Some days, mere survival is all I can do.
Today feels like one of those days. I am very tired and sleepy and I get the strong feeling that I will spend most of today asleep. I have already had ten hours of sleep and I am betting that I will end up getting still more, given how I feel.
And I am trying to learn to just accept things like this. But it’s all so random. I need predictability in my life and that makes it damned near impossible for me to accept that there is no way of knowing what sort of day I have in front of me based on how the universe happens to feel to me at any given moment.
So I end up clinging to whatever external stability I can grab in order to compensate for the chaos and turmoil inside.
And when I try to pull myself together and get all my ducks in a row, I fall apart instead. The center does not hold. That swollen sea of pain, fear, weakness, and paralysis wells up inside me and whatever pattern of stability I am trying to create dissolves before it can even be born.
It’s like trying to build a sand castle in the middle of a hurricane. That hates me.
There has to be some way to soothe the savage seas within. I long for peace – and not just in the form of shelter from the storm, which is all I have now. Just a tiny little shelter where I can hide from the raging tempest above and try to keep myself amused.
My god, even in my metaphors I’m agoraphobic.
Well, as above, so below, I guess.
And I want so badly to be able to escape my flimsy little shelter which never seems to be big enough to keep all of me safe at the same time. There always seems to be some part of me sticking out into the chaos, and the only way to deal with that is to remain as still and small as possible in order to keep the maximum amount of me inside.
And that’s a pretty shitty way to live.
The important thing I have to remember, though, is that it’s my life that sucks – not me. My life is deeply unsatisfying to me right now and for decades I have internalized that via self-loathing and tearing myself apart.
And all to keep myself from having to, like, DO things. Because that’s where discontent inevitably leads, right?
Well no more. I am unhappy with my life and I am not going to forget that. I amj ust going to have to learn to live with it.
Maybe it will lead to my overcoming my internal issues and finally making a big push to find some kind of paid word to do.
And maybe it won’t. Maybe it will just leave me howling my pain into the night.
But it sure as fuck beats suffering in silence.
More after the break.
Pressing My Luck
All right, big money, no Whammies!
I don’t normally press my luck. Except when it gets all wrinkly.
Anyhow, here I am, oressing my luck by not doing Part 2 of my blogging until 7 pm when I know I have to be in the shower by 7:30 pm in order to be ready to leave at 7:45 pm to go do Subway with Le Gang.
A little under 500 words in half an hour? No problem.
I am in a fairly good mood. Anxiety lurks around every corner, as usual, and that takes away from my sense of calm, but I at least feel somewhat content and I am enjoying being alive for now.
Things seem nice and I feel like I have things to look forward to, and that’s good. That’s a solid peg above mere survival, so I’ve seen some improvement on that front.
I did sleep most of the afternoon away, but whatever, it’s not like I lost precious productivity to it.
You have to have it to lose it. All that happened was I didn’t play video games as much as I usually do.
Boo frigging hoo.
And yet, it sort of does feel like I lost something akin to productivity. That leads to the saddening conclusion that playing video games is my substitute for productivity because of the false sense of progress and achievement they bring.
What do you mean, I did nothing all day? I will have you know that I defeated many Magisters, monsters, and assassins today and went up several levels!
Furthermore, I am closer to Divinity now. So put that in your pipe and smoke it!
Sad, isn’t it? Kind of like a hamster feeling like he’s making progress towards a goal because of all the miles he puts on his FitBit running on his wheel.
I’ve always assumed that if I got something going in my life – like when I was getting work from UpWork – then I would just naturally play video games less.
And that was true. But the hidden clause in that statement was that I had to leave the warm safe world of my video games in order to get something going in the first place, and I have been avoiding doing that by obsessively playing video games instead.
Video games are safe and easy and low stress compared to trying to find people to pay me money to do a thing. The variables are all well known, there is nobody around to trigger my social anxiety, and like I keep saying, while I play them, I am okay.
Not overjoyed, but not anxious, frustrated, or depressed either. Ergo : okay.
They offer me very high density escapism. Loads and loads of mental stimulation for a downright trivial input of energy on my part. More than enough to fill my mind and displace all my worry, anxiety, depression, etc while I am playing.
What happens if I stop playing them?
Let’s hope I never have to find out. Not, at least, until I am strong enough to willingly set them aside in order to make room for life to happen.
And I am getting there.
But I am not there yet.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.