Realized that the feeling like I am never ever doing what I am supposed to be doing had crept back into my life.

No surprise there. I predicted it the last time I was at this point of realization, even. I knew the odds of my changing the pattern were low.

Because the sad truth is that it is the only way I know how to live. My life only makes sense to me when I am hiding like a villain from a powerful feeling of error, inadequacy, and underlying it all a deep and terrible shame.

I wish I could ditch the shame. I don’t have anything to be ashamed of.

I don’t have to be ashamed of my total lack of life progress – I have been quite ill for my entire adult life. In many ways, it’s impressive that I have made it this far without ended up in the psych ward for either doing seriously crazy shit when my depression makes me so numb that I will do anything just to FEEL SOMETHING^[1], or because I attempted suicide and somebody noticed.

But no. My depression would never allow that. It’s entire mandate is to hide me from the world so I will be “safe”, and therefore I am not allowed to do anything crazy because that would only attract attention and maybe even the sort of serious sustained medical attention that would threaten the depression’s whole regime.

So instead, I just make it through every day the best I can while the clock ticks on any attempt I might make to get an actual fucking life.

Thank goodness nobody really cares how old an author is. At least in “print”. ^[2] I could be seventy years old and confined to a sickbed and as long as I can write the sort of things people like to read, I have a chance.

And I can. I write things people find hilarious and delightful. I need to remember that.

But that’s the trick, isn’t it? How to appreciate all my considerable gifts without it turning into that feeling like I am not doing what I am supposed to be doing. ^[3]

After all, if I have all these gifts, then I should be using them, shouldn’t I? Why, it’s a crime to let such talents go to waste. I should be ashamed of myself!

Oh, I am. And it just makes me avoid dealing with the whole situation all the harder.

It’s such a tricky, fussy thing to try to disarm. No wonder I go long periods without even trying very hard to free myself. I am so goddamned sick and tired of getting my fingers burned every time I try.

Clearly some kind of paradigm shift is needed. I think the last time I discussed this, I had the idea that I should just get used to my overweaning superego’s punishments.

Endure it. Tell my superego to go fuck itself, because I am going to do whatever gets me ahead no matter what you do.

Signed, my weak but feisty id.

That would certainly upset the applecart and piss off the mustard wagon.

That would involve, essentially, manning up. Getting over myself. Conquering the demon who guards the first gate to adulthood, Fear of Pain.

It’s a testament to the progress we have made as human beings that the modern person can have such a fear.

In previous, more primitive eras, pain was part of everyday life and there was little to no way to avoid it. Those people who could not adjust to that were selected out by evolution and, presumably, starved to death.

But we have done such a magnificent job of making our lives more pleasant and less painful that now, fear of pain can not only exist but thrive.

How many people today are stuck in dead-end lives that do not make them happy at all simply because they refuse to do whatever painful, unpleasant, scary, or “weird” thing it would take to get them out of it?

Besides me, that is?

Answer : plenty. People are all bottled up by pain our ancestors would not even notice. It’s an unintended side effect of progress.

Turns out all those unreconstructed macho types are not entirely wrong when they talk about people getting too soft and wimpy.

They just completely miss what the problem is with that. It’s not the failure to live up to some macho ideal that is the problem.

The problem is that being wimpy makes your life suck. You would be much happier if you got tougher and stronger. That’s what it is all about.

But the people delivering the message don’t get that and so they completely fail to convince us modern creampuffs that they are anything but sadomachoistic.

If someone had made the case for me when I was young that if I push through difficult and unpleasant things in order to get what I want, said things would become easier over time as I toughened up, I might have had a very different kind of life.

It’s the hedonist’s argument for self-discipline and the cultivation of strength, and it actually makes a hell of a lot of sense.

These people are not sadomachoistic. Just inarticulate.

As it stands in my life now, I am ever so slowly moving in the direction of seeking and acquiring strength in all its forms. Courage, health, toughness, horsepower, and the deep down irrational stubbornness that refuses to back down or quit no matter what.

Just to name a few.

Only by gathering and preserving strength can I acquire what it takes to pull my life out of this decades long rut and get my life going somewhere again.

I don’t know where I will find it.

And I don’t know what to do with it once I do.

But I know what I am looking for now, and that’s some major progress right there.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.