Okay, time to put these thoughts into words.

Everybody knows, on some level at least, that adrenaline makes you stupid. We have all done unwise things “in the heat of the moment”, or said things we wish we hadn’t when we were angry or upset, or found ourselves maddeningly clumsy when trying to deal with some recalcitrant inanimate object.

Well, blame adrenaline.

When the adrenaline starts flowing, our mind shift over to their adrenalized mode, and and that mode focuses entirely on the here and now.

That means it empties our minds and shifts our thinking in such a way that our higher reasoning “human” mind shuts off in favour of our fast but sloppy “animal” mind in order to focus all our resources on dealing with the threat at hand.

Problem is, for us modern humans, there’s a high probability that the “threat” requires those exact same higher reasoning faculties adrenaline just turned off.

In other words, we get stupid.

But let’s drill down deeper. What exactly happens?

This is where the true madness lies.

Because what happens when you are trying to deal with a stressful situation with a less than ideal brain? You get even more stressed out.

Which releases more adrenaline.

Which makes you even stupider.

And stresses you out even more.

And by that simple and deadly cycle, you end up in a very bad frame of mind. possibly to the point of it turning into an anxiety attack or other extreme reaction.

And this applies to so many situations.

1. That exam you studied for only to have all the answers fly out of your head when the time comes? Adrenaline.
2. When you want to ask your boss for something but chicken out? Adrenaline.
3. When you try to have a calm discussion with a loved one about something but it turns into a big screaming match? Adrenaline.
4. When you had a ton of examples earlier and can’t remember them? Adrenaline.

The reason I am focusing on this is because I think it is the key to a lot of what goes wrong in our lives. Without a full understanding of adrenaline’s effect on the brain. we judge ourselves by the standards of a calm and rational mind, when we would be better off acknowledging our variable levels of IQ and saying “Oh, of course, I couldn’t do that, I was too dumb at that moment. “

The real question is what to do about it. The only solution I can think of is to get a grip on yourself before the cycle begins.

Or at least learn to calm yourself down when you’re having trouble thinking.

Because it works the other way, too. The more you handle calmly, the more confident you become, and the easier it is to stay calm.

It’s all about switching that polarity, and keeping it switched.

Oh, and for the record, I did the smart and sensible thing and stayed home last night.

And kind of hated myself for it.

More after the break.

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This is not good.

So, I still feel very woozy.

I am chock-a-block with the wooz. Highly wooz-positive.

And it’s lasted long enough now that I am officially worried about it.

I guess in the back of my head, I assumed it would be a transient, 24 hour bug kind of thing but no, it’s hanging in there.

Best I can say is that I feel a little less sickly than yesterday, and a bit more energetic, but otherwise the symptoms remain the same.

Dizziness being the main one. Mostly when moving. When I am just sitting there typing away at the compubox, it’s not too bad. I’m a little dizzy, and my head tends to list side to side a bit as a result, but it’s easy to ignore.

But if I dare get up and move, or even move my head too fast, then all illusions of healthiness are shattered and the world lurches around me and I feel like a slightly overfilled water balloon with my contents sloshing about.

And I can’t help remembering my Grandma (father’s mother) and her problems with vertigo in the last decade or so of her life.

But I don’t think this is that. Hers was a cerebro-vascular issue and this seems to me to be more of a vestibular issue.

You know I’m nervous when the top shelf medical vocab comes out.

What I am saying is that it seems like an inner ear thing. Though restricted blood flow, especially in my legs, might be a factor too.

I get this hot fluttery feeling in the backs of my legs that accompanies the dizziness and I am not at all fond of it.

It seems bad.

And overall I just feel dark and depressed and disassociative today. It feels like seasonal depression, maybe. At least in part.

I feel like I am trapped in some dark space between dimensions, both here and not here at the same time, but fading away fast.

Sucks to be crazy.

Oh well. At least Xmas is coming up this Saturday, and that’s… good, right?

I will get to spend a pleasant evening with Joe’s family eating too much of things I will then have to go to the bathroom and take insulin to compensate for and have excellent conversation with Joe’s family, who are delightful and fascinating people who are nice enough to have me as their one and only guest every year.

I just have to very firmly and decisively stuff that fucking Trog of mine way down into his hole and stop listening to him entirely so he can’t make me freak out.

A glass of champagne or two will help with that, I think.

Or maybe I will take one of my fast-acting anti-anxiety meds.

Maybe not…. I am told their effects can be rather unpredictable the first few times you take them as your mind and brain chemistry get used to the effects.

I wouldn’t want to turn into a manic loon at Joe’s parents’ place!

Liquor, in this case, might be the safer option

What the heck, I only drink one day a year, might as well enjoy it! .

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Feeling pretty run down today.

Worried I might be coming down with something.

There’s this heaviness in my limbs that I don’t much like. And I feel kind of woozy and wobbly, and my head is sore.

I feel like I’m lurching around like a drunken man – only without the fun part. My appetite is shot and there’s a gross feeling in the pit of my stomach, like there’s some thick cold slimy fluid in there.

Oh, and my joints hurt.

It all adds up to my having some kind of bug. A flu, or suchlike.

Kind of makes me wish I had remembered to get my flu shot last Wednesday.

Also makes me eager for that Covid-19 booster shot.

Well, no sense worrying about things I can’t control. Right now, the question is : should I go out to shopping and Denny’s tonight?

And I know the right answer : no. I both should not expose myself to the elements and should not expose others to me.

But that answer sucks, so I am going to try to think of a better one. Odds are pretty low but I have to give it a try.

What makes it even worse is that we were going to discuss what we all want for Xmas.

Yeah we’ve left it rather late. Xmas is only 6 days away. If any of our gifts have to be shipped, they ain’t gonna make it in time.

Whatever. I feel like the Scroogening of the Fru has begun, because I am finding it incredibly hard to muster up any Xmas spirit at all.

Even when I don’t have the flu.

I’ve officially reached the stage where Xmas just seems like a big hassle and I have even found myself wishing it was all over already.

This is a sentiment I would have previously described as “evil”.

I have always loved Xmas. It’s such a “me” holiday. People getting together with their loved ones, sharing good food and liquor, enjoying one another’s company, and with a big warm glowy vibe of love and family and generosity and openness and all those other good things that I love so much.

Presents are nice too, though I prefer giving to receiving. Not because
I am some impossible saint of selflessness. I just love getting to express how I feel about those I love with small gestures.

As a very sensitive soul who tends to be off on his own little planet most of the time, I get terribly worried that people think I don’t care about them or don’t think about them, so gestures become terribly, terribly important.

Got to send my love during those rare periods when I am in transmission range.

No idea what I want. Maybe I will talk it over with myself during Part II. That has always worked out for me before.

Of course, by then it will be too late. I really should have figured this out before I went to Denny’s. I will be asked what I want there.

But I’m not going to Denny’s, am I?

At the very least I shouldn’t.

But I might just do it anyway.

Julian and Felicity, if you are only now reading this and finding out that I probably exposed you to the flu Sunday night, um… sorry.

But I love you guys (and Joe, of course) so much that I couldn’t stand to stay home. Especially tonight of all nights.

More after the break.

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It’s not that complicated, Otis.

This line from the bridge of this song really jumps out at me when I listen to it today :

“I can’t do
What ten people tell me to do
So I guess I’ll remain the same!”

Otis redding, “sitting on the dock of the bay”

Because that’s horseshit, Otis.

True, you can’t do what ten people tell you to do. But that doesn’t mean you haeto remain the same.

It means you have to choose.

Figure out which of those ten people are right and do what they said. Or say to hell with all of them and do what seems right to you alone.

Or just do what you feel like doing. Whatever.

But you can’t blame those “ten people” ^[1] for your inaction.

It’s your unwillingness to decide for yourself that’s to blame.

I know this because I’ve used the exact same con on myself. I mean sure, I called it “option paralysis” and didn’t have specific people to blame, but the game’s the same.

Now I know making decisions is hard. Lord do I know that. It’s especially hard when you are delicate and timid by nature like me (no, really) and so it’s both hard to find the grit to decide things and hard not to give in to the fear of having things blow up in your face that leads to hesitation and, ultimately, immobility.

Because if you never choose, you can never make the wrong choice, right? Sure, people can say “doing nothing can also be the wrong choice”. but it sure doesn’t feel that way because nothing actually happens.

So it feels safe to do nothing. Even if, as in my case, it very much isn’t.

Doing nothing about my health problems is,.in fact, super dangerous to the point where it is killing me as we speak.

But nothing actually happens, subjectively speaking. There’s no pain. I don’t suddenly faint or have a spasm. My vision doesn’t dim. Nothing dramatic and obvious like that ever comes of it.

I just fall apart inside a little tiny bit at a time, all the time.

It’s like erosion. There’s no thundering tide or coastal megastorm that comes in to take away half of your coastline.

Just the steady action of the waves taking away a few grains of sand at a time. Always.

And you don’t even notice until your cottage falls into the sea.

And then suddenly it’s an emergency. And you freak out and you deal with it and lots of people help you and together, you manage to patch everything back together.

And then everyone leaves, with you heartily promising that you have learned your lesson and nothing like this will ever happen again.

But then they’re all gone and there’s nobody watching any more and it’s all back to you.

And you go right back to ignoring the problem.

Until tnext time.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Been thinking a lot about my issues with bad sleep lately.

It started when something I was watching (don’t recall what) mentioned Irregular Sleep-Wake Syndrome and how bad it was for your health.

They described the symptoms and it sounded exactly like me. Rarely sleep for very long, sleep broken up into many sessions, both insomnia and day drowsiness.

I knew that my shitty sleep habits were a problem. I knew they were probably unhealthy. I know I should get my shit together and try to sleep like a normal human.

I just didn’t know there was a name and an assigned pathology for it.

With a high comorbidity associated with it.

So that’s a gentle hint from fate that I should stop fucking around and get this shit under control some time real soon.

And it’s not like I don’t know how : stop all the fucking napping. If I just stayed awake and out of my bed all day like a normal person,

At least that’s the theory.

But I’m grown extremely emotionally dependent on naps. Like I have said many times before, I use them to reset my background anxiety level so that it never gets too high.

That’s not all, though. It’s also where I hide from the world. When even this absurdly low impact life of mine is too much for me, I can always retreat even further into sleep.

Like I keep saying, sleep is death without the commitment.

I mean, sure, death ends your pain, but what if you change your mind and decide you don’t like it later?

I could take a sleeping pill. I have many. But we all know what that means : hyper REM-dense sleep that damn near kills me,

Or feels like it does, anyhow.

And the thing is, sleeping pills and sleep apnea don’t always get along. The pills can make the apnea worse by making it harder for the body to respond to the lack of oxygen, as well as further relaxing the very areas of the trachea and palate that get in the way of my breathing when I sleep in the first place.

So if pills are out and skipping the naps would be too difficult, what does that leave?

CPAP of course.

I really need to give it another shot. Which means this time, I have to be patient enough to figure out how to put the damned thing on.

I got VERY confused by all the straps and things last time.

And if I still can’t figure it out, I won’t just give up in frustration. I will call my service rep, or look up a YouTube video, or SOMEthing.

I’ve got to do something to get my life moving in the right direction. The heart operation was only the beginning.

Might be nice to feel good for a change.

More after the break.

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Get out of here!

---

A comment I left on this youtube video :

Oh yeah. See, back in the 80’s, I was a kid with no friends and a mall within walking distance. So when I was bored I would go to the mall and just kind of hang around. Some of the store owners really didn’t like me and would chase me out if they saw me. What amazes me now is how little that bothered me. I was a very shy kid and yet routine getting kicked out of the book store or Radio Shock or the greeting card store didn’t phase me. Pretty sure I matched the clinical definition of “pesky”. I guess I knew that sure, they would kick me out. But then they would go back to running their business and forget about me and I would slip in again. I suppose to me it was kind of a game. I was a pest. 🙂

Sleep, part 2

Whaaat? The same topic in both halves? What’s next, competence?

Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

---

The thing is, I have never been good at sleep.

Even as a tiny child, I recall laying on my back on my crib, staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night, unable to get to sleep.

Luckily, I was so small that I had no idea there was anything wrong with that and it’s not like I had a schedule to keep yet anyway, so it didn’t upset me.

But all throughout my life, it’s taken me a long time to get to sleep. And in junior high I started having problems with insomnia.

Took me a long time to figure out how to circumvent that.

Protip : turn the alarm clock to face the wall!

And honestly, I would probably have insomnia issues now if I had anything like a 9 to 5 or even a student’s schedule.

Then again, my anti-insomnia (pro-somnia?) game is quite good now.

Protip : never ever try to sleep. Trying makes you focus. Focus is the opposite of sleep. Remember always that sleep is not something you make happen. It’s something you let happen. The idea is to remove all the obstacles you can.

Come to think of it, I feel the same way about romance.

Another thing my brain cooked up for me to worry about : it has been a very long time since I remembered a dream.

I’ve remembered random fragments. Some random thing will trigger some incredibly tiny fragment of a dream – a sense of recognition, or the ghost of an odor, or a vague feeling of warmth like you’re coming in your front door on a cold Fall day.

But that is it. And I can’t help wonder if my poor shattered and scattered sleep is to blame. They say it takes three hours to get to the truly deep REM sleep that really nourishes and revitalizes your brain. Finishes the job of transferring medium term memories into long term storage.

I haven’t gotten three solid hours of continuous sleep in years.

I have a lot of trouble remembering stuff, too.

Probably just a coincidence.

Still, it would be interesting to find out what life with a clear head is like.

To be honest, it kind of scares me.

This fog that chokes me also hides me.

After all these years of being a Trog, I dunno if I can stand direct sunlight again.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

1046

And I am starting to worry that this means there is something terribly wrong with me.

Seriously, the very idea of getting under an extra-heavy gives me the hives. It sets off all my claustrophobia and fear of confinement all at once.

For me, they would feel far too much like being buried alive. Or tied down in a hospital bed with tubes everywhere.

Heck, I can’t even stand being under a duvet.

And yet, these things are hella popular right now. There’s millions of them weighing down beds all over the world.

And that’s because they work. Countless people report sleeping much better now that they can cuddle up under their snuggly cuddly weighted blanket.

“It’s like sleeping in a warm hug!” they say.

And to think, this all started with autistic children. Yes, even freaking Rain Man could find comfort in these things, and he reacted to being touched like you were scalding him with a hot iron.

But not me, no. I’m special.

So what the fuck is wrong with me? Something went seriously wrong in my very early childhood and left me unable to partake in a very common and public form of self-soothing self care which if it wasn’t for my issues would sound very good to me.

I mean, who doesn’t want to sleep in a warm hug? That sounds awesome. Like a little baby animal sleeping in its mama’s arms, all snuggly and secure.

What could possibly be a better way to sleep than that?

But no, that’s not for me, apparently. Seems like I am not nearly as cuddly as I thought I was all these years. Maybe I can only the snuggly cuddly Fruvous everyone knows and loves because it’s all happening via the extreme distancing of text, and in real life I would have a full body freakout and hide up a tree and have to be coaxed down by firemen and social workers with Smartfood popcorn and porn.

OK, maybe not that extreme (or adorable).

But there was that time when I was having post sex snuggle time with a paramour and I was very close to sleep when I was suddenly seized by the desire to run away from him at top speed and never ever stop running till I tied.

It was the urge to flee amped up to 11. And it came out of nowhere. Once second very, very mellow and content. Very very groovy.

The next, total panic.

I did not, thankfully, run screaming into the night. That might have raised eyebrows, considering I was naked at the time.

But I had no idea I had all that in me.

I get the distinct feeling that I have some very serious emotional issues that I have never had to deal with because I have never gotten very close to anyone.

Say, why is that, anyway?

Oh right, crippling mental health issues.

Man, I’m more fucked up than can be measured by science.

More after the break.

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The masses are a myth

Let’s kick the crap out of misanthropy tonight, shall we?

It started out with this video :

On which I left the following comment :

Good god, y’all. Why are we still paying attention to such outmoded thinking? The sorts of conformity and herd thinking that these 19th century bigwigs talked about died in the 1960s. Individualism won, conformism lost. “The masses” were never real either. They were just a convenient way for dyspeptic misanthropes to express their general inability to get along with others in a way they thought made them look cool. Note that if you ask them to look out the window and point to a “mass”. they can’t. Once they look at people as individuals, they aren’t “the masses” any more. But individuals are all we are and all we ever are.

Now don’t get me wrong. These gentlemen said a lot of things still well worth reading. We can learn a lot from them,

But all this BS about all those terrible “masses” is merely social maladjustment masquerading as philosophy.

me, dec 12, 2021, being my bad boy of philosophy self

A lot of thoughts I have had for a very long time came together in that little rant.

I have been an implacable opponent of misanthropy ever since I was a student at UPEI and first learned there were people who actually thought like that. As a philosophy.

Before that, I though “misanthrope” was just a fancy way of saying “grumpy person”.

And sp. in a primitive way, I saw through misanthropy’s bullshit right away. To me, it was intuitively obvious that it was not so much a philosophy as a personality defect.

There is nothing noble or correct about being unable to empathize or respect the individuality of people when they are in too big a group.

Let me illustrate my point above about not being able to find a “mass”.

Me : Well you keeping going on about those wretched “masses”. So show me one.

Misanthrope : I don’t understand.

Me : It’s a simple question. You say these teeming throngs are everywhere, especially here in the heart of London. Ergo they should be easy to find. So point one out to me.

Mis : (confused phumphering)

Me (pointing out the window to the street below) : There! The vicar in the brown tweed! Is he a “mass”? One of the “herd”? A “mindless horde”?

Mis : Well no…. that is…

Me : OK, then how about the redheaded lady with battered old pram? Or the old gentleman looking through the bins for bottles? How about the posh dowager with her tiny little dog? No? None of those people are “masses”? Why it’s almost as if the very concept of “the masses” is so specious it doesn’t even exist in the singular

.Mis : Now see here….

Me : Face it, it’s never been about the masses as people. As individuals. As they really are. Instead it’s been about dealing with your own fear of others by reducing all those scary other humans to a simple label you can handle. And then looking at them from Olympian heights so you can tell yourself they are not so big after all. Which is move without about as much intellectual honesty and rationality as going to the top of a tall building and thinking all those people down there really ARE as small as ants now!

me, today, somehow managing to foam at the mouth in print

God I can be a prick sometimes.

Doesn’t mean I’m wrong, though.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

That’s about as good as my attitude towards myself get.

Never truly warm, forgiving, or sympathetic. Never treating myself with kindness and understanding. Never a warm hug, a word of support, or a kind gesture to myself.

No, the best I can manage is to be the gruff, strict, hard as nails teacher from a sitcom that everyone thinks is a total bastard but whom you realize by the end of the pilot really truly care about the kids and wants them to do well.

And of course, that’s not how I treat others at all. In fact, if I saw someone treating another person like I treat myself, I’d likely butt in and defend them.

As with nearly all other depressives, there is one set of (arbitrary and unfair) rules for me, and one for literally everybody else

Doc Costin got me thinking about this fact during Thursday Therapy today and it’s really got me wondering why I am so hard on myself.

Fundamentally, I think it boils down to last Thursday’s topic, inward directed anger. Being harsh with myself is the main way that self-focused anger expresses itself on a day to day basis.

What’s more, maintaining this hostile attitude means I am always ready to pounce on myself and attack my slightest weakness at any moment.

It’s very self-destructive. But it keeps the beast fed.

What really struck me as I was talking with Doctor Costin about this is how hard it was for me to imagine being any other way.

I try to imagine being kinder and gentler with myself and I draw a complete blank. The idea is simple enough but when I try to apply it to myself – I got nuthin’.

I know I don’t have it in me to be, like, perky.

Not without some really excellent medication, anyhow.

But there’s something a lot more sinister lurking under the dark water of my psyche. Like if I let up on myself, I would somehow be… letting myself get away with something?

And I guess I would because I would be forgiving myself for being myself.

Well it’s not like I was given a choice.

I guess I am still looking for that magical third option that isn’t taking my anger out on myself and isn’t taking it out on others.

Maybe I can take it out….in actions? If I could turn the anger into the motivation and energy to accomplish things which are meaningful to me, that might do the trick.

That’s a pretty radical idea, but it could work. Needs more pondering.

As usual, I find myself wishing I could just dump all my latent rage somewhere so I don’t have to deal with it.

Just grab hold of some cosmic electrode handles and yell “DO IT!” and have all that latent emotional energy discharge all at once like I am trying to arc weld with hate.

Man, what a relief that would be!

Then I would able to go about my life as a much calmer, saner, healthier person and everything would be just fine.

Oh well, maybe some day.

More after the break.

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The saga continues

Oh my freaking God. Why does life hate me?

So I finally had it all together. Fresh sensors, check. Base unit^[1] (aka “reader”), right here in my hot little hands. Plug to charge reader, bingo. Wire to connect plug to base unit, found and inserted. Reader plugged in and charged, four by four, chief.

So I unwrapped the sensor – oops,. part of the adhesive pad flopped over into itself and stuck there. No way to peel it back off. Hope it will work anyhow.

Then I inserted the sensor into my arm with the applicator, making a satisfying ka-chuck sound like I was using an industrial sized stapler.

Then I inputted the sensor’s little code into the reader, and it validated my sensor (thanks!), and started up its mysterious (but no doubt necessary) two hour warmup.

And I was happy. Finally, I had got my poop into a group enough to get back to monitoring my blood so I could get it back to normal and be healthy again!

Well, healthier, anyhow. Point is, I’d have my most pressing issue under control.

And everything was fine, just fine….until I heard…. THE BLOOP.

The god damned fucking BLOOP.

At first, I was in denial. Warm, sweet, gentle denial.

“Gee, I wonder where that cute little bloop came from?” I wondered as cute forest animals frolicked about me in a sun-drenched meadow in spring.

But then Man entered the forest and I remembered what that fucking bloop meant.

It meant the sensor had failed on warmup AGAIN, and in the exact same part of the warmup as before! GOD FUCKING DAMMIT!

Not this shit again! Is it the reader that is broken, or does Dexcomm just have really shitty manufacturing standards?

Or am I fucking things up in a way so unique and bizarre that nobody from this reality would have thought to tell people not to do that?

That has happened many, many times in my life.

So first, I took a little break to let myself cool off a bit. Could not face starting nother sensor and having Lucy pull the ball away at the last second again yet.

Then, like half an hour later, I was ready to start out fresh again, and went to take the previous sensor off my arm so I could replace it.

And it was not there. Fucking thing must have fallen off when I was asleep, probably because I fucked up the adhesive pad at the beginning.

Can’t start a new sensor without it because I have to take the transmitter out of it to put into the new sensor.

Why? Because it’s a piece of shit device by a piece of shit company. Words cannot describe how badly I miss the OneTouch Ultra Supreme With Bacon, or whatever the fuck it was called.

The one that actually fucking worked. But is too expensive for us disabled type people to deserve, according to the province.

Think anyone told them that high compliance rates lead to better outcomes and thus save a lot of money in the long run?

Probably. But they didn’t listen because that smells awfully like being nicer than absolutely necessary to poor people and that goes against everything they believe in.

Not that I’m bitter or anything.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

So, I finished the main plot in Oblivion.

End part was pretty badass. The evil god Dagon managed to break into Tamriel from his dimension of Oblivion despite all my efforts to prevent that very thing from happening throughout the whole damned game, so I had to get the rightful heir to the throne, Martin Septim, past this three story tall Dagon-monster so he could use the Amulet of Kings gifted to the Septim line by the great god Akatosh to sacrifice himself to manifest an avatar of Akatosh to kick Dagon’s ass back to Oblivion and seal the gates between the dimensions forever.

So ya know. Just another Tuesday.

The final fight was insanely hard, with just way too many monster coming after me at the same time for my poor spells to handle.

Not even the big explodey fireball type spells!

But then Maelkoth called it a sneaking mission, and at first I was all psssh, I’m a sorcerer, I don’t sneak, I blast.

But that idea percolated in my mind for around an hour before I finally remembered that I had a potion of invisibility.

Took that, jogged right past Dagon, got Martin into the Temple, and Dagon got evicted with extreme prejudice.

I was just glad I didn’t have to fight the motherfucker myself.

It was a pretty good ending. Felt properly climactic, with monsters swarming the Imperial City and soldiers running around and the (remarkably convincing) sounds of battle all around.

Plus, ya know, an epic battle between a King Kong size demon and a giant dragon made of fire.

Right now, in the game, I am killing time waiting for my new Dragon Armor(my reward for saving the world, ya know) to be made by playing a quest mod quite misleading called HentaiMania 2 (haven’t fought a single tentacle monster yet).

It’s OK for a time waster. Pretty much just dungeons and monsters, neither of which are particularly inspired but what the heck.

For the curious the Hentai aspect is that most of the “monsters” are big titted anime chicks who are sort of naked-ish if you remove their armor.

Sadly, the same cannot be said for the big beefy orcs. Le sigh.

Once I get the fancy new armor, I will most likely start over with a new character. I’m very tired of being a wimpy wizard who has to rely on his summoned monsters to protect him because literally everything can kill him.

So I’m gonna go to the opposite extreme and be a big mountain of Orc or Nord muscle. With armor as thick as a sidewalk and an axe you could use to fell a sequoia.

It will be a huge relief just to stop having to switch spells and worry over my Magicka supply all the damned time.

---

Crap, I almost forgot I wasn’t quite done with part 1 AGAIN.

And at almost the same spot, too.

This is becoming alarming. Can’t go losing what marbles I have left.

Jesus I’ve got to get my shit together.

More after the break.

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SO SHALL IT BE!

Lemme tell you about my Glucometer Saga.

First, there was the box of sensors that were all dead. I dragged my ass about calling the company about that for a couple of weeks.

Why? Dunno. Sometimes I just can’t do things. Some bizarre aversion forms and freezes me in place and I can’t do the thing until it thaws.

Maybe it’s a reaction to the feeling I am “supposed’ to do a thing. Maybe, perversely, that feeling of pressure to do something makes the busted up crazy part of my mind feel like things are going out of control so it slams on the brakes.

I dunno. It’s fucked up.

Anyhow, so I called the company, had a nice chat with a sympathetic lady at the call center, she took down all my details and promised I would get a new box within three to five business days.

So I sat back. And I waited. And waited.

And then, suddenly, I waited some more.

Waited a whole month before deciding I had been forgotten.

I wonder if that nice lady even bothered to take down my info, or if she just said what needed saying to get me off the phone.

Would not be the first time someone lied to me to avoid dealing with me.

And I’m such a nice guy!

Anyhow, so another couple weeks go by with me doing nothing to get my glucometer working until it occurs to me that it has been more than a month since my first order of sensors and an order lasts a month so the province will totally pay for more sensors for me by now.

Then, I dick around for another week before actually ordering them from the pharmacy.

Dear Julian then fetches them for me. All right, we’re back in business!

Except I can’t find the reader. Uh oh.

Another week or so of foot-dragging. Why can’t I just DEAL with things?

I dig for and find the reader. GO TEAM! Wait… it needs recharging.

No problem, here’s the plug right here. Now… where is the wire that connects the plug to the reader?

Nowhere to be found! Of course!

It then took me three more days to search for it, not find it, get bummed out about that, then suddenly remember it just uses a standard micro-USB cable and I had found like three of those looking for the “right” cable.

Mind still stuck in the days when everything used its own special cable, I guess.

So today I finally got it all together. The reader is charging as we speak. Once it’s done, I get to try to remember how to apply the sensor and get shit going.

I am proud of myself for finally getting this done after like two months of various forms and levels of dicking around.

But I swear, if none of these sensors work, I’m a-gonna smack somebody.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

But I’m working on it.

Still pondering the secrets of my nonexistence as revealed by me in this space in the second half of yesterday’s blog entry.

To summarize, I figured out that I have felt like I am not here, not really around, like I am a ghost, and other similar things because my childhood traumae scared me so much that I was afraid to exist, and tried not to.

Somewhere in my deep programming, far beneath the reach of mere reason, is the feeling that if I am detected, the Bad Thing is going to GET me, and my only safety lies in giving no sign of my existence whatsoever – including that basic unconscious signal all humans put out that tells other humans we’re around.

Hence the feeling you are being watched, among other things.

And whilst those observations remain solid, I think there is more to it than that.

For example, I think being ignored and neglected by my family and my teachers had a lot to do with it as well. They treated me like I didn’t (and shouldn’t) exist, and that really fucked up my early childhood development.

I carry a massive sense of negation around with me as a result. A powerful feeling that I should not be, I am not wanted, my existence is a mistake and a crime, and that the world would be better off without me.

And yes, I know, intellectually, that none of that is true. And that counts – it’s the whole foundation of my ability to resist those terrible thoughts.

But those thoughts are always there, held back by a dam made of reason and sheer bloody-minded stubbornness, but still exerting a terrible pressure on the system.

Keeping the zombies out is never as good as making them go away.

It’s only been within the last year or so that I have been able to look at myself in the mirror without a powerful wave of self-hatred so powerful it almost makes me puke washing over me.

That hardly ever happens now.

That guy in the mirror ain’t so bad. Just looks like your everyday average big bearded fat dude. There’s a lot of guys who look more or less like me in the world.

But then again, it’s never been what is on the outside that’s the problem. I hardly give it any thought at all.

People are their insides to me. Their hearts and minds and souls. Everything else is just whatever packaging fate randomly assigned them, and means nothing about what matters to me about them.

Though a penis is always a plus. Sorry, ladies.

I love your hearts and minds and soul too.

Just not into vagina.

Try not to take it personally.

I’m sure your is fantastic.

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I hate this kind of thing

Wandered off with only 464 words written. Totally spaced on the fact that I had not actually made it to 500 words like I am supposed to in part 1.

Didn’t remember till I was sitting down to work on part 2.

Numerically, an insignificant oversight – 36 out of 500 words, 7.2 percent.

But getting this blogging shit done right everyday is my one little island of competence and productivity and reliability in a sea of flaccid ineptitude, so it hurts to screw up.

Oh well. I will def get my 1000 in by the end of the day, and that’s what counts.

And now, another brilliant innovation from Fruvous Labs.

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A Subway suggestion!

Hey Subway! You should make it an option to have egg salad as your side dish.

I can’t be the only person who loves the stuff, I’d much rather have a little plastic container of egg salad than greasy chips or a cookie. And you have the stuff right there for making your egg salad subs. So why not make it available as a side?

Come to think of it, you can turn any sub into a salad, so I could just order the egg salad sub as a salad and add whatever veggies and stuff I want…

Mental note : try this.

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On personal morality

Say you are walking through a mall when you see an article of clothing and instantly fall in love with it.

You have to have it. But you can’t really afford it. So you’re torn. The tension builds, then snaps : you buy it.

But then you get home and try it on and you look fantastic but regret is setting in, and you start thinking about how badly you just fucked yourself over by spending that much, and you start to feel guilty.

But guilty about what? For who? The only person who got hurt was you. So clearly this is not our usual interpersonal kind of guilt.

Instead, it’s personal guilt, the kind you feel for violating your own self interest. It is entirely self-referential and therefore is separate and distinct from the kind of person guilt we feel when our actions have harmed another, or one of our own principles.

This makes it an interesting avenue of moral inquiry that I have never seen explored elsewhere. It makes us take an almost schizophrenic role in that we are both the wronged party and the perpetrator of the crime, and are angry with ourselves.

Viewed that way, it seems almost like insanity, but it is instead a fundamental part of any functional self’s ability to self-regulate and it would be hard to imagine it not being there.

To put it somewhat flippantly, it’s how we stay smart.

As such, it is inherently intellectual. It governs the realm of making smart choices rather than morally correct ones.

Thus, it is a rather chilly faculty. This is clearly demonstrated in sociopaths, who lack empathy and thus have only this personal morality to guide them.

I can’t imagine living in a world that cold.

No wonder some of them go nuts.

Still, the case of the sociopath shows that this morality of self-interest might be the primitive ancestor of pre-empathic morality, and thus might teach us a thing or two about the deep structure of all moral psychology if only we have the courage and fortitude to strap on our wetsuits and explore its chilly waters.

And speaking of chilly waters, I suppose I should stop talking like a reptile and lay down for a much more human nap.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Very very frightening, me.

While I was putting my lunch together, Julian was watching Jimmy Kimmel on the TV and apparently, recently the unthinkable happened in LA : it rained.

But of course, mere precipitation is not nearly as big or visual enough for Tinsel Town, so this rain came with absolutely spectacular thunder and lightning.

As in, lightning so intense and widespread and complex that you half expect Raiden from Mortal Kombat to show up.

And that reminded me of an incident from my childhood that I wanted to write down.

And lucky you, you get to read it! *hearty, ragged cheer*

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What happened was that Prince Edward Island got hit by its own super storm.

This is extremely rare. Due to PEI being a narrow-ish strip of land. big storms tend to miss us, and so we only get the edges of them. Even when they get close enough for direct strikes ^[1], they never hit us with the sort of megaton force that is routine for people who live on the Prairies or in the Tropics

Except that one time…

On a sweltering summer night, I was awoken from a deep and dreamless sleep by the nerve-shattering sound of what I was sure was an explosion. It was so loud it shook the whole house like it had been struck by the first of an angry god. All the glass fixtures were left ringing after and dust was billowing down out of cracks in the ceiling.

The cats were quietly freaking out under my parents’ bed, I discovered later.

I was still reeling from this sensory onslaught when it happened again, and I learned the almost incomprehensible truth :

That had been thunder, and it was going to just keep happening.

Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. Prince Edward Island is remarkably free of extreme weather. No hurricanes, or earthquakes, or tornado, or plagues, or anything else on that Biblical scale.

Furthermore, I had no idea thunder could even BE that loud.

I’d never seen anything like that on TV!

And at first, I was like, whoa, cool! But that did not last.

I am very sensitive to sound, and having my poor little ears assaulted by hammers made of loudness shattered my tender nerves.

And each successive blast was worse because I had nowhere near enough time to recover from each one before the next happened.

So before long I was a total wreck. What followed was an hour and a half of pure hell. No escape was possible from a sound that loud. It was just hammer blow after hammer blow to my embattled nerves.

When it finally ended I felt directly to sleep. No transition at all. Just dropped directly from extreme nervous agitation to the deepest blackest hardest and most complete sleep this side of the grave.

Next morning I awake to find that the rest of the family slept right through it. Nobody remembered anything unusual about the previous night at all.

And that just proves life isn’t fair, folks.

Because I’m the heaviest sleeper in my family (although my mom is close). If something woke ME up, logically, it should have woken everyone else up too.

I mean, I’ve slept through earthquakes, for fuck’s sake!

But no, the universe was cheerfully willing to make absolutely no sense whatsoever in order to make sure I was forever alone in one of the worst experiences of my life.

It’s hard not to take that kind of thing personally, universe.

More after the break.

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I’m not really here

Haven’t done this topic for a while.

So let’s take another crack at why I feel like I am not really here.

At the moment, the root cause seems to me to be fear.

Fear of existing. Fear of being noticed. Safety in invisibility.

I learned to blend in with the woodwork as a defense mechanism primary against my bullies but also, to a lesser degree, my father.

But this is about a lot more than merely hiding, It’s even a lot more than merely not wanting to be noticed.

Deep down, it’s about want not to exist. Or rather, to hide all existence from my fellow naked beach monkeys. To mask the very deep. fundamental signal that we subconsciously give out that tells other humans we are there.

Combine this instinct to hide from danger with low self esteem and a poor sense of self like in me, and the need to hide can become unnaturally strong, to the point where it suppresses your very sense of your own existence.

Of course I don’t exist. I’m too scared to.

And it’s a pretty bleak thought to realize that the avoidant personality disorder is so strong in you that you’re afraid to even exist out loud.

So that’s the heart of it, more or less. So what do I do about it?

Because this constant pressure to conceal everything about myself has got to go. A stable sense of self can’t even begin to grow if I am scared to even exist, let alone be a living breathing human being with needs and desires and even like…. rights.

But how do I get at that deep down fear that fuels it all? It’s definitely too deep a part of my programming for me to merely think my way out of it.

This is microsurgery. The crude metal hands of “reason” are not suited to the task.

I suppose we can start with affirmations : I am safe. No danger lurks in the darkness waiting for me to drop my guard. I can exist bold and loud and no harm will befall me.

I hereby declare myself equal to all my monkeys, with no shame, no holding back, no hesitation, and with the full expectation of being treated as an equal.

And if I’m not, there will be hell to pay.

Because I am here and I am real and I deserve – and demand – my fair share of all the good things in life like love, acceptance, and money that everyone else gets.

I’m here whether you like it or not, world, and for your own sake you had better get used to the idea really fucking quick.

Because I am never going to disappear again.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Having a super sleepy day. Damn it. \

Hence my once more not getting around to eating lunch till 4 pm.

Man am I getting sick of this shit. It’s always the same : 2 pm rolls around but instead of getting hungry for lunch I am getting sleepy for….um, sleep.

Please excuse my faulty parallelism.

In fact, I am still so sleepy that there’s a chance I won’t make it out tonight. I am waiting to see how I feel after some food and some Diet Coke.

I will try my level best to make it out. I love our Denny’s meals, and having to do my shopping online at the last minute always introduces delays, complications, and uncertainty to my week.

And I hate all of those things!

Oh well, at least I got the new credit card activated at last, so ordering in is at least possible should it become necessary.

But I hope it does not. Do your magic. Diet Coke!

---

I think seasonal adjustment is part of the problem. Part of what makes me sleepy in the afternoon. As the days get super short, some messed up instinct is setting my circadian “day” to end in midafternoon, so that’s when I want to sleep.

And that’s livable six days of the week, when I have nothing to do in the afternoon and in the evening.

But not on Sunday, dammit. Sundays are sacred!

But for like… um, non-ecclesiastical reasons.

I will do what I can. There’s the Diet Coke, and I will take another nap after I am done with this portion of my daily blogging. Hopefully that will get me sufficiently ahead of game to do shopping and Denny’s.

Ah yes, Denny’s, where I will also drink much Diet Coke. Got to keep that in mind.

I can do this, dammit!

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Meanwhile, in the real world, I beat Inscrypion.

Hard to say what I thought of the ending, as the plot had gotten pretty damned complicated by then and I am not sure I know what the heck happened.

We beat the evil AI. That I know. More or less.

So I have been mostly playing Oblivion. I finished the Arcane University plotline and so I am now the University’s Arch-Mage.

As in Skyrim, my showing up at an institution means death for its current leader. Not that I will do anything to kill them – the plot will, so it can have me replace them.

Hard not to feel a little guilty about that.

The final fight against the King of Worms, Mannimarco, was pathetic. He was barely any harder to beat than the dozens of his lesser necromancer underlings that I dispatched in order to get to him.

So that was a disappointment. Now I am just sort of dicking around delaying having to resume the main plot for as long as I can.

I am foot-dragging bout it because I’ve come to the point where there has to be some big climactic battle, and while I love battle, I hate war.

Battle is simple : kill them.

War is super complicated and chaotic, with noise and screaming and people moving everywhere and no clear mission and the ever present threat of friendly fire, not to mention my total lack of a soldier’s battlefield awareness… ick.

Hopefully my actual part in it is simple and straightforward.

More after the break.

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Careful, I just might be happy

Or at least, way less sad.

Careful, though. I don’t want to jinx it or anything.

In face, it’s kind of hilarious how scared I am of being openly happy out of a deeply superstitious fear that the universe will punish me for daring to show joy.

Shhh! If it sees us, it will remember it hates us and get real mad!

Put like that, it’s obviously ludicrous. I’m not hiding from some malign entity who is out to GET me so my only safety is in remaining unnoticed and concealed.

Tell that to my adrenal glands, though.

But yeah. I feel pretty good right now. It started when I was doing my weekly Sav-On shopping and really blossomed while we were at Denny’s.

Nothing blissful about it, just a feeling of a buoyant blossoming inside of something like a radiant sunflower inside that gently propped me open like an unfolding umbrella.

And it feels quite nice. I could really get used to this.

No, really. I could!

Because this is my new goal. I have a mood target now. To be all opened up inside like this instead of scrunched up in a ball like an anxious armadillo like before.

After all, I have no idea what I am doing. I can admit that now. It doesn’t matter how smart I am “supposed” to be or how clever I think I am.

I haven’t the slightest idea what I am doing, I am not in charge, I am in no sense qualified to do anything at any time anywhere, and the best I can hope for in life is to keep stumbling through half-open doors till I get good at it.

I might be a genius but I’m not that smart. If you catch my meaning.

I am even wise from time to time. But that is not true wisdom, it’s insight. The kind of insight that lets one be the Wise Old Owl for others.

But true wisdom leads to wise actions, and on that level I score pretty poorly. The best thing you can say is that I don’t do a lot of really stupid things either.

Sort of a negative space version of wisdom.

But whatever. I’d rather be a happy goofball than a miserable wise man any ay of the week that ends in Y.

Above all, I embrace the opportunity to learn to breathe life in and out in the eternal cycle of living instead of trying to hold it all in all the time.

So fuck my wisdom. Fuck my truth. Fuck my reality. Fuck my knowledge, and my wisdom, and my insight, and my sense of the gestalt.

I’m just another soul looking for the way out of this crazy place.

But until I find it, I will just concentrate on having a good time.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I have been reconceptualizing my ability to get things done.

Because the truth is, I can’t just do things. Not really. It might look like there is nothing keeping me from doing all the things I “should” be doing, mostly health related, but that’s because the problem is in the deep layers of my mind, where it’s hard to see.

I have this massive untreated psychological wound in the very center of my being, and it kind of wrecks my life.

Or it would, if I had one.

And it’s high time I stop pretending that it isn’t true. That I am, in fact, a healthy person and any second now I will snap out of it and start living a normal life.

Not gonna happen. I’m gonna be fucked in the head for the rest of my life.

That doesn’t mean change and growth and recovery are impossible. It just means I have to be more realistic about what is possible.

And it especially triple double with a one and a half twist means that I will have to stop judging myself so harshly for not being able to do the things I can’t make myself do.

I’m a very ill man and it makes no sense to judge myself on the same scale as a healthy person. I have issues so deep and dire that most people couldn’t even comprehend them. Their minds would simply shut down in self defense if they tried.

Hell, not even my therapist can handle them. And that’s his goddamned job.

Back on track : I can get things done, but only now and then. Every once in a while. the mists that cloud my mind part and I am, for a little while, somewhat sane.

And so it makes sense to picture my life as biding time waiting for the next break in the clouds where I can actually do things and do what I can while it lasts.

It means facing the reality of my illness, though, which I only just realized I have not been doing. On some especially deluded level, I have been avoiding thinking about what my prospects are, realistically speaking, and living in a delusional bubble where I am both healthy and sick at the same time, both states quantum superimposed.

Nope. I’m just plain sick. And the danger grows every day. And I can’t just fix it. I have to wait for the next bus to sanity to show up at my stop so I can get things done.

That seems like an acceptable way to live if I can make the mental transition. It means accepting that my fate lies in the hands of random fluctuations in my brain chemistry, but that’s the truth of the situation whether I cop to it or not, so…. might as well.

All I go to do is keep an eye on my level of crazy so I can jump in with both feet in those moments when my resistance is down.

It’s not very comforting but at least it’s based on something real.

More after the break.

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Oh what a night

More Adventures in Ordering In.

So, last night. I deliberately used up most of the money left on my second PayPower buyable loadable Mastercard.

There was only $38 left on it from the initial $500 I put on there months ago, so I figured that would be enough for one hearty meal and then I would switch to the new one I bought and put $500 on last Sunday.

Of course, it wasn’t that fucking easy,. Over and over, I would put together an order and it would come out to just a scooch more than what I had left on the card.

Then I finally got it under…. but it was still too close for the restaurant’s comfort so it got rejected anyhow.

Then I got everything perfect….only to then find the restaurant had closed while I wad fretting over my order.

ARGH, said the fox.

But eventually I got a nice Caesar wrap on the Classic plate (4 Zucchini Sticks, Zoo Dip, and a half Casar for $4 – not bad!) and the only problem was missing fries.

I didn’t want the fries in the first place. Fries are so boring. Not worth the carbs. So I wasn’t exactly weeping over them.

But I reported the omission to Door Dash anyhow. They tossed $6 my way by way of an apology. Works for me.

Except what did I find sitting on the counter right where they should be this morning?

Conway Twitty, lookin’ mighty surprised.

OK, you got me, it was the fries.

So, oops there.

Then tonight, I decided that I wanted some Subway. Always tasty and mostly nutritious, especially if you avoid the cholesterol laden dressings.

I don’t, myself. But the principle holds.

That meant it was time to activate the new card. And that went fine until the very end, where I had to read these teeny tiny numbers off the back of the new card.

And despite my visual impairment, I think I got them all except for the very last one. \

Which was totally a 1.Or a 3. Or a 6. Or… an 8. Or a 7?

In other words, I was fucked. After trying a bunch of times. I gave up and ate stuff I already had here.

I could have ordered from Pizza Hut, as they still, god bless them, take cash, but by that point I was so pissed off by the whole thing that I just wanted to eat and be done with it.

Plus the aggravation had killed my appetite anyhow.

So I had yet another fun Saturday night struggling with the forces of fuckery in order to get myself fed.

Hell, I even tried taking video of the numbers on the card and blowing it up.

But no, fundamental resolution was too low.

Enhance, god damn it!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.