By any objective standard, I’m a pretty awesome guy.

Patient readers know the drill. ^[1]

1. I have a sky high IQ. Hyperintelligent. Never had to study in school. Never met anyone clearly smarter than I am. Can think rings around most people. Etc.
2. Massive writing talent. Well I mean. You’re reading it right now. My time at VFS proved to me that I write better than most people without even trying. Some day I should get around to trying.
3. Charismatic and lovable. What can I say, I’m a sweetie. I have a charming personality and a megawatt power of personality. Cute, too.
4. Hilarious. I am one funny motherfucker. Many people, some of them who don’t even know me, have said so. Right before Covid hit, I did a comedy open mic and got a huge ovation. I got the power.
5. Genuinely caring and compassionate and understanding. I really care about people and want them to do well. I see their pain and want to help them. I would heal the world if I could.

And so forth and so on. I’m going to stop there because I am making myself sick.

My point is, I have got a lot to be proud of, and yet I am not proud. I have nothing to be ashamed of, yet I am wracked with shame. I have many assets so potent that most people would give three limbs to have, and I have to make lists like the one above to remind myself I even have them,

In short, I have a great deal going for me and yet I don’t feel it, I should get at least some happiness out of all my gifts and yet I rarely do.

What’s up with that?

First off, it’s mostly latent. I’m not doing anything with it, or not much at least, and while that hardly invalidates my powers, it does mean that they are bottled up and frustrated and thus a source of pain more than a source of joy.

Sad but true.

Plus, I take them for granted. I know I shouldn’t but I do. They are a part of me and always have been. Trying to appreciate them is like trying to appreciate having fingers.

I mean yeah, you’d miss them if they were gone, but most of the time you don’t even think about them.

Plus, and I realize this is a bit of a wack thing to say, but they have never done me much good anyhow.

The reasons for this are extremely complicated and I can’t claim I bear zero responsibility for that, but the fact remains that for the most part, my high level abilities have just alienated me from others and left me bored and lonely.

Well, that’s mostly the IQ part that does that. But still.

And I know that can be changed. There has got to be a place or situation where I can use my talents for personal gain out there somewhere. And it’s only my own inner paralysis that keeps me from seeing and finding and exploiting that kind of thing.

One day, the scales will fall from my eyes and I will see my opportunity and seize it and finally get to make something of myself.

Assuming, of course, I live that long.

More after the break.

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My eyes are dim, I cannot see

I was going to link a version of the Boy Scout song those lines come from, but the only version on YouTube was sung-shouted by distinctly NON-professional children and that shit is hard on the soul, so, you’re welcome.

Anyhow. My point is, it’s been five weeks since my second cataract operation, and I still can’t see too good.

In fact, my vision right now is worse than it was without my glasses before I had the first cataract removal operation.

And it has me worried. I was really anticipating some form of improvement. Kind of thought that was the whole eye of slicing my eyeballs open. Twice.

But I suspect something has gone terribly wrong. And it might be my fault.

After all, I was the one who fucked up the instructions on the eye drops for the first operation and stopped them way too soon.

Now I am trying to stay level headed about the whole thing and not disappear down a shame spiral and end up oscillating between denial and self-loathing for freaking ever and never actually dealing with the issue.

I mean, that’s what I have been doing so far, and look where it’s got me.

So when I go cash my check on Monday, I will also make a stop upstairs to Doctor Vaezi’s office and make an appointment.

He told me to come back to him if things didn’t get better, and they didn’t, so back I shall go to get them to run their diagnostics and see if they can fix me up.

Hopefully, it will be as simple as him giving me another of those anti-inflammatory shots he gave me once before. It was very effective, and it didn’t even hurt.

And my eyeball felt nice and cool inside for a while.

My biggest worry is that he will tell me my eyes are super fucked and there is either nothing he can do to fix them or it will take a round of far more complicated, painful, and dangerous operations to keep me from going blind.

Admittedly, the odds of that are (hopefully) low. But that’s how my hyper-neurotic mind works, and I feel better for having exorcised that thought from my head by writing it down for you nice people to read.

That’s how us writers work, I guess. We work out our issues by writing.

Like that thing about the Great Column? Started off as a way for me to workout some ideas about restructuring my mind to handle a more energetic life.

And I think it turned out pretty dang good.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.