minded folk, technically breakfast, but I go by time of day, not context.

Hence my tendency to eat “breakfast” at 6 am, then go to bed.

What can I say, I am a nocturnal beast.

So yeah, I feel pretty crappy right now. The usual. Dizzy, drained, discombobulated.

And me without my recombobulator. Typical.

Right now it kind of feels like I am underwater. Every move I make gives me a wave of mild surface tingles on the skin of whatever part moved.

It would almost be kind of pleasant if it wasn’t the result of smothering in my sleep.

Right now, all I want to do is crawl back into bed and hibernate. I do not feel ready to face the day on any level and, quite frankly, wish the day would fuck off and die.

My therapy session isn’t until 3 pm, so I suppose I could get in a little naptime before then, seeing as it’s only 11:37 am right now.

One annoying problem : ever since my tablet died (RIP), I don’t have an alarm clock any more. I used its alarm program as my alarm clock and very much appreciated being able to take a nap when I wanted to even when I had something on because I knew I could trust the alarm to wake me in time.

Without that program, every nap is a gamble. Maybe I wake up in time, maybe not. And I am not normally the sort to take that kind of risk.

But I do need my sleep. So, maybe.

Then there’s Paragon tonight. I don’t know if I will make it. I feel very “out of spoons” right now. Been going out more than usual.

Plus I have been getting the sulphur burps all morning, and that usually means I am going to be sick some time soon.

So I have that to look forward to. Yay.

Oh well, Perhaps my prospects will seem brighter after I get a little more sleep.

Ever feel like life got too damned complicated while you weren’t looking?

---

I have totally figured out meditation.

It’s simple : what meditation does is clean your working memory of everything you don’t need in order to give your subconscious mind the maximum possible share of your mental resources so it can process all the stuff that can’t be processed any other way.

Some things require the activated state of the conscious mind to truly process, Problem is, the conscious mind is always too busy with this, that, and the other to process said things. So said things remain unprocessed.

Enter meditation. By stilling the nattering of our “monkey minds”, we free up our mental resources for doing the really deep emotional and cognitive work we need so badly and yet never get around to doing.

Am I repeating myself?

Along the way, people also learn to consciously influence their own emotional and/or chemical state. That is extremely valuable in and of itself. Learning to calm yourself is the best stress-beater ever.

And that’s where most of the health benefits come from, I think. The deep processing is great psychologically and cognitively, but it’s the stress reduction that keeps your body healthy by lowering your background adrenaline levels.

So, there you have it. Now you know how meditation works!

Aren’t you glad you read this site today?

And remember, all the stuff about shakras and meridian lines and celestial harmony and so on is just horseshit for people who don’t know the difference between a metaphorical truth or a literal truth.

And that’s the real goddamned truth, everybody.,

---

And now it’s 10:16 pm and all is well.

For certain values of “well” anyhow. The physical kind, not so much. I am definitely coming down with something,. dammit.

My throat is sore and scratchy, as are my lungs, and I have a little of that “malaise” feeling that always comes with infectious illness with me.

Right now, it’s quite minor. More of a warning than an illness. But you can bet your buttons that I am going to keep a close eye on it.

After all, I spent ten days in the hospital earliest this year for a case of pneumonia that started off as a minor illness like this one.

And as it was, I barely made it to the hospital in time. I thank my lucky stars that on that day, I listened to the voice in my head that said something was very very wrong.

That’s what prompted me to think over my symptoms and come to the conclusion that they were not normal and were, in fact, pretty scary, so it was time to go to the ER.

I would prefer never to have to go through all that again, of course.

Especially now, because I wouldn’t even have my tablet to entertain me.

And books and crossword puzzles can only get you so far, ya know?

Guess I better stay healthy then.

At least until I get a new tablet.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

…has sucked. But things are getting better.

I have felt messed up all day. Tired and stressed out and anxious. For a while it felt like I couldn’t do anything without this omnipresent anxiey making me want ot jump out of my skin and back in again.

At the same time, I felt this energy drain. Not, thank goodness, the really bad kind that makes me feel like there’s a gravity well trying to suck me down to the floor by making every cell in my body heavier, but still somewhat unpleasant.

Worst of all was the deep hard ache in my lungs. That’s what clued me in to the fact that the problem was oxygen and that I needed to do my breathing exercises pronto.

I have three such exercises :

1. Forcibly emptying absolutely all the air from my lungs. That means taking a deep breath, then exhaling continuously until there is absolutely nothing left in my lungs. This works by getting rid of the excess CO2 that accumulates in my lungs as I sleep because the sleep apnea causes incomplete exhalation. This technique is highly effective but also somewhat strenuous and uncomfortable. So I am somewhat more likely to use…
2. Holding my breath. I am not sure why this works, exactly. But it does. I take a deep breath and hold it for as long as I can, and while I am doing so, I can feel the CO2 in the bottom of my lungs being sucked upwards, and then it gets pushes out when I finally exhale. This technique also works as a test of how bad my situation is, because (and this is a little spooky), the worse my imbalance is, the longer it takes before holding my breath has the usual effect of making me want to exhale. I figure this is because when I am holding my breath, my lungs are using up the oxygen mixed in with the CO2 and I don’t feel oxygen starved until that is all used up. I have gone thirty seconds without feeling the effect before. Wild. I always have this odd technique….
3. Breathing in an out rapidly. As in, panting like a dog. Seems to pull the CO2 up and then push it out. I don’t use this one so much, but it’d good to have when the other two techniques either don’t seem to be working, or when in my O2-deprived state they both seem too onerous or complicated.

So I was able to get myself somewhat back on track via my own efforts, which is always good, Anything where I can help myself out of a bad situation or even just make my life a little better via my own effort is a good thing because it works against my usual feeling of utter helplessness and despair.

I need all the reminders I can get that I am not, in fact, powerless to change my situation and that I am not utterly incompetent and that the fact that sometimes it’s really hard for me to do simple things is no reflection on my character or capacities.

It just means I’m sick. And if I hang in there, the fog will lift, and I will be able to get shit done at last.

More on this later.

---

I should really stop saying that, I rarely if ever resume the previous topic because by the time I get back to the computer, my mind is a million miles away from where it was when I started this dang thing.

What can I say, the waters of my mind run swift and deep.

I just had a very modern “senior moment” : I managed to completely forget why I opened a browser tab in the moments in between opening it and switching to it.

The waters of my mind run so swift and deep that whatever is on my mind can get swept out to see at breathtaking speed.

My mental beach has one heck of a riptide.

I feel better now, thank goodness. Just like yesterday. And that has me thinking.

If the deal was, ‘you will feel absolutely horrible for six hours a day but the rest of the time you will feel reasonably okay”, I think I would make that deal.

From what I understand about people who are super grumpy in the morning and hate “morning people”, that’s life for a lot of people period.

Especially before that “first cup of coffee”, or so I am led to believe.

Myself, I have never been like that. But then again, I have never had anything forcing me to be more awake and alert than I wanted to be.

Even when I was a kid going to school, I always got up way before I needed to leave because it takes me a long time to wake up.

And even the walk to school and the morning classes did not require me to wake all the way up. So it could be 11 am before I was truly awake.

The few times in my life when something has been forcing me to be way more awake than I would naturally be, I was hella grumpy.

Oh damn…. it just occurred to me that the worst case scenario is if I had to deal with something totally unexpected while not fully awake.

I don’t handle the unexpected well when I am fully compos mentis. If I was already sleepy and cranky when the unwanted surprise came, there would be no hope in hell of keeping the angry sarcastic bear that lives inside me in his cage.

I remember that before tour buses were banned from going through Bevery Hills, there would be these news stories about some poor celeb in their slippers and bathrobe getting into a screaming argument with some fucking halfwit who just trampled their begonias or whatever.

I could totally see that happening to me. Not only can I get cranky when my sleep is disturbed, I also have very strict sense of propriety and privacy and can get quite bent out of shape when I feel someone has vastly exceeded their perogatives.

So yeah. I can imagine getting into a screaming argument with some idiot who woke me up by trodding through my flower bed.

I picture me screaming, ‘YOU ASSHOLES DON’T OWN ME!’.

And THAT would be the video that would go viral.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

God, I hate the summer.

While also loving it.

It’s a complicated affair.

Been through a lot of bad sleep in the last 10 hours or so. The usual kind, all sweaty and draining, leaving me disoriented and dissipated and disassociative.

Right now, I feel like I am not quite in my body. Like I am a few inches out of sync with it. An aura photograph of me would look like a double exposure.

And I have that maddening floaty feeling. Like I am a soggy balloon full of water and helium and every time I move, the water sloshes around vertiginously.

Goddamn sinus fluid in the inner ear.

And everything seems sort of hollow, Especially sounds. There is a distinct (albeit suble) flattening effect on everything I hear. Really adds to the surreal factor.

And of course, underneath it all is the heavy, sodden feeling that comes from having been pulled through the eye of the needle by my sleep apnea over and over again.

It’s rough being me.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel. I think I am actually catching up on sleep now. Despite all the symptoms detailed above, I actually feel better than I did the last time I woke up. I figure one more nap might actually get me to something approaching an actual alert waking state.

What a concept.

I really should go back to taking my sleeping pills. I haven’t taken one in weeks, maybe a month. I have been sleeping in naps instead, which appears to be my default state.

And I know that’s not good for me. It means I am not getting nearly enough of that deep cycle sleep where the brain does its deepest and most profound integration of short and medium term memories into the overall long term memory structures.

What that means is that, without that good deep sleep, I end up with my mind slowly filling with unprocessed memories. These haunt the background of my mind, unconsciously, so they do not have a conscious effect and it’s all too easy for me to pretend like it’s no big deal.

But all those memory fragments displace normal cognitive functions and drag down my mental CPU performance, and that menifests as low mood and a general feeling of weakness and confusion.

And that’s depressing AF.

So as usual, I am the author of my own depression because I don’t do the things I know damned well I should do in order to stay healthy.

Because I am too depressed to do them.

It’s not quite the Catch-22 that it sounds like because it is possible for me to pick my moments to resist and push against the depression and get some of the good healthy things done, and thus get ahead for a while..

I think that;s the key, though : waiting for the right moment. My mood goes in cycles and if I try to push in the middle of a cycle, then it goes nowhere.

But if I wait for the nadir or apogee of a cycle, I can get shit done.

Speaking of which, time to call my shrink (finally), take that last nap, and then go finally get my psych meds.

The darkness never lasts forever.

And the sun feels just as good on my skin no matter how long it’s been.

I will be back later.

---

I feel a lot better now.

Did the whole phone call, nap, meds thing.

Turns out, my shrink doesn’t schedule appointments past 3 pm any more. Bummer. I am guessing that this was a compromise with his wife, who wants him to retire.

See, she has retired, and wants to do all kinds of stuff with him, but he is a workaholic and doesn’t want to commit to retirement.

And he has a very good excuse for not retiring : he has a bunch of us mentally damaged types who are highly dependent on him to think about.

I know damned well that if he retired, there would be no other therapist for me here in Richmond. I would either have to do without (unthinkable) or have some kind of long commute to wherever in the GVRD will have me, I suppose.

And speaking of long commutes : because he doesn’t do appointments past 3 pm any more, that pretty much kills any chance I have of continuing to get a ride home from Joe this summer. Bummer. And that means I will be getting there and back all by my little old lonesome for like, eight weeks.

And that’s doable. I have a bus pass. The bus gets me within five or six blocks of my therapist’s office, and it’s summer, so it’s likely to be a pleasant walk.

And it (almost) goes without saying that I need the fresh air and exercise.

So that’s not so big a deal.

And if I really, really, really don’t feel like walking to and from the bus stop, I can always take a cab. Costs about $15 each way, so not exactly a cheap option, and not something I could do each way every week.

I do not have a spare $30/week in my budget.

But it’s good to have the option in reserve, just in case. Like, what if it’s a crappy rainy day? Or I am sick or something?

And there are always those days when the depression wins. Those are the days when I am forced to admit to myself that I am truly sick, and that my depression is not necessarily something I could just shake off “if I really wanted to”.

And nobody ever told me that my depression wasn’t real or anything like that. I just developed that delusion in order to cope with the reality of being ill.

I would probably be better off in the long run without it. It keeps me from truly facing and dealing with the realities of my mental illness because it keeps me from taking my depression as seriously as I should.

But I am not sure I could cope with the true reality of it. And that’s not an easy thing for a rugged intellectual type like me to admit.

There are truths I fear and realities which could kill me.

And that fills me with existential shame.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Well, another thing has come along to fling my tiny little lifeboat about.

This time, it’s something quite predictable, though no less disruptive : Joe’s work schedule switching to summer mode.

Joe works for the local school board as a janitor, and normally, he works something like a 3 pm to 11 pm schedule.

Makes sense, right? Kids get out of school at 3 pm or thereabouts, and then the janitorial staff more or less has the place to themselves, so that is the logical time to get in all the cleaning that the day staff can’t do when class is in session.

There’s a hidden catch to that, though : if the school is dirty when the teachers arrive in the morning, it’s the night shift that gets the blame, and the people on the day shift know this so they know they can get away with leaving the night shift with half of THEIR work to do as well.

People really are creative when it comes to inventing ways to be shitty to one another, aren’t they? You have one shift with zero accountability and the other with all of it.

These are the injustices of everyday life.

Anyhow, in the summer the kids ain’t there, so that’s when they do all the cleaning that would be impossible to do if school was in session at all.

Complicated stuff that involves things like pulling up mats to clean under them, flushing out the pipes with a high powered hydraulic system, and deep waxing the gym floor so it can survive another school year of abuse by a thousand kids sized pairs of sneakers.

But that stuff can be done on a normal 9 to 5 schedule, so that’s what Joe’s schedule is going to be starting tomorrow.

Well. it will actually be 7 am to 4 pm,. but close enough.

On my end of things, the most direct impact is that with a schedule like that, it is basically impossible for him to drive me to therapy every week.

Not only are therapists pretty unwilling to schedule sessions after 5 pm, Joe is going to be super tired after a full day of heavy labour and it would be cruel to expect him to drive from work to the apartment, then drive me to therapy, then hang around or run errands for an hour, then drive me home.

Normally, he does all that before work on Thursdays. That’s why my therapy appointments are usuallly at 12:45 pm. That way we get home around 2:15 PM and he has time to relax before getting home from work.

But clearly, that is not gonna happen during the summer.

The best we can do is that he will pick me up after work. Which means I need to schedule my appointments for around 3 pm to 3:30 pm so they end somewhere between 4 PM and 4:30 PM.

And, tragically, I was suppose to call my therapist and set that up last Thursday. But I just kept forgetting. I have a low friction brain, and things slip my mind very easily.

Gets me in all kinds of trouble.

So there’s a very real chance that I will not get therapy this week. It’s possible that there will magically be a slot open in the right time range some time this week, but I ain’t exactly counting on it.

Fair enough. My error, my consequences. That works.

And I find myself once more contemplating how disruptive small waves like this can be to my all too placid and becalmed life.

It’s certainly not who I want to be. On any level, I don’t want to be some tiny dinghy tossed back and forth on the waves like a ping pong ball. I want to be a great and mighty steamer that plows through waves like they were made of shaving cream and is so mighty and huge that it makes its own weather.

I am so damn tired of being so damned weak. It’s so fucking frustrating sometimes. My desires are so much stronger than what this useless carcass of mine can actually sustain that it makes me want to scream.

And I am far too old to be able to substitute rage, testostosterone, and sheer bloody minded determination for actual bodily resources any more.

I tghink I need to reboot my lifestyle entirely. I want to just take off somewhere and rebuild my whole life based entirely on what makes me feel healthier and happier and to hell with all the destructive distractions and deadly dulling of my id and my libido.

There are times when I feel like I am not even truly alive. Because no matter what my pulse and respiration rate say (those lying cunts), I don’t feel life at all. The pump pumps and the peristalsis pulses and glycolisis keeps those muscle pumping, but emotionally I might as well be six feet under on a cold winter night.

I am just so fucking numb.

And my soul cries out against it, and tries to goad my mind into waking up and taking charge and bumping up the lights so we can see our fingers wiggle and know that we are acually a live mammal living on Planet Earth.

But the countvaling force is strong and it’s hard for me to find the wherewithal to push back against it for long. As much as I consciously wish to melt and wake and rise, the subconscious forces of my depression remain determined to keep spraying everything with liquid helium until all is dead and safe and calm again.

And I can’t shake the feeling that the whole shebang is wrong. That this titanic struggle is a false duality designed to keep me too caught up in the war to notice the clear, simple, gentle, wise solution that is staring me right in the face.

It’s easy to say I should forgive myself.

It’s just as easy to say I should go easy on mysef.

It’s even easier to say I should really just relax.

But all of that is meaningless and insubstational and worse than useless.

It’s like telling someone who is drownign to try not to breathe so much.

Maybe there is no solution in the linear logical sense of the word.

Maybe the problem cannot be solved by analysis and synthesis and revelation.

Maybe I am stuck in this low rent bardo of mine until I learn to go about things in a whole new way. Something more sane, and intgegrated, and gentle, and human, and filled with the wisdom of the heart.

I have been too damned smart for my own good for far too long.

Time to finally grow up.

I will talk ot you nice people again tomorrow.