Remember this song?

Got reminded of it on Facebook recently, and just had to go download it as an MP3 for my collection because it freaking rocks.

And that got me thinking about the whole “if it hadn’t been for… ” way of looking at one’s life. A lot of people have a long list of points where their lives could have turned out so much better if it hasn’t been for this factor or that decision or whatever.

And I coud play that game. There’s certainly a lot of moments in my life where things might have gone a lot better if I had made a different choice. Like demanding my parents skip the whole early retirement bullshit and finish paying for my college degree. Or not fucking off to Portland when I did. Or realizing that there was this disease called depression way earlier,  and that it didn’t necessarily manifest itself as suicide attempts and other extreme behaviours… it could be something as simple as being scared of the world and an accompanying inability to grow as a person into full adulthood.

For like…. twenty years.

But none of that matters any more. Our choices come from who we are at the time we make them, and maybe those were the only choices I could have made. At every stage, I was doing my best. Of course it seems like those were bad decisions from the point of view of an older, wiser me who now knows the consequence of that decision.

But that doesn’t mean I didn’t make the best decision based on what I knew at the time.

Besides, that’s all in the past, and the thing about the past, the most important thing about the past, is that it’s not here. It’s dead and gone. For those of us with strong intellects and great powers of recall, it can seem like this is true. Like everything that has ever happened to us is always with us because we can bring it back to us in great emotional depth and detail at a moment’s notice.

But it’s a pernicious lie, a toxic illusion. The past has passed and cannot be altered for it is a dead thing. We will never experience it again. All we have is the present. Our memories of the past are with us, but the past itself is not. Realizing and fully accepting this fundamental truth is the key to letting go of the past in order to live a better, healthier, happier life facing forward, which is the only direction that matters.

We can learn from our mistakes without dwelling on them, or worse, in them.

So no, I don’t care to plau the “what if” and “if only” game any more. It’s toxic. It destroys life. It pretends to be a way to avoid future mistakes but it’s really just a way to avoid dealing with the present by burying out heads in the past.

And that’s no way to find happiness in life. You can’t go through life in reverse gear.

Took a nap. Then, another nap. Doing that way too much.

It’s a clothing thing. I should be getting dressed the minute I get up. I know damned well that until I do, I will linger in this parasleep state, always sleepy or asleep, drifting through life in brief inter-nap interludes while time passes me by.

It’s a seductive trap, this soft and isolated state. I don’t have to worry about anything. Time slides past without conscious effort. Nothing can touch me when I am asleep. I can even tell myself that I must need the sleep if I am so sleepy all the time,.

But that’s utter bullshit. If I was to get dressed, I would wake up, and I would be ready to take on the day and get shit done. To excuse my blatant wallowing in sloth by telling myself I need to sleep or that I don’t want to get dressed until it’s time to go out otherwise I will have “wasted” a set of clothes^[1] is to give in to the exact kind of weak and self-betraying thinking that got me in this unholy mess of a life in the first place.

And I am better than that, dammit. I deserve better than that,. When I make the weak choice, I am giving up on myself just like everyone else has and tacitly justifying their neglect of me by acting like I deserve it.

And the thing is, that’s what is easiest for me to think. It’s a pattern already set down in my mind and reinforced by decades of repetition. Believing in myself takes an investment of effort, energy,and focus. Sinking into melting marshmallow oblivion requires none.

And depression is very good at draining your motivation and energy.

Ideally, I would have spent this afternoon working on the final draft of my short film. I have the basics down, I just need to give it all the polish and refinement that I can.

Instead, I slept. Now I will have time to finish this blog entry then shower and that’s it. Maybe play video games a little bit. What I really feel like doing is laying down for the seven time today and sleeping until my bladder wakes me up for the eighth time today.

It’s especially tempting because the sun had gone down and it’s all dark now and that makes me really want to hibernate. Good night folks. It’s been fun. See you in the spring.

But I have a life to live and things to do. I want to live, dammit, not sleep the sleep of the ancients. I’d like to think I’ve just been paying my sleep debt, but past a certain point, it is nothing but a low commitment form of death, and I want to be alive.

I want to feel the sun on my skin in the land of the living.

But I keep returning to the grave instead. It’s warm down there too.

Anyone know a good necromancer?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.