I am talking, of course, about how I am partially ultraviolet light.

OK, OK, not really. Instead I am going to discuss my feelings about how I may or may not be slightly autistic.

Now let me be time crystal clear here : I am not autistic. And I am not claiming to be autistic. Rest assure that I am not trying to sneak onto your sacred ground, my friends on the spectrum.

I have checked myself over many, many times and I simply don’t match enough of the diagnostic criteria for autism or Asperger’s. So I am not in the club at all.

However, I have identified certain traits within myself that resonate with my understanding of the spectrum and that therefore I can better understand by looking at them through that lens.

Got it? Good.

What I have been thinking about lately is the problems I have had connecting with people. No matter how hard I try, regular people and myself just don’t click. I can tell they are looking for something in me and not finding it, and I desperately want to give it to them but I just don’t have it.

It’s like they are looking for a USB port and all I have is Bluetooth.

That’s when that soul-crushing chasm opens up between us and I feel a hard cold breeze hit my heart from all directions at once and I feel alienated and isolated and I am once more stranded naked in the midnight tundra of the void between our souls.

And I find that highly discouraging.

So do others, because there is nothing obviously weird about me. I am articulate, empathic, funny, intelligent, and approachable. All surface indications are that they should be able to connect to me the same way they do everyone else.

But somehow it just…. doesn’t work.

So now I am wondering what the heck is the deal with that. Sure, in an of itself it isn’t autism, but then what the hell is it? What do you even call that?

I am clearly different from most of my fellow humans and I am pretty sure I was born that way. Even as a preschooler I was an oddly serious, self-contained, focused, and mature little boy.

Being denied kindergarten only reinforced this tendency.

But even before that, I was very odd. I had no interest in toys. Dolls, action figures, toy dump trucks, and all the rest held no allure for me.

Because I had no urge to concoct and enact the sorts of scenarios that seem to be what “play” means to normal, healthy children,.

I never had an imaginary friend. I never had a stuffed animal I thought of as a real animal and carried around with me everywhere. I always had a very sharp understanding of the difference between fantasy and reality.

And this was true before the rape, before the lack of kindergarten, and before I ever was bullied by anyone.

So what the ever loving hell was wrong with me?

Because I sure as frick wasn’t normal, and I am not normal now.

To be honest, I never stood a chance.

More after the break.

---

Random thought : what of instead of watching someone strip, you watch someone being stripped? An undressing show. Could be pretty hot.

---

My major malfunction, part 2

I’ve put the question of what the fuck was/is wrong with me out to my Avoidant Personality Disorder subReddit. So far, only one reply, and they talked about functional play versus symbolic play.

Functional play is using something exactly as intended – like bouncing a ball. Symbolic play is the sort of imaginative, freeform play I talked about above.

The responder said that it sounded like I had some functional play but no symbolic play, and I think they are right.

I did do some things like bounce a ball against a wall or jump rope or go climb a tree. But at no point was I imagining anything else happening.

In that sense I was a very dull child.

But the thing is, I had loads of imagination. And of course prodigious intellect. I could, and can, lie in bed for hours just thinking about things.

And yet, even within the world of my mind, I never imagined myself to be the hero of an adventure I was creating on the fly. I never told myself elaborate stories. I never conjured up a sorcerer’s orchestra or pictured myself flying on the back of a Pegasus.

I was always me. Flights of fancy never carried me away. I always had that very firm sense of what was real and what was imagination and the two never crossed.

It never would have even occurred to me to imagine my way out of my problems. I often say that I am a dreamer but…. not that way. Not in the doe-eyed idealist sense with stars in their eyes and hearts full of wonder sense.

I saw that kind of thing in pop culture, and it always spoke to me. I often wished I had that kind of overpowering hope in me, and I would enjoy it by proxy when it came up.

But it was not for me.

It could never have been for me.

So I might get a really good feeling from, say, this song :

And while I listening, I would feel some kind of connection to the sort of full color enriching hopeful world other kids lived in.

But then the movie ended and the song faded and the color and warmth drained out of me again and I went back to being a sad little robot who went to school.

So again, what the heck was wrong with me? Something was and is terrible wrong with me. I am a defective unit. Does not compute.

And I wouldn’t care except that I think it has a lot to do with why I am so sad.

There is a cold dark gap where some vital piece of social equipment should be and that made me quite unlike the other children and left me alienated and alone.

And to this day I am so very lonely without it.

If I knew what it was called, I would buy one online.

As is, I don’t know if it even has a name.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I must be.

After all, cogito ergo dum, right? I’m an idiot therefore I am. If I don’t exist, then wh o’s asking all these stupid fucking questions?

All evidence and logic would seem to point to the irrefutability of my existence. Any theory claiming otherwise would have an awful lot to explain.

Like if I don’t exist, who ate those sausage rolls I got from 7-11? Huh? Not so tough now, are ya, wise guy?

I mean, half the other suspects are vegan!

So I guess I am forced to reluctantly admit to the truth of my marginal existence. If pressed in a court of law, I would have no choice but to confess to probably existing at least most of the time.

I dunno though. Reality is such a commitment.

Like, what if I don’t feel like existing? What then? Once you exist you are stuck, like it or not. If you change your mind, well, it’s too late.

You exist, and there’s nothing you can do about it!

Well, there’s one thing you can do about it, but it’s even more of a big commitment than merely existing on this plane of reality.

It’s true that I sometimes want to die. But not, like, permanently. Just for a while, so I can get some rest for once.

Then resurrect feeling all well rested and renewed.

A long weekend should be sufficient time. Jesus had the right idea.

Of course, the real problem is that I often don’t feel like I am here. That is how deep the numbing effect of depression and avoidance has dug this hole of mine.

I am so numb that I can’t even feel my own existence. No wonder I so often feel like i am on the brink of falling into a bottomless bit of utter catatonic madness.

I’m barely here in reality in the first place. Subjectively speaking.

And I know that’s a problem. I know I would be a lot better off if I spent less time in the pastel paradise of my computer and more time interacting with actual living breathing reality, otherwise known as the place where I actually live.

But reality is weird, man.

All that sensory stimulation and non-negotiable unpleasantness and ignorance and stupidity and shit that just plain sucks,.

The technicolor fantasy world inside my computer is fully curated. I choose what is part of it and what remains outside its hallowed doors. I have control here. Power, even.

In this world, I am confident, and competent, and capable, and all those other manly things that I am sadly not in the “real” world.

Of course, I don’t have those qualities precisely because I hide from the world inside this isolating incubator of a life of mine.

But that won’t last forever.

I am working on a way out.

I am building the special device that will allow me to leave.

Part key, part talisman, part hazmat suit, when complete it will allow me to walk away from this lack-of-life support system and maybe even interact directly with my fellow mortals without needing the internet to act as filter.

One can only hope.

So stick with me, kid, because I’m busting out of here.

Any day now, I swear.

Sweet sunshine, here I come!

I just…. have to get ready first.

More after the break.

---

Joke I heard on my beloved Jack FM today :

I don’t like elevators, so I’ve started taking steps to avoid them.

A flawless pun. Mad respect. Golf claps for everyone.

---

Impulse power, Mister Sulu

What the funk, haven’t kicked this one around for a while.

---

Impulses die when they are never acted upon.

Or rather, they fall asleep.

There is only so long that your brain can keep trying to get the same impulse through to the action center of your brain before it gives up and another instinct dies.

Repeated stimuli are tuned out, after all. And unrewarded behaviours are eventually extinguished. And for an impulse. leading to action is all the reward it needs.

So when it comes down to a seriously depressed person like myself who lets almost no impulses lead to action or even emotional expression and who therefore has a very weak impulse generator across the board, and thus not a lot of drive.

Hence my constant indecision. The true solution to the problem of the infinite corridor of infinite doors (the ICOID) is to pick the door you want.

Barring that, the one that FEELs right. Yes, that’s not logical. But it beats drowning in the goddamned doldrums, doesn’t it?

And barring THAT, just pick one at random and start exploring. Yes, any one of them might lead directly to disaster. Some are booby trapped. Some seem to lead to paradise but dump you into hell instead. Some go nowhere for a really long time then end in a dead end that leaves you no choice but to go all the way back to the beginning then start over knowing all that effort was in vain.

All that and much, much worse is possible.

But really good things are at least as possible. Don’t let depression’s darkness convince you there’s no such thing as light. Statistically, without additional parameters, negative and positive outcomes are equally probable.

So go out there and get hurt, he tells himself for the millionth time.

But I have too much of that cold paralyzing life-destroying fear inside.

Fear isn’t even a big enough word for it. It’s something even deeper than fear, or at least, fear as the human mind normally conceives it.

It’s a fear so ancient and primal that paramecia feel it when an amoeba is trying to engulf it. It lives in the hindbrain and shivers in the dark and it coldly hates the world for all the threats it contains.

It has and needs no source, because this fear has nothing to do with the world outside my skull and everything to do with being scared for so long that you are always ready to freak out at the slightest excuse.

And how that fact makes you feel about life and the world.

It’s not good.

It’s the scared little animal that is my heart, and it’s so cold and so tired.

And so very, very angry.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

This is important.

I think one of the fundamental cognitive flaws that underwrites one’s depression is the idea that energy is something you either have or you don’t.

How typically of depression : a false all or nothing binary.

The truth, as always, is more dynamic : energy is something you can give yourself by doing things that pump you up.

Healthy people know this intuitively, so intuitively in fact that they don’t know they know it and therefore can’t explain it to us lost children.

But their motivational routines include it and that’s why they work. They grasp that motivation doesn’t go straight from 0 hp to full blast from a cold start,.

It comes in stages, and each stage contains the energy to boost to the next stage. Just like the gears in an automatic car.

I use a surprising number of automotive metaphors for someone who can’t even drive and has to memorize license plates to tell which car is a friends’.

A : What kind of car does he drive?
Me : Um…. kind of grey?
A: Seriously? You’ve been in his car thousands of time and you still don’t know what kind of car it is?
Me : Well it’s not like there’s labels everywhere….”

Anyhow, asides aside, the key principal is that there are ways to GET energy (or motivation or inspiration or whatever) but you have to put in the initial effort to get things started in the first place.

You need to install some spark plugs.

Spark plugs don’t power the car. All they do is provide the spark that ignites the fuel and after that the engine is running on gas.

So depression’s bleak and narrow view that you either have ALL the energy to do something or you just can’t do it is just plain wrong.

And that error is a vital cog in the way depression conspires to keep you down.

The truth is that you can have the power you need if you want it.

So do you want it?

But Fruvous, if I accept your theory, that might lead to my doing things and I am in general against doing things ever so I have to reject your theory!

Well then it’s not really about energy or motivation or whatnot, is it? So you can stop lying to yourself about that. You now know that the power to do what you want is available to you and it’s a matter of your choosing not to do it.

As for what will pump you up, I obviously can’t tell you that. It’s too personal and individual. Only you know what things make you feel inspired.

But the main thing is to fight to want to be inspired. To let inspiration in and give it permission to call the shots.

To stop fighting yourself and your own motivation. To put your all into combatting the anti-action bias and accept that if you truly want to get better, that is going to involve actually doing things, with no guarantee of reward.

It’s up to you to stop clinging to the bottom so you can float to the top.

And that means giving up the safety and security that is god damned killing you.

More after the break,

---

The energy miser

Think about that seminal example of financial constipation, Ebenezer Scrooge.

He ruthlessly and compulsively hoards money even though it doesn’t make him happy. At best, it makes him somewhat less unhappy.

But like any addict deep into their habit, he no longer pursues his drug because it makes him feel good, but because stopping would make him feel bad.

He has more money than God and it still barely keeps his demons at bay.

The ultimate irony is that he can’t even spend it on himself. Richer than beef gravy and yet in terms of material pleasure, Bob Cratchett lives better.

If he hadn’t inherited that house from Marley, he might be living in the street. Or his office, sleeping on his desk.

And it’s all because his mind is stuck in a state of false scarcity. No matter how much he has, he still feels like he’s desperately poor and can’t afford to spend one farthing more than absolutely necessary or everything will fall down around his head.

In his head, he knows that’s not true. But it’s the demon tormenting his very soul that is in charge and it knows no such thing.

And that’s what depression does to the relationship with one’s own personal energies. It creates a perpetual state of false scarcity.

The body most definitely has the energy to do the same range of human activities that healthy people eating the same diet and getting the same amount of exercise do.

For those of us who are obese, one might even say we’re quite rich. Energy galore. A million dollars in the bank.

But depression tells us otherwise. Its propaganda constantly tells us that we are barely surviving and we have to do and move as little as possible or we’ll die.

Ultimately it all comes down to reward. It’s the anhedonia that kills you.

Motivation falls apart when the pleasure one should get for doing things disappears. You stop doing the work because you’re no longer being paid. The stimulation of the reward center of the brain that is one’s “pay” for every action dwindles to next to nothing and one becomes an addict and a slave to whatever can press that reward button the hardest with the least amount of effort because that’s the only way the cost/benefit ratio of effort versus reward can work in your favor.

In the lab experiment of life, we are the rats who have to keep on pressing that goddamned lever as fast as we can just to stay marginally sane.

This is where religious faith can help. It allows the mind to invent an independent source of reward stimulation that is purely internal and therefore cannot fail.

Not an option for many people, sadly.

But perhaps freedom begins with the realization that you do not need reality’s permission to be happy.

You can go ahead and be happy for no reason. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Maybe not bliss. That could get messy. But enough joy to keep your head above water.

Give yourself permission to stimulate your own happiness at least that much.

Who knows, it might even work.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

To the tune of Manic Monday by the Bangles :

It’s just another Therapy Thursday….

Shit, WTF rhymes with Thursday?

Save me, Rhyme Zone!

It’s just another Therapy Thursday
It’s not like it’s my birthday
I think I’ve gone the wrong way
Roast beef is an entrée.
It’s just another Therapy Thursday

Meh. It needs work.

---

Did the therapy thang with Doc Costin today.

Was nice to hear from him because I didn’t get a session last week. Something came up with his wife’s health at the last minute and he had to cancel.

Fair enough. Excrement occurs. She had a fall a couple of weeks ago and they are both in their 70s so that’s a big freaking deal.

Cracked two vertebrae. Poor dear.

Random aside : when listening to my Reddit videos about relationship issues, I’ve noticed that the vast majority of married couples have ages with 1 year of each other.

Isn’t that interesting? Like people naturally sort themselves out into close-age pairs without ever consciously intending too.

I would have understood a 5 year span maybe. But 1?

Are there such things as micro-generations?

“We bonded over liking the exact same season of Spongebob. “

Anyhow. Back to therapy.

Main topics included : CPAP, and how I should really trying harder to learn to use the goddamned thing so I can get decent sleep.

It started with me sharing my thoughts about how sometimes it’s like I live to sleep. Like I stay awake just long enough to get tired enough to sleep again.

Like I keep saying, sleep is death without the commitment. It’s the closest you can get to being dead without being dead. It lets you flee life almost completely.

Hence its strong appeal to my avoidant ass.

But that lead to discussing my lack of CPAP participation and how I went to the troub;le of getting a new mask and all, then tried putting it on, got frustrated when I couldn’t figure it out, and gave up apparently forever.

And that was in early October of last year.

This is what happens when you live life with one and a half feet out the door. When you are always primed to bolt for the exit so you can scurry back into your hidey hole where you can hide even further in sleep.

It’s like I am not even here. What you see is just a hologram projection of me designed to fool people into thinking I am a real flesh and blood person while I remain cowering in my cave, terrified of everything.

But I want to be a real little boy. Or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

Or do I? I’m not sure, and I think that’s the problem. Part of me wants to walk in the light and part of me want to squat in the dark. And that second part is holding me back.

Sooner or later, I am going to have to stop letting my fears and resistances and compulsions and aversions hold me back and just turn to face the strain and do what I know needs to be done in order to dig myself out of this hole.

If, that is, I even want to get out of this hole.

And I do.

But I also…. don’t.

Sigh. It’s so complicated to be me.

More after the break.

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Why I need a cellphone

I have finally come up with a solid reason why I need a smartphone, and I partially have Julian to thank for it.

Because as I was carrying my supper into my room after making it in the kitchen right now, I noticed in passing that he was listening to a newscast via his smartphone as he sat on the couch and ate, and suddenly it hit me :

If I had a smartphone (or tablet, or whatever), I could listen to my YouTube videos anywhere I go. And that means I could have my beloved vids with me to act as a centering, calming force – the aforementioned “talisman” – to help me go out more into the world and expand this tiny safety zone of mine.

This prospect intrigues me.

At first, I would just use it to make myself more willing to do stuff around the apartment. Mostly cleaning and other chores, but other stuff too.

Might make me more likely to shower, if I can ever get past being covered in god damned bandages all the time.

Or at least learn to assert myself with the nurses enough to get them to waterproof ALL the bandages EVERY time.

Anyhow, the prospect of a more portable Fru pleases me both because it could be a real enhancement to my life and because having the idea in the first place shows that I am starting to think outside my teeny tiny box.

And that’s a very good sign. Healthy, even. A few little green shoots of green poking shyly through the ice around my heart, looking for sunshine.

Keep going, little buddies. It’s coming. Springtime is real, trust me.

---

My mind is a monster

I’ve spoken before about being afraid of the power of my own mind.

The way I phrased it long ago is still apt : “Sometimes I am terrified by the prospect that I might actually be as smart as I sometimes think I am.’

That’s probably why I have always responded strongly to anything in sci fi or fantasy where someone is realizing they have enormous power and it’s driving them crazy.

Like that one episode of original Star Trek, where the crew member gets the zap and starts gaining psychic powers rapidly.

I identify with that shit, man. I too have more power than most people, though mine is of course merely intellectual.

But I am frightened of what I could do with that power and, even moreso, where that power could take this fragile mind of mine.

I have felt delusions of grandeur swelling in my mind, trying to break through to the surface of my sanity, and had to fight hard to keep them down.

It would be so easy to declare myself some kind of superior being. It would “solve” this conflict between my identity and my superpowers. Between me as a human being and my status as an intellectual giant.

But it would cost me my sanity, and that’s too high a price to pay for anything.

Still, lately I have been pondering whether the path to sanity might have to go through Crazytown. Whether I have to risk going in the direction of madness in order to sufficiently rebalance my mind to make me stable.

I’m positive that my depression uses my fear of going crazy to keep me in line and under its greasy black thumb. I’ve felt like I am barely clinging to a knife’s edge of sanity for so long that it’s hard to remember that this idea might be entirely bullshit.

Maybe I could let go completely, and nothing bad would happen at all.

Or maybe I would go a little crazy for a little while, while my mind rebalances itself and I cling to some flotsam and do my best to survive The Flood.

Or maybe I would go a whole lot crazy. The kind you don’t come back from. I dunno.

But at least it would something different from my current crap parade.

And at this point, maybe that’s enough.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I can’t hold back on this any more. This bullshit has gone on long enough. Time for me to make a flaming anus of myself and voice a highly unpopular opinion.

Namely that the whole concept of “demisexuality” is dangerous bullshit that makes the world a worse place by isolating people in bubbles of false identity when we are far better off remembering that we are one in our common humanity, not subsubsubdirectories in the file system of the human race.

Let’s start with a definition from the Wikipedia article :

A demisexual person does not experience sexual attraction until they have formed a strong emotional connection with a prospective partner.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_asexuality#Demisexuality

Now cards on the table, the main reason I am so mad about this horsecrap is because that describes me and I refuse to be pathologized.

Needing an emotional connection before sexual attraction does not make me special or part of a unique group or any flavour of asexual.

Don’t get me started on asexuality in general. Just don’t.

In fact, not that long ago, it was assumed that the definition listed above applied to all women, across the board!

If anything, it should be the people who can get attracted without an emotional connection who are the weird ones.

I mean, what, exactly, are they attracted to? Body parts? Abstract geometry? Some sort of fantasy in their heads?

Personally, I am attracted to people, and people have emotions.

Emotions, thought, reactions, opinions, preferences, ideas,,,, all the things that make people individuals, and interesting, and desirable to me.

If all you care about is body part, go fuck a mannequin.

In fact, I think most people need some form of emotional connection before they are attracted to someone, they just don’t know it because that connection is presumed.

Sure, some horned up frat boy drooling over a big titted cheerleader is not consciously thinking about her mind, but he would be way less turned on if there wasn’t one.

If she was a vegetable or a dummy or a video game character or a RealDoll, he would not be nearly so excited to sleep with her.

But what really worries me about these identity labels is that I think they lead people, especially naïve young people, to make something a permanent part of their identity when it may well be a transitory part of their development.

Like, say someone reads up on asexuality, decides it applies to them, declares themselves to be part of that community, joins forums, goes to events, makes friends in asexual circles, and enjoys the thrill of the whole identity inclusion cycle for say a year.

But then…. start to feel different. Starts to feel horny. Like, all the time.

Are they going to make a break with their newfound community? Ghost all their asexual buddies? Tear the asexual flags off their walls and backpacks? Tell the people on the forums to go unfuck themselves?

Of course not. They’re going to suppress this new truth about themselves and go on pretending to be asexual while hiding their true sexuality from all their friends.

And isn’t that the thing we’re trying to make sure people don’t have to do any more?

That’s what worries me. I don’t want people making potentially temporary things a permanent part of their identity and boxing themselves in.

I remember when people just said they had a low sex drive. What was wrong with that?

Or how about “not very interested in sex right now”?

Or “just now getting really good at masturbating?”

Why take on this big restrictive label when it’s totally not necessary?

Keep your options open, kids. You don’t even know who you are yet.

Then again, neither do I…..

More after the break.

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I wanna do the stupid thing

But I’m not going to.

Not all of it, anyhow.

I just played Oblivion for quite a while and now I have stopped because it’s time for me to eat and blog.

But I don’t want to eat and blog,

I want to take a nap.

This is my pattern in the last month and change. I guess I don’t have the endurance I used to. Instead of switching modes from the gameplay to the ol eat n’ blog, I end up laying down for a while because I am so tired.

So tired that I am not even hungry, though I totally should be by now.

Ergo, I end up napping, and then I end up not eating until hours after when I should, which throws my whole schedule off.

And instead of eating my meals at regular intervals, like I know I should for a whole host of reasons, I end up eating my “supper” at 10 pm and then my “snack” at midnight, or something else equally absurd.

I can’t live like this. I can’t lose one of the only bits of regularity I have been able to establish and maintain. I can’t eat at random times because I constantly end up sleepy when I should be hungry.

Fighting the sleepy. Still looking for the hungry.

And that’s what it will take to set things right : the will and grit to fight the sleepiness and stay awake until the eating and writing are done.

I have fallen into a dangerous state of indolent decadence. One where I almost never resist the urge to sleep of my own free will.

It’s only when there is something external I need to do, like hang out with my friends or go to Wound Care or whatever, that I fight sleep.

And therefore I sleep a lot. Some days it feels like all I have the ambition to do is sleep. That being awake is useful only in that it makes me sleepy again and that every waking moment is secret spent just waiting for the chance to go to sleep again.

This is not good.

I am not dead.

Life is worth living, I swear.

I just don’t remember why right now.

It’ll come to me.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Still not in the mood to use the topics from my notes.

I’m feeling very inward facing lately. I think that’s why. I have too much I am trying to express with these inexpert words to take any external words in, even from myself.

That’s fine, though. The notes are there for when I need them. When I am drawing a blank and can’t think of anything to write about.

And they are a way for me to get ideas out of my head without having to write the entire thing. Patient readers will remember that I resisted doing that for a long time under the assumption that if the only way for my ideas to escape my skull was to write the full thing, I would be more motivated to write the frigging thing.

And there’s still some truth to that, and the connected idea that if I write down an idea, my brain will say “good enough” and count it as “written”, and then I will have the same distaste (and disgust) I have for it that I have for all my completed works and will never want to touch the thing again.

God it’s complicated being me. Sigh.

But the truth is that writing down the idea of something is not the same as writing the thing. I have much more to say on the topic and/or a much more deep and detailed story to tell, and the note is merely a reference to that greater work.

So jotting down the occasional note is fine. The note is neither command nor obligation, it’s just a bit of externalized memory I use to make space in my brain for new stuff.

Got to keep my working memory as uncluttered as possible.

After all, there’s less of it every day.

---

Trials of Fire indeed

In addition to all the Oblivion-ing, I’ve also occasionally been playing a game called Trials of Fire.

It’s a turn based strategy RPG of unusual depth and fascination and my continuing to play it is quite noteworthy because normally, I would have given up on it by now.

Because the truth is, I am terrible at it.

For now, at least. I never get very far into the game on each “run’. Usually the third or fourth battle kills me. By all measures I have demonstrated very little aptitude for the game. It’s too complex for me to easily handle.

Which is why I love that I keep playing anyhow.

Because you know what? Fuck aptitude.

I’ve coaster through life on natural ability for too long. It’s a crutch. So it’ good that I have found something I enjoy enough to keep doing despite repeated failure.

in fact, I find the game quite absorbing. Time flies when I am playing it. I lose hours an barely even notice.

That’s especially true now that I have noticed that I can multitask it with listening to my YouTube videos due to its relatively low verbal component and low stimulus level.

The two together put me into a “flow” state quite nicely. And I treasure that.

Because barring any direction or goals in my life, getting through time with as little pain and strain as possible is as good as it gets.

Next best thing to being in a coma!

More after the break,

---

Me : 1, Argh! : 0

Just had a wrasslin’ match with that bloody-minded beast called bureaucracy.

Started when I got an email from the province telling me that my booster shot of the ol’ COVID vaccine was now available and all I had to do was log in to the government website and book an appointment.

Easy… ish. All I had to do was plug in my personal health number off my CareCard plus the appointment confirmation number.

So I clicked the link in the email and it took me to the appointment website. Legit!

Then I go back to the email for this confirmation thingy.

It ain’t there. Panic level 1!

I am now in a tizzy trying to figure out what the fuck I missed.

Luckily I switched back to the website in my blind panic and saw that the confirmation code had been automagically filled in when I clicked the link.

Kind of wish they’d TOLD me that. But whatever.

So I make my appointment for what seems like a sensible time – 11:30 am Friday. But then I tell Julian, and oops, he already agree to dogwalk then.

Merde. Oh well, these things happen.

Now I gotta figure out how to change the appointment.

Luckily, that proves to be easy, there’s a link for it in the confirmation email.

But then the real battle begins because apparently these appointments are going fast ergo I am going through location after location and finding they either have no appointments left or only have appointments on days and/or times I can’t make.

I had no choice but to just keep trying locations till I found one that worked.

Thankfully, I finally found one. 3:10 pm this Saturday the 29th, at, ironically, the pharmacy attached to my doctor’s office.

And I need to make an appointment with him to discuss both my tummy issues and mystery of why half my body went numb anyhow, so what the hell, I will see if he takes in-person appointments on Saturdays.

Odds are low but it’s worth a shot.

Still kind of pissed off about the ER’s lack of continued interest in why i had some very heart attack and/or stroke like symptoms.

The EMTs were certainly taking the whole thing seriously. That was soothing to my fears, which were considerable.

For all I knew, this was it. This was the heart attack or stroke that was going to kill me. Turn me into another fat (potential) star taken too soon.

And I didn’t even drink or do drugs!

So to then patiently wait for hours while they did their thing only to be told “Well it’s not a heart attack or stroke. Bye!” was very disappointing.

I really thought they cared!

Well I am going to get some kind of answer somehow, dammit. Either from my GP, or my cardiologist, or (god help us) the internet.

I trust the internet on a lot of things, but I know that Google plus my being a recovering hypochondriac make for a very volatile combination.

So I don’t wanna go there. Much better off talking to experts.

Nice, soothing, knowledgeable experts who know way more than me and who are trained in this very thing and whose opinion I can therefore trust.

Imagine me repeating the previous paragraph in a low, singsong voice while rocking back and forth while clutching my sides in the dark,

So don’t fuck this up, experts.

You’re all that stands between me and MADNESS.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Yes, I do have one.

I’m as surprised as you are to learn this.

I’ve always associated that sort of thing with the doomed perfectionists and demon-driven overachievers of the world.

The Type A Types. People for whom I had great admiration (and use) and who probably are the ones that keep the world running, but with whom I do not identify.

I’m a more laid back type, or so I thought.

But I am actually the opposite, it just doesn’t seem that way because it doesn’t express itself in me like it does in other.

The epiphany came when I realized that my arrogance was such that I simply assumed that whatever I did, I would do better than anyone else.

As long as it was in my rather large wheelhouse of creativity and academics and so on, I simply assume I will do extremely well without even trying.

It’s not as crazy as it sounds.

Because that has literally been my experience of life. Without effort, I was way, way smarter than the other kids. There was never even any question. At no point did I ever feel like one of my fellow students was somehow serious competition for me.

Granted, that’s mostly because I was a doe-eyed innocent who didn’t think in terms of competition at all and just wanted to be everyone’s friend, but still.

If I could start over at Grade 1, I would be competitive as FUCK.

My point is, I have been the best without even trying my whole life.

So I can truly say that the idea that in any “my sort of thing” competition, the idea that there will someone way, way better than me there would not normally occur to me.

I want that kind of competition. I’ve been search for my sensei (or at least a worthy rival) for my entire life. I want someone to test myself against. I want someone who can put me down with superior force and make me feel like finally, there is a superior power who can protect me and whom I can learn from in this world.

Holy crap. Stick a pin in that shit, it’s gold.

The protect part especially. When there is no superior power in your world then you are truly alone and abandoned. Sure, you have power – but you don’t have the wisdom, experience, toughness, or grit to use it to protect yourself.

Instead, it makes you a target of other people’s impotent rage.

Ain’t my fault I’m Superman.

Anyhow, back to my subconscious but profound egotism.

I am not sure how I would react if I stepped into some arena of competition and found out there was someone way better than me there.

Honestly, I might creepy them out to the max by getting all excited to meet them.

“OMG! you completely kicked my ass! That makes me so happy! I’ve been waiting to meet you for my entire life! We need to go again, and this time, I will actually try! I’ve always wanted to know what that’s like! Will you be my FRIEND? Wait, come back!”

Yeah. That would not end well.

More after the break.

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“…and you know it’s safe for everyone to eat, because it’s made without ingredients…”

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Trouble changing lanes

Lately I have had trouble changing activities.

Like when I stop playing games to blog or go to the bathroom or eat. Or when I stop blogging to lay back down.

Seems like no matter what I am doing, I never want to stop doing it and then have to face the uncomfortable transition period, which the unhealthy Trog part of me always views as a cruel and chilling dislocation of some kind.

Like there is no such thing as a smooth and comfortable change. Only life as an endless series of brief islands of warm, fragile stability being shattered by brutal tsunamis of arctic fury.

And that’s no way to run a railroad, kids.

Anyone can see that. Life involves changes and transitions. At the risk of insipidity, I will point out that you will always be stopping doing one thing to do another.

And that would be true even if I was a billionaire. Getting out of the hot tub to meet with my production team is just as much a transition as getting out of bed to play Oblivion.

So to have so little ability to adapt to the basic mode changes of any life on Earth makes me a very poorly programmed nude monkey indeed.

I don’t know why I have such a poor transmission and gearbox. I suppose it must be my inward turning nature. To be otherwise would require some kind of constant presence in mundane reality and I try to keep that shit to an arguably harsh minimum.

Regardless of the reason, it seems quite absurd to me that I have to fight myself a dozen or more times a day just to get myself to do whatever is next.

Wake up, you silly human, and read the agenda!

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A knot in the gut

WARNING : Non explicit poop talk.

More than a little worried about my intestinal situation.

I keep getting constipated without knowing it then ending up taking a very extensive poop which leaves me in this bizarre and uncomfortable state where I can feel a rather solid and tight knot in my guts right around and under my navel, but I can’t shift it.

So it feels like I have more defecating to do, but I can’t actually do it. Frustrating.

And of course, my mind immediately goes to one of my many medical issues doctors don’t feel like fixing, my untreated umbilical hernia.

That’s exactly where the knot forms, and lingers for a while before moving on. It could very well be that the problem has gotten worse and is now narrowing the intestine and causing bottlenecks in the system.

That shit could get serious. So, back to Doctor Chao I go.

While I am there, I might as well ask him if HE knows why the left side of my body went numb and caused me to go to the ER.

What the hell, it’s worth a shot.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

There is part of me that is always screaming.

Some beyond insane fragment of my mind that just screams and screams in a vain attempt to express the deep and terrible pain I am in all the time.

Perceptually, it is somewhat like a constant white noise at a frequency you can’t actually hear but yet can still perceive.

And it hurts.

Could be entirely metaphorical – my mind’s way of translating something deeply ephemeral into something more concrete.

Could be entirely physical – a side effect of my sinus issues causing me to always have fluid in my ear.

Probably a little of both.

I feel really tormented lately. I keep finding myself hounded by a feeling of persecution and dread, like something or someone is coming for me.

Dunno what, and it doesn’t really matter. It’s the Nameless Horror, the Very Bad Thing that is the villain of all neuroses and compulsions. The thing that is so bad that your mind shuts down when you try to understand or name it because it’s too great a horror for your mind to contain.

So I keep finding myself in this state of near-panic and manic dread, usually while I am lying in bed but sometimes during quiet moments when I am here at the computer too.

And it’s like being trapped and it’s like being crazy, only at the same time the sane part of my mind is screaming, “What? What is problem? Why are we freaking out?”.

Question cannot be answered because there is no reason. This is not about anything real. This comes from the deep dark recesses of the chemical mind where all the suppressed emotions and latent energies express themselves in the lowest possible way, via the waste heat of emotions that is anxiety and depression.

I’ve always known (but don’t always remember) that at the root of my problems is a massive backlog of unexpressed energies. Some of the happiest days of my life in the last decades have been ones where I actually managed to get enough of my shit together to have something to keep me really, really busy.

Whether it was jobs off of UpWork or trying to write a million words in a year or doing 60 seconds of video a day in addition to blogging, I have been the happiest when I have had plenty to do to express my overflowing life force.

I know this… but it doesn’t make it any easier to provide these outlets for myself. Once more, having all the best reasons to do something doesn’t make it any more possible.

Not when you have a motivational logjam that could clog the mighty Mississippi.

Nothing can get through. I feel the impetus to action trying to actually motivate me. And I feel that impetus to action straining against that logjam in vain before giving up.

And part of me – the sick part – is happy about that.

Oh good – for a second there it looked like we might have had to do something.

Now let’s go back to this walking coma we call a life.

It might be terrible, but at least it’s predictable!

More after the break.

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Infinity isn’t hard to understand. It’s just the opposite of zero.

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Why are you so nice all the time?

Because… why would I want to be any other way?

I was asked the question by a fellow furry back in the days of FurryMUCK, and that was the answer I gave. I can’t imagine he found that answer useful, but it was honest.

I get a great deal of joy and pleasure out of being nice. It lets me connect with people the way I like to, and leads to the sort of happy, mutual, warm interactions I love.

Plus it makes people like me, and aim good vibes my way, and in return I like them and give them my own happy fluffy vibes.

I mean, what’s not to like?

And for me, it’s not a strain. It’ my natural inclination. If I had my way, I would spend my days being nice and helping people and making the world a better place.

To me, that would be paradise unbound.

It’s not like there is an angry, hostile, seething person who hates “having” to be nice lurking beneath the surface in me.

I have my own demons and sometimes they get too close to the controls for comfort, but for the most part, I really am the sweetie I appear to be.

I say this not to brag about how awesome I am or to make some claim of purity (god forbid – I deeply mistrust purity of all kinds) but just to make a plain statement of who I am and what I am like.

To me, the benefits of being nice are so numerous and the costs so minimal that it is a total no brainer to me. On a purely selfish basis, being nice totally rocks.

But that’s just me. That’s what makes sense given my own character and nature. I do not expect others to follow my path and get to the same place.

I especially don’t want people to try to force themselves into my mold. Do not force yourself to be nicer than you feel. That is no long term solution.

The only use for forcing yourself to be nice is so that you can find the joy in it yourself.

Once you sample the joy of mutual niceness, you won’t have to force yourself to do anything. Niceness will truly be its own reward for you, as it is for me.

But it may take some time. There may be old habits and bad programming you have to defeat in order to free yourself for this new experience.

Be patient. Opening your heart might not work the first time. Or the twenty seventh.

Just remember, when all else fails, lead with love. Approach the world with open arm and an open heart and say “Hello world. I’m so happy to see you. ”

Works wonders, I swear!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

That’s how I feel right now. Alliterative.

Also spooky. Murky. Mysterious. Ambiguous and illusory. Sliding between forms, partaking of all and none. The mirror image of a shadow of a ghost.

I have plenty of good topics in my notes but I am not in a “topics” mood. So none of them appeal to me. None of them seem “right”.

Guess I’m on my own, then.

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Crisis? What Crisis?

Take your bloody pick.

How about the fact that I am old and dying of preventable causes which are (in theory) entirely under my control but which in reality I can only silently watch destroy me in increasingly horrifyingly gruesome ways and passively wonder what it will finally take and bad does it really need to get before I will actually be sufficiently motivated to save my own fucking life.

But that’s the sane part of me talking.

The crazy part says. “as long as I keep neglecting myself, I’m getting closer to the sweet release of DEATH, when we will finally ESCAPE everything and it will all be OVER at last. “

And I am never going to escape these deadly doldrums until I make that crazy part of me go away somehow.

If only I was immortal.

That’d really show it.

I can’t even tell myself “I want to live!” with conviction.

To be honest, I’m still on the fence on the question.

The best I can say is that I don’t want to die. Which implies a desire to live by default.

But I can’t say I view the prospect with any enthusiasm. In fact, the less I try to looking into my future, the better, because the more I look the worse it seems.

So I jut keep my eyes fixed on the screen in front of me and do my best to stay in the permanent illusory present, ignoring everything outside my tiny vehicle as it drifts inexorably towards the annihilating vortex of rage and pain and strong energies left to run wild that will one day destroy me utterly.

I suppose I’d rather be in control of my life. Given the alternative.

But honestly what I really want is money. Money enough to not have to worry about money. Money enough to feel secure and free and not boxed in my life. Money enough to feel like I can do what I want to do with my time.

Money enough to build the bedroom video studio of my dreams.

Actually, I could probably get a start on that now. I mean, I already have a fairly good webcam and a high quality mic if needed.

I should just get my ass a greenscreen and get started. Turn myself into a YouTube star known for my unique point of view and wacky, colorful, outrageous personality!

And, let’s be honest, my fresh and controversial opinions.

There’s no way I could be some kind of mainstream friendly, eminently marketable, born to push Audible subs and $5 shaving kits kooky Internet funster.

I might play the harmless clown a while, but sooner or later, my need to throw verbal hand grenades and fuck shit up and shake people out of their slumber so they can wake up and truly SEE will overtake me.

Because I am a trickster god, and my job is to destroy, disrupt, and disperse all the old illusions and lazy intellectual shortcuts and false morality and other spiritual kudzu so that the mind of man can be clear and the soul of the sisterhood pure and we can all walk together into a clear blue dawn and know true freedom at last.

Plus I wanna get laid.

Money helps with that too.

More after the break.

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Time for “the talk”

Now son…. when a man and a woman…um, or a man and a man… or a woman and a woman…. or um…. a Catholic priest and a choirboy….. or a lonely farmhand and a very affectionate and understanding goat… um… where was I going with this…

*consults notes* Oh right…. when…. um those people and/or livestock… love each other very much…. or at least figure they’re the best each other can expect to get on an off nigh… um, or they’re both horny and there’ nothing good on TV…

Now picture all that delivered by Red Green.

Just replace “son” with “Harold!”.

This is that time when I discuss my sexuality or at least acknowledge that I have one and should probably be doing something with it.

Like, expressing it somehow. Possibly with others.

That’s where it always breaks down, though. Others. Solo sexuality can be fantastic, but it only goes so far.

Sooner or later, you’re going to want/need the kind of sex that involves other people.

And for me that is….. impossible.

Or at least that’s how it feels.

I can barely handle talking with strangers, let alone contemplating getting naked and frisky with one.

The gulf between me and the rest of humanity is too wide to be bridged by anyone’s genitals. The very thought of trying to reach out to another human for sex or cuddles or even light conversation gives me a case of the Raging Heebie Jeebies (Live tonight at the Corn Palace).

It would take something quite powerful to be my bridge into that world. Some powerful talisman or ward that I can clutch in my sweaty palm that will make me feel safe enough to go out into that big bad world and make myself vulnerable.

I don’t handle rejection well. Especially the personal kind.

It’s not something I could do on my own. I’d need help. Someone to hold my hand and comfort me and guide me through that babbling madscape known as “the real world”.

The sort of thing a father is supposed to do, come to think of it.

No wonder I am such a coward. My father didn’t protect me from jack hit, and instead of making me feel safe he was one of the main things I was scared of.

But that’s a topic for another time.

Mental note : time to talk about Larry some more.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Okay, so here’s what went down last night.

So at around 9:30 pm on Thursday, January 20, 2022, I noticed this somewhat odd feeling in my chest.

Not pain, exactly. At least not acute pain. More like heartburn, with a slight sense of pressure, like someone was pressing lightly on my ribcage.

This bothered me. After all, that was a spot very close to my heart (literally), and I’d had work done on my heart last fall, so… concern was warranted.

So I decided to get up and move around a little both to see what effect that had and to express my newfound agitation.

In order to get up, I had to briefly rest my weight on my left hand, and that’s when I noticed that said hand was REALLY numb.

Like, if the norma thing was your hand “falling asleep”, this was it lasping into a coma.

And my immediate thought was HOLY SHIT because I know what THAT means.

I remember when all the PSAs warning people of the signs of a heart attack were on the air and I remember what they said.

AND I remember all the pop culture heart attacks I have seen on TV and in movies.

They all agree that one of the surest signs of a heart attack or stroke is having the left side of your body go numb.

So after what was (for me) a relatively brief period of dithering, I called 911. And sure enough, while I was waiting for the ambo, the left side of my FACE went numb.

Luckily, Bertrand Emergency Mode had kicked in and that kept me from freaking out about little things like how I might be dying. Instead I was focused and calm.

Like I said last night, panic never helps.

So when the EMTs showed up, I was calm, clearheaded, and most importantly, dressed. They examined me out in the hall outside our apartment ’cause there’ way more room there. I got to see on their high tech stretcher.

Then it was a strangely long ride in the ambo. I mean, it’s only six blocks to the hospital but it felt more like 20.

And that would make sense if they were driving super slow in order not to jostle me, but that was one of the roughest rides I have ever endured and I come from a place where the roads are more patch tar than pavement.

On the way, the EMTs ask me questions, and have a lot of trouble getting my blood pressure via the old fashioned stethoscope method.

Anyhow, we get their alive (huzzah), and I get checked in, and the tech THERE has trouble getting my blood pressure with the fancy new electronic BP cuffs!

I assure him that despite the issues getting my BP, I’m pretty sure I HAVE one.

What follows is the usual long periods of drowsing in the ER in between things like X-rays, bloodwork, and some drunk ranting for 5 mins before security can hush him up.

All to reach the completely unsatisfactory conclusion I described in the previous entry. No idea what made my face and hand go numb. And they don’t care.

They are the ER, and they patch people up and send them home. Obscure philosophical questions like “what is the true measure of a man” and “why did my face and hand go numb” are not their domain.

Guess I will just wait to keel over, then.

More after the break.

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Freezing in the dark

Really feeling the cold wind of isolation bite right now.

It’s like there is a part of me that knows what should be there. Knows on the same deep animal level that our bodies know to eat when we’re hungry and what to do when our bladders are full. It know what warmth and connection should be there but the big dumb organism it’s attached to and part of doesn’t know how to make that pain go away.

Or if he does know, he’s far too maladapted and malformed to do it.

So maybe it’s easier to just tell himself he doesn’t know rather than face he truth that he knows – he always knows – but he’s just too god damn chickenshit to do it.

It amounts to more or less the same thing anyhow.

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You know what I find touching? (WARNING : also morbid. )

The fact that when people think they are about to die, they immediately think about not seeing everyone they love ever again.

That’s how intimately social a species we are. To us, death is fundamentally a separation. When facing our own doom, which is impossible for us to truly encompass, what we perceive instead is being taken away from all our beloved fellow humans.

That, we can imagine, and it’s horrible. One of the worst things possible.

Hence our collective fear of being “taken away”.

As in, “you keep doing that and they’ll come take you away”.

Notice that there need be no mention of where you’re being taken to, or what will happen to you when you get there.

It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you are being taken away from everyone and everything you know. They are removing you from your current habitat, to which you have adapted, and putting you somewhere new where you won’t know anybody and you will have to start over from scratch.

I think that’s why the image of someone being loaded into a police car and driven away has such enormous power in the public mind.

The cops can, will, and do take people away. All the time. It’s a big part of the job.

And even if you are 100 percent sure that said person deserves it, a little part of you can’t help but identify with them and feel the horror of being “taken away”.

Then there’s the opposite of being taken away, being taken home.

I’m still looking for someone to take me home.

But first I’d have to know where that is.

I’ve never even been there.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.