ALL RIGHT. Time to get this done the way I always do, by talking it out in my blog.

The ground rules have changed a little. I will now accept cash donations as long as they are contributions towards a specific thing.

Well I guess I’d always accept cash. But you get the idea.

One thing that someone could get me is my new glasses. I keep putting off ordering them for some reason, even though I know I have the budget for it.

Well someone could give me $25 towards a new pair o’ specs. I have my prescription so all I need to do is order them off of Holy Shit Are These Glasses Cheap.com or whatever, and they’ll be on the way.

By UPS, thankfully. You know, all the postal workers are really accomplishing, besides making us all loathe them for taking Xmas hostage, is teaching people how completely unnecessary they are.

Sure, couriers are more expensive than a stamp, but who the fuck sends letters any more? Everybody just gets stuff off Amazon, and they use UPS.

Anyhow, moving on, someone could also give me a contribution toward my Steam account. I have finally accepted that, against all logic and reason, the actual physical Steam gift cards are a myth and a fantasy and so I will need to act as an intermediary via good old cashola.

Either that, or someone with a credit card could probably send me a virtual gift card. I assume Steam are smart enough to have those available.

Let’s see. I could use a new pair o’ pants. Joe presumably knows my size because he’s bought me pants from them Big n’ Tall guys downtown before.

One of my current pairs is on its last legs (last threads?), Almost all the belt loops are busted and there’s a hole forming in the seat that will hit the illegal parts of my butt any day now, so it’s going to go.

Getting them repaired is also an option.

What else. Well, of course, sugar free treats are always nice. They would make great “stocking stuffer” level gifts. Russel Stover, bless his corporate heart, has an extensive line of sugar free candies and chocolates.

I really like the Starlight Mints and the Fruit Mix in hard candies. Or the sugar free version of Werther’s Originals.

So much better than Werther’s Derivatives.

Now what? Hmmm. It’s a testament to how empty my life is that I can’t think of much that I need outside of food, clothes, and video games.

It’s not like someone could get me a job for Xmas.

I’m trying to think of something that would make my life easier. But to be frank, my life is already pretty easy.

Terrible. But easy.

The problem is that a lot of what I want is too expensive. Like computer parts. I still need to upgrade the power supply in my computer so it can handle all the other fancy schmancy other stuff I have installed in there.

I’ll try to think of something during the break.

More after the break.

---

This could totally be about Fruvous

I’m the blue doggy.

I have a history of approaching very scary looking fursonas and winning them over by the sheer power of my vulpine charm and cuteness.

You know, there can be a lot of power in being nonthreatening and adorable. Often the scary fur is tickled that someone like me is approaching them at all.

It’s good to be cute.

This could be about Fru too, but fair warning, its entirely smut with a cute premise. And he’s the wrong color of fox. But I love how happy he is!

---

More gift ideas

OK, now I really have to cudgel my brain.

The problem is that I always just make do with what I have and I don’t think about what I want but do not have.

I’m adaptable to a fault.

Well let’s see. I could use another “super easy” songbook so I could learn to play stuff on my synthesizer. I think I’d like the Simon and Garfunkel one next. I already have one for the Beatles.

And by “super easy” I mean the letter name of the note (A, B,C, etc.) is printed right on the note so I don’t have to be able to tell if a note is on a line or in a space.

Given that assistance, I can piece together how to play the song if I already know the song well from having listened to it many times.

Hmm. I would also like one for the Tragically Hip, or Jethro Tull, or maybe Cat Stevens. I am trying to pick artists where I know a lot of their songs.

I mean, most of my entertainment comes from YouTube and that’s free. Hmm.

Oh! A clothes hamper would be nice, as would a nice BIG trash pail for my garbage in my room, or one of those sealed containers for the recyclables like the one that we have in the kitchen.

I need help keeping this room clean. Well, cleaner, anyhow.

And lastly, and always, books. What books? I’m not sure. I will see if I can put together an Amazon wishlist to guide people.

Of course, this all assumes anyone actually cares what I want enough to actually shop for a gift for me. Historically this has not been the case.

Not that I’m bitter.

Now that I have some sort of list started, I have to think about what I want to get my friends. Obviously, I’m not going to speculate about that here and ruin the surprise.

I’ve been anxious about the upcoming holiday, even though I have no real reason to be. I will order gifts from Amazon and they will be here in time. I don’t have to stress.

I think at this stage in my recovery, I need to learn to commit more of myself into the things I do, and I need to do more things which benefit from that level of commitment.

I can do this. I can take some of that video game energy and invest it in a new kind of game, a creative game, where I have a lot of fun making things.

This can be a beautiful world if you want it to be.

But first, you have to change.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Or is it nothing but fear?

My life has been dominated by a bountiful bumper crop of absolutely nothing. Via my fears and my extraordinary flexibility of mind, I managed to create a hermetically sealed hermitage of a life where I was (and am) as chained up and locked up as any prisoner in a gulag but managed to hide this from my everyday consciousness by staying buried in my video games and my blogging.

At least the blogging is productive. Marginally.

Through this self-imprisonment, I arranged for absolutely nothing to happen to me. My life has remarkably few events in its timeline.

The average person would have graduated, had jobs, found a career, found a mate, made a household, had kids, and made something of themselves by my age.

But not me. I might as well have been in suspended animation.

Well that’s not strictly true. I was alive, experiencing the world a little bit at least, and continuing to gather insight and understanding.

Who knows, maybe all this time in outer space might turn out to have some use after all. That would certainly help with this feeling of nothingness.

Oh right, the subject.

All that nothing happening me has left a seriously big mark. It has, in fact, stunted and warped my entire personality in ways that I don’t dare try to fully comprehend.

The amount I already comprehend is already traumatizing enough.

Because all that nothingness is stored inside me. I guess it’s the Freon in the deep freeze unit that has been keeping most of my personality in cold storage for all these years. I’ve spend decades leading a nothing life in which nothing much ever happens and I don’t grow as a person at all.

And yet, I seem fine. I don’t show outward signs of distress or discomfort or disorder at all. I seem cheerful and confident and smart and funny and sweet and cute and all those other happy fluffy things about me.

And I am those things. But I am also dying on the inside all the fucking time. Within what I’ll call my Fruvous-ness is sad, desperate, lonely, frozen child who lurks deep inside me most of the time in order to hide from the world that hurt him so badly.

He wants someone to love and cherish and comfort and protect him. Someone to finally parent him so he can grow in the sunshine of their love instead of withering and wintering away as he waits, and waits, and waits.

Waiting for something that will never happen. People don’t usually parent adults. And the knee-jerk therapist response would be to tell me I have to parent myself.

But that doesn’t fucking work. A plant can’t generate its own sunlight any more than you can make a boat go forward by blowing on the sails. I don’t have an internalized model of competent parenting to model myself on. I don’t have a source of warmth and love and happiness to draw upon in my soul. I don’t have faith.

I don’t have faith.

Faith in what? I excluded faith as a possibility when I was very young. I took the path of the Truth, of science and reason and logic, thinking quite naively that it would be enough to sustain me.

But paranoia, mistrust, hostility, bitterness, and subterranean rage can never truly be enough to live on. They can keep you going but they can’t sustain any growth.

And so here I sit, caught between the aching desire to finally burst into bloom already and the glacial chill of all that god damned nothing.

I wish I could burn it all away.

More after the break.

---

Two gay furry smut comics I’ve enjoyed recently.

Warning, this one has a bunch of weird fetishes, like (adult) twincest and genital inflation, but if you ignore all that and concentrate on the story, like I did, you’ll find the writing is actually quite good.

Seph and Dom : The Return

This one is just straight up (sic) gay smut, no weird fetishes, but what truly impressed me was the emotional depth and understanding our protagonists express amidst all the buttfucking and cocksucking.

Hold me close and don’t let go

I really feel the depth of their bond and their love. It moved me.

And to me, that’s very sexy.

---

The man in the cell

“Oh, I’m not locked up in here at all. ” said the man in the cell. “I know it may look like I am, but I assure you, I am not.”

“It would take far more than a few bits of tin, ” he said as he gently rattled his steel manacles, “or a few puny pebbles, ” he said as he gestured to the enormous concrete slabs his cell was made of, ” to hold back a man such as I. Why, any time I want, I can simply snap these chains like they’re nothing but wet tissue paper and smash that wall to pieces with a single punch and walk right out of here, and there is nothing that anything or anyone could do to stop me. ” 

“I just choose not to at this time. ” 

That said, he settled back into his manacles with an air of self-satisfaction, clearly quite pleased by the thought of his own awesome abilities. 

And it’s not like I could prove him wrong. For all I, his jailor, knew, maybe he really could do all those things. Anything is possible, after all. 

And I’d only been working in the King’s Dungeon for eight years, and he had been one of my wards that entire time, so I have no idea what he was like before he was here. 

Maybe before he was jailed he was a mighty raging giant who could uproot trees like he was pulling a weed and throw them so far they disappeared over the horizon. Maybe one day he would finally grow tired of our modest accommodations and smash his way out of here with casual ease. Maybe the only reason he had stayed the King’s prisoner for so long was that he appreciated the peace and quiet as it gave him time to truly meditate upon the eternal verities and how they relate to the welfare of mankind. 

Maybe all of these things about him were true. 

But I really doubt it. 

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow. 

 

It’s time to spin the wheel!

(spins Wheel of Maladies, it stops on “sleepiness”)

And it’s sleepiness! Yes, today you will be incredibly sleepy for no apparent reason, making getting anything at all done extremely tricky!

That’s what today’s been like so far. I guess my extra exertions yesterday, with the eye doctor appointment and everything, took more out of me than I thought.

And/or I am fighting off an infection of some sort. Maybe the same one that seems to constantly lurking in the background lately.

I say that because I also feel a by now all too familiar soreness in my ears, nose, throat, and lungs, and my nose is running.

But the main thing is Mister Sandman parking a dump truck of sand on my chest then dumping it straight onto my eyes.

If this is malaise, it’s an extra strong dose of it.

Of course, that’s making writing these words for you wonderful people all the more difficult. Just getting my thoughts together enough to write them down is proving to be a challenge, My mind keeps drifting away.

This is when all the mental muscle I have developed over millions of words added to this blog o’ mine comes in handy. I can make the words come out even when my energy is being drained away by something.

Plus I am feeling a little perkier now that I’ve gotten a can o’ carbonated beverage (fizzy lemonade, yum!) on the go.

Jesus, could this all just be dehydration?

If so, my hydration game is getting really out of hand. It’s not like I have gone all day up till this point without drinking any water. I’ve had a couple of glasses.

Then again, the sleep I’ve been getting has been heavy and troubled and therefore pretty sweaty. Maybe I’ve been sweating it out as fast as it’s been going in.

Once more I contemplate just sticking a hose in my mouth and inserting a catheter so that the fluids can pass through me unhindered.

I am but a bend in the river.

On the psychological front. I suddenly realized this morning that I have been feeling quite anxious lately and that my lowered Paxil dose is the probable cause.

Hence my getting super stressed about the bug people coming over , and my continued stressing about not having ordered any gifts for my roomies yet let alone being able to get cards to my family.

These things are genuine issues but my mental illness has blown them way out of proportion and made me panic over fairly trivial things.

And this is, in a strange way, progress.

Because it means my emotions have been sufficiently thawed out for me to start getting old symptoms back, only this time I can meet them head on and try to learn to handle them on my own, without the Paxil, permanently.

I sure am glad I never gave in to the wild temptation to quit Paxil cold turkey, though, because if this is what a 25 percent reduction twice a week feels like, a 100 percent reduction would have sent me to the ER in a very bad mental state.

It does bother me that due to the blister packing of my meds, I no longer have the option to go back to my previous dosage of 40 mg a day instead of 30 mg twice a week.

I am seriously considering telling my pharmacist to dispense my meds normally once this batch of blister packs wears out.

There’s so many little annoyances with them. Like not even knowing what I am taking any more. If the West Coast Retina people had asked me for a list of medications yesterday, I might have been able to name three or four but the rest are a black box to me now, I don’t remember their names at all.

Where in the pill bottle era, I knew them all because I saw them every day.

I will think it over, because the blister packing IS convenient.

But also irritating.

We will see.

More after the break.

---

More on anxiety

As opposed to moron anxiety, which I think we all have these days.

I must admit to experiencing a highly perverse form of nostalgia. This anxiety I am experiencing really brings me back to the days when I had first moved to this area and all my enthusiasm for job searching was gone and I had sunk into a nightmare world where I peed out the window because I was too scared of bumping into other residents to use the shared bathroom on my floor of bachelor suites.

Are they also bachelorette suites?

Of course, those were not good times. Even after I got onto the Paxil and gained some distance from the anxiety = enough to handle it some of the time anyhow = my life was very difficult because even when I was alone in my apartment, even little noises from my fellow residents just living their lives could set me off.

But nostalgia is funny like that. You can even miss the bad times. Kinda.

Come to think of it, I dug myself out of that hole too, and I did it by starting and running the local furry community. Through it, I was able to do a heck of a lot of social healing.

I’ll never forget that moment just after me and the local fluffies had just got out of seeing The Faculty at The Hollywood and I was looking out over Broadway and it suddenly hit me just how good it felt to be actually out and sharing and connecting with people.

And in that same moment I also felt an enormous sadness because now I knew what I had been missing for so long. Now I had something to contrast my loneliness against.

It was a very emotional moment.

And now I hope to have more of those. Yes, because anxious again sucks, but I am so much stronger and saner now. And now that I know that it’s just that old beast anxiety rearing its big dumb head again, I am confident that I can overcome it.

I just need more things to DO.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Today’s been busy, at least by my standards.

This morning, I went to see Doctor McKay, my eye doctor. I get the feeling Doctor Vaezi, my previous eye guy, is too successful and important for West Coast Retinal Consultants out here in Richmond.

But don’t let the name fool you. They do the rest of the eye too.

It was the usual long process of actually getting to see him. Show up, check in, sit in the waiting room. Get the dilation drops put in. Sit back down in the waiting room. Get back up for the imaging of my eyes in various forms.

There seems to be three forms. I know one of them is to map the blood vessels in my eyes, but I dunno about the other two.

Maybe they just want to capture the sparkling depths of my baby blues.

Then there’s the testing. You know, can you read these letters. I got further than before with that at least with my right eye because when it got tough, I gave myself three or four seconds to just stare at the letters as my eye gathered enough information and the letters slowly resolved themselves.

I hope that did not throw off the measurements. My changing tactics.

Anyhow, then it was more waiting until I got called into the exam room, where I waited a bunch more before my ocular specialist Doctor McKay showed up to consult.

Impressively, he remembered me and what he’d worked on before, which was that blood vessel issue in my left eye. He asked about it, I told him it was fine.

Well, not really. Unsurprisingly, it turned out that the swelling was a lot worse in my left eye, which of the two appears to be the troublemaker.

And that meant it was time for an injection. Yay. He literally stuck a needle in my eye.

But they have new, sharper needles, and he probably remembered that I seem to be somewhat resistant to the numbing agent they use, so he was all slick with putting a drop of the numbant (sic) in my eye and doing the injection all in one motion.

Very impressive technique. Kinda hot, in fact.

Well, I did have a handsome blonde doctor stick SOMEthing in me.

Anyhow, it hurt, but it hurt a lot less than previous shots to the eye. Hooray for sharper needles and skilled doctors.

I will be back there next Monday at 11 am for a shot in the right eye. After that, the shots will be repeated every six weeks until the swelling is gone.

Fair enough. Whatever it takes to retain my eyesight.

After that, we headed over to wound care, and that’s when my troubles began because despite all the time I spent sitting and waiting, my legs were still incredibly tired just from getting to West Coast Retina Consultants and moving around there, so even just getting up the elevator to the clinic was very tiring.

What’s worse is that I really needed to pee.

Luckily, I had the time to do it. Unluckily, I stupidly chose to use a urinal instead of doing the sensible thing and sitting down to pee in one of the stalls.

This, of course, involved standing for a long-ish period and my legs do not like this. There were, thankfully, grab bars on either side of the urinal.

But my pee decided to come out at a very weird angle and that meant I had to use one hand to hold my instrument and achieve any level of accuracy.

Foreskins can be such a pain.

Anyhow, all that conspired to make it so that when I finally sat down in the waiting area I was in agony. I was breathing so hard and in such obvious distress that the old people in the waiting area with me felt bad for me.

Luckily, by the time I was called in to get my bandages changed, my endorphins had caught up with me so my legs were now somewhat numb.

Still very tired, but at least the pain was mostly gone.

Needless to say, after all that righteous suffering, I felt I had earned a vanilla cone from McD’s on the way home.

Thus ended today’s adventure.

Oh, and the bug people were here while I was gone. So, phew on that.

More after the break.

---

Now there’s an image

I just realized how potentially creepy the phrase “the bug people” could be.

Oh, update on last night’s “cold” : it comes and goes. Which is very weird. Sometimes I feel like I’m on the edge of pneumonia and sometimes it’s almost gone. All that’s left behind is a bit of a dry throat.

It seems to be linked to my hydration level, at least partially. I’ve known for a while that because of how Jardiance works, it makes your urinary system work pretty hard and hence also depletes your hydration level pretty fast.

And I am trying to break myself of the habit of procrastinating on getting up and refilling my water glass. That is the number one cause of me ending up dehydrated and it has to stop or shit like this “cold” will keep happening.

I wish my body had a diagnostics panel I could check to see what my levels of various things are so I could top up (or cut back) when needed.

Oh well, maybe someday. We already have things like blood sugar sensors you can implant in your arm and read with an app, so once that kind of thing goes through a few more evolutionary cycles, maybe we’ll all be able to get a “health chip”.

It’s always bugged me that there’s no easy way to tell what vitamins you need. Even a medical lab would have to run a TON of tests to figure out the levels for every nutrient.

Maintaining your body should be as easy as maintaining your car.

“Seems I am low on Vitamin A, calcium, and brake fluid. ”

Imagine how much healthier people would be!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

But only a start.

So my apartment building is being treated for cockroaches (eep!) tomorrow, and here I am in my filthy bug-ridden environs feeling incredibly anxious because these people are gonna show up with their bug traps and see my pigsty and judge me harshly.

And I am deeply ashamed of the state of this room of mine. I live in squalor for what seems to the world to be absolutely no good reason and this bug trap visit is bringing that to the forefront and I don’t like it.

So I have started trying to clean up. I guess where filth could not motivate shame just might, but I know there’s no chance I can actually make this place clean in time.

And I know this to be true because, quite disappointingly, I found myself completely out of gas after just a half hour of cleaning, and I’d hope to do at least an hour or two.

But nope. Started at 2 pm and by 2:30 pm I was all tuckered out.

Dunno who this Tucker guy was but he was presumably very tired.

So tomorrow will be a sort of neurotic apocalypse for me. My demons are arriving in force and they come bearing bug traps.

Just like the old gypsy predicted!

Honestly, I really hope they show up when I am out of the apartment. That way they can judge all they want and I won’t care.

And I am going to be out of the apartment for a chunk of time. I have my appointment to see Doctor McKay (about the fluid building up in my eyes) tomorrow and that will probably keep me busy between 10 am and 11:30 am, and then I have good ol wound care at noon, so if I am lucky I will be away for two and a half hours.

Honestly, if they haven’t come and gone by then, I will seriously consider getting Julian to drop me off at my favorite White Spot (on Ackroyd) and then come get me when the coast is clear.

This is really fucking with me.

Oh well, at least it’s keeping me from worrying about my eyes.

I’ve only got so much bandwidth for freaking out, after all.

Meanwhile, I have been spending a lot of time on Bluesky. That’s the hip new alternative to Twitter (sorry, Twix) that all the cool people in the world are flocking to because Twix has become a toxic hellscape of right wing hooliganism.

And of course, with every decent person who flees Twix, the toxicity of the place only gets worse until one bright and shining day in the not too distant future when all us libs will be gone and they will only be trolling each other.

In fact, some of them are already migrating to Bluesky for some reason and then whining about how left wing Bluesky is.

I don’t understand it. Wouldn’t you be more comfortable with all your awesome right wing bros back on Twix? I am sure they make you feel all warm and included!

Or are you willing to admit that you can’t stand to be around people like yourself?

Come on now. You can do it. Just a little push and I am sure you can evolve a sense of irony and shame again.

Trump hasn’t completely made you his bitch yet!

I find the folks on Bluesky to be very groovy. And it doesn’t matter if right wingers invade now because they will be little red drops in a vast blue ocean, and cannot possible have any noticeable effect apart from providing sport for assholes like me.

So bring it on, you troglodytes. Just try to troll me.

Because I troll back. And I can troll way, way harder than you ever could.

Because y’all are dumber than fuck.

More after the break.

---

Oh crap no

I am feeling ill. Dammit.

My lungs feel very stiff and scratchy and sore. Hurt a little bit with every breath. Add to that feeling feverish and a little out of it and bone tired, and the picture is bleak.

Well I don’t care. I am going to my eye appointment no matter what. Sorry, John Q. Public, but my eyesight is at stake.

And I use that all the time!

In fact I’m using it right now.

But I really don’t like how I feel right now. This definitely feels like a lot more than just a cold. It feels like someone or something is sitting on my chest. And pain when you breathe is never a good sign.

So right now I am hoping my immune system can fight this shit off before it turns into pneumonia. I don’t want to end up spending a week or more in the hospital on top of the rest of my stressors.

I don’t even have a working tablet to use to keep me occupied. I’d have to either order the battery for it right quick or make do with books and crossword puzzles.

And I have done that before, and it stinks.

Hey Doc, can you do me a favor?

But hey, now I’m not worried about the bug trap people OR my eyes!

Let’s stop there though, please, I’d hate to see what’s next.

The ironic part is that I started feeling bad when I was cleaning my room. At the time I thought I was just tired from the cleaning but nope, I was at the beginning of coming down with whatever it is I have now.

I suppose that when I go out tomorrow, I should wear a mask for the protect of the public. Assume I make it that far.

It’s not impossible that I will get worse and have to go to the ER before then. And then boom goes my eye appointment.

It’s not like the hospital can do that kind of work.

Oh, one ray of hope I need to cling to though : it’s the fluid pressure in my eyes that is making my vision bad right now, so it is possible that if that pressure can be relieved,I will suddenly see a heck of a lot better!

That sure would be nice.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

It’s harder than it sounds.

I could rail against my mind fog. Shake my tiny fist at the sky and yell, “Damn you, mind fog, I wish you’d go away forever!”

But I don’t wish that. Not really.

I know that I’m the source of the fog (remember, everything in your head is you) and that going around constantly in a daze serves a vital purpose, namely acting as a sort of soft focus lens to make reality less scary.

And by scary, I mean overstimulating. I think.

Still working out how overwhelm and anxiety fit together in my mind.

Anyhow, the mind fog blurs everything and makes it seem like things are further away and less intense than they are and thus preserve the inner sanctum of my mind in which I have been hiding for most of my life.

I can feel that duck blind of the mind quite clearly now. I can feel how it has acted as both camouflage to hide me from the world and as a kind of shark cage to protect me from it when the camouflage fails.

Above all else, nothing and nobody touches me. Not the real me. Not the crazy critter who lives inside that cage. He can get extremely close to people without them ever truly touching him and he’s so good at it that they never know that hiding inside all that cuddle warmth and snuggly sensitivity hangs a cage of ice colder than space itself.

And I know that this is a big problem for me. I know that I can confuse the hell out of people with the mixed signals I put out. That’s the main reason I tend to keep everyone at arm’s length – from that distance, I can be Mister Sunshine and nobody can sense the little man on the inside who is scared as hell of pretty much everything.

I know that if I am ever to get into a relationship, I will of course have to get one hell of a lot closer with someone. And I know that it is not in my nature to hold back when connecting with someone – we connect deeply or not at all.

And that means that at some point, that little man may well have to abandon his little shark cage and at long last let someone actually touch him and let the layers of ice around his heart just melt away.

I don’t know what will happen then. I hope I can handle it. I’d like to think I would finally simply surrender to it all and become a more whole person and truly, truly love that person with all my heart and soul.

But given that I can’t seem to handle the intimacy of even falling asleep while I am in physical contact with someone else, I definitely cannot guarantee a good reaction.

Oh well, Everybody has to find out what they are like when they are in love at some point of their lives.

Granted, it’s usually in their teens, not when they are 51, but whatever.

Better latent than never!

That’s the thing. I’ve led such a strange life. For as long as I can remember, I can convincingly act like I am okay, and even pass for normal as long as people don’t look too closely, but it’s all just part of the duck blind.

Deep inside I am frozen in time and detached from everything and scared, and all I can really do is lurk in the shadows most of the time.

I’m doing whatever I can to push against this tendency in me and force myself out of my shell and into the world a little bit more.

And sometimes I can, and sometimes I can’t. And that’s okay.

It’s okay to get frustrated with myself over it sometimes too.

It’s okay to wish winter would end and the sun would visit my sky at last.

Even though I know I don’t really want that fog to burn away.

Because then I’d be exposed.

More after the break.

---

The place where it dies

I can feel it when motivation should be happening.

It’s like electricity trying to flow through a broken wire. I can feel a stimulation of my brain but it never makes it to my motivational complex at all.

I’d have more luck trying to pass current through a block of wood.

In fact, that’s more what it feels like : like the wire isn’t broken, it just leads to a large cold block of deadness and apathy and thus gets nowhere near its destination.

And all I can do is just watch and feel it happen from the sidelines. Like I am not even involved. I feel the spark and I feel it get smothered by the deadness and I can’t even feel bad about that.

Because for reasons that are obvious if you think about it, I just don’t care.

Part of it – maybe a big part – is that this is my normal now. Has been for 30 years. Actually being motivated to do things would be weird for me now.

I mean, out of nowhere, feeling like doing something… what’s up with that?

I guess it all leads back to “control”, just like everything else. Almost never acting on my impulses does create a lot of solemn predictability for me.

By treating my own goddamned impulses like alien invaders burst into the room and making irrational demands of me.

I would be far better off being a lot more like a normal, healthy, functional human being who puts the impulses and instincts at the core of their being and everything else gets piled on to that primal id foundation.

I guess this is what happens when the defining trauma of your entire life happens when you are only four year old, your connection to your id gets severed as part of your panicked retreat into the chilly depths of the mind.

I guess I should probably do something about that.

But meh. Whatever.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

In other words, video games.

Beat the main plot in Morrowind for the first time ever a couple of days ago. So that was cool. I killed the fuck out of Dagoth Ur and destroyed his god-machine robot and saved the people of Vvardenfell from the Blight and there was much rejoicing.

I didn’t get a huge sense of accomplishment, I don’t know why. Maybe because they didn’t build up Dagoth Ur as a character at all. He was just a name connected to the bad shit going down until that final confrontation. So there was no real sense of having overcome a difficult foe.

The game did try at the end, though. He got a couple of villain speeches off before I killed him, including the requisite “join me, Luke Skywalker” type speech even though that was totally not actually possible.

Someone should make a mod where you can do that. I mean, morality would dictate that if you do that, it would be game over, but still, it’s nice to have options.

I’ve started a new character and started exploring quest mods and such.

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The Twilight Zone

I’ve just realized that the scam I have been pulling on myself involves something I already knew about, the fact that I live in a state that is literally and metaphorically never very far from sleep. but what I didn’t know till now is how I use that to keep from ever having to actually do things.

Like, for instance, that third lesson.

This is going to be hard to confess, which is why I’m doing it.

The way the scam works is that I convince myself that I can’t get things done in the morning because I’m too tired and I can’t do them in the evening for – reasons? – so I am totally going to do them tomorrow afternoon!

Bullshit. You’re going to sleep for most of the afternoon and play my vidya games for the rest of the time in which I am not blogging.

The time I really should be setting side for non-gaming non-blogging activities is between around 3 am and 8 am, which is when I am most active.

But of course, that would cut into my video gaming time, which is somehow both incredibly precious and very plentiful at the same time.

A long long time ago, I can still remember how that music used to make me smile…

(It’s a reference to this. – Ed. )

Ahem. What I meant to say was that a long long time ago, I sank deep into the world of Skyrim and its galaxy of mods, and that’s when video games officially took over my life.

I stopped eating meals out in the living room with Julian like we’d done for years. I ate in front of the computer instead. Still do.

Heck, for those first few days, I didn’t eat, drink, or sleep at ALL. I must have entered some kind of hypomanic state because for a while, I really felt like I had somehow transcended physical limitations and did not have to do that shit any more.

In other words, I was delusional.

And that’s when the addiction took hold and displaced everything else in my life. My life became a video game playtime optimization exercise and it’s been that way for so long now that I barely remember the time before that when I might not have been any more functional but at least I did a variety of things with my time.

This addiction has hollowed out my life by jealously monopolizing all my free time and refusing to let me do anything else.

Including that third goddamned lesson.

I feel so very, very lost.

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More about addiction

When I so much as ponder going without playing games for even an hour of potential game time, I get this feeling like a cold wind blowing across my soul.

As if I was some infinitely delicate creature who will perish if exposed to so much as a mild breeze from the world outside my gaming so-called life.

Now obviously, this is insane. I could throw this computer out the window and move to a yellow yurt in Yalta and I would be fine, at least physically.

The withdrawal would be a bitch, though.

Life without screens? Is that even POSSIBLE?

It’s not that drastic, anyhow. I don’t need to leave all screens behind in order to get my life moving. I just need to develop my ability to step away from the gaming for an hour or two a day so I can get other things done.

I mean, I already do it for blogging. It’s not like the entire time I am blogging to you fine and wonderful people I am mad jonesing for my next fix of Morrowind.

I suppose on some level, I am looking forward to going back to gaming after, But for the most part, tippity tapping on the keys for you folks keeps me occupied.

And that’s the point, I suppose. Keeping this massive mental mansion of mine too occupied with meaningless activities of no consequence for it to get bored and start picking apart my sanity or having it decay away like an unstable isotope.

And of course it strikes me how limited a life that is. I’m sure that there must be tons of other things that could keep me safely distracted. It’s a matter of opening up to them,

But such is the nature of addiction that it does not allow for competition. My addiction simply MUST have every waking hour to itself or it will pitch a fit.

It’s a distressing and disturbing way to live and I know I would be a lot better if I could just let go of the LCD teat of video games long enough to gather some meaning for myself and do things that might actually be good for me.

Maybe I should look on each departure as a little adventure. And like all adventures, you are happy to go out and happy to return as well.

And who knows. Maybe it will turn out that productivity is addictive too.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

My exact level of assertiveness is kind of hard to define.

For example, I am ferociously opinionated. And I will take on anyone, anywhere, and at any time in the arena of public opinion. When it comes to expressing myself in that way, I am utterly fearless and would argue with God Himself if I thought He was wrong.

At the very least, I would request clarification on whether the laws in the Old Testament, and especially that Leviticus bullshit, were ever meant to be His laws too.

I suspect they were not.

And I am also fearless in the defense of others. I am constitutionally incapable of letting injustice happen in front of me without trying to intervene. I will throw myself into the jaws of danger not because I am especially courageous but because to sit by and do nothing is beyond unthinkable to me.

And I know I might make things worse.

But I have got to try.

On the other hand, my social anxiety has been so bad that I found myself unable to signal to my waitress that I wanted a refill on my drink because she looked busy.

And it’s still very hard for me to advocate for myself. To demand things, or even just ask for them. The power of the bad, bad tapes in my head telling me that I do not dare ever ask for anything because people are already only barely tolerating me is still too strong.

I was roundly resented for my entire childhood and it’s taken till now, at the ripe old age of 51, for me to realize it.

It’s not my fault I was a surprise.

So it would be accurate, if somewhat misleading, to say I have a problem with assertiveness. It’s very hard for me to stand up for my own needs and insist upon being treated as an equal.

Because in my head, I’m not equal at all. I am The Thing That Never Should Have Been, a hideous monstrosity utterly repugnant to all and wanted by none.

I mean, I must be, otherwise why did I get treated like I did by everyone? Parents, siblings, teachers, you name it, all clearly viewed me as a something disgusting that they wanted as little to do with as possible.

And yeah, I know they were wrong to do that to me, I know that now. But all that abuse and neglect is still written large upon my soul and I don’t know how to rub it out.

What I need, I suppose, is all of the opposite input that I can get. I need people to tell me that they want me around and that they are happy I am in their life and that they don’t view me as a liability or worse a social leper at all.

Because that feeling that nobody wants me around leads directly to the feeling that people would be better off without me and that leads directly to the bad place.

And I don’t want to go to the bad place.

I might not make it back out.

So let’s try to sum up. I can assert my opinions… just try and stop me. And I can assert myself on behalf of others in order to defend and/or protect them.

But when it just involves me and my fate, I’m as meek as a child.

In fact, it’s only been in recent months that I have even started to wake up to the fact that I am perfectly capable of pursuing my own best interests.

I may not always have the proper brain chemistry to do it – though I am working on that – but I am always capable of going out into the world to find my fun.

I can do it. It’s allowed. I don’t have to worry that someone will get mad at me for trying to do it myself. I don’t have to just passively absorb whatever happens to me like I am no more than a leaf in the wind and my fate is not my own.

I need to accept that I am responsible for myself.

And that being responsible for myself is a good thing.

Because it means I can finally start to grow up.

More after the break..

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I very much enjoyed this gay furry smut-ish comic.

It’s very well written and really touched me on an emotional level. There is such warmth in their relationship and it’s just everything I would want out of love.

For those of you unfond of gay furry smut, there’s just one long sex scene between Ethan and Allan and it’s not important to the plot at all so feel free to skip it.

And this is another good one. It has almost constant nudity but not that much sex per se. And the plot does get kinda wacky.

I hope you enjoy them too.

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A totally different person

That’s what I think (fear) I will be if I get myself sane.

I try to imagine myself without all the anxiety and aversions and escapism and I just can’t. I can grasp “me but happier” as a concept but when I try to imagine what that would actually feel like, I can’t.

It’s like I am trying to see all of a line that goes over my horizon. I just can’t see ahead that far. I don’t know what that would be like, or who I would be.

I’d like to think the end result would be more or less the current me, but with all my best points turned up to 11 because the mental illness isn’t holding me back any more.

So super funny and kind and charismatic and loving and cute, basically.

And able to open myself up and express myself in absolutely massive ways. Ways so big they create a fucking shockwave when they land.

In my heart of hearts, I want to come roaring out of the shadows and on to the world stage with a thunderous TA DA! and wow them all.

And I truly can do that.

If I just get out of my own shadow for a change.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Did the Therapy Thursday thing today.

And it did me a lot of good to talk about my worries for my mental health re : spending all of Christmas all alone with Doctor Costin.

Um, I mean, I talked about my worries with Doctor Costin.

Spending Xmas alone with him seems like a longshot at best.

Though he did say I could call him that day. That’s one advantage of having a therapist who is Jewish. To him, December 25 is just another day.

Because I was able to talk it through with Doctor Costin, I was able to clear the mental fog enough to realize that I can create my own little Xmas for myself.

After all, I could get myself a frozen turkey dinner. maybe some dinner rolls, a nicely naughty (but not TOO naughty) dessert, heck, maybe even some wine.

I would just be keeping with tradition if I got a little drunk and ate turkey and chocolate on Xmas day, that’s what I did at the Devoy residence in years gone past.

I hope Joe’s parents are okay. I know the decision to not do the big Xmas dinner must have been very hard for them, but they are in their 80’s and just can’t manage it now.

Anyhow, I will get myself some special treats to make Xmas feel more special and maybe watch the Alistair Sims version of A Christmas Carol as it is by far my favorite.

And I am sure to get a phone call from my mother, and that will be a joy. I love hearing from my Mom. When I hear her voice, I feel like I’m a little kid sitting at her knee again.

She may not have been a perfect mother, but she will always be my favorite person and a very nice lady and I will always want to bask in the glow of her attention and affection even if she’s around 2676 miles away.

I asked Microsoft Co-Pilot for the distance between Richmond and my hometown of Summerside. That thing is so dang handy!

And I can spend time online with whichever of my fuzzy friends happens to be around on Xmas day.

There’s bound to be more than you might think because a lot of furries work through Xmas, either for the overtime or just out of silent, passive protection against the holiday making them feel lonely and sad.

At least, that’s why I think they do it.

Honestly, it’s what I would do if I had employment. Work seems like a great way to keep yourself occupied and therefore not thinking about what day it is.

Just like how I use video games to keep from thinking about my life. Nope, sorry, I have filled my mind with Morrowind and there’s no room left for depression.

Speaking of which, I hit a serious snag in Morrowind recently. I needed a certain super powerful artifact from a character and the door to that character’s palace was locked and there was nobody there to open it.

So I tried a bunch of different things to try to make it behave itself, but none of them worked, so eventually I used a console command to just give me the damned thing.

I hate to cheat like that but I only ever cheat in video games when the game itself has fucked up and I need to fix it to continue.

So it’s not really cheating. It’s more like making the damned thing behave.

So, yay, I reign victorious. When I play again, I will use the artifact to defeat the bad guy and quite possibly complete the main plot of the game.

At the very least, I can’t imagine what would come after beating this guy. It’s not like I am going to take on Dagoth Ur (basically Satan) myself.

I’m not nearly legendary enough for that!

Not yet, at least.

More after the break.

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Sort of half sick?

I think my body must be fighting off some kind of bug because I have felt off for three days now and it’s got me a tad worried.

In addition to sore ear, nose, throat, and lungs, I have a runny nose and I have felt tired a lot. I have slept an awful lot today and I will definitely be sleeping more because I can already tell I will be going to sleep when I’m done blogging.

One odd thing is that all my symptoms are at their worst in the morning, when I have just woken up.

Which is going to make tomorrow morning’s 8:45 am wound care appointment REAL fun. I may end up having to cancel if I still feel like this.

Whatever bug I am fighting should probably not come to the CCC with me.

All I can say is that this better not turn out to be Covid because I got inoculated for it just last week, along with the flu, and if I end up with Covid anyway I will have to go back to that Shopper’s and demand a refund of the no money it cost me.

Ha ha ha.

More seriously, though, I really am worried about this turning into something worse. I felt worse today than I did yesterday and yesterday was worse than the day before that, so the trend line is not a positive one.

If I do get worse and end up at UC or the ER, it will be, of course, on the weekend. For whatever reason, this shit only ever goes down on the damned weekend.

Maybe fate wants to make sure I have plenty of company in the waiting room.

And so far (knock on wood) I’ve only ever had to go in one time for a high priority thing (chest pain) and if it’s just the serious sniffles this time, that more or less guarantees I will be there for a long ass time because of its low triage score.

So honestly I hope I get better soon, if only to spare me the aggravation!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Because they’re basically the same thing.

The core dynamic is the deeply cowardly act of redirecting anger created by abuse by those above you (and therefore scary) onto those who are not only below you but actually the least powerful and therefore least scary targets around.

Shit flows downhill, as my late father used to say.

And it would be one thing if these people did it with the full knowledge that they are doing something rotten purely because they can get away with it and it feels good.

But of course, they don’t do that, because they are far too weak and timid to take that level of accountability for their actions.

Instead, they go through amazing mental contortions to actually convince themselves that the least powerful (and scary) people are actually to blame for their pain.

Thus the ability of billions of people all over the globe to blame the poorest people in society for things like national debt.

Because make no mistake : modern conservatism is abuse. Its entire underlying structure is about delivering the pleasure of hurting the weak to the masses and everything else is just window dressing.

That’s why it’s all so mean spirited. That’s the entire point. That’s the product. That is the addictive substance.

The right wind pundits and podcasters’ job is to use whatever means are necessary, no matter how blatantly intellectually dishonest, to remove all impediments to that sweet, sweet joy of taking your pain out on the only people you’re sure can’t fight back.

This is also why compassion enrages them so much. Compassion stirs actual tender emotions in people’s hearts and if you’re addicted to the joy of hate, that only reminds you that you’re actually being evil and that ruins all the fun.

The point is to have a great time hurting the very people Christ commands you to care for while also believing that you’re not just a good person but the best kind of person and definitely getting into Heaven ahead of all these heathens

I mean, why let that faggot Jesus spoil all the fun of being Christian, right?

And if you listen carefully, you can detect a solid note of panic in their voices when they are railing against compassionate measures. That’s the panic of a hate junkie who feels like their supply is being threatened.

Imagine the revolution that could be unleashed if all these people could swear off the hatred and became enough of a vertebrate to look above them for the source of their pain and suffering and direct that rage at the people actually hurting them.

But that would take courage and, like I said, these people are cowards. And that’s just as true for conservatives blaming the poor for the deficit as it is for your average schoolyard bully beating up a nerd for daring to be smart when they are dumb.

The entirety of modern conservatism makes a lot more sense when you realize that it’s all just an abuse delivery machine.

I have suffered from this effect myself because my own father would get shit upon and put upon at work by bosses who felt free to make messes they knew he’d clean up and who would dump nearly their entire workloads on him because they knew he would do it for them without a complaint.

And then he’d come home and take it all out on his wife and kids.

My childhood would have been a hell of a lot easier if he’d just had the balls to protest how he was being treated by lodging a complaint with his union, UPSE.

But no. Like a true conservative, he could only vent his rage on people who could not fight back – people he claimed to love – and where he felt the most safe – at home.

Makes you sick to your stomach, doesn’t it?

More after the break.

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The problem of stupidity

Ordered me some Pizza Hut tonight.

A Melts (Bacon Chicken Alfredo, yum) and their new Golden Crispy Waffle Fries (meh, not crispy, boring) cost me only $20.66, which is only a few bucks more than what getting McD’s via Julian costs me. Not bad.

When the delivery arrived, I had to explain the concept of me buzzing her up to my Dasher (seasonally apropos) twice before it sank in.

She did get in eventually, though. Which is good, because I’m home alone and, gimp that I am, I would have been able to get my order if it’d been delivered to the lobby.

Anyhow, the whole thing got me thinking about stupidity and why it’s so infuriating.

Part of it is violation of expectation. You expect a certain degree of mental agility from people and when it’s not there it not only throws you off, it makes whatever you’re doing way harder because now you have to explain things.

And odds are, if this person is truly a dip, it will not be easy.

But in the broader sense, the herd is only as fast as its slowest member and that is certainly truly for society as a whole.

Especially if you’re intellectually gifted like myself. My whole school career was spent bored and frustrated at having to move at the speed of the slowest student in the class when all I wanted to do was rush forward like a heavy locomotive.

But anyone who has been saddled with a particularly dimwitted co-worker gets it.

When you’re as brilliant as I am, in a sense most of the world is that co-worker. On a purely intellectual level, the average person with an average IQ is like a child to you.

And the fact that you are stuck in the world where these children run everything can make even mild mannered liberal intellectuals pull their hair out.

Let alone passionate types like myself.

That’s why so many of us succumb to misanthropy. It’s a natural response to the problem of stupidity because it’s either dedicate yourself to leading the sheep (a job for which we are often ill suited) or resign yourself to being stuck on the same bus as everyone else when you can clearly see that the driver is drunk.

Myself, I reject misanthropy as a matter of deeply held belief. After all, you can’t exactly be a misanthrope and a humanist at the same time.

And I will choose my humanism over mere crankiness every single time.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.