Every post a time capsule, every word a thought or emotion

That's about the thrust of my posts in the past few years. Here I am, 2.5 years out from my breakdown, and my thinking about it is still evolving.

That isn't where this whole need to unload started, of course. The reason for speaking is almost never the thing talked about. There's the semester ending(quite well thus far it must be admitted.) There's the cloudy short cold days with nothing nice to do apart from work. Then there is the quiet before the next stage, where I have project to work on to further develop my ability to be self directed (while working on other skills.)

Mostly though it just escapes me how good I have it. Which is how I got on the anniversary of getting out of the hospital. It is also 8 years and a month out from the day my divorce was final. 13.5 years from the day I walked out of high school. It's all meaningless, because those wounds are so old that the only memories left are of mulling over other memories.

I'm working through cleaning out my email inbox. I just got through 2016. Which spurred going back and reading what I wrote during 2016. I sure was full of myself, and pissed. Really that's the entire progression of depression over the past six years, towards anger and arrogance.

It was what it was; a bad time. It's a fucking bump that I got over. There's no changing it.

So I'm feeling down, what now? I'm going to take exactly half an hour and destress, then I'm going to do SOME sort of school work for half an hour, and so on. Repeat fucking pattern, discipline my mind. I might take a 20 minute work out break after two cycles, but not before.

I guess I just wanted to talk to my future self. I'm hoping where you are now it's better than it is now. It is my sincerest hope and goal that by the time I feel the itch to go digging again I'll have graduated, and hopefully gotten into a good grad school (or as a back up have a job that is cool enough to do for a year while I wait for application time to come round again.)

There are hopes, there are expectations. I expect to keep trying, because that's who I am. As to hopes; I hope what I do is worthy of better results. Thus far the improvement is pretty stark. Two more years and I'll hopefully be seeing as stark an improvement.

The key to making good decisions is only looking back at relevant data, and improving process.

A little doze, a little prose. Some little thoughts to warm your toes.

intro:

I wanted to work on a piece of work for myself. I haven't written purely for myself in awhile. Most of the time I write to throw my anger against the wall, but there it is. I'm going to try and capture a feeling I've been having lately. At first I was going to work on this for a site where I write anonymously. Then again I thought about writing it for a site where I am very well read.

Neither worked for creative freedom. If I wasn't so ego filled I would just write it and hide it in a drawer. Sadly ego and writing are kept in the same place in my mind.

I call it: No Longer Young

Body:

Young no more
The sun rises unexpectedly, a great and simple joy
now that my naivete is spent
I am no longer just a boy

Alas alas, I sing the song
that aged men must sing
A life so full, mistakes were made
Yet I learn
Yet I grew
Yet my first chapter was wrote

If I had done it differently
who would face you now?
If my face were not so lined
would any wisdom show?
I didn't come for vanity
nor wealth
nor fame
nor did I have desire that any would know my name
I sought to be the best I could
and better I became

Yes youth is gone, and bittersweet
the parting comes at last
I hated youth
I hated the unknown
Most of all I hated who I wasn't
Or maybe who I was

An ego large
ambition drives the man to reach so high
yet passion's flame undirected
 more dangerous than disease
A man who seeks an enemy,
an enemy will find
though none will see the enemy
if not inside his mind

Return at last to rise above
to separateness alone
Home kept in heart
treasured and forgot
Yet found again, and not too late
life bounding yet ahead
for many days are left for me
before all my words are said.

Splat splat! Everything is meaning and the delusions aint so grand!

Ah! But what is joy?

Perhaps I will just say the world is a fantastic place.

I'm no Pollyanna either. This world is a world of fantasy. Our entire economic system is an agreed upon abstraction, no fucking physics or material wealth there. I laugh to think that materialism is the biggest lie of all: The more money one accumulates the less one has, and the more one is had.

But I was talking about meaning, and got off on talking about fantasy. Fantasy and meaning are intertwined, I see that now.

When I went mad, and I've never been sure that I came back, I thought the world was my toy and spinning like a top on my finger. Then I came back to what I call reality. Yet all of me didn't come back. The part that assumed that reality was solid died in that heaven forsaken hospital. It wasn't hell either, though my personal belief is that Hell is where God keeps those who refuse under all circumstances to approach him. It was a holding pattern of hurt, pain, and attempts to mitigate the damage.

I'm not mad now. Not even a little. I have touchstones of reality with which I register, and often.

The real world that the rest of humans live in is a terrible place, and I'm aware of that. I'm sorry about it too, as sorry as anyone with a warm bed and full belly can be about the cold, desperate and starving. I delude myself that I have compassion, but I just have open eyes. The pain is everywhere, and I try and hold joy and light within. The goal is to remain stable, rational and cogent.

Programming has produced a new nirvana for me, a world of pure logic, problem solving and where things are either broken or working. It stresses me out with challenge yet brings me unbridled joy. It is not my destination, but it gives me clarity like opium to a man in pain.

I feel like a child, discovering the world for the first time. The past is a different country, one I come from and remember much differently than my fellow immigrants. This present land is alien and unfriendly, but it is unkind to us all and we commiserate in our discomfort.

Poetry used to be so awful, now it makes me laugh:

Ewwy Gooey was a worm,
a gooey worm was he....
He sat upon a railroad track
a train he did not see......
Ewwy Gooey!

Then there is meaningful but funny songs:

Fogging the view cupping face to the window
in darkness you make out a spiralling shape
putting all reason aside you exchange what you've got
for the thing that's hypnotic and strange

------------

Heave ho splash plunk rolling down a hole
heave ho splash plunk roll roll rolling down a hole
down the dark swift stream you go
into lands you once did know
move beyond the world of trees
out into the whistling breeze

------------

My friends all said you've lost your head now what are you going to do
you've been keeping your neighbors up all night
sayin "What the hell's the matter with you?!"

This might sound mean but your digging machine's gonna leave your feelings hurt
you're gonna dig right down to the center of the earth, and find out that there's nothing there but dirt!

-------------

Anything you want, you got it
anything you need, you got it
anything at all, you got it, baby

-------------

Taken from the county jail
By a set of curious chances;
Liberated then on bail,
On my own recognizances;
Wafted by a favouring gale
As one sometimes is in trances,
To a height that few can scale,
Save by long and weary dances;
Surely, never had a male
Under such like circumstances
So adventurous a tale,
Which may rank with most romances.

---------------

Ah, but we're all fools in love. I love myself, my life, and my family.

To quote Vonnegut:
A lover's a liar, to himself he lies
the truthful are loveless, like oysters their eyes!

“The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.” – G.K Chesterton

How can you fake that which cannot have it's veracity verified?!

I'm a weird little philosophic machine. The atypical bit is my particular journey down this path. It is part of the difficulty that in starting to think about my issues with originality I address part of my approach that is atypical.

I like the word atypical (and let's talk about why): Last semester in statistics I learned quite a large amount about sampling and modeling. Statistics is wonderful in that it only gives data about a given sample and how that sample behaves. Since I am in the social sciences our samples are usually of people.

Normal Distribution Curve

This is the perfect normal curve, like we use in testing. In this model you'd want the vast majority of people to appear within one standard deviation from the mean, which is -1o to 0 and 0 to 1o. That represents 64.2 percent of the sample. Within IQ for example this represents scores between 85 and 115. 130 and 70 are the second set of standard deviations and where most assessments lose accuracy, and anything over 160 or under 40 is not measurable. 

Anyway when I'm thinking about myself and how well  I follow patterns, it is usually in my inverse relationship to social pressure. My peers and local authorities tell me to make a decision and I immediately doubt the quality of that decision. If I see something working and don't feel pressure then I'm likely to accept it as an effective solution.

Example:

No one needs to sell the concept of eating cheese. It is high protein, easily digested and high in sugar. It makes bland food taste good. People will add cheese to things to sell those other things, but no one needs to sell me on cheese.

Yet every ad wants to sell me on being anti tobacco, buying new cars, or changing insurance agencies. These things have little practical effect on my life, which means that there must be some back end benefit for those doing the selling.

-------

The strangest thing is that thinking that one is unique or original is just as faulty an assumption as assuming that what others do will work for me. It is a common reasoning error. The reason it is an error is that if many people think "I am the only one thinking this" then it isolates them, and it isn't true. I'm using truth in the Boolean logic sense, so don't get excited about the philosophy of truth, enlightenment and whether we can really know anything.

-------

But I am alone. I am fundamentally alone, singular and isolated. I am not cut off entirely though. I'm not suffering from social anxiety, and I empathize with others very well. Others don't empathize well with me. *sigh*

I'm very tired right now. This is one of my largest issues: I work myself so hard that I can hardly function anymore, and I like it. It would be nice if I could just write a contemplative on my place within the human race and my relative commonness and the value of that, but it just isn't in me.

Why:

I want it, and it would satisfy me. Being satisfied is a horrible thing for a tired man, because it might let him rest. Note I say rest and not sleep, because I sleep (not as many hours as I would like but that's neither here nor there. Seeing a doctor tomorrow about that issue.)

Some battles aren't worth fighting. The journey into self is one of them tonight.

I never saw the sudden curve before it's way too late

"And my skin is raw, but my soul is ripe,

And no one's gonna stop me now, I'm gonna make my escape
But I can't stop thinking of you,
And I never see the sudden curve until it's way too late
And I never see the sudden curve until it's way too late

Then I'm down in the bottom of a pit in the blazing sun,
Torn and twisted at the foot of a burning bike,
And I think somebody somewhere must be tolling a bell
And the last thing I see is my heart, still beating,
Breaking out of my body and flying away
Like a bat out of hell"

Bat Out of Hell, Meatloaf

Round the curve my mind and body went, holding on to the pivot point of my willpower with hands white and bloody. Shocked I swung out the curve and into the arching fall. Oh first I swung up it was true, but always I was falling. Falling: The disaster of utmost control lost. I used to dream about falling a lot. That and being trapped in a gothic mansion were the most common fixture of my dreams. Then there was this dream I had of the terror tornado. It sounds so cheesy when I say it like that. When I was a kid that was what terror was like, a raging storm with a heading that I was in the way of. What powerlessness I felt then.

 How I lied to myself as if the drugs were all to blame.

The truth.... if there is a truth to me, is that I'm always running. Sometimes I'm running away, others I'm running towards something or other. Why is it so easy to be non specific about what I'm running from and not what I'm running towards? Both are fucking scary. 

*sigh* Love is irrational? Rationality is irrational. The world is full of paradox, ambiguity and uncertainty. We go against the grain of our very nature in our search for meaning. I feel like I'm supposed to be this fucking light in the darkness, but look at me. Not that anyone reading can look. I like to keep the me I am here and my face as separate as possible.

There's some part of me that doesn't want that reconciliation to happen easily. Oh sure, anyone could know who I am, but all this is just an elaborate lever that makes me examine myself in ways that amuse me. People talk back so rarely that there is an illusion of isolation. The blog is the 21st century answer to the confessional. It's better though, there are no prayers or answers offered. It allows people like me to work on ourselves.

Though that work is always transitional and temporary. Adulthood is thus: working in fits and starts and balancing reality with the places we escape to. Where are we running, or running from? One day maybe I'll have that answer.

Goodnight.

The ride that I don't get off of

If it isn't clear by now I have finishing problems, in more ways than one. I struggle most to finish for myself. If someone else needs me to finish a project I'll do it. Yet my will is not so strong as to push on for my own benefit.

Until now anyway.

I'm on a ride that feels wild and out of control all the while my drive and desire grips my hand and throat. I strangle myself every time my eyes drift away. I punch any delusion. Mine is the drive and the vision. It is as if to wonder if God had to cut my strings, over and over, until my spine was a ramrod. I know not.

The desires remain there, festering like the wound on my hand. Each day it hurts I apply a salve, yet it does not mend. It remains there to remind me of what weakness is, of my own shortcomings. I must see that which I'm running from and at the same remain mindful of what I am running towards.

I'm almost always excited these days, and with frustration comes a boiling need. I dig this tunnel, as my shovel strikes that which is harder my body quavers, my breath starts. I am but a hammer with a wood handle. The vibrations from the chisel travel back to my hand. Oh! But to stop?! Madness.

"Down, Down, Down you go
No way to stop
as you fall, hear me call
No! No! No!
listen to this warning and consider these
simple words of advice:
stop stop stop."

Ah but such madness leads towards the sweet hell that is oblivion. What is this man but weak flesh contrasted with a will that exceeds his ability? I consider my desires all the while. Ah how I love myself, ah how I despise my body, my weakness. My will has swelled, fed like a raging fire with the kindling of failure and the fuel of understanding. I push on.

"my friends all said you've lost your head, now what are you trying to do?
you've been keeping your neighbors up all night sayin "What the hell's the matter with you?"
This might sound mean but this digging machine's gonna leave your feelings hurt
you gonna dig straight down to the center of the earth to find out that there's nothing there but
dirt, just dirt, no women, aw man, dirt!"
Digging Machine, Logan Whitehurst.

For the journey is the thing I am on. The journey hurts and tires the wanderer, yes? But the wonders the eye sees only on the journey. To sit still would be satisfying, but to miss those sights and sounds that come only from a new world born every day? Solitude and depths untold, lessons new and wisdom old. I'm a philosophic old hippie these days, and a pragmatic little engineer. Who is he, that man I will be when my days come to an end? Is he kind or is he smart? Has he any friends?

Fucking poetry. Fucking sex, mystic legends and wild tales. Who knows what is real anymore? And why would it matter? It only matters that I appear to function. Ah, I function well. It's all madness inside and a tower of reason and productivity outwards. Ah the wonderful things I cannot touch, and the things I dream of but shouldn't have.

Such is my need for a controlling power that I become it myself. Would that God would take that mantle back. Someday I think he will.

The solitude is getting all the stranger these days. I crave it and run from it. When I am alone there are just the right number of voices: There's what I want, what I don't want and what needs doing. Other people are odd in a way I can't put my finger on. It is as though they find satisfaction with their weakness. Others soak up that which I am repelled by. How the crap are humans supposed to work? Is there a model or a template? I've found no common one. Thus I am vague when others ask how they should behave. Yet if they ask me how I would act, well that's easy. I would analyze and move forward. There is little else in the core of me. I am but a digging machine myself. Even my pain instructs me on better self care. I get better at juggling.

It strikes me that writing here again I'm discussing myself quite a bit. It's sloppy writing, but words I need to get out. One day there will be a great sorting out of self and other undertaken by me. Ah, again the journey is the trans-formative process. I started this adventure as a naive hobbit, yet I am no Frodo to be pulled along by events. I am a Bilbo, finding myself and strangely pleased with the reformation. There is no going back, we are round the bend already and safety is far gone, if it was ever there at all.

Never self critical enough on a Wednesday

Wednesday this semester is a hectic day:

I get up to an alarm (the only day I have to), between 6:45 AM and 7:15 AM.

I go out to breakfast, again the only day that I have to.

Then I get to school between 8:25 AM and 8:45 AM and try to start working.

Intro to counseling starts at 9 AM.

I can focus for maybe half an hour of the class. Unavoidably we end up on a tangent (as is going on right now). I don't care about the personal feelings of my peers on how broken people are. We're training to be healers, we are not sociologists.

This may be a flaw in my character. I get very frustrated with the shallow and esoterically meaningless discussions of under educated people. It is unavoidable that we must all discuss the various blemishes that our society possesses. I find no fault in the cry of "This world should be better!" My fault is in the cry of the layman of "The technical solution should be thus!" As if they had the data to say so!

Which comes back to things I hate in myself. I hate it when I think I have all of the data for a given project and do not. I would rather be mute on all solutions than speak of things I don't know.

-------

A pause thinking about borderline personality disorder.

-------

There isn't much of a choice between developing interesting insights on others and dominating the class.

I just have so much poorly sourced anger. I hate, without specificity and without direction towards a point of satisfaction. What is worse is that I depend on my anger as a crutch. My anger gets me up in the morning, and carries me through the day. I don't want to work, or leave the house for that matter. I'd be quite content to read my books and eat at home. Yet, there is no satisfaction there. I don't like the way the world treats me when I do what I prefer.

-------
3.5 hours later and nothing MHM 10/3/2018
------
Push to publish the next day because this mindfulness exercise was day specific. MHM 10/4/2018

The healthy don't complain: they're busy

Hello gentle reader (who may or might not be me in the future).

Did you know that I stop writing about how I feel when I don't want to remember? I know myself so damn well that I know that if I stop writing about my feelings than it is as if they don't happen.... *satisfied sigh*
Oh! Oh! Oh! The things that I don't know!

Oh Oh Oh
The things you gotta know
Oh Oh Oh
The things you gotta know
History history you have to know your history
you have to know those dusty musty gents
emperors kings and presidents
you have to remember which one is who
remember his birthday and remember his birthday
and the size of his shoe
remember sir Oliver Oglethorpe
and dear old Ching Chang Chose
and which queen of Qumblin had a wart on the end of her nose?
who's that geezer Julius Ceaser?
Looks to me like Ebeneezer
No that there is Ebeneezer
This sir Frederick Von Thorpe Pleaser
And this is sir Alfred Fluther Hillary Billery Blurn
Oh my gracious goodness Bub the things you gotta learn
You've got to learn why do cows chew their cud
And why are fiddle blisters always blowing suds?
You've got to learn the smell of the stipulated pinkweed
how it differs from the smell of the pipulated stinkweed
Of all of the pyramids,
how deep is the river Nile?
And how many teeth in a crocodile's smile?
And how many bones has a diploducklodicus?
And how many bones has a rumpa- rampa-wrinkle-dinkle-populatta-ficus?

-Phonetic transcription by Max Malcolm of
Oh Oh Oh, The Things You Gotta Know from "Hooper Bloop Highway"(Dr. Seuss, 1975)

--------
But on the other hand:
I was getting off track.

I've been so busy checking in with others that I haven't check in on myself in awhile. That's the true purpose of a journal; to write without an intended audience. I suspect that most of my blog readership burnt off in the year gap between posts (not that I haven't been active.) My angst ridden writing has been topic driven at Quora in the intervening time.

I purposefully don't promote this blog on Quora because I have a steady following there. Promoting this on that site would reflect a quality bar I haven't met here in the past decade of writing.

There's a commonly held belief among young writers (which I am just barely still at 30) that one has to write tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of terrible words before good writing starts happening. I still hold this belief doubtfully because typing and formatting does not make a good writer. A good writer is a master manipulator of language, the reader's emotions and thought patterns. Until I get recognition in the way of people asking for me to write for a living, my assumption is that I am startlingly average among the semi professional writer class.

My belief is further tempered by bad prolific writers: L. Ron Hubbard, Larry Niven and Stephen King particularly.

I would rather be good than prolific any day.
--------
Which brings it back to what I'm doing with my life.

I'm a full time straight A student. At least at this point in the semester I am. I landed on the Dean's list at NSU last semester. Landed being a particularly apt term for a process that has more to do with class structure than my actual skill.

I am a paradox of terms:
I am academically well ahead of my peers.
I didn't earn my Associates degree until three months before my 30th birthday even though I started college at age 17.
I have been told by others that I am perceptive.
Other people believe I should have no problems with any academic challenge.
Meanwhile I work 40-50 hours a week on 9 credit hours (which is 27 hours of theoretical work.)
I washed out of a sophomore level math class two weeks into this semester.

--------

What else can I say? Our country is in terrible trouble, but it isn't my department to fix it. I'm having medical issues, but I'm also doing everything within my power to resolve them. There are plenty of problems but all of them have solutions and people who are okay with covering them if I don't want to.

---------
On the other hand I wear a glove. (a joke.)