survival mode

The past few months have been too much.  I've had to collapse for a while.  Restructure my priorities and expectations for the time being.  I need to focus as much as I can on re-establishing my healthy routines.  I need to incorporate some extra knee exercise into it ..but today, not getting stoned first thing in the morning was progress.

I don't seem to have much to say.

life is suffering

My knee is all fucked up.  I think it's a small tear in the meniscus, which should heal eventually.  It might not though, and the torn piece can get stuck in the joint causing more problems.  It's probably temporary, but given the nature of 45 year old knees, who the hell knows.

Kickboxing and grappling keep me sane.  It's not just about the exercise.  It's about doing something I enjoy, that I'm good at, that keeps me engaged with people and involved in something.  It provides something psychologically critical that I can't function without.  I can't just do something else, but I haven't been able to train in months.  I've been feeling worse and worse.

Life has been complicated and confusing lately.  It's been an easy semester, but I'm not doing all that well, because I've been a mess.  Then my dad gets his biopsy results.  5cm malignant mass on pancreas, multiple lymph node metastasis.

I'm heading down to Pittsfield this Thursday.  Guess I'll be getting there as often as I can.

familiarity

Last week, another group was doing a class presentation on friendship.  This week, my group had to do our presentation on family.  The presentation itself was awkward, but I got through it.  People construct families in all these different ways, place emphasis in different ways, on the roles, responsibilities, and relevance of those in the group, and even the group over all.

Collectivists, we learn, value the group itself, while individualists predominantly value the group only in so far as what it does for them.  Individualists value independence, while treating familial connections as more temporary, circumstantial, disposable.  Collectivists can go to the other extreme, of treating an individual as disposable, should their disposal benefit the group.

We ask why people go through all this; what is the purpose of family?  These are complex fluid in-group / out-group dynamics.  On one level, the practicality of it seems to be fundamental across cultures.  People figure out ways of banding together, establishing these protocols to facilitate it.

On another level, we need to create all these distinctions between us and them, because it's how human biology works.  We bond over the notion that we're us, and they're terrible.

"oxytocin promotes human ethnocentrism"

Family is a vital part of being human, regardless of how we define it.  What it does for people is important.  We're not evolved to go through life alone.

friendship 101

We covered friendship today, in Intercultural Communication class.  What it means across cultures, what's expected, and how it's expressed.  To start, everyone in the class has to say what friendship means to us personally, what more close friendship means, and what we give (and expect) from the relationship.  All the answers we gave were then listed on the board.

"Trust" was written all over the place, along with numerous related terms like reliability and honesty.  At one point, the class got into discussing honesty vs hurt feelings.  How honest does honest have to be?  Should we insult our friends, make them feel worse, because we're just being honest?  For the most part, no, of course not.  We tell a friend the hard truths when it stands to help, not just because we feel like it.

In talking about honesty and the need to be brutal about it, there seemed to be another underlying truth.  There was a lot of sentiment along the lines of friends being honest, but not judgmental.  People are more trusting of those who value us, who make us feel worth something.   Too much brutal truth destroys trust as sure as anything. 

This sort of trust apparently goes right out the window, when we think someone is too antagonistic.  It seems unrelated, but makes sense in a way.  Trust has a lot to do with motives.  No matter how good and honest a person is, if they value different things, if they don't value us, their goals are far more likely to be in opposition to our own.

So many behaviors people engage in are developed to facilitate trust.  All these cultural rituals show that we're the same.  We both know how to shake hands, make eye contact, small talk, or whatever else.  When we don't show affinity, trust falls apart.

addiction still not about drugs

Gabor Maté says this all the time.  It was the title of the paper I wrote on addiction ..and yet, there's this assumption: of course we're mostly talking about drugs.  That I'm still talking about people like Jenny.  As I explain in that paper, I'm talking about almost everyone I know.  I'm talking about the human condition more broadly.

I don't like these distinctions society makes. There are degrees of severity, in a condition we're all prone to.  There are co-existing traits that can compound the risks, such as impulsivity.  We then say it's only real addiction if the person lacks impulse control.  That combination can lead to the most destructive behaviors, but lumping them together as a "disorder" completely misconstrues the nature of the problem.  Like, how these two separate issues that on their own are just normal human traits.

At about 39:30, he says that there's this depressing general rule, that we always marry people who are at the same level of trauma that we're at.  One thing that bothers me about Maté, is that he too often speaks in absolutes, but that aside.. is there any truth to that?  That people tend to pair off more successfully with someone of similar levels of trauma?

I found it interesting, because it makes intuitive sense to me.  I've always doubted the notion that depressed people shouldn't be together, for example.  It's highly unrealistic.  People need to be able to relate to each other.  See somewhat eye to eye.

It's important to understand his definition of trauma though.  He's referring to the psychological wound.  Not the event or experience that created it, but the psychological scarring and damage that remains - something that varies massively depending on how well the damage healed.

A broken leg that's never set can become permanently crippling.  While someone else breaks their leg and can say they're just fine, because they got medical attention.  One of them healed properly a long time ago, so calling them the same for the original break would make no sense.  Trauma, as Maté defines it, means whatever damage currently exists due to those harmful experiences, for whatever reasons.

Trauma then is a product of our lives, the tangle of vicious cycles, compounding factors, abuse, illnesses and accidents, poverty and neglect, in a psychopathic civilization that does everything to keep us down.

gaslighting

Reality has always been difficult to pin down.  That's not what our brains do, though.  We use whatever information we have and take our best guess.  It's a creative act, wherein we take the leap to some interpretation that we've made up in our heads.

We never have all the information.  Differences in perspective can change everything.  We presume arbitrary values to everything.  We ignore countless parts we don't understand, to focus on the parts we have more of a chance with.  Our brains have to work this way, just to survive.

It's a far cry from being right about anything.  I try so hard to be a good person, but I don't even know what's going on.  From what I can tell, neither does anyone else ..but, I could be wrong.  What does it even mean to be good? What's more important, honesty or compassion?  How proactive should we be about it?  How much of ourselves is reasonable to give?

If I'm being honest with myself, there's always room for the possibility that I'm getting it all wrong and actually a terrible person.  I'm always trying to figure it out and do better.  I try not to be too hard on others about it.  It's not easy, and I might be wrong about it all anyhow.

trust me

because I don't trust myself.  I don't trust anyone.. but I know trust is important, so please trust me.

What is it to trust someone?  Do I trust that everything a person says is entirely true and authentic?  That they're never wrong, never say shit they don't mean when they're angry?  This would be crazy.  Do I trust some deeper truth of who a person is, do I trust myself to discern it?

Why do we trust?  Why don't we?  The young are trusting, before they learn how badly we can be hurt.  We learn not to trust.  We learn that people can't be trusted.  We learn that we can't trust ourselves to even figure out who can be trusted.  We lose the capacity to form healthy connections at all.

When we can't handle it, we can learn that pain itself is worse than it is.  That to be hurt is some catastrophe, when it's just life.. but we have to trust that we can handle it.  We have to be able to take risks, without the fear that those risks might destroy us.  We need to be sure that we won't be so easily destroyed.

cultural identity

It's good that this has been a light semester, because life has been stressing me the hell out.  I'm just trying like hell to get back on track, before I fuck it all up.

Sometimes I wonder if anyone cares to read all this narcissistic drivel, and why.  Lately I've noticed no one does, but that really doesn't matter to me.  Other times though, I have to write yet another paper about myself for college.  This time, for Intercultural Communication, about the make-up of  my own cultural identity.

palabras

It can be interesting, to read a dialogue, noticing overall trends more than when we're in the moment, responding to each moment.  I'm not the most relaxed person and it shows even when I'm chatting.  Martial arts instructors are always telling me to relax, too.  It's similar in that I'm just trying really hard to get it right.

Most people are very imprecise.  We have this instinct to assume similarities, unless given reason to think otherwise.  So in being imprecise, we can think we're agreeing, when we're actually talking about totally different things.  Great strategy for getting along with each others, but how connected are we if we're not really paying attention to each other?  I suspect people misunderstand each other this way all the time.

I try really hard to understand and to be understood, and successful or not, it can be awkward.  I don't enjoy the sort of banter where we don't really care.  I can relax just fine, it's just that I'll be more non-verbal if I do.

This gets at something I really like about internet interactions.  In text we get to know each other's thoughts in such a way that allows more time to think and process, to remember. I think something can even be lost when we stop doing it.  We forget these deeper parts of the people closest to us.

What our senses tell us feels the most unimpeachable truth, but our minds interpret our senses through what we think we know, missing all that we don't.  One example was this time someone I was with was crying.  She kept saying that she didn't know why she was crying, she wasn't sad.  It was so difficult to wrap my brain around the idea that this person, showing obvious signs of anguish, was having a response to the shrooms she'd taken.  Her words didn't match what was right in front of me.  I believed my eyes instead of her words, and it wasn't until later, in retrospect, that it seemed stupidly obvious.

Of course this isn't everything.  It's a part of who we are, other parts come through more in person, and some will always be unknowable.

intracultural communication

This COM requirement class I'm taking, intercultural communication, so far, has not gotten into any specifics about any particular cultures.  We talk about how communication works, the use of symbols, intentional vs unintentional.  Reminds me of a 5th grade "gifted & talented" class.  So far, very familiar almost juvenile material.

The class turns out to be oddly social.  The instructor's lectures feels almost like an hour long chat, and then we split into groups and discuss something, like three paragraph long scenarios involving a few interactions, and how intentional any communication therein would be.  Ok, whatever.  Have to admit, I need the practice.

The class is mostly women.  My chatting partners have been almost all women.  This makes the issue more acute, but broadly speaking, it's making me realize that's I've never talked to people in my entire adult life.  Aside from family and a few other close people - I've never had conversations with strangers, people I barely know, or just met.

Even in the instances where I spent time around people, like back in Minneapolis, I barely talked to any of them about anything ever.  Aside from a few polite exchanges.  I've managed to go most of my life without having conversations with people.  No wonder I never meet anyone, right?

I feel insulated being older.  This class seems to be especially young for some reason.  It doesn't matter as much whether or not they like me.  We're not peers, we're not going to be friends, regardless.  Oddly enough, that makes it so much easier for me to be friendly.  Smiling, making eye contact.  Even stringing together words of appropriate brevity and substance.

For my other class, I have to read a chapter, and then write 5-7 sentences of substance about what I liked most or some such.  This is a weird semester.  Given the lighter course load, I wanted to focus more on training, but then I hurt my knee.  Old injury that flares up sometimes and makes me stop using my leg for a week or two.

why so slow

Interesting article on why sloths move so slowly.  It's an adaptation to having such terrible diets while living in trees where they're relatively safe.  They don't need to move fast, so they conserve energy by expending very little to keep muscles moving and active the way other mammals do.  Similar to being cold blooded, they depend on the environment being warm enough, so they don't have to burn energy keeping their muscles warm.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190828-why-do-sloths-move-so-slowly

Growth hormone is utilized in the metabolism of fats, proteins, and carbohydrates.  Even had an endocrinologist tell me that it should really be called the metabolic hormone, as that's even more of its function than growing is. Metabolism is the process through which the body generates its energy.

I'm not deficient in any of these nutrients, my system gets enough, but struggles to convert it into energy no matter how well I eat.  I'm often of the mindset that I need to conserve what I have, careful about every bit I need to spend.   Could be an adaptation of my own, learned over years of feeling depleted all the time.

For over a year now, I've been attempting to expend as much energy as I can instead, to train my body to produce more of it.  This is bound to have limited results given my condition, but makes much more sense than conserving it.  That's not how energy seems to work, given that I'm not literally a sloth.

headkicks

So odd the way I want to write about my martial arts classes lately.  It's not very interesting, even to me.  Something about my brain chemistry after class just seems to line up.  It's going well.  I wish it were easier to remember that before class.  I keep trying to go to more per week, but failing.  After about two classes a day, two days a week, my willpower seems to be depleted for the week.  It shouldn't take so much.

Sparring was strange tonight though.  A new type of class, where the instructor really emphasized wanting us to go light impact.  Then announcing rules that changed every round.  One person, no kicking.  The other, no punching.  Or what what he called Kyokushin style, no punches to the head, and no clinching - vs. no lead leg kicks.

When I was assigned "Kyokushin style," we were reminded that this does include head kicks.  I was feeling confident enough to try a few, something I haven't done in ten years.  Not only did they land, but fast and ridiculously gentle.  This is better than I used to be.

In the prior class, I'd been partnered with a man of substantial girth.  The instructor joked that those were some extra heavy kicks to be holding for, even with the heavy kicking shield.  Even seemed to watch me to make sure I'd be ok at one point.  Wasn't actually bad though.  Not that I'd want to get hit even once without the padding, but holding was fine.  

He was the latest person to be surprised at how hard I can hit, when it was my turn.  I've been getting better at this.  There's are so many little details to maximizing the amount of energy you can put into a strike.

I can finally do kip-ups again, too.  I'm almost 45.  Maybe getting older isn't such a catastrophe after all.

high functioning

C in calculus, A in python, onward ho.  Halfway to a degree for getting a better degree.  This semester the theme turns out to be communication, because I have these requirements to meet.  I had to pick from a list of courses ranging from customer support to an anthropology course on linguistics - that one, not actually offered this semester.  Or ever, really, but in theory.  It's in their catalog.

So, I went with the second most academic looking option on the list, intercultural communication.  I dunno, could be interesting.  Certainly something I could use some help with, given that I consider all attempts at communication to be intercultural for me.

Then another course on technical scientific writing.  It seems to be surprisingly focused on the the communication aspect of that, adapting it to a given audience, accessibility, brevity.. Eh, not so interesting, but should be tolerable.

It's about time I do this to say the least, but I still have a few reservations.

lost trains of thought

At times, I've tried try to explain how aimless I feel.  I'm not sure there's a point to anything I'm doing.  I'm not talking existential angst, but literally, am I accomplishing anything, is going to school going to lead to a more functional life?  That sort of stuff.  Or am I just wandering in circles more vigorously than usual?

Or rather, I start saying something like that, forget what I was saying, go off on some tangent, or maybe just stare at the floor for a while.  My thoughts feel aimless too.  Much the way I have trouble sorting out where my life is going, I can't even sort out where my mind is going half the time.

It feels more accurate to say that I'm not a linear thinker.  I'm slow processing because I try to take every step from every direction.  I lose track of which way is forward.  What the hell do I even want? It's a matter of perspective.  I lose the continuity, my point, where I was going or where I started.  As I scramble to pull it together, my mind seizes up.  It doesn't work well under pressure.  Probably that damn corticotropin again #hypopituitarism

Writing helps on both levels, allowing me to organize my history such that I can look it up.   It also helps me organize my own thoughts, so that I can eventually get to a point.  I periodically have to remind myself of why I do this, too.  Making it public helps keep me honest with myself.

corticotropin

Anxiety for love of life, anxiety for pain
 Anxiety, a feeling that you know you can't contain
Anxiety destroys us but it drives the common man
 Foundation of society
  Anxiety
   Suppress it if you can.

~Bad Religion, "Anxiety," ©1989

Woke up this morning all stressed out, so much to do today and I was so tired.  Eventually got it together and replaced my broken bicycle chain.  Never had a bike chain just snap while I was riding before.  Come to think of it, this is the longest I've ever ridden the same bike, and I've never payed attention to what sort of condition the chain was in.

So, never had to replace one, either.  Nervous about what it would entail.  Maybe I should just buy a whole new bike?  Thought about taking to a repair shop, but decided to look into what it takes to fix myself.  Looked like it might be straight-forward enough to be worth a shot, and if I'm wrong, I'll take it somewhere.  Ended up taking all morning to figure out, in part due to lacking basic tools.  I had the special chain tool, but couldn't find my pliers anywhere.  Had to improvise, but I seem to have succeeded.

Now for all that other stuff I had to do.  I, uh, what was it again?  Some forms I had to fill out to mail tomorrow.  A cauliflower I'd planned on doing something with.  I didn't really have that much to do.    I do this to myself all the time.  I see one big thing I need to do, some other stuff looming in the periphery, and I'm clearly doomed.

Reminds me, got a very serious looking official letter yesterday, from CCV.  Probably to tell me that I failed all my classes and I owe them thousands of dollars.  Finally opened it this morning (another big thing I had to do, right?) and it's just this dumb letter of congratulations for being 15 credits in,  towards my associates degree.  As of last semester, I thought I was 23 credits in, and that I should be getting another 7 any day now.  All things being relative though, eh, whatever.

Wish my brain would stop doing this to me, all this pointless anxiety is kind of exhausting.

To be more precise, the part of my brain responsible could be hormones.  The pituitary produces corticotropin, which stimulates the release of cortisol.  Cortisol normally spikes early in the day, when we need to wake up and get moving.  I've always had a hell of a time switching gears.  The cortisol is there, but it takes a while.

Cortisol is also a response to anxiety.  Without cortisol, coping is much more of a challenge, both in terms of mental health, and in simply getting up and doing something.  More subtle than adrenaline, it helps kick us into gear to deal with the source of the anxiety.  Like panic is to adrenaline.  When the system is working properly, panic and anxiety are important and healthy responses to life's stressors, but it's all this elaborate chemistry in our heads.  Which part we identify with as our true selves is actually nonsense.  None of it, any more or less than anything else in our lives.

Maybe I is more of a reference point, for our awareness, our experience.  I doesn't need to be anything itself, to be a useful term.  The way you might describe the window of a room looking out onto the street, even if that room is empty.  Even if there is no room.  Even if there is no window.

going through hell

My sister and I have always had different approaches to mental health. Her approach was more along the lines of keeping moving, staying busy.  I still have trouble keeping busy even to the extent that normal people do.  Trying to deal with the world makes me feel like a sloth watching chimps shriek and jump around like lunatics.

As I push myself to keep going, doing so much more than I used to, I've been recognizing something else.  A desperation, a fear of missing a single step, on top of all the steps I miss for my own mental health reasons.  As I struggle to keep making progress, it feels glacially slow, while backsliding seems to be on the verge of constant avalanche.

It changes a person's priorities, making the goal oriented behaviour feel more important than everything else.  Everything else being essentially contingent on a presumption that I'm succeeding in this uphill climb, where the only alternative is tumbling backwards to my death.

"Growing instead of withering" also comes to mind, strikingly similar in binary choice.  Ideas, underpinned by this desperation.  To finally outpace depression, but just barely.  If I slip back into that, fuck everything.

summer break

Another semester down, a few weeks before fall starts.  I have less on my mind, so I guess I'm blogging and ranting about my country on facebook again.  Doing two classes instead of four has it's pros and cons, but I think it's a good balance for now.  It means that I have enough energy to spare for MMA and that might even be more important.

Had a great muay thai class last night.  My shins and forearms are all bruised, got some great sparring in.  Against a woman who's roughly my equal in skill and weight, and one of the BJJ instructors who's about six feet tall and really wanted to practice his clinch work.

Sparring is the first of anything I've been doing that's pushed me so hard I've literally worried I might vomit by the end of it, but I love it.  I want to get back in there and figure out how to counter that instructor's clinch.  Clinching back harder and faster doesn't work well against a guy that big who knows what he's doing apparently, but I have a few other ideas.

Sometimes it's a chore, I don't feel like going, I have to push myself and then classes are disappointing for one reason or another.  It all depends on a number of variables, but then sometimes it goes well, and I realize that it's actually making me happy.  I've had really hard time finding much of anything else that does that.

Maybe fighting with people satiates my need for human connection better than trying to have a conversation does.

fear and love

Nothing matters.  This is not how I feel, it's just the truth.  We can all agree on this, right?  I mean, I literally can't even fathom how it would be disputable.  The universe is vast and absolutely entirely indifferent.

Life is an amazing process that occurs when the right elements all exist on the same planet.  This "goldilocks zone" may turn out to be more wide or narrow than currently believed, but life will occupy that space as long as it can.  Countless cycles of not only individual deaths, but the deaths of entire species.  All species eventually die.  The planet eventually dies, probably even for reasons well before the sun goes, and then eventually maybe the entire universe.

We're talking about unimaginably vast scales of time and space, but this also means all the more time and space for other goldilocks zones, where life flourishes for a while before flickering out of existence once again.  Of course, all sorts of things move me anyhow, I'm human, but still.  It is what it is.

"It doesn’t punish, it doesn’t reward, it doesn’t judge at all. It just is - and so are we.  For a little while." 

~George Carlin, at the end of a bit that was honestly hard to watch.  He's merciless about mocking people for caring about stuff.  As if "bourgeoisie white liberals" means anything on a cosmic scale, either, but ok.  I prefer this auto-tune of how he ends the bit.

Bill Hicks, I'm less familiar with.  This choice we have "between fear and love," isn't much of a choice, even on it's face.  If one lacks the sense of self-worth that is typical of depression, I might wonder, what good am I to anyone else?  Honestly, depressed people are downers, we're lazy, we're negative, often we're not even nice.

I also need to break down the term "self worth," here.  It's not abstract, but literally, how much am I "worth" - to others?  It's right in the terms we use, when we talk about how much we "value" ourselves.

Value and worth are transactional terms, a process that goes on between people.  More intrinsic being our assessment of that.  This is simply having self awareness and consideration for others - before any number of neuroses take over.  Sometimes it can be a difficult equation.  I don't know what the hell people want.  They don't always make a whole lot of sense.

Doesn't matter whether I care about others, if acting on that means mostly keeping to myself, either way.  The thing is, it's an assessment that isn't necessarily wrong, and that's not depression, so much as just kinda depressing.

When we want to trade or purchase anything, there are multiple values at play.  How much can I actually get for this?  How much will it cost me to lose?  How much do I think it's objectively worth?  These concepts are all interconnected, like different axis of a graph, at the center of which one might find some vague notion of self esteem.  A complex process bouncing between internal and external circumstance, leaving very little room for much choice.

The world more broadly though, sure.  The universe is pretty awesome.

slow processing

Finally got some Muay Thai sparring in last Friday.  I'm rusty as hell, but it was great.  I have lots of bad point-sparring habits I need to break.  So, I was looking forward to doing some more of it tonight, but no luck, no sparring tonight.  I thought about asking, but didn't feel quite confident enough to risk initiating anything.

It was open mat after class, and in theory I could just ask if anyone wanted to spar,but I'm not actually sure the kickboxing works that way.  They don't do a lot of it.  I could ask about anything of this, but you know, I'm still working on this stuff.  The boxing people spar all the time, but I only take that class to round out my practice.  I don't want to do any regular boxing. 

I've been going to these striking classes again, Judo/BJJ once a week.  Jog about twice a week.  Meditate every morning.  Well, almost every morning.  Been biking all over the place lately.  Practicing the math a few hours a day, too.

Found a great web site that breaks any problem I plug into it down into all the steps required to solve it.  Gibberish like this? No problem.

I've been reading about what they call "processing speed" and how if it's "slow" it results in some awfully familiar symptoms.  In torpere, Latin for being slow. Ленивецa, lenivetsa, Russian for being slow.  It feels like I'm on another wavelength, I've often said.  All three might be interpreted differently, but just happen to technically refer more to being slow.  One study found that slow processing uniquely interferes with peer relationships; "they were surprised to find that a slow processing speed had a greater impact on peer problems than all the other subcomponents of cognitive function that they measured."

Maybe this is why I can't really follow what my teachers are saying, particularly when they're explaining complex multi-step problems.  They say math can be especially problematic.  I'm better at following the steps on Symbolab though, which is all the same stuff my teacher has been saying.  I recognize it. Seems I just need to go through it at a sloth's pace to understand and remember it, but I think I might actually get there before the final.

It is healthy having goals like this.  I'm going to need to figure out some new ones soon.

are we there yet

Open Air Jiu-jitsu, round two, I fail again.  Just didn't feel like it.  Tried really hard to get myself together and go anyhow, but I don't feel like going out.  I don't feel like being around people.  I'm tired.  Some days are still better than others.

First calculus quiz, I got a 95% but the next chapter has been much more problematic.  I just failed the midterm with a 55%.  I don't understand what the problem is.  What does it mean to not be a math person?

"Dyscalculia is a math learning disability that impairs an individual's ability to represent and process numerical magnitude in a typical way," but it's not the numbers I have a problem with.  It's all the parts I don't even recognize as numbers.  The cube roots of secants over tangents of e to the power of x.  Find the derivative of the linearization.

I understand that a lot better than I did a year ago.  That would have been absolute gibberish to me.  The progress is cool and all, I try to remember that.  I was just hoping to be able to get better grades, and it's incredible to me that I'm consistently behind most of the class in this stuff.  Wtf is wrong with me.

The most sane approach would be to visit the tutoring center and ask for help but goddammit fuck that.  There's got to be something else going on here.  I've been putting tons of time into trying to make sense of the material.  I don't understand why this is so hard for me. My third semester of trying to get the hang of math, and I'm still floundering like this.

Just did my homework, after giving it up for hopeless yesterday.

   #1 if y=x⁴+3x², find the linear approximation at a= -1

This is the entire problem.  There's supposedly enough information there to come up with some kind of answer.  Sounds crazy, but wait, I know the formula for this..

f(x) + f ' (x) (x-a)

I have all these formulas memorized, but I can never seem to plug everything in right.  The only way I could get the right answer was to switch up the order of operations:

f(x) +(f ' (x) (x-a))

I don't think that makes sense.  I can't imagine why the formula wouldn't make that explicit.  It's like I'm just guessing and came up with a roundabout way that coincidentally lined up with the right answer.  The next problem I get right on my 17th try by dividing instead of multiplying, and that makes no sense either. 

This instructor doesn't give A's for effort.  He doesn't give anything for effort.  That 55% was 40% of my final grade.  I'll have to get an A on the final to pass at all now.

Meanwhile, getting A's in Python 101, but it's so elementary.  I'm not going to be able to code the most basic app by the end of it, just a bunch of tricks through the compiler - and there is no Python II, let alone anything more interesting.  Need to transfer to a real school for that, but I'm not there yet.

The confidence success builds can be motivating, but motivation in response to failure is so much more difficult.  I've been practicing lots of failure lately.

fight or flight

Stayed briefly for open mat time last night, something I've been avoiding.  You have to find someone to train with, and like, ask them if they want to..  Someone invited me to roll, it went well, we talked briefly as I needed to rest for a few minutes afterwards, but then suddenly I said goodbye and left.  I guess there was a decision to leave in there somewhere, but despite feeling pretty good about it overall, it's been nagging at me.

As I think back on the moments before making the decision, my memories of the details, I realize there's so much room for spin.  I can explain the behaviour any number of ways.  Some more likely to be true than others.  I don't actually know what the real reason is.  I was exhausted, it seemed like a good time to call it.. but I only needed to rest for a minute.  It's as if that didn't occur to me.

My training partner seemed surprised when I left, as open mat had just started.  I was nervous, I was tired, I had a plan but it ended with "stay for open mat" so that's as far as I got.  I felt like getting out of there, and after two hours of yoga and bjj, my faculties were too diminished to resist.  Or even think about it for a second?  Baby steps, I guess.

Funny how it makes me feel worse in a way, to confront my fears, only to drop the ball every goddamn time when I do.  Progress seems to require an awful lot of failure.

Open Air Jiujitsu

Thinking about braving something like this now.  First Sunday of every summer month, people from schools all around meet to grapple in the park.  Like that's not scary enough, I'd have to bike there and it's way the hell on the other side of Burlington.  I can imagine myself giving it a shot, but geez, I don't know.  It seems ambitious but I've been looking for something a little more social to try.

- update 6/23/2019 -

I actually went.  Well, I tried.  I biked all the way there, spent like an hour biking around the park, couldn't find anything but regular park stuff.  Which was nice I guess, but I gave up and went home.  So over ten miles, lots of pedaling uphill on my single gear mongoose.  Only to realize I had the time wrong.  I'd been an hour and a half early.

See what I mean?  What the goddamn fuck.

still not speaking human

There have been times not long ago, when merely writing something constituted an effort on my part.  Those were the earliest entries in this blog, back when forcing myself to write was about doing something, anything.  Now I try to fit in an update now and then, between everything else I've been up to.

How am I doing, right?  This is one reason for keeping a blog.  If I want to know what my state of mind was a year ago, two or three years ago, I can just look it up.  I've been trying to make progress for a long time.  I seem to like my writing a lot better from a distance, but am I doing better?  Am I getting anywhere?

I can look back at these old entries, like "So many mountains to climb," a straight-forward reference to feeling that I have a long treacherous and difficult path ahead.  Starting with the dishes.  Clearly, I'm doing more than I was, more that I want to be doing, more that would be called productive.  My kitchen is well stocked, I listen to music all the time lately, and that MMA place I took the sad little picture of?  I've been going regularly for over a year - so why do I feel like I'm treading water?

I'm certainly doing better, relative to where I was, but the rest of the world still feels so very far away.  Alienated, disconnected, socioeconomically precarious, I hesitate to laud my accomplishments too much, lest anyone think I'm doing well.

I try not to dwell on it as much, almost to the point of forgetting, but beneath all my latest efforts, I'm also still this person.. "I Don't Speak Human," the title of song I'd just stumbled across on youtube, a cartoonishly vivid portrayal of how I feel, but in particular, framed in a way I would have related to especially well a decade or three ago.  That part of me is still in there, cheering when they're flipping off humanity.

I can go back a few more years though.  Circumstances were pretty dire here.  Before I'd even been put back on growth hormone.  I didn't even understand how it worked yet.  I didn't understand why some people say it takes six months to work, while other say years - this is akin to asking how long calcium takes to rebuild the bone loss of a long standing calcium deficiency.

It is a luxury to be able to worry about the things I worry about these days.. "Mind at the End of its Tether," an H.G. Wells title, referenced in another book I'd read decades ago, The Outsider, by Colin Wilson.  In which the author seemed to consider it apt for an intellectual mind's eventual slide into the final stages of madness and depression.

So.. yeah.  I am doing much better.  I've lived my whole life with the shame of all the things I wasn't doing, but I'm also still not doing enough yet.  I'm doing better, but I have a long way to go.  Let my guard down for half a second and I'm napping again.  I'm doing so much better in terms of energy levels too, but it's exhausting, still so often grappling with exhaustion.

Still quite a few mountains to be climbed, I guess.

winning

I've been thinking, there's no way I could keep doing this school thing, if it weren't for taking martial arts.  It's difficult to put my finger on exactly how it helps, but it provides a feeling of emotional substance.  Without it, I'd be running on empty, and don't think I'd get anywhere at all.

This place where I train recently added a yoga class on Fridays, so I've been going to that too.  Probably a good idea, may even reduce my risk of injury.  Then afterwards, a muay thai class, and brazilian jiu jitsu across the room.  Lately I've been focusing more on BJJ, determined to get to the point where I might even be considered at least kinda good at it.

What really seems to draw me into it more than other arts is how I feel tested, almost every class.  It's known as "the gentle art" because of the way we can try what we learn on each other, we can see how well it works, how brutal it could be - without anyone getting hurt.  When I'm in an effective submission hold and have to tap out, it's because I've been indisputably beaten.  I'm grateful to be in a situation where tapping out is an option.  You can't test muay thai the same way, without people getting hurt.

So as I've blogged before, I tap out a lot.  Few times every class.  I'm drawn to a test that I've been repeatedly failing.  There are all sorts of reasons, but one of them could simply be that almost everyone there is relatively good, most of them having trained longer then me.  Never mind how they're all bigger, stronger, younger and they have pituitary glands.  I don't mind all the losing so much, because I'm grateful to be physically capable of doing this at all.

Still, felt good to win a few.  New student tonight, previous experience included "one semester" of BJJ, few inches taller than me.  He asked if I wanted to roll, after class.  Uh oh, I thought.  I just love being beaten by someone new, but of course, let me grab my mouth guard.. and I won.  Repeatedly.

I saw openings, omoplata, armbar, triangle, and went for them.  Somehow actually getting them right, except for the omoplata.  That's a tough one.  I almost got it, but had to transition into another armbar.  Sometimes it feels like maybe I'm finally making progress.  I'm skeptical, but come to think of it, I did pretty well the other day, too.

It's odd how despite all this, I still have to push my self so hard to go.  I almost always feel good afterwards, so you'd think I'd look forward to it, instead of desperately fending off excuses for why I should take the day off, every damn class.  When I fail that test, it makes my whole weekend depressing.

circumstances

My cousin is moving away.  They don't know exactly where yet, in the area, I assume, but they're selling the house, and her dog is already living elsewhere.  Walking that dog for her has been a regular part of my life for years now.  I'm relieved not to have to pick up anymore caca for a while, but I'll miss her.  Life's changes always feel so strange to me.

Who are we, if not these circumstances?  Circumstances change, who we'll be changes.  Given that I'm still all too entirely attached to my ego, these changes always feel so surreal to me.  One day big chunks of my life are just entirely different.  People, places, pets, going to a martial arts class or two every week, going to college.  Less confident than ever, but I'm getting better at doing it all anyhow.

My life is a lot different than it was.  I have an appointment with an optometrist tomorrow.  Come to think of it, that will be the first time I've gotten to one on my own, and my eyes have been terrible since I was a kid.  Somehow, I've always found a way to depend on someone else, because doctors scare me.  Especially the ones that are dubious about insurance.  Not sure what gets covered, when it comes to optometry and dentistry.  It's been different everywhere I've been.

I'm novelty seeking in many ways, but terribly change averse.  Somehow, I keep moving around anyhow, making these huge surreal changes now and then.  Going to school has been such a trip.  I'm not really sure if anywhere, where it's taking me, but it has been a massive change in the sorts of information my brain processes every day.

My thyroid seems to be swollen now, a lump in the vicinity of a parathyroid gland, that's nothing serious nine times out of ten, they say.  A common thing that happens to people over forty or somesuch.  Likely another jujitsu injury, but can't be sure.  So, also made an appointment to have that checked out.  Even if it's not serious serious, there's a good chance it's something that does need to be dealt with.  Good thing I'm getting better at dealing with things.

negating entropy

Physics I... W ..but still.

torpere

IIRC, this was the likely trajectory, with the idea that once I'm on track I might be able to keep going, despite it all.  So yeah, still inching along here.

It becomes so difficult to see the point in doing much of anything- not to be taken for an illogical conclusion, but an arbitrary feeling.  Motivation is a process; chemical, neurological, psychological and sociological.  A process that can go wrong for any number of cascading reasons.  It occurs to me that a more accessible way of asking what's the point would be to ask, what's in it for me?

Need to start meditating again, running again.  I need to study chemistry.  but why though.  It seems I lack confidence in any potential outcome making a substantial difference.  Dopamine should spike at the mere possibility of things going well.  I think something goes wrong with my process of motivation around there somewhere, but there could also be reasons that happens.  Reasons I've adapted by mucking up my own dopamine system.

The problem might be that life is largely crappy and ultimately pointless.  Human connection can provide some structure to that, but you people are all crazy.

6/19/2019 update

Crazy how I started doing those things I said I needed to do, and life started getting better.  Cleaned my apartment and stuff, too.

why am i doing this

Sometimes it's as if my mind works with a different sort of filing system.  I have trouble engaging with the material in such a way that I perceive the specifics to be important.  Each time I come to a similar problem, I have to figure out how to do it all over again.  Only remembering bits and pieces of what I'm supposed to be doing, even when I've finally had it all figured out already, just the other day.

I'm not so good at the jujitsu either, in large part because I can never remember any of it until I'm walking home after class.  I hate when people ask me for examples, of anything.  I don't have that kind of information on hand.  The information is all in there somewhere, but I'm terrible at finding it when I need it.  Maybe I'm just terrible with stress.  Any stress at all.  Could be a cortisol-corticotropin-pituitary thing.  Could just be from a lifetime of incessant depression.

It makes sense that I'd come around to this idea that learning is more valuable than knowing.  I can hardly remember what I've learned, anyhow.  This could be why I write, why I have been since I was a kid.  My concern that I'll forget what I'm thinking founded in that fact that I generally do.

I remember writing something about independence a while back.  My ability to function is heavily constrained and precariously dependent.  Getting myself stuck in some depressing job that's really just as precarious, constraining, and dependent would not help.  This is a problem in me, in how I interact with the world.  These things that I'm doing are about easing myself in that direction of fundamentally changing that.

If nothing else, it's important to remember why we're doing the things we do.

learning disability

I'm doing ok in chemistry, but mostly just because I've been diligent about turning in assignments.  Putting in enough work to get good grades, while I still bomb on the quizzes.  I'm not actually learning the material all that quickly.

I try not to look too lost in class, because the teacher watches, often asking where she's losing us.  If she asks me, I don't know what to say.  I don't know where to start.  She repeats an explanation, but I can't seem to parse the words quickly enough to remember any of it.  I'm still just as lost, and I honestly don't know why.

I hear the words, I understand most of the individual parts.  It's when she's putting it all together, in some step by step process that I don't organize the incoming information well, focusing on some pieces, missing others, keeping no track of the order any of it's in.  "Jab, cross, hook, kick" still loses me half the time.

I don't follow directions well.  I've always hated instruction manuals.  Now I'm trying to remember all the different rules of redox reactions and how to calculate the stoichiometry, balancing equations, and molar conversions, to milliliters, to grams.

Unlike physics, bombing in chemistry just means getting about a third of the answers wrong.  Should still average out to another C+ maybe even a B.  Not great, but what really gets me is that I still don't even know how to play a guitar.

The problem seems bigger than chemistry and physics.  In theory, I can learn how to do things.  Of course, but, have I ever learned how to do anything?

I'm actually drawing a blank here.  The only things I'm good at were largely a matter of winging it.  Some things can be achieved with enough practice, maybe learning a few basics.  Other things though, seem to require being taught some pretty complicated stuff.  I'm making progress I think, but I'm not actually sure.  I'm figuring out how to get through it.  I'm learning odd and ends, I'm getting a good amount of mental exercise, but what am I doing again?

Human beings are extremely adaptive.  We make do, we get by, we look normal.  My life has certainly been atypical though.  Trying to understand my teacher is a bit like trying to understand what the fuck I'm supposed to be doing in this world.  In this society.  It's all such a jumble of fucking nonsense to me.

transience

An old poem, and older painting, a theme I've often wrestled with.  Everything is so fleeting, and yet forever.  We can't hold onto any of it.  All the way down to who we are, countless moving parts, none of it lasting.  Life thrives when it's growing, changing.  The process of learning itself more valuable than anything we could already know.

↜∑≾∛↗↝

Finally started learning trigonometry in pre-calculus, and it's funny, I remember it pretty well.  My physics teacher pushed me way past the point of merely needing to understand basic trig.  For the first time, in pre-calc, when we're given a bunch of problems to practice, bang bang bang, I was done.  Had the right answers and everything. If that physics teacher weren't fucking with people's futures, I'd say he was actually good.

I have to keep reminding myself of why I'm doing this.  I'm not trying to succeed.  I'm not trying to prepare myself for a career.  I'm not trying to make friends.  I'm trying to exercise my mind such that maybe I'll eventually be able to start thinking about all that.  Rebuild a few neural connections.  In a sense, of course I knew that I was bad at this, but that's why I'm doing it.

I don't enjoy much of anything these days.  I'm pushing on in spite of depression, not getting past it in any biochemical sense.  I enjoy good food, so by extension, I almost enjoy cooking for myself every day.  Aside from that though, I don't have a lot to keep my going.  I've been this way so long, it goes without saying.  It really is an awful condition.

withdrawn

I hate to admit this more broadly, but I've been having a much rougher time this semester.  It's no wonder there are a lack of people going into STEM fields.  It's so much more challenging.  I don't know that the material itself has to be, or if there are issues with the way that it's taught, but the difference has been huge.

With the issues I'd been having with physics on top of that.. yeah, just too much.  I dropped physics, to focus on math and chemistry.  Unclear if there will be some sort of penalty down the road, possibly not.  If I had a 3.8 GPA, that might put a serious dent in things, but for me, no.  It might not matter at all, as long as I don't make a habit of it.

It's a great load off my shoulders, but it's still been really disconcerting.  It's like there's a sort of memorization that my brain has become extraordinarily bad at.  My memory is fine, generally.  I can remember the forest just fine.  Individual trees, though?  Can't I just Google it?

I wonder if it has to do with being so reliant on technology to do a substantial amount of the heavy lifting, for so long.  I've been Googling since before it was even known as Altavista.  Given the way the brain finishes developing by 25 or so, trying to remember anything after that just seemed so inefficient, right?

Honestly though, I'm appalled at how difficult it's been for me to remember much of anything.  I'm learning, but nowhere near the pace I'd expected given the amount of time I put into it.  Nowhere near the pace I'd need to be, to actually do well. The classes I have done well, were mostly classes in which I didn't need to learn much of anything.

I remember when I was a kid, refusing to do homework, acting as if I were above it.. I don't remember if I actually could do the homework, or if maybe I was frustrated because I didn't even understand what I was supposed to be doing.  I wasn't really paying attention.

Maybe I was too distressed, too distracted, too withdrawn. It's hard to say what causes it, but I'm realizing that I've never even attempted this, in the most elementary sense.  I essentially refused to put any effort into the entire education thing, and as soon as that started to equate to bad grades, as school started to demand anything at all, I wasn't having it.  I don't remember considering any alternative.  Maybe I didn't see any alternative.

Looking back on it, as I try to finally push myself now, I realize that there's a distinct pattern to it all.  Whatever intelligence I may have, and have ever had.. It seems to have a massive gaping hole in it.  I'm barely starting to get the hang of things, just enough to realize, I'm actually really bad at this.

Guess I'll see how I do going part time.  One advantage of that being financial aid covers classes year round, instead of being forced to take summer off.

3/1/2019
  

Fucking hell.. After assurances by both my adviser and the financial aid office that the class would still be covered before I made my decision ..half my financial aid was immediately revoked, and the school is now billing me $1500.  Technically, they'd still pay for the class, but since I'm no longer enrolled in 12+ credits, I don't qualify as a full time student, per federal aid requirements.

6/15/2019

Months later, I get a call out of the blue, telling me I had an unpaid balance for next semester, but taking another class would net me better financial aid, and oh btw, they're refunding me the $1500.  Then asking for $500 back.  Ok, still +$1,000.  Great, for the moment I think?

what IS factoring

Sometimes people remark that going back to school is tough.  It's been a long time since I've been in a math class, right?

No, I've never been in a math class before last semester.  My placement test put me at the college algebra level, but I was totally winging it.  I never learned ANY of this.  I'm not going back to college.  I dropped out of high school, just as we were starting to get into the most basic of math using letters as variables.  I've been trying to pick it up as I go, but it's been rough.

The other day, my pre-calculus teacher did a quick factoring review, and I attempted to ask this.  What IS factoring?  She starts by explaining that it's breaking numbers down into factors - duh, I get that - and then she goes on and on, without answering my question - I only realize that now, as I've finally figured out the answer for myself.  What I can't figure out is why the hell teachers don't just put things in direct terms.  I seem to have this learning disability where I have no patience for the rest of it, when I don't even understand the point.

Going through youtube videos and online tutorials, it's the same way, except that somewhere in the middle, sometimes I find what I'm looking for.  Aha!  This could have been a ten second video, what the fuck.  Factoring is such that the multipliers of term C can also be added together to equal term B. 

Suddenly, I know what the point is, and it's goes from immiserating confusion, to oh.  This is easy.  What the hell.  I realize it gets much more complicated from there, because some equations are complicated and require further tips and tricks to work with, but I needed that basic foundation, before I could understand anything else.

I suspect that physics is somewhat similar.  I have no patience for two hour lectures, where all the vital details and formulae are interspersed throughout.  Maybe it's severe ADD, or maybe it's just my learning style, the way my brain works, because of how I learned to learn, when I was very young.  When I was way ahead of everyone else.  On the other hand, it just makes sense to me, that you put the foundation first, before building on it.

It's not just an issue with teachers though.  I have a textbook, and it's the same way.  If I sit and read the entire chapter, I can't make sense of it or retain a goddamn thing.  I need it condensed to a succinct list of formulas used.  That should be page one of each chapter, rather than piecemeal all over the place.

There is a chance here, that I am still in fact pretty damn smart, but I've been having some serious doubts, wondering if after years of disuse, my brain has simply shriveled up, and I'm actually a moron now, only just coming to realize it.  That has certainly been what it's felt like.

are we having fun yet

Turns out, it's not all my fault.  Two years ago, CCV changed the pre-requisites for taking physics, from pre-calculus to intermediate algebra, because there weren't enough students taking it.  They did this despite the fact that we still need trigonometry to understand the curriculum, which isn't taught until midway through pre-calculus.

On top of that, there are two physics teachers, one with a reputation for being pretty easy, and the other.. not so much.  Guess which one I got.  It's weird, because he's really nice, and says he considers himself lenient, and yet gives me failing grades for not getting my lab reports perfect.  Despite getting it all right, I didn't show enough of my work?  5/10

I figure I'll catch up eventually, but that will still average out to a terrible grade, below the 70% I need to qualify for financial aid.  So I feel the school pretty much screwed me, and I'm not sure how that plays out.  Will financial aid refuse to grant me anything ever again?  Will I just have to pay for this one class?  Will I be too demoralized to keep going?  Can a person's entire academic future be fucked over this sort of thing?  What the hell, no wonder CCV has trouble filling their more advanced classes, and has an abysmal 11.5% graduation rate.

If possible, I'll just take it again, surely breezing through the second time, but I don't even know if that will be an option.  In the meantime, I've been studying my ass off, and it just never seems to be enough.  Forming new neural connections is taking much longer than I'd hoped.

I had to stop at Rite-aid for a few things after math class yesterday, and they needed my phone number for my discount card.. and wtf was it again, the square root of my area code, divided by cosine and sine squared of a • t / ∆d.. I couldn't even remember my phone number.

At least I know what trigonometry is now.

floundering

So yeah.  This is fucking horrible.  I study, I go to school, I endure all sorts of social hell, I come home.. and I have nothing to look forward to.  I have no reprieve, I go to bed ..and can't even sleep.  I got four hours last night, but got through the day in spite of it, only to not be able to sleep again tonight.

I have to wake up for class in four hours, but I don't think I can do it.  Oh and I'm not doing so well.  I haven't been studying enough, and it turns out, I can't wing physics.  I literally got every damn problem wrong, on my last quiz.  I need to actually study for it.  Which I've started doing a lot more of, but I'm an emotional basketcase.

Seems that whole self-medication thing was actually holding me together, even more than I'd realized.  I'm not sure what to do.  I just have to get through the next two weeks, talk to my psychiatric nurse, prove that I haven't touched cannabis in weeks..and then I'm going to get so fucking stoned.  Yeah, I can see how addicts relapse and end up overdosing.  Good thing my drug of choice is about as harmless as they come.

I'm not sure I can actually pass this physic class though.  Would be great if I could just take it twice, I'd surely ace it the second time, but financial aid doesn't like that.  I hate all these restrictions financial aid puts on me. 

I don't even have physics tomorrow.  Just chemistry and math, which I'm doing a whole lot better in, but that will change pretty quickly if I don't even make it to class.

drug testing

I stopped taking Zoloft a month ago because as SSRIs always do, it stopped working.  I understand a lot about how drugs and physiology work now, and it's frustrating how wrong so much of the conventional wisdom is.  If you take any drug every day, your body will get used to it.  It will build up in your system, you will both become dependent and develop tolerance.  You can increase the dosage, making the problem worse, or you can stop.

SSRIs are especially bad in this regard, because they must be taken every day, and must build up in the system to work at all.  So, their functionality is inherently antithetical to efficacy.  Another point worth mentioning, is that cross-tolerance is also a thing.  If you switch from one SSRI to another, you'll have an immediate tolerance to the new one, also.  These drugs are extremely similar in what they do, and slight variations don't bypass tolerance much.  You can try SSRI after SSRI, looking for the one that works, but surprise, none of them are ever going to work, without a good long tolerance break.

This should be common knowledge, but instead psychiatrists will look at me like I've got three heads for saying it, because it's not what the pharmaceutical companies tell them.  Yes, these highly educated professional authorities are wrong and I am right.  Absolutely.  Still, I've been seeing my psychiatric nurse practitioner, in the hopes of working something out.  He finally agreed to let me try dexamphetamine, but it comes with this long list of demands because it's a highly controlled substance.

I get it, most people are retarded children that would abuse it, without question. It's highly effective, even if you don't really need it, so people will take it every day, more and more, until ruining its usefulness and undermining their health, both physiologically and psychologically, in the process.  The same way they do with caffeine, but caffeine works very differently and has much less harm potential.

It's annoying, but most of it is easy to accommodate.  They want to count my pills regularly to make sure I'm not using more than prescribed and the like, but they also needed to do a urine test.  I told my nurse that I self-medicate with cannabis every day, so he knew I'd test positive for it, but the demand was that my numbers come down over the next few weeks.

So... THC Metabolite reference range < 5.0 ng/mL

...my results > 1,000 ng/mL.  LOL

Self-medication isn't just another way of saying abuse.  It means that whatever I'm medicating will no longer be mitigated.  I will stop vaping for a few weeks, but that means becoming more anxious and suicidal, with nothing to protect myself from that.  I'll try getting more meditation and exercise in, but I'm not terribly optimistic about being in a state of mind conducive to that.

This is an appalling and irresponsible approach to mental health treatment, the likes of which I blame for Jenny's suicide btw, but I have to go along with it, because I'm desperate.  There is a chance that once it's out of my system, which takes a few weeks, I'll realize that I'm better off without it.  I guess it's about time I find out for sure.

Unlike SSRIs, Dex can be taken as needed, work for a few hours, and then it leaves the system.  So of course, they want me to take it every day because they're fucking morons.  THAT'S NOT HOW STIMULANTS WORK.  I'll be taking it three times a week, at carefully chosen times to maximize efficacy and prevent tolerance.  However concerned my nurse is about addiction and whatever that means to him, I'm both more concerned and more knowledgeable about it all.  Number one, DO NOT TAKE IT EVERY DAY.

Most of my life, I've promoted the concept of self-acceptance, particularly in regards to mental health, and the same applies here.  Psychoactive medications are tools that can temporarily help us rise above our endogenous limitations, but they can not change who we are.  If you try to use a drug to escape who you are, you will fail.

reading people

Asked recently by a mental health professional about my classes this semester, one question was about the age composition of my new classmates.  Are any of them older, like me?  Each class has about fifteen students, one or two being over thirty or forty years old, aside from myself.  Most recently, for example, sure.  There was this one guy, within ten years or so.  Older, younger, hard to tell exactly.  Especially hard to tell in my case.  Sometimes I consider dying my hair, just to see how much it throws people, but it feels dishonest.

Was this someone I could could see myself relating to, he asked, knowing I have issues relating to people.  First of all, the answer was no, on all different levels.  I was struck by how immediate and automatic my response was, but also wonder about the strangeness of the question.  I'm not sure what it's supposed to mean, in the context of being an adult.  As if we're supposed to outgrow wanting friendship and connection, but I'm not really the beer and football type.

Mostly though, I stumbled over trying to explain how I could discern complete lack of interest in a person I knew absolutely nothing about.  So, I've been looking at different people, thinking about all the information I draw from little more than a moments glance.  An easy example being friendliness, something I think most of us attempt to discern as quickly as possible - this is what a lot that whole smiling business is about.  I'm not great at smiling, nor is it especially important to me in others, but I understand friendliness and why people do it.

There are all sorts of things we gauge from how people express themselves.  It seems unfair, because I try to friendliness.  I'm bad at it, but I keep trying 😬

Mental health issues of all kinds can interfere.  Lots of things can interfere with all of this, but some people can look more aggressive or more compassionate, more interesting or rather less so.  Some can look substantially dumber than others, but I'm not sure how accurate any of this is.  I have no idea how dumb I look to other people.

There's definitely a rapid fire assessment of all these things going on, whether it makes much sense or not.  Everyone reminds me of someone as soon as I meet them, each their own personalized stereotype.  Rough estimates can be practical, but it strikes me as an interesting phenomenon, as I try to figure out what sets me apart, now that I'm surrounded by humans again.

sobering

Something that's always nagged at me regarding addiction and how it's often talked about - underlying causes and all that - not only does this mean that giving up a drug is no solution, but having been free of drugs all along isn't even preventative.  It follows that some "addicts" have never done drugs at all, even.  If the question of whether we have a problem has nothing do with drug use or lack thereof, are we just talking about depression here?  "Just depression," as it were?

There does seem to be a different character to it.  A particular emphasis on escapism.  Gabor Maté says that addictive behavior is the product of trauma, particularly during early childhood.  That is, highly escapist behavior.  Escapist to the point of making terrible choices, just to hold onto whatever the method of escape may be.  The traumatized need their happy place?  Traditionally, the emphasis on addiction has not been about the problem, but the way of coping.  There may be various other ways of coping.

In a sense, this is also in line with the Buddhist concept of craving.  Maté wrote a book titled, Realm of the Hungry Ghosts, and I think all seven realms represent craving.  All of us exist within one of these seven realms, so a lot of it becomes broadly relatable.  Some closer than others.  Maté also claims that the so-called gene for addiction isn't a gene for addiction at all, but for sensitivity.  Whether it blossoms into addiction depends on circumstances and context, not the gene itself.  He sounds a lot like Sapolsky, in that way.

The more I've read about this, the more it's come to look awfully similar to this feeling of being driven to distraction.  An incessant impulse to get the hell away from myself, whether I'm trying to do it with video games and coffee, or cannabis and politics, or just plenty of alcohol.  Some healthy escapism of course being fine.  The problem being the obsessive pattern that develops.  Every waking moment of every day, it is the alternative to enduring.

I've spent my life jumping from one distraction to another.  I stopped for a while, magnificently undistracted, but I knew it wouldn't last.  So far, I've managed to keep crawling onward.  Wish to hell I could figure out how to clear my head like that again.  All the willpower I've been able to muster has only gotten me so far.  I can abstain from whatever seems to be problematic, but what I'm desperate to escape from doesn't go away.  It's more problematic than all of it.