Today was Therapy Friday (Doctor Costin had to postpone due to life complications) and something came up during my session that I want to capture here.

I was talking about all my profound guilt and shame over how my life has turned out and how many years of my life I have wasted hiding away from reality when suddenly it hit me : it’s also regret.

I really, really regret the way I have lived my life, namely like a rat in a hole hiding away from a big bad predator that does not exist.

If I could go back in time, I swear I would go back to when I first got to the GVRD and kick my ass and force myself to find a way to make something of myself, even if that something is just the graveyard shift at 7-11.

That would still be better than the yawning void of undifferentiated time that is this meaningless and purposeless life of mine.

Of course, after kicking my ass, I would hand myself some winning lottery number, so maybe the 7-11 thing would not be needed.

The obvious follow-up to that would be to try being the person I will wish I was in the future right now. To effectively kick my own ass right now so that future me won’t be living the exact same stupid life and hating it even more.

And I’m working on it.

Like I told Doc Costin today, I feel like at this point in my life I am slowly but steadily prying open this sarcophagus of mine to let the fresh air and sunshine in for the first time in what feels like centuries, and I can’t tell him or you when exactly this will result in tangible action on my part but it’s going to be soon.

The paralytic hypnosis that I have called my “anti-action bias” is slowly wearing off and the animal (me) is beginning to move around and show interest in his environment.

I still want to live life and do stuff. I am tired of my content free existence. There is a hell of a lot more to life than video games and masturbation (both single player experiences) and I want to get the hell out of my shell and go out there to experience it.

Even if my physical debilities mean I can only do it online.

Becoming active on, say, Tumblr would still be a hell of a lot better than typing my words for just a couple of friends to read.

Not that I am not super grateful for both my readers, but I want more.

Actually, Reddit would probably suit me more, but there are literally millions of subReddits and I have no idea which one would be the right one to be my new community and/or forum.

Something furry, maybe? That would expand my room while keeping me mostly in my comfort zone. Or maybe something political? I am definitely opinionate about that.

Or hell, maybe even something related to gaming.

And of course, I could get back into video . Find my webcam and get it working again so I can make video essays exploring my favorite topics and sharing my extremely unique and bizarre views with the world.

Of course, it would be easier to just do that via TikTok on my tablet. But I dunno. I want to try something brand new.

Maybe I could see what Instagram is all about. I’ve heard good things.

And really, really bad things. But I am not a teenaged girl so I am pretty sure I am immune to thinking I am worthless because I am not as pretty as the popular girls.

I will think it over.

More after the break.

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Where the fuck are they?

This is what is currently driving me freaking crazy.

I asked for Amazon gift cards for my birthday because that way they can be used to help pay for a new power supply for this computer.

I asked for them figuring that it’s the world’s largest retailer and basically like a third of the world’s economy, so surely, surely those cards are available everywhere.

Nope! Felicity looked around and they are nowhere to be found.

So I figured a little Google Fu would solve it. I have found lists of places that sell other kinds of cards online. So Amazon should be a cinch, right?

Nope! Apparently I live in a hole in space-time where nothing makes sense and there is literally no place in Richmond to buy said gift cards.

Tons of cards for other, far more specific places, but none for the place that sold you half of the things in your house right now.

I asked Amazon.ca. I asked Google. I even asked Microsoft Co-Pilot, their AI assistant which is now on every Windows computer in the world.

And in all three places, all I got was a list of the kinds of places that might sell things like an Amazon.ca gift card.

You can buy them online, of course, but not everybody has a credit card and not everybody is comfortable with doing business that way.

So I am damn near tearing my hair out.

I mean, what the everlasting fuck, man?

The whole reason I asked for the gift cards in the first place was that they are less impersonal than cash and now I feel like all I can do is ask for cash.

And I fucking hate that.

So now I will be fuming and agitating (fumigating?) about this until I find a solution or I go completely insane.

Right now, I could go either way.

Oh, and my birthday is Sunday and it’s almost Saturday, so it’s not like I have a lot of time to find a solution.

(a little time passes)

Oh ho. But now, apparently, the clouds have parted and the PREVIOUS card I asked for that nobody could find, a Steam gift card, can be bought at London Drugs, both the Ironwood and the 3 and Westminster locations.

That would also be acceptable. Right now, I have a game that will probably keep me going for a while, but it won’t be long till I need something new.

Why does life have to be like this?

Why is nothing ever simple or easy?

How come things don’t want to MAKE SENSE?

In a word – argh.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow/

I call it my being absentminded, but really, it’s brain fog.

My mind is a very foggy place. Things can get lost in there very easily. Things appear out of and disappear into the fog seemingly at random, and on a bad day things can get rather pea-soup like in there.

And I won’t pretend I don’t know why it’s there or what it’s doing. It’s a simple manifestation of the general numbness that comes with my depression and its function is to keep me anesthetized so that I don’t have to feel my pain.

Or my joy, or my sorrow, or damn near anything else.

I suppose that on some deep and mindless level I have “decided” that it’s worth not feeling anything in order to not have to feel the terrible pain of my deep Wound.

But up here on the conscious and directed level of consciousness, I can tell you for certain that it ain’t.

That’s why when something I read or watch or listen to stirs big emotions in me, I am almost pathetically grateful for it because at least I am at last feeling something.

Even if it’s painful or negative or even bad, the relief I feel at a break in the numbness of my existence is enough to make me want to cry with happiness.

You would think that this would teach me to seek out those experiences, but no. Not yet, anyhow. Most of me is still in the “it’s bad to feel bad” phase where the idea of deliberately looking for something that will make me really emotional in a negative way seems like the definition of insanity.

Hell, even deliberately seeking out things that make me feel really good is far rarer than it should be. Like I recently pointed out, there are galaxies of pictures and video online that could make me feel a lot better.

Like pictures of kittens.

I mean, just look at this!

Doesn’t the world seem like a better place for having such delightful things in it?

Any universe with snuggly cuddly silly cute kittens in it can’t be ALL bad.

But it’s like deliberately seeking out positive emotional inputs is cheating somehow. Like at some point I made a deep and terrible decision that my emotional state must always reflect the real world and therefore to deliberately push it one way or another would be to dangerously delude myself.

And how’s that working out for ya?

I am definitely more than ready to delude the hell out of myself if it means that i am a happier and healthier person in the long run.

Because fuck reality, man. When reality does not give us the emotional nutrients we need, we need to be able to synthesize them for ourselves or find ourselves sliding into the depths of the emotional malnutrition state known as “depression”

Something has to set a limit for how low we can go before the emergency system kicks in and gives us whatever the hell we need without asking reality’s permission.

And that is what people get out of faiths of all kinds, from organized religion to tarot cards to a deep and abiding love for the Dukes of Hazzard.

It’s like religion, when it’s operating properly, gives the individual a massive battery of positive emotions to draw from when they need them and these act as a sort of emergency power supply for one’s mood.

We depressed types don’t have that. More fool us

Maybe we all could use a little more delusion in our lives.

Because reality SUCKS.

More after the break.

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My deep dark terrible shame

Don’t get too excited, patient readers, I haven’t done or discovered anything new.

I just feel like it’s time to take another crack at one of my biggest issues.

As you know, dear reader, I carry an enormous, crippling burden of shame about how my life has turned out.

You know, the whole “never had a job or been in a relationship or really done any adulting at all” thing.

i mean, I’m about to turn 51 this Sunday and I have done next to nothing with my life except play video games and masturbate.

Not at the same time, obviously. That would be tricky.

Plus I have yet to find a game that is sexy enough.

Anyhow, yadda yadda, I am a colossal loser. The biggest, really. Even the previous failure to launch record holders of the zeitgeist, the “still working at McDonalds at my age” set, have it way, way over me.

And it really, really hurts. Knowing that the entire 30 years of my adult life has gone completely to waste leaves me not just mortified but horrified.

But no matter how “true” this outlook on my life may be (debatable), it is extremely unhelpful and toxic to my wellbeing to the nth degree and if I want to move forward I am going to have to change it.

And I want to. But I have yet to figure out how to get over it. In fact, right now, it feels like a giant craggy pointy mountain in my path, with a summit way up in the clouds.

Talking about it like this helps a little bit, though. Getting some of that spine-cracking burden of shame out in words helps me to feel a little better about it.

And I know I am an amazing creature, brilliant and unique. There is nobody else like me in this world. I am a delicate gossamer hothouse flower blooming in the dark.

And that knowledge can compete with the shame but so far it can’t overcome it. The shame is so much bigger than whatever pride I might have in being uselessly unique.

I need to accomplish things in order to become more sane.

I am too insane to accomplish things.

I need to work on that.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Feeling somewhat better today.

The sunshine helps. Amongst the millions of things I “should” be doing for my mental health is get some full spectrum bulbs to see if they improve my mood and/or sleep.

Although I am a little wary of the phrase “full spectrum” because that could just mean “white”. White light does, after all, contain every other color. Ergo full spectrum

I suppose if it helps, it doesn’t matter. And there must be a reason why those little white LED Christmas lights make me feel good.

Maybe some white light is exactly what I need. Maybe I need to also give up on being such a troglodyte and at least get enough sunlight to enable my body to make the vitamin D it needs.

Figuring out how I can get outside time is a challenge but doable. I return to the idea to get Julian to drop me off at some park bench close to the road where I can sit in the sun and soak up the wonders of the natural world for a while.

That would probably do me a heck of a lot of good.

What I’d really want is to go to the beach, but um, walkers and sand really don’t mix. So I would be pretty helpless until he came to pick me up again.

Still, it’s a thought. Might be worth it. The beach is always a happy place for me. I love being near the ocean. It always calms me right down, like all my troubles and pains and fears and the kinks in my hoses are all dissolved into the big blue bulk of the water, leaving me cleaner on a spiritual level.

That brings up an interesting thought : I wonder if a supervised trip to the shallow end of the local municipal pool would also do me good.

I’ve always liked being in the water despite being unable to swim. And with my advancing debility, it might be very nice to get some time away from gravity’s full force for a little while.

Heck, maybe underwater I could even walk.

The important thing to keep in mind is to get my head out from under my tail and reach out into the world to find pleasure and happiness and joy.

It’s all out there waiting for me. All the love and acceptance and affection and approval that I have ever craved can be found out there in the big bad world and I can have it all if I just summon the courage to go looking for it.

After all, that’s what normal people do.

And to hell with the voices in my head telling me not to bother trying because it won’t work and I will just end up worse off than if I hadn’t tried.

That’s 100 percent bullshit, just depression’s monotonous propaganda designed to keep me from peeking outside this fetid grotto of mine and seeing that, lo and behold, the real world is full of wonderful, joyful, beautiful things that I am free to draw upon to bolster my own mood whenever I like.

Heck, a simple Google image search for “kittens” can unlock many, many images that would make me much happier, and what is wrong with that?

Feel bad? Look for things that make you feel good. Simple.

Kittens are my anti-drug. One of them, anyhow.

It does mean hacking your way through the icy numbness of depression’s anhedonia to get to the pleasure of it all, and that won’t be easy.

But it will totally be worth it when you open up your vault and let the sun shine in.

More after the break.

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The Drinking Song

Every once in a while, I wonder if Moxy Fruvous were really the big deal I used to think they were back in my UPEI days.

Then I listen to something like this :

…and it makes me want to cry every single fucking time, and I am reminded that they were an amazing fucking band and nothing can ever take that way.

I’ve gone through something similar with REM.

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A whole new game

Well, mostly new.

I recently (as in, yesterday) spent the money I have earned (?) via running Salad^[1] to get a game I have wanted for a while called Pathfinder : Kingmaker.

I wanted it because I really enjoyed the sequel. Pathfinder : Wrath of the Righteous, and base on that figured I would enjoy the original game or “prequel”.

So far so good. I’ve played it for four hours or so and the biggest difference so far is that the opening for Kingmaker is nowhere near as dramatic as the one for Righteous.

But then again, it’s kind of hard to compete with this :

No wonder I was instantly hooked. And traumatized.

The two are not unrelated. What can I say, I still love the grimdark, and it doesn’t get much grimmer and darker than that outside of the Witcher franchise.

It’s been a while since I played the sequel, Wrath of the Righteous. Last played it in August of 2023. So there has been enough of a spacer that I am no longer tired of it.

But transitioning from all the 3D RPGs I have been playing to the humbler world of isometric RPGs is a bit rough. I keep getting this creeping feeling that there must be something I am not seeing.

I’ll get over it. I always do. Transitions can be rough but that doesn’t mean they aren’t ever worth the cost.

I say this to you in order to say it to me.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I’ve been craving sweet things lately, and that disturbs me.

And not just a normal kind of craving that could come just from seeing something sweet that I used to love but can no longer eat.

Those aren’t so much cravings as longings. Wistful ones.

No, these are hot, intense cravings that come out of nowhere and come with vivid visions of both the image and the flavour of something specific.

My mind fights that shit off pretty easily, but it takes a few seconds for my defenses to activate and in those seconds the craving is as powerful and intense as a wet dream.

And that’s very annoying.

And, like I said, worrying because sudden cravings for sweet things is a classic sign of diabetes and I thought I had that shit under control.

As a matter of fact, what led to my initial diagnosis for diabetes was me suddenly developing hardcore sugar cravings that led to me doing highly uncharacteristic things like eating an entire bag of cookies, so like 20 cookies, in one sitting.

That was not normal for me at all. In all my life before that, I had never had a “sweet tooth”, in that I never actually craved sugary things. I enjoyed them as much as the next naked beach monkey, but I never craved them per se.

So you can see why I am kinda worried about these new cravings. They suggest that my brain is not getting enough sucrose and I am not sure how that could be, but I am pondering increasing the amount of carbs in my diet to see if that helps.

I don’t want to do that. I don’t crave carbs either. I don’t exclude them like I used to do, but I still don’t eat a lot of them.

And maybe that’s the problem. My brain needs more carbs, stat.

Which is a funny kind of problems to have as a Type II diabetic, but I am going to at least pondering giving it what it wants (within reason) and seeing what happens.

Like, I am obviously not going to go buy myself a movie theater sized Caramilk bar and mow it down, but I have some cheesy poofs in the living room and I might just go get them and pour myself some and give them a munch.

I do know that I get really hungry sometimes, and I dunno what is up with that. But sometimes that “demon hunger” of mine strikes and even a big meal can only temporarily put a dent in it.

Makes me feel like I am going crazy.

Luckily, a shot of insulin (or maybe 2, spaced out) usually takes care of the problem. A problem that also suggests that my brain is not getting enough fuel and is frantically sending out hunger signals to try to get what it needs.

That’s one valid theory, anyhow. I do not completely trust it. The urge to eat more “naughty” foods can be very sneaky.

But I always know when I have gone too far because the naughty food makes me feel much worse almost instantly.

I get this gross nauseous feeling like a kid who just ate all his Halloween candy, I sweat profusely and it’s the gross, sticky sweat that clogs my pores and makes me feel like I am in a deep jungle climate.

So yeah. That regulates it quite nicely. I might look longingly at someone’s box of Timbits but I am not tempted to eat any because I know it will hurt.

Now where was I? I swear I had something I was trying ot get across.

Oh well. Maybe I will remember it between now and part 2!

More after the break.

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Hunger, sweets, etc part 2

Hey, waddaya know, I remembered.

But I have nothing to add on that topic, so….

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Goodnight sweet prince

I am still having trouble with being sleepy all the time too.

Lately I am learning towards thinking it is related to my depression somehow. After all, I have taken the lid of a lot of emotions lately and it would be entirely in line with the usual diagnostic criterion for depression for that to cause a change in sleep habits.

I am in the process of destabilizing a lot of things right now, so I have to be ready for things to change in ways I could not possibly predict

I am undergoing my greatest psychological restructuring yet. And there maybe be even bigger shifts before the process is complete and I have something approaching sanity.

I’ll tell you one thing – being crazy is getting very very old.

I am sick and tired of not being in control of myself or my reactions or my fate. I want to live a life shaped by my will and my desires instead of just crouching in a bunker and waiting for life to go away.

Hint : it won’t.

I have a strong desire to make myself into something. Something good, something strong, something I can be proud of.

So far in life, I have simply been whatever I am by default. I have chosen very little, mostly just reacting to change, and wherever I landed, I clung to whatever solid ground I found and rapidly set up the exact same kind of life as before

I mean, does it really matter where my bed and computer are when I almost never go outside and never on my own initiative?

My current location’s main advantage is that it has my friends in it. That’s really all that ties me to any particular location.

Otherwise this bedroom could be in Timbuktu for all the different it makes.

And I am tired of that. I want to be alive and to have a real life instead of just hiding in the shadows and playing video games till I die.

There has to be some way out of this tight little tomb I have constructed.

But I won’t find it by playing the labyrinth game.

I will need to transcend myself somehow.

Maybe I will just keep following that little light in my head.

That will do for now, anyhow.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Took me an hour and twenty minutes to get out of bed just now

And that’s just not acceptable. It throws my usual schedule way off. It’s almost 5:30 pm and I am only sitting down to blog and eat my supposed lunch NOW.

I’m going to have to movie supper from its usual 8 pm to 8:30 pm to partially compensate. And I should not be messing with my patters of digestion like that.

And it’s getting worse. 80 minutes between waking and rising is merely the latest top score. It’s been growing by around 10 to 15 minutes a day for a week now.

And it’s a physical and emotional; strain. It makes me feel like I am losing what little control I have in my life and that makes me very uneasy.

That said,if this is part of the price I have to pay to get free of my mental prison, I can live with that. I will pay it gladly.

This “Operation Rainbow Valley” of mine, wherein I transition to a new, sunnier, more positive outlook on life, is a major undertaking that is bound to destabilize a heck of a lot more than just my sleep schedule beofre it’s done.

If so, so be it. All options are on the table, up to and including going genuinely full on batshit cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs crazy for a while, if that’s what it takes to become sane.

Obviously, I would prefer it didn’t come to that. And as far as I know right now, it doesn’t have to. But I am willing to go there.

I have made an important first step : I have a little star of my own in my mind now, and it is always shining, and it reminds me to turn toward the light whenever I can.

It’s like my own little personal sunbeam. In fact, one might even say…

And it makes me a sweet, sweet honey…. fox.

I have finally made it to a place where I can make my own happiness without needing it to be validated or justified by the world or “reality”.

We can’t change THE world by changing our perspective. It will be the same ol’ objective reality no matter whether we hate ourselves or greet every new day with a shout of unbridled joy.

But we can change OUR world, and that’s the only world we will ever live in, so that’s more than enough.

Just like in filmmaking. the smallest shift in perspective can radically change the entire mise en scene of our life.

So why not choose whatever angle makes life look the best?

I am not talking about embracing rampant delusion. That might be fun for a while but sooner or later, objective reality WILL catch up with you and you will wish you had decided to stay connected to it after all.

No, I truly mean just looking at the real world from a different angle. One that makes life easier for you and gets you out of your own way so you can untwist your soul and give it a good firm shake to get out those last few drops of tears and get the worst of the wrinkles out of it.

Well straighten me, ’cause I’m ready. Bring on the flood, let kingdom come, and may we all be together on the other side.

I truly don’t give a shit any more. It’s like, whatever, man, Whatever I need to do in order to get right with the world, I will do it.

Even if it involves an open ended interaction with the real world.

More after the break.

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Oh no, not the real world!

Yes, the real world.

Hey, Guardian Angel!

A little love won’t make you blind.

Words for me to live by, really. I need to keep telling myself that I can change how I look at things and how I go about getting my needs met so that I love myself a whole lot more without that meaning I blind myself to that mean ol real world out there as well.

And the real world really is the issue at hand, is it not? I have spent an entire lifetime with my back turned to reality and my head buried so deep into my distractions that the real world couldn’t even leak in if I wanted it to.

And I did not.

Ergo, another aspect of my recovery will be to devirtualize myself. And that is NOT going to be easy. I have been virtual for so long – most of that time in total denial of the act – that I fear the real world and all its uncontrolled and unpredictable stimulation with the same kind of stark, unreasoning, primal fear that a sheep has for wolves or that little children have for the Bogeyman.

Clearly I need to work on being so incredibly resistant to any form of real world stimulation not mediated through a screen, and the only way I can see that happening is via exposure, and that terrifies me.

So maybe my baby steps will consist of just bringing the idea of increased stimulation from the actually really really real world into my mind without doing anything with it except just sitting with the idea.

Get used to it that way. Let the lack of action slowly drain the panic away. It’s hard to stay scared of something when it isn’t doing anything.

If I can get used to the idea, then the actuality can be introduced slowly. Starting by lying in bed like usual, but suppressing my urge to disappear into the dark recesses of my mind like I would usually do and instead stay as mentally present as possible.

I know my mind will fight me like a rabid cougar with kittens on this, and I do not plan to fight back. Going to war with yourself rarely does any good.

Instead, that too can be patiently outwaited. Let the storm wear itself out and then move in with what you want to be doing when it’s done.

I know one thing : I am really fuck sick of things as they are right now.

Something, somewhere, has to give,

I nominate my depression.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Still pondering my exit from a tense, anxious, crisis based bunker mentality to something more mellow and harmonious and relaxed.

I know it won’t be an easy or quick transition. For one thing, it will require me finding different ways to express my energies.

Right now, my energies go mostly unexpressed except, I suppose, the ones involved in playing video games, writing, and masturbation

As a result, there is always all this latent energy hanging around in my soul and just waiting for the slightest stimulation to turn them into self-loathing, anxiety, depression, or just plan ennui.

Or even health problems. Stress is a killer, man.

If I am to stop being so negative, therefore, I am going to need to find a healthy outlet for those energies. Otherwise whatever progress I make in letting some sunshine into my heart risks being undone by the storm within.

And finding a way to let those energies out is going to be a massive change because it will mean changing my entire idea of what I do and why I do it and require me to open myself to actually acting on my impulses and therefore living a far less quiet and predictable little life.

The sheer scope of this transition leaves me awestruck. Just the notion of thinking about what I want to do makes me feel giddy from the elevation.

Luckily, I don’t necessarily need to make some enormous leap of faith all at once in order to get there. Slow but inexorable progress can do some of the work.

But I won’t lie to myself : leaps of faith will also be part of the process. Not everything can be done at glacial speed. Sometimes you just gotta jump.

Luckily I have already done some of the groundwork by consciously uncoupling my emotions from the rules of logic, causality, and contiguity.

I don’t need a reason to be happy. I can just be happy. Happy because I have made myself happy, not because the real world is letting me justify it.

Instead, I need a reason to be unhappy. Let the god damned depression justify itself for once. And said justification had better be good.

All of that is easy and fun to say but of course, actually putting all those bold and defiant words into practice will take actual work.

But I am confident that it can be done. I am fully convinced that somewhere inside me is a bright, bubbly, cheerfully optimistic person who got buried under ten tons of bad brain chemicals but is still alive and kicking and waiting to emerge.

Right now, what I have is a feeling of where the light is. Which way is up, so to speak. A deep emotional sense of what it means to push myself towards the positive and, like a sunflower, tilt myself towards that light in order to catch all the rays I can.

The fact that we’re transitioning into summer should help with that. Sunshine does see ti improve my mood in the real world, even when it comes with oppressive heat.

But the real solution will come from all that latent energy I mentioned before. Because one of the secrets of being a positive person, I believe, is that positive people dedicate a lot of energy to mood support.

In other words, instead of hoarding all their energy like a miser, they invest a good portion of it into keeping their mood above a certain minimum level, even though that means making an open-ended commitment of energy to the process.

Because hoarding energy is useless. Austerity doesn’t work. Never has, never well. There is no point in holding on to your energies to the point where they become a toxic hazard and are tearing you up inside when you could be investing those energies into your own wellbeing.

I mean, what the fuck are the energies for, anyhow? What possible future rainy day could possibly justify this compulsive retention?

Do you really think the day will come when you have to run ten marathons in a row and you’ll be all, “Boy, good thing I saved up all that energy!”

Bullshit. You’re not saving up anything. You don’t spend it because you can’t spend it. The compulsion won’t let you. You’d be better off spending it all the moment you got it, because then at least you would get something out of it.

Instead, you let the crops rot on the vine and waste it all.

More after the break.

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Straighten me, ’cause I’m ready

Don’t fret, my legions of male fans. I don’t mean straighten me in THAT sense. I will be gayer than disco till the day I die.

No, that’s a quote from one of Spider Robinson’s Callahan books, and knowing him, that means it’s probably a quote from someone else, but I can’t figure out who.

Not with my disinclination toward research.

But it’s stuck with me as a quote because it seems to encapsulate a kind of secular call to the universe for something larger to oneself (but possibly part of oneself) to intervene and straighten out our bent, folded, and mutilated souls like a transcendental chiropractor so that we might be healthy at last.

Or at least a cleaner form of crazy.

And that’s how I am feeling right now. Straighten me, powers that be, because I am ready to accept your correction. I am a very sick man who is more than eager to receive that short sharp shock that will snap me out of my dazed and hazy state and set me on the road to truly being awake for the first time in 40 plus fucking years.

I am through with pretending the way I am right now is somehow good, or that it is something worth preserving, even.

Fuck that. It can all go. Anything worthwhile in me will remain even after the flood has done its work, and absolutely everything else can be flushed downstream to join all the rest of nature’s waste products in the ocean.

I hereby release all that I am in order to become what I need to be.

I surrender all form so that I may be born anew.

And maybe get it right this time.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Namely. what do I want for my birthday?

And as usual, I have no fucking clue

I mean, talk about option paralysis. There are far too many possibilities to calculate. And as patient readers know, my weak and palsied id is far too ineffectual to be able to tell me what I want.

I’m not good at wanting things.

I’m good at making do with whatever I end up with. Which can be an impressive skill in and of itself, but pretty useless in situations like this.

So I guess it’s time to try to write my way towards some kind of answer.

For my own edification only, of course. So I know what to buy myself. Patient readers also know that I have given up on expecting the people in my life to pay any attention whatsoever to any wish list of mine.

Because I mean, first they would have to actually read the list, then they’d have to think about which thing on the list to get me, then they would have to think about where to get that thing, then they would have to shop online for that thing, and then they would have to order that thing in time for my birthday, and then wait for it, and so forth and so on, and quite frankly my happiness is simply not worth that kind of effort.

I mean, It’s not even close.

Not that I’m bitter.

Anyhow, on to the speculation. Part of the problem is that my main hobby, video games, does not require a lot of material items to pursue.

And the things that might actually contribute to that hobby, like a new beefy power supply for my computer, are way too expensive to ask for.

I guess I could just ask for Amazon gift cards, to be used towards said goal.

The clock is ticking. My birthday is the 19th and that’s a week from tomorrow, Sunday. Which is rather handy because it means my birthday is on a day when we’d be going to Denny’s anyhow, so my “party” is already in the bag, so to speak

I put “party” in quotes because we’re all too old and tired to actually throw a real party, with cake and ice cream and so on.

I know I can’t ask for Steam gift cards because my friends can’t find those. It’s only the most popular gaming platform in the world, dwarfing all others, but that doesn’t mean anyone around here sells their cards.

Of course, there’s always virtual gift certificates, but then you would have to like, take out your credit card, and type in the numbers, and then do a search, and then go through the whole checkout process, and phew, yeah, totally not worth it.

I mean, then it would become a whole “thing” and we all know how impossible it is to do anything that is a “thing”.

Not that I’m bitter.

So yeah. Amazon gift cards are an acceptable compromise between me being able to get what I want and my distinct distaste for cash as a gift.

It’s just so impersonal! It has zero value as a gesture. It replaces, “I got you this because I know you will like it” with “I have no idea what you want or even who you are as a person, but um…. whatever it is, you can probably get it with money. ”

Thank God I am not bitter about all this.

Amazon gift cards will do nicely, at least as a way to fill in the blank until I think of something more specific I want.

You know. To buy for myself.

More after the break.

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More crisis management

On the whole, I am probably better off not feeling as though I’m in crisis.

I mean sure, an argumen could be made for the crisis POV. After all, I am about to turn 51 and I haven’t even start my life yet. I am still stuck in Failure to Launch Mode (FTLM) after all 30 years of my adult life and if I am going to get some living done I should probably start doing it real soon now, while I still can.

But let’s peel back another layer of that onion, because having cause to panic does not necessarily mean it’s a good idea to panic.

I detailed this once before in this space, a long time and thousands of words ago : the panic mode does not galvanize me into action. Quite the opposite, in fact : it just makes me disengage and withdraw all the more because it makes life even more stressful and my malformed response to stress is to hide in my shell until it goes away.

Except it never goes away.

So arguably, I would be far better off going in the opposite direction and treating life like it’s easy, rewarding, and fun. Just one long lovely vacation where I am free to do whatever pleases me the most at any given moment and where all of life’s possibilities lie open to me to indulge in whenever I please, like a smorgasbord of self-actualization.

If I could get into that groove, all the stress would go away and with it a great deal of my inner conflict. And I would just plain be treating myself better. Gone would be an inner world with all the relaxed calm of a hostage situation where I am always being crushed in the jaws of my own brutal self-judgment and don’t get to be happy until I overcome myself in a way I know will never happen.

Why not, you ask?

Because my inner world is too damned toxic! Catch-22.

So I need to pull my head out of my assumptions and strive to change my perspective on life entirely. It really is all about how you look at things, and that CAN change.

But it won’t be easy. The old POV has inertia on its side. It will require a lot of self-correction and concentrated, long term effort.

But I just have to keep it up until I truly start to feel the difference.

Then the process will provide its own motivation.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Haven’t poked this wasp’s nest in a while, so let’s.

When last we left our brave psychonauts psyche…. explorers, we were discussing how when I imagine my room and my bed all nice and clean and tucked away, a very strange and creepy feeling starts welling up inside of me.

It feels like something is going to come out of me that I want to keep in. You can fill in your own disgusting biological metaphor. The specifics don’t matter, what matters is that I have no conscious idea what this something could be.

And that intrigues me. What could it possibly be?

I know there is definitely a strong sense of shame attached, as if having this something come out in front of others would be akin to soiling oneself in public, only worse.

And yet I feel like it has nothing to do with the things I normally think of as my secrets.

And I have some pretty big secrets.

But this feels more like something deeper and more primitive, like something that might in fact reach all the way back to my toddler days.

Which just makes it all the more mysterious and intriguing.

And the fact that it is apparently the throngs of random items cluttering up my environment that are holding this something back is also fascinating.

Like the real world clutter clogs and confuses and possibly overloads some key part of my brain involved in keeping this something suppressed.

Like my mind fog, but more concrete and specific.

It makes me want to see what would happen if I spent a couple of hours in a empty, unfurnished room with white walls, floor, and ceiling.

Kind of like a much less intense and moist version of a sensory deprivation chamber, done with the knowledge that you don’t have to cease all input to the senses you merely have to give them no stimulation, just the same inputs continuously, and your nervous system will tune that shit out on its own.

In a white blank room like that, there would be no chance that my something could stay suppressed and it would have to come out of me on some level and let me get a good look at it so I can figure out what the fuck it is.

It could be just a big ball of undigested shame, terror, horror, and pain from when I was raped when I was a tiny child.

I mean, the timeline is right and it would make a lot of sense. That massive trauma has been lurking untreated and infectious in my psyche for 45+ years, it would make sense for me to have been reflexively choking back its toxic byproducts for all this time.

Which kind of implies that it’s time I horked all that bad stuff up, dunnit?

I know my system would fight me on that. I’ve been holding this stuff in for so long now that it is second nature and controlled by a part of me that has been around a lot longer than any sense of rational restraint or enlightened self-interest.

But I bet I would feel kinda hollow without it.

Something for me to ponder further.

More after the break.

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Some signs tell a story

Like this one :

Listen up, pal, this big gay trucker orgy is happening whether you want it to or not, at least in my imagination.

Do you really want to piss off a bunch of surly gay Teamsters?

---

Can you believe this is supposedly a children’s book?

The very hungry bum

Yes, the illustrations are far from explicit and we never seen the bum’s “mouth”.

I don’t care. If someone gives your child this book, do NOT let them babysit!

Not unless you run an EXTREMELY liberal household.

Like, illegally so.

---

The other end if the day

And now that the sun has gone down, I am super sleepy again.

Of course, part of that is probably the crash after consuming Diet Coke with my McD’s meal this evening.

I swear, one of these days I am going to pull the trigger on that idea of getting a six pack of cans of regular Diet Coke and using them to help me stay awake for an entire day.

The idea being that when I finally go to bed, I might actually sleep for long enough to get some of those deep REMs I am missing.

Then again, that might lead to me waking up in a deathlike state like other times when I have slept and dreamt really hard.

Well then fuck that. The last time damned near killed me. Or at least it felt like it.

That’s also why I don’t take sleeping pills any more. Too big a chance that they will make my sleep apnea worse and I will wake up with a completely fried brain and dehydration from all the sweating and barely functioning at a goldfish level.

It might be possible for me to get better sleep. But not like that.

Never like that. Never again.

Oh, one bit of news : I screwed up this morning.

I knew I felt too stick to go into Wound Care. And I totally planned on calling them at 8:45 am, when they open, to tell them this.

But then I got really deep into chatting with my fuzzy friends, and lost track of time, and forgot all about it it until the phone rang and I went, “D’oh!”.

I apologized profusely to the nurse I was supposed to be seeing. I think he was just relieved that I answered and was not dead.

I feel pretty bad about it. Being absentminded is one thing when the only person it is harming is me, but when it causes me to commit an error of manners and consideration like that, I feel terrible.

Oh well. It’s in the past now. Nothing I can do but do better.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Today was Therapy Thursday, and one of the things that came up in passing was my feeling like I am constantly approaching the point where I would finally jump off the diving board and plunge into life without ever actually making it there.

And I don’t know what to make of that. I know that I won’t get anywhere if I keep bullshitting myself with the feeling of making progress without actually doing anyh of the things or taking any of the risks needed to actually make substantial progress.

Like I have said before, it’s entirely possible that I have been scamming myself for a really long time by settling for these itsy bitsy teeny weenie bits of :progress’ – just enough to convince me that I am getting somewhere – when in reality it’s like bragging that you’re climbing Mount Kilimanjaro because you’re a whole seven micrometers higher up the side than you were yesterday.

I mean yeah, technically, you are climbing it. But at this rate, you won’t rach the summit before the Sun turns into a red giant and engulfs the Earth.

The question then is whether this is something I can do something about. Can I choose to say “fuck it” and start climbing in earnest?

Maybe. But it would require a large amount of overcoming myself.

And that’s the real challenge : actually changing who I am. Expanding theboundaries of my life and becoming more than I am in the process. Expanding not just my mind – that part is easy – but my spirit and my soul and my entire umwelt.

To open the doors to my soul and let all my emotions escape into the world as I finally manage to air out this musty tomb I live in and get some fresh air and sunshine in here.

And when I am ready, to go out and play.

Or maybe before I am ready. Maybe waiting to be ready is part of the problem. Maybe the real secret is to jump out of the plane and figure out how not to die on the way down, so to speak.

That goes against every fiber of my cautious nature But just like everything else, caution kills if taken too far and there has to be some room left for taking risks. following roads to find out where they go, and trusting in your own coping abilities to see you through somehow even if things go wrong.

That all sounds very bright and brave and good but my stomach is tying itself into knows just thinking about it.

This is why people travel to broaden their minds etc, I think. Travel means dliberately leavnig the comfort of the known and the familiar to go someplace to have new experiences unlike what you get back home.

When you put in that way, it sounds utterly horrible Can’t imagine why anyone would do that to themselves. Why not stay home. It’s cheaper AND safer!

And I know that’s a very unhealthy part of my mind speaking One that still has far too much influence on me because it comes from some very deep emotions born back when I was being raped when I was four years old.

And I don’t know how to get over that except to keep picking at that ancient wound in hopes of finding a way to let it finally heal itself.

In order for that to happen, I have to remain aware of it, hence the picking And at the same time I can flush the impurities from the wound and put a nice clean fresh set of bandages on it.

Who knows, maybe I will clear the way for a major revelation that will finally let me deal with all those old emotions once and for all.

Or maybe I am just bullshitting myself.

More after the break.

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I’m feeling down

Feeling down, when I would rather be feeling up. *eyebrow waggle*

Feeling down enough that I am beginning to wonder if I am comic down with something./ I definitely feel that heaviness and fatigue I associated with playing host to something decidedly unwelcome and viral.

Might mean I don’t make it to Wound Care tomorrow. Oh well, I seem o miss one in five sessions anyhow, so this would be entirely within the statistical norm.

You’d think I was a very sick man or something.

Still, I managed to get one thing done today : I emailed West Coast Retina Consultants, the people who look after my eyeballs. about needing a new glasses prescription.

I figured I would contact them first because they are the people with the most recent scans of my eyes plus my previous prescription came from one of their doctors, Doctor Vaezi, and they have been looking after my eyes in general, so I figured I might as well see if I should be going to them first.

My guess is, probably not, in which case I will just book a visit to a regular optometrist iinstead and ask for the full battery of tests.

I’m pretty sure I am overdue for those. I am supposed to get the fully Monty every two years, and it’s been at least two years since my cataract surgeries, so it must be time to get my eyeballs looked at once more.

Back to feeling tired : I am pretty sure I am caught up on sleep. So it’s not just that I need a nice long nap.

That puts the ball pretty firmly in the “illness” side of the court. Dammit. I am so tired of feeling like this periodically, and there is always a chance that even after I get over this bout of whatever, my muscle damage will have increased.

And isn’t that just ducky.

They still don’t know WTF is wrong with me. All I can say is that I ain’t making it up. That doesn’t mean it is definitively not psychosomatic, but I doubt it is.

It came on too slowly and gradually for that.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Or, translated from Vulpine, “Fuck off, world!”.

Don’t mind me, I am just in a crappy mood. Not for any particular reason that I Can think of, mind you, just a lot of small frustrations building up into a big ball of angrily nihilistic grunge style passive aggressive rage.

Plus today is my first day on generic Loratadine instead of my usual Reactine Complete. I have switched (with Julian’s help) as a cost cutting measure because the generic stuff is like half the price of the Reactine.

But that does mean I Am doing without the other half of Reactine Complete, which is the pseudo-epinephrine, which is a nasal decongestant.

In theory, if the antihistamine is keeping me from sneezing, I won’t need a nasal decongestant, but we shall see.

Call it a pilot program. If I am not happy with the result, I will bite the bullet and shell out the extra money for the Reactine.

I do feel like part of my crap mood is a general and diffuse inflamed feeling, like my body is annoyed with me but refuses to tell me why.

My relationship with my body is… complicated.

Plus I just don’t seem to have a lot of words in me right now.

I blame the sunshine. It’s a lovely, summer-type day out today, and that has switched me into Summer Mode, which tends to make me feel lazy and self-indulgent and disinclined to focus down and think about deep stuff.

And that’s more or less what I do here. Talk about deep stuff.

Ot just rattle on about my inane life. Either/or.

Been playing Dragon Age : Origins, which as the name implies is the first Dragon Age games, and quite honestly the best one.

Sad but true.

It’s a great game but I am beginning to remember large swathes of the plot as I play, so it is possible that this playthrough will not last that long.

Oh well. The first time I installed it, I played through like eight to ten times, so I have definitely gotten my money’s worth from the game already

I feel a little ripped off, though, because I was really hoping that it had been long enough since I had played it that the game would seem new-ish.

But I guess when you play through an entire game eight to ten times, it ends up locked away in your memory more or less forever.

It was funny, though, how before I installed the game, I remembered almost none of it. Hence my feeling like it would seem brand new to me.

But the moment I had gone through the opening cutscene and made my character, it all started coming back to me in big, meaty chunks.

That’ just how my mind works, I guess. Ask me to tell you everything I remember about a movie or TV episode I have seen and I will draw a total blank except for maybe a few key moments or bits of dialogue.

But once I start watching it again, it will come back to me.

I think my memory is very much optimized towards specific queries. And part of why I was always so oood at school was that I got as much information out of the question itself that I possibly could.

Which is great for an exam or Trivia Night but not so much for open ended questions.

I mean, in my school days, I could still answers those, “Name three things about X” questions, but it was uncomfortable and awkward because my brain does not go in that direction of its own accord.

Anyhow, as fascinating as that isn’t, I am gonna go lay down now

More after the break.

Grr, bark, etc.

Still not feeling great.

Woke up from a nap when my alarm went off at around 8 pm. Time to go eat and blog. Problem was, I needed to poop.

Got that done, and found that process had upset my digestive system enough that I no longer had any appetite so supper was kind of off.

So now I am sitting here munching trail mix and drinking water as I type my words for the day out for you lovely people.

And feeling, in general, curmudgeonly. Cranky. Makes me wish I had a lawn so I could yell at some kids to get off it.

This one’s for you, Mister Clarke, my neighbor from around the block, who used to yell at me and the other neighborhood kids to get off HIS lawn.

I get it now. Mister Clarke. I really do.

Really. “get off my lawn” is just the urban version of “get off my land”. Either way, you are defending your territory from interlopers in a way that must hearken back to the days of almost universal agriculture.

Hunter-gatherers don’t need to defend their territories, just their tribes. Their peoples’ prosperity was not tried to how much land their could control.

But once we settled down and built farms, shit got real. And suddenly the idea of ownership of land and other goods came along to replace primitive ownership which says you only own that which you are defending this very minute.

Then again, even non-human animals can have territories for the express purpose of controlling the most important ancient resource of them all : pussy.

Maybe on some deep deep level, the old man chasing kids off his lawn is merely re-enacting the ancient drama of chasing away young rival males who are trying to mate with your females.

But whatever. I do go on and on, don’t I?

I am sure I will get over my pissy mood sooner or later. Nothing lasts forever, not even the bas stuff. And who knows, maybe I will get something useful done in the meantime.

Heck, my birthday is in 11 days and I still have no idea what I want.

Maybe I will buy myself a new game, or… something.

I imagine I will work it out in this space sometimes soon. Until then…

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.