passive observer

So, there's nationwide rioting now. In the middle of a pandemic, as the economy collapses. All going about as well as I'd expected, but guess I'm feeling shellshocked just the same. Always wondering about trajectories. Is this about to be crushed by the authorities and swept behind us, as we head into whatever catastrophe comes next? Or is this going to go on for a while, the way it has in France or Hong Kong. Our cops are being horrifically brutal.

I watch it all from the sidelines, much as I watch everything humanity does. There isn't much going on in Vermont, but if I had comrades heading over to New York or whatever, that might be different. If I were more motivated to actually do things, I'd have the means and maybe even the will to go get involved. I just sit here though, the way I always do.

Just taking it all in, rooting for the protesters. I admire their courage and energy. I'm mostly just trying to figure out what's going on, as the world just keeps getting crazier. I've spent a lot of my life bored and alone, but this is something else. My sense of time just keeps getting worse. I'm barely sleeping. Days feel like weeks. Not quite as depressed as I was, though.

Meanwhile, my gym is "reopening" tomorrow. With all sorts of restrictions for me to be anxious about. They say don't come in if you have any symptoms at all. Any sign of a cough or runny nose, and they don't want to take the risk. No contact between students or staff, unless they come from the same household. They recommend finding a designated partner to engage in any partner activities. BJJ is presumably still out of the question entirely. Can't learn that without lots of contact. Sparring, also out.

All rather problematic for me. On the one hand, maybe I should try to rise to the occasion and make the most of it. On the other.. I'm getting pretty good at working out on my own. If I'm still not training with people, it's just a lot of extra hassle and anxiety for nothing. I'll be asking what's the fucking point in no time, and I'm not sure what to tell myself.

This has also been expected. Now I may have to be choose not to go. If that makes me unhappy, it'll feel more like my own fault. Not sure what to do, which is when I'm most likely to do nothing.

problem solving

In rereading my old writing, I realize there's a progression to it. I know that what I don't write down, I largely forget. Not because I'm particularly forgetful. The human mind generally doesn't keep track of everything we think about every day, for the rest of our lives. Not just a matter of remembering, but keeping track of, and building on. Countless steps leading in what seems to be a vaguely upward direction. I don't know where I'm going, but shudder to think about what's behind me.

Writing helps me maintain particular conceptual formulations in working memory longer than possible naturally. I do it publicly because it makes the endeavor more substantial. When I write for myself, it's fragmented and half baked, filed away to be forgotten somewhere. Other people seem to be important.

My last post, for example. I wonder if it comes across as a problem I'm trying to solve, or a more self-affirming proud-of-who-I-am sort of thing, despite the negatives. Or, does the reader focus more heavily on the negatives, to see it as self-effacing?

Taking some of that into account, I wonder myself. I fixate on the issues of social connection, not because of some pathology, but because lacking social connectivity can be extremely toxic. I've done a lot of thrashing around in my life, trying like hell to figure out what to do about it.

I made a video today of some of my workout. Posted it to Facebook. It's something I feel proud of, but it's weird needing to record myself. Expressing this sort of vanity makes me uncomfortable, but eh, thought I'd give it a shot. My mom was the first person to like it. Thanks, mom.

Then my old Hwa Rang Do instructor liked it. We haven't had any interaction at all since I left Minneapolis two or three lifetimes ago. Suddenly my unusual choice to throw in my old ssang jeol bong (nunchuku) skills seemed an especially good idea. A homage to my time at his school, but I didn't expect him to actually see it. It made me happy to see that he appreciated it.

Trying to live in the world has not been going as well as I'd hoped it would, and that's been churning beneath all this pandemic angst. A reluctance to return to all of that.. but I'm reminded that I was on the right track, and why. Other people really do seem to be important.

dysexecutive hungry ghosting

I literally do nothing all day. It's difficult to explain why. There are lots of things I could be doing. I just don't care. I don't want to do any of it. So, I think about this a lot. What this dopaminergic collapse might mean, what to do about it. I'm bored, restless, miserable doing nothing, but I'd be bored, restless, and miserable doing anything else too, so. I just sit here. All day, every day.

Not quite. I don't want to do any of it.. by myself anymore. My efforts at being out in the world are all about hoping to meet someone. I care about all sorts of things. I'm interested in all sorts of things. None of it moves me. I'm not functionally motivated, without the hope that someday even just taking a walk might seem worth doing. Which it would be, with the right person to walk with. Maybe.

I have to be honest with myself. I don't know that this concept of being with someone isn't just a device I've learned to use, to be able to imagine being happy. The carrot at the end of the stick to get myself going. To keep myself going. Despite never being happy. 

I learned it pretty young. After leaving Syracuse, I was always looking for friends like I'd had back then. As a teenager, I transitioned into idealizing the concept as more of a romantic relationship. Only in recent years, thinking back over it all, have I realized I never had those friends in the first place.

I had friends, but it was really just me, exalting the friendship to such a degree. Best friends forever, soul mates, whatever we call it. It was one sided, but I was oblivious to that. I've realized it probably wasn't even healthy then, let alone the lifelong pursuit to regain it.

It is a coping mechanism though, not the problem itself. When you have a broken leg, a crutch can be important, but now that we're all socially distancing, I have no way of even pretending I might meet someone. Thus, I have no reason to do anything. Again. All the nothing I've done in my life has been when I've had no hope that doing anything would help (meet this person)

Except I liked the bjj, judo, muay thai. I seem to honestly enjoy that for whatever reason. I can speculate, but maybe another time. I don't know why. In any case, I can't do that, either. So aside from preparing my two meals a day and working out, I just sit here.

truth over facts

I've been reading about all these different countries, how they're managing covid19, how well it's working, etc. Then I saw an ad for pizza delivery. They say it's all safe, no contact, but it's food, it has to be prepared by people, transported by people. I'm sure they have precautions every step of the way, but people make mistakes. Check the reviews and yep, plenty of evidence for it, too.

Then, you don't get sick. Never even knew you were infected, but a brother's friend's mother inexplicably gets really sick weeks later. Good luck with the contact tracing.

Americans are being far less careful than they are in places like South Korea, Switzerland, and China. Even the most well intentioned among us often don't understand why these measures need to be airtight. No pun intended, right? Papa Johns is not an essential service. All sorts of things are still open that are not essential. America just can't give them up, and that's one reason our curve isn't flattening at all.

While we're talking about it as if it's on the decline - people are literally saying that new cases are on the decline - but the data is right here. It's not. Daily cases are very much still going up. We're succumbing to the pressures from all different sides, and lying to ourselves about it. I'm sure that'll work out great.

Ironically, partially opening up is the right thing to do, with one huge America-will-fuck-it-up caveat. It requires all sorts of serious precautions and public awareness and cooperation. Maybe that's three caveats, but we've got none of it. Everything from factory farms to restaurants to preschools just figuring it out on their own. It's great that they're trying, sure. Except it's not, because the lockdown is not a mitigation strategy. It's not just a way to keep infections to a minimum.

It's supposed to be a strategy for safely reopening everything. For that strategy to work, it's almost all or nothing. We can't ever reopen safely, if we can't get new cases down to zero, not just in regional pockets here and there, but much more broadly. We can never reopen safely with ignorant laughable precautions, like putting shower curtains in restaurants. Sure it might help, but if even a few people are getting infected, the entire thing is a failure. The virus remains uncontrolled and uncontained, making it impossible to do anything safely.

This is where the country is stuck. The lockdown strategy isn't working. It can't. America is just way too broken. This means the way we're going might be the only way we can go. People will resist, the economy and everything will suffer anyhow, many places will try to lockdown again, only to be unsuccessful again. 

In the meantime, we'll never be able to fully open. As the death toll keeps climbing, no one is going to be wanting much physical contact with strangers. I suspect lots of business will be having more serious problems, even if allowed to open. Even the lockdown protesters will start seeing the deaths, if not dying themselves, and I find it tough to believe that won't shake their convictions a bit.

On a somewhat more positive note, new studies have shown SARS-COV2 is actually much less deadly than we thought.. but also much more contagious. Turns out far more people have antibodies than they expected to find. Being a novel virus makes that 0.1% fatality rate much more severe than it sounds.

I guess we do have herd immunity against the flu. We have no immunity against this, which is why this good news isn't all that good. In ten years though, when civilization is a smoldering heap of rubble, it will probably be even less deadly than the flu is now. In the meantime, on an individual level, it means even the compromised have a much better chance of surviving an infection than we thought. You often don't even know you've had it.

Unless these serology studies turn out to be completely wrong. Who knows with any of this.

i just can't

I still work out every morning and hit the heavy bag for a while. It's the one thing I'm holding onto. For me though, other students to train with is the most important thing, and it's the instructors that are optional. Not that they don't add anything, of course good teachers are great - but I could still get into an open gym situation where everyone just trains together. I can't get into this:

"While waiting for us to reopen"

It feels so much more complicated than that. I don't know if or when they'll be able to reopen. I've been repeating myself a lot here, but I don't know that I've expressed this coherently yet. On the one hand, it sure seems like there's hope that within a few months, maybe everything will be back to normal. People on Twitter seem to think the worst is already behind us. Maybe I'll feel silly for being this stressed out over taking a few months to avert millions of deaths.

It sure seems that way, but I can't see how it's even possible. If I'm right about how long this will go on, it snowballs into all sorts of other problems. We're going to be in a state of collapse, unable to deal with climate change, inequality at its worst ever, and our government a clusterfuck of psychopaths and morons. This is some seriously dark dystopian shit. To be clear, the government isn't going to be sending out a meager stimulus checks, while we sit at home complaining. They'll be killing us for trying to survive.

On the one hand, everything might be fine. On the other, it might be the end of the world. I find this internal conflict very disconcerting. 

happy happy joy joy

I keep hearing that I worry too much, I'm dwelling, I shouldn't wind myself up over things that are out of my control. When one person says this, I can respect it. To each their own. When I'm getting the same rationale from all different directions, I start to wonder. It doesn't actually make any damn sense - to me. Why am I looking at this differently than everyone else?

I want to think about and discuss this incredibly consequential event as it's happening, but I should refrain because it can cause negative emotions? Makes sense taking care of six year olds, but I don't understand this view regarding adults. Negative emotions are the least of my worries here. I'm angry and bored out of my mind because my life is gone, my hope of meeting people gone, my hope of getting out of this hell, gone. I just have to go back to sitting here enduring it. The least I can do is try to make sense of it all and commiserate with myself about it.

It has been pretty challenging to make sense of. I've learned a lot trying. I keep wondering about other people because if I'm this confused, what the fuck are you all thinking. I'm also more obsessed with the human response to this than the virus itself. Another thing people don't get. I'm not even worried about the virus. I'm worried about the people. The ways people are reacting has also been complicated.

We feel powerless. Why expend energy on something we can't do anything about? We don't know virology or epidemiology. Let the experts take care of us. Maybe we'll get lucky, and science will have some kind of breakthrough tomorrow - and it would still have to go through a year of testing. That's best case scenario. It will probably take much longer to really get this under control. 

Maybe we open things really carefully, with all sorts of precautions, and we can keep spread down to a minimum in the meantime. Another best case scenario. Also improbable, because we're instead going to reopen things early, with laughable precautions that allow the virus to become even more deeply entrenched.

Beating COVID19 is pretty much out of the question now. It will kill millions of people and that's scary, sure.. but I don't know what the hell people are going to do. It appears we're going to reopen things. That is going to cause a new wave of infections. That much seems reliable.. but, will we shut down again? 

Politicians looking at this from the top down might see that we have no choice but to try to function in spite of the "risks," and they'll try to work with that. People though are going to see it differently. They're not going to understand or accept it. Some will be angry about how much worse our leaders have made the problem. Others won't understand any of that, but they'll be just as angry. Unprecedented numbers of people won't be able to afford food or rent, while billionaires are frantically making everything worse. A massive storm is coming and I think we should try to be prepared for it.

It will be amazing if I'm wrong about all of this and everything turns out fine in a few months. People harp on the fact that I don't know. We can't see the future, but we never fucking know anything. We can't even see the present. We make the best educated guesses we can, and try like hell to survive.

#StayTheFuckHome

the missing point

I wonder about other people, who seem to be handling this better than I have been. Especially people who are in roughly similar situations - minimal social connections, so now almost entirely isolated. I don't know anyone in a situation like mine, but many living alone, who had jobs, now sitting around doing nothing all day every day.

It occurs to me that I don't understand how they can live that way in the first place. In some dead end low wage job, doing nothing to make their lives better. Not that I feel superior, just that it seems incredibly depressing. Why even keep doing the job? Why not fall into a pit of hopeless despair, like I did?

For me, that sense that I'm trying to get somewhere is important. That it's somewhere realistic and worth getting to, not just a distraction. I've talked a lot about this growth mindset, wherein who we are is not an anchor, but a vector. Who we are is what we're striving for, how we're striving for it, what we're doing. Not some mirage of ego.

Now I'm doing nothing again. My entire life strategy blown to hell. Not sure if I should rethink it or just give the fuck up. I don't understand people who are content to be going nowhere, just surviving, distracted by their jobs, then placated by their fictional media of choice, television, books, movies, video games. I've lost interest in all of that, and often wondered why.

It's directionless, a distraction from being directionless. Like a dead end job we're not getting anything out of aside from the paycheck. Other people are handling this better than I am, for the same reason they were handling life before better than I do. Keeping busy with chores and watching TV or whatever.

I don't know that I'd call this part depression. Low expectations may yield greater peace of mind, but I'm not sure I understand peace of mind for it's own sake. Stillness is clarity, but it's also stagnation. Over time, stagnation becomes increasingly harmful, although so is a lack of rest, or lack of stillness. Finding a balance was ideal.

Having some direction in life can help with depression, but I think that's because it's just generally good for mental health, to keep moving, progressing in our lives in some way. Much the way physical health benefits from regular movement. It's not easy though. Movement comes from motivation. This situation is crippling me on multiple fronts. Taking away everything I was doing, my reasons for doing them, and the means by which I was even capable. I was barely keeping it together as it was.

Guess I should have gotten my life together five or ten years ago. Seems I've missed my window of opportunity before the world ending.

the world is burning

I'm periodically reminded of just how little most people understand about mental health. It's easy to forget, because to me, it's fundamental. To them, it's abstract. At times, it's easy for me to forget too, just how not abstract it is. Like dropping something and wondering why it falls to the ground, after writing all these posts about gravity.

It's frustrating, because I know we make these judgments about whether a person is positive or negative, strong or weak, handling their shit or falling apart. We make these judgments with so little understanding of what's going on.

It's also frustrating, because I don't see other people taking the dangers they're in seriously. I'm not just worried about myself here, but lately I'm questioning my own sanity more than usual too. I know that I've fallen back into serious clinical depression, and it can be skewing my judgment.

I don't know what to do about any of this.

over there, some other time

Trying to make sense of things has a lot to do with perspective and context. "Long and short define each other," as now is relevant to then, here is relevant to there. Nothing means nothing without no context.

Aside from making communication difficult, this also seems to mean I don't think as much of the present moment. Even in terms of what I enjoy, I'm far less inclined to do anything that's just going to be gone in a moment or two. I understand there may be value in sitting with the moment, being mindful of it, but it's also a delusion. 

When we think about the past or future, somewhere else that we imagine, this is all conceptual. We're making it up. This is easy to understand. It's a little more mindblowing to realize that we're also making up the present. Time itself is conceptual framing for a process we don't understand, vastly greater than're equipped to fathom. Everything that has ever happened everywhere exists, just not where we happen to be at the moment.

So, where are we? In our own minds, swimming in nonsense.
Here and now.

circumstances 2020

Last May, I was blogging about circumstances, and how they define us. How surreal it can be when they change, when they change us. Crazy year its been. No wonder I have no fucking clue who I am anymore.

I don't know if I'm feeling so hopeless because the situation I'm in is depressing such that it induces a hopeless chemistry or if said hopelessness is entirely rational. This situation sucks, and I can't see it working out any time soon. Even if we're talking years, I should be ok. I could conceivably be ok.. but it's not feeling that way. I'm feeling so utterly broken, the future stretching off into a very dark and ominous haze.

It's odd the way they talk about reopening things. Even people who oppose it seem to think the consequences will be this thing that happens; people will die, but it will be done. More likely, people will die, then more people will die, then people will keep dying - until they close it all down again. This isn't going to be done, no matter what they do, until the science comes through for us.

Is there something in epidemiology that says this sort of thing just kinda goes away, regardless? What a huge relief if true. Or maybe we can weather the carnage. That seems to be the expectation, but as it accumulates, they tend to realize it's worse than they expected. Some panic and shutdown immediately. Others may try to really push it, because if it works, all that death won't be for nothing. It won't work. It will be for nothing. They'll still end up shutting down, I think.

Maybe it won't be as bad as I think though. Who the hell knows. I'm just here sheltering in place month after month waiting to see how much worse things can get. My brain chemistry does seem to be pretty fucked up lately, I must admit. Circumstances can do that.

old heart falls

Woke up again this morning.

Fuck.

I don't want to do this anymore.

This is what I've been dreading, this is what's been keeping me going. Fear of feeling like this again. Another fucking day with nothing worth doing. Same as every other, another day in this vanishing life.  Depression. I just had to keep moving, keep going to classes. I stumbled, but this was the alternative that kept me getting back up.

Now just like that, here I am, back in this all too familiar hell, just the fucking same.

I wonder how other people are doing. This is hitting everyone differently, each of us in very different situations. I'm not sure anyone understands how bad my situation is. Assholes think I'm lucky being able to sit at home all day.

I want to cast blame, rant about how they're handling this.  Of course it's lacking. People are idiots.. but even if they did everything right, this destroyed my life just the same, and I'm not handling it well. I don't see much point in handling it well. I think about how long this is likely to last, and there's no way I can get through this.

Martial arts isn't just important to me. There isn't anything I can replace it with. Training without the interpersonal physical interaction isn't worth doing at all. It's not some sort of compromise solution. This is why I'm so depressed. This was the most critical part of pulling myself together, and there are no compromises, no alternatives, no solutions.

and it isn't about the fucking martial arts. It's whatever the hell is wrong with me. This is the only thing that works. This has been what props up everything else I've been doing. There are a number of intersecting reasons.It's one of few interests I've had my entire life. It's one of the only things I want to do at all, for who knows what reason. Exercise, motivation, social interaction. It was the only thing in the world that makes me happy, and I was finally doing it.

Would have been interesting if I'd stuck with it since I was seven, but I was tired. I tried again when I was 30. Again in my 40s. It hasn't been easy for me, taking decades just to get started.

It's also like language of sorts that I feel relatively fluent in, almost confident about. I interact with people in these classes, as if I too am supposed to be there. I feel more out of place everywhere else. It's weird too, because I'm older and smaller than everyone, so I kinda am objectively out of place, but I'll spar with any of them, no hesitation. I just hate when they try to talk to me.

In turn this helps me feel more confident elsewhere in life. Sort of. It's a long slow process, and I was just getting started.

Everything else I've been doing was built on that. It was holding me together, while going to CCV endeavored to tear me apart. Between the two of them, my only contact with humanity. Eventually I'll be able to go back to college classes, with all sorts of precautions in place.. I still won't be able to train with anyone. I'm not doing that. I won't be doing anything for a frighteningly long time, having clawed my way out of years of solitary confinement, only to be thrown back in.

I don't know what the MMA schools will do. I run through all these different scenarios in my head. Nothing works out. I can't see how they're going to be there for me, for quite a while. What state will I be in, when they finally are? At this rate, I'm not going to hold it together anywhere near that long.

I don't understand why we're pretending this will all be fine in a few months. It's possible I guess, but it's not how the situation looks to me. This is making me feel crazy. My only hope being that something entirely unpredictable fixes everything. Seems to be what everyone else is counting on, but that's not usually how science goes, right? It may look that way when we're not really paying attention, but these things take years. Sometimes many years.

Meanwhile, everything just keeps getting worse. I'm not sure if we're all fucked, or if it's just me. I was barely hanging on as it was. Now I can't even go visit my dying father.