heartlessviking

Today should have been a good day, a few things went quite well, but all that is overshadowed by the words of a local lawyer “I don’t think that your case is actionable”. I appreciate the serious mindedness of lawyers, but they are a discouraging lot. I can’t sue my former employer for wage fraud or hostile work environment. In the opinion of this lawyer, I don’t have a case.

I have trouble forcing myself to care, about anything at this point. If I had achieved my ends I would currently be in a quite lush hospital, out of my mind, and potentially with a better case against my former employer. But no, we “saved” me by bailing before my brain melted. I don’t want to look forward to anything. I don’t want to deal with another human being, ever. Clearly the gulf between my morality and the morality of society is too wide to ever be crossed. I don’t fit, and it’s unclear if I ever even could.

I thought about contacting the crisis line, but for what? I get grief from my therapist for it, and half the time it doesn’t help anyway. I’m lost, really most completely. I started trying to pull the strings of my life together, then I got into a car accident due to my own inability to focus. Now my car is running funny, and it’s unclear if it will ever really be safe for me to drive again. Granted, as long as it is just me, car crashes have a high fatality rate, it would be an appropriate curtain on what has been an ignoble and pointless existence.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit, (my therapist called me an insightful person today, that’s progress). I’m well aware that I’m absurd, and that probably isn’t going to change. I think I’m done taking anything seriously that doesn’t have to be. Life is short, we’re all in this til the end. I have enough stuff. I have enough people. What I lack is enough kindness to myself. I think I’m just going to go with that. This year I turned 33, and with that age and frailty comes a greater acceptance of my own mortality, and a presence of mind that life is too short to be stressed all the time. I want children, that’s it. Everything else, could be done without.  I’ve spent my whole life going without due to budgetary constraints, and now that I have given up on the rat race I’m thinking about seeing how rich a life I can live mostly on the money I already have. My uncles did it. I think that’s where my parents are too.

Anyway. I found this video of a man doing a duet with a puppet, and you can see on his face he knows how silly and absurd it is. Yet, he’s happy, and that’ll have to be enough;

https://youtu.be/WRUjq7t4rC8

I’m going to talk about some identifying information in a bit, but first on that;

I’ve been writing on here for a few years now. For the first year I’d guess I posted maybe once or twice, responded as many times. I was very concerned about privacy issues regarding doxing, and to discuss my desire to die, I’m going to say some things I would never want to be associated with my real name. As such, I have community here, while having an outside life that doesn’t have to know. So, it becomes more comfortable as I find others of similar philosophy such that I can mask my syntax from that of the other me.

I’m an Eagle Scout. I appreciate that some people are less than aware of scouting, or maybe only vaguely familiar with it. Boy Scouts is(or was, depending on attitude) an education program for young people. It seeks to teach good stewardship and leadership in people with potential. It’s kind of like ROTC, which I didn’t do because there wasn’t time for that. I dated an ROTC girl….. married a non ROTC girl….. divorced……. married ROTC girl. Heh, never made that connection before. Fun.

in fact, gosh darn, there’s nothing quite as sexy as a girl that can march! Might just be for me.

Anyway, so when I’m this low I get philosophic; why do I do as I do? I have options.

I think I have an oversized obsession with power and control. I fight it, but if let go I would ride the backs of my soldiers to social war with the concept of sloppy. Yet the common outcome of my self loathing is that I consider myself a poor leader, even when I’m the most trained in the room, that self doubt pervailes. I’m now once again the most informed person in many rooms, but that’s my ego going off. You’ve got to believe yourself less than perfect, or you are too proud. Less than perfect is too complimentary, try imperfect? No. Maybe troubled? No. _FLAWED_ Ding! Ding! We’ve got a winner!

Shame could be our currency, my social class is so ridden with it!

So, I’m trying to find my place. I was given a path to high powered jobs, but they couldn’t give me agency, I self destruct without agency and the ability to choose. Like, they only hire educated people to the job, yet they also only hire people willing to be debased on a daily basis (that rolls off the tongue, huh?) Some people might emerge from schools with some semblance of a desire to self such that this policy may be a flaw in this approach.

In the near future I’m going to freelance. work as little as I can get away with. Go swimming, hiking, biking, boating. tend my garden, hopefully tend some kids too. A few animals around, not too many, but enough. I don’t really care, at this point further training will only drag me away from that which I desire most; a full life, a fully lived life. That’s my ideal, my city on a hill.

I’m at the point of literally asking, because I’m not allowed to want violent revenge on the people who are indifferent to my suffering. I’m also not particularly allowed to want to just not go back to work. Meanwhile, I’m sick, deep in burn out and having no motivation to pull up and out. I’ll put myself right back here is the reason. I’d love to do the normal thing, earn a paycheck, go on vacation to the lake. I really did try. It just doesn’t offer any rewards. I have this intolerable ambition, I’m not happy with whatever is given to me, I want more. I can’t seem to get more. Thus, misery. It’s less work to be miserable down here, in the pit with all of my guilt and shame. The world is cruel, and I don’t see where I’m supposed to fit in.

I’m too sensitive to help people. I’m also too dispassionate about any other kind of purpose. Hence, worthless, useless, yet I meet people convinced of my utility. God damn if I know anything. I’m a fool, a lost man without direction or even a desire to pick up a compass (figuratively, orientation and sense of direction are actually two of my useless strong skills.)

so what do I want? To what end should I seek out any kind of outcome when gaining the attention of others is a certain path to my pain? I may be known to be somewhat of a masochist, but everyone has limits, don’t they? Why do I keep pushing? What’s the desire that others have out of me? And why should I care?

For a long time I thought that if I worked hard I could satisfy others. I’d be dissatisfied, but as long as someone got to be right and vindicated that seemed like enough. Now it isn’t. Where do I go? I don’t feel particularly wanted in any locality I find myself. I think I might be the human equivalent of a foreign contaminant, and the white blood cells of our society is doing an excellent job of exterminating me.

As an idealist, I’ve spent most of my life within my own head. I tend to thrive in environments where I am left to my own devices. Yet rather suddenly I have begun to doubt who I am. I have worked in social services for most of my career, and last month I finally realized that it wasn’t working because I valued myself too much to endure the environment. That seems like a pretty high bar, and that’s because it is. Most of my employers have been some degree of evil/corrupt, and that’s just the cost of entry to the workforce around here.

I have some ideas for what to do with my new found freedom, here is a short list;

I could go work with disabled children (which would be staying in my lane)

I could teach school (less staying in my lane, but still in the same territory)

I could write software (entirely divergent from the others, not something I know much about)

I could build my own small business (current ideas include bakery, landscape design and building custom furniture)

The problem though is that these all sound great. Some of them likely have issues which will be a deal breaker for me. That takes time and money, things that are diminishing by the day. So what do I do? Jump and trust? How can I do that after the horrible career struggles I’ve had and my parents have had? What is real, and what is illusion? I haven’t found a more effective test than going to push against things. Most things that people say about careers are at the very least manipulative and deceptive. At worst the gaslight us to make it all our problem, all the while the relationship benefits them far more than us.

It’s not the pain that gets to me, I’m somewhat numbed to that, it’s the hope that keeps me going into unpleasant situations. I think that I haven’t been honest with myself about desireable outcomes. I tell myself I want to move on, but do I? I am seriously bummed that my (possibly former) employer didn’t reach out to me today. I started applying for new jobs, already got the first rejection back, and I’m remembering how much I despise job hunting. It’s all pleasuring unattractive people, I know that it’s not supposed to feel like prostitution, but trying to talk a company into hiring you is remarkably similar in all the worst ways to flirting. “Hey, I have emotional and intellectual assets you need, and I’ll do anything you want”

My therapist says that I swing wildly to extreme emotions. She prefaced it by saying it would make me mad… and I’m not so much mad, as I am confused. The problem I have is that with my desire for precision I do not use hyperbole, and that sets me apart from the rest of the species. So to convince others that it is awful and needs action I have to sell that to myself, hence wild emotions. No one is helpful in response to reasonable caution.

I keep coming back to something I thought about last week; Where should I go to get better treatment? The job market for me is like dating for a survivor of domestic violence; I’m quite sure that somewhere out there is an employer who is less demanding and pays better, but that isn’t what I attract. Honestly it would be better if my wife worked and I looked after household stuff, that’s what most men that I meet that I don’t instantly despise are doing.

But I can’t commit to anything, which I guess is supposed to mean that I still have some healing to do. Great, not like I was seeking out a different life or anything (passive aggressive sarcasm)

I just, don’t want anything. At the same time I understand that being alive means doing something to justify it. My options fail to excite me. See? THAT’s how I react to things. No one is willing to offer help to “Oh dear, I seem to have broken my leg, if it’s not too much trouble can you call an ambulance?” Yet if you simplify as if you are dealing with a toddler “OH SHIT” prompting them to ask “what?” “MY FUCKING LEG!” “what about it?” “PAIN!” what should I do “AMBULANCE”. See, people like to be involved. They’re quite egotistical. And thus I have constructed my entire social presentation to try and motivate other humans.

I’m sick of dealing with people that  I am incapable of respecting. The problem is that in my day to day life, I meet so few people worthy of respect. Then the rare kind one among them will try and comfort me, and because of my overextension I’ll bite their head off, because their faith and hope are based on entirely imagined optimism that people will behave reasonably. AND THAT, is hyperbole, because the problem isn’t a complete void regarding reasonable people, the problem is that irrational and frustrating people seem to dominate. Hence my irrationality. Is it still mental illness if it’s an adaptive trait used to achieve specific goals? Probably.

The whole mental health field is unscientific as hell. Large swaths of it are either people barely justifying their existence, and a large amount of the remaining ones are new age frauds. Yes, competent ones exist, but they’ve occupied all the space in the profession for competent scientists, which are damn few.

It was a long expected reunion, between myself and death. We’re old compatriots, comrades, but not really friends. If you’re friends with death, that’s another world entirely. It’s like being sexually attracted to death. While I admit that it has an allure, death is rarely sexy, and even more rarely openly attractive. Rather it is an acquired taste. One of many of mine.

I knew it would return. Like a lover with low self esteem, death slinks back, ashamed to admit that it needs to associate. It comes in waves. Death of a family member with death of a pet, or beloved friend. Death of career along with death of hope. Death is many things, generous most of all. If pain is what you seek, death offers it in unlimited quantities.

So, the last few days death has been my house guest. It hovers over every conversation, implying a sense of finality. Who will be next? The anticipation is sickening. It won’t be me, death is having too much fun with me to dispose of me. It will be someone living life to the full, someone so vibrant that their death will shock and offend the senses.

I think that’s why I resist it. I’ll admit my lack of control over the waves of loss, but my hand will do kindness, even to the last. It toys with me, taunting me about who or what it might take next. That’s my role, I’m one of the few people that cohabitates with and associates with death. It’s not a position that I have any pride in, but it is a familiar identity, possibly the only thing that really sets me apart.

I’ve become more of an existentialist as my depression moved forward. Thus this joke only just struck me as funny. If you are an existentialist then the life you have is the only one you ever will, and possibly the only one in all of existence. We can’t verify that others experience things, so they are uncertain.

I’m trying to move on with my life. Tomorrow I’m calling HR and going to ask for leave and time, because my panic attacks have started to last hours again. I may walk away from the helping professions forever, it’s a mid life crisis, changing what you do is part of the formula. So in some very real ways I will destroy the world, the known world for me for the past 33 years. Into the unknown, into the void, possibly into nothingness.

As I talk about often, I’m a shadow of who I once was. That’s this era; shadow me going through the motions waiting to find a way out. The problem is that I’m screwed up. I lean in somewhat. I own that my nerves are shaky, and there is at least one day of the week that I need industrial strength sedatives to get through. It still gets worse.

So, we’re wrapping up the month, and suddenly I have to make a major task out of getting to all my clients. Right, that’s the script this week; run around, screw a reasonable amount up so that they don’t suspect that I have enough together, and we’re good right? Not that simple. My therapist was sick, didn’t come to my appointment today. I’m realizing that I am more dependant on these things. It’s nice to have some rational feedback. Now I have to do without that too.

No parents, no therapist, all that’s left to me is drugs. Damn good drugs, but it is yet to be seen whether it will be enough, and worse yet it is yet to be seen if it matters to me.

I spent a long time getting here, and the more I think about it the more I realize that I am metaphorically in the middle of nowhere, without identity, desire, or direction.

I was someone for a long time, before that I was someone else. It doesn’t matter who, I’m not them now. I don’t think I want to be anybody anymore. Yet, I have a wife, a job, and a family who all assure me they care very much about me. I don’t see how that is so; the agony I’m in, if anyone I love was feeling like this, I’d do anything to fix it. I guess that is a bit of who I am. I don’t think of myself as a quitter, or passive, but that’s what tempts me. I want to quit. I want to walk away from everything. Not for a rational reason, I just don’t feel like being that person again.

I want to be left alone to my projects. Whatever whim takes me, that’s what I want to do. Lately I’ve been getting into gardening. I wish that was all I had to do. Not find someone who will buy my plants, just grow enough for my family and not be asked questions about it. Plants are so simple; right light, right moisture, right nutrients and good seed and you get amazing food. I wish my life worked like that; the right parents, the right education, the right training, and a half decent mind should amount to something. It doesn’t. There is no me, no one left to hurt or disappoint, just a guy, sitting in an office, waiting to die.

Eight days out from my next therapy appointment, and I’m working my homework. The challenge; why do i do what I do, what IS the point?

This is a good therapist, she ripped through my defenses that I like to imagine myself at war with these giant forces, ones that I likely can’t move. I’ve thrown myself really hard into that over the last few years as I slowly but surely felt greater and greater doubt about whether there is a place for me in my current career field. Not as such. I have already decided I want to move elsewhere. I have already decided that outside of this experience, I don’t want to go on in the “helping” profession. Certain essential parts of it argue with who I thought I was.

So, terrifying as it is, I’m thinking about leaving behind almost everything I’ve worked on for the past 15 years. I like being able to afford my lifestyle. I like sleeping soundly and not having to worry about work. I like not being complicit in a system that I find to be inherently corrupt. Still trying to work out what those values mean for me, and my future, but I don’t have to do what I’m doing, and there certainly isn’t much financial incentive to try.

That’s what it all comes down to, trust and faith which are different words for the same damn thing. The truth is that I don’t know how to put a positive expectation on another human being. It’s beyond my ability at this point. Oh, you might say, but you appear vulnerable, right? That’s some kind of trust, one would think. The fact is that I don’t care. Curse me, you still can’t do worse than I expect you to. I trust people to be as awful as I can imagine, then when they are less awful it is mildly pleasant.

The fact remains; as I don’t trust anyone to act in my interest, the entire success or failure of my work depends on me, and no one else. I’m the only factor that counts in my world. The fact is, I’m doing a piss poor job of that these days. Not that it matters, it would appear that the society I live in is intent on pulling me down to their paltry pathetic level of low standards.

I’ve been very depressed lately, trying to find a reason to pull it together. Such reasons don’t exist. It’s not worth the price I pay for less money and benefits than I need to pay my debts. I frankly don’t care if those debts EVER get repaid. I worked 16 years to get to where I stand today; destitute, hopeless, and fed up.

Today I had a number of people telling me to toughen up, take it on the chin, because that’s what I’m paid to do. Fuck that noise. If you want me to get tough, watch as I walk away from EVERYTHING this broken culture stands for. You don’t need me. You need a passive yes man, who will do your bidding no matter how cruel or insensitive you are. That’s not me. Oh well.

I still might off myself, the chain still looks awfully tempting. Oh well right? This is market forces at work, the thing that all the people other than me worship and dedicate their life to. I’m done. If my employer wants me to go, I will. No problem at all. I can’t work a job that refuses to allow me a side hustle that pays me so low that I can’t service my damn debt. I can’t get my tax return, I’m giving up on it, and everything else. I tried really hard to make it work, and I was willing to keep trying hard, up to today. Oh well, that’s what I get told when I ask for help. How about the rest of you fucking toughen up and learn to run an economy without me or anyone I can pull away from this toxic mess. Oh? Not ideal? Welcome to America, we screw everyone, that is unless they are very rich. Those people matter more than ANYONE ELSE. Fuck that. I know, swearing up a storm, probably more than I’ve said in one place ever before in my life. I’m done though. No one cares, and that’s just fine with me.

I’ve been trying to clean up my office, you know the place I spend 18 hours a day six days a week in.  Today, as I was shambling my way through it (the only state I know how to clean in anymore), I came across a length of chain used to train dogs. It’s a horribly inhumane little object, and most days I’m too soft to use it on my puppies.

I feel like it’s pretty obvious where my mind went next. I fantasized about ending my life. That’s how suicidality comes to me now; little bursts that no one sees coming, followed by hours of drunken or stoned stupor to attempt not to think about it too much.

On the other hand I had an honest discussion about what I want;

lately I’ve been thinking about starting a workshop and building furniture. Beautifully made furniture is a constant requirement, if I were to gain certain specific skills in assembly I have more of a chance of becoming a millionaire.

More to the point; I’m tired of other people. I’ve worked my butt off for sixteen years, and I’m still flat broke, unable to afford the most basic of needs. This is post university, post becoming a published author. The point is that there is never going to be enough talent to fill the lack in our culture. We feed on mediocrity. I was rewatching a few movies that took place in the 19th century, and that seems like a more plausible future than any of the utopian science fiction I once loved so well. We’re a short jump to families being so poor they have to have their kids go to work too. I don’t know if anyone gets that, or cares. The point is; yes, that bothers me, but so does the shoddy construction of much of the commercially sold furniture today. We can and should move away from medium density fiberboard (MDF), it takes the same amount or less wood to use wood…… so that’s an area I think mankind is more interested in experiencing improvement than in being better people to the people around us. There’s no money in it unless you are planning to cheat and steal. In our culture money dictates value, and it would appear we don’t value people much.

Remind me again why I should leave the chain alone? It’s not important, everyone is hurting, we’re all dying and enough of us are incapable of having children that we have under-replaced since 1995; people my age don’t want kids they can’t afford, and who apart from millionaires can afford children in this economy?! Chain is looking better by the minute, which means I should stop. Oh well.

as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by death. Not usually so much in that I will die someday, though I always supposed that I would. I lost a caregiver at a young age. For some reason it still bothers me that no one told me she was sick until she was already gone. She was my great aunt, and is probably responsible more than anyone wants to talk about for who I became. She was an opera singer, spent a few years doing that in Germany, then settled down with her lawyer husband. Her daughter couldn’t have kids of her own, so I was the closest she had to a grandchild. Then she died.

Older humans die, I get that. Yet it irks me that we’re so terrified of it. If Christianity is right, we’re going to heaven, which is supposedly much better than this life. If there is nothing after, then we become dirt, and that dirt feeds animals and the circle of nutrients continues. I think I started wanting to die then, when my great aunt died. My parents invested heavily into trying to distract me, and for a time that worked. Ten years later my paternal grandmother died early to Lou Gehrig Disease, but not before an agonizing three year decline. I never met her husband, he died of heart failure two years before I was born. I never met my maternal grandmother either, died close to the same time. Funny how these things happen. So by my late teens I had a singular grandparent; my maternal grandfather.

The thing that still gets to me about him was that he absolutely had no intent on living a long life. After his wife died he became something of a hound, flirting with everyone, he was a delightful human being. Smoked cigars, drank like a fish for some time. He destroyed his knees in his early 80s, but he made it to 95 before passing away. By the time he had reached the point of needing constant nursing staff, I was filling a cna role at a local hospital, so the role of caregiver fell to me. I don’t resent it. I’m his namesake, and because of those years I probably knew him as well as anyone else. He’s been gone for six years.

It’s torture, loving fragile soon to die people. My best friend for the last decade has a heart defect, she could die any day. I worry about my wife, no telling how long or how well she’ll do. Yet I realize that I chose this. I surround myself with frail people, people who may not know how long they have. It could be envy, it could be guilt, I think it’s just what is comfortable.

Because of my focus on death, I’ve run my own numbers. Actuarial calculators tell me I will likely make it into my 90s, possibly even break 100. It’s not something I’m intentionally doing. It does feel like a reaction to seeing people fade away. I can’t do that to those I care about… and yet from time to time I wish to die. I don’t understand why I’m still here. I’ve achieved as much as I ever cared to.

Today my wife got a job market on the other side of the country. I thought about career suicide/rebirth if she was to get a job offer that could support us. Fleeting, like most hope these days, it does not look like it will work out. I don’t know where I’m going, because to me life was always like a road trip that I would try and impose a plan on, adapting as I go. This is no road trip, that is unless it is a road trip literally conceived in Hell. I’m talented enough to do better, I’m smart enough to think of better. Yet this low paying job is the best I can think of…. because it is certain. I could work for them until I die… and it would work out reasonably well too.

Nevermind that I am starting to strongly suspect I’ll never reach my full intellectual potential. It’s fear of missing out; if I go I miss out on near certain financial and career stability, something that I really thought I wanted more than anything. If I stay, I miss out on the adventure. That’s the agony of knowing, that whatever I do it is at the expense of some other hope or dream. I despise this short lifetime, because there’s too many things to do, and never enough time. I get that if I was dead I would miss out on these things, but my idea is that I probably wouldn’t know about it. The knowledge that every step comes at the expense of my hopes and dreams puts incredible pressure on me to enjoy my life, which frankly I do not. That is the failure that haunts me most.

I think it really comes down to how petty I feel being dissatisfied. I really want to, because I’ve been trained to since birth, give myself a pep talk that will get me up and swinging again. It’s a huge reflex, but I recoil at the thought of it. _I don’t want to get up!_ Seriously there’s no point. All these things are meant to make a person submissive. Pay your bills, barely touch your debt, fix your belongings. The rest of them seem quite entertained. Must be nice! Then again, clearly I don’t think it’s nice, I think it’s rather a cruel thing to act so happy and satisfied with SO LITTLE.

I want to do work that is valuable. I want to be paid like I’m doing that kind of work. I want to have a foreseeable day where I might be debt free. I want to be respected in my field, and have the accessories that come with it.

Too big, I’m always dreaming too damn big. This is fine. I have food, shelter, love of a good woman, I should be content right? I got a job in what I went to school for right out of college, this is what everyone is hoping for and hyping up? What a letdown. I really had myself believing this would somehow be better. It’s the same, the whole background noise to my life is the same; drone on, drone on, sell your youth and your freedom for temporary financial security.

Total tangent; I really want to try LSD, but not just that, a guided therapy session under LSD. They say you get to confront your demons. Sounds great, if it means I can deal with some of this shit. On the other hand, I have this chronic fear that if I go too far on drugs I’ll end up hallucinating my mind out, never being fit for any kind of work or use again.

Better living through chemistry, that’s the Boomer way.

Honestly; I’m just really tired. I have to be on call for another seven hours, and if that phone rings that means I have to do the most complicated fast procedure I’m trained on, under observation of my boss…. great…..  I’m really glad to be useful, but if that usefulness could somehow come during my waking hours…. it would be nicer. Granted, I’m putting off enough negative energy to end a friendship, as such no one wants any of what I am right now.

Ah, the fool I was, thinking that work could STAY meaningful. The fool I was, thinking I could ever make more than minimum payments. Ah the fool I am, acting like satisfying other people is ever going to help me or them. Ah, the poor befuddled fool I must be, staying in this honeypot deathtrap…. dying the slow death of cognitive decline and decay.

I don’t know why nautical metaphor feels so fit for describing depression, the common denominator of loneliness I suppose is unparalleled. The point is; I feel quite alone, especially in philosophic and religious desire. I seek that which is beyond human understanding, and at the same time fully admit that what I am looking for may not be there. Those around me get more and more upset about my qualification that I do not know everything. Yet, there is but one flaw I cannot stand; pretending to know what you do not. So I am disliked/shunned by the religious and the atheists. I have a small group of each who tolerate me, yet they test me regularly on the firmness of my rhetoric and the sincerity of my belief. Today, I don’t know if I’m passing the test.

I’m trying to not just deny myself, but consider that which is removed a joyful sacrifice. As such, I’m not in a great place defensively speaking. Yet, I do this as I believe it is the will of the lord, and the only path under which I continue to grow as a person. I don’t understand how people in the West are so god awful sure of themselves. All the scientific data from the last century indicates that at every point we’ve been somewhat mistaken in our description of the world. Being open to correction was exactly the missing feature non-believers tell me they want out of those of faith.

Yet here I am, attacked by both sides for trying to bring them to the table. Truly the diplomat is a pathetic and unwanted creature.

I came up for air for a bit today. That is to say I sobered up for the first time in a few days. As sober as I get anymore, which I suspect is still in the refractory period for the intoxicants I use. I lasted about six hours…. found enough to do that I felt relatively productive to the point I didn’t have to run from the void.

Now I’m running again, and plan to run for a bit longer yet. I want to know what the pitch is for someone at my stage to sober up; oh no, throwing your life away? What life? I’m as dead sober as I am high, but high at least makes me less irritable about my dull lifeless form. If I ever reach the point NEARING addiction I’m going to take extensive time off, possibly forever. I’m very career suicidal lately; there’s no point, it doesn’t bring particularly good money. Despite my warmth and comfort, I’d rather be homeless than this.

Right, so I’m a little toasted, a little buzzed, so it is possible that things seem like good ideas when they aren’t.

Three months into this major depressive episode, and I’ve reached the point that the part of my mind which adapted to pull me out is trying to do that. Getting those sort of hopeful thoughts that in the past I would have taken at face value. No more, it’s not getting away that easy. I only ever trusted others assuming that they could be decent, and that delusion is hard for me to go back to.

Some of the things I do are reminders for myself to come back later and realize; not doing well, objectively or in my own mind. I’m staying mostly high almost every day I can get away with it. This is a first for me, in my 30s I’m trying a technique that is much more common in teens and twenties. The issue, well for one I don’t want to become an addict. Treatment of addicts is awful, and then you have to take stuff that you used to have fun with is now off limits. No thanks to that. Supposedly I’m intended to be scared off by the damage it does to my body. Life damages the body, intoxicants merely limit your awareness of it.

See, the part I’m fighting right now is the opportunistic part of my personality, this is the thought;

This isn’t that bad, you get more input into your schedule and work than you ever have before, and the meaning or lack thereof is liberating such that you can walk when you want. You’d be hard pressed to find better.

The problem with that is that it’s bullshit. It’s a solid line of complacency because things could be worse. Things could always be worse, that’s the nature of decline.  I don’t want to sit in the pot til it boils thinking “well at least they aren’t eating me yet.” (lobster metaphor, I’m big on metaphors.) So, to follow the metaphor, I either need to find an escape route for myself and my closely related lobsters, or I need to liberate all the lobsters. I definitely would love to do that, liberate the species, but what can you do when the species doesn’t want liberation? It is the heart of egoism to believe I better know what people need than they do. Also, I don’t know how obsessive the chef will be in trying to find myself and fam, so that escape could be a door to another cage. Rubber bands on my claws, I must be delicious when I’m frustrated, because that is the state I’m kept in.

For those with high anxiety (when will he tell?!) I’ll relieve you straight out; it’s money. Me and money both get along too well, and get along not well enough.

So, why do I despise/love money as I despise/love myself? Step into my mind; my parents did okay, mostly because up until the mid 90s there was such a thing as a upper middle class, and that’s where I grew up, adjacent to very wealthy people. I went to private schools with them, and nothing I experienced in my childhood convinced me that the other kids had it better; their parents ran after money all day, and mine did less and had more time for me. Well, usually.

My dad had an unstable middle adulthood, the longest he worked  for a single company was eight years. He wasn’t getting fired, he was getting laid off, over and over, until all the jobs he was qualified for had been outsourced or automated away. Then he tried his own small business, and that didn’t work.

Right about here I enter the story as a participant. Everything I had learned in the first 18 years of my life said that predictable was better than lush, and stability more valuable than a big paycheck. So, I tried to settle, hard. I worked in several dozen different industries, not seeking to make an excessive amount of money, seeking to enjoy my work, and I did.

Unfortunately my early career years occurred during the largest recession in living memory. So I got let go quite often too, different outcome because around 2008 was when they really perfected making a job so miserable that no one would want it. This was also the beginning of the time you could work full time and not get insurance. When I was a child only small business/contractors were exempt from overtime rules. So we all started becoming outsourced. My wife at the time left me, and I sunk into my first large depressive episode.

That was all ten years ago; that set up the struggle I’m still having, to find worth in an apathetic and materialistic society. Seeking meaning, not wealth. No wonder I’m depressed, that hasn’t been a product in my entire life.