two steps forward...

I guess one major reason I've been getting more depressed again is that social security only sent me $600 last month.  I have no idea why.  I didn't even call them to find out. I know this sounds pretty stupid, but I've been hoping it was a fluke.

Obviously, my number one reason for not doing anything about it is that talking to people scares the hell out of me.  If there's anything I have to do which might involve talking to people, fuck it.  Maybe when I'm feeling better.  Maybe I'll figure something else out, in the meantime.  Mostly though, just fuck it.

Especially people who can say no to me, regarding something important.  Like, can I rent this apartment, can I get treatment for this illness, can I have this job, or can you please just give me the bare minimum I'm going to need to find a place to live?  I'm not trying to buy a house or anything here, just rent a fucking hole in the wall room, with no kitchen, and a shared bath.. and last month, they didn't even give me enough for that much.

Chances are though, they had their reasons.  I can probably find out what those reasons are, but does that mean grounds for an appeal, let alone any sort of immediate correction?  Not likely, no.  They calculate it based on all these factors that are completely removed from what's actually needed to survive.  At the low end of that calculation, it's really just enough money to take the edge off of homelessness, and they keep tweaking and adjusting mine, so that I have no idea how much I'm going to be able to count on.

Or, I'm just doing it wrong.  Not navigating the system adeptly enough to get what I'm supposed to actually be entitled to.  I've tried looking into various services, but it's like a maze of dead ends, and I've basically failed to get anywhere at all.  Either this entire system is a cruel joke on those who really need it, or I'm just fucking it up, because just maybe I'm actually disabled or something.

failure to communicate

Years ago, I had this neighbor who was deaf. One night, I saw him confronted by a cop, as he walked across the street from my building.  The cop kept telling him to go home, that he shouldn't be out on the streets so late, alone.  Apparently assuming that his inability to speak was indicative of cognitive impairment.

This man, whose name I never knew, seemed to be very frustrated.  Trying to explain that he was just on his way to the corner store, but the cop wasn't listening.  He couldn't get past the strained speech, and what it meant to him.  Probably not the sharpest pig on the force, but still, surely if someone could explain it to him, and he would stop for even a moment to think about it, he'd be able to comprehend that being deaf was not the same as being retarded.

Even then, I suspect, that getting lost in the moment, he'd forget, and revert to treating a deaf man like a lost child, because that's what his instincts were telling him.  He hears that inability to speak clearly, and reacts to it, before logic and reason have much of a chance to even enter into it.  The ways in which we communicate and understand each other can be so intuitive like that.

It's interesting the way we react to people, on a very visceral level.  All the cues we take in, as we try to assess the sort of person we're dealing with.  It's an important function of social navigation, in many ways, in all sorts of interactions.  It can be a serious problem, when there is a barrier to that sort of assessment, when a person can't communicate, or when their ability to do so is distorted in some way.  We can end up being like that cop, treating a grown man like a hapless retard, because we're so used to depending on information and cues that aren't being adequately provided.

Another time, I remember walking down North Street, and seeing that same deaf man, hanging out with a few other deaf people.  Laughing and joking in sign language, they seemed to be able to communicate with each other just fine.  Suddenly, he was just a normal guy, rather than someone caught in the catch-22 of trying to explain that he was normal.

I've just been invited to a Memorial Day get together, and guess I should give it a chance, but I'm not sure which will be worse.  Sitting alone feeling awkward, or failing to communicate with someone who notices me sitting alone feeling awkward.  

Wait, definitely the latter.  It gets to the point where I just want to be left alone.. yet, I'll go.  Never know when someone there might turn out to speak sign language.

delineating extrinsic from intrinsic

It is strange, to think about my last post, my assertion that I'm doing much better.  I may need to explain how I personally understand the difference between how I'm doing, and what the world is doing to me.  I get the feeling it might not be quite self explanatory.


I'm not going to get into how there really is no difference.  How it's a delusion inherent to humanity to think otherwise, and all that.  For now, I'm more concerned with how it feels important to draw the line somewhere.  Maybe the pretense helps my brain figure out what we should do next, I don't know.

I'm referring to these distinctions we make, based on our experience and expectations.  Arbitrary benchmarks of good and bad.  Long and short define each other, as Lao Tzu put it.  Another illusion, it's all relative to these other things that are relative, but I'm glossing over that, too.

I'm thinking about how I'm doing, relative to how I was doing a year ago, five years ago, ten or even twenty years ago.  I'm thinking about how much of it is a natural outcome of immediate circumstances, and how much of it is a sign of improvement, psychologically, or physiologically.

I've been running 6-8 miles a week, for a while now.  Until a few months ago, it was something that I wasn't doing much of.  Not for lack of trying, as I've been running sporadically for years.  Very sporadically, but now it's like clockwork.  I've been writing more, and doing various other little things.

I've been looking into this Zen center that's in the area.  I've been working on volunteering at a soup kitchen.  I'm terrified, but I know that I need to start doing more, connecting with people.  I'm actually taking steps in these directions that I couldn't even deal with thinking about, before.  I have more energy to do this with, to push through some of the anxiety with.  I'm an angsty wreck a lot of the time, but I think this is some kind of progress.

There are things I don't have, though.  These are extrinsic factors.  Circumstances that feel beyond my illusory control.  I am very alone in this world.  I would seem almost inhuman not to be weighed down by that.  I have an income that falls well below local cost-of-living.  I don't know where I'm going to live, and yet, I'm the one who's supposed to figure it out. This is something I've never had to figure out for myself, before.

These are circumstances that are worse for me now, and I'm not feeling so much better that I can handle it all that well.  A lot of these improvements are just the immediate effects of the adjustment to my endocrine system, while a lot of my problems are still going to be wired into my brain, from decades of coping.  Patterns that aren't going to shift all that quickly.  As well as some remaining imbalance, because there is no reliable way to test somatropin levels directly, and it's much safer (and cheaper) to err on the side of undertreating, than overtreating.

So, I'm doing better on one level, but not on another, and it isn't depression, when one has good reason to be depressed.  That I feel like I'm hanging on by a thread here might actually be pretty damn normal, even if the path I've taken to get here is not.  So this is why I say I'm doing better, but not exactly cheering about it.

the synergies of gastrophysical hedonism

Made a curry last night that came out pretty well.  I let myself be talked into adding vegetables that I don't usually combine.

I have these very specific ideas of what synergizes with what, but I'm not entirely sure these ideas aren't completely random.

Aside from onions, garlic, ginger, tomato (because they go with anything)
I added carrots, bell pepper, green

beans, mushrooms, and chickpeas.

Some of those combine with some others, but there are a number of them which feel antithetical to me..  Texture, flavor, size or shape?  I don't really know why.  I usually just go with these inclinations, although they do end up limiting my repertoire.

So, this curry came out pretty well, and yet, I'm not sure.  Might have been better if I'd followed the amorphous rules I normally do, but on the other hand, there's something to be said for getting a wider variety of nutrients, anyhow.

I also experimented with using gochujang, instead of sriracha.  Gochujang has a uniquely east asian flavor, normally not what's found in a curry, but it turned out to work very well.  Better than sriracha, but sriracha always feels like cheating, anyhow.  I pretend I'm adding heat, when what it really adds is sugar and salt.  Gochujang has more depth, although in the end, I did feel like it needed a little more sugar and salt, too.

There are some stereotypes which have more than a grain of truth to them.  There is something about getting stoned that makes me feel like everything is fine.  Whatever I've driving myself up a wall over isn't really such a big deal, after all.  Being that it's not such a big deal, I can just do something else, and stop worrying about it.  I can cook, just post about cooking, or whatever I feel like doing.  Unfortunately, sometimes there are things that I really do need to worry about.

At times, I've let that get the better of me, but these days, I generally wait until evening, when anything I need to do is indisputably out of the way.  My angst tends to plague me even then, when there's nothing I can do, anyhow, and it's really nice to get a reprieve from that.  Yesterday, I skipped it entirely, so today I made an exception and vaped a bit early.  I wish I could claim to be a beacon of responsible use, but the state of my existence can really give a misleading impression, suggesting otherwise.

It's actually kind of strange, the way whatever problems a person has, from schizophrenia to depression, from anger issues, to laziness, to forgetfulness (despite [1][2][3])  If they do any recreational drugs, those drugs become the culprit, and while sometimes there can be correlation or even causation, more often, there demonstrably just isn't.

In a sense, I wish I could say that this is me, at my worst, but in many ways, this is the best I've ever been.  Sad as that may be.  It's just not good enough to get through the circumstances I'm in, nor to be cheerful in the face of it all, but still.  Depending on far you want to go back, I'd say I'm actually doing much much better.

event horizon

Sometimes, all that keeps me going is curiosity.
I start thinking about how desperately I just want to bail, and yet, I can't help but want to see what the world is going to do, over the next forty or so years.  Even if I don't have much hope for myself, I just feel technology is moving so fast..

The next century could be the most interesting in human history.  It just seems crazy to miss it, if I don't have to.  Even if I can't get much of anything else right, I should be able to hang on, clinging to whatever niche I can.

up the creek without a paddle

Ok, so setting aside the discussion of causality and excuses- all the ways in which I completely failed to get myself on any sort of path towards independence.  We can chalk it up to the hurdles of poverty, compounded by mental and physical health problems, or we can just say I fucked up.  I made bad choices.

Fine, regardless, what does that mean, for how I can move forward from here?

Let's imagine I wake up tomorrow, miraculously feeling like I can finally navigate society effectively enough to do anything I might need to do.  I still have no idea what I'm actually supposed to do.  I have no idea how to rectify these bad choices I've apparently made.

Getting a job wouldn't even be realistic.  I have no work history, and no 'skills.'  I learn quickly and could excel at any number of things, but what are my chances of convincing an employer of that?  The only people who would be indiscriminate enough to hire me, would be those filling jobs no one else wants, and there aren't a lot of those around these days.

I'd have to expend all sorts of effort, applying for lots of minimum wage work, where I'd still be just as poor as I am now, only spending all day doing something miserable.  I don't think it would even be a step forward, and would be all too likely to undermine my hypothetical miraculous recovery.  I'm pretty sure that's just being realistic.

Other than that, what options do I actually have?  I can't even afford a place to live, nevermind any sort of skills training or college.  I have no idea what to do.  I'm supposed to stay positive about.. ok, I don't even know what I'm supposed to be positive about.

That I might be able to find a room to rent (i.e. shared bath, no kitchen), that will cost my entire disability check.  That seems like a lateral step, more than any actual progress.  I'll just be trapped in a different situation, where I'll be able to safely veg out all day, without being judged for it, but I'm not sure that wouldn't be just another bad choice I'd be making.  Being alone on disability is apparently untenable, so how do I break free of this?

work ethic relativism

In discussions of wealth and poverty, ambition and work ethic comes up a lot.  The idea being that income is a choice, to some degree.  Even if we concede that not all people have the same choices, the choices we do make, of course, enter into it.  Still, there is a huge discrepancy in how we tend to judge those choices.

Obama, FOX News, and Jon Stewart, on the subject

Choices are based on priorities.  Not everyone has the same sense of work ethic, not everyone cares about amassing wealth.  Some people are much more inclined to do the bare minimum to get by.  They're the people prone to being branded unmotivated or lazy, but such judgements vary widely, depending on the circumstances they're working with.

Take someone born to relative wealth, someone with lots of opportunities, who squanders a whole lot of it.  Maybe they travel to discover themselves, or maybe they just party too much, but ultimately, by and large, they still end up doing ok for themselves.  Not as wealthy as they might otherwise be, but even doing very little with what they have, they're able to get a decent career going, and do ok.  How often does someone going from financial comfort, to making all the "bad choices" that would send them spiraling into poverty?  They make all sorts of bad choice, but can almost always recover.

Now, on the other hand, take someone with much the same mindset, born into poverty.  They aren't driven to work themselves to the bone for minimum wage, they squander what scant opportunities they have, derailing their chances of ever making anything of themselves, maybe even sabotaging their chances of working entirely.  They end up in a downward spiral, doing whatever they need to do to survive, whether that's welfare, or crime, or dumpster diving.  There's a good chance they end up corralled by a few bad choices, and it will widely be deemed their own damn fault.

This expectation for those in poverty to be bootstrap swinging overachievers is such bullshit.  The middle-class aren't held to the same standard.  They're allowed to make mistakes.  Not everyone has the same sort of motivation, the same sort of priorities.  We are who we are, but coming from a wealthier family, people have all sorts of options to do reasonably well for themselves, in spite of these sorts of character differences.

When someone born into financial stability doesn't want to pursue a workaholic life to maintain that same degree of wealth, it may stress out their parents, but they aren't going to end up homeless or in prison.  It's a reasonable choice.  When someone born into poverty has the exact same neurochemical predisposition though, they're completely fucked, and treated like they deserve it.

So much of this discussion seems to come down to two different schools of thought- poverty is either the fault of those who are poor, or poverty is a natural outcome of circumstances.

Of course, there are all different sorts of poor people.  There are all different sorts of wealthy people.  Some are highly motivated, some are what we might call lazy, and everywhere in between.  Those with an abundance of opportunity have all sorts of slack, to screw up here and there, to make some bad choices, some mistakes, and still go on to lead productive lives.  While the poor are expected to be highly and consistently motivated, and often, even that isn't enough.

This idea that poverty involves cultural or even individual character flaws would mean that people jump from one socioeconomic class to another, all the time.  Of course some people are lazier than others, but for people with money, it doesn't really matter as much.  How often does someone grow up in a well educated middle-class household, only to end up on welfare?  If it were really a matter of being lazy, why don't people fall from wealth to poverty more often?

Some of us are trying, some of us not so much, but holding the poor up to a broadly unrealistic standard isn't a solution.  Focusing on personal differences between types of people is a distraction.  Look at the empirical facts about poverty in the aggregate, and it's pretty clear, the only thing that's consistently wrong with poor people, is that they were born poor.  In a society that's decided poverty is their own fault.