I’m into it.

Had one of my relatively frequent attacks of depression and despair earlier. They tend to hit me when I am switching modes from passive to active or vice versa.

So when I stand up, mostly, but also sometimes when I sit down at the computer after having social time with Le Gang, I get hit by a wave of intensely dark depression that makes me feel lost and lonely and incredibly sad.

And you know what? Good. I need more of that.

Because the more of that and other emotions I feel, the smaller my burden of emotional constipation gets and the closer I get to fine.

So this time when the blackness engulfed me, I resisted the reflex to push it back down to where it came from like it’s an embarrassing relative in a Gothic novel who someone bit through the chains again, and instead tried to open myself up to it so I can try to experience it in its fullest.

So to continue the metaphor, as I feel compelled to do, instead of pushing the embarrassing relative back into the basement, I tried inviting up for tea.

Now I am new at this, so I can’t say I got very far, as once I am on my feet I kind of have to devote all my attention and energy to whatever I stood up to do and deep spiritual experiences kind of have to wait till I sit down again.

And maybe have had a bit of a rest.

But I am going to be looking out for this kind of thing now, and pushing back at a lifetime of suppressive instincts in order to try to open myself up more to life.

And you can’t let more stuff in without letting more stuff out. Right now my bus can’t take on any new passengers because it’s full.

Gonna have to drop off a lot of passengers who have been there way too long in order to let me pull over to the side of the road and clean the damned thing already.

Maybe then I will be able to make this a much happier, groovier trip.

Basically I’m trying ot train myself to “lean in” to the pain, like Sheryl Sandberg says. Instead of pulling back and trying to stop time when the pain comes, thus ensuring that the pain will last, you lean in to it and thus get to the other side of it much much faster.

Like Churchill said, when you’re going through hell, keep going.

And that means staying with the less pleasant emotions even when your instincts are screaming to you to flee at top speed. It means letting go of the idea that you “should” be happy and that therefore any unhappiness is some kind of crisis.

Stop trying to be “happy” and try being human instead.

I’m increasingly sure that happiness is not something that can be pursued directly. All you can do is remove obstacles to it and have faith that it will happen naturally when your levity is stronger than your gravity and that odds are, when it happens you will be too busy having a good time to even notice.

More after the break.

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Find your own damned path!

So my beloved game, Pathfinder : Wrath of the Righteous, has invented a new and innovative way to fail me completely.

Before, it was content to just crash at random moments, usually but not always after I had played for an hour or two.

Well, at least it kept me from having to decide for myself when I was done playing.

But now it has decided that was too good for me and now it hangs without even letting me get to the main menu, with Continue and Load and Options on it.

Ergo, now I can’t play at all. And I am stuck trolling the Internet with my weak Google Fu trying to fix the god damned thing.

And I have to admit, I am tempted to just give up on the damned thing already. I have been through so much crap trying to get and keep this game working that I am seriously wondering if it’s all worth it.

The cost benefit ratio is in danger of going into the red.

But I have been enjoying my second playthrough of the main campaign and it is still a pretty damned good game overall, so I will make one serious valiant effort to get it working again before I toss it aside contemptuously.

I mean, I already gave up on my month long Midnight Isles DLC campaign because the fucking thing kept crashing my computer.

Compared to what I am dealing with now, those seem like the good old days. At least I made it to the Main Menu and got to load my game first.

Maybe this is the Universe’s way of forcing me to do something with my life besides play video games all the god damned time.

If so…. thanks, I guess?

But you do know I still have $60 in my Steam wallet, doncha? And there are still thousands of games on Steam.

I’m just sayin’.

If only I could gamify productivity. Turn writing and submitting stuff to various places a fun and engaging video game where I feel safe and confident.

I know there are plenty of ways to do that. Why just give yourself XP for every submission and decide how much XP it takes to LEVEL UP! Woohoo!

Um, yeah, fuck that. If I was that capable of self-motivation I wouldn’t even be sick.

Lately I have really been feeling like a blob without a skeleton. A lot of truly amazing parts are floating in my protoplasm but without a rigid, solid framework to bring much needed structure to my being, it is all just useless goo.

I can’t conceive of being able to provide that for myself. I never had any outside discipline to internalize. All I had was school and that was laughably easy for me.

Without an external framework like school to use as my exoskeleton, I am nothing but a slug oozing around at the bottom of the pecking order.

How can I raise myself to the sky when I can’t even stand on my own two feet?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.