Having a sleepy day so far.
As in. I have slept most of the hours of today except for the two hours I spent eating breakfast then going to Wound Care.
Whatever. I’m fine with it. It’s been decent quality sleep. Restful and untroubled. So it’s not been leaving me feeling terrible when I wake up.
I can live with large quantities of that sort of sleep. Eventually I will, as usual, become annoyed with how much of life I am missing out on, but for now I am content to snooze.
I’m currently facing a tough battle in Divinity : Original Sin. Not so tough that I can’t imagine winning it, but tough enough that I am going to have to really think about tactics and come up with ways to neutralize some of the enemies’ advantages.
I keep telling myself that all it takes is persistence, and that’s true. This isn’t the first difficult fight I’ve faced in the game and all it took to get past the previous ones was to try, try again and so that’s what I am doing.
But I have been falling back into wimpy habits in the game lately. Namely, when I hit a really tough fight, I don’t stay and persist till I overcome in, I go exploring and looking for an easier fight instead.
And that is very much loser behaviour. Sure, in an RPG like D:OS, I can always tell myself that I am just choosing to level up my heroes before tackling the tough fight again, and that might seem plausible, but I know myself and I know that’s not what I am really doing there.
What I’m really doing is wimping out and looking for the easy path. And there’s nothing wrong with a little of that – why make things harder for yourself if there’s an easier way – but to say that running away when faced with adversity is a way of life for me would be like Mount Everest is a little hard to lift.
It’s an understatement, is what I’m saying.
I’ve spent my entire adult life in full flight from even tiny amounts of adversity. On a subconscious level, I have been waiting for some kind of mystical magical path of literally zero resistance to open up to let me through to even the most basic level of adulthood for a very long time.
It ain’t coming. At some point, if I want to get anywhere in life, I am going to have to climb that stimulation gradient and endure my fears and learn to stay and fight for what I want instead of instantly caving in and running away all the god damned side.
I hate being so weak and gutless and spineless. I know how wrong it all is. It is definitely not a smart or wise or seemly way to live and yet I can’t seem to make myself knuckle down and change my wishy washy ways so I can get somewhere at last.
Because doing that will hurt. Overcoming oneself usually does. Facing my fears by focusing on what I want and actively pursuing it instead of drifting lonely as a cloud like I have doing for thirty fucking years will not be easy, and to the unworthy soul (like mine), if it’s not easy – REALLY easy – you just plain don’t do it.
And when I try to imagine what I would need to overcome my lassitude, I keep coming back to my lack of some spiritual substance I can use to comfort and steady myself as I brave the storm within to find safer ground.
Or at least more fun ground.
This substance could be called a lot of things. Courage. Character. Grit. Self-discipline. Belief in oneself. It could even be called faith.
Whatever it is, I don’t have it, and I feel its lack quite keenly. I can feel my soul trying to make the connection between desire and action and I can feel it attempting to draw on said mysterious substance and it just plain not being there.
The tank is empty. I’m not sure it’s ever been full.
All I can do is keep sending energy down to my deeper self to keep the thawing out of my ice torn and frostbitten soul and hope that my Spring will some day come.
Other than that, I feel utterly lost and alone. As usual.
So what the hell do I do now?
More after the break.
The wrong question
Come to think of it, I guess “what do I do now?” is the wrong question.
Wrong because there is nothing I can “do” to make myself healthier. Not in the usual way we think of “doing” things.
There isn’t a concrete and logical series of steps I can take in order to gather that mysterious substance unto myself or anything like that.
Things are not that sensible.
Everything that I need to “do” is entirely internal and spiritual and existential, and that’s somewhat of a stumbling block for me because I am not used to acting in that realm or even acknowledging its existence at all.
I’ve gotten better about that in recent years, but it’s still virgin territory for me and hence I tend to feel lost in the wilderness when I think about it.
I’m so used to using these mighty mental muscles to engulf and overwhelm problems that I have to keep reminding myself that there IS another way and I know what it is.
I mean, this “intellect first” approach to life is the whole reason why I have to write my emotions down in this blog in order to process them and find out what they are.
Only the act of articulating them can bring them close enough to the surface of my mind for them to make the therapeutic journey from the subconscious to the conscious.
It still strikes me as an ass-backwards way to have to go about things. Like having to translate something into Finnish and back before you understand it.
But it’s what I’ve got to work with, so work with it I shall.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.