It’s a lovely sunny 4th of July. ^[1] It’s 24 degrees out, the sky is blue with a light patina of fluffy white cloud, and I am feeling fairly good.

I’m not sick, but I’m not well.

I thought I had this brilliant, explosive, deeply insightful topic to write about today, then I sat down and started writing about it and realized it made no frigging sense.

So that was a bummer,

I had been thinking about my idea that you can be addicted to relief. And the idea was, well there’s no relief without pain, so does that mean you’re also addicted to pain? Does that mean you subconsciously seek out pain in order to feel relief from it?

Sounds good, doesn’t it? But sigh. Nope.

Because a) no pain is pretty much always better than relief from pain unless you’re a way more energetic and intense person than I, and b) if you suffer from depression and anxiety and various physical ailments like I do, you don’t exactly have to go looking for pain, and c) it’s not like I have a long history of getting myself into painful and/or scary situations I then require relief from.

I would probably be better off if I did, to be honest. At least I would get some frigging life experience instead of being a hermetically sealed urban hermit.

And maybe then I wouldn’t be so god damned afraid of everything. I have known for a very long time that what I “need” to do is go out into the big loud busy world and stay there until I acclimate to the higher stimulation levels and thus learn, on a deep level, that the outside world is not so scary after all.

Yup. Known that for ages. At least a decade. Probably a lot more.

Convincing myself to actually do it, on the other hand…..

Now would be a great time to do it. The weather’s fantastic. The outside world is a very pleasant place right now, all warm and happy and cheerful. It’s pretty much my personal dictionary’s definition of “nice” out there right now. As long as I take it easy, I could take the elevator down and sit outside for a while, just soaking up rays and letting the fresh air clean some of the crap from living in filth from my lungs.

That reminds me. Time to look up cleaners. I could totally see myself sinking a couple hundred bucks in hiring some professional cleaners to come in and sanitize this god damned cesspit I call a bedroom.

It would be money well spent.

I might have to leave the apartment while they work, though, in order to avoid the feelings of intense shame at people seeing my… mess.

Let’s just say there’s more than just dust in places.

But it’s their job. I am sure this would not be the worst they will have seen.

Might be up there, though.

More after the break.

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Hello Monkey! Hey, is that a wrench?

Well, life has thrown a rather depressing complication at me.

See, because it’s summer, Joe’s work as a janitor for the school board has switched to summer cleaning hours.

That means he is now working from 10:30 AM to 6:30 PM, which means the car is busy during those hours, which means it is not available to take me places for most of the day for the next two months.

That’s going to make getting to my medical appointments very tricky.

For the stuff here in Richmond, there’s always taxis or the bus. So that is doable at least. I don’t want to pay for cabs but I can do it if I have to.

But for the stuff at St. Paul’s and other faraway locations that’s not an option. Cabs would cost far too much and I am not entirely sure I could handle the bus for the stuff i Richmond, let alone a long complicated journey to some place in Vancouver.

I sure as fuck would be using the elevator in the Skytrain stations.

There is also HandyDART, which is a point to point bus service Transit offers for disabled people so they can get to their medical appointments.

Pretty sure it’s free. And on paper, it would be the perfect solution.

But I am terribly afraid of the mentally disabled. Not proud of that but it is what it is. And the prospect of spending a long ride in a short bus with them chills me to the bone.

So that’s definitely a last resort kind of thing.

I could ask Felicity, I suppose, although she has a pretty busy teaching schedule so it’s pretty iffy as to whether she would be free,

I would, of course, pay for gas.

But then there’s the issue of fucking COVID. Neither of us are fully vaccinated yet and she is worried about taking the virus back to her elderly parents so I am not sure she would be comfortable with me in her car, even if we both wore masks.

Which is a shame, because road trips with her are always awesome. I can’t think of another person I would rather have drive me places.

Luckily, as far as I know, I have nothing major till the end of the month. So other than the need to cash my monthly cheque (finally), I have no need for a ride any time soon.

I will check my notes to make sure that is true, though.

I really need to start putting that shit into a calendar app of some sort.

Or at least writing it down on my actual calendar.

Somewhere in me is a highly competent person who always stays on top of things and is super organized, efficient, and in control.

To the point of it being a little scary, in fact.

But he’s buried under depression with the rest of my good traits.

Someday I will dig that poor fella up.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.