That’s a prediction, BTW. Not a plan.

But I just went to the kitchen, got my lunch together, and came back with no belt on my pants because I didn’t feel like stopping to put on my belt on.

Thus, I had to make my PB&J while holding my pants up by awkwardly tilting my hips this way and that, causing me all kind of hassle, all because I didn’t want the hassle of putting on a belt.

That was a net negative no matter how you slice it. The smart and sensible thing would have been to either stop and put on the belt or just taken off the damned pants.

It’s cool, we’re very much clothing optional around here. Part of the benefits of us all being gay men.

In fact, honestly, it’s unusual to find me IN pants when I am at home. But I am planning on changing that by getting dressed in a fresh set of clothes every day.

It will make me feel a whole lot better and do wonders for my level of alertness and calm. There’s nothing inherently wrong with hanging around pantsless but for me, it’s associated with the kind of unbounded mental state that leads to depression.

Hell, I have been a nudist. I have lived in a household where the first thing you do after coming home is take off all your clothes. Where you have to remember to keep some clothes near the front door in case someone shows up unexpectedly.

Where I dreamed of a place with a nice eight foot tall privacy fence so I didn’t have to put clothes on if I wanted to lie in the sun for a while.

And where NOBODY wears trunks in the hot tub. ^[1]

Because this is California, baby. Be cool.

Anyhow, where was I? Oh, me being an idiot.

This is all part of my learning to encompass and accept the fact that I am not a wise man. I am not even a smart man.

What I am is an incredibly intelligent man. If I was a D&D character, INT would be my primary stat. I can think rings round most people, my thoughts operate on a level that most people could not even conceive of, and I’m really good at school.

But I am also a clueless bumblefuck because I am so withdrawn into my own mind that there is not a lot of room left for actually paying attention to the here and now, and so my relationship with reality and my environment is distant at best.

All part of being an INTJ. We’re brilliant but we suck at anything sensory.

But I am going to fix that by doing little exercise to get my body moving and my senses engaged in order to ground me in reality and the real, physical world.

There’s a lot that sucks about living in the world inside your head. It gives your personal demons very close access to your most tender feelings, it blurs the line between what is going on inside our head and outside it, and it alienates us from reality in a truly deep and terrible way that has long lasting and highly deleterious effects.

So I want to come home to the real world while I still can. Finally escape the prison in my head and walk in those peaceful green meadows I can see through the windows.

Because I’m here and I’m alive and I’m ready to be born.

I just need to warm up enough inside first.

More after the break.

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Oh yeah, the point

The point of my bringing up my tendency to do dumbass things was not self-abnegation but rather the opposite : self-forgiveness.

I have been far, far too harsh on myself on nearly every level for far too long. Especially when it comes to being “smart”. On some deep level, I have felt like I had to make the smartest possible choices every single time or I have utterly failed.

And that’s just plain stupid.

Nobody could live up to a standard like that. It’s inhuman. Everybody, from the lowest idiot to the most stratospheric of geniuses, does dumb shit sometimes.

And besides, life is not an exam. Nobody is keeping score and there will be no report card at the end. Nothing is going on your permanent record.

So go ahead and fuck around. There are far, far worse things in life than failure and you are under no obligation to make fewer bad decisions and unwise choices than anyone else just because you’re intelligent.

And by you, I of course also mean me.

Above all, I forgive myself for not being perfect. For being suboptimal. For not always being able to grow and strive and reach for the top.

For most of the time, in fact, being barely able to just hang in there and wait as patiently as I can for the next time my mental fog parts long enough for me to get things done.

And I never know when that will be. I can encourage it to happen, in a way, but I can’t make it happen. That’s life with mental illness.

Your mind is not yours to command.

Right now, I am trying to cook up a new kind of project for myself. Something I can create and call my own. Something presentable and professional. Something I can be proud of. Something that, god willin’ and the crick don’t rise, will get me the audience I so desperately desire.

Could be a blog. Could be a YouTube channel. Could be TikTok.

Could be a lot of different things. But it’s going to be something by golly. I am a powerfully creative and fascinating person and it’s time I prove that to the world.

And I can have everything that I want. Money, audience, influence, fame.

But first I have to do what I do best : dream.

Dream up a brand new thing that I can do to show off my mad skills.

Sounds doable to me.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.