Remember this one?

There is nothing I am supposed to be doing.

There is nothing I am supposed to be doing.

There is nothing I am supposed to be doing.

Repeat until believed.

But we already know that ain’t going to happen, This must be the fifth or sixth time I have returned to this topic and each time I have told myself the same thing and made like I had finally liberated myself from this oppressive and overpowering sense that I am constantly failing a test I can’t even see and every time, it makes me feel better for a little while but eventually my mind reverts to the old pattern and I am back to square 1.

The problem is that I can only resist this deadly default state by sheer force of will, and that is never, ever a good long term plan. Doing things by sheer force of will is meant to be for emergencies. It’s the spiritual equivalent of mothers lifting cars off their children when the adrenaline is pumping.

No, I will not be deflected into intellectualization. Nice try, subconscious mind.

The only hope I have of a lasting solution is to try to figure out why I always feel like there’s something I am supposed to be doing and try to fix that thing.

The problem is that this feeling of failure has been around for so long that I can’t easily remember where it started. And most of the time, it operates way in the background, so that I don’t consciously feel it.

And yet, it really rules over everything else. The whole reason I hide from the world so hard is to hide from this sense of constant failure. I can’t face the world and all its voices telling me that I should/could do this or that, so I just hide from the whole thing.

Like Mister Redding said…

So is the fundamental problem indecision? Namely, my inability choose between the seething sea of a near-infinite number of options that I perceive?

If so, why can’t I choose? Heck, how does anybody choose?

By not having my sort of vision, I suppose. Fundamentally. They either don’t see even a millionth of the possibilities I see, or something in them – call it will, desire, or instinct – lets them eliminate most of them and choose the one that suits them,

The one that feels right.

And maybe that’s the real problem. I am trying to actually computational process all those possibilities and that is obviously impossible.

Too many variables for even my big ol brain to handle.

Normal, healthy people have emotional solutions to the problem. And these work for them because they are not obsessed with finding the “right” answer.

They are not trying to control outcomes by anticipating and correcting for all potential problems like I am.

And they are definitely not waiting for the “right” answer before acting. They forge ahead and deal with life as it comes, with faith that whatever happens, they will be able to deal with it well enough to survive.

And how did they get that faith? By getting hurt and making mistakes and still being there afterwards. By surviving bad things happening to them, and thus learning that they are not the end of the world.

By being ‘stupid’ enough to go out and explore and learn instead of hiding from the world like I have done all my life.

By not being so fixated on being “safe”.

And we all know how I got that way.

(HINT : Rhymes with “grape”)

So it all comes down to my primary trauma taking my sense of safety away.

But why does all this make me feel like there is something I am supposed to be doing?

More after the break.

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Yeah, what’s with that?

For once, I am going to beat back all the competing ideas of what to write about that are trying to entice me into doing something “easier” and stick with my subject.

Imagine me beating back an unseen mob outside my open door while shouting “Back! Back, you savages!” before finally getting the door shut. Phew!

So why does all the above the line booshwa^[1] lead me to feeling like I am constantly failing to do whatever it is I am supposed to do?

The originating incident has to be when my parents took me out of college. Until that point, I had a clear idea what I was supposed to be doing.

I was supposed to be passing my classes and getting a degree. It would have been a double major in psych and philosophy. I would have used that to get into a master’s program in psych with the aim of becoming a therapist.

Not a psychiatrist. No plans for med school. But a therapist.

And I suppose when I got yanked out of school, that put all those plans to an end and I never replaced them, so that while the plans themselves died, the feeling that I am missing out and should be out there in the world “bettering myself” never went away.

It just disappeared into the background noise of my mind, silent but omnipresent.

And I can see why. I was a very different person back then, and that person did not know how to handle what had happened. Like a victim of a horribly violent crime, it was all so sudden that I didn’t even know how to process it.

Which is why it led to my losing my fucking mind and having to claw my way back to my current level of sanity way back in the early to mid Nineties.

It was such a huge conflict because I had done what I had always done, said “Sure thing! No problem!” when my parents asked something of me, and it had led to me being absolutely miserable in a way my parental programming did not even allow myself to recognize, let alone react against.

And you know what? I still haven’t processed it. Not entirely. I have at least gotten myself to the point where I see how profoundly I was betrayed and just how much life scarring damage that did to me – lost my friends and my future and my fragile grip on reality – but on a deeper level, I have never addressed the profound trauma to my (at the time) burgeoning adulthood that did and how it led to my not being able to move forward in life at all.

I was cut down in my prime and I still haven’t recovered.

Guess I know what I will talk about with my therapist next time.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

It slips my mind from time to time.

Did the followup with my podiatrist. He continues to be young and handsome.

Things are aces on that front. The wound has done an amazing amount of healing in two weeks. Once the doctor peeled off the accumulated callous, it was evidence that the ulcer was mostly healed and that more band-aids and Neosporin ought to finish the dang thing off.

Which is groovalicious. Nice for one of my problems to go away for once.

But the bad news is that I am still fucking dying. Just getting out of Joe’s car and into the office building and up the elevator felt like death.

So much so that I was actually happy when the doctor put me in an examination room and told me he would be with me in ten minutes.

That way, my pulse had time to get back to normal.

And I know what this means. It means the wheelchair and/or the mobility scooter are coming for me any day now. It won’t be long before I will be as physically disabled as I am emotionally disabled.

Maybe that will be enough to get me to take care of myself properly.

And maybe not.

Clearly I need to develop my self-discipline muscles so that I can override that clutching paralytic fear that keeps me from doing much of anything.

I mean, objectively, I could at least be taking my insulin regularly. It doesn’t take long and it isn’t particularly hard and I think it’s safe to assume my blood sugar level is crazy high most of the time right now.

Testing is still beyond me. Maybe if I get the insulin going, I will feel good enough to try to get testing fricking working, but for now that it not within reach for me.

This despite the fact that I am getting weird pains in my legs and feet a lot and that I regularly feel like yesterday’s leftover crap and that just getting out of a car and going up an elevator damn near kills me.

Admittedly, part of that was the cold. My body just can’t handle it any more. Cold air hurts my lungs and sucks the energy right out of me.

But still. I am quite sick. I really “should” be doing more about that.

But it doesn’t interfere with playing video games and blogging, so deep down I don’t care. I have my addictions well supplied. Anything else is superfluous.

At least, that’s how the diseased part of me sees it. And for now, it still has a majority government. So I do what it says more times than not now.

But its power base is crumbling and one day it will fall and I will be in control of myself for the first time in a very long time and I will finally be able to truly live my life.

At least, that’s the plan.

Who knows, I might die before that can ever happen.

Well, it’s been a really stupid and pointless ride.

More after the break.

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The usual bullshit

Whoa, watch out, Big Baby Brain (BBB) is feeling cranky.

Had to order my groceries online again on Sunday. The previous Sunday it had been because I was too sick to go out.

This time, it was because it was too wintry outside for any of us to go out. So instead, we “teledined” with Felicity over Zoom.

Reminds me that I still owe Joe $20 for the McD’s and 2Ls of Diet Coke. Kind of hard to pay him back when I have no cash because I haven’t been near an ATM for ages.

He and I really need to figure out a way to transfer funds directly. If we had that, not only could I skip the ATM, I wouldn’t need to cash my check in person and could finally join the millennium and get direct deposit.

Hell, maybe I could even set it up so the rent went to him automatically once a month.

Anyhow, we “teledined” and did not go out, so once more, I was at the mercy of Sav-On Foods and their oddly unreliable online ordering system.

And as per usual, a bunch of the stuff I ordered did not arrive. Out of stock, or so they say. Funny, I am pretty sure that if I went to the Ironwood Sav-On Foods, I would find the cookies and diet pop I ordered right there on the shelves.

Well, except for the Diet Root Beer. That shit’s basically a myth now.

And I knew they would not have the sugar free Scotch mints, dammit. I ordered them basically as an act of pure hope.

I can only assume that someone fucked that up, though, because I got a bag of Pep O Mint life savers and they are NOT the sugar free kind.

I checked my digital receipt and I def unchecked the “allow substitutions” box when i ordered, so there’s no excuse for them getting it wrong.

More worrisome is the fact that I got NONE of the cookies I ordered. Right now I am coasting on my backup supply of cookies but that will only last another day or so.

I am telling you, I am so sick and tired of not getting what I order that I think I will try ordering everything via Amazon.ca next time.

What the hell, I already pay for Amazon Prime, might as well use it. And somehow I have more faith in Jeff Bezos than in Sav-On right now.

I mean, Bezos might be a nightmare villain from a children’s movie about puppets, but at least Amazon gets shit done.

Of course, with Amazon, I will likely have to deal with some fool who expects me to come down to the front door of the building to get my stuff.

No way, Hose A. You’re paid to deliver my package to me. I am not going to get dressed and haul butt down the elevator and to the front door to make YOUR life easier.

I’m nice but I’m not THAT kind of nice.

Besides, based on my difficulties at the podiatrist’s office today, going down there would likely take a hell of a lot out of me.

Bring my stuff to me, bitch. I’m disabled.

Never try to out-lazy a fat man. Especially a smartass one like me.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Or am I? It’s a hard question to answer.

Clearly, the most psychologically healthy answer is “yes”. Yes of course I am doing all I can to get better. Of course I am doing “enough”. I am doing my absolute best with the hand I have been dealt and my overbearing superego can take all its fretting and feelings of indecision and inadequacy and shove them up its anal stage.

Yeah, I play video games most of the time. I’m not happy about it but it’s my refuge from anxiety, fear, and depression, and I need it.

When I am ready, I will start making the moves that might lead to having better things to do with my time than rot my brain with video games all day.

But I am not there yet. The fear is still too strong in me. The fear of exposure, the fear of the world, the fear of having to deal with that seething mass of danger and possibilities and overstimulation out there beyond my prison walls.

Honestly, I could really use someone to hold my hand through the whole thing. But I can’t imagine anyone who would be willing to do so.

I will think about it though.

Anyhow, the problem with “I am doing all that I can”, which is neutral/positive, is that it’s only one tiny shade of meaning away from “I can’t do any more than that”, which is actually a very depressing thought.

It seems, on a prima facie logic sense, to eliminate all possibility of growth. I literally could not be doing more. Whatever rate of progress I am currently maintaining is the absolute upper limit. No sense in even trying to try harder.

And I need growth. Progress. Evolution. Stasis is not an option. I grow or I die.

So the idea that I am doing all that I can clearly needs some fine tuning.

I suppose I could say I am doing all I should be doing. I am not screwing up or failing myself and there is nothing I am “supposed” to be doing that I am not.

It sometimes feels that way, granted, but that’s just a negative interpretation of a frustrated growth pattern and not to be taken as literal truth.

It’ll sure be nice to be healthy enough to go out into the world and pursue my fortune and find my way in this crazy old world, but until then, all I or any other victim of serious illness owe the world is doing what one can to convalesce.

And that’s kind of what all the blogging is about. Sadly, mental illness can’t be solved by a pill or an operation or putting your psyche in a cast for a while.

The human brain is the most complex thing in the known universe and when things go wrong on the software level, as with all forms of mental illness that do not result from organic brain damage and/or malfunction, all you can do is keep digging through the detritus in ones brain so you can throw out the bad stuff and let the good stuff shine.

So I will continue to strive to sort my head out, and it takes as long as it takes.

It sucks, but it’s what I am stuck with for now. After all….

I’m doing what I can.

More after the break.

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Where I belong

In theory, I could be attending R. Graeme Cameron’s weekly fannish Zoom meeting for us older fen right now.

Joe’s there. I can hear his laptop from here. I hear the voices of people I like talking about things which interest me. In theory, it’s an ideal environment for me to stick a baby toe into the white water rapids of actual socialization.

But I can’t. I just…. can’t. No combination of the moves available to me will get me there. Something I very much want is tantalizingly close and yet I just… can’t.

And I don’t know how to feel about that.

It upsets me. That’s clear. Makes me want to close my eyes and pretend it isn’t happening. Block it out of my mind.

After all, that’s what I do with damn near everything out. It’s a highly developed skill.

I want to be there. And the “so close and yet so far” pain of it all is excruciating. If I was even remotely functional, that would be more than enough motivation to get the fuck over myself, get out there, and have fun.

But it ain’t. My depression gives me enormous motivation resistance. It takes inputs of extraordinary power and influence to so much as activate my motivation center, let alone actually rouse it to action.

It’s this resistance – this numbness – that is the real enemy here. Depression’s twin heads of anxiety and despair are the obvious threat and fighting them can lead to some good results, but ultimately it is the hidden third head that causes adrift in the Arctic Ocean level numbness that must be defeated if the beast itself is to die.

It’s that numbness that cuts off all feeling of hope and love and joy and basic human connection and leaves us shivering in the dark.

It’s that numbness that makes it so hard to move with precision, either physically or emotionally, or even mentally. Who can be agile when they are mostly paralyzed?

It’s that numbness that makes you subconsciously seek out pain and suffering because there is a voice inside you screaming from the wound created by that space where your hotter emotions should be. Your mind knows what should be there, and the absence of those things makes you seek out something, anything, that might cut through the frostbite and actually make you feel something.

And it’s that numbness that creates the inner silence that makes every little thought and idea and emotion seem to roar like a demon and send your poor head rocking.

That’s why getting better means waking up.

And like rubbing a limb that’s gone to sleep back to life, at first, it’s really going to hurt.

But it’s the only cure for the phantom limb pain of the mind.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Ordered from the Wing Kee, our local (as in, two blocks away) Chinese place last night.

You may remember the name from my puzzled rant about how I live in one of the highest concentrations of Chinese people outside of Beijing and yet it is curiously hard to find Chinese food here.

By which I mean Canadian style Chinese, of course. With that in mind, it’s not really that mysterious. I mean, I imagine it’s pretty hard to find a Chinese-style hamburger anywhere in the rest of Canada.

The Wing Kee is basically the only option for my idea of Chinese food that doesn’t also have some weird rule like $40 minimum order or some complicated combo system or some other such nonsense.

So anyhoo, ordered BBQ duck on rice from the Wing Kee last night. I’d never ordered it before but I love the BBQ duck I used to buy at a Chinese bakery/deli, so it seemed like a sure thing.

Not so much, as it turns out.

Because when it arrived, the duck portion of it was like 85 percent bones and fat. Truth. It was so bad that I basically just ate some of the veggies and rice and left the duck part of it for today, when I would be more inclined to dig through the offal to get the small portions of actual duck flesh (which were in no sense BBQ) out.

And that’s what I did today. Most of what I got went right into the composting, leaving me with a few paltry scraps of bland steamed duck meat.

I am disappoint.

To the point where I doubt I will order from the Wing Kee again. it’s such a total and utter fail that it makes me question whether the place is going to be around much longer… or whether it should be around.

Generally speaking, when the food quality of a restaurant takes a nosedive, it means that they are not long for the world. Once they are desperate enough to cut costs that they compromise the quality of the very thing they sell, causing them to rapidly lose customers, the writing is on the wall.

They’ve certainly lost me as a customer.

Dunno where the heck I will get my Chinese food now. The next best place is Bamboo Express, and their version of the concept of an egg roll is a hunk of fried batter the size and shape of a Nerf football.

It doesn’t even have a filling. No bean sprouts or bok choy or anything. It’s just a ovoid blob of the sort of batter the casing of a REAL egg is made of.

Wonton batter, maybe? But even plain old fried wontons are an eight story tiramisu of intricate design and execution compared to these “egg rolls”.

Oh well, Plenty of other places to eat. And if I want Chinese food bad enough, I can take a cab to the mall and go to the food court.

Modern life is so darn complicated.

More after the break.

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Wobbling along the edge

Been wobbling along the edge of a deep depression lately.

The usual signs are there. Moments of black rage nihilism where I want to kill all of reality just to make it SHUT UP for once. Times when a terrible sadness wells up within me and I desperately want to let it out, but I don’t know how.

I try to cry. But I don’t get very far. The ground is barely wet when the rain stops.

And I have a hefty dose of that haunted feeling I get sometimes, like there is a ghost in my soul and it’s trying to get out – or at least get me to listen to what it’s trying to say.

I try, little ghostie. But I haven’t the ears to hear you yet.

My physical health is crappy too. I am not even going to try to figure out the chicken and egg of cause and effect there.

I feel crappy either way.

I’ve been having digestive issues and sinus issues, probably related. My sinuses get clogged, that causes a sinus headache, which makes my head hurt in a certain way that also makes me nauseous and upsets my digestion and voila, cramps in my gut.

Oh, and my balls ache too. Because why let the other parts have all the fun of making me utterly miserable.

I blame the vagus nerve. Who knows what that dang thing is up to.

Meanwhile, in reality, it’s probably all happening because I went two weeks withotu showering and my pores are all clogged up.

And the shower I took earlier this evening should help eventually, but in the mean time, my body still has to build up pressure behind the remaining clogs to push them out and finally let my skin breathe again, and that is not fun while it’s happening.

So I am going to try hard to make myself take another shower, a longer and hotter one, to maybe steam clean my pores instead of waiting for the dam to burst.

Or the fever to break. Take your pick.

What I really need is a long soak in a very hot bath. As hot as I can stand, because it’s the heat that both signals the pores to dilate and melts the accumulated goo inside.

I don’t normally take baths because they are kinda gross. I don’t like sitting there in a stew of my own effluvia. Showers don’t have that problem. The steady stream of a shower takes all that old sweat and skin salt and such away instantly.

My perfect setup would be an indoor heated river that I could sit in and the warm water would reach up to my neck and just flow over and around me, taking all the gross stuff away and cleaning my skin fresh and clean and happy.

Still, perhaps I can talk myself into taking one good hot bath to try to reset my skin to it factory settings and maybe treat it a bit better this time through.

That would be nice.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

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You know what I really want? Love.

And not just any kind of love. Big love. Powerful love. Strong love. The love of someone far stronger and smarter and wiser than my poor self. Someone who can take me in their arms and tell me everything is going to be alright and make me believe it. Someone who can protect me both from the world and from my own foolishness.

Someone who loves me deeply and completely but not blindly. Because they know me. They get me. They understand who I am and why. They know me flaws and all and still they love and affirm and value me and make me feel like I am truly worth something.

Someone who likes having me around. Someone who wants to hear what I have to say because they understand what I am trying to tell them and enjoy hearing it because they see that I have a lot of worthwhile things to say and value receiving them.

And they are strong. So, so strong. Strong enough to calm my fears and soothe my jangled nerves and make me feel safe. Someone whose power and warmth and vitality can penetrate my fragile frostbitten soul and let me finally feel warm inside.

Someone who can finally make me feel like I have come home. Truly come home. And that everything is going to be good now because at long long last, I am safe.

So basically, a parent. The parent I never got as a kid. Someone to give me all the love and affirmation and hope and protection and guidance and acceptance and encouragement that I never got as a kid and that still lingers as an unmet need even though I am 47.

Clearly, I can’t move forward without getting these needs met in some way on some level. They are not just going to go away. Human beings need certain inputs before they can grow up and like childhood malnutrition, a lack of them leaves marks that last a lifetime and stunt the child’s growth into a healthy adult.

Just as clearly, these needs are not something a big bearded 47 year old man can address via the direct route. I can’t go looking for this missing parent in the real world because such a person does not exist. Not to the point I need them to exist.

Because what I am basically talking about is God. And religious faith is not really an option for me. For better and definitely for worse, I am far too “rational” for my own good and faith a priori to evidence is not possible in my cold and calculating world.

But all is not lost. I might not be able to accept the logically absurd and nakedly petty and self-serving faith of others, but I am a dreamer, and dreamers dream what they need into existence without waiting for reality’s permission.

So maybe I can dream up a God for myself. One who meets all of my needs without needing to exist anywhere outside my capacious skull.

I mean, what the hell, that’s where other people’s God lives too.

I’m just cutting out the middleman.

More after the break.

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Being your own parent

Um, yeah, that doesn’t happen. Not for me. Not yet, anyhow.

I mean, it sounds good. Plausible, even. It sure would be nice if I could do that.

But I can’t do that. So it’s worse than useless. Might as well be someone telling me to solve my transportation problems by flapping my wings.

That would definitely work.

But I have no wings.

And that’s a hard idea to get across to people. It’s only been in the last few days that I have come up with the idea of their being no sequence of moves available to me that would result in my doing X, and while that’s by far the best way of expressing it I have come up with, it’s not exactly accessible.

Except possibly to other INTJs. We all think in chess terms on the abstract level.

Still, I am at least somewhat closer to being able to explain to people why I can’t do that perfectly sensible sounding thing that it totally seems like I could totally do and that would totally improve my situation.

More importantly, I can explain it to myself.

Anyhow, back to self-parenting. Surprise! I remember what I was talking about.

Self-patenting is, to me, at this time, obviously impossible. I don’t have an inner parent that can take care of the paralyzed preschooler inside me. It’s just me, a timid child walking naked through midnight tundra trying to find the way home.

I have no idea where that inner parent would have come from because it’s not like I had any role models. There was nobody in my life at any point who would have modeled proper caring for me.

Even my favorite teacher, Mrs. Rogers, found me very frustrating to deal with. And while I will always adore her for being the only teacher who cared enough to keep at me long and hard enough to break through to me, she was not exactly a warm and compassionate kind of woman.

Just stubborn enough and dedicated enough to wrestles with the impossible kid.

I don’t even have the example of someone else’s parents. I mean, I am sure there were plenty of caring, involved parents around me when I was a kid but I was too socially isolated and miserable to take any notice of them.

More abstractly, to me the idea of being my own parent seems as ridiculous as trying to give yourself a piggy back ride. No matter how clever you are, or how deeply insightful you are, or how emotionally acrobatic you are, it is and always will be a two person job.

But I can see outside that paradigm. I can accept the abstract possibility of being able to be, if not exactly my own parent, than at least my own best friend.

But it will be a long time running.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Well I guess it’s time to fill my daily quota of shrapnel pulled out of my tortured soul and fed into the insatiable void of screaming madness at the center of my being.

Still working on that. It’s probably some kind of chemical imbalance.

Not really feeling the words right now. My mind is agitated and I am having trouble staying focused on the page. I keep wandering off on long, rambling mental tangents that lead me over hill and dale then suddenly remembering I was like… doing something. Wasn’t I?

I have never needed drugs in order to trip.

I just have to think about stuff.

---

Haven’t been back to Second Life since last we met.

I know I will go back at least one more time to check out the furry scene there. My gut feeling is that I will find a lot of neat stuff but no people.

According to one furry I know, it’s possible that most of the people from Second Life have migrated to VR Chat now.

That makes sense but sucks. I understand VR Chat is a lot like Second Life but more sophisticated. It’s clearly the next evolution of the idea.

But not having VR gear, I dunno if I can access it. The name says no but I would imagine that if one wants a virtual community to thrive, having it be usable only by the still relatively small number of people with VR sets.

---

Just looked it up. You do NOT need a VR set to use it. So I am going to check it out once I am done with this section of the day’s bloggening.

I will still go back to Second Life one more time just to check out the furry action. If I don’t, it will hang there as an unfinished task in my mind.

Compulsive completion and all that jazz.

But if VR Chat is where the action is, that’s where I will go.

It’s kind of ironic how I live in this zone between the need for attention (strong) and my social anxiety (also strong).

It supports the notion that I am, in a sense, an artificial introvert. Or, put less poetically but more accurately, I am not naturally as much as an introvert as I have been due to my social anxiety and depression.

I like this idea. Means there is hope for me yet.

And it matches the evidence. I’ve always been a ham. I love performing for people and showing off. Under the right circumstances, I love having an audience and being the center of attention. I am endlessly curious about people and want to hear their stories. I crave affection and attention and affirmation.

A hermit I ain’t. Not deep down. My demons might have chased me into this cave and I might have sealed the door to keep them out, but this is not my natural habitat.

I think my natural cycle would oscillate organically between extrovert excursions and introverted retreats to recharge my social batteries.

But right now, I need to retreat because I have a sinus headache.

More after the break.

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I don’t belong here

Mandatory song reference :

Felt good to get that off my chest.

Seriously. Fuck those guys.

Anyhow, that’s not the sense of feeling like you don’t belong I am going to talk about tonight. Tonight, I will talk about where in a way I do feel I belong.

Spoiler : it’s not reality.

I was thinking about the Die Hard movies and that got me thinking about Die Hard 2 and it occurred to me that if just once in my life, I got to say “YIppie ki yi yay, motherfuckers” then take a drag on a cigar while something evil exploded, that would be a peak experience. I could die happy after that.

Hell, I might die OF happiness after that.

But that got me to thinking, well, why? Why would it be this apotheosis level amazing event to do a bit from a movie I like? What, exactly, am I getting out of it?

That’s when it struck me that one of the things I would get out of it would be that for once, my two parallel realities would align : the real world, and the world of media properties that I and most of my other Generation X types have in our heads.

And I had never consciously realized how much of my mental terrain came from media before that moment.

Like I have said many times before, I was raised by television. It’s a well known fact.

But now I realize the real weight of that because it means that so much of my childhood was spent watching TV and reading and such that the vast majority of the childhood experiences that laid the foundation for my personality were virtual.

When other kids were out have real experiences, I was reading, watching TV, and playing video games. All my experiences were from media. I am, in a deep sense, mostly made of media I consumed.

No wonder I have such a weak hold on reality.

I’ve spent so little time in it.

And obviously that continues to this day. I spend all my time in front of this computer. The closest I get to real world experience is talking as a fake fox with other fake animals in a text based environment.

That’s pretty unreal, to be honest.

Plus, there’s hanging out with my real world friends, and thank goodness for that. It is what keeps me sane because it gives me a reason to stay attached to the real world instead of disappearing into the computer like I have joined the Borg.

That reminds me. I was going to try to spend more time outside so I can ground myself in reality and make myself feel much more secure.

Funny how that slipped my mind.

Maybe that’s why I end up spending so much time just laying in bed doing nothing except, I suppose, letting my thoughts process without new input.

That’s my brain forcing me to stop consuming media.

But that’s not enough, I need to get out of my head entirely and spend some time in the real world so I can ground myself and no longer feel like I am constantly dangling over the precipice of madness and catatonia.

Problem is that I am so much more at home in the media saturated world of my mind.

The sad truth is, that’s the place where I feel like I belong.

Kinda pitiful, ain’t it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Today was Therapy Thursday. And on these days, I reserve the option to not immediately start my blogging at 2 pm, like I do every other day of the week, because therapy often leaves me mentally exhausted and in no fit state to blog.

I don’t exercise that option very often, though, and now I remember why. By skipping my blogging until I sit down to dinner, I end up starting at 8 pm, and that brings back the unwelcome and gladly forgotten specter of time pressure.

I actually feel like I need to hurry now.

I hate hurrying.

So next time I do this, I will force myself to do Blogging Part 1 at 5 pm so that when supper time (8 pm ish) rolls around, I am doing Blogging Part 2 : Electric Blogaloo with supper like I normally do.

I mean, the feeling of pressure isn’t rational. I can easily do all my blogging before midnight. In fact, long ago, in the mist shrouded caverns of the past, that’s how I always did it. Just sat down at supper and did the whole thousand words in one go.

Then one time I was simply too sick to do that, so I decided to do 500 then and 500 later that evening.

And the next day I was still pretty sick, so I did it again.

Then the third day, I felt a lot better, and was going to go back to the usual “once a day, all at once” schedule, when I realized I really liked breaking it up like that.

Now I can’t imagine doing it at all once ever again.

Not on purpose, at least. Lately I have been writing Part 1’s that end up being 600, 700, or even 800 words. so it’s possible I will do it by accident one of these days.

This is a happy development. I like being prolific. I take it as a sign that I am really developing my writing muscles when I write so much without feeling like I am pushing myself or ending up hating having to write more.

Nope. This shit stays fun or it stops dead. I am 100 percent convinced that play and fun are at the very heart of art and the only way to stay alive as a creator of any sort is to keep doing things you find fun.

Because nobody has to “find” the motivation to do fun things. Nobody needs to wait to be inspired to do fun things.

Fun things are, by definition, intrinsically rewarding.

And it’s the extrinsic rewards that really keep you going.

Now where was I….

---

Oh yeah, therapy

Oh yeah, therapy. I was, at one point, tacking towards talking about today’s therapy session. Then I forgot and talked about other things.

How very like me. I am glad I am not the sort of person who needs linear progression.

That’s why this blog has no format. Technically, as long as I am expressing myself through words, I am doing it right.

Some of us need that kind of freedom.

Anyhow, therapy. Was a decent session. I unloaded the vast majority of my recent major revelations about being essentially an infant and how I had never taken charge of my life except when I went to Kwantlen then VFS and how I have always had someone to take care of the grownup reality for me, and so on.

One thing I realized is that the infant label doesn’t work and yet I am not a real child either, so obviously I am a preschooler.

I was one when I got raped at 4, after all, so it would make sense that there is where I stopped. I am a victim of arrested development at a poignantly early age.

Like I told my therapist today, while these revelations are huge (biggest I’ve ever had) and ground-shaking and all that, I am very happy to have had them and look forward to tackling my greatest challenge yet as I try to deal with them so I can move on.

This is where my ability to just keep moving forward no matter what comes in handy. I will just keep plowing ahead with this task like a bulldozer. Victory is inevitable.

Once I grasp where/what growth is, I have to go in that direction. There is no stasis. I evolve or I die.

And I don’t wanna die.

Another revelation from/during therapy is that this whole preschooler thing explains why I have such a hard time looking after myself.

After all, if my whole deal is being cute and pathetic, anything I do towards looking after myself will send the wrong signal and might discourage people from helping me.

This shit just drips with sadness, doesn’t it.

This is why I am sitting in a filthy room that I never clean and why I don’t take care of my diabetes and why I, in general, don’t get anywhere in life.

How could I, when I am so helpless and adorable?

No wonder I freeze up when I even think about taking charge of my life and getting things like cleaning up my room or getting back to injecting insulin done.

Those things go directly against my whole adorable and pathetic deal.

Clearly, I need a whole new deal with life. One where I am strong and independent and can truly respect myself instead of always casting myself as the helpless victim of forces beyond my control.

They might have been beyond my control before. But not any more. Now I know where I am and what’s going down, and that means I can do something about it.

It will take a lot of toil and strain and sweat and tears before I clear this, the biggest of all clogs in my system. I have never been more aware of the nature of the weight on my chest that has been holding me down.

But I’m not worried. I know that I can lift it off myself.

Because now I know where the handles are.

Wow, I did it all in one sitting. Whaddaya know.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Got nothing on my mind right now. Feel a wee bit between thoughts.

So I will talk Second Life. ^[1]

I was reading a pretty interesting article about whether or not it would be better if offices replaced Zoom with some sort of 3D virtual meeting space with avatars^[2] when the article mentioned the biggest and best example of this, Second Life.

It then diverted into a fascinating look at this one community and location called Virtual Ability Island, a community space for people with disabilities loosely organized around letting them do the things they could not do in the real world.

And that got me thinking about my own disabilities, like depression and obesity and especially my social anxiety, and I thought maybe Second Life could help me with that by being a small, doable step towards broader socialization.

It’s not exactly reality, but it’s a lot more “real” than the text-based environment that is my usual furry hangout, so it might make for an excellent place to desensitize.

So I decided to give it another try, After all, it had been at least a decade since I tried it the first time, so presumably it was a lot more refined by now.

When I tried it the first time it was crude. And ugly. And I just can’t hang around a palce that displeases me aesthetically.

What can I say, I’m a sensitive artist type.

Then again, maybe I just felt overwhelmed by novelty and social anxiety, freaked out, seized on one thing I didn’t like, and used that as my excuse to run away.

Whatever. Point is, it didn’t make me happy.

But that was a decade ago and I was curious about it again so I signed up, downloaded it, and gave it a shot.

It’s way better organized and cleaner looking now. The graphics are a lot better. Everything looks far more professional and far less ad hoc.

It’s all still kind of overwhelming to me, but I am easily overwhelmed.

Mental note : get more whelm.

I’ve given it two shots so far. Once, just to check shit out and look around. That ended with me in some place called Horizons where I was exhorted to play a really crappy kind of video game.

Like, would get a D as a beginner’s project in video game school.

Then I checked out a “Gaming” area, only to find it filled with strange casino games with various themes that all worked out to be basically bingo.

Yawn. Casino games are boring AF when there’s no real money on the line.

Then I checked out “Social Island” because it was so ridiculously on point with my goals that I could not resist.

And it was… chaotic, unsurprisingly. Random music playing in various places, random text conversations going on.

That’s when my social batteries wore out. Quit.

Then I looked up furry stuff for Second Life as I know there is a simply massive furry community there. Found out there was a huge adult GLBTQA+ club called GYC, so on my next sortie, I looked it up and checked it out.

Or rather, I tried to, but it turns out I was not “old” enough, in the sense that my character had been created too recently.

That hurt a bit, but I get it. They probably get a lot of assholes “griefing” them and that can only happen if people can make new characters and return to do more dickery, and having to wait three days between attempts would really take the fun out of it.

So it doesn’t matter if FurFagsDieLOL makes a whole new account. He still won’t be able to go get his trolling jollies for three days.

Being blocked was such a surprise, however, that I had no idea what to do next, so I ended up just quitting.

I will be giving it another shot later today.

I will keep you updated.

More after the break.

---

Life 2 Episode 3

Gave Second Life another shot.

Managed to hang around for a bit more than half an hour before getting too frustrated and/or bored and/or overwhelmed to continue.

Checked out Boystown, which is their big gay neighborhood. Wandered around a while, looking at this and that. Suddenly realized I had not seen any other players.

I went back to the “Destinations” tab and realized that some of the destinations had a number of players listed but Boystown did… not.

Yup. I was the only boy in Boystown,

How very depressing.

In fact, there’s nobody in most places. I am beginning to feel like the whole place is a boomtown after the boom. I may have arrived at the place when it’s circling the drain, socially speaking, and I am not going to find there to be a lot of “action”.

But then again, I once thought that about FurryMUCK and Tapestries, and it turned out that you just had to know where to go, so I will hold out hope for Second Life yet.

At least until I am “old” enough to go to the furry gay club.

If I don’t find my kind of action – conversation and/or gay furry sex – then I will give myself a pat on the back for expanding my boundaries and give up.

So far I found exactly one place where people were talking – an exhibitionist area called the Keyhole Bar (cute name). There were people dancing and the music was dance remixes of 80’s songs (how very) and people were, in fact, talking.

It was a pretty stupid conversation, but it’s a start.

I tried to join the conversation but nobody reacted to anything I said, and I got a shocking reminder of what it’s like to be socially invisible.

I am so well established on Tapestries that I forgot all about that feeling.

Not happy to have it back, to be honest.

But whatever. New people are always invisible. You have to hang around a place for a while before you become part of the scene and not just another blip on the screen, there for too short a time to be worth consideration.

Myself, I try to make sure to greet new people at Merriam’s, my hangout on Tapestries. But I am often too wrapped up in my interactions with my friends and acquaintances to even notice someone I don’t know.

So if I find a place I like, I will hang around till I decloak.

What the hell, I can always play a game in another window while I wait.

Oh, if anyone is curious, my username is DJKelvinZero.

Why Kelvin Zero?

Because I’m the coolest.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

It has occurred to me that in order to transition from infancy to adulthood, like I want to do, I will kind of have to be a child for a while along the way.

I am not, at the moment, happy about that.

For one thing, I have no idea what that would even look like. Arguably I already live like a child on summer vacation. I spend all day entertaining myself. I have no responsibilities. I don’t have homework, or any other kind of work.

So what difference would it make?

Maybe the truth of it all is that I’ve been a child all these years. A weak and reclusive one, but a child nonetheless.

Well that would save some time.

A child with infant emotional patterns? I dunno. Children deal with things by attracting people to nurture them sometimes too, I suppose.

But most kids are more self-motivated and adventurous than I am. They explore, they try things, they get into trouble, they act on emotion, they learn by doing.

So if I am still a child, I am the kind of child I was : terrified, weak, isolated, easy to ignore, unable to advocate or pursue his own needs.

Well it’s someplace to start.

Call it being an arrested child. After all, it’s not like I got to have a real childhood. All that vital social development and the emotional maturity it brings passed me by entirely.

Things grow strange in the dark. And my childhood was midnight black.

So my next step is still childhood. Just a better one.

No idea how to pull that off. As usual, I know where I want to go but I have no idea how to get there. All routes require jumps I just cannot make, spans I cannot cross.

Maybe I just need to get better at jumping, then. Because figuring out how to get there via moves I can actually make seems impossible to me now.

Well one thing I have learned from video games is that if the problem seems impossible to solve, you’re looking at it wrong, and it’s time to pull back and rethink. Examine your assumptions and see if any of them are flawed,

Not easy for me given that whole “lack of a reverse gear” thing I talked about yesterday. My mind wants to rocket ahead full speed, and that’s very powerful but sometimes that is just plain the wrong tool.

And you can waste time trying to turn a screw with a wrench, or you can put the wrench down and pick up a freaking screwdriver.

Easier said than done.

So I will contemplate this seemingly intractable problem of not knowing how to get where I want to go via moves I have available to me.

Maybe the solution is there but my ancient psychological defenses are keeping me from seeing it because a solution would threaten the old regime.

The only way to overcome that is to keep plugging away at the problem, either subconsciously or consciously, until the ice melts and the fog clears and there’s the solution right where it was supposed to be.

It’s happened before.

Time to make it happen again.

More after the break.

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Facing the future

Never been my strong suit.

Even back when I actually had a future, I didn’t think about it. All through high school, it was very clear that I was supposed to be thinking about what I was going to do after graduation, but I somehow never really got around to it,.

Of course, I am kicking myself for that now. With my academic record, I could have gone to any school in Canada, and on a full scholarship, most likely.

But that would have required focus and ambition and the ability to take things seriously, and I didn’t have any of those back then.

Instead, I took my post-high school life entirely for granted. I knew I would go to college afterwards, so I didn’t give it much thought at all. Which one? Dunno.

I was such an idiot.

So when my parents told me and my brother, “you’re going to UPEI because that’s the one we can afford (or so they said)”, I shrugged and said “okay dokey”.

And I liked my time at UPEI. I like my courses and my professors and my friends.

But it is not a good university. I could have done so much better. My academic average was over 90 percent.

And I know that I could have made a fantastic impression on scholarship committees and other funding bodies.

But oh well. Such thinking did not fit with my happy go lucky personality.

And I have done precious little planning for my future since. I’m like the class passive literary character to whom things happen but never at their own instigation.

Every time I have made a big change, like moving, it has not been my decision. It’s been because in one way or another I got kicked out of the situation I was in.

Usually, it was because roomies got sick and tired of me. I don’t blame them. I was much more burdensome when I was more depressed and the fog in my mind was much thicker and more opaque.

It can be pretty rough having the world’s oldest (and smartest) infant around.

I can be quite draining.

So really, the only thing I can truly own is going to Kwantlen then VFS. That was all me. My own initiative, my own impetus, and my own effort getting shit done.

Sadly, I screwed up the UNO job and then foolishly let myself sink back into depression, and then Skyrim happened and tore me up inside, and I have not made it back into the light since I crawled out of that goddamned hole.

In fact, I have never really recovered from Skyrim because that’s where I got addicted to playing video games all the time.

And I still do that today. It’s the main thing holding me back. The addiction makes it so hard to do anything else, such as the sort of things that might get me somewhere.

It’s a hard problem to get a grip on. I’ve become deeply dependent on the soothing state of mind I get into when playing a game and listening to music or a Reddit video.

In there, I am calm and happy and engaged, safe from the pressures and anxieties (oh, the anxieties) of the real world.

It’s killing me. But I can’t fight it alone.

Guess it’s time to look up Video Game Addicts Anonymous.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

But first, this headline.

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Part-Time Assistant Cook Suffers From Impostor Syndrome

Chuck McChuck, a part-time assistant fry cook at a local Wendy’s, claims that he has been living a lie and that he is “not the marginally competent low-level employee everyone thinks he is”.

“I’ve got everyone fooled. ” he said, his voice raw with shame as he contemplated the tab on his can of generic beer. “They all think I’m this amazing guy who can chop onions and fry bacon, but I’m not. “

The home front isn’t much better. “I’ve got my ex-wife and three baby mamas convinced that I am this irresponsible loser who ducks his responsibilities and only pays child support when a sheriff has a gun to my head…. but it’s nothing but a tissue of lies!”.

“There’s no way I can keep this up. ” he added. “Sooner or later, this is all going to come crashing down, and to be honest, part of me is looking forward to it. ”

“At least it will finally be over. ” he added.

---

Now, back to Big Baby Brain

You know, like this :

Okay, not really.

I’m just going to bang on about my being an emotional infant some more.

I’ve had the image in my head of myself as a big brain in diapers for a long time. I think that, on some level, I have known about my own infantile tendencies for a long time.

But knowing it subconsciously and facing it consciously are entirely different things. I am glad that I have come this far and faced this truth as I now feel like I have a better idea of what I need to do in order to grow up than I have ever had before.

I have to give up being pathetic. I have to believe that I can make it on my own. I have to start taking ownership of my life and my destiny, as hard as that will be.

And it will be very, very hard. I am talking about changing my fundamental approach to life here. I feel like I have to grow an entirely new spine now, and develop my power in a sense that goes way, way beyond this intellectual playpen of mine.

It’s about as big a personal change as I can imagine.

But I know I can do it. In fact, now that I have seen past the edge of my universe, it’s inevitable. Spiritual growth is an undeniable imperative for me.

Might seem like a strange statement from a 47 year old infant, but it’s true. I lost my way for a very long time because I didn’t – couldn’t – face the truth about what the real problem in my soul was.

I mean, who wants to admit to themselves that they are as emotionally underdeveloped as they are intellectually overdeveloped? That they are the world’s smartest infant?

I want to give up being helpless.

I want to throw away my attempts to attract nurturing.

I want to stand up on my own instead of leaning on others all the time.

I want to face the world on my own, as a real person, as strong and independent and worthy and respected as a member of the community as anyone else.

I want to stop being a burden and contribute instead.

I want to be proud of myself instead of always cringing in shame and apologizing to the world for my very existence.

I want to live a normal, decent, respectable life that I can celebrate and be proud of.

I want to finally grow up and be an adult.

And that’s really gonna hurt.

More after the break.

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Struggling for rebirth

The changes I need to make in order to grow the hell up already are so profound that, ironically, it’s like I have to be reborn anew in order to get over being such a baby.

Guess I didn’t get it quite right the first time,

Maybe this time I’ll be wanted.

It’s not that big of a surprise, really. I have a long history of starting over where others would work to fix the issue in video games.

Hard to describe why I do that. The short, unhelpful, question-begging answer would be “because it’s easier”.

Really? It’s easier to hit reset and do everything you did to get to that point than to figure out how to extricate yourself from the spot you’re stuck in? That makes no sense.

Well, when you put it that way, yeah it makes no sense. But to me, it does. My mind is very fast and maneuverable and extremely agile, but it lacks a reverse gear.

So it’s very very hard to make it go backwards. It really resists it. So it’s quite possible that it is literally easier for me to start over than it is to force my brain to back out of a tight spot and take another route.

Sadly, that’s not really an option with life.

Hence my secret (ish) wish to just cash my cheque and take off in a random direction and wander the world till I find a nice people with good people and good vibes where nobody knows me and I can start all over again.

That’s the closest thing to a hard reset life has unless you believe in reincarnation.

And I can imagine someone saying, “But what could you possibly accomplish by doing that which would not be more easily accomplished by fixing the life you have?”.

Oh, for one, I would lose all unwanted contexts. I would be free to start over without a whole lot of history dragging me down. I could build a brand new version of myself from the ground up and do a way better job this time.

Make a version of me based on what I know about myself now. A cleaner, smarter, stronger, more efficient me, without the bloated anchor of the past dragging me down.

But I am actually both too lazy and too responsible to do it. I could never do something so cruel to my friends. Disappearing is one of the worst things you can do to people because it’s all the pain of grieving without the closure of death.

Instead people are left to just wonder and worry and it gnaws away at them, day after day, year after year.

No, I could never do that to the friends who have been so kind and patient with me. I will have to find better, less dramatic solutions to my problems.

But I will still think about it from time to time.

Knowing the cat would eat it doesn’t keep the caged bird from looking out the window.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.