chemical imbalance

I can't seem to let go of the past.  That whole growing up thing that didn't seem to happen for me.  Childhood, adolescence, I can't get over how wrong it all went.  I can't stop rifling through the memories, trying to make sense of it all.  Could I have done things differently?  Why does it matter?  Why does my mind always end up back there?

Can I do things differently now?  Dissecting the problem always brings me back to the causal chain, it just is what it is.  I thought I'd be able to figure it out eventually.  I thought it was just a matter of hanging in there, getting through it.. but there's nothing to get through.  This is it.  Nothing ever pans out.   Its always my fault one way or another.  Its supposedly my life and all, but I don't remember picking it out.

The Omnitrope sure isn't working any instant miracles, but there's still reason to maintain hope.  It's not like a drug that has an effect.  It's supplementing a deficiency, so results can be extremely gradual.  Though it's nothing miraculous, I am feeling a somewhat better - which can mean that it's not enough to overcome inertia, but maybe I'll handle future opportunities better than past ones.  Maybe if I just hang in there.

Not feeling it, though.   It's not enough to fundamentally change the equation.

I put my fist through quite a few walls, as a kid.  I knew my life was coming off the rails, and couldn't do a thing about it.  Now, I can't even imagine where those rails are supposed to be.  All that's long gone, but I keep going back to it, because I have no idea where else to go.  Beneath it all, still that kid, putting his fist through walls.  I somehow managed to fail at growing up.  How does that even happen.  Given the chance to do it all over again, there's no reason to believe I'd really have any more success.

At the very least, I wish I could just be laid back and positive about it all.  What different does it make.. but no, I don't even get to be that person.

what is this I don't even

I started keeping a journal when I was about eleven.  I've been writing in it pretty much ever since, though it's taken various forms.  Why?  What am I trying to accomplish?  Am I succeeding?

I'm basically taking notes, scribbling out anything that seems noteworthy.  I must have learned fairly young that it might be a useful technique for figuring out what the fuck is going on. A way of sorting my tangled thoughts, filing them away, in case I need them later. 

It is amazing to me, how much of my life I don't remember.  There's a highlight reel, but what was I doing on Oct. 20th, 2015?  Who the hell knows.  I'm not sure I can recall anything specific that occurred in last year's entire month of October, but if I check what I was writing about, that will probably help.

As I started posting my rambling online, it also became a social act.  Ideally, I hope for others to come along, similarly confounded by life, looking to share notes.  An impulse to reach out for social structure, for reassurance, to figure things out together.  A normal impulse, that plays out somewhat differently for me.

Maybe I'm just crazy, though.  I don't even want to pretend to know, anymore.  Just keep doing what I'm doing, and ah, fuck it.  Whatever.

the logistics of attention

My computer is offline for a few days.  The CPU fan died, now I'm waiting for the parts to fix it.  In the meantime, I'm using my Note4.  Not as flashy as a Note7, but at least it won't blow my fingers off, right as I'm about to type something brilliant.

What was I talking about?  Ah, right.  Attention.  That's why I title my posts before I even start the entry.  I often need the reminder. 

Sometimes I think this might be the product of wandering the information superhighway all these years.  I'm told it's not even called that anymore.  In any case, there does seem to be a fair bit of evidence suggesting that it might be detrimental to some elements of concentration, focus, attention.

But you know me, I've got to ask what those words even mean.  I want to know which molecules and receptors need the duct tape.  I'm skeptical of the conventional wisdom, which has something to do with just sucking it up and trying harder.  It just doesn't add up.   Responsibility.  Some of us just make the perplexing choice to be incompetent.

Sometimes I think that if I took a break from my PC, it would surely help.  It is a crutch, and crutches can be hard to let go of.  We come to depend on them.  That's what a crutch is all about, right?

So, sometimes we need to have them fail, to realize we can walk without them.  Although, we tend to forget that often people use crutches because they do in fact need them.  I just find myself doing nothing at all.  I don't know that it makes much sense, blaming computers for my deeply entrenched impulse to do literally nothing all day every day.

I'm think there might be a correlation between motivation and attention.  To be focused on the world in front of you, because you're going somewhere therein - as opposed to being lost in thought, drifting through the world not being paid attention to.  At least not in an immediate direct sense.

We speak of an attention deficit, or absent-mindedness, but it's really more a matter of attention redirected.  The mind isn't absent, it's just chronically busy with something else.. and not having my computer doesn't seem to be helping, after all.

it was a dark and stormy night

I first did LSD in my early twenties.  Not a lot, but a handful of times.  It can be pretty intense, so I didn't like doing more than once every few months or so.  Once, we were able to get mushrooms instead, but that was the extent of my psilocybin experience back then.

For a variety of reasons, the LSD use tapered off after a few years, and I didn't do much else for maybe ten years or so.  It wasn't until I moved to Chicago that I discovered how much can be found online, these days.  From seeds and spores that circumvent the law, to the array of security and privacy software you need to learn how to use, to wade into the dark web.  I experimented a bit.

Even tried a new and largely untested one, 25i-NBOMe - that seems a bit reckless, in retrospect.  These chemicals go straight into the wiring of our minds.  I think it's probably a good idea to have at least some evidence that they don't do any lasting harm, before using ourselves as guinea pigs.  I prefer those that have been widely used for decades, or even millennia.

I seem to be drawn towards playing with the dials, distorting perception and cognition every which way, just to see what happens.  I wouldn't even say I enjoy it, usually.  I've had a few good trips, but most of them were just really interesting.  Crazy, fascinatingly mind-blowing.  Although, sometimes it's a bit like wandering out into the woods on a pitch black night, to jump into a cold lake.  Just to see what happens.  That is, probably not fun, per se.  Sometimes it takes a week or two for me to feel mentally prepared.

Once I feel ready for the impending shock, I dive into these experiences with a sense of curiosity, really not knowing what to expect, or how to plan for it, but having the idea that some degree of planning can be important.  That it can make all the difference between a trip being enjoyable or not.  Beneficial or not.  Each time, as the effects entangle me, I'm looking to figure out what's going on, exactly, and how best to utilize it.  To understand the world, myself, my mind, my life.

This might be why my impulse is to immediately jot down all my experiences, but I've realized doing that has a strong influence on how the trip goes.  That is, writing steers the trip in a particular direction, changing the experience.  As does just about everything we do.  The trick seems to be in learning, in what ways, exactly.  A common impulse for someone feeling overwhelmed by a psychedelic is to curl up as comfortably as possible, in the dark.  Maybe even alone. This will make for a particular sort of experience, and generally speaking, isn't a great idea.

Likewise, writing, dancing, religious ceremony, socializing, meditating, watching the clouds or watching a movie.  A trip can go all sorts of ways, depending on how it's navigated, but being wound up in the middle of it, it can be difficult to remember what's a good idea, what isn't, and why.  It's easy to fall back on innate impulses that can undermine the experience, but I've found it to be a matter of practice.  I've gotten better at it, but there are always unexpected twists and turns.

As I start getting back into this stuff again, it's interesting how the trips vary given the very different place I am, in my life.  It makes for a different experience.  New ropes to learn.  I wouldn't say my last trip was a bad one, but it was pretty rough.  I came out of it feeling I'd made some progress.  Maybe a more recreational experience wouldn't have felt that way.  I don't know.  Guess that's another thing to try figuring out.

everything I know, I learned from video games

Maybe not everything, but as a substantial component of my whole life, gaming has naturally been part of how I experience the world.  Before video games, I was disturbed by the "ages 10 and over" printed on my Player's Handbook.  Not the dumbed down basic Dungeons and Dragons handbook either, but Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.  I didn't think pouring over that at eight years old was so inappropriate that there should be a warning label against it.  It wasn't really the sort of gaming that appealed to me as I got older, though.

I also remember the attraction to a game like Pong.  A few pixels simulating the tossing of a ball back and forth, much simpler in gameplay than even table tennis.  Just hit the dot back and forth.. and yet, being drawn towards even that.  For a while.. I've also lost all interest in countless games, since then.  Far more elaborate and interesting games, now so much more dull and unappealing than trying pong for the first time.

There are two variables that seem to factor most heavily into that.  First, there's the novelty of it.  The fact that I was experiencing something new.  In modern games, they're often entertaining, until they become entirely predictable.  Once we've experienced everything of interest there is to experience in the game.  As the likelihood diminishes of anything new and interesting happening, it feels more and more like a waste of time.  In terms of the unconscious mechanics of that, it could be that I'm no longer learning anything.  The draw towards novelty could be a biological driver for the learning of new things.  That we hijack, in a sense, to entertain ourselves by learning things that aren't actually all that useful, or even real.

The other variable though, is in the difficulty.  There are some games that will always provide a challenge, and they tend to have more greater longevity.  Other games become trivially easy, once you've spent enough hours getting the hang of their mechanics.  This is where even a game like pong can have a draw, despite appearing entirely familiar within a matter of seconds.  This probably goes more to the central core of what gaming is primarily about for some of us.  Appealing to the impulse to test our skills.  To fail, and try again.  To get better at something.

There may be a correlation with dominance and alpha behavior, an impulse to take the bull by the horns, just to say that we could... hijacked also, rechanneled by playing harmless games.  No tormenting of bulls required.  The underlying mechanism behind what gaming strives to appeal to though, being the impulse to take on a challenge, to get better, to make progress towards greater challenges.

When we're not making progress, when we're not practicing skills or learning anything new, when we're just going through the motions to stave off boredom, it can feel like a waste of time.  A good video game though?  That can trick the brain into thinking it's making superb use of its time.

Is being tricked by evolutionary biology really any better though?

skittle bowl refugees

Most people would run like hell from the prospect of risking themselves to save others.  Most people are terrible.  Least, as far as I understand people to be.  Sure, they're relatively nice to friends and family, but beyond that, most people are essentially psychopaths.  How much is "most" really, I don't know. Half?  Nine out of ten?  Two or three in ten, but it feels like most because I'm such a bitter old cynic?

It's difficult not to be biased about it.  Look at the people we've known, how many of them acted like self-centered pricks, figure that's probably a reasonable cross-section of humanity to call it close enough.  Or, you could look at the sorts of things people say on the internet, the people who aren't in your social circles.  Would that be more accurate?  It certainly skews perspective in the other direction.  At best, we take in as much data as we can, and call it from that.

I think most people are terrible.  Well, roughly half, with a lot of murky grey area in between.  Grey area which I'm still inclined to call terrible.  I think it's just how evolution's played out, though.  On the most basic level, we're all coded by the simple causality of it, to put our own interest above all others.  Doing so is simply, reductively, more Darwinistically effective than not doing so.

At least, until you add another level of complexity, where that straightforward rule gets causally outmaneuvered.  Groups of people who are inclined to help the group, even when doing so results in sacrificing themselves, also had the better chance of survival overall.  It was their genetic traits which proliferated, often over those groups which were prone to collapse when environmental stressors forced too many selfish decisions.  When group dynamics were critical.

Nature works in fuzzy ways though.  This isn't a binary distinction.  It runs along a continuum, from one end of the spectrum to the other.  At different times, and in different places, different proportions of these counterbalancing factors have been more or less effective.  We don't know which genes might be responsible, and what the biological mechanism might actually be - but chances are pretty good that it's something that quantifiably varies.

Some people are just going to be more altruistic than others, but there's also going to be a natural tendency towards thinking people at different places on the continuum are fundamental threatening our very existence.  The coding that tells us that the other side is wrong is there because it was an effective survival measure.  In our genetic experience, their side got everyone killed.

[the random facebook post that came across my feed, which inspired this]

metamorphosis.

Why do I ask odd questions, like what it means to best utilize time?  Am I just picking random quirky subjects to pontificate uselessly about?  Heh, no.  That would be annoying, right?  No, to sort out cart from horse, here- I notice this irrational undercurrent to my neurotic angst,  a sense of wasting time.  It seems to underpin some of the issues I have.

I want to understand what it is that's really bothering me so much, because on its face, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.  So, I blog about it.  It can be messy and awkward, it can be terrible writing, but sorting through it like this is what I do.  I often go weeks without speaking to anyone.  When I finally do, it's a cashier, or something.  I don't socialize at all.  Instead of talking to myself, I blog.  It would be great if this produced anything of value, but I'm not exactly counting on it.

So, I get into these odd questions, as if I'm lending them an importance and then getting all worked up over it.  No, if this weren't something that were really bothering me, I wouldn't be thinking about it, let alone writing about it.  I might be discussing it with people, in some universe where people have those sorts of discussions, but if I have to choose between talking to myself the way that I do, or talking to them, the way that they do?  I'll keep my solitude, thanks.

It also helps keep me awake.  It's possible that the struggle to stay awake has shaped a whole lot of how I've spent my time, over the years.  Maybe it's why I stopped doing all sorts of things.  Almost everything put me to sleep, because I was always on the edge of sleep anyhow.  A gradual calcification of poor habits, an atrophy of strengths, a slow metamorphosis into this.

This incessant fatigue is exactly what being on GH is supposed to help with, most of all.  I have been feeling somewhat better this past week.  Oddly so.. but I'm also anxious.  It's a relatively subtle change.  I don't know how temporary.  The old baseline always seems to come creeping back.  A bit like an anti-placebo effect, I'm very skeptical, but I'm also feeling better for the time being, and that's not nothing.

My entire life, from how I live to how I think, a product of feeling the way I have.  That's not going to change all that easily, or maybe even all that much, but still, finally feeling somewhat better is not nothing.