Really didn’t feel like doing my White Spot thing today. The last few days have been quite emotionally draining for me, and that left my reservoir of ATC (Ability To Cope) at drought level lows.

But fuck that shit. The truth of the matter is that my sense of how much energy I have is wildly unreliable and crushingly conservative. Miserly, even. Therefore, it is pointless and highly counterproductive to let it call the shots.

Plus, personal energy is not like a currency, where the less you use, the more you have. Use it or not, it will not accumulate. Therefor you cannot hoard it.

It is a lot more like a muscle. Unused, it atrophies. Use it, and it grows stronger. The more you use it, the stronger it gets, and the more energy you noot only have, but feel you have.

Don’t you wish money worrked like that? The more you spend, the more you get?

And most importantly, every time you overcome yourself and do something you don’t feel like doing, you strengthen that muscle too.

So I am proud that I overcame the resistance of reluctance in order to make it to White Spot tonight. Here I am, writing, sitting down, eating,nbsp; and listening to music, all at the same time.

It’s all the comforts of home, plus people bring me food.

I am listening to music via my newly arrived Just Plain Headphones. They are by Koss, cost me eight bucks, and they work. Boffo.

I am still planning to get a modern Bluetooth set in the future, but it gives me great comfort and pleasure to know that,nbsp; if all else fails, I have a pair of Just Plainnbsp; Headphones that Just Fucking Works.

I should start a tech company named JustPlainShitThatJustFuckingWorks.com! Or JSPTJFW for short(er).

It would make a million dollars overnight.

Been feeling medium crappy today. Trying hard not to let it influence my mood. No reason I have to be feeling the blues just because I am feeling a little under the weather. Fuck that random crap.

I am working hard at becomibg happy by default.

Western society says happiness is something you have to earn. Why? What would be so bad about being happy all the time?

People think that if you were happy all the time, you wouldn’t do anything. But people are at their happiest when they are fully engaged. Happy people can do all kinds of work because they never lack motivation.nbsp; They engage with life without fear because they know that no matter what happens,nbsp; even if it’s truly horrible, they will be okay and happiness is always just around the corner.

I would argue that happy people do more than most people,nbsp; not less.

In a way, that is why so many of us are on antidepressants. They provide resistance against the downward spiral of depressopn and sadness, and in doing so, give us a constant feed of unearned happiness.

Clearly, the earned happiness system is severely flawed. There are so many people at every single level of achievement that are deeply unhappy that it becomes quite clear that whatever it is that society tells us will lead to happiness often does not.

And what makes us happy at one stage in life will not necessarily keep us happy forever. We learn, we age, we grow. We ascend Maslov’s pyramid.

Note that happiness is not the same thing as euphoria. Happiness is the state of feeling like your life is great. Euphoria is a function of immediate pleasue. Hapiness makes you feel like everything will be alright. Euphoria merely makes you feel that everything is fine right now, and keeps you from even thinking about the future.

Happiness is functional. Euphoria is not.

And happiness is sustainable. It renews itself. Euphoria cannot last. No matter how strong the pleasure, no matter what kind of pleasure (mental, physical, emotional), the mind will adapt to it and it will fade into the background, like a repeating sound fqading into the background noise.

Thus the futility of trying to fix your depression with its opposite, euphoria. It’s like dealing with a leaky bucket by pouring water into it really fast. It might temporarily give you the illusion that the bucket isn’t leaky, but the second you run out of water, the illusion is shattered.

And guess what? Pouring water through it that fast made the hole in the bucket bigger. Now it leaks faster than ever, and you would have to pour water in even faster in order to achieve the illusion of a non-leaky boat again, and of course that will make the hole even bigger….

People can spend their whole lives digging themselves deeper and deeper like that. And drug addicts are only a tiny fraction of that population.

We are all junkies.

More on that when I get home.

(—)

Wow, I wrote 800 words in White Spot. A new record. Hopefully, I will get to the point where I write the whole thing there.

Now back on what I am pleased to call the subject.

We have reached a level of understanding, in this modern age, of the perils of consumerism. The idea that trying to purchase your way to happiness is a very poor long term strategy is hardly new or controversial.

But when we speak of such things, we tend to think in terms of obvious things like going to the mall and buying stuff we don’t need. And that is a big part of it. We convince ourselves that a bigger TV or a new outfit will make us happy, and it will, but not for very long.

The deeper problem is that we treat everything like that. Relationships, jobs, places we live… we talk ourselves into thinking that a new one will make us happy, even though the last ten did not.

What we are really addicted to is hope. Purpose. A direction in life. Modern life does a shockingly poor job of providing this for us that we are left fumbling in the dark for anything that seems like a solution.

No wonder so many of our solutions are just plain wrong. We have no idea what we are doing.

Time someone fixed that.

I will talk to you people again tomorrow.