…is worth doing badly.

Sounds wrong, doesn’t it? But it’s right, and for us grown up smart kids, it can be a paradigm smashing and highly liberating concept.

So let’s get smashing. It’s clobbering time!

First, let’s deal with the logical issues.

If something is worth doing, then it’s worth doing even if it is done badly. The only question is whether it is done well enough to considered done.

And when you think about it, the very idea of doing something assumes that.

Think of it like grades. Us precocious adults can easily get trapped into thinking that if you don’t get an A, you have failed somehow.

But life, like school, doesn’t work like that. In life, all that is needed is a passing grade.

In the school of life, a D is just as good as an A+.

For instance, say you come upon the victim of a terrible accident and you can see that this person will die if you don’t use some gauze and bandaging from the nearby first aid kit to patch them up pronto. ^[1]

The pre-enlightenment stance would be to freeze up because you don’t know anything about first aid and if you try to bandage the person you know you will do a terrible job.

Well, now they’re dead. Good job.

The enlightened reaction is to do the best bandaging job you can and hope it is good enough. Sure, you might screw up – but you might do a good enough job to save their life long enough for the EMTs to show up, and the person might live.

And that’s way more of a chance than doing nothing would have given them.

This also maps to neurotic concerns about doing things “right”. That’s another phantom of a high achieving childhood. The overweening need to have the “right” answer can completely blind us to a superior “right enough” answer.

So the state “anything worth doing is worth doing badly” is definitely true. I both know and acknowledge this.

Accepting it on an emotional level is another thing entirely. That’s the main reason I decided to write about this tonight : to help it sink in.

Thing is, I have never thought of myself as a perfectionist. In fact, I have always seen the dangers inherent in perfectionism.

But then again, it’s easy to eschew perfectionism when high performance comes easily and naturally to me. When you can get 90 percent without trying, why try harder?

I am constitutionally incapable of trying harder than I need to. It’s a character flaw.

Anyhow, despite my non-perfectionism, this “worth doing badly” thing hit me like an atom bomb when I first read it months ago.

My mind immediately rejected it HARD. That can’t possibly be right. After all, it sounds so very wrong.

But then I read the explanation in the article and it clicked. It’s totally true, for all the reasons listed above.

The particular application of this principle that sparked this discussion was a discussion with my therapist about how I make things but never put them anywhere they might get noticed and appreciated.

And I got thinking that I should submit stuff places. But of course, before I do that, I would have to clean said stuff up and make it presentable and work to make it as good as I can, right?

Which means it will never ever happen. Gumption trap. Self-checkmate.

Anything that makes something longer and more complicated is instantly rejected by depression. It says “No way can you sustain motivation through that palaver. “

But is that step really necessary? After all, sending out my usual half-baked creations is better than sending out nothing at all.

I mean, what the hell. I’ve been getting away with submitting first drafts for my whole life. Why stop now?

For all I know, getting published or noticed or promoted or whatever

So what the hell. From now on, I will keep going even if all I can manage to do is my usual sloppy, half-assed job of things.

It’s worked for me so far!

More after the break.

---

Later that day

This keyboard is developing issues. The spacebar takes more force to operate each day. And sometimes random keypresses occur.

Oh well, time to either pop all the keys out so I can give the inside of the keyboard a deep and thorough cleaning, or buy a new one.

Guess which one is more likely to happen.

Been checking out potential upgrades for this here compubox of mine. Going to be using this article from Tom’s Hardware as a guide.

Looks like a new GPU will cost me $300-$500. Oy. Still don’t know which one to get yet but at least I have narrowed it down a tad.

Still not sure I want to pay all that, though. There’s tons of games out there that this bucket of bolts can still play. Technically, I don’t “need” to upgrade.

On the other hand, I got $2000 sitting on my card awaiting use, and considering that video games are what I do all day, enhancing that experience is a sensible way to invest that money.

Boy, that’s a lot of money, though.

After the GPU would come a new monitor. Something big and high rest to make things all purty and possibly easier on the eyes.

In fact, there are monitors specifically designed to minimize eye strain now.

Bet those are easy on the eyes.

I suppose part of why I am hesitating is that investing the money in my video gaming experience seems kind of like giving in.

Like I am officially declaring that depression wins and this is all I can expect of life.

Then again, it’s not like I could otherwise use the money to move myself forward.

Not unless they sell mental health wholesale these days.

So I dunno. Guess I will just keep thinking about it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

It finally happened. Trump left. Smilin’ Joe Biden was sworn in.

The long national clusterfuck is over.

And now, the world, as one, copes with PTSD.

On the personal front, the “not specifically intended to be sexual” vibrating massager I ordered showed up on time and on schedule.

Bit of a tussle with the delivery guy. He calls from the entrance to our building and tells ME, the customer, that I have to go down to HIM.

“I can’t do that.” I reply. “I will let you in. “

“Um, no, we can’t do that. I’m on a cell phone. ” he says.

“I know.” ^[1] I said, in my bright, cheery, and clearly enunciated voice that only implies that you are an idiot, “So hang up and call back on the phone attached to the building.”

“Uh, no can do, I don’t have the number…..”

“The buzzer number is 0601!” I cheerfully supplied.

“Well…. okay.” he grated in reply, then hung up.

And for a while, I didn’t hear from him. And my resolve wavered. So I went out to the living room and asked Julian to go down for me.

But Julian didn’t even have his pants on when the phone rang, and lo and behold, the intense buzzing sound on the line allowed me to infer it was him, and I let him in.

Victory! Ah, that felt good. Don’t try to match my laziness levels, fool, because you might be lazy, but I’m lazy AND brilliant.

Nolo contendre, motherfucker.

And the best part is that I didn’t even think about it. He said “Come down” and I said “I can’t” purely out of reflex. I had not given a single thought to the issue before I picked up the phone the first time.

The reason that is such a big deal was that I stood up for myself (in a tiny way) purely out of instinct, and that signals big progress towards learning to assert myself.

I defended my territory and won, and without thinking it through and deciding it’s justified and carefully measuring the amount of force needed and all that BS.

Nope. He tugged. I tugged back. HARDER.

This is not the first time this has happened with Amazon deliveries. It happens pretty often. I can only assume that most people just go down, like this entire apartment building was their house and they are going to the front door.

Well fuck that. I am a lazy stubborn agoraphobic genius, so YOU come to ME.

Oh, when he finally knocked on the door and handed me the package like it was a dirty diaper on the way to the pail, he gave me such a look of resentment.

Like, sullen teen level resentment.

I, of course, loved it. Go on, feed me your pain, your resentment, your blind and unjustified rage. It only sweetens the victory.

Like I am going to go out of my way to make HIS job easier. Fuck THAT.

More after the break.

---

Nothing but haymakers

When I (verbally) fight, I fight hard. Every punch is maximum force. Every shot is a headshot. Every thrust of the blade goes straight for the jugular.

It’s the way I have always been. And I suppose there is a certain rough-hewn nobility to it. Were I a petite man, it might even be labeled as my being “scrappy”.

But in a 6’1″ ogre like me, it’s really antisocial.

It’s like I fight every fight like I am fighting for my life. Like there’s far more at stake that some idle conversation or some comment section bullshit.

So why is that? I mean, what the fuck, right?

Let’s try to figure it out.

First, let’s discuss my oft buried and rarely acknowledged pugilistic nature.

There has always been a part of me that really wants to fight. That wants to hit and be hit without a hint of restraint.

That just wants to fuckin’ go’er, ya know?

But obvious that shit has no place in the mind and personality of a sweet natured middle class liberal fag boy like me.

Had I been a product of the working class, I probably would have been one of those guys who picks fights in bars for fun.

But instead, I learned to bury that part of me because it “didn’t make sense”.

And I have only just now realized that there was a lot of baby in that bathwater and that I paid far too steep a price when I suppressed such a large part of myself and that it’s high time I excavated that part of myself and put it to good use.

Another factor is how I grew up verbally wrestling with my father. First I attempted to mediate between my father and my siblings (surely, it was just a matter of communication) and then when I got older and realized my father abused us because he needed to, I would tackle him when he started talking crap at the dinner table and I just kept on doing that, interposing myself between the innocent and the forces of evil, until I got strong enough to utterly defeat him and chase him away.

I take no pleasure from that. It needed doing so I did it.

So on that level, I really was (verbally speaking) fighting for my life. I had to defeat the monster that was my Dad. Nobody else could do it. Nobody had my gifts but me. Nobody else could see him like I did. Nobody else knew his secrets and his bullshit and his petty little justifications like I did. I had to do it. It had to be me.

And you know what? When you are fighting the boss monster of your entire existence, you don’t pull your punches. You hit as hard as you can as fast as you can and you just keep hitting until the motherfucker stops getting back up.

No wonder I fight like I do.

The third factor is a lack of opposition. Had I had equals to spar with and test myself against, I would have learned how to play nice and not take things too far.

But I didn’t. I’ve been far, far stronger than those around me for my entire life. Which means there was never anybody to slap me down, put me in my place, show me where the limits are.

Instead, I defeated all comers with depressing ease, often without even trying. I shrugged off their mightiest blows and then ignored them.

Also very antisocial of me. But it’s not my fault I’m the biggest and the strongest.

I don’t even exercise.

There’s other factors too. Like shameful memories of losing verbal battles to bullies. A fuckton of suppressed rage at how life treated me.

Being, in general, a wee bit insane.

Regardless of explanation, it’s something I am going to need to deal with if I hope to escape this cage of mine and go out and hang with the normal people.

Or at least, a larger and more diverse group of nerds.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Like an overcast summer day.

That’s how I would describe my mood right now. There’s some heat – it’s not like I feel calm or relaxed. Those medium grey clouds up there are swirling moodily, and I definitely feel frustrated and irritable in a directionless and noncommittal way.

But I am not stoked up and pissed off, either. Cool air currents circulate around that medium gray cloud formation, and they keep the heat at the middle from building up.

I’m picturing a 20 foot stall dark grey statue of some kind of ogre god-king – let’s call him Urok – with an enormous but very tidy and precise eternal bonfire burning at its base.

Cold mountain air swirls around the statue and its blaze, keeping the balance, and it is said that if the fire ever goes out, it will mean Urok’s great and mighty love is gone and the world will freeze to death and the sun itself will fall from the sky and shatter like glass before the last of its heat melts the seas for just long enough to drown the fragments of the sun forever.

But if the cold winds ever stop. the blaze will escape the circle which contains it, and the world will burn in Urok’s unquenchable rage. Mountains, valleys, rivers, oceans, cities, hamlets, and even the mighty temples of the other gods will burn, break, melt, crack, and be ground unto dust as the earth shakes and fire rains from the sky and Urok’s shadow twin Oruk, a mile high with eyes of darkest night, will smite the world with his red red sword and the continents will break apart from the force.

So it’s…. kind of important.

Do you think writing like this Urok stuff has a market? I mean, it seems pretty epic and cool to me, but I might be just a wee bit biased.

It would make a pretty badass intro to a dark fantasy RPG. Just have to add a bit like….

“As a Guardian of the Balance, you are the latest in a long line of solitary warriors that stretches back far beyond even the deepest of histories of the most ancient of people, and it is your sacred duty to preserve the Balance at all costs.

You were trained for this. Your skills of war make you the equal of not just any man but many armies. You command magic that can turn aside any storm, turn night into day, and even stop time itself if it is necessary for your duties. You have fought and defeated legions of death cultists seeking to trigger the End of All in fire or ice. You even know how to sow the holy salt that insure that no dead thing can walk your lands without being reduced to ash by holy fire.

In short, your training and bloodline combined ensure that you are ready for anything that might happen during your time as Guardian.

Or so you thought. Until today.

Because today, a crack appeared just above the statue’s right eye.

Now it’s up to you to find out what that means. “

Well that was fun to write. I should go on fictional flights of fancy more often.

God knows, I might even write something sellable one of these days.

More after the break.

---

No seriously, WTF!?!

I ordered some stuff from 7-11. Including two 2L bottles of Coke Zero.

Kids, can you guess what showed up instead? Go on, guess! But don’t bother shouting your answer, because I can’t hear you.

Those of you who shouted “regular Coke”, congratulations! You are correct. You have accurately projected the trend of my life right now and placed tonight’s events on the curve implied by the data.

I’ve fired off a complaint to 7-11 via DoorDash. They sent me the usual automatic offer of compensation, which I have always accepted in the past.

But not this time, both because I am too pissed off and because all they offered me was a lousy $1.51 and frankly. I find that insulting.

I mean, the part of the order they got wrong costs $4. So $1.51 ain’t gonna cut it, cuz.

More importantly, how does this shit keep happening to me? How hard is it to tell the sugary version of a beverage from the diet version?

The bottles are totally different colors for a reason.

My current theory is that there is currently a major production fuckup in the carbonated beverage supply chain leading to massive diet cola shortages everywhere.

Ergo, these errors are a result of people sending me “the closest thing”.

Superficially plausible, but I was at Sav-on a couple of days ago and they had tons of Diet Coke, with no shortage in sight.

Plus, you’d think if they were out of something that common, they could like…. tell people. Maybe even not let them order it.

Just a thought.

It’s almost like now that I am opening myself to my anger more (and realizing that I am a somewhat cranky person), the universe has decided to test my aggravation systems.

Well at least I get mad and bitch about it now, and thus vent the anger instead of swallowing it and just becoming more depressed.

Depression is anger aimed inward, after all.

So I am going to have to call Joe and ask him to grab me my usual pair of 2L Diet Cokes. At least I have a funny reason as to why.

The worst experiences make the best stories sometimes.

Other times, they make for stories so depressing that people are left speechless and pale, like they just witnessed an atrocity.

I wonder if I ever gave someone PTSD?

See, this is why I haven’t figured out how to turn my pain into comedy yet. My pain is kind of hard to laugh at.

“And then there was the time every single member of the student body of my elementary school chased me around the school and held me down so my worst bully could stomp on my head! HA. HA. HA.”

Then again, THAT joke is funny. Hmmm.

Maybe the secret is to get really meta. How post-modern.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Felt really bad earlier.

As in, a terrible tension gripped by body and my mind and felt like it was going to tear me apart, or maybe I’d just explode.

Exploding seemed like a very attractive option. All that tension gone in one orgasmic cloudburst. Kaboom. Ahhhhhh, lovely.

Slight drawback: I’d be dead.

There’s always SOMEthing.

It really felt like my muscles were trying to murder my skeleton. Just squeeze it into jelly.

This has happened before, though, and I think I have sussed^[1] out why.

It all has to do with my skin, and my excessively large pores.

See, now that things have gone back to “normal”, I only leave the house once a week, on Sunday nights.

Which would be fine except that I only shower before I go out, meaning that right now I only shower once a week.

Pretty gross, I know. I got issues. Fair warning, it only gets worse from here.

And well, once a week ain’t enough. The previous and superior normal, where I went out for McD’s with Le Gang three times a week. was barely enough.

Ideally I would shower daily. But uh, that’s not going to happen.

On the once a week schedule, my pores get more and more clogged over the week and I get sicker and sicker, overheating easily as the thermal transfer efficiency of my skin goes all to hell and I end up mildly heat sick all the time.

But then Sunday comes around, and I take a shower, and everything is healthy again for now, right?

Possibly. But, not necessarily.

Sometimes, what happens instead is that my pores only end up partially declogged, and the remaining clog is drives deeper and harder into my pores.

This turns a soft clog to a hard clog, and as I sweat and whatnot, pressure builds behind that hard clog and results in my recent form of agony as if my entire skin had a bone stuck in its throat.

The agony persists until the pressure finally pops the damned clog, and suddenly the fever breaks and I feel sooooo much better.

Its a nasty issue and a most unpleasant experience, and so it would be best avoided if that is at all possible. But how?

1. Shower more often. Obviously. Three times a week at least. The easiest way to do that would be to shower on Tuesdays and Fridays as if I was going out. Seems doable at least in theory.
2. Shower better. Get pore-cleansing body wash. And a really good loofah. I am willing to suffer a bit for superior cleansing. Hotter showers would also help, but I have to be super careful not to trigger my tendency towards heatstroke. Set that off, and I’m not just sick, I’m in danger, because the shower is a very bad place to suddenly become dizzy and nauseous
3. Shower with a well hung muscular black dude who rewards cleanliness with hot gay sex. Mind be hard (!) to pull off, but you got to admit, it would work.
4. Try to invent the human washing machine. Or rather, a washing machine for people. It could be so nice. You just sit down in it and it does the rest. Kind of like those old timey steam baths that close around you leaving only your head exposed. Only more washy but less scary.
5. Go to the local cash wash and try to convince them I am a car. Could be fun, but also probably would kill me.
6. Save up and go to a fancy spa where they have a zillion ways to cleanse you. Honestly, this one has a lot of appeal. Bring it on. Hot rocks, algae packs, deep tissue massage, rubbing me with weird leaves, whatever you got. Wring me out and hang me up to dry.

So it’s a fixable issue, for sure. In theory.

In practice, there’s no way to know what my depression will actually let me do.

But it’s good to have options.

More after the break.

---

Covid ruins everything

Of course, the problem with the otherwise brilliantly rational spa plan is that I can’t imagine there are a lot of spas open in the age of COVID.

I mean, I could be wrong. It could be that spas are going great because so many of their treatments involve germ-killing heat or weird organic chemicals and whatnot.

But I doubt it. Science be damned, I don’t want to get into the hot oil bath (or whatever) ten other people have used today unless I personally saw them sanitize the thing to my satisfaction every single time,.

And even then, maybe not. Fucking Covid.

Covid has even managed to invade my video game world. See, I want to upgrade this here computer of mine, and according to my techier friends, that means starting with an upgrade to my computer’s GPU.

Or “graphics card” as it is known to us oldschoolers.

Problem is, Covid has shut down or crippled many major chip manufacturers and that means the major GPU makers like ASUS can’t make new GPUs and that means the prices for the ones still on the shelves have gone through the fucking roof.

So no new GPU for me for the time being. Dammit.

And of course, I still really really miss restaurants. There is something special about breaking bread together with loved ones that nothing can replace.

And not only is that impossible to do in a restaurant due to Covid, you can’t even have people over and feed them yourself.

To me, that shit is the worst non-medical consequence of this fucking plague : the interference with all the simple, wholesome human bonding activities like birthday parties, eating out with friends, and even getting together for the holidays.

Being a squishy sentimentalist despite my size, this shit breaks my heart.

Fuck you. Covid.

Fuck you in the ASS.

I can’t wait till the vaccines put your in your grave.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

[[1]] The Windows dictionary didn’t have “suss”. I had to add it. Have I really lived long enough for Seventies slang to have become archaic? [[1[[

Sorta kinda. In some senses. I have several attributes which can be considered somewhat magnificent and, in some lights, vaguely godlike.

Look, I’m working on it. Building a stable self-worth after so many years of unlimited self-loathing is very tricky because I have to balance on a tightrope with self-annihilating loathing on one end and raving egomania on the other.

Basically, it’s a fight between “I am toxic scum who makes the world a worse place just by being alive” and “I am the smartest person….IN THE WORLD! All should bow before me and lick my nuts in blissful gratitude for my being alive! MUA HA HA, etc.!”

Secular Messiah is in there somewhere too, as is The Ogre(he’s new), and all the other facets of my personality.

But at least I am opening the door to the positive side of things lately. I am no longer nearly as scared to open the door to the raging screaming monster orgy of my untapped id as I used to be.

Sure there’s a lot of craziness in there. That’s what happens when one’s personality becomes so dangerously unbalanced.

But I have a firm hand on the door now and I can let the pressure out a little at a time.

Even better, I am learning to harness that pressure and redirect it into something healthy that badly needs the energy.

Like supporting my mood, for instance.

I was looking up one of my astrological aspects, Moon in Sagittarius, recently, and the article talked about its irrepressible optimism, and instead of my usual eyerolling “yeah right” type reaction, I realized that it’s true.

There is a strongly optimistic side of me that has been hidden under all this useless depression for a really long time.

And this is the side of me that I want to liberate the most. This endless wellspring of positive energy that yearns to be free of the oppressive weight of the no-fun collar of corrupted reason could do wonders for my mood just via its “fuck you, I am awesome” attitude and refusal to accept unhappiness as an answer.

So fuck that bullshit “reason and logic” circuit. It has vastly overreached its legitimate powers and is now just a thin disguise for naked cowardice and a broken regulating system that was supposed to keep me sane but instead just murdered me instead.

Well fuck it. Die, you miserable machine. I hereby rip the collar from my throat and throw it on the ground then stomp it into teeny tiny pieves.

Stupid thing never fit right anyhow.

Besides, there are worse things than chaos and going crazy. At this point in my so-called life, I am perfectly willing to lose my freaking mind if it means I get to be happy.

Better happy crazy than miserably sane.

Who am I kidding? I’m crazy either way. Might as well be the happy kind of crazy.

Sounds like a lot more fun.

And more seriously, maybe the path to sanity requires passing through regions of madness from time to time.

Maybe I need to go crazy from time to time in order to become sane.

One thing is for sure : stability is worthless if your life sucks.

More after the break.

---

Making reality bend

Let’s talk about objectivity and how really fucking stupid it can be, shall we?

For most of my life, I have been hardcore committed to the ultimate objective truth of everything. My mind inherently cuts through all artifice and illusion to get to the truth at the very heart of things, and lets absolutely no other considerations – least of all personal ones – get in the way of its brutal and relentless search for the truth.

I am, as Robert Anton Wilson put it, one of the tribe of people who are determined to figure out what is really going on.

More fool me.

Because human beings need mercy. They need some way to shield themselves from the harshness of reality and that means there has to be a certain amount of wiggle room in their worldview so that they can adjust said worldview for maximum comfort.

“But that’s delusion!”, says the ancient brutal truth machine that until recently had free reign in my brain. “Why, that opens the door to believing all kinds of self-serving lies and that’s the first step towards MADNESS and CHAOS!”.

Yeah right. And if we let the kids wear dungarees, the streets will run red with blood by tomorrow noon as society devolves into shrieking anarchy.

Not all slopes are slippery, Grandpa!

And besides, it’s not like this relentless investigation and analysis ever made the tiniest of dents in the rampant delusions of my depression, so what good is it?

What use is sharp-minded political analysis if I continue to think everyone hates me?

And there are worse things than being a little deluded. Objectivity, taken too far, becomes toxic, just like everything else does.

Besides, no matter how much I love the truth, it will never love me back. It can’t. It’s far too hard and inflexible and cold to so much as glance in my direction.

Only I can give myself love, and that must be unconditional, a priori to any actual justification for said love.

I’m still working on that. I have never believed in unconditional love. Perhaps I am far too judgmental for it. I have always assumed that there is always some kind of condition attached. Actions so heinous that they could break the bond of love.

But then again, true love is an attachment between people. Maybe it’s possible to keep on loving someone even after they hurt you super bad.

And maybe it’s possible for people to love me no matter what I think of myself.

I want to believe that. I really do.

And maybe some day I will. Maybe some day I will be strong enough to truly believe in the love I know is there but do not feel.

After all, no matter how dark the night, the sun never stops shining.

Even when we cannot feel its warmth at all, and dawn feels like it is a thousand hours away, and we cannot even remember what sunlight felt like.

The sun is still there, shining away, happy and warm.

And we will feel it again when it rises.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Whiny, reluctant teen voice : “Well, I guess I should express some rage now. “

So yesterday, I ordered a bunch of stuff from the Ironwood Sav-On. Stuff that has that precious vitamin B12 in it.

And I knew there would be fuckery because the website has been redesigned. Uh oh.

That’s a rather touchy subject with me because Facebook’s last redesign made it so that I can’t see Notifications, can’t add a comment to stuff I post on my timeline, and can’t caption photos I upload.

Do you any idea how much it pisses me off to have my self-expression curtailed?

The first bit of fuckery : I got my order all together, went to check out, and only then realized I had somehow selected “pickup” instead of “delivery”.

Well that would have been pretty fucking useless. Thank Dog I caught it.

And whaddaya know, there is literally no way to change that at this point in the process so I have to start a brand new order and do all that shopping AGAIN.

The next number in our cavalcade of incompetence is the phone call from the store telling me my pickup order will be delayed.

My what now? I am positive I never finished that earlier order. Oh well, at least that gave me a chance to cancel it. at least.

Then comes the delivery, and the dude calls me to tell me he will be there soon (they always do that) and happens to mentioned that there have been some…substitutions.

(SFX : Dramatic sting, spooky thunderbolt)

And I am like….

The driver tells me they substituted regular Orange Crush for my Diet Orange Crush (clearly totally unacceptable)….

And had substituted regular Scotch mints for my sugar free kind.

This, despite the fact that in the “note to personal shopper” section of the order I wrote “Diabetic. Do not substitute sugary items for sugar free items. ”

I mean, what else could I do? They got rid of the “no substitutions” button in the redesign. That message was my only defense.

But again, at least I learned this before I got my order. Told the driver to cancel my order for those two things. Apparently my “personal shopper” ignored my “personal preferences”, aka medical necessities.

So my order showed up minus two things I was especially looking forward to, especially the sugar free Scotch mints.

I haven’t had my beloved Scotch mints in so long. I was so happy to find ones I could have without them killing me.

Oh, and just now, I am looking at computer monitors on Amazon.ca, and apparently there is no such thing as a normal computer monitor any more.

All they have is these “portable” monitors, all of which are SMALLER than my current monitor. Son of a bitch.

I don’t want portable! I want enormous and high res!

Maybe I should just buy a TV instead.

More after the break.

---

Here we go again

What the fuck did I do to piss off the universe?

I order pizza from Pizza Hut. Big pizza (14″ Meat Lovers), little pizza (12″ Chicken Caesar…I can never resist the whole medium pizza for $5 deal), two 2L bottle of Diet Pepsi, nice and simple.

Pizza delivered. Big pizza, check. Little pizza, double check. And two 2L of… REGULAR PEPSI? What the FUCK, world?

Thus begins the saga of trying to figure out how to complain. I go all over the website looking for a “contact us” button or similar. Nuttin’.

Finally. I somehow persuade it to show me the stuff it usually shows at the bottom of the website and find the Contact Us button.

That leads me to a weirdly long form for feedback (I’ll give you some fucking feedback) which actually had the gall to ask me for my province and city TWICE (just ask the top half of the form, ya snaggle toothed cunt) so I filled the cocksucker out with my complaint and submitted it.

Jesus Herbert Christ, I’m so mad I’m going Islander.

But the online form wasn’t very satisfying. So I decide to call instead.

So I look up the number for my store, which is two blocks from here, and dial it. It rings and rings and rings and rings and then bumps me to the hotline.

I wait through some truly antique on-hold music (remember Muzak?) with the occasional voiceover that makes me feel like I am in a department store in the late Seventies (in a bad way) and then I get a nice lady on the phone who listens to my complaint then tells me she is going to transfer me to my local Pizza Hut.

Which is where I fucking started!

And what’s worse, the transfer won’t go through. Should have taken like two seconds but five minutes later and I am still listening to a warm female voice of the type used in science fiction mind control machines telling me how awesome Pizza Slut’s five different kinds of crust are.

That’s when I went “duh”, hung up, and hit redial.

This time someone answered! A guy said “Thank you for choosing Pizza Hut” and I started to relate my complaint but then it clicked into some mode where I was hearing my own voice come back to me, on a roughly 1.5 second delay.

Which is highly unnerving.

I hang up and redial – no answer. Nothing.

Because apparently, right after sending me into Solipsism Mode, the entire place returned to its home fucking dimension.

I mean, someone was there. Someone answered the phone. But then remembered that phones steal your soul, apparently.

I have redialed a half dozen times in the last hour – still nothing.

I guess our planets were only briefly aligned.

This whole day has left me feeling burly and defensive.

Like I want to go chest to chest with my gremlins and say, “Ya wanna go’er? Eh?”

Fuck this fucking fuckery.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Oh look, it’s time to take a brief journey into marginal productivity again?

Yippy fucking skippy.

Feeling increasingly disgusted by this stupid fucking life of mine. A worthless existence playing video games all the live long day, punctuated by brief interludes of self-expression like this one where for an hour or so, I technically do something.

And it’s…. Jean-Luc?

Thank you, JLP.

Increasingly I find myself looking at the day ahead of me and thinking, “Seriously? That’s it? That’s all I am going to do with the hours of the day? Play video games and blog? That is IT?”

Which is, as patient readers know, all part of the plan.

I’ve been carefully letting the pressure of impatience and dissatisfaction and frustration build within me in hopes of forcing myself to the point where I am just so god damned sick of it all that I blow out that clog in my motivation system for good and end up actually doing something productive.

Historically, it has been this kind of rage that has moved me to action. When I had my total psychological and physical breakdown in my early twenties, it was getting really fucking sick of being sick and frail and miserable that gave me the motivation to grit my teeth in ferocious determination and fight my way out of that hole.

And it wasn’t easy. It took a lot of grit and determination to force myself to eat when I had no appetite, drink when I wasn’t thirsty, and get up and move when the slightest motion made my head spin.

And all that time ghosts and visions and unhinged emotions swirled around in my head.

But none of that mattered.

Because I was pissed off.

And that meant I was going to keep on fighting until I won.

This is when a capacity for bloody minded para-psychotic determination comes in handy. Once that mode kicks in, nothing will stop me from attaining victory because any obstacles, difficulties, or opposition will only make me angrier and even more determined to see things through.

I’ve stupidly avoided engaging this mode for decades now because it’s pretty scary. It’s a mode of mind that starts out living in the outskirts of Crazytown and can end up on the express bus downtown pretty damn quick.

But I need not fear its power. I can control it. Bruce Banner can retain enough control of the Hulk to keep him from truly hurting anyone who doesn’t deserve it.

So bravo to me for building up my inner fires to this point. I can’t say exactly when I will reach critical pressure and come busting out like an explosive jailbreak.

But I know it will be when I am finally mad enough to stop caring about the comfort and security I am leaving behind because it fucking sucks and god damn it, I WANT STUFF.

And I am sure as hell not going to get it sitting on my ass playing video games.

More after the break.

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I stalk the night

Well, it feels like I do. Metaphorically speaking at least.

Been pondering the complexities of my nature lately.

Let’s start with this little speech of mine :

“I am capable of anything. Absolutely anything. I can be secular Jesus, overflowing with pure selfless love and compassion for all that lives. I can be the Devil himself, diabolical and malign. I can be a clumsy clown, capering around just to make you laugh, taking delight in your joy. I can be a dark magician, using my illusions and tricks to trap you and take your life force to replenish my own. I can be the hyper competent administrator and leader, understanding your business better than you do. I can be the lazy but spectacularly gifted talent. I can even be the nice lady who makes the tea. Alpha to omega, everything and nothing and all points in between, I am the ultimate protean superman. capable of being any damned thing I want to be.

Now what I willing to be, that’s another story.”

Now that little speech makes me feel powerful and strong.

But it’s also creepier than the average fuck.

These factors are not unconnected. Being creepy and weird and beyond the comprehension of most can be a potent defense against the world, and knowing that I can think concentric circles around most people to such a degree that I am quite simply beyond them makes me want to laugh evilly. Mua ha ha ha!

On the other hand, I really want people to like me. And I love everybody. I want to give the world a hug and a pat on the shoulder and an understanding ear.

And light snacks.

Traditionally. as patient readers know, I refuse to even contemplate questions of which facet is the “real” me.

All of them. None of them. They are all me. And so on.

But it now occurs to me that not picking one does not absolve me of the need to figure out who I am. On some deep level, I need to somehow add all these crazy vectors together and figure out which way I am actually going.

I mean, who is the man behind all those masks? I can’t dodge the question forever. I am not going to be able to plat my flag of identity in the ground and make it grow (work with me here) if the fundamental question of who (or what) I am is left blank.

Somehow, I will navigate this jungle of costumes and find out what I look like naked.

I’m as scared as you are.

So as much as I hate the question, on level I will have to figure out who I really am, and smartass glibly evasive bullshit just won’t do.

I mean, it’s me asking. Who do I think I am fooling?

The magician who tricks himself is a fool.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Warning : all the feels.

This is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

Just got off the phone with my therapist.

As sessions go, I’d put it on the positive side of meh. Meh-plus, if you will.\

I did a lot of talking and touched on a lot of deep and important things that have been on my mind lately. Got some stuff off my chest. Ground out some more of the frozen slush inside me, and that’s always good.

And yet, I don’t feel like I really got anywhere. It was all motion, no action. It helped, for sure. Just how much it helped I won’t know until that cold numb feeling wears off.

I made a great leap forward when I realized that feeling was progress. It’s what the icy slush inside me feels like when it is melting.

It’s what thawing out IS.

I told Doc Costin that I feel like I am in between stages right now, which is true. I feel like I am transitioning from one level of consciousness to the next.

Sometimes, New Age language is the only language that fits.

I mean it’s not ALL bullshit.

Ninety percent tops.

This transitory feeling is why I have been doing less of the deep dark delving into my depression lately and more of the bright and cheery personal reportage.

In a sense, I would rather be grinding out more of the pain inside me and making psychological progress that way, but meh.

That shit gets old eventually and that’s when I need to take a break and let my psychological birthing muscles rest and just stay on the surface a while.

Speaking of which, another thing we discussed is how I have realized that there are two prongs (I love that word) to my recovery :

• Prong 1 : Accentuate the positive. Cut through the negative self-talk and replace it with the positive. Shoot that self-loathing shit down as the madness it is. Remind myself that I’m awesome and I have nothing to be ashamed of. Other people do not see me how I see me. I am just another person to them. Be bold.
• Prong 2 : Void the negative. Push all the dark and poisonous shit inside me out into the world and reduce the net toxicity of my mind. Scream into the night. Smash the fortresses of my enemies with bolts of pure rage. Teach the world to fear my wrath, for it is mighty. EAT the LAST NANAIMO BAR and NOT EVEN CARE.

The problem, such as it is, is that these two prongs seem to pull in different directions, at least superficially.

In reality, voiding the darkness makes accentuating the positive way easier. And accentuating the positive helps me to feel strong enough to void darkness.

They are two sides of the same healing process.

Nevertheless, I still get confused as to which way I am going. The best attitude, I suppose, is to shitcan my expectations and just pivot in whatever direction seems right at the moment and get the emotional work done.

Go with the flow because you don’t really know which way things will go.

There’s a bumper sticker for ya. A long one, granted.

More after the break.

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Welcome to Rescue 711!

Remember that show, Rescue 911 with William Shatner? Me too.

Anyhow, out of diet cola, so I ordered some from 7-11, along with some strips and wedges and a Jamaican patty.

Got the Garlic Aioli dip with the strips. Because I’m a wild man.

It’s rough getting used to things going back to “normal” after Joe was off for a month and we went back to a previous, superior “normal”.

Normal classic, as opposed to the new normal.

The new normal kinda sucks because Joe works 3 to 11, and that kind of precludes hanging out in the parking lot at McD’s as we don’t get together till midnight and that is when I normally have my nightly slack.

So instead, Joe and Felicity get McD’s separately and eat it while we watch videos over Zoom, and I have my snack when we are done.

It’s an imperfect solution and I feel very guilty about being so dedicated to my routine that I can’t eat McDonald’s at midnight three times a week.

What can I say, like a werewolf nun, I’m a creature of habit.

I suppose I could go along to McD’s and just not eat anything till I got home. Have the ol midnight-ish snack then.

That seems cumbersome and lame, though.

I will muddle through. I always do.

Trying to figure out how to get rid of negative self-talk via a method a tiny bit more sophisticated than brute force suppression and substitution.

That shit’s not sustainable.

I think that part of the answer is to simply let myself grieve all the losses and pains in my life. Don’t suppress them, don’t dwell on them, just pick them up one by one, feel sad about them for however long it takes to heal, then put them down again.

Might involve a lot of crying and sadness but there are worse things.

I think one of the most pervasive pretty poisons in modern culture is the idea that you should be happy.

That happiness is normal and if you are not happy, there is something WRONG with you and you are FAILING and it is a CRISIS.

We would be far better off accepting that sometimes we will be happy and sometimes we will be sad and sometimes we will be angry and sometimes we will feel bad and in short, we will experience all known emotions and they are all fine.

No really. They are all normal, natural responses to life and none of them are wrong or bad, even the ones like sadness that are not any fun.

True wisdom comes in learning to never resist any emotion. To let them all flow through you unimpeded, so that they pass quickly and without pain.

Like Churchill said, when you are going through Hell, keep going. Don’t slam on the brakes in order to stop the pain.

That just delays getting back out again.

Instead, hit the accelerator and lean in.

Before you know it, you’ll be on the other side of it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Technically, my stress test isn’t until 10 am tomorrow, but I feel like it has already started because it’s already causing me stress.

I really don’t want to run on a treadmill.

Because I’m pretty sure it will hurt.

And I don’t like pain. It hurts me.

And I hate treadmills. They are the definition of futility. If I have to walk, I better be getting somewhere, god damn it.

They offend me aesthetically.

More pertinent is this growth I have on my foot. It’s dry and hard now, and that is what lets me walk around on it, albeit with some pain.

But if I go running on a treadmill, it will definitely crack open and start to bleed and god knows what else.

I think I may have a medically legitimate reason to call and cancel. Or at least to call and ask about it. Imagine that.

Time to make a phone call.

---

Appointment canceled. Which is a relief. But also feels weird, because I do legit want to find out if there is something wrong with my heart.

But doing the stress test now would likely fuck up my foot pretty bad, so, no dice.

The cardiologist (or her receptionist – a lot of doctors are answering their own phones these days) said that the treadmill is definitely still part of the test, but she said I could walk instead of run.

And I thought about it. I haven’t run in a very long time, so walking does appeal. But I am still too worried about the growth on my foot.

I told the cardiologist and/or receptionist that I had an appointment with a podiatrist, which wasn’t technically true. Yet.

So I call up the podiatrist that shares offices with my GP to make an appointment, only to be told that podiatry is not supported by MSP and the first appointment would cost me $115. So um….. no.

Until that moment, I thought a podiatrist was a legitimate foot doctor. A specialist, just like a cardiologist or a endocrinologist.

That was a long word to type.

But the lady on the phone said podiatry was more like being a chiropractor or traditional Chinese doctor, and hence not covered.

Wild. So what the fuck do you call a legit medical foot specialist?

A pedalogist? Hmmm. That sounds… um, wrong.

I just Googled it. It’s an orthopedic surgeon, or orthopedist. D’oh! Of course.

Which leads me to the next step in our journey, because after I got off the phone with Mister Expensive Foot Fuckery, I called Doctor Chao (my GP) to get an appointment with him, but nobody answered.

I figure at this point it is time to go back to the beginning and see my GP. He can figure out where to take my poor messed up foot next.

The wound care clinic can’t help me because there’s no wound.

The podiatrist is, apparently, kind of fake.

So back to the GP I go.

This medical merry go around is enough to make a fella sick.

But at least it gives me something to write about.

More after the break.

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Pasta Part Deux

Having Part The Second of my Pizza hut pizza feast from last night.

The Meaty Marinara pasta, natch. That’s my go-to, my fave. The Creamy Alfredo is pretty good, too, but I just go nuts for rich, beefy dishes.

They are so delicious. And feel so nourishing.

Probably got lots of B12 too.

Speaking of which, I realized recently I had completely forgotten my plan to get loads more Vitamin B12 in my diet.

Totally spaced on it. Haven’t had a supplemental injection in a while either. Eep.

I assume my levels are rock bottom again right now as a result. Which might just explain my run down feeling.

So, it’s time for another meaty order from Sav-on. Get myself lots of tasty animal products to encourage me to eat meatier fair and get my B12 up again.

It’s not like I have anything against meat. I’m no vegan or vegetarian.

But somehow I got out of the habit of eating meat except when I am eating out. I don’t know how that started.

Maybe as a cost saving measure?

Then again, I have never been all that carnivorous. I mean, I like meat. Meat is both tasty and good.

But I have always been able to take it or leave it. A meal without meat doesn’t bother me at all. I’ve enjoyed the heck out of vegetarian cuisine.

And I never bought in to the whole “every meal needs a meat” jive that North American culture lays on people.

In fact, come to think of it, until fairly recently I did not know that meat and other animal products are the only way to get Vitamin B12.

I suppose that somewhere in the back of my mind was a hazy idea that meat was entirely option and a person could just go without.

Um, nope. You got to get that B12 somewhere. And if you don’t get enough of it, you end up feeling like crap.

Makes me wonder how many of my fellow depressives could benefit from a good B12 supplement. Or a steak.

The best dietary supplement is always food. Food is what we evolved to derive nutrition from. Jury’s still out on pills.

Don’t get me started.

I still can’t quite believe I had a medically sound reason not to take the stress test. I keep going over it in my mind, looking for the fatal flaw, a loose thread if you will, that will reveal that it was all a delusion my brain cooked up in order to get me out of something I really didn’t want to do.

But nope. It’s legit. The growth on my right foot would undoubtedly have cracked open under the pressure of treadmill treading, and that is bad.

So until I get that mofo fixed, no stress test for me.

I’m actually a tiny bit disappointed.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.