idea entity

That H in ADHD always bugged me. It was almost always referenced as ADHD and not ADD, occasionally including some mention of the H being silent in some cases. Some were dreamers, more than particularly active, let alone hyperactive. Clearly, that was me. I never identified as a wellspring of kinetic energy, but I certainly have attention deficits. This means constantly getting distracted and feeling driven towards activities which override distraction. Competitive sport and video games both achieve this by actively demanding attention, rewarding it, and punishing distraction. You can't really space out when you're sparring.

Growth hormone is more aptly called a metabolic hormone. It plays a substantial role in the body's production of energy. Being deficient made physical activity highly discouraging, so I languished away playing video games instead. They make it difficult to space out as well. I could have pushed myself harder to compensate for my deficiency somewhat. That's what I should have done, but I didn't have the guidance. I didn't know how or what to do. Now that I'm being treated for it, I have to contend with getting old, instead.

There are all sorts of things I've been trying to do my whole life that require lots of attention. From reading to playing guitar, to painting, these things can be substantial components of my sense of identity, along with decades of feeling frustrated, unable to focus on doing these things any more than sporadically. My failure to be what I wanted to be also became a substantial part of my identity.

This sense of identity is based on a deficit which can make it highly variable. At times, I've done lots of reading, or artwork. I practiced Russian and Spanish almost every day for a long time. I read Feynman and Sapolsky. When my mood is better, I am less limited by such deficits, but a better mood requires overcoming other deficits. So much of identity is based on variables, even brain chemistry and hormone levels that can change with what we eat or how we sleep.

I haven't been remembering my dreams for years. I just started taking zinc for unrelated reasons, and suddenly I'm remembering my dreams again. I've also been doing lots of sweating these past few years, in addition to going entirely vegan. Two common causes of zinc deficiency. I noticed substantial improvements within days of starting to take it, before I expected anything at all. I've never noticed much of anything taking a vitamin before. A deficiency seems like a good bet.

We never know what sort of environmental factors make us who we think we are, who we think anyone else is. As life violently bounces us around at random, a primary function of human consciousness seems to be constantly crying out, I meant to do that! When this ridiculous function fails, we can get really depressed, in large part due to the realization that life is just violently bouncing us around at random.

make war not art

For some reason, martial arts has always been uniquely important to me. I've been at my best when I've been training, and I fall apart when I haven't been. It's taken me decades to get over the notion that the kung-fu isn't something to be taken seriously. I never let myself think, you know, maybe this is what I should be doing with my life.

At my age, it really is probably too late career wise, but I can still get out of it what I can, while I can. I don't know why it took me so long, but I actually do know why. I remember moving to Vermont. I knew this MMA school would be the first place I should check out, but it took me years to build up the courage. In Montclair, I'd scouted out all the local schools, even found some in Newark, Brooklyn, and Manhattan.. but never stepped foot in any of them.

I've always been too terrified of everything, but I've been trying to do this my whole life. What else can I say that about? I keep trying to justify and explain it, but why does that even matter? 

I've done a lot of reading in my life, and I hope to do a lot more, but "I'd rather be throwing kicks than reading books," as I put it the other day. It felt strange to admit that. It's not the identity I've tried to present my whole life. It feels like a sort of laziness, like admitting I prefer donuts to broccoli - which in fact isn't always true. These things depend on all sorts of circumstances.

Right now, circumstances aren't good. What I've learned about combatting depression is that it's important to do things. I'm fixating on the MMA so much because I know it helped the most. I'm clinging to that. As my mood improves, I'll have an easier time getting into books books and art, albeit maybe never as much as I like punching stuff.

why am i like this

Depression can mean a lot at once. It occurred to me to Google "symptoms of clinical depression" to help illustrate what I'm talking about.

Anxiety, apathy, general discontent, guilt, hopelessness, loss of interest or pleasure in activities, mood swings, or sadness. Agitation, excessive crying, irritability, restlessness, or social isolation. Early awakening, excess sleepiness, insomnia, or restless sleep. Excessive hunger, fatigue, or loss of appetite. Lack of concentration, slowness in activity, or thoughts of suicide.

To me, a list of symptoms like this doesn't indicate a complex multifaceted disorder, so much as a gamut of consequences for a type of neurological impairment. Even sadness is not a central component of depression, but one more outcome of the brain failing to regulate itself.

Depression can be confusing, because it doesn't appear to be the natural outcome of anything. As the brain becomes impaired by experiences and a failure to meet basic emotional needs, there can be no apparent connection between those circumstances and having insomnia or irritability months later. As we adapt and pathways are reinforced, years later. Decades later.

I've been trying to overcome this all my life. I finally thought I was getting somewhere, but this last year blew all that to hell. I still have a plan of sorts. I still work out every day. It's the only thing I do, because it's the most efficient tool in my toolbox, and I don't have much to spare. If I keep at it, I can build on that, when the time comes. 

I do not have a lot of confidence in this plan, but I don't see a viable alternative. Depression is a hard problem. There's an entire medical discipline devoted to repairing the damage of early childhood and the like, but I'm skeptical. I haven't seen much evidence that it ever actually works. The experiences of our past form the foundations we've spent our lives building on. We can bury it behind us by building on it more effectively.

I've seen lots of therapists in my life. Social workers, psychiatrists, and psychotherapists. Not to brag or anything, but I'm not even talking one or two of each. Over the years, across seven states, it's added up to more than I can count offhand, in each category. They focus a whole lot on the past, because it's easier for them. If they start talking about the present, suddenly they've got all sorts of real issues to deal with, beyond the scope of their profession. All those stressors in our daily lives, much of which little can be done about. We can learn better coping strategies, but that only gets us so far.

There are things we can do to counteract depression, but it takes a lot more work than talking about our childhoods for half an hour a week. Some therapies consist of pushing clients to do that work between sessions, but that's about as successful as you might expect, if you've ever tried to suggest to someone with depression that they should exercise. Something I've advocated often, but I know how difficult it can be, and it's only a first step. 

Diet can be another, but swapping out frozen pizzas for fresh produce can require learning how to cook, and require all sorts of time and effort that a depressed person may not be inclined to spare. Adequate sleep can be vital too, but life can even make that difficult. Having goals and a reason to get out of bed every day can be more difficult than it sounds. The more of these things we can check off, the more resilient we will be.

Hardest of all for me, has been socializing. Human contact is critical, but requires engaging with people according to strange and complicated dynamics. Going to a party to sit alone in the corner can fail to be of any benefit whatsoever. Most social interaction can fall into this category, for someone with depression. Unable to emotionally engage, just getting through it. There needs to be a measure of trust, and common ground, or common goals. This is how the brain chemistry has evolved to work. Online interactions can be a poor substitute for being around people. Hanging out with family isn't a substitute for peer relationships or engaging with humanity more broadly. These needs our species evolved to have require chemical triggers related to how we perceive and interpret others and our interactions with them.

Our society has become so individualistic and atomized, with the pandemic throwing that into sharper relief than ever. I know I'm not the only person struggling, and that many of us were already struggling, when this past year compounded everything. It's not surprising that so many people opt to risk getting covid over isolating themselves, particularly in a country like the US. 

Mental health problems can be self-perpetuating precisely because correlations between behavior and consequence can be so speculative and uncertain. The impulses we have to protect ourselves can lead to behaviors that only make the problem worse, unless we understand why we are the way we are.

hikikomori

All my life, I've felt different, unable to form connections with others. I've felt isolated and alone, in personal relationships, and in rooms full of people. In recent years, I've come to think maybe the problem was never that I'm different. Regardless of whether or not I really am all that different, maybe that was not the impediment. It's a story I've been telling myself since I was a little kid, but not without reason.

More likely, the problem was within me, responses to childhood trauma; defenses I'd had to learn, to wall myself off from people. It's been like being locked in solitary, my entire life. Sometimes people visit, but nobody can get me out. I get stuck on martial arts because it was the exception. I felt a sense of connection when I'd spar and grapple. A way out of solitary. The only way I've known. 

I've often wondered if finding a good sparring partner would even provide sufficient basis for a friendship. Good sparring is fairly demanding criteria in itself, but it was looking far more attainable than whatever else I was looking for. Even if I never felt much of a connection with any of the other students individually, I felt a sense of community and camaraderie with all of them. Ever so slowly, I was also getting better at the individual interactions of more verbal nature.

In a broader sense, I've always been a more physical person than I like to admit. I've always preferred throwing kicks to reading a book. I've been watching all sorts of dumb action on Netflix. Not that I can't appreciate other genres, but I gravitate towards a lot of monster fighting silliness and I'd rather be the one fighting the monsters. The hobbies I've stuck with have been the simplest. I cook because I like to eat. I grow peppers, because I like to cook. I've enjoyed connecting with people and the world more physically, in simple terms of senses and instincts.

Simply hearing people talk can immediately elicit feelings of alienation, before they've said much of anything. Trying to reply, even more so. Appropriate and healthy neural connections are not being made, but this can be a matter of conditioning and experience. In time, with practice, maybe I'd relax and get better at it.

I was trying, but instead, I've spent the last year locked away in my apartment, getting worse by the day. Back to the old self I never really got away from. I don't want to find some way to come to terms with this. I refuse to be ok with living like this ever again.

imaginary happiness

Youtube recommended this video a while back, but I didn't watch the whole thing. I saw enough for this one concept to stick with me. The narrator says that we despair because we lack the imagination to see how things could be better. This strikes me as patently absurd, but I keep thinking about it. I know that even people living in trailer parks can find happiness in buying lottery tickets. Further, that sort of dopamine gaming may even ward off depression to some degree.

What is that but to imagine how things could be better? Instead of dwelling on how you probably won't win, think about how great it would be if you do! A therapist might advise being a little more realistic about what we're aiming for; tell some poor schlub that they can be anything they set their mind to, and sure, maybe they'll turn their life around. Or maybe they'd have better luck playing the lottery. How realistic are we being, really? I'm not sure the psychological mechanism being advocated is any different.

I also wonder what this says regarding how negativity is perceived by others. It concerns me that despair is being interpreted this way. It's like when they tell the agoraphobe to just go outside, or to have the good fortune to be forced outside, expecting them to be shocked into dramatic improvement upon learning for the first time that it's actually quite pleasant out and nothing terrible happens. That's not how it works, and that's not helpful.

I can certainly imagine it. I can imagine winning the lottery or finding a djinn to grant me wishes. My imagination does seem to fall short, when it comes to how I might earn a living, but for the most part, I can imagine things going all sorts of well. I'm just disinclined to believe any of it. I can imagine taking a much more emotionally stable position when things do go wrong, but that isn't what actually happens, either. I don't know this world in which anything goes well. Life goes wrong at every goddamn turn and then you die, as far as I can tell. 

So yeah, I'm compelled to just to hide. I don't have aspirations when surviving for the time being is really the best we can do. You certainly don't want to screw up the surviving bit, chasing rainbows. Some might call this a trauma response, and yeah, what a traumatic world this is. Happiness is the product of imagination, much the way suffering is the product of living in reality.

Maybe if I improve myself, life will go better. That seems rational enough. Going to CCV, taking MMA, meditating, it's all premised on this, what I thought was a pretty healthy intersection of reason, knowledge, experience, and imagination. Still waiting though, for anything in life to be any better than futility and catastrophe. I thought I was doing the very best of what I could possibly be doing, but this miserable bullshit this is still my life.

I can even imagine being happy with the way my life is, exactly as it is, but that's not how the neurochemistry works. It has more to do with basic human needs being met. It's like telling a starving person to imagine that they just had a great meal. Even if that causes a miraculous shift in ghrelin levels, you're still starving.

ragnarok

I finally have a Netflix account. Setting it up, I was asked to pick three movies I liked from a list of a hundred or so, and it was tough, because I'd never heard of any of them. Years ago, this general loss of interest in story telling started causing problems for me. Was it my lacking attention span, was my imagination dying? It makes me uneasy on various levels, but giving it up wasn't a conscious decision. I just lost interest in all of it.

This year, I've had to reacquaint myself with mindlessly wasting time, playing video games, watching lots of youtube, and finally, Netflix. It's a lot more international than I remember it. I don't know if that's customized to me, because I listed six different preferred languages, or if Netflix is just making all this international content popular. I've watched movies and TV shows in Japanese, Portuguese, Cantonese, and Norwegian. A South Korean movie I watched had characters speaking in about twelve different languages.

Most of it seems rather mediocre, but it's entertaining. I find myself watching these shows, and even caring what happens next. It's pacifying, but I had a taste of what it was like to have hope in actually changing my situation, making something of myself that I'd actually want to be. Time goes by so fast. Watching TV makes it go by even faster. I don't want to go back to being pacified, but I don't know how to get that hope back.

I seems to cause me a great deal of anxiety, waiting month after month for things to return to normal, not knowing if even that will be enough. If it ever happens. I don't even know what I'm waiting for exactly. Took all the willpower I could muster, just to go pick up a few groceries today.

"Mange tror at Ragnarok var slutten. De tar feil. Det er hvor alt starter."

Nice sentiments, but it's fantasy. In reality, bad shit happens and everything dies. There are no heroes, no saviors. There aren't even any good guys, really. Just lots of clowns stumbling around each other in the dark. We're lucky if we can find a few people who aren't fucking terrible.

hang the dj

As I understand it, negativity is not very popular. In expressing something, there can even be this underlying presumption of advocacy. That is, why say something, if you don't think it's right? "Right," being intentionally impressionistic in its ambiguous meaning here. A blanket term covering ground from ethically just, to scientifically accurate, such that in some contexts, it's all the same to us. It's what we believe.

I don't have beliefs. Agnostic, not just about gods, but in all things. "I" itself needs better definition now, because some aspects of what could be defined as the self require belief to even function. "I" is a collection of aspects. I prefer to identify more closely with the parts that do the reasoning, to the parts that just flail around irrationally - not due to some failing of rationality, but because that is how the brain works.

Is this difficult to understand? Am I typing gibberish here, as far as anyone else can tell? I think this is pretty straight forward, and I've explained it such that it should seem common sense. That assessment may involve some miscalculation.

Being honest about the less rational parts of ourselves can be difficult. I am most rational when my brain has everything it needs to be performing at the peak of what I'm familiar with. Metabolically and environmentally. When my brain is impaired, distracted, lacking in food or sleep, I'm less keen on identifying that as "me," per se. You can try to look at it one way or another, but the truth is that it just is what it is, all of it. It's how it works. Self is just a concept.

In any social element, I am also trying to connect. This is what communication is about, as far as I can tell. Expanding our understanding of what's going on beyond ourselves, and emotionally connecting with each other. I don't really understand where the positivity and cheering up bit comes in, but that's because I have difficulty connecting with it.

I'm negative when that's what's honest. That's necessary to either end, logically or emotionally, to understanding one another. The alienation depression causes isn't some delusion of mental illness. If being honest about how we think and feel inhibits connection, the only alternative is to be dishonest; to put up a facade. Depressed people do it all the time, and it doesn't go well. 

The problem for someone on the other side of the equation is that it is difficult, and even harmful to connect with such negativity. It's understandable to want to believe that this is all a matter of choices. Sometimes it helps to focus more on others, and less on ourselves, one way or another. Other times, this is like saying we should focus more on running a marathon and less on our broken legs.

sloth boxing

I often have trouble getting moving. More and more so, the longer this goes on. When my blood is pumping with cortisol, adrenaline, and endorphins, it gets a lot easier. It becomes sitting still that's difficult. Laziness is a matter of perspective. When we keep moving to avoid the perils of stillness, that too is laziness. It's the overcoming of proclivities that's truly difficult, whichever way we're trying to go.

It helps to have rituals, techniques, and practices to facilitate these transitions. Drugs like caffeine can help us get moving, alcohol can help us wind down, but drugs do little good on their own. I've often spent an hour or so trying to get myself feeling alive enough to start bouncing around like I mean it, but that hasn't been enough lately. As I drag myself into the living room to start working out, I've found that it also helps to just start shadow boxing, even with no energy at all.

I just go through the motions, weakly, half heartedly, slow and clumsy. I gradually pick up the pace and focus as I get into it. I try not to get distracted. This can be a challenge, because if I don't get stoned first, I'm too depressed to move at all. Before too long, I'm moving faster and faster. Once I've been breathing hard and sweating for at least a few minutes, I don my gloves and lay into the heavy bag.

On the one hand, I wonder if it seems I'm being hyperbolic. On the other, I know that I hide just how badly I'm doing. In this moment, and over the course of my lifetime. I'm barely holding it together. I neglect all sorts of things, being too busy just trying to get through the day. When I become too depressed to eat at all, I start thinking about how a few days without food could undo months of work. This gets me to eat. Sometimes I picture healthcare workers standing over my cadaver, remarking on how odd it is that I'd work so hard to get into shape, just to throw it away. This keeps me from hanging myself.

Even with vaccines, it's looking like we're never going back to normal. Society will be divided between those who take precautions indefinitely, those who say fuck it, I can't live like this, and those who couldn't live like this. It's looking like I'll try heading back to the gym by March, but I have no idea how that will go. For now, gyms are still a grey area, enforcing whatever precautions they can. Often these measures are woefully inadequate and yet they can't dispense with the charade until more people are vaccinated.

This pandemic seems to have destroyed me. I'm just living it out in slow motion. I'm not getting better, I just keep getting worse. I think I'm dying. 

comfortably numb

When I'm not training, I can't stand watching fights. It just makes me feel bad, because it's itching to get in there that makes it worthwhile for me. I don't want to idly watch other people fight, and struggle, and live. Not that it can't be enjoyable, but enjoyable isn't the point. I'm not experiencing anything. It's a waste of time. I want to be the one doing the living.

Many seem to have this idea that if you're comfortable, your life is basically good. Certainly relative to someone whose life is uncomfortable, never mind much worse than that. There's very little sympathy for the overfed masses who sit around on their butts doing nothing all day. Utterly broken people, but sure, they're killing themselves in comfort. Maybe this is why we make our prisons such inhumane hellholes. We live in a society that thinks doing nothing is some kind of luxury. We live in a society that imprisons people in so many ways, as we're condemned for the inactivity that does us in.

Comfort is no pinnacle of human achievement. Being comfortable can be a great reprieve from everything life throws at us, but to live in a constant state of comfort is not living at all. The comforts of capitalism sedate us, as we're bled to death to keep the machinery running. Enrapt in vast webs of illusion, we think we're ok, we're comfortable, as our lives are stolen from us.