Well that was weird.
Sat down to use my PC and woops, no internet. Checked my tablet – none there either.
Well fuck. Now what?
To give myself time to think it over, I went to the kitchen to make my belated lunch.
Been sleeping when I should be eating again.
Making lunch gave me time to ponder my options. It’s always amusing to get a taste of just how dependent on the internet we’ve become during an outage.
“Well, I could…. no, that’s online. I know, I could…. nope, online too. Of course, I’ll just… fuck! Also online. Dammit, what did I do with myself before the internet??”.
It’s just like a power outage in that way. Although most of us don’t remember a time before electricity, at least.
But I swear to God, I was perfectly capable of entertaining myself and dealing with reality for my entire life between my birth in 1973 and the advent of the internet for most people in 1995.
I vaguely recall videotape being involved somehow. Remember those?
Anyhow, I eventually remember that I copied my entire previous hard drive onto this hard drive when I got this PC, and that included my now quite ancient video file collection, so I could watch some of those.
Plus, it occurs to me now, I also have a bunch of podcast episodes saved to my MP3 collection and I could have put one of those on.
Moot point now. Internet is back, obviously. Turns out the router accidentally got unplugged when Joe and Julian were doing some heavy duty spring cleaning.
I figured it would be something like that when it was down for BOTH devices.
The weird thing was how hard it was to get back into the blogging mindset once I had given up on it and made peace with the situation.
I relaxed too far. I mean, I knew that the situation would likely be resolved after Joe and Julian came back from running errands but I relaxed like I was in London during the Blitz and had no idea when the next Allied food drop was coming.
So when I realized it was time to get to work, so to speak, my inner child was all whiny and dragged its feet. I basically had to wrestle with it in order to get it moving in the right direction despite its protests and bargaining attempts.
I’m the sort of person who cannot afford to give himself any wiggle room because I am extremely good at wiggling.
Like, so good I make Jell-O jealous.
So that’s my afternoon adventure. Well, plus it’s Therapy Thursday so I had my session. Nothing big came of that although I think I am getting better at letting my guard down so the emotions can come out when I am with Doc Costin.
So that’s something. I feel like my emotions have been closer to the surface in general lately, and I am quite happy about that.
Visibly so, even.
My mission right now is to squeeze all the emotions I can out of my cramped and wretched soul. This vast vault of frozen feelings locked deep within me has got to go.
It takes up way too much space and the electric bills are killing me.
More after the break.
I’m sort of employed?
Can’t say much about it, but I seem to at least have been accepted intop their trial program and I will hopefully get my assignment soon.
Just have a bit more administrivia to go through first.
Looking forward to having something meaningful to do with my time. Something that actually pays a little bit of money. Money that I can earn.
And earning money is something very precious to me. I’ve done so little of it.
Certainly never enough to support myself. I’ve always depended on others to support me, and that is a deep and potent source of shame for me.
And that. as patient readers know, goes all the way back to my emotionally impoverished childhood where I wad made to feel helplessly guilty just for being alive and having needs and taking up space and such.
So it’s about a lot more than merely whether I am a burden on the taxpayers of the province of British Columbia.
I cost them so little compared to their revenue that I am barely even here.
No, it goes way deeper than that. I want to break this pattern of dependence and find my way into the work of work and compensation that most people take for granted so I can finally support myself both financially and emotionally.
It’s absurd that I am going to turn 50 without ever supporting myself. I have so much talent and intelligence to offer the world. There simply has to be a place for me somewhere in this big bright busy world and as hard as it is for me to stand up and go against the flow, nobody is going to find that place for me so I have to do it myself.
Getting freelance work off of UpWork is a great place to start. I’m one heck of a good writer and it’s high time I made some freaking money off it.
Money I can truly call my own, guilt free.
And I know a lot of people would tell me not to feel guilty for being sick and therefore unable to work.
Well add that to the long long list of things I should do but don’t, then, because as I have explained, that guilt looms large in my life. Too large to simply wish away, or get over.
It makes me feel subhuman and subnormal. It makes me wonder why I am even alive. It humiliates me and taunts me with my utter lack of growing up.
I’m going to turn 50 in less than two months. I will be a 50 year old lifelong loser.
I don’t know if I can live with that.
Here’s hoping the new job opportunity works out.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.