Specifically, failure is no excuse to stop trying.
But don’t take that too literally
What I am talking about is depression, anxiety, and a far too easily triggered flight response. When that flight response is triggered, all we want and all we can think about is escaping the situation.
No matter how much damage that does to ourselves and our interests.
And the worst part is that the moment we do escape the situation, that response is immediately rewarded with a profound sense of relief as all that anxiety and tension disappears and we suddenly feel so much better.
Keep that up and giving up because your preferred response. Your go-to defense for absolutely all occasions and the number one reason your life sucks.
And all so you can get that sweet sweet relief as often as possible.
In fact, it’s a short drive from that to what I will call pre-failing, which is when you decide will fail without even trying first. On a deep level, you have determined, through flawed reasoning and based on no evidence, that you definitely WOULD fail IF you tried so why bother even trying?
And from there it’s a short slide into never trying anything new ever and thus being stuck in the same endless loop for years or even decades.
Congratulations, you’re a loser. You’re a loser because you give up too easily. You give up too easily because of your constant need to escape at the slightest sign of hurt, fear, pressure, or even just the urge to exceed your limitations.
The only cure for this, as far as I can tell, is hot emotion. Anger, passion, lust, inspiration, courage, and so on. Only these things can provide a countervailing force to all that inner collapse and surrender.
Only hot emotion can give you a reason to hang in there and NOT give up and give in like you usually do. It can give you strength you didn;t know you had and fuel the kind of resolve that lets you endure all the pain, fear, distraction, and all the other dirty tricks your mind uses to try to make you surrender until you pop through to the other side of all that and find that not only are the dirty tricks over, you feel a lot better about yourself and your ability to be effective in this mad world of ours as well.
For me, what works is to get pissed off. Fed up. The times in my life when I have made the biggest changes have all been when I was sick and tired of my situation and used that energy to fix the situation.
That is, more or less, how it’s supposed to work. And how it works for the mentally healthy, I can only assume.
But for those of us who fell down into a very deep well of fear, anxiety, depression, self-loathing, and so on, it’s a god damned revelation.
Taking refuge in the world of the mind like I have done for so long has never been a good long term strategy. Anything I need in order to be happy and fulfilled is out there in the real world, waiting for me to grab it.
And I am do tired of this do nothing life of mine.
I don’t want to be half dead any more. I want to live. even if that means living with pain and fear and all that other scary stuff.
So I am going to use my rage to burn my depression down to the ground.
No mercy for corrupt software.
More after the break.
The fuckery is afoot
Starting with me.
Spuug came over to install my new RAM.
That didn’t last long because it turns out I bought the wrong kind. I bought DDR4 ram and my motherboard only takes DDR3.
And there is no way to bridge that gap short of buying a new motherboard. So I screwed up, and feel dumb.
Thing is, he told me it was DDR3 ram the previous time he was here and had the computer all naked with its case off.
I just forgot. And didn’t see the DDR4 in the product title amidst the data spurt of all the other info coming at me all at once.
So I am a dumbass. D’oh.
I am going to try to return the incorrect RAM. I got it from Amazon America, so that might cause complications.
At the very least, I am not going to get my $20 import fee back.
If I can’t return it, I am going to have to sell it. On eBay, I guess. But I also might put an offer up on craigslist to swap it for an equal amount of DDR3 RAM.
Think about it, the person I trade with is getting a free one generation RAM upgrade. It’s like swapping a PS3 for a PS2.
What the heck, it might work.
Turns out I can return it for a refund BUT I have to print out two labels in order to do so.
Fuck you, Bezos. Who even has a printer any more?
Felicity, that’s who. I will have to get her to print them out for me. Sigh.
Oh well, at least I will get a refund of most of my money (minus restocking fee, of course) and maybe even use said refund to get the RIGHT memory this time.
Tonight’s other featured fuckery is that I finally manage to sit down and have dinner at 10 pm and go to have some more of that delicious tzatziki I bought last week.
Only to find that my tzatziki is FREAKING FROZEN.
The top rack of our fridge gets coldness leaks (??) from the freezer sometimes and so random things end up partly frozen.
Normally it’s a beverage, which is no big deal Even kind nice. Like a crude Slurpee.
But this time it kinda sucks. Some things are not meant to be frozen!
Oh well. I am ordering more groceries tomorrow. If I can find room in my budget, I will buy myself some kind of treat to make myself feel better.
You owe me, world!
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.