Today, I talked about whether or not I suffer from SAD.

I certainly feel more perky and cheerful now that the sun is out.

And this is a golden time of year for me because we have sunshine but it’s not too hot out yet. That’s perfect for a polar bear like myself.

So I will try to arrange some outside time for myself. I know it won’t be easy to convince myself to really do it. The scared little animal in me still wants to remain hidden and not be noticed and always retreat to the position of least fear.

That’s the real definition of safety that the anxiety to depression continuum runs on. You can only feel “safe” when nothing is triggering your flight or freeze responses.

And they are so very, very sensitive. And heavily prone to hallucinations.

I was talking about that with my therapist, Doctor Costin, this morning. About the relationship between anxiety and depression, and how he thinks that I don’t suffer from major depressive disorder. Instead, he thinks the main issue is anxiety, and I agree.

The theory gets pretty complicated at this point. I mean, for instance, you could debate endlessly which came first, the anxiety or the depression. Blah blah blah.

All I know is that it’s not depression that has kept me in suspended animation for three decades. It’s fear. Anxiety. An anxiety so pervasive that it makes even dealing with the mundane aspects of everyday reality seem fraught with peril because that constant drumbeat of terror makes it so hard to think.

Adrenaline is a harsh mistress. It makes you dumb because it pushes you to use the fast circuit of the brain which only cares about the immediate moment and does its best to empty your mind of everything else.

Anyhow, I’m an anxious dude who manages to hide it from others by spending most of his time alone in his room on this effing computer. The rest of the time, I am with at least one friend and only going places I am super familiar with, like the living room, Wound Care at the CCC, and of course Denny’s.

I can’t think of the last time I went anywhere new. And that makes me sad.

Not SAD. Just sad.

Well I am going to change all that. I am ready to go looking for excitement and a big part of that will be trying new things and going new places.

We need variety and variance in our lives. We can’t afford to let things become so routine and predictable that our nervous system just tunes them out and we end up feeling like the world around us isn’t even real. Nor are we.

So I am going to shake things up a bit. Try to find work on FlexJobs. Polish up those Onion headlines and send them in. Try once more to make friends with Discord.

Yadda yadda yadda.

All in all, I am trying to be more hopeful and it seems to be working. The sunshine seems to have perked me up and made it easier to be positive and for that I am grateful because I have been sans hope for a long long time.

Well, no more. I am looking around, looking up, and looking forward to things. For once in my life, I can view the future as something other than a blank grey horror.

I am sure that this world has a place for me, someplace where I can shine.

And if it doesn’t, I’ll make one.

More after the break.

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Various irons in the fire

So let’s see…

I have the tab with the Onion job in it. That’s the big shiny prize in my life right now. I honestly think I would kick ass at a job like that.

Even if it meant moving to Chicago. Not that I am at all eager to be a foreign national in Trump’s America. Not a great thing to be.

But at least I’m Canadian, so I blend in.

And Chicago isn’t super far from New Jersey, where my sister Anne lives with her husband Dean and various and assorted cats. So that could be a fallback position.

Hmmm. According to Microsoft Co-Pilot, it’s 12K km or 806 miles. 12 hours road time.

Maybe not such an easy escape route after all.

In another tab I have this thing, which is an open call for animation scripts.

And I did take Writing for Animation at VFS, so I am slightly qualified for it. Plus, of course, I would love to see my words turned into animation.

Then there is Substack, which seems to be structured to be a subscription based newsletter platform but whether you charge people to subscribe is up to you.

A lot of people don’t. I think I could only get away with that if I started writing classic serial stories with cliffhanger endings.

How do they survive? Subscribe to find out! Mua ha ha.

And I have a couple of tabs relating to AI image and/or video generation. There’s exciting new stuff out there but it requires being a touch more technical than I am capable of being and so I am waffling on whether it’s worth it to me.

I will probably get a furry friend or two to help.

Like I said to a friend of mine today, I am not a “do it yourself” guy as I am a “let someone else do it while you sit there and look cute” guy. 🙂

I know my strengths. Competence is not one of them. Between the dyspraxia and the mind fog and the generally not being mentally present in the world, dealing with the realities of existence is not my forte.

Makes me wish I was better suited to coding. I could bypass all my coordination issues by developing technical skills.

But I don’t swing that way at all.

I have to find my own kind of path. One where my amazing intellect and creativity and wit and so forth can really shine.

I’ll figure it out eventually.

I’m working on it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.