the open invitation, and why it is no more

 I had ambition, it drove me for so many years. The thought that if I got through today, someday in the future would be edifying. It was driving, but it was also an invitation to anyone involved to take advantage. They knew I wouldn't quit, because I owed it to myself. No more.

Being more or less dead for almost a year changes a man. The big thing to me was when I asked them to work with me on my health issues, and they rejected me. That was the final nail in the coffin of me trusting an employer. They claimed to be about health and balance, but their actions confessed otherwise.

This morning it is cold, rainy, and a little bleak. I did my treatment plan update in therapy this morning, never a pleasant task, yet has to be done. It also means I barely processed my week. I've been writing this self esteem journal, gotta wait another week to process that.

Right now I'm locked up, even the things that had functioned as escapes aren't working right now. Major flaw in the present focused mindfulness era; if today is miserable, that becomes your world.

I have no more to give, not to people who can't appreciate it. To my mind, that includes most employers. Dad was putting pressure on me trying, so I make a show of trying. In reality, I'm barely holding on, and I struggle to tell others about it.

like I'm arguing with myself about how much self care I want to do. If I had boundless energy I'd go for a bike ride, take a shower, and cook dinner. Things not being that way, I'll be ambitious if I manage to get my laundry done and dinner.

Upshot we replaced the sink. It's a little thing, but it feels so much better. We ditched the garbage disposal, it rarely worked anyway, for a normal drain. The sink itself is stainless steel. Also got the car up and going again. Last week I had the radiator replaced and oil changed. Today I filled her up with gas and put the fuel line treatment in. Now all that is left is body work, which is also the case for my truck.

The truck is a roadblock RN, I can't get the hood open and the battery is dead. We've joked about the truck being roughly representative of my own well being. It's accurate; it sits in the driveway, just as potent and beautiful as always, but immobile, a gravestone of the function that was.

Today's rain came with dirt. Everything outside is really gross. Oklahoma, the gift that keeps on giving. Which makes me think of the biblical story; "If your son asked for some bread, would you give him a snake?" goes the rhetoric, my reply "In Oklahoma, not only would a snake be provided, but taunting and blame for being foolish enough to expect better." The inconsistency of a highly Christian state that resembles Christ less than anywhere else I've been.... agony.

What it is, or what it will be

 You'd think this blog is long dead, and you'd be wrong for at least today. I have written out every word I can stand anonymously, and in a more public forum, and find I still have more to say.

Screaming into the void that this is, the lack of feedback is somehow comforting. Ever so rarely someone finds the blog and leaves a comment, it's the least response of any project I have ever worked on. So when I write here, I can be sure I'm doing it for myself.

Which does lead one to ponder why it is published online. Above all it is for indexing value. As long as this is active, I can track it down and review it. Given the extensive record, and that it is made in the moment and not in the idealistic retrospective, there is no more potent evidence that I existed/exist, depending on when you read this.

Arms race, a phrase I've been using quite a bit lately, may be less appropriate now that there is war in Europe. It is an ample description though. The forces that discourage me are growing more complex and persuasive. As that is the case, I have beat a strategic retreat. I don't believe that there is anything left to be gained in pursuit of a career. 

Which is not a refutation that a career might provide gainful employment. It certainly has, now and then, in very short bursts, and in ways that have not allowed me to plan or advance my life in the entire adult period. I sit here at 34, wiser, better educated, more skilled, and every bit as humbled by the challenge of trying to find people that appreciate me as I was 12 years ago.

The 12 year thing is one of my superstitious tics. Rationally, it is probably nothing. Either a self fulfilling prophesy or me trying to apply patterns to chaos, either is more likely than external religious significance. Perhaps there is a God, and if I ever meet them, I want to know whether they ever had a plan for me. IF they did, what purpose does the pain serve? What could possibly justify what I've been through? 

I struggle to turn the page. I've been trying to write a book for nearly a year now. The introduction is fine, I like my characters, but I have no climax or ending. I just want to end the book right after the central conflict is revealed; in my experience things struggle to pass that phase, if they ever do.

Life is not narratively satisfying, that's how you know it's real. If it was narratively satisfying you'd be haunted by the possibility that your brain concocted it to satisfy your inner desires.

A problem I am blissfully free of. The world is horrible, with islands of kindness ever so rarely. Those that engage are either more idealistic than I, or better at lying to themselves. That is to say; those like me. It is a small contingent. The majority of the species is motivated by less noble things, more practical though. Poverty frightens most of them into manic action, but I cannot find it within myself to fear poverty. I've spent time studying it, and it is far LESS awful that the life I have spent the last two decades leading.

That's me all over, non specific, dramatic. I wanted to be a teller of stories, things being awful is a good set up.

When last we left our hero, he had been forced to graduate a semester early, and with only a single major in psychology and neglecting the end part of the computer science education. A pandemic had started./ Every Phd program he applied to ignored him. All the while, he received accolades academically and in his research.

Meeting with the real world, it became rapidly clear that those accolades were entirely superficial, not effective at convincing anyone that he was a capable and intelligent person.

The following four-fie months after graduation existed as a passionate and pointless job hunt. Every coding job applied for ignored him as persistently and studiously as the universities he had applied to. The only lead; working for child welfare for the state. Eventually after more interviews and effort than any other job in his career, he found himself with a position two hours away from home, in one of the most toxic departments in the state.

*hand wavery* textbook disappointment, futility, and frustration. Everything that the state had been to him through his life was evident in the machinations of the machinery of the state. It ground him nearly to nothing, to desiring homelessness over gainful employment.

So he left, with every attempt not to rebuffed, he left. He tried one more time a few months ago, this time returning to inpatient psychiatric work, which imploded spectacularly, again against his will or intention.

Now, he's lying to everyone who asks him to. Saying it will get better perhaps. It won't. Getting better would require a fidelity and kindness that the people of Oklahoma lacked, unable to afford such things. The world is too awful. In a more civilized time our hero could have descended into opium and poetry like the great Poe or Lovecraft. 

Is not to be, not yet. The marriage holds. The house holds. The beliefs of others in the talents and abilities of our hero remain remarkably strong. If belief could produce success, surely it would have by now.