When you’re teetering on the edge

Well, I’ve always said dissociation is the grade A stuff, however you can get it. Escaping the world you’re in, exploring one someone else has created, it can keep you occupied for weeks if not months. Of course drugs help with that, but you said you don’t want that help.

You don’t like the worlds other people create? You create your own, visualize it, code it, write it, draw it, somehow you’ve got to pour this energy that you would be putting into hating the world you are in into creating a world that is less painful.

There’s an upshot to this as well, if you write a book or series of short stories, or code a game world for yourself you can very likely sell it and raise some money and get out of the hellish environment you are in.

Reading other people’s stories makes you better at writing your own. Playing other people’s games makes you better at writing your own, in theory.

Pets help with the loneliness. We have two cats and a dog, getting another dog tomorrow. One of our cats loves to sit on my lap while I watch TV, and that helps me a lot. Streaming services, TV and movies help.

I’ve spent a lot of time unemployed in this house. It really isn’t that bad, considering. I mean 3 beds and one bath is pretty nice, I’ll admit, but the floor in the kitchen and bath are falling apart.

The thing is that more than a few of my neighbors are as stuck as I am. Old people aren’t able to work either. So I figure if they can survive it…. Maybe I can. This place is like flypaper, people get stuck here.

However, if you work at it you can climb out of being stuck. That’s what I believe. I did the whole Babe Ruth thing and pointed off in the distance, said I’m going to shoot for that place way over there and get out of this place, now it’s hitting the damn baseball.

There’s a reason it was impressive when Babe Ruth managed to do that, you know? It wasn’t like he was an average batter, he was superb. Now thank god I’m not doing it in baseball, because I’m lousy at baseball, but I’m doing it in psychology which I am actually pretty damn good at.

Hmmm, I had to look it up and the actual accuracy of the called shot story is in some historical doubt, whether that was what Ruth meant in the moment. Yet the story is bigger than the man, and despite his own biographer doubting the story, the fans believed, and popular culture has cemented it in history.

I just read a lot about Babe Ruth, really a giant of a man who was only taken down by cancer and ALS. Donald Trump actually awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and I never thought I would agree with him on something.

One of the writers who actually was there in the 40s when Ruth died said;
The fascination with his life and career continues. He is a bombastic, sloppy hero from our bombastic, sloppy history, origins undetermined, a folk tale of American success. His moon face is as recognizable today as it was when he stared out at Tom Zachary on a certain September afternoon in 1927. If sport has become the national religion, Babe Ruth is the patron saint. He stands at the heart of the game he played, the promise of a warm summer night, a bag of peanuts, and a beer. And just maybe, the longest ball hit out of the park.

I don’t know, American kid I still am at heart, Babe Ruth represents what I thought this country should be about.

That’s what I mean about getting wrapped up in someone else’s story. Maybe it can inspire you. Stories are the best drug there is, because they don’t cost anything most of the time. That’s why I’m so into narrative psychology, because I think there’s treatment potential in stories.