hopeless and helpless

I've been working hard towards self-sufficiency all my life, but it would appear that I've failed miserably.  Depending on how you look at it, maybe I've just had a much longer climb to get there, and society isn't accommodating of people progressing at different rates.  There's a trajectory we're supposed to stay on, and when we fall off, it can be hell trying to get back on track.  Some succeed, but many more never do.

The longer we take, the worse our prospects get.  They say that after some time, people basically become unemployable, which tends to mean fucked, in all sorts of ways.

I don't really know what it's like to be busy.  I've always run out of other resources well before time.  Mostly sanity.  For most of my life, I've had nothing but free time, and it's horrible.  I wish I had places to go and things to do that actually mattered to me, but that is not how it's gone.  My life has been shaped by the problems I had when I was younger, and now I have no idea how to do anything to change it.

Each time I move, there's been this hope that I might find opportunities that weren't to be found elsewhere, but it's always the same.  The sort of solutions I'd be given if I were to seek professional help would not be cognitively engaging.  Doing something tedious for minimum wage would not make my life better.

This fire that's raging inside my skull at the moment makes me realize that my neuroendocrine system might have tricks I was not aware of.  Responses to stimulus that have not always been there, maybe.  I feel like I could be doing a whole lot more with my life.  I'm even wondering if it's just that I'm finally free of caffeine addiction, in combination with everything else.

I got five hours of sleep last night, no coffee, yet I'm chomping at the bit for something to do.  This is really weird.  I've also lost all interest in Facebook and Twitter.  I don't care at all right now.  I keep checking it out of habit, but I have no comment on any of it.  I don't want to read or argue about whatever distraction might be dominating the current news cycle.  I really don't want to play video games, although that's been waning for some time.  I desperately need some kind of direction.

I've also had no appetite.  If I didn't know better, I'd think my brain might have figured out how to produce it's own Adderal.  What am I supposed to do with it though?  This is where people suggest going to the library or volunteering at a soup kitchen.  Laudable goals sure, but I'm not sure they understand the problem.

radical transperancy

I'm not an absolutist about much, but I'm a believer in honesty.  Honesty with others, though not necessarily needing to tell everyone everything.  For one thing, most people really don't care.  More than that, I've found honesty with myself critical.  It's so easy to slip into narratives, to be so sure of things, but the mind fabricates a lot.  We forget more than we want to admit.  Without even taking the time to think about it.

As I've been following the news closely for a few years now, I've realized that people have no memories of anything, unless the news cycle's been reminding them of it.  The present is always decontextualized in this way.  Often the memories are in there somewhere, but we're not as good as we think we are, at associating a memory with current relevant information.  Honestly, I find it implausible that I'm speaking only for myself here, but go ahead, believe what you want.

It's a lie of false certainty and unchecked bias, when the brain really isn't processing the whole picture.  Disproportionate values placed in all sorts of ways.  Focusing on one thing more than another, for no reason other than self bias.  Empathizing more with those who are more like ourselves, for example.  Sapolsky says oxytocin does that, but spellcheck thinks 'oxycontin' is the real word.  Even spellcheck lies to us.

Just the other day, I'm out buying beer.  Now I'm looking in my fridge thinking, why the hell did I buy coffee stout.  When am I supposed to drink this, without screwing up my new coffee regime?  I think there had to have been a moment of self-deception involved there.

I am an idealist when it comes to honesty with others, in this respect.  I believe in the premise that checking each others' bullshit can be an important part of being less wrong about everything.  Sometimes I've needed the help, but I think it takes a balance.  No one really gets to claim that they're the one whose right about everything.  Except maybe Noam Chomsky.

The problem with this ideal is that most people are so very wrong as to be not that helpful.

blog therapy

I've been having trouble sleeping.  I can tell, my brain chemistry is different somehow.  It's a little like LSD, not hallucinations, but that feeling of intensity.  Somewhat like a stimulant, but more cerebral.  I wonder what hormones or neurotransmitters I've been awash in, as I try to weather emotions I'm not terribly familiar with.  Isn't there some way to get the stimulant effect, without being miserable?  Laser focused day after fucking day and it's completely useless.

Sometimes the worse I feel, the more I want to keep writing.  I've been in therapy a lot, I've learned to just talk things out myself.  I'm not sure which has been more useless.  The trick though, is imagining different sorts of people reading it.  Critiques and impressions of people who may or may not actually exist.  It helps me critique myself, and works best after I've posted something and started worrying about what others might think.

I'll then edit the post accordingly. Sometimes the additional perspective helps me realize it's entirely founded in bullshit, and I just delete it.  When I'm having trouble moving on from a particular subject, it can make more sense to edit the same post over and over, rather than post after post on the same thing.  I am having trouble moving on here.   My emotions, blindsiding.  What the fuck is this.  I'm not entirely sure what's going on with me.

The catch is that I have to be honest, publicly, knowing full well that some of what I write might not be exactly flattering.   It might not be interesting.  It might be a particular cognitive loop I'm stuck in, trying to argue my way out of with all these imaginary actors.  This can get repetitive.  Some of these arguments have been going on for a very long time, but at least my writing has evolved.

When I was a kid, I kept a journal that no one else was supposed to read.  I was eleven years old, and page one was about wanting to experience love.  The first time I kissed a girl, we were only four or five years old, but if I remember correctly, there was even talk of getting married.  I didn't see her for years, during which time my pituitary imploded.  When I saw her again, we were in fifth grade, and it was awkward.  She'd grown a whole lot more than I had.  It was not meant to be, after all.

Why am I writing about this now.  Yeah, I don't know if I should be that honest, but my mind keeps going in circles.  My instincts keep telling me that this means I have more to say, and that I shouldn't say anything.  I'm not being honest enough.  My biggest fear though is that it doesn't even matter.  I'm afraid I've lost my best friend no matter what I do.  The mind fixates, and moving on is extraordinarily difficult when I can't care about anything else.  I walked my cousin's dog like I was supposed to, but then it was right back to this.  Not like I wasn't all weepy picking up dog shit too.

Maybe beer would help.  I haven't even been drinking occasionally, all concerned with my brain health and the like, but fuck if that matters to me right now.  My prefrontal cortex has just been pissing me off anyhow.

der steppenwolf

I try to write around this a lot, though I'm not sure I've been successful.  I've found it to be largely counter-productive.  Few understand or care and it is embarrassing.  This part of my psyche is so vulnerable, so I try to avoid discussion on the subject.  So here I am now, with my rambling lead in. Don't blink, you'll miss it.

I can talk about politics or music, but it's all distraction.  I don't really care about any of it, but it's a good distraction.  A puddle deep way of connecting that doesn't work as well if I don't compartmentalize the crushing loneliness that elicits all the wrong responses from people.. but this is what I'm really talking about when I say that I'm a failure.  This, my whole reason for dragging myself from each decade to the next, is what I've failed at.  At my age, it feels like a statement of past tense making all else pointless.

I've never cared about anything all that much, other than finding someone like me.  To share this crazy existence with a female of my species.  The most normal thing in the world, if only I were, as the humans say, neurotypical.  Everything else, I can adapt to.  I can take interest or not, whatever.  The world is all sorts of tragic, beautiful, and interesting with or without my engagement.  Sometimes I'll even say that I'm not clinically depressed or anxious, which is clearly untrue, but it feels like circumstance that would change in a heartbeat, if only I could find whatever the hell I'm looking for.

I'm inclined to say that this is itself the pathology, maybe even endocrinology.  I fixate on what would soothe my lifelong inability to connect, but I don't like to talk about it.  There isn't much point, except to say, please mind my feelings, here.  I'm not a monk.  I wish I could better explain what it means, that I can't relate.  I don't want anyone to take it personally, but it's particularly excruciating at the moment.  I'm not handing it well.

I feel this predicament gives me insight into how motivation itself actually works, so I usually try to comment on that instead.  Oxytocin, dopamine, reward pathways and how socialization plays into that.  Or how all that somehow plays into capitalism's failures.  Something distracting.  Sometimes it feels important to express what's actually going on in my head.

Sometimes compartmentalization breaks down and I'm just trying to sort through the mess.  Nurse my wounds, rebuild a few walls.  Sometimes this takes a while.  I thought this part of me had faded away years ago, but turns out I'd only buried it.  I've been confused by the force with which it reemerged, but maybe this has given me an opportunity to better work through it.

Human relationships can be very motivating.  I've had to figure out how to make do, given that I don't have any.

i think i can, i think i can

Visiting my cousin last night, I was caught off guard and asked if I wanted to read to their year and a half old daughter.  Ok, I have to admit, I was happy to give it a shot.  I have noticed that just smiling at her hasn't won me a whole lot of trust or favor.  She still looks at me with apprehension.  I'm nervous about these things though.  I don't know if I can read a children's book right, and babies can be pretty judgmental.

I joke, but I was nervous about it.  In order to read in proper entertaining fashion while keeping track of what she was doing required my full attention, to such an extent that it felt like being on autopilot.  I had nothing to spare for my precious default mode network.  I realized that this itself makes me very nervous.  It wasn't really just that I was afraid of being judged, but that without the familiar hypervigilance of ego, I wasn't entirely sure what I'd do.  Hopefully, I'd just read to her like a normal human being, but with this human brain thing, you never really know.

So, it was a little shocking to discover that I pretty much just read to her like a normal human being.  She seemed content, and I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do when we got to the end of the book, so I read her a second book.  At one point, I noticed that she was distracted and kept looking up, so wondering what she keeps looking at, I realize there's her whole family watching us.

..

 I think they were a little shocked too.

neuroplastika

All these things I do in the hopes of squeezing what I can from this grey matter, I do in realizing that I am already underwater.  I wouldn't worry about my coffee consumption, if this were actually working out for me.  Addiction is less than ideal, as I'd put it, but who in their right mind worries about everything being ideal?  Yeah, I'm not really in my right mind.  I'm just doing whatever I can think of in my latest push towards remedying that.

At the very least, my brain has was way too many adenosine receptors.  Coffee works by blocking these, so nature responds by growing more, to compensate.  An impressive trick, but it tends to ruin everything.  The more of an addict we are, the more of these extra receptors we have, desperately needing to be blocked.  I've read that it takes months for those to scale back to normal, once they're no longer swimming in all that coffee.

While it may seem a contradiction, it's in realizing just how much caffeine sometimes helps that I've realized how much it might be undermining me.  My tolerance is so high that other times, it just does nothing.  If it all comes down to these receptors, that drinking coffee can help so much, then not having them in such abundance should also be a huge help.

novelty seeking

Had dinner with family the other night, and at one point began to explain my caffeine withdrawal.  No, I'm not giving up coffee.  I'm just giving up my addiction to it.  I find it odd that this is so difficult for others to understand and yet, maybe I wouldn't have understood myself, a few years ago.  It has a lot to do with what I've learned regarding addiction, particular as it pertains to stimulants and my own experiences.  It seems counter intuitive and yet now, it just makes perfect simple sense.

I find it disappointing when others act confused by things that make perfect simple sense to me.  I suppose that really, I'm confused by the things that make perfect simple sense to them, as well.  It's a different sort of confusion, but the net impact is the same.  It's alienating.  Differences in priorities, values, and ultimately outcomes and experiences.  A difference in worldview, a feeling of living in an entirely different world.  The way others think, feel, and behave is often unfamiliar to me, but whereas I've spent my life trying to understand them anyhow, there is little incentive for them to do the same for me.

I've started drinking coffee again.  All according to plan.  It's been over two weeks, the withdrawal has become negligible.  I have a schedule which involves drinking coffee twice a week, now.  I'll see how that goes.  There was an article I read a while back about the benefits of breaking up routines.  Doing mundane things differently, so that the brain doesn't stagnate into monotony and repetition.  Everything we do creates a baseline to which we adjust, and that baseline can be kind of lousy.

It's a bit like the studies showing that learning multiple languages results in greater mental acuity.  Which is the main reason I'm doing that, too.  Mixing things up compels the brain to be more active, more aware, more mindful.  Settling into patterns can be all but unavoidable and even necessary though.  It should help to switch things up on a neurochemical level to ensure that one day differs from the next, and plan my routines accordingly.