Well, my depression pulled a con job on me today and I fell for it hard, and that pisses me off something fierce.

Here’s the sitch : today is Joe’s birthday. He turned 50 today. Whoa. And the plan was to meet up with his family at White Spot at 6 pm so we could all celebrate together.

And I was looking forward to this. I love his family – they are the people nice enough to invite me over for Christmas dinner every year and I always have a lovely time because they are great people and great conversationalists.

That’s a very long word.

But I woke up feeling terrible, like usual, and in hindsight, I think my depression and/or social anxiety seized that feeling and used it to convince me that I was far too sick to go out and eat today.

So I told Joe I couldn’t go…. and immediately felt a million times better. It was a con job from beginning to end. I wasn’t really too sick to do, my issues just used that to twist my arm and convince me I was sick.

At that point, I theoretically could have said “Actually, no, I feel better now, I will go. ” But I do not have that kind of social agility. The fact that it would have embarrassed me a lot to suddenly pivot like that was more than enough to keep me from doing it.

One definition of social anxiety is “a paralyzing fear of awkwardness”.

So here I sit, in the same bad situation I have been in so many times before : knowing that my friends are all off having fun without me and I am stuck here all alone basically because I suck.

That’s how it feels, anyhow. I feel pretty depressed right now. Not in a self-endangering way, but still pretty bummed out.

I know that I should not blame myself for this. And I definitely need to ignore the voices in my head telling me that I have “failed” Joe and now he thinks I don’t love him or something like that.

I am sure he’s fine. I am sure he missed me but he knows I have health issues that I cannot always control I am sure he understands and would never hold my infirmities against me at all.

That’s what my mind knows, and it;s doing its best to talk my heart into believing it.

So right now, I am just kinda waiting for the crazy emotions to drain away and be processed without my having to accept what they are saying as true.

You’re shut out, Crazy Thoughts. Might as well leave, you’re not getting in.

OTherwise, meh. Getting tired of playing video games all day. Reached the part in my cycle when I can say to myself, “There has to be more to life than this!” and mean it.

That means wrestling directly with my addiction. Addictions always want you all to themselves and view everything else you could be doing with the jaunduied eye for a jealous, bitter lover who loathes all rivals.

Basically, addictions are Yoko Ono.

To hear my Yoko tell it, there is nothing in this life for me but playing video games all day becaiuse when I am playing a video game, I am safe in its arms and not scared or anxious or depressed or anything else.

My mind is too full to let in any bad thoughts.

And when I try to imagine skipping the games in favor of something productive that might actually improve my life and make me qa more fulfilled human being, my addiction is there dutifully supplying the feeling of dread and catastophe that is supposed to convince me that would be a terrible, terrible idea.

But I am growin wise to that bullshit. The real result of not maximizing my video game playing time is my feeling better about life, and that, of course, is seen as the threat it is to my depression etc.

I have been at the bottom of this deep dark hole for a long time now. Life is passing me by while I play Middle Earth : Shadow of War and Slay the Spire all day.

What I want is to get back to where I was when I had just left VFS and was full of energy and ambition and determined to conquer UpWork and become a top earning freelance as a bridge to something more permanent.

I almost can’t relate to the person I was back then any more. He seems like someone who was far more alive and connected with reality than I will ever be again.

I like him. He was cool. I miss being him.

Right now, my strategy for dealing with the crazy thoughts is to not resist them but to let them play themselves out…. but in their own part of the mind, where I can feel them but they can’t take over my mind.

That way, they get felt and thus do not accumulate, but I don’t have to let them have their way with me and make me feel like I am a horrible person.

Because I am not a horrible person, I am a great guy. With issues.

Sooooo many issues. I have more issues than National Geographic.

Because it’s a magazine that has been around for a long time. And therefore that are a great many issues of it.

Ask your parents if you still don’t understand. \

Anyhow, the gist of it is that I am carefully nurturing the slow accumulation of boredom and discontent with my video game based life, and I am hoping that I will so have enough to be able to make some changes in my life.

Because my life right now sucks in terms of making me a happy naked ape. I will fight the fog in my head and wake myself up even though it means abandoning the fog’s cold anesthetic comfort for a world full of pain, fear, and loss.

Wake up. Time to live.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.