My LiveJournal has more pleasant, less run-on, more coherent sentiments, generally speaking.

For all you fine people searching via google, here's my experiences with Strattera (a non-stimulant drug to treat ADD/hyperactivity.).

These blatherings are how I happened to feel at the moment. Grain of salt, etc.

(my asleep thoughts are here, and my main page here.)

2 feb 2007, 01:50
I hate this cloudy weather bullshit. Fucks up my sleep schedule really bad, and sends my mood to shit.

On the other hand, when my mood is shitty, I'm much more able to reflect on my emotions (something often quite difficult for me). When work is bleh, it resonates with one of the things I feel guiltiest about: the lack of direction in my life. I find it difficult to come up with things I want to do with myself, or things that I want out of myself (or from others) - and this evokes massive guilt in me. Why? No idea; if I knew, I'd probably be a far happier person. It's an odd notion, to want to be compelled by inner forces towards some greater purpose.

14 sep 2006, 15:55
Doesn't seem like I'm oversharing much lately, eh? Turns out I've been a lot more cheerful in general, so I haven't had the need to outpour angst.

Anyhow, the sole point of this entry is so I can link something: The Pelican Drinking post that mentioned "receiveth". (Scroll down to Vulgarian Nights.)

29 jun 2005, 02:55
I didn't think she would call; she never did when she lived here. I suppose I could have been more in-your-face about it, but that almost seems self-defeating, somehow. At least I got my laundry done; perhaps I'll actually be social tomorrow...

13 apr 2005, 5:11
I seem to cry an awful lot in my dreams; I'm sure it's cathartic, but... I'd like to get a better grip on what exactly it is I'm upset by that I'm bawling about it; waking up the next morning and going 'huh?' - if I even remember it - ain't too good for that.

16 mar 2005, 5:18
No more Strattera for me, I've decided. I'm sick of feeling nausea after taking the stuff, how it can screw up my sleep schedule, and how little benefit (I think) I actually get from it. Too damn many side effects, and I want to see what my normal baseline behavior is like, anyway - it's been a while since I haven't been on anything activating (e.g. Wellbutrin) or the Strattera, so I think it's about time. My shrink won't be thrilled, but oh well.

9 jan 2005, 21:07
My mood, generally speaking, has been pretty good; there's been some bouts of low mood, but those have almost certainly been due to the crappy weather and being sick and unable to go out and be social. I'm actually catching up with some long-delayed projects and writing and soforth, which is definitely a mood boost.

What's sort of irritating is that the urge to move north is hitting now, rather than around July or August, where it'd be useful and practical to do something about it. Who knows, maybe I'll actually do it this time; it'd be going way, way outside my normal comfort zone, though.

24 nov 2004, 01:53
So very, very stressed. Helloooo, Asperger's, seasonal depression, holidays, Xmas music, and work. (I think the lightbulbs do help, though. Mmm, full spectrum.)

18 nov 2004, 03:22
I so need to get out more. In other exciting news, still depressed! But not as bad as I was on Saturday. Or Sunday or Monday, whenever it was that I was hiding in bed and sobbing every couple of hours. Fortunately. With luck, the $30 light bulbs will help. (They better!)

1 nov 2004, 17:40
So, these days I MU*. And on one MUSH I play a female character. I started talking a whole lot with somebody, and she (a lesbian - and Log Cabin Republican!) invited me on to the MU* she was working on. I eventually revealed who/what I was (although the notion of genderqueer doesn't seem to have made any impression on her) and the chatter with her came to an almost abrupt halt. Today, I asked about something, and she asked me not to join the Wiz channel, where the implementors were hanging out. I feel like I was being used as a sex toy or something. I don't think I'll be going back there. Right now, I feel like I want to throw up.

I hope I don't go spiralling down into depression, but my stomach turning sour, my back aching, and getting shivers? Not good signs of avoiding it.

30 oct 2004, 00:59
Some days, when people compliment me on my looks, I believe them. Despite what I see.

13 oct 2004, 11:17
Monday was my dead older sister's birthday, the one who died in a car crash when she was three days old and being brought home from the hospital. My parents swear that her name (Christine) and my middle name (Kristian) have nothing to do with each other.

4 oct 2004, 4:25
I feel restless, and unfocused, and dyslexic, and that I've almost got things right, but there's some concentration or sense of order or... something that I'm missing. Shit. I need to do my taxes. (That's not the thing, but it's something to remember and do. Like the divorce papers, too.)

I feel angsty and tired but I don't wanna sleep. I don't know what I do want to do, though. The story of my life.

6 sep 2004, 1:17
Now I remember why I don't go to those parties. How depressing.

4 sep 2004, 11:58pm (still my birthday for another two minutes)
This has been a bad week or two. Lots of stress, lots of depression, and I've spent the last half hour crying my brains out, and I'm not really sure why. Yeah, there's feeling utterly inane and stupid for not having gotten any more packing done, and not having gotten more stuff done at work, and not knowing what to do with myself - but this mood seems more adrift than usual. More painful, more ennui-laden, more 'I wish it would stop', too. Everything hurts, and I really wish I had someone to hold me and tell me it'd all be better - but mostly just to hold me while I cried and wailed so I could get at least a little comfort.

24 jun 2004, 17:38
Email to my sister:

When are you going to realize that me, Mom, Dad, and Jamie will all love you no matter what? It doesn't matter what you choose to do in your life, we still love you and want you with us whenever you can be.

I don't know how much of the Asperger's stuff I've told you about, but it means that I often don't have the energy to deal with people, or social situations, or driving, or anything like that.

The URL http://www.udel.edu/bkirby/asperger/aswhatisit.html has some OK info, but it doesn't really give the full gist of what happens, especially for me. For one thing, I empathize really, really well with people, and can usually read their emotional states without any problem whatsoever; also, I have a really strong drive to be gregarious and social. (Some of that comes from the ADD.)

The really perverse bit is that while I desperately want to be social, and interact, and not be alone, I just can't deal with the drain. It's an internal conflict that I have to wrestle with on a day-to-day basis. I drain really quickly, and end up curling up in a ball for a while and shrieking incoherently when I hit empty It's no fun, and it usually takes me a couple of days to recover to a more normal state.

My emotional makeup has changed rather a lot over the past 2.5 years; going on the Wellbutrin (and then the other meds) did a lot to open me up emotionally. Before then, I couldn't cry unless it was a really ultra-intense situation, and things bottled up for months and months until I imploded. These days, I'm much more aware of my emotional state - but I'm also more beholden to it, too, and a lot of the time I'm still pretty fragile.

That's the real reason I didn't go home for Xmas last year - it felt like it would have been way too much, with no respite, no escape, and I couldn't deal with it. It gets extra intense because I do feel close to you all - and I can read y'all's emotions extremely well - and so I can tell that you want to be close (and so do I) but because I can't, that hurts; that sets up a gigantic feedback loop where I'm draining and in too much distress to do anything but pull away, making you feel bad and thus making me feel bad, and causing even more drain.

The worst part about it is that when it happens, there's nothing anyone can really do for me. I need to be by myself for a while, and slowly recover. Physical affection helps, but trying to (verbally) interact just exacerbates things. That's why I've been so loath to try and talk about any of it. It's a gigantic burden on me to bring up, I often don't express what I'm trying to get across very well, and if I'm misunderstood it makes me feel alienated. Of course, y'all can tell when I get like that, and try to help - but that's about the last thing I'm able to deal with when I get like that.

I've only started to recognize much of this out within the past year or so, much less been able to put it into words. That's another one of the reasons I've not talked about it - I haven't known what to say, or how to answer any of the questions. I don't mind questions at all, but I've been at an utter loss as to how to answer them until recently. (It doesn't help at all that these sorts of questions also come up most often on the phone, when I'm least able to respond.) If you have questions, please ask 'em, I really want to be able to answer. I've had no idea how to even approach any of this, what you wanted to hear or not.

I think this is about all I can write for right now without completely breaking down. Feel free to forward this to mom and dad and jamie or whomever if you want.

14 jun 2004, 12:50am
Orientation at Yahoo! in... crap, seven+a bit hours. Oops. I should go to bed. Stupid geeky compulsions.

8 jun 2004, 9:34pm
I'm sick - sniffles, maybe a slight fever - but reasonably cheerful, if not terribly motivated to do anything much. Need to get something to eat, and then I'll try the dreaded task I've been evading for quite a while: Cleaning My Room *shudder*.

Also, I may be employed. Yay.

22 may 2004, 9:14pm
I'm supposed to go to woom in an hour or so, but I'm freaking out bigtime. Mmmm, panic. I worry that I'm not going to look right, or be depressed while there (a distinct possibility; I was crying in my dreams when I napped earlier, that's always a bad sign) or... something. I don't know what. One of my biggest fears usually is that I'll do something to feel like an utter outsider and/or twat, and that I'll have to go hide in a corner and cry because I'm just not able to deal with things. I've never had anybody tell me something that made me feel like that, but I've had feelings from inside that ended up having me act pretty much the same way. I need to go eat, but there's so little time left before I have to make the hour drive up to the city and find parking and make it to my door shift and all that sort of thing - and that doesn't even include getting dressed and ready! Auugh. I'm getting the panic shivers already. Wah.

17 may 2004, 12:20am
I went to Carl's Jr to be out of the house - to be at least nominally social in some weird sense even though I wasn't interacting with anybody, and it helped a little, but not a lot. Talked briefly with Irina about the birthday party last night, and felt myself start to flush and feel sick and sad. Seems like psych may be right about still not accepting Asperger's; I feel guilty and wussy and lame for not having being able to go out. I hope I recover from this bullshit enough to be upbeat and happy for P&S, or at least woom. I'm wondering if I have enough emotional energy to try to weep and let out the frustration.

3 may 2004, 2:56am
I am a chubby bunny. I'm up to 183 or so - roughly 10 lbs more than when I was on Wellbutrin - and my shorts were rather tight. Eek. At least I'm not freaking out about it (yet.)

Kinky Salon was nice; it seems like most of the people I'd want to talk to are already involved with running the thing. Sounds like I should start staffin' sooner or later.

22 apr 2004, 23:24
Except today, it seems to have kicked in a day early. Wtf? Maybe I should just go to bed early, sob for a while, and drift off into an emotionally exhausted sleep.

2 apr 2004, 20:56
I seem to be getting Friday night blahs these days; I've gotten them for about the past two-three weeks. Dunno what brings thems on. (Not having eaten dinner probably isn't helping.) They kinda suck, though.

30 mar 2004, 10:47am
I'm prety cheerful, it's my brother's birthday, and I'm going off of Wellbutrin.

13 mar 2004, 5:06pm
I accidentally slept from about 2:30am to 4pm, completely missing my meeting. Oops. I did this almost exactly a month ago, too. Wtf?

16 feb 2004, 3:34am (ugh!)
Re the last entry... as it turns out, I ended up accidentally sleeping 14 hours the night of the 13th; that seems redolent of something organic waiting to happen. It looks like this might be borne out by looking at my journal, too: my handwriting gets pretty small when I get depressed, and the last couple of days appear to have that. Bleah.

Also, the initial trigger was, in fact, a misunderstanding. I think I'll go pig out on O'Henry candy bars now.

13 feb 2004, 13:45 (just after lunch)
The worst thing about getting depressed is knowing that even if the original trigger for depression goes away or gets resolved, I'll still be in a shitty mood and be mopey for quite a while. I hate it that I do that.

9 feb 2004, 21:17
Almost every evening, I get into a state where I get cold and vaguely panicy. I don't know why. Dunno if it's low blood sugar, some weird drug side effect, or something else. It sucks, quite a bit. What really blows is when it overlaps or segues into depression; nothing quite like freezing to death, being sad, wanting to bawl your eyes out, and knowing that those sorts of behavior are self-perpetuating. Nobody's online, or nobody's talking, and so I sit here in my room, too tired to go anywhere, too upset to concentrate on anything, and wondering what the fuck to do with myself. I feel real, real shitty.

Postscript: almost immediately after writing that, I crawled into bed, and then accidentally fell asleep for two hours. I imagine being tired enough to doze off with all the lights on and in my clothes probably doesn't do superb things to my mood.

9 jan 2004, 4:44pm
One thing I've run into over and over is the low emotional stamina I have for being in transit. Going to the airport, driving a car, sitting on the train for an hour - they all suck really hard. I can't deal with it very well - but I deal even worse with my reaction to my reaction. Guilt, fear, anger towards self, depression, they all come a-rollin' in. The feelings that I ought to be able to deal, that I should be able to, and that I shouldn't be having the reactions I have... well, they suck. Quite a bit.

2 jan 2004, 19:58
Happy new year and all that sort of thing. Over the past two days in the threads of conversation, I mentioned that I utterly fear other people - in particular that I'm going to be laughed at for unknowingly doing something. Both times, I've ended up bawling for a bit. Why I get that strong a reaction by mentioning it, I don't know; probably something along the lines of 'Because I have such feelings, I'm a feeb.'

23 dec 2003, 13:47
One of the less desirable effects of having my emotions more open to me is that I'm now aware all the time of when I'm stressed or grumpy or panicy or whatever; this usually manifests itself as me being cold. It really kinda sucks that it's so difficult to get away from; by the end of the day, I'm pretty exhausted. I don't have enough energy to do much of anything afterwards, and feel real guilty that I don't (and don't enjoy things in general much at all.) Small decisions (what do I want to eat?) become gigantic ones because it becomes a question of 'what's the least undesirable choice?' and even that becomes fraught with uncertainty and panic. Bleaaaah.

By the time I've recovered from work, it's usually time for bed. :-/

21 dec 2003, 00:07
Note to self: call people before the party gets going. Having people be shocked when I call is not desirable. Oops. I hope I haven't disrupted things too badly.

I had lunch/dinner with Laura this afternoon. We talked for three hours or so. It was good to see her. In the course of talking, I realized that I'm still real uncomfortable with showing many of my emotions. If I think anybody's nearby, I cry without making sound. It was good to see her, and also pretty cathartic. I think it'd've been wiser to not go 16 hours before eating; that always makes my emotions go a bit more askew. Not having my meds at the proper time made me really damn twitchy and hyper, too. As it is, my writing still seems sorta stacatto and stilted. Time for food.

15 dec 2003, 20:14
Pretty much every day, between 6 and 9 pm, I start to get all sniffly and upset and make strange gulping noises in lieu of crying. I don't know if it's a time of day thing, if it's when I'm separated enough from work enough to let my feelings go, or what. It sucks, though. Eating usually helps, but not always. It really fucking blows.

I think I've answered my question about why so much on this webpage is negative, sad, or so on: because there's not much that makes me happy for which I feel compelled to add another layer of separation. (maybe for 'deviant' sexual practices - but I'm not exactly comfortable enough with my sexuality to discuss that here; I think there are three people whom I'd told I'm taking propecia.)

30 nov 2003, 00:37
Yay, my date was quite fun. First one in over a year, too. I've also kept up my perfect record of 'no first dates under 18 hours'.

q: What does a lesbian bring on a first date?
a: a toothbrush.

26 nov 2003, 12:13
I'd finally started coming out of a blue period (I thought); going off the Zoloft seems to have helped quite a bit, no more weird panicy feelings. Ugh. It seems the mood hanging over me is still around, though. I'd felt a little off yesterday when people were talking about the big lovefest that'd happened over the weekend, but that subsided pretty quickly. Today, though, it came up as the topic of conversation again (mostly because people seem to have gotten sick from it), and the blue reappeared. It wasn't a crashing; it was more of a 'ease this 300lb weight onto your head and shoulders nice and gently.' Betwixt that and beating my head against the wall with fucking piece of shit software misbehaving something awful, I'd really like to go home and curl up in bed for a while. (It'd help if I ate lunch, too.)

10 nov 2003, 4:59
I mentioned to tamara earlier today that I'm happy a good 30%-50% of the time. This really is good; my depressed days are down to about a third. The first time I remember the sinking feeling I now associate with depression was when I was 4 and in preschool. I didn't really know what it was back then; most of my emotions got good and repressed as a side effect of dealing with my ADD. They started to become unblocked around age 15, when I realized I was depressed, but have only really opened up a lot in the past couple of years. The scariest thing now is that I hope I can be happy; with school (and sometimes work) always eluding me and never getting much of anything done and always returning to the same depressed state, it's easier to give up and not beat your head against the wall any more.

So far things look good. I hope.

24 oct 2003, 17:46
I'm in a pretty good mood today. I'm actually pretty cheery when I'm not depressed; unfortunately, that mood doesn't seem to lend itself to writing as much.

I was reading in Salon a review of the book not much just chillin': the Hidden Lives of Middle Schoolers by Linda Perlstein, in which the author relates

I was surprised at the degree to which sexuality infused their lives. There were flashing incidents, there was a lot of sexual harassment that the girls were somewhat flattered by. There was freak dancing [with boys grinding girls from behind, his groin against her butt], there was constant talk about blow jobs among a good deal of the kids. I was surprised that this stuff went through their brains.

I mentioned this to my psych in the course of talking about other super fun (meaning "in retrospect, really kinda horrible") incidents in grade school and high school, when she looked at me with a mildly odd expression and asked "Have you heard of Asperger's Syndrome?" She read me a bunch of the diagnostic criteria, and sure enough, it sounds like I have it. I'm mildly autistic, woo hoo! Between that and my ADD, it surprises me not at all that the messages of raging hormones (then or now) are not quite as obvious for me.

The funny thing is that one of the chat groups I frequent was talking about their self images, and a very large portion of them said things like, "I was always the ugliest of my friends." - and that group is pretty damn attractive. I suppose it's a condolence to hear that others have felt similar sorts of things. Unfortunately, since I didn't actually feel those things at the time (as far as I know), it seems like I get to feel them all now. All the accumulated loneliness and isolation of twenty-odd years in one big mass. It hurts a lot, but at least I feel sort of like a person now. I still all too often still have my doubts, though.

17 oct 2003, 18:35
It seems I don't write here much when my home DSL is down, as it's been for the past couple of weeks. Go figure.

I talked to weez for the first time in about a week; she asked me how I was doing and I said so-so, but I was "kinda lonely a lot." Shortly after typing that, I had to head to the bathroom to cry for a while. I didn't think I'd react as much I had (and still am) to something I'd written down before, and said out loud, but never really to anyone.

It's not like I don't have opportunities to be social; I do, fairly often, but they almost all require hauling my ass up to the city or the east bay - and driving about an hour each way. That really really sucks. It also puts me in the position of getting depressed from the cycle of "It's my own damn fault I'm depressed and lonely, if only I got up and..." which is a hell of a thing to break loose from.

I feel like an abject fuck that all I seem to write and talk about is misery and pain and depression and shit like that. I'd much rather be able to talk about the happy things, how the 22 ducks I saw on Wednesday were happily swimming around, how nice the grass feels on my bare feet, stuff like that... but those moments get drowned out by the sheer quantity of sadness that I seem to have most of the time. I know that's real fucking attractive, too; it's one of a bunch of reasons I haven't even tried to date or anything like that. I feel too broken and unattractive to show my face. More than once I've lain on my bed and very quietly said, "I wish I were pretty." Dumb, perhaps, but heartfelt and without any idea of what to do.

I don't know what to do, or how to deal. Accurate self-imagery has never been one of my strong points.

4 sep 2003, 00:03
Whew. Thank god that's over. 30 was interesting, exciting, a year of valuble growth and change - and something I never ever want to go through again.

2 sep 2003, 22:28
I was sitting in the car, wondering 'what do I want to eat? I don't know! I can't think of anything!' and started to get panicy. Wtf? Why would something as seemingly innocent as that trigger a nasty and visceral 'I wanna curl up in my bed and hide and/or be held by someone' reaction?

In other news, Applebee's is just as bleaaaaaah as they've been all the other times I've been there. I was hoping they'd changed - but nope.

21 aug 2003, 00:29
It sounds like my chains of reasoning and knowledge of the facts were both pretty inaccurate. I've likely committed libel. Oops. Sigh. The one positive thing about it was it made me realize just how fucking pissed off I've been about the entire situation. Yeah, I'd said I was mad, but it's not the same thing as screaming and ranting and actually expressing it all. Anger ain't something I've been easily or comfortably able to express. I suspect it's one of the other things I learned to repress at a very early age. It feels like there's probably a link between my panic and my anger (or inability to process therein). Instead of blowing up, I'd implode. It'd explain a bunch of things (e.g. why I was actually depressed when it was expected or I was 'supposed' to be angry.)

19 aug 2003, 20:35
When I thought about this weekend and the elliptical response I got about it, I became enraged. I screamed and cursed. I refrained from sending any nastygrams, and kept myself from adding a whole lot of bitterness to the LJ post I made 2.5 months ago that set this whole ball rolling. Now I'm merely fuming and pissed; my stomach has calmed down enough that I think I can go eat. And yes, I realize full well that this is a tenuous chain of inference... but sadly, it doesn't seem all that unlikely to me from how people have acted before.

13 aug 2003, 13:43
I'm waiting for files to copy, so I figure I may as well kill some time writing this (and actually writing something not full of gloom and doom.) I've been feeling sorta adolescent lately, although I don't know why; I certainly never felt like this when I was a teenager. It ain't bad, it mostly feels like there's a whole lot of incipient change.

I also realized the other day that there are three reasons why I go to the Carl's Jr. kinda far away from work: all the iced tea I can drink, the iced tea there has never sucked, and (perhaps most importantly) there's a crick running right by the parking lot. It's got some of the standard river vegetation growing on either side, and it's only about 15-20 feet down from the parking lot elevation. It seems to flow pretty well, and doesn't look ultra-polluted (e.g. like the Chicago river). Whenever I stand there and look down at it with the midday sun streaming down on me, my inner monkeybrain gibbers and howls with glee at the scenery. I know I've always had an affinity for flowing water, but I hadn't realized quite how strong it was.

31 jul 2003, 23:58
My sleep patterns have sucked ass; Labrada said that I've been (essentially) jet lagged for the past fortnight. It'd make sense. Waking up at 4:30 every morning really blows goats. So, I'm now on prescription med #5, woo hoo.

I've been kinda mopey for the past couple of days; I suspect it's some cyclical thing, exacerbated by no exercise, nowhere near enough light, and pimples sitting on mutiple pressure points. Some of the pimples were in the blackwork of my tattoo; that was exciting and new. I'm sure there are still boatloads of stress floating around in my head, too. Urgh.

And in the radical-life-change-bits department, I'm quite seriously thinking about taking female hormones. That's right, I'm mulling the possibility of sterility, increased risk for blood clots, and a major rework of my body shape. I've been thinking about this for several months now, and what's sorta disturbing is that I still can't quite vocalize why I want to do this. Most of the other people I know of who've done crossgender sorts of things seem to have hated their body in some shape or form, while I don't. The majority also seem to want to become as opposite-gendered as possible, whereas I'd want to emphasize the best parts of both sexes. (I don't have the desire for surgery, either.) I've read up on the regimines and the risks and yet I still want to go ahead with it. I'm sure my parents would deal with it real well (snort), but for everyone else? I don't know. It seems like one of those things I Should Be Doing for whatever mysterious and unknown reasons there are for what I do.

23 jul 2003, 2:45
My HIV/gonorrhea/chlamydia/syphilis tests all came back negative. Yay. My bill for the doctor visit arrived today, to the tune of $1300. Boo. (Looks like they didn't notice I have new insurance.)

I found that the strange little market by Broadway and Main in Redwood City not only has Granny Goose nacho tortilla chips, the saltiest chips EVARRR (from which I'm getting my NaFix), but also has party packs of Johnsonville Bratwurst. Can't find the damn things anywhere else, but poke your head into a hole in the wall, and lo, there they are.

I dragged the last of my books out of Pastoria today. They're sitting in my trunk. The trunk just barely holds all of them. I think I'm going to have to get serious about the 'read and/or get rid of' deal; I just don't have the space in my room for them.

I found that handcuffs will go through my septum all the way, but not quite through my nipple. Ow ow ow. Oops.

19 jul 2003, 22:10
Tonight is Ted and Phoebe's birthday party. Even though I have another shindig to go to, it still gives me the knot in my stomach when I think about being the persona non grata. It's not that I actually want to go - it would be way too awkward - but the drama surrounding it all is what makes me more than a little ill. I just want the whole fucking thing to Go Away, to not have to worry about when I can get my fucking books, or that I might accidentally tread on 'her' turf, or show up to the same events, any of that bullshit. It pisses me the fuck off.

I'm cranky fairly often, but very rarely angry. This whole matter makes me angry. ARRGH! (it then usually makes me cry afterwards.)

2 jul 2003, 23:18
Ted told me that he was having a birthday party next weekend... but that it was going to be a joint party with Phoebe. I can't say that getting to avoid the party so that more Drama doesn't occur fills me with joy and rapture; more resigned sadness, really. I'm probably going to softly cry for a bit, since I don't know what the fuck else I can do.

29 jun 2003, 05:39
Crap, it's getting light outside. I'm not liking these zoloft side effects, no sirree bob. I ended up not going to the SomArts or Kinky Salon things due to being tired and it getting late - and THAT's from being up until 6am or so last night. When I was finished I said to myself, 'I spent three hours for THAT?' Grrrrrrr.

26 jun 2003, 11:52
There's nothing quite like new bed fumes to make one all headachy. Ick.

While everything I write in this august oversharing page is what I genuinely feel at the time, how well those perceptions/feelings jibe with reality is much more up for debate. Did Phoebe really react as I wrote? I think so, but it's possible I was overreacting. As usual, the truth is probably somewhere in between.

I figured I should make it explicitly clear that I don't take everything I write/feel/experience as gospel. Caveat lector.

25 jun 2003, 21:21
My bed came and is now set up, which is nice - but when I got to Pastoria and turned on my light in the room, I could see Phoebe vaguely outlined through the shutters - and when she noticed the light was on, her body language stiffened up and her voice stopped for a beat. Enough of a reaction that I was still clearly a malignant presence. I had to flee for a bit, and cried for a while and thought a lot about stabbing myself repeatedly. When I get this down and out, my options are usually a) continue to hurt, b) go to sleep, or c) contemplate self-injury quite a bit. If I stick with a enough it often gets me stable enough so that I can at least half-heartedly do what I was doing before.

The worst part is that the last rejection is as bad as the first. It never gets any better. It always hurts just as much. All or nothing, the story of my fucking life.

25 jun 2003, 00:11
I feel ashamed and awful that I haven't gotten out of the house yet. It's so damn hard to do much of anything, though. I hope the hard 1 july deadline will cut through it and motivate me enough despite the depression. (This makes me wonder if it's more learned behavior, the Wellbutrin decreasing in efficacy, or super-depression, because before I've been much more able to go on and do stuff despite feeling like shit.)

19 jun 2003, 20:22/23:13
All that's for me right now at Pastoria is my stuff and tension. Worse than when I lived alone. This ain't exactly a surprise, and not a whole lot of fun for Robert or Phoebe, either. I suspect everybody will give a big sigh of relief once I'm completely moved out. Until then, though, it's hard to make myself do anything, save go to work. (Wanking is now a chore with the Zoloft, don't even have that.) Blah blah blah moan blah blah blah whine blah blah depression blah blah relentless negativity. I don't want to be like this, but it's a hard pit to pull myself out of, even with the vast amount of pills I'm taking. Of course, that makes it sooooo much better.

postscript: I get really cranky when I'm totally unhungry and don't eat. This certainly did not help my mood. Eating dinner and placing an order for a futon helped quite a bit, though. Now I'm eager to finish planning how my room will be arranged... but still not the actual moving bit.

18 jun 2003, 14:44
After feeling like a leper last night, it was nice to get up and see I was having a good face day. I put in my contacts and my new black shirt, how stylin'.

After all the shit that's gone on, I think it's time to let things with Pastoria lay fallow for a while. I'd been meaning to get out and interact with other social groups anyway, so it's especially timely.

This whole moving thing is still biting the wax tadpole, though. I'm probably be wistful for a week or three.

17 jun 2003, 11:04
I think things are a lot better now. Also, the hardware at work miraculously decided to start behaving. Yay.

16 jun 2003, 21:25
Started moving. The bedroom I'm moving into is kinda tiny, and it'll be fun trying to wedge everything in and not become claustrophobic in the process; there's no way I'm going to be able to fit all the books in.

The house here is empty, nobody here but the cat; I wonder if he'll remember me in two weeks. I'm going from a home to a place where my stuff is. I'm too emotionally worn-out to cry or scream or do much of anything. I feel numb. (Too bad, more moving to do.)

My apologies for being such a drag, but it's pretty fucking hard when you're dealing with panic every goddamn day, stress at work, tension at home the house, depression, and all sorts of other shit. There's plenty of beauty and wonder in the world outside (go outside and look at the stars tonight), but it's all fucking swamped under by panic, loneliness, and doubt. I don't know if anything I thought was even close to accurate, or how misguided my emotions actually are.

12 jun 2003, 23:27
I'm trying to decide if I'm too depressed/panicy/whatever the hell it is to wank. I'm not sure. Phoebe says she thinks I haven't changed enough to deal, and thus the moving. She's probably right, but I wish I were able to prove her wrong.

I'm very lonely, trapped in myself.

11 jun 2003, 21:39
Well, I spilled my guts; I don't think I have any secrets left - that I know about, anyway. It doesn't seem to have made my mood much better; my stomach is still wound up in knots and I feel like I want to cry but don't have enough force behind it to actually do so. Sigh. I'm gona go to Adrenochrome and see people; I hope my mood doesn't continue to suck.

I'd note that this panic shit has been going on for more than a week now. It's closer to two, if I count the stressing out about Kinky Salon as the beginning.

10 jun 2003, 22:53
La la la la la, panic sucks, la la la, wanting to claw your own eyes out does too, la la la la. I'm so fucking tired of this, and about as far as I get is 'it was something that happened to me when I was real young'.

9 jun 2003, 18:48
a postscript to the last entry: while at In-N-Out (where they had godawful iced tea, bleaaaah) I realized that the closer I was to a person, the more scared of them I am when I get in that state. The other contradiction of the mood is that I desperately crave sociability even while being scared shitless of the people around me.

8 jun 2003, 23:01
More of the same, except there's less of a self-hate vibe and more of a "I'm profoundly uninteresting/not worth it" one instead. When that kicks in I get afraid of people. I started every time I heard Myst clatter around the house, and hearing Phoebe enter the house made me terrified. I really need to eat, even though I'm unhungry; I can hear Phoebe laughing at something, which is probably enough to make me get up and leave - the prospect of feeling awful and left-out from hearing people laugh makes "I don't really want to eat" pale in comparison.

7 jun 2003, 17:19
Guess what, more mood crashiness. What brought this on was realizing that I had nobody to crush on, nobody I'm likely to crush on terribly soon, and even if I did I'd be extremely unlikely to act on it at all. The last bit is what really gets the tears going, the simultaneous feelings of inability to effect anything and that I'm not <whatever> enough to go and do them, or if I were less lazy or whatever else I would and could. The urge for physical closeness, for snuggling, is so strong and the process by which I'd get to do so is so terrifying and seemingly out of bounds right now that it burns. Knowing I'm still pretty severly fucked up emotionally makes me even less inclined to try and go and initiate anything new, as well. Of course, this feeds right into the 'I want to fit in, I want to be part of the gang [i.e. "normal people"] but I either can't or won't' thing, thus self-reinforcing even more.

I get the feelings of cold when this happens, but they're much different than the happy shivers I get. The happy ones are up near my ears and down to my shoulder, near the back of my neck. The sad/panicy ones are in front, at sternum level and extending down to my navel, with some extending down to the front of my legs. The crying always takes the same facial expression, too - it's never the angry grimace or I'm hurt or sorrow faces. It's always screwing up the eyes real tight, the lips pulled back, and the feeling of deep and unassailable pain. Even though I'm writing fairly dispassionately about it, it's only being held in check - much as how I'd held it in check for most of my life to deal with hyperactivity. I think I need to go lie down for a while and try to get at least a little bit out, lest it go right back in and sit even deeper than before.

(fifteen minutes later) That didn't work. Still all the feelings of uselessness, that I deserve all I get, and that I can? should? am? being rightfully punished for how I behave. The images of self-harm have become fairly standardized, so I suppose that's easier to deal with in some ways; you see you slashing yourself enough times, you get desensitized to it, at least a little. I'm so sick of it all, but it feels like there's no escape from any of it - the feelings, or worse, the situation. The latter is what really gets me.

4 jun 2003, 12:04
Woke up kinda moody, big surprise. Dreamt about playing Pac-Man; I really sucked, as is usual. The annoying bit was when the last power-pill ran away just when I was about to pounce on it and go ghost-chomping. It seems like I almost got enough sleep, which is nice; only woke up around 6:30 - or was it 8? Maybe both.

I got up to get a glass of water last night because when I was lying in bed I thought I heard my roommates talking (and because of the fucked-up state I was in I was seizing on every little noise I heard). As I get tired and start to dream I frequently have audio hallucinations, so I didn't know if I was imagining it or I really was hearing them over the fan and the closed doors and down the hall. Turns out I did in fact hear them; I suppose it's nice that I'm merely hypervigilant instead of hearing voices in my head.

3 jun 2003, 22:49
I realized that I was more tired than I thought when I got home, but the unease which started during my psych session ramped up pretty hard. Turns out that one of the manifestations of panic I get is getting cold and feeling depressed about things. It's all sorts of no fun, and the worst bit is that it (still) seems relatively unfocused on specifics. It's related to the larger issues that have been going on lately, sure - gender issues, dating issues, identity issues - and there's plenty of anxiety, but this reaction just shuts me down, unable to do much of anything. It's really frustrating to get this way from even thinking near the subjects. It sucks.

31 may 2003, 23:09
I'm sitting here, stressing/freaking about the Kinky Salon I was going to go to - none of my 'fetish' clothes fit any more - or worse, are all dull and boring. I was thinking about wearing the backless dress I have and whatnot, but the dresscode is 'fetish/latex/futurist/sci-fi'... and that's none of that. At this point, I'm leaning towards just staying home. :( It's not atypical for me to bail on things for similar reasons.

It seems kinda trivial to bitch about, though.

23 may 2003, 00:15
Some days I'd like to beat severely those who think that depression is noble and wonderful and all that shit. Today is one of those days, mostly because I'm constantly reminded of how much it SUCKS. I really hope I'm not becoming an emotional drag on the people around me; I know I'm certainly enough of one for myself, feeling the same shitty things in the same fucking way for the past two weeks. At least there's a treatment I now have that I hadn't tried before.

20 may 2003, 09:35(edit, 11:06)
Looks like I am/was more fucked up than I thought. After I wrote the previous entry, I went out and sorta half-asked if they could talk elsewhere and then fled back into my room. Fled is a pretty accurate word; I felt I had to quite literally hide (and did so by hurrying into bed, putting the quilt over me and hyperventilating/crying a bunch.) I wanted to ask Phoebe or Robert if they could tell me I wasn't a horrible and awful person for having asked that, but found they were still talking in Robert's room, I retreated back to my room post-haste and hid back in bed. Later, when I heard Phoebe (I think, could have been Robert) open her door and step out, I quivered and shrank back in fear; I would have recoiled from anyone who had approached me - Robert, Phoebe, any person who randomly walked in off the street - and been sure that they'd mentally/emotionally hurt me, and that I deserved it for some reason. (The rational part of my head also wanted me to have someone, anyone, come in so as to partially disprove the fucked-up way I was feeling.)

After whoever went back into their room, I started in on the 'oh, god, what I did was fucking terrible' line of thought, and naturally what I had to do to make amends. Leave a note [not good enough, and would just embarass me more], move out [getting there, but would put them in an even worse financial position], kill myself [not terribly good for my health], etc. I cried myself to sleep amidst the feelings of shame and horror at what I'd done.

I don't think 'regressing' quite describes what I did, since there wasn't any sort of age attached to what was going on, and no impairing of my cognitive processes. It pretty much made any reasoning that involved emotion and/or propriety impossible; things were off the scale, but at least I knew that I was immensely fucked up at the time. There was also some weird thing going on where part of me remained immensely cool and 'rational'; however, in addition to 'drink water, you're dehydrated' and other useful tidbits, I found myself thinking that I couldn't possibly be feeling or doing these things naturally and that by virtue of being able to think about things rationally while simultaneously doing weird things I must be putting on an act somehow. My dreams were extra surrealistic, escapist, and involving time travel via pieces of red paper, and only one person I knew showed up for a brief cameo; in comparison, most of my dreams as of late have been pretty pedestrian and have had lots of people I knew in them.

It sounds like I'll have a lot to talk about with my psych tomorrow. I'm still fucked up enough that I don't know what the hell I ought to do to apologize to my housemates for my bizarro behavior. I feel like a turd.

20 may 2003, 01:25
Where to start? Jesus, there's been a fuckload of emotional tension for the past ten days or so. My sister's impending wedding probably was the source of a whole bunch. The cloudy weather almost certainly didn't help. Aw, fuck, it's 2:30 already, and I haven't finished this, yet; I should just spew in an extra-oversharing entry and then go sleep and worry about it later.

Lately, I've been feeling especially isolated, alone, and craving of intimacy - but with enough fear and baggage stacked up that I don't do anything about it (like go date), thus starting the cycle of self-loathing that only intensifies because I know I've got all these good things going for me and I still can't/won't do it. I'm oversensitive to fucking everything going on; for instance phoebe and robert are talking and laughing once in a while, and it's making me feel extra stupid and alone - even while I know that their chatting has nothing to do with me whatsoever. I take all the good things I see as signs that people are happy and fun and not scary and that I can and ought to and should have fun with them - thus making my failure to do so ever the worse and despisable. Of course, asking for any help or talking about it is even more awful, as it's intruding on their fun.

I want to write more right now, but I just can't take any more and need to go cry and fall asleep. There's too much I can hear outside my door and I'm acting like a fucking bozo because of it. I feel lucky that I don't have any tendencies towards punishing myself physically.

Oh god, this hurts.

14 may 2003, 02:20
More exciting moodiness this evening. I wanna blather about it more (and probably will tomorrow), but here are the highlights: I get bored really quickly when interacting with most people; talking to people the first couple of times scares the bejeezus out of me; and that I process people's emotional reactions really really fast (and intuitively), but the inferences from something really really slowly. Ask me whether somebody is happy, sad, or something else, I can tell you in an instant; ask me why someone got agitated when I brought up the price of their house, I might be able to tell you in a day or so after conferring with people.

13 may 2003, 01:22
I broke for a while, and was an utter mess. On the bright side, I got to approach things slightly differently for a change. I don't think I can adequately express how supportive Phoebe has been during my bouts of exceptional emotional complexity.

12 may 2003, 21:23
I've been in a pretty good mood for the past couple of weeks; becoming employed helped an awful lot. I'd been vaguely moody last week, but there wasn't anything terribly strong attached to it. Today, though, there's been much more intense moodiness. Part of it was from the emotionally charged conversation I had with Phoebe last night whereon I talked about my anxiety, fears, and so on -but the majority of it comes from the regretful conclusion that there are some people who I have to write off and not interact with.

I tend to have a pretty intense personal loyalty, and so when that gets abrogated I don't take it terribly well. There's been some non-fun with my former psuedo-boss at Redback; while upsetting, it wasn't really a surprise. The bigger impact came from thinking about a couple of people who I had considered friends, but can't really do so now. They were people with whom I talked on a fairly regular basis, but no longer do so. They seemed to just... stop.

One of them would say HI! online, but that's it - no other contact, electronic or otherwise. She's embroiled with all sorts of drama and a little inbred community; I guess I understand why it happened, but I don't feel any better because of it. I could have pressed her for more interaction, I suppose, but that seemed sorta weird and ungood for some reason I can't quite put my finger on. Even her LJ seemed to be not really worth it to read, since there wasn't anything of content there.

One of the main others who's been on my mind completely disappeared. Not even a hi or how are you. I know she's still around, but seeing her in person seems kinda pointless. The ten-cent shrink in me wants to mutter about building and living in her own hermetic little world, but a bunch of that is sour grapes. The second- or third-hand gossip about her seems to reinforce the notion of stasis; nothing changing, wanting to keep up the same role she's had for years and years now.

I hate to bitch like this, but I don't know what else I can do; it really hurts when I have to consider somebody lost to me.

24 apr 2003, 22:00
I'm in a pissy mood. It looks like my PC is remaining mysteriously flaky, and that people have probably been using our wireless without our knowledge and using up our IP addresses. Autumn and her friend Fox are over here (as well as Jen) for Phoebe's interview about online chatting and the personae generated. I got back from dinner and walked through the door, and went to close it when Autumn said, "Don't close the door." Gee, thanks for telling me what to do in my own fucking house. Combine that with the earlier neomarxian arguments for racisim ('all racism in the US is economically motivated') Fox was making, and that adds up to a whole lot of irritation I don't want to deal with. GRRRRR.

19 apr 2003, 03:16
The Seder at JD's got a wee bit loud/unruly after a while; neither Rachel or Karin 'n' Mike were there, which was too bad. I showed off my tattoo to a bunch of folks, who were duly impressed. The tattoo is mostly healed now; there's some scabbing here and there, but not too much. It'll be all healed just in time for it to get poked again on Friday. I was hoping to show it off at Autumn's party next Saturday, but it may be too raw and/or covered in A&D goo to display. (In case it is, I got a nice backless dress at Savers today that I look pretty decent in. Be better if I had tits, though.) If this party is going to be like the last one, I'll be there mostly to show off my sassy self, but then get bored after about an hour and a half and leave; the crowds that've appeared at previous parties just haven't done much to engage me at all, and the Bacchanal theme may lend itself to 22-year-old drunken twits acting all Naughty. Bleh, I'm too old to put up with that repetitive and uninteresting behavior for long.

17 apr 2003, 21:52
As far as i can remember, my parents nor my teachers told me 'It's OK' when I was floundering in school. My parents said they loved me, but they never gave any indication they thought I was even trying. I think this is where my learned helplessness comes from: while I didn't have any emotional doubts, I never had any social support from my 'rents; add to that my rather pronounced lack of 'normal' social skills, and you get a whole lot of being stuck alone, thinking you're awful.

12 apr 2003, 20:29
My tattoo is itchy, and my mood is crashing because I'm starting to feel shitty about not terribly relishing the thought of going to a housewarming while not having anything else up for the evening. Cleaning my room seems kinda pointless, even though I know I'll feel better once it's done. It seems my mood is doomed to be shitty for a while, so I may as well try to be cathartic and talk about what my parental units said on the phone today.

I had asked them what I was like as a kid, how I behaved, how I acted towards other people. Dad said I was "an intellectual" all along, and Mom said I was "bright-eyed". I apparently was fairly outgoing, provided I found people who understood me - usually adults. Mom remembers when I tried to chat with one of the neighbors' kids, and them not getting many of the topics I brought up. She doesn't remember many of the specifics of what happened 25+ years ago (go figure), except for a couple of things here and there. One thing that she hadn't really told me before was her frustration with the schools' inability to do anything with me. Some of the teachers did pretty well, but the majority? Nope. I knew that my fondly-remembered science teacher from Jr High retired the year after I graduated, but Mom told me today that the reason he retired when he did was that he was fed up with the school system's treatment of me. It was hard not to burst into tears when she said that.

Sigh. This isn't cathartic enough.

18 minutes of sobbing later...
While crying, it occured to me that one of the reasons what Mom said upset me so much is that even the people who saw a lot of my predicament - especially when I couldn't - were helpless to do much. It felt (and feels far too often) like I'm adrift in the ocean, away from everything and everyone, and the few times I've caught sight of shore I've been unable, through fear, ADD, obliviousness, not knowing what to do, whatever, to do much of anything. The fact that I've had this same thing going on for the past twenty years makes it feel like I'm doomed, it's never going to change. (it's one of the best fuels for suicidal impulses, too.)

I'd been sorta flirting with someone on Friendster, and she mentioned she was going to be down in the southbay today. It was 2 in the morning when I responded to her; I wasn't thinking terribly clearly and was also terribly uncertain about if she was implying she was interested in meeting up (why else would she mention it, my head now asks), so I sorta intentionally passed it over in my reply. She replied back on Friday morning clearly spelling it out, and I was going to respond to her... but I still haven't. I've managed to forget about it, or not find any words, or get distracted by other things (writing this entry is proving to be pretty fucking hard, actually). Some of it is ADD, a lot of it is being scared (the last time I met somebody I only knew online where flirting had been involved was 1992), and I'm sure there's other stuff in there, too. Not being able to do it as yet just makes me feel like utter shit - that it's the same old song and dance I do, not changing.

Fuck, I wish I didn't have so goddamn many depressed entries. So many triggers for them, too. It'd be nice to take things easy and less seriously; Mom also said today that I was serious long before I was silly, so perhaps there's hope yet.

7 apr 2003, 23:12
On the eve of getting my (perhaps slightly overpriced) tattoo tomorrow, I've realized that this will be one of the first couple of times I'll have marked myself with the intentional expectation that others will see it. Yeah, I've pierced myself, dyed my hair random colors, and worn goofy clothing... but it always seemed like they were things I did for me, that they could be invisible to anyone else and that would be OK. But this... no. As it happens, it won't be visible much of the time as it'll be on my back and I don't have much occasion to prance about topless.

The other thing that occured to me is that I've (unconscoiusly) pretty much always regarded myself as being unable to 'pass' in normal society, that my modes of communication or my strange behavior or body language would immediately give me away. This sort of view has been supported by the times people have said that they recognized me without having met me, just from seeing me wander about or the like. One other aspect of getting the tattoo is acknowledging to myself that I stand out, I don't pass, and that I don't want to pass. I'm embracing my weirdness or individuality, I guess. Rather extreme and permanent way to do it, too.

Yay for individuality; now, all I need is to get hired and have my tendonitis and medication-induced nausea go away. Oh, and have the depression vanish, and make my life clear. And get a pony.

4 apr 2003, 21:58
It occurs to me that one of the reasons I've tried so hard over the years to read people and figure out how they act is because I've desperately wanted to do that for myself. Stupid ADD.

4 apr 2003, 18:16
My mood seemed pretty good; this is probably in part due to the sun, warmer weather, big fluffy clouds, etc. Of course, now that I'm feeling better I went and started talking about the sociological implications of sex, something that never fails to fill me with... not stark-raving terror, but 'stark-raving anxiety with a Magic Shell coating of fear' might be accurate: my lungs feel pushed back in my chest, my sinuses start throbbing, my hands feel all weirdly tingly, and the pit of my stomach feels like it's imploding. Big strong he-man, me. It's the most ticklish of subjects and social interactions, the one that seems the most laden with pitfalls and rejection, and the hardest to approach directly. Part of it is certainly due to me not being able to judge how well or not I'm interacting with people, not being able to read people's intended reactions well (i.e. knowing the rules for how things are 'supposed' to proceed), and not displaying those expected reactions. The other big part is my oft-bemoaned lack of experience with dating; I've really only dated three people. Two of those were mostly by accident, and one wasn't initiated by me. I'm trying to work myself up to (gasp) attempting to initiate something myself; that'll certainly be interesting for everyone involved. I wonder how much of a nervous wreck I'll be when it happens.

3 apr 2003, 00:02
Grrr. I typed the wrong command earlier today and accidentally wiped out the copy of this page the webserver sees. Oopsie.

At lunch today, I was mulling over how I fairly often have to consciously assume behaviors when talking to people, rather than speaking 'naturally'. In some ways this means I'm manipulative as fuck, because I have to explicitly work out what I'm going to say and what effect it'll produce. My 'natural' behavior is a bit too honest, sidetracky, or overshareful for a whole lot of situations; this seems to be a very common symptom of having ADD. In some ways, I think it's comparable to speaking a different 'social language' natively and then learning the common-to-the-culture one. There's bound to be incomprehension or mistranslation, or some idioms that just don't translate at all; also, if people don't realize you're not a 'native speaker', their expectations can lead to a whole lot of misunderstanding.

2 apr 2003, 00:07
My mood's been wobbly for the past couple of days, possibly exacerbated by feeling a bit spacier/absent-minded than usual. Having a slight cold and a breakout of pimples doesn't help much, either. I'm not sure what makes these moods show up (biorhythms? hormones? phase of the moon?), but they seem to make ruminating on stuff harder to avoid - not that that's bad, but rehashing the same thing zillions of times ain't terribly helpful, and the veering off in a zillion different fuzzily-defined directions is amazingly frustrating.

The two big things that have been weighing on my mind as of late are relationships (as always) and ADD (fairly new.) In reading Driven to Distraction, I was sorta taken aback at just how many of my behaviors are influenced by ADD, how many of those are undesired or the source of a lot of anguish over the years, and how unsettling/relieving it was to see all those traits there on the printed page. I ended up sobbing an awful lot while reading the book this time. I'd read it a bunch of years ago, but it's different when you haven't been formally diagnosed, and can only hope that the symptoms mentioned are really something that's there and known and treatable. Seeing that most of my childhood experience ran directly counter to the suggestions the book gives for raising an ADD kid was also really emotional for me.

For the better part of ten years, I tried getting various psychs to treat me for ADD, and none of them would; I don't know if they didn't believe me, didn't feel qualified to make a diagnosis, or what. I eventually stopped beating my head against the wall and gave up. Only my current psych (who deals with kids as well as adults) has been willing to work on it. There's still the fear lurking that now I again have a hope of having things be better, it'll get taken away again.

One of the main criteria cited is 'Inaccurate self-observation: People with ADD are poor self-observers. They do not accurately gauge the impact they have on other people. They usually see themselves as less effective or powerful than other people do.' Missing social cues - or worse, recognizing that there's a cue there but not knowing what it is - is really awful, too. That's one of the worst things about ADD for me: knowing that things are going wrong while they're happening and being unable to do much about them.

Expressing myself has long been a painful thing. In preschool I'd talk about various esoteric things for show-and-tell, and get blank and confused looks in return. My parents were amused by my temper tantrums, and didn't take them terribly seriously. Things got worse when high school rolled around; dating was everywhere, and I was mostly oblivious to everything that went on. In college, when I started realizing what was going on, I didn't even know where to begin - so I didn't; since this culture mostly requires the menfolk to go out and talk to the wimmenses, I didn't date. These days when I hear people talking about their myriads of dating experiences, the Beltane celebrations they've been involved in, how they got laid every day at Burning Man, or that they're gonna have a fling with somebody in a month or three, I get a sick feeling in my stomach and gnawings of depression, and weird emotional flutterings I can't quite identify. It's not that I don't want to hear about such things (I find them quite interesting indeed, actually) but that I seem to be convinced I'm congenitally unable to ever be in a situation like that. Until a year or two ago, I'd only been told by women I was attractive a couple of times at most. (The menfolk have given me many more compliments; alas, I'm pretty damn low on the Kinsey scale.) Not being able to talk and not being talked to hasn't made my confidence terribly high, and I'm frequently unable to tell when I'm doing things 'right'. I <heart> self-reinforcing cycles.

I had more structure in mind when I started writing this but it seems to have evaporated, and I'm teetering on the edge of being morose; these seem pretty clear indications I should be going to bed.

23 mar 2003, 03:42
I got to wear my red outfit (red horns, dress, contacts, lipstick, socks, eyebrows and uv lime green eyeshadow) to the party this evening, and I got a lot of compliments. The party itself was kinda eh. I'm pleased with how my eyebrows are shaping up after the butchery I did to them three weeks ago. I also can't find any of my copies of Kevin Aucoin's books anywhere. Grrrrr.

It's strange to be in the big master bedroom and lie on the floor with all my stuff around me; it feels like I'm real young and I'm in a big tent and camping out. Need to get a futon; hope the next person I contact doesn't decide at the last minute that they only want to sell me the frame and not the mattress, unlike the last (seethe).

I'm feeling pseudo-hyper, like I want to talk a blue streak - but I'm not feeling much in the way of tachycardia or jerkiness in my fine motor control movements, unlike other recent feelings of hyperness. I'm not sure if it's the Strattera, being really tired, some combination therein, or something else. I imagine tomorrow will reveal which one of those it was.

19 mar 2003, 09:46
I had a nightmare where I dreamt that my brother had done something bratty to me, and so I was going to get back at him. I hit the door enough that the lock gave way, and then caught him, turned him over, and told him that I was going to have to perform 'The Operation' on him. He freaks out, I run my thumbnail like a razorblade across his back, and he freaks out even more. I woke up sobbing.

From about age 3-5, my parents/opthamologist thought I had a lazy eye, even though I kept on telling them I didn't, that it was under conscious control. They made me wear this stupid eyepatch for years, which wasn't a big deal - but every once in a while they talked about The Operation, where they were going to cut a bunch of the muscles in my eye so that it wouldn't be pointing the 'wrong way'. Every time they brought it up I ran off and hid; whenever I'd tried to tell them that it wouldn't do any good, that I always moved my eye intentionally, they brushed it off. Eventually, they decided that it would correct itself as I got older.

Gee, I wonder why I have Issues with being trusted and with being misunderstood.

8 mar 2003, 22:51
My day has sucked ass. I'll talk about it later. For all you fine people searching for Strattera via google, here's my experiences with Strattera.

8 mar 2003, 04:59
After suggesting it to Phoebe, I decided to write my own list of 'What validates me', and 'what invalidates me'. The short version: the former pretty much is limited to cognitive abilities or style/taste - and and anything social, sexual or emotional shows up in the latter, if it appears at all. Fortunately, I couldn't sob too long because I was dehydrated.

5 mar 2003, 18:40
I'm so fucking glad February is over. My psych was kinda taken aback at all the things that happened in the past 20 days - a gout attack, stress with my own divorce, friends with domestic violence issues, wife's aunt dying, my roommates fairly rapidly heading towards divorce, and Mr. Rogers kicking the bucket. I'm sure there's one or two other things I left out. Gah.

On the positive side, it looks like things are stabilizing now: it looks fairly definitive that it'll be me and Phoebe in the hiznouse (without any other roommates), things with Laura are going pretty well, we should be getting a nice hunk of change from income tax returns, my weight has pretty well hovered around 175lb, and the Strattera is noticably helping with my ADD. I can't remember the last time my handwriting was this neat - probably never. While I wouldn't go as far as to say it's legible, it's definitely more legible.

All things considered, I think I've been dealing with things pretty well. Now, if I could just do something about that pesky job situation...

24 feb 2003, 14:22
It looks like one of those days where I'm going to start crying at random every couple of hours. or minutes. It doesn't help that I feel amazingly lonely, either.

22 feb 2003, 23:22
Yessir, it got worse. I think that I'm pretty well justified in saying my life is sucking kinda hard right now - I'm unemployed, depressed, ADDish, going through a divorce, and now it sounds like my roommates are divorcing with enough drama attached to things that I don't want to stick around the place. I don't like this one bit.

22 feb 2003, 15:49
I'm so upset now I feel like barfing. I feel angry, sad, upset, betrayed, worried, panicky, and all sorts of other things. I don't want my already precarious state to become worse, and it looks like it may. I am not happy.

14 feb 2003, 16:03
The interesting thing about Wellbutrin for me is that it doesn't really mess with my mood much, in that I can still get really really sad, happy, or whatever; what it does for me is prevent the really sad (or other awful) feelings from disabling me to the point where all I can do is lie in bed and cry or stare at the ceiling. Now, I can lay in bed and cry and then get up or deal with the feelings involved without being completely overwhelmed and swept away into the unclimbable pits of despair.

I still have issues-o-rama, but at least I can see them now instead of them being drowned out by depression.

9 feb 2003, 14:47
One of my keenest childhood memories is waking up one day and finding that the door to my bedroom was closed, and crying and crying because it was. Mom showed up after what felt like five-ten minutes and asked what was wrong. I said "The door was closed!" and she looked kind of guilty and said something to the effect of "You were asleep and I didn't want the noise to wake you up."

My mom used to punish me when I was quite small by putting me in my room, turning off the light, closing the door, and locking it until some amount of time had passed. I don't remember how I was supposed to find out when the punishment was over; for that matter, I don't have any memories of being punished, I only remember the confusion and upset from waking up and finding the door closed when I hadn't done anything.

All that certainly has something to do with my need for invitations and the feelings of exclusion I often get. It makes me wonder how gregarious I was as a child, how much I talked/babbled/whatever, and from where I get the massive feelings of shame from displaying emotion.

8 feb 2003, 21:14
It was a great relief to finally get everything out of the old apartment and to have everything clean to the landlord's satisfaction. (Next time, if I have the cash, I'll tell him to just hire the cleaners. It's not worth the time it took me.) While I'll miss the half a block walk to Albertson's, it's really nice to be in a house that's very obviously a community. When I was driving to the old place the last time, the neighbor across the street waved to me. I grinned real wide and waved back. I've missed that sort of thing a lot.

And now I'm mulling whether I want to take a bath, if I want to go to Urban Wasteland, or go to autumn's Comfort Party in my bathrobe. Ah, these are the sorts of decisions I like.

7 feb 2003, 23:50
I'd been feeling sorta emotionally unstable all day, and the cleaning/moving shit hadn't helped one iota. It's nearly done, there's only a carload or two left, and then a buttload of cleaning - all of which should be easily done before 4pm tomorrow, when the landlord arrives. That's not much solace, though.

I was talking to Ari and she mentioned that she and Gary were gonna be talking about game stuff that evening, and that just pushed me over the edge. I had talked to my friend Tam earlier, and she said she was going to a party I didn't feel in the mood for. Phoebe had also said she was going to be hanging with James, and Ari's quite innocuous comment just triggered... something. I thought I could just go and do the final bits of cleaning, but there was too much, I had to go and lie down and cry softly for a while and wonder why.

I knew I was miserable, and that I felt like all the fun kids had plans and I didn't [unfun kid me], and that I was feeling terribly broken for being depressed and being unable to make fun plans of my own - 'but why would people want to hang out with a broken person anyway? how repugnant,' the little voice says. Do I feel any real source of it? Nope, nor do I know why that conversation would give the push needed to make me fall. It annoys me and frightens me and disgusts me, and that makes the depression feed on itself more. But even when those things pass, I still feel sad, I still want to cry (even though I don't have the emotional energy to do so) and I'm still helplessly confused as to why I do the things I do.

It really sucks that the negative things are utterly blocking the views of all the good things that have happened as of late.

3 feb 2003, 23:03
Hello to my fans in corporate.

I did the 'too honest' thing again today; I always forget that I'm not just talking to people, I'm supposed to be talking to them with the agenda of "I'm far superior to all the other people you're interviewing, and even my faults are strengths." Fairly typically for me, I realized this about 45 minutes into lunch, 15 minutes before all the interviews ended. As sort of the mirror image of the honesty thing, I tend to believe people pretty much verbatim at first, and only really digest/critique it later. Reflecting on these things didn't exactly brighten up my day.

On the other hand, I realize where part of the body image distortion I had when I was younger came from - my pediatrician, Dr. Cywinski. I think I was in third or fourth grade, and he told me that I was "overweight. You're fat." I guess I took it to heart. I don't remember my body changing very much as I got older, I don't recall any proportions getting weird; I just got taller, and kept the same pot belly I always have had. Fat. Only two months ago, when I was home for Xmas, did my I have any notion otherwise; she was talking about something else and then added "but you were so skinny in high school." I think I replied with the witty and urbane comment, "I was skinny?" and she affirmed it. Real strange to hear that what I'd thought for about twenty years was wrong.

28 jan 2003, 17:43
As I was driving home from Dana Street, the thought "I feel like I'm leaving my adolescence" popped into my head. I laughed aloud a bit, and then moreso semi-hysterically, and then began tearing up and producing half-stifled sobs. I got home and did something that seemed halfway between crying and laughing - I couldn't tell if it was either or both. It felt like a tremendous sense of relief.

26 jan 2003, 14:14
I think getting nauseous when getting depressed is a defensive mechanism so that you don't yak while crying. It's kind of upsetting that I expect that 50% of the time I'll go fetal while crying. Then again, my whole inability-to-deal upsets the living fuck out of me, only adding fuel to the fire. Not-dealing is just so amazingly attractive.

I think that at this point one of the most comforting (and maybe even helpful) things that could be done for me at this point is for someone to hold me - or heck, even touch me - while I'm holding my legs close to my chest, rocking back and forth, and making that weird monotone screech. It's about a quarter-tone flat of E flat, and then a much shorter quarter-tone sharp of D. over and over and over. It doesn't even sound like crying to me.

26 jan 2003, 02:36
The birthday dinner and cocktail party were fun. I must admit to being a little wistful by dropping off the (very happy and drunk) Ari and Phoebe at Phoebe's place.

There's all sorts of feelings there; what they all are and what exactly they're focusing on, I'm not sure. I hope I'll be able to sort them out one of these days. *sigh*

21 jan 2003, 13:44
It's been five months since my life started to crumble, and three since the major depression has kicked in. I've been better, but I've slid back to the same depths. The apartment is appallingly messy, and I can't even bear to clean it up (something that's helped in the past.) I'm nauseous every time I eat, I cry in the morning, I cry before I go to sleep, I have only a few hours of respite before it's back to more of the same. What's even worse is that I know that I've only scratched the surface as far as my Issues go, so it's going to continue to be not good for at least a while longer. Now that I can sort-of feel my own emotional state, everything's hitting me all at once, everything that I thought I had dealt with but apparently only pushed into the anxiety closet.

Ari was kind enough to talk to me last night, when I was in the throes of one of the worse fits. It's amazingly tough for me to figure out what I do actually feel, what does bother me. It doesn't help that I don't actually believe most of my explanations for why I feel like I do or what I'm really feeling because those explanations have been wrong more often than right.

I'm so fucking tired of crying and nausea and feeling suicidal every other week and not being able to pick myself up. That's whence despair.

20 jan 2003, 23:24
While driving at random, it seems that for the dream I had last night, the imagery of my Dad as Ozzy Osbourne is as being sorta ineffectual and grasping (cf Ozzy on 'The Osbournes') and that I get suicidal because of some sort of punishment from my Mom. (What the punishment is/was, and what the thing is that would make me upset I'd off myself, I have no idea.)

During that same epiphanic reverie, I also found out that the reason I got hyper today (when I'd never been like that before save when really really tired) was because my emotions had always been severely clamped-down on before, my hyperness is somehow tied in with my emotions, and now that I'm beginning to emotively cut loose it manifests more easily; that the reason I get so tired when dealing with people is because being social goes directly against that clamping, making my head work against itself extra hard; and that I'd be much more extraverted normally.

I have no sexual exploits to report. Wish I did.

18 jan 2003, 18:26
Wow. I woke up this morning and thought 'What was I DOING?' Good grief. I don't think I'll be taking the Straterra again soon, at least until my mood improves and I can take a lower dosage of Wellbutrin. Gah. Massive anxiety, nausea, and things tasting wrong are not my idea of fun.

I also really like the phrase 'Sanitize the Joy'.

18 jan 2003, 03:35
It seems that when I get depressed and I mull over something excessively, I go 'why? why? WHY?' and get real combative. And put things in the worst possible light. And generally irritate the fuck out of people. And then freak way the fuck out. (cf 28 dec)

While driving to Gary and Phoebe's for UA, I worried in the car that I was going to starve myself to death, and was really quite upset. I sort of accidentally gave Phoebe the cold shoulder by not seeing her yahoo messages, and then not saying anything to her in person (too depressed). Once the game got going, it was better - although the discussions of what was happening in the other game that all but me were playing in didn't exactly fill my heart with a sense of belonging. Afterwards, we got food at Carrow's; my lightheadedness was getting really bad each time I stood up, so food was a good thing. I even managed to eat a fair portion of it.

However, only once I got home and onto YIM did the fireworks begin in earnest. I told Phoebe what was gnawing at me, and did so in probably the most accusatory and least tactful or flattering way possible; she got quite understandably angry; I freaked out an awful lot, and then recovered somewhat. Today will not go down as a day I'm proud of.

Phoebe suggested that perhaps I cling to the notion of "I can't communicate well with anybody so I'll never be happy" as some sort of validation. This may well be true. I know that I have the self-reinforcing behavior loop of 'say something unclear in a combative style, get upset about being unclear, become even more combative, repeat.' That's one sure way of fulfilling that validation prophecy, although I'm not sure if the loop is a cause or an effect. Getting immensely angry and ashamed of my miscommunication doesn't help things much, either.

I think that tomorrow I'm going to stop taking the Selettra or whatever it's called, and possibly reduce my Wellbutrin by a bit. They seem to be making things worse rather than better at this point. (The fact that both are SNRIs - even though the one has no contraindication for the other - probably doesn't help my neurochemistry.)

the fourth damn entry for the 17th
Yay for carrots. I can eat them without becoming nauseous. I fear what the hell my condition would be like without the meds. This is real, real bad.

17 jan 2003, 17:00
It appears that I'm both sad and depressed, but that the one isn't caused by the other. This is probably good.

17 jan 2003, 12:33
I managed to get out of bed and put my laundry in the dryer within a few minutes of waking. This is a good sign. I'm starting to hit the angry bits now, though.

17 jan 2003, 00:37
I think Phoebe and I really are broken up now. This is a good thing, rather than being in some lingering state that makes me miserable. (I think) I'm handling it well, and mostly just sad and regretful about it all. In retrospect, I don't think there's much I could have done much better with how I was at the time. I hope it's not due to the drugs that I'm not depressed.

I'm glad I was able to ask her how things really were, even though I knew what the answers would be.

14 jan 2003, 11:30
I had an appointment with my psych, Dr Labrada. I broke down and cried in front of her after talking about the frustration 'n' shame about not being able to concentrate on things that bore me. I can only think of one or two other times in the past couple of years I've displayed that (much less with the same intensity) in front of anyone.

I have some weird new medication for ADHD I'm now gonna be trying, Strattera / atomoxetine HCl, aka (-)-N-methyl-3-phenyl-3-(o-tolyloxy)propylamine HCl. It's not a stimulant, so it won't be scheduled at 3 or lower, like Ritalin. Here's to hoping it works.

Super funtastic 1:44PM update: did I mention that I got 2-3 hours of sleep last night, cuz when I tried to go over the issues to talk about with Labrada, I couldn't stop sobbing? Or that after I came home from my appointment this morning, I did more of the same?

Lunch was nice, except for the part where I got so nauseous that my salad came back for a second helping. Not the best of days.

11 jan 2003, 23:25
Oversharing science lab: it looks like the only bodily fluid of mine that fluoresces is urine. Snot, saliva, spoo... nothin'. (I can't think of any other S fluids.)

11 jan 2003, 19:53
Even holding myself, going semi-foetal, and rocking back and forth doesn't help much. The worst bit is that it's a momentary balm, and there's just as much waiting in the wings as before the sobbing.

5 jan 2003, 14:41
Had another dream where I was really really depressed, but fortunately the imagery was real, real simple: Phoebe didn't want to hug me, I got depressed, and I half-woke up and started crying in an amazingly frustrated way. Went back to sleep and had dreams about outwitting some evil-yet-comically stupid space aliens in a future society where everybody had futuristic and amazingly fashionable clothing.

After I woke up and thought about the depression bit, I've come to the following conclusion: the juxtaposition of physical contact, frustration, and depression is pointing towards metaphorical and literal impotence: I've felt unable to really affect myself in a number of ways, and I've been remarkably un-horny, except in the physical sense. (The only time within the past, oh, five months that I've had a spontaneous erection is when Tina sat in my lap.) There's probably some lack-of-connection stuff in there too, but I think that's secondary. Also, the Phoebe in my dream, while being Phoebe herself, also had the connotation of people in general. I'd really like to be able to come up with this sort of crap while conscious.

Oh, and the reason I've been amazingly un-hungry? I'm still in a major depressive episode, and so betwixt Wellbutrin and depression, I have barely any appetite at all. Whee! Kinda distressing that while I knew I was a little depressed, I didn't realize I was that depressed.

28 dec 2002, 13:21
I had another one of the dreams where I become ultra-depressed. It involved Ari and some sort of 1800s/1900s passenger train; Ari was a man in his early 30s and I was a woman in my 20s, and wackiness ensued with log-rolling and something with a river that I don't remember. I did something that was slightly mean, and apologized for it, but then went and hid and was immensely depressed for quite a while - and continued to be depressed even after I woke up.

The dream was useful in that it let me see some of my own behavior - when I feel awful, especially after having done something I oughtn't have, I go and hide and then feel worse because nobody finds me or checks up on me - from a semi-outside perspective. What the imagery had to do with anything, I dunno - could be really oblique references to something or it could be nothing at all. The most vexing bit is that I don't remember ever having emerged from one of those dream situations in a positive way; I either wake up or the scene changes and nothing's ever dealt with. Ugh.

14 dec 2002, 23:27
I finished the 'Feeling Good' cog therapy book while I was waiting for a reply as to whether anything was happening this evening. It has more or less the same techniques as the depression workbook, with very little hints as to what to do when you hit a blind spot and you're unable to tell if you actually are being reasonable or at the bottom of a chain of faulty logic. Between that and busy-waiting for 90 minutes, I'm not a happy boy. Maybe I'll go to smurf village and I'll be less pissed-off.

postscript, 01:39: if smurf village was having a party, it was amazingly restrained - there was nobody at all in the house that I saw, so I didn't even bother going in. I ended up walking around the block for twenty minutes or so and cooling off, then going to In-n-Out and running into Joshie and (mumble) where we chatted for an hour or so. That was nice. I realized in the car that being social is one of the few things that remains enjoyable even when I'm severely depressed.

13 dec 2002, 14:20
Last night I was kinda down, and thought for a long while about my grandpa. He died when I was 18, after a long bout with Parkinson's. I didn't get to talk to him much after I became an adult, because he was already too far gone. The impressions I get of him, though, are of good humor and a gentleness about him. For some reason, I associated my teddy bear (Pooh) with him. Pooh didn't particularly resemble Grandpa, but he had an enigmatic smile about him that seemed to evoke grandpaness for me.

Today, before I took a shower, I noticed how awful my pits stank. That brought a chain of associations: my mom talking about how much my grandpa's pits stank, being in my grandparent's house, sitting and listening to grandpa talk about the older days of Sheboygan... but mostly how he smelled. His scent was familiar, calming, sort of vaguely floral in the jasmine sort of way with some spice thrown in. Rather like me, actually. A lot like me. In fact, if you were to take something that I slept with every night, and add fabric smell to that, it would be kinda evocative of how grandpa smelled.

Strange how much smell triggers in me.

11 dec 2002, 23:57
I've been looking at my writing and how it varies according to my mood. Earlier, I was hyper and depressed and my writing went all over the place: changed in size, didn't go in a straight line, scrawlier. It also had some interesting extra flourishes that don't show up in my normal writing. (Historically, my writing has gotten small when I'm depressed; after going on Wellbutrin, this seems to not be the case.) I also get thrills of paranoia from time to time, that's all sorts of fun - especially as I know how it's silly relatively soon after it appears - but it still rings in my head.

I was wandering around by the San Antonio park/shore thing. While the greenery is nice, it's still a marsh, and doesn't really resonate with me much. Getting out into the sunshine and sitting on the bench higher up than the rest of the area was the nicest part, really.

I'm still coming to grips with 'What do I want to do with myself now that I have all sorts of free time?' This is something I'd managed to avoid before by working all the time, but now that I'm unemployed, I can't really duck it with that. Some of it is staring at big projects and going 'How can I possibly start that?', some is impatience and lack of attention, some is just not knowing what I really want.

Painting seems to be working reasonably well, though; I've actually stuck with it so far. That's encouraging.

8 dec 2002, 18:40
I drank too much tea last night, and lay awake for an hour or two when all I wanted to do was sleep. My thoughts and I tossed and turned, and inevitably wound back around to the same old themes. I've only recently realized the extent to which I express affection and/or emotional closeness in physicality (and not in words); last night was an indicator in how my body seems to need it back in that way. I can go back and forth with the words spoken and written and in my head, but far too often they're scant solace. The turbulent moods last night didn't help but crouching with a pillow did, a little. I don't like this.

The dreams weren't any better; they were a reminder of my passivity, borne of being unsure as to what I can do, what I can ask, if I can ask. My (self-perceived) inability to affect things was writ large, and when combined with the fears of emotional abandonment, disposability, and not being worthwhile for someone else... it wasn't a pleasant sleep, nor a particularly happy waking.

The inability to ask, and then passive-aggressively demanding so much when I do... I don't know how I'll be able to get myself in order.

27 nov 2002, 17:39
Other than having a sore (and grody-looking) throat, I'm doing pretty well. The Wellbutrin seems to be interfering minimally with my moods and body; it noticably does not seem to be acting as an upper, as it does for some. I mostly want to go out and be social this evening, which is kinda unusual; I'm even willing to drive to do it, which is downright odd.

20:16: I got anxious and depressed and angry and distant-feeling. Angry at myself, angry at not being more social, angry at not having more friends. Angry crying with my teeth bared and grimacing and me wanting to pound something. Now I'm merely shaky and upset. Will it continue, will it win over the desire to go out? I don't know.

22 nov 2002, 17:19
I had a crying jag in the car, which was disconcerting, as I was still driving and I mostly semi-hyperventilated and made unhappy noises. There was also a complete absence of being sad, too. My subconscious seems to think that the crying is due to pain, and not sadness per se. If this goes for historical reasons, too, this would explain why the effexor is only partially successful. Is there such a thing as a psychic pain reliever?

The $60000 question is now 'pain from what?'

16 nov 2002, 14:51
A bunch has been going on, but not much of it has seemed important to write about (or had a good enough form to inscribe.) I started taking effexor on Wednesday, and I've had a vaguely loopy feeling that's been gradually diminishing... but about ten minutes ago, I was thinking about how I've been wanking in front of the computer for most of the day (semi-figuratively), and how I should get out and do something... but nothing seemed particularly grabbing and worthwhile. I started to wibble, and so I went and laid down in bed for a while, and semi-cried for a while. The scary part is that while I knew I was upset and was crying, I didn't feel it. I knew I must be upset because I could feel my body doing the physiological things that accompany upsetness, but on the inside all I got was a very very vague and muffled impression. This kinda freaks me out, in a "can't feel anything" sort of way. It could be that I 'feel' things differently now and I don't yet recognize the signs correctly, I dunno.

The other side-effect I've noticed is that I get stiffier than ever (almost painfully so), but it takes much longer to spoo. Kinda frustrating, that. Dunno how it'll affect my libido in general, or if there's more fun yet to come (har har.)

30 oct 2002, 23:38
This is really bad. Everything seems like noise. Music, TV, playing videogames, chatting online. It's all one big joyless cacophany pressing in on me. The disconnectedness of talking to phoebe and ari online was probably the worst bit. It reinforced the notion of getting only a solitary thought here, as I got into a state where the conversation dropped and things got reduced to a single line here and there. It emphasizes the distance.

I think part of the other problem is the essential neediness of my present condition. It's that whole asking thing, for one, and the knowledge of how much I've been hopelessly and terribly putting upon people. I'm horribly ashamed of it, as I don't know if I could put up with the constant demands I'm making - or even worse, if I even would be willing to do so. (I hope I would.) Being (correctly) regarded as too sensitive about a bunch of things just drains the ego even further. I feel like I don't even have enough internal force to cry.

I don't know what I want, I don't know what I can do, I can't really cry; I feel feeble and helpless and it hurts. I think this is the worst it's ever been - worse than Boston, worse than the things in grade school, worse than the despair of Texas. It's from within, and that's why it's so awful.

30 oct 2002, 18:50 and 20:07
La la la, depression sucks, la la la. It comes and it goes, but it seems to be here more than it ain't. There's a desperate urge for something, but I can't for the life of me figure out what it is. It seems to be related to being social, but I'm not sure if that's what the root is or if that's something that distracts from the real issue. Activities become devoid of fun after a short amount of time, and it just hurts. Ennui of the worst kind.

20:07: I took half of one of the Ritalin I'm hoarding, and attempted to go to the Silicon Valley Boardgamers, but I just couldn't deal with things. Went home, felt myself getting noticably calmer and less freaked out, yet still depressed. It's still kinda debilitating, but there's less franticness about it. I can sit and concentrate on how I'm feeling and not be wracked by urges to run around or to do something, anything other than what I'm currently doing. The physical vaguely twitchy/jumpy feelings ain't exactly my favorite, but the ability to sit still more than makes up for it.

It sorts of makes sense that ADD fuels my depression, as the helplessness at being able to do anything is almost certainly one of the causes. There may be some panicy aspects about it as well - 'I want to be around people but I don't know how to act around them and I don't know what to say and oh my god what do I do now arrrrrrrgh!'

Being calm makes me able to see where I am without getting distracted. I don't get to do it nearly enough.

26 oct 2002, 18:09
The depression seems to be getting worse. It was real hard to get out of bed and into the shower today. I got myself out of the house for lunch and for errandy things, but got right back into bed as soon as I got home. I've got a major case of lassitude, made worse by not knowing what I do want to do, if anything. I wanna be social, but it's real hard to make anything go.

24 oct 2002, 23:39
This afternoon, I'd gotten nearly everything out out of the office around 5, yet was oddly reluctant to leave. I managed to distract myself with stuff until 8, when I dragged the last of my stuff out, sat in the driver's seat, and cried fitfully for a little while. Thinking about what I'd do with my days (alone in my house) until I find further employment bugged the living shit out of me, and I realized just how much of my social interaction I draw out of my work.

I actually do have a bunch of crap that I want to do (paint, fiddle with bike gears, play with wing construction), but the lack of instant gratification and the aloneness make them immensely hard to get going on and difficult to keep on with.

There was a bunch more, but I got kinda distracted and mopey, and I need to go to bed. However, one more thing: when I was driving on the way home, the thought that went through my head was 'my motivations are misguided' and my subconscious agreed with that an awful lot. It then said it had no idea what that meant. Sigh. Ah, to know myself.

15 oct 2002, 16:06
mmm, writing during work. The smell of doom in the air, and nobody around is motivated to do much of anything, with impending layoffs. When I got home last night, I wanted to get out and do something - anything - but it was too painful to do much of anything other than half-whimper and hold myself while lying on the bed. I couldn't cry, I was too exhausted to do it. I eventually managed to get enough will together to go to Target and look for the underwear I like. (Alas, it's gone! no more!) I ended up at Coffee Society for a while, reading the Taoist I Ching (translated by Thomas Cleary), which made me feel quite a bit better. Taoism stresses the unification of opposites, of mending the splits in self, and undoing conditioning. I've got all three in spades, and it was amazingly gratifying to see these concerns thought of as the main things in life. Taoism seems to be an externality I can really cleave to.

14 oct 2002, 19:07
In case I didn't think I was in the middle of a depressive episode, getting into bed and crying briefly without much prompting is probably a pretty good confirmation. (The 'always tired' and 'no appetite' were decent hints, as well.) I've managed to be fairly productive at work despite it; the gloom and doom hanging over the office from the upcoming 50% cut in non-engineering staff - and not finding out who gets cut for another two to three weeks - isn't exactly the most motivating and 'up-with-people' situation to be in. Being broken out all over and achy from pimples on acupressure points isn't helping, either.

There doesn't seem to be any particular focus of the mopeyness right now; while I'm worried and concerned about my job and fiscal status, that doesn't seem to be it. Lonliness seems to pop more to the top of my Big Box o' Woe, but that's no news. I'm getting that irritatingly vague 'there's something I want (or want to do), but I don't know what' feeling a lot lately, but the things I've been trying to do have been hit with the inability to concentrate for more than ten minutes at a time on whatever. I don't know that I'd recognize what I wanted right now even if I had it. Grrrr, the inability to enjoy anything much is terribly, terribly irritating.

10 oct 2002, 23:57
The past two months have made me the most emotionally distraught I've been for quite some time - the last ten years, I'd say. There have been some times that were worse, such as the mini-breakdown I had in July 2000, but this has it beat for the sustained intensity of it (if not peak intensity.) All the interpersonal issues have been no fun at all, and my alienation and inexperience hot buttons have been pushed quite a bit. Work is possibly going into a small collapse, so the mood around the office is hardly uplifting and jolly and fun. It's really the personal issues that are the big thing, and most of the work issues stem from the fact that I can't concentrate on a damn thing when I'm as depressed as I've been.

After the long talk Phoebe and I had two or three days ago, I've decided that I should change the style of this lovely page, so that it's written to communicate with its august readers rather than to be as a forum for unfiltered expression. My writings as thoughts to myself seem to have been taken pretty negatively, as they dwell on the less-desirable aspects of things and are decidedly biased towards how things felt to me, rather than as a calm and rational recounting of how things actually were. There's so much context that's missing in most of what I wrote that I suppose it just ends up being too much of a funhouse mirror, rather than a glimpse into how I go about thinking about things.

As I haven't been eliding terribly much about my relationships and have been naming names right along, I don't see any great value in changing that; it makes things less confusing for me than to try remember what I was subtly hinting at and who I called 'Agent Twinkletoes'. So, then.

It seems that after the initial bout of closeness with Ari, so much conflict has arisen that things have gone back past step one. I've given up wholesale on the notion of sex, and am even unsure as to whether hugs are something that's a social nicety or something that's enjoyable. Emotional closeness has been an utter disaster, with my division of emotional notions into bite-size pieces being taken as a talking-down to rather than as a way for me to keep straight what's going on, and antipathy to the fact that I've been trying to communicate even though it's difficult and draining for me.

I admit that this paints her as the Bad Guy and me as the Innocent, which isn't accurate. She's had all sorts of horrible and awful things happen to her, with a big denouement happening only a few months ago, and my style of asking rather a lot and going why, why, why can't be terribly good or helpful at all right now. If I can go as far as to presume what she needs, I'd say that she needs to be from a position of strength where she can dictate what she will and won't do. My big difficulty is that I can't read enough of what that is, so I get antsy and confused and depressed at being cut off. I don't know whether I can handle the tentative queries and not end up getting frustrated when I do too much or it's not wanted, it's not something I'm experienced or good at.

I have to wonder that how much of this has been exacerbated by the strong attraction between Ari and Phoebe; as my presence inhibits the both of them from acting out their inclinations to pull each other by the hair onto the floor, I can see how it's frustrating to have me there. Yeah, while I feel left out (for fairly obvious reasons) and mope about it, I also know that it's not my place to be all whingy and depressive because of that. I don't want to be, but there I am. At this point, I just want them to do whatever the hell it is they've been wanting to do, so that things don't remain unreconciled.

7 oct 2002, 03:22
Can't sleep, clowns will eat me. Sigh. Was pleasantly surprised by Mona paying an unplanned visit. I ended up driving her to the Fremont BART station, where it took her an hour and a half to get to Berkeley (!!!). BART's website ain't working, either - somehow, this doesn't surprise me.

I'm mostly writing this so I can quote John Donne (Devotions, XVII):

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.

I wonder what work will be like tomorrow....

6 oct 2002, 01:55
The day was fun, but tanked towards the end. I gave too much to Phoebe and only realized this after the fact (after I had gotten mopey on the drive back to my place.) I don't ask for enough with her, still. I was hoping the fission would have alerted me to it, but no. It was still quite nice, but left me wanting (and not realizing that I was.)

It's now 4:30AM, and have been talking to Ari for the past two and a half hours. Very, very different communication styles. Dunno how well if at all I make the swirliness and multiple viewpoints of my thoughts known. The pictures in my head don't translate well at all.

I was going to write more, but there's nothing right now that wouldn't keep. (Most of it was composed of feelings of alienation and being out of place, nothing terribly new and exciting there.) More tomorrow, I think.

3 oct 2002, 15:44
I've been wanting to write for several days, but things have been clogged up in my head, with a bunch of thoughts appearing and then disappearing, without ever acheiving coherence or solidity. It's been quite aggravating, since I want to get them out, out, out - but they're swirling and moping inside. I've had a whole bunch of dreams lately with Ari showing up, more as a symbol or focus than as a representation of her as a person. I can't remember what the hell the dreams were, which is the most aggravating thing about them - I can't even remember any of the themes or feelings involved. I don't like the idea at all that I'm fixated on her, consciously or not - but it seems that she's certainly acted as a hook (or perhaps more accurately, catalyst) for a bunch of my unknown-to-me thoughts and feelings as of late. Sigh.

The FSF, while interesting, didn't seem to be really worth it. This could have been depression talking, or perhaps that what I was looking for (whatever the hell that is) wasn't there. The notion of scoping doesn't do much for me, I think - but then again, I generally don't get scoped, either. If I were, I have no idea how I'd think about it.

I want to write more, but my mood has crashed somewhat, and the words are slipping away again. More later, maybe.

28 sep 2002, 16:10
I'm at 203 pounds. Wow. Lightest I've been in about 8-9 years. Now if I could just stand to exercise, or perhaps bring myself to do situps (always my least favorite thing, considering that a whole lot of my stomach muscles were sawn through during my appendectomy.)

I'm also not sure whether it's good or bad that Ari and I find it frustrating to talk to each other. On the one hand, our styles are real different and we have to explain ourselves a lot to get at what we're trying to say; but on the other hand, it means that difficult terrain is being travailed, and I don't think what's being followed is petty or is arguing for its own sake. (In some ways I'd be quite pleased if she were able to fully express her anger at me.)

26 sep 2002, 14:47
I woke up (to the dulcet tones of voicemail) feeling like I'd been crying five minutes before. Not surprising, considering the utter wreck I was last night. Talking and thinking about Robert's party in August put me into almost as deep a depressive hole as I was on the night of the party itself. It's raw, it hits pretty squarely most of my Issues, and it hurts. I couldn't plaintively wail, there was too much all at once for that. I want to write about it, but it's still too close to do so.

Also, crying on a full stomach physically hurts. Ow. I'm glad I went home after lunch.

22 sep 2002, 18:39
Phoebe and I are now "broken up". I give too much, too easily; I don't ask/wait to accept enough. Her style is to take what's offered, and offer but not solicit. I don't do what I want to do too much of the time, I go along with what other people want. It came to a head yesterday after talking for a while; I'm amused/bitter to note that the whole evening was pretty much a microcosm of the things that sucked for me. Now I'm bitter, and angry, and sad - some at her, some at me.

21 sep 2002, 04:46
I finally mailed autumn my unasked-for advice. I can hope it was egoless enough to be seen, and that it's accurate in what it says.

But mostly, I wanted to get it off my chest, say 'I tried' and be done with it.

I want to write about what happened this evening, but I just feel kinda numb. Dealing with people, not being able to help, and being able to only watch them do what they need to do is so hard for me.

16 sep 2002, 12:20AM
What I didn't say in LJ about chillits.

The first night, dan and alex conspired to look for nookie. That kinda colored things for me when I saw people interacting/flirting/drug-using. There were some cute people there, for sure, but... it seemed in some ways like an excuse for cheap fondling or fucking. While I suppose I'm fine with the idea of that, it just doesn't appeal to me much emotionally. It seems like a lot of work for not that great or lingering a payoff and dishonest somehow. I'm not sure why or how, and it bugs me.

The other thing that bugged me was that socially/emotionally, I was pretty far off from most, if not all, of the people there. JD I can talk to about a lot of things from an emotional/spiritual side, but he wasn't around much. Bez is too close to his own issues, and too vulnerable right now to talk about the things I'd want to. On the good side, this led me to read the Tao Te Ching again, and I had forgotten how many of the... verses? seem like self-evident truisms to me.

Good works are trackless, good words are flawless, good planning isn't calculating.
What is well closed has no bolt locking it, but cannot be opened.
What is well bound has no rope confining it, but cannot be untied.
Therefore sages always consider it good to save people, so that there are no wasted humans;
they always consider it good to save beings, so there are no wasted beings.
So good people are teachers of people who are not good.
People who are not good are students of people who are good.
Those who do not honor teachers or care for students are greatly deluded, even if knowledgeable.
This is called an essential subtlety.

10 sep 2002, 10:54AM
I apparently have an allergy to "jelly rubber". I feel so pomo. I've also been damn mopey lately. Negative feedback loops suck ass. I hope my social self-confidence is building; lately it's been not good at all.

(later: 9:25PM) I'm just sort of generally depressed now. I'm lonely, unable to deal with people, and not finding much to be of interest or fun. Going to sleep and hoping things get better tomorrow seems to be the easiest thing to do right now. Hope ari's enjoying her LA run for Miyazaki.

8 sep 2002, 2:07AM
Today, I just couldn't Deal with being around lots of people. I've been not so happy with youdunnit as of late; there have been differences of opinion I've had with Ted about what sorts of things we should be doing (mostly, what sorts of things should the players be doing)... but more importantly, that I'm just not getting enough out of the time and effort I have to devote to the thing. GMing (at least with this group of people) isn't terribly rewarding, and even being around them for a period of time and being social eats an awful lot of energy. Phoebe's dropped out today, and I've been entertaining the notion for quite some time myself.

The storyline seems good, but I don't know if I can deal with the player interaction required. Sigh. I think I'm going to retire from LARPing for a while after this is done. (It sounds like the traditional SV crowd is breaking up, too.)

5 sep 2002, 2:42PM
Well. What a strange day (and birthday, I suppose). Where to begin? Possibly by mentioning if any of youse who are written about in this entry are uncomfortable with it, I can delete this. And now, the really long entry.

N.b.: This is how things seemed to me at the time. There are several fucked up inferences of logic in here that don't make sense. Take this with a rather large grain of salt.

Went to have tea with Ari; I was kinda awkward. I'm still getting a feel for how she behaves, and I wasn't sure how she'd act after the Saturday fling. Starting to talk with her is kinda slow, but builds momentum pretty well. Decided to head back to my place, when Gary called and said he and Phoebe were gonna grab dinner; I told him that we would pass on chowing, and he said that he'd call/show up after they were done. At the apartment, talked and pet for a while... but kept on expecting G/P to show up, which kind of put a damper on more protracted activities. Called Gary, he said that there was a mixup, and would we like to head over to their place? Did so, and Phoebe pulled me aside to show off her new headboard (with shelving! and mirrors!), pushed me down, and so we talked/snuggled for a while. I thought it was kinda weird to be invited over, and then leave Ari/Gary talking by themselves, but figured that it was a decent way for them to get to know each other a bit better. Gary and Ari sat on the couch and Phoebe sat between them, getting pet and petted. I sat off in the chair. They did this for a while. I sat.

Writing this, I have all sorts of mixed feelings. Some outwardly directed irritation at Phoebe, some inwardly directed at me. A feeling of being drained emotionally. I'm not sure if I feel used. I have a sense of melancholy, and all sorts of other mixed feelings. That weird sense of anxiety I felt with Phoebe/Ari when they were at the party returned, and in some senses rings true, but not in other ways. It's going to take me a fair amount of time to absorb all this. I know I'm still not reading things as accurately as I like right now - e.g. I can't tell right now what people think their own emotional state is.

After a while, Gary realized that it was entirely too late, and he had class early in the morning. Phoebe suggested we (she, I, Ari) head back to my place, and I drove the three of us back. There was some jockeying for position. Phoebe teased me, with not quite enough levity. I still can't deal terribly well with that sometimes; deliberate provocation can still confound me with the proper way to react. With someone else around, it seemed like it was going to hang in the air all evening, the social coin being on my shoulders. She eventually got relaxed, but not relaxed enough and I kind of botched wrestling her into a pinned position. I got her down somewhat with her arm behind her back and was trying to position her down more and get my knee to keep her down, when... I remember my teeth baring, a surge of anger, and pulling up on her arm and hyperextending it. There was a light pop somewhere, and a surprised/pained yelp about a tenth of a second later, even though it seemed much longer. I immediately freaked out, going into the 'oh, fuck, what have I done?' thing. There were mumbled apologies and itsOKs and brief talk of fighting to 'not lose' and fighting to win. It was quiet for a while.

There was more petting, an episode where I got all depressed and withdrew, got better, and the petting started up again. I don't remember exactly what happened, save for Phoebe uttering "Tom always gets to sleep last. He's always the last to let go." and when trying to console me "If you've got two beautiful women in your bed, what can be wrong?" As I don't remember the whats and wherefores, I'll continue on in this small saga.

Phoebe was in the middle, facing Ari. They were cuddling pretty closely, while I was semi-spooned with and petting Phoebe, and stroking Ari's hand and head when I could reach. After a while, Phoebe got utterly caught up in Ari, and her attention slipped away from me altogether. I got demoralized at that point, and wanted to just withdraw and sleep. I pulled my hand away from Ari's, and after a bit asked if I was OK. I don't remember what I said, if anything, but Phoebe said something related to the earlier sleep comment, and I turned away and nearly went foetal. After a bit, she snuggled up to me and asked what was wrong and tried to comfort me. Ari sat there looking grave (and feeling like an asshole, she said later.)

There's more stuff that happened later (I spooned with ari some, we all went to lunch with Gary, I apologized to ari in the car, etc.) but that was the climax. I had a deep sense of Phoebe just not getting how I worked emotionally, and that disturbed me a lot. She managed to hit me where I was vulnerable three or four times with not-quite-unserious teasing, and it hurt and isolated me. Feeling like Phoebe was ignoring me in favor of the shiny new person, when I was right there next to her just multiplied the effect enormously.

(Begin wacky analysis.) In some senses, it's where social power and emotional power are the same thing that gets me. Doing things to jockey for social position gets you social currency, at the cost of emotional hits. You can do it with as few as three people, because there are the indirect effects from the third party. The problem is that I just don't pay much out of social currency and it's all personal and emotional. If you can get something back by means of wearing down the other emotionally, that's fine - but I don't think I do! It's all a negative sum game where the prize ("I'm on top!") wears me down even more.

The other part is attention. Phoebe craves it; she's a performer. She knows how to get it, and will go out and get it. She'll sit in the middle of the crowd and bask. I crave attention too, but I'm really at unease with the notion, and I suppose I think I don't deserve it. (I don't know what it is I feel I lack. It might be part of the isolation/alienation thing.) So when I feel brushed away, and my only outlets are gone... I withdraw. I can't deal. I curl up. I can't quite cry. I'm alone and nobody cares, passing me up in favor of whatever else.

Ari, I think, understands me emotionally pretty well on an intuitive basis. She seemed pretty damn quick to pick up on when I was sad/upset. It's stil tough to try and figure out how to express things in a mutually comprehensible manner, as our communication styles are pretty widely different. The age and context difference is pretty noticable, which adds to the fun. I think I'm beginning to be quite fond of her.

So, after this supposedly fun thing I'll probably not try again (a threesome), what do I think? I'm still not sure, except that my kinda-fragile ego doesn't seem to cope too well with it - pairing is just too strong. The big thing, though: power issues keep on raising their ugly heads with me and Phoebe, despite me trying not to think about it. The very cynical voice asks questions like 'Are you satisfied with the occasional sex with the mostly comforting? After all, she's got partners all over - Gary, me, maybe Ari, whomever else comes by. Why bother doing more than you have to? Having to ask for sex is a potent coin in the power game, and makes you pretty damn beholden.' I just don't know the realm in which such things are played - is that sort of statement true? untrue? an elaborate ploy to stab at phoebe and thus get more power for me? I don't know, and I don't know my own motivations for asking things like that and it bugs the shit out of me. It's all that much more painful since I really do love phoebe and she me; it wouldn't hurt so much if we didn't. So many questions and ambiguities and emotional tender spots everywhere! I don't want to trod carelessly, over myself or her.

But on the very positive side: I'm very glad that Ari has decided to perhaps hang out with me and/or us.

1 sep 2002
prostate. M is Monica. Rumors. ace of swords. hakone. LJ refs. attachment/pain/buddha. credit cards, divorce, ADD, postcoital, bob, dr.charm/agent mist.

31 aug 2002
31st already? ugh, need to go by the post office, and mail off checks. Busy busy. it wasn't just past finger reach, like I thought, but also way down at the bottom. D:R(test/P who?),P(G,T,D,M); else? dunno. OK, I guess; best to start from scratch, forget all. I am the three kings, but no cups in the house. merlin/butter makes my right brain happy. Does bamboo bloom? Do they have tea? Is not-tea code for hot zombie fucking? I think that's it, had to be said. Wish I were asleep. Hope Bez is detached, but not too much. Hope I'll be, and forget the context - letherific, rich Corinthian. $11k in debt, Jesus. Need to split. Need to audit. Stupid forms. Need to get dr address. Wonder if hyper was noticed, all a-quiver? oho, I did get the BBQ invite. Too much rambling, not getting anything else, time for sleep. Finish the cats tomorrow, maybe.

27 aug 2002
What do I want for my birthday? The things I can't have, of course. Looming damn near the top right now is for this fucking gout to go away in my ankle. It's OK, and then I walk on it the wrong way, and... smashing pain - instead of an icepick being jabbed in, it's more like an anvil dropped on it. Nonlocalized agony. I don't think this new prescription is doing me a damn bit of good.

Tomorrow I get to figure out one way or the other if I'm going to be taking classes at SJSU or not, as it's the first session for the likely Tuesday class I'd take. Would the interest level be sustained? Can I stay awake for two hours, plus half an hour each way on the light rail (or driving?) Time will tell - or if I do nothing, it won't.

I wonder what my friends who went or are going to BM this year will come back with.

22 aug 2002
I slept too much last night. Went to sleep about 4, woke up about 2 kinda anxious. I think it's either depression or massive uneasiness about moving to Oakland, or both.

I get to go see the house in Oakland today; the thought fills me with more dread than excitement. I think the dilemma comes to this: is giving up such close contact with Phoebe and Gary (and especially the closeness I've gotten with Phoebe) worth the greater accessability to other people (primarily the devgaf crowd) and the possibility of meeting new people? Right now, the thought scares the living daylights out of me (and not in an eager excitement way, either.)

My last moves across the country at random didn't work so well, or took an awful long time to bear fruit. 40 miles in the bay area is practically cross-country.

17 aug 2002
I went to alex's night of alcohol. It was kind of interesting, although there was far too much shop talk and the gender ratio was ridiculous (11:2!) Saw a pair of opposites: one person who at first glance looks young, but upon further inspection is much older (but is only 36) and one who looked old but might be under 30. What is it that makes people look and act old?

And a rhetorical question I've been vaguely mulling over and don't want to forget: why is it easier for me to give in/release to others than it is to myself?

27 jul 2002
Despair.

I got to sleep around 5-5:30 last night. Ted called me at 11am to remind me of a game tomorrow. There's no surer way to fuck with my emotions than to interrupt my sleep schedule. I got halfway back into sleep when it was time to go over to Gary & Phoebe's to plan for the UA game. Ted was there already; he demanded a hug. My emotional energy for the past couple of weeks just gets utterly drained when dealing with him - it's too demanding, too much. I tried to avoid much of any contact with him, to retain what little emotional normlacy I had left. It didn't really work. I ended up lying back on the sofa, eighthheartedly dozing. Ted and James left; Phoebe went to get dressed. Gary got home and went into their bedroom, and I lay back on the sofa, eventually going foetal. I had no energy left for myself, no will to do anything. I couldn't move, I couldn't change position, I couldn't do anything but feel the tarry pits of despair and think in little circles.

Gary and Phoebe emerged after a while, and I told them I just couldn't deal. Gary seemed to understand, asked me what I was supposed to be doing for the game, and said he'd take care of it. I drove home in a daze, got into bed, and tried to cry for a while. It didn't work so well. You have to let go to cry, and was too drained to be able to release. Writing is a little more cathartic; it doesn't do as much as crying, but it lets go at least a little, and it releases some of the thoughts stuck in my head.

I think I'm going to have to drop out of UA; my emotional pool refils quite slowly, and any dealings with Ted suck it beyond dry real fast. It's just too much to deal with.

26 jul 2002
My subconscious decided to wake up, and it very unambiguously indicated that the Sandra from my dream last night was very clearly supposed to be a sham. I'm at a loss as for analysis; various explanations involving juxtapositions of desire and perception suggest themselves, but none of them seem terribly compelling.

I don't think I've babbled much about my subconscious before, and it fits in with the 'what really strange things do you believe in' conversation I've been thinking about for a couple of days. Sometimes in my dreams, I can get semi-lucid and ask the other actors about things. Sometimes I'll even get a straight answer. Occasionally, the same sort of 'feel' of that dialogue will happen when I'm awake: I'll be thinking about something, and I'll get a happy shiver down my spine as an affirmation of its verity. If I'm lucky, I can think about other things and get a response to those. Usually the shiver is on my right side, but on some occasions when the answer seemed to be real important it's both sides at once.

This sort of access to my psyche happened a bit when I was younger, but increased dramatically after one particularly heavy mushroom trip. Shrooms seem to activate my dream imagery while I'm awake in various different ways - some things are purely visual and complex without a whole lot of deep meaning behind them, but others are very clearly emotive and/or introspective. I've noticed that when the deep-emotive aspects kick in, I get left-handed. This observation has led to a theory: my left brain is hyperactive, but my right brain is not (and under the influence of psychactives, finally gets to express itself.) I have no idea how much I actually believe this notion, though.

Xwrits is telling me to shut my literary piehole, so it's sleepytime. I wanted to rant about the meeting, but instead here's a quote from gothrachel:

*wingthing* You'd think there would be a supersaturation point.
*wingthing* Wherein there can be no more Tedness, the rest is excess.
*wingthing* Lord. The chemical reaction that is Ted. And here I thought he was merely a butterfly in my chaos theory.

23 jul 2002
Hrm, I haven't updated for a while, and feel like I ought to. There's a bunch of things that perennially pop in my head to blather about, but I never seem to have quite enough to say about any given thing to merit devoting the effort to transcribing them. I find it hard to generate vast amounts of prose; even a couple of paragraphs can seem long-winded and excessively verbose to me when writing them. (I had the worst time writing essays in HS and college - I'd agonize over every single sentence in all five paragraphs, and it inevitably came out stilted. It just didn't flow worth a damn.)

I've lately been noodling with the idea of attempting to write a novel, something Chandleresque yet vaguely supernatural. I've even got an idea of what most of the plot would look like. I have no idea of what kind of style I'd want to have, though, and the idea of cranking out 400k worth of text just scares the living dickens out of me. It's hard enough for me to write out a couple paragraphs of dribble of what's exactly on my mind (i.e. this very entry) - but this is only about 200 words as yet, for crying out loud. Then again, "only 425 paragraphs left to go!" sounds less daunting, I suppose. (I must admit that I feel mildly embarassed at my exceedingly terse entries when I see people like andan or felix lee (grayscalewolf on LJ) cranking out five-ten entries a day of entries at least as long as this.)

I suppose the reason that I don't write so much is because I hate half-baked thoughts (god knows that some of the people I rant about have enough of them, and there doesn't need to be any more) but the only real way to get them fully baked is to write them out... and writing up something that I know is gonna be awful and turdlike (even if it ain't) is so discouraging. I think that I may be getting better at accepting the notion that 'doing something [creative] crappily is OK'; even though I pretty much suck utter ass at drawing (compared to, say, astra or heather - both professional artists) I'm still (very) slowly plugging at it. Enjoying the process is real hard for me when I can only see the finished product - or rather, what I want it to be and how it looks like it's going to turn out. Those two usually end up quite different.

Ramble, ramble, ramble. The other thing that annoys me about my writing is that I can't remember wtf I've already mentioned in previous entries and what I haven't. I know that there are some things that I think that I go on and on and on about, but I have no idea if that's actually true or not. Do I actually blather about gender dysphoria all that much? The headers say no, I haven't mentioned it since november... but it seems like I do anyhow. This is probably due to the same fucked-up time sense that makes me not remember if I watched 'The Dark Crystal' at jorm's place last year or three years ago; I remember the event well, but not its place in time. Strange how time doesn't strike my memory as a referent worth keeping.

Urgh. I almost feel like rambling more, but I have to be nominally conscious in five hours and do my four hour helpdesk shift and preferably not fall asleep for half an hour at a time like I sometimes do. (That wouldn't be nearly so annoying if I didn't have interesting dreams while I did...)

10 jul 2002
Less than 4 hours of sleep and an empty stomach and waiting for an hour and forty-five minutes for a meeting to begin does not make me a happy boy. I get much more emotionally volatile and mercurial when I'm tired or hungry, and both at the same time just multiplies things. Rambunctious ten year-old behavior (or later, sulking) doesn't do me a world of good, either. It just makes me feel insanely old and weary and miles apart from what's going on. I considered just bailing instead of coming back from the bathroom.

8 jul 2002
First the Dutch, now 'animaljuice.net'? Everybody loves the frown, I guess. (and miscpix/mrschlong.)

tam's quotefile gets a buttload of hits.

4 jul 2002
I went to James and Allison's BBQ. It was OK. I mostly talked to Jamie and James, and then retreated to the living room when the high-pitched giggling started in earnest. Ended up fleeing about 9:20 or thereabouts, getting mildly depressed. (I felt kinda bad about Phoebe being in a weird mood yesterday and possibly not doing much to help, too.)

30 jun 2002
To add my two cents to the conversation in the ride back: What was fun at the party for me: cleverly taking psuedoephedrine and 1.5g of mushrooms beforehand - and that wasn't 'fun', it was 'interesting'.

I found the party amazingly unsatisfying. It didn't know whether it wanted to be a Serious Important S&M Event, or a party. (It could have been the latter, but people didn't want it to be that way.) It was trying too hard. When I asked Ginger how she was enjoying the evening so far, she grimaced.

Ted was all out of sorts, because he (nor I) didn't really have much of a way to engage other people. The clumps of people who arrived mostly stayed in those clumps, and there was very little in the way of social lube going on (neither the vibe nor the lack of drugs/booze helped.) If you were a young cute female, I suppose that would have worked to get attention on you.

Most of the people there just failed to engage me. There were some interesting things, like the woman in the latex dress with too-high for her high heels (her legs shuddered too much when she walked. Threw off the look something hard, IMHO) but overall I just failed to be interested by most of it. I tend to be allergic to 'PERFORM!', too.

I know ted and phoebe and gary were kinda caught up in the PERFORM! thing in some ways. I suspect phoebe bore the brunt, as the cuteyoungthing seemed to be the intended target of performance; but 'hey, you'll get attention if you do this' is ted's siren song and gary is always willing to be the good host. I hope I helped mitigate some of it, I dunno.

I guess when I go to shindigs I either want a emotional sense of closeness to some of the people involved, or social/intellectual gratification in the form of talking with people - and neither of those seemed to be tenable. I suppose it's possible that something physically satisfying could have happened there, but the setting was just all wrong tonight.

All in all, I'd have rather just lain around somebody's hosue or drank coffee or something.

26 jun 2002
Yesterday, I boiled all of my silicone frobs.

No, it did not make soup.

23 jun 2002
The logical connection between my modes of depression: if I feel I can't connect to anyone or anything, why would anything I do matter?

Also, Ted suggested that what I may be suffering from may not be a cold at all, but food poisoning. Jury still out on that one.

22 jun 2002
Useless fact of the day from Erowid: DXM apparently has anti-libido effects. Weird. Don't robotrip and fuck, boys and girls.

I seem inexplicably bummed out, and I'm not sure why. I'm feeling better (all that's remaining of this cold is the occasional cough and clogged-up Eustachian tubes), but after I got home I just started feeling really down. I had a good time hanging out with Phoebe (and I really hope I didn't infect her with my cold), but afterwards my emotions just decided to sag. Perhaps it's time for me to get on prescription antidepressants again, I don't know what the hell in my life would be making me feel like this right now. (Other than the five zillion previously-bitched about things.)

16 jun 2002
Game seemed to run OK. I didn't particularly enjoy much of it, but that's mea culpa; I didn't come up with enough things to do. The players pretty much said that they liked it. Characterization was a nice change for most of them. There's still lots of stuff to figure out. Right now, though, I'm getting depressed out of my gourd.

I want to be clingy right now, to pet or cuddle or hold. It started getting bad (although I didn't recognize it at the time) around 8 or so. I hung around the other GMs a bit much, and then when I ate at Chef Liu's (quite tasty) with Phoebe (also quite tasty) it started to get much worse. I couldn't (or wouldn't) make eye contact, I started babbling (at least, I don't remember it making much sense). It pretty much stayed at that level for most of the evening.

Enough of this has happened lately that it's made me consider going back on antidepressants. Prozac freaked me out because I felt empty... but I realize now that that's partially because I really just don't have a lot of motivation or burning desire to do stuff. Part of it's focus (why start things you can't finish? it's no fun), but part of it ain't. In some ways, that's a lot harder to accept. I don't know if my desire is absent, muted, sublimated, or what. (Self-censoring of desire is something I've certainly done in the past... deeming it socially unacceptable, rude, or distasteful.)

Maybe the 'having to be up at 8 or 9 tomorrow' will help; sleep-dep has been shown to help in the short term. In the meantime, I hurt and whine and want to be hold.

12 jun 2002
I've been in one of my amazingly-dissatisfied periods again. Damn little seems to hold my interest or concentration. Some things don't even seem worthwhile, and just wastes of time. I think this is probably depression, and while the St John's Wort seems to take the irritability edge off of it, some deeper urge remains.

Urges seem to be one of my big stumbling blocks - I never seem to be very good at figuring out what they are. Maybe this is depression making everything seem pretty much the same color of grey, maybe it's that I'm real indecisive about everything, maybe it's accumulated stress, maybe it's fears lurking in my psyche of what would happen if I went out and tried to do something and failed horribly at it. I know it's at least a little of the first and last, but those don't seem enough to make menot know what I want or feel, somehow.

I think the most pernicious thing about depression is not just that it makes doing things not worth it, it make me feel like I'm not worth the effort. Some weekends I just sit around the house, bored silly yet too irritated at going out or finding something new. It feels like I'm putting in time, but for no appreciable goal.

I don't think this is a new thing, though. I remember lying awake in bed at night, not really wanting to go to sleep (yet not wanting to do anything else), not being able to doze off easily. Getting in bed and being able to drift off immediately is still quite the novelty, and seems wrong somehow (because, my god, then I'd have to wake up early and eat breakfast and fight traffic and be bored at work and come home and be bored just like now.)

I feel like sometimes I'm too good at rattling off my faults, that I keep on abstracting them outside of the realm of how I live my everyday life or what's going through my head at the time or what I'm feeling in the moment. But I don't know what else I can do to change. Perhaps my notion that knowing what the problem is will fix things; that certainly would tie in with my all too common tendency to over-plan, want every last bit of detail, and never actually getting around to implementing much.

Maybe tomorrow I'll write a day in the life of moof...

6 jun 2002
Spooky things.

So, after more weirdo things coming up, I decided to see what my happy li'l deck o' cards and my ever-wacky intuition would say about autumn 'n' ted. The first reading gave curiously muted results, with a fairly descriptive description of the present-day, but nothing about the outcome. The second is much more interesting: I asked "what should I do if they get together?"

The results, as I read 'em: I'm separated emotionally from the situation, I don't have any authority over any of it but I should continue to be friendly, "misfortune will be averted", and I should avoid The Tower (!!!) I think I'll be staying the hell away from this.

I swear, I really do shuffle these cards...

3 jun 2002
I tried doing a bunch of readings this evening - mostly for Ted. They came up kinda funny, and when I tried to get a little more explanation, the High Priestess - "my" card - kept on appearing upside down, as if to warn me that it wouldn't be too helpful for me to continue. I then asked "If not me, then who?" and The Tower popped up.

The thought of Autumn at this point encouraging Ted to go in a given direction filled me with dread, my subconscious started babbling away on my spine, and I got kinda freaked out. I'm not sure how or why this got triggered. Sigh.

31 may 2002
Boy, I've really refrained from writing here much ever since I started LJing in earnest. Hasn't seemed appropriate to write here much, somehow. This is partially because I usually don't want to write stuff in LJ that I can be easily called on, that I have to be less BSy and more airtight than my stuff nobody reads here. Unformed thoughts here.

A notion that popped into my head when getting a massage from gary: people in roles that involve therapy or receiving do so partially so they can compare others' pain to their own. It's a way to gauge where you are.

Another kind of weird notion: it'll be the most beneficial to interact in pretty disjoint ways with both Gary and Phoebe. Why do this? It would seem that when there are multiple paths that don't cross each other much, that there are different ways in, there won't be an exhaustion of resources - and that it would allow me to continue to interact without either exhaustion or some sort of cross-threading of modes. The latter seems like the far more possibly-BS assertion, but also concerns me more, that there could be some sort of weirdo internal backlash between them if the way they interact with me gets too similar. This is not thought out well at all, but it's been running through my head for a while, and I figure I should write it down for posterity.

Sigh. So many things in my head, so few ways to get them out, so little short-term memory to get them to condense.

23 apr 2002
Stupid meatsack. Whine whine whine.

• I have some of the greasiest hair of anyone I know, and lots of dandruff. I mean, my EYEBROWS dandruff up a storm. Come on, eyebrow dandruff? Wtf is up with that?
• My intestinal gas is some of the worst I've encountered; you really don't want to be in the same room with me after I've had fajitas.
• My knees dislocate at the drop of a hat.
• I have gout in my left ankle and right big toe. Ow.
• My pores are all fucked up and cloggy; I think I have keratosis pilaris, which means that 'they clog up with strange deposits'. Those adhesive things that supposedly clear out your pores? They don't work on me - I have to manually unclog the damn pores. Yuck. My back is a cloggy wasteland.
• My vision is horrible.
• I burp a lot.
• My nose is almost always clogged, so I'm a mouthbreather a lot of the time.
• I have allergies or asthma or something. I start wheezing easily.
• I'm chubby with a lot of stretchmarks.

I know that when I get like this, it's immensely frustrating to not know what I'm feeling - and not knowing my own emotional state is pretty much the way I am most of the time. I can recognize strong emotions on the surface when they're there, but more subtle things, lurking underneath? I don't know.

I suspect that there's some sort of deep self-loathing going on somewhere, for not being able to compare with my own internal rigid sets of standards. Striving ain't good enough (although I wish I knew what I were striving for). Whenever I try to sit and think and feel, I feel all mentally scattered, running off in all directions. What's worse is sometimes I just don't get anything at all - it's lie bouncing off an invisible wall or something. (That last bit is the scariest in some ways - that I'll end up saying 'That's it? That's all there is?')

I have an urge to just go and delete this all, since it seems rambly and incoherent and whiny and just not polished enough, not quite fit for consumption. I suppose it's good I write this at all, I just don't know, I can't tell if it matters or not to me and that's real distressing.

20 apr 2002
In vino taurumerdus

In my fairly drunken haze, I was called a techno-shaman; I asked what my totem would be, expounded on what my role as techno-shaman was, and then I told a secret.

My (drunken) expounding:
Consider a person as an n-dimensional matrix. They have certain obvious degrees of freedom - but they also have several "hidden" variables. My job is to intuit the hidden variables, figure out where they are (point A), where they should go (point B), and the shortest mean path to get from point A to point B. (Note that this depends on the basis available.)

And the secret: a) By seeing that others love you, you'll see it's OK to love yourself; b) you may not love yourself in the way you expect.

I'd really like to know what the second the second part means.

18 apr 2002
Fragility.

Sex still scares me in a lot of ways. Something that's so intimate can have a lot of extra baggage associated with it, and I tend to be real emotionally vulnerable. I think that perhaps a corollary of having such a high automatic bullshit-rejection threshold is being very emotionally sensitive as well - or maybe it's because that since I tend to get close to so few people, when I let down my barriers I let them down as much as I can and thus I get real paranoid about fucking up because I'll know it immediately.

I'm still trying to come up with a reasonable explanation for the statement I made to Phoebe earlier this evening, "Men are differently vulnerable than women in relationships." (at least, I think that's what I said.) I'd argue that men can hide their emotions better, protect them more thoroughly - but that relationships open those up a lot more deeply in comparison to other activities and so there's a much bigger capacity for hurt. I don't know how much I like this answer, though, both in terms of veracity/bullshit and the comment on emotional structure it makes.

The other thing I've been worrying about is that my emotions only really seem to reveal themselves when I get deeply involved with someone (and historically, always female). I'm not sure how to deal with it, since I see myself as fragile and going to pieces and not being able to feel and act in a responsible or adult or non-broken manner. It's partially being overwhelmed, partially being aware of being needy (something I hate), partially not being able to read people, partially low esteem/martyrism that lets me give up and say, "Oh well, I didn't deserve to be happy anyway - not that I would have known how to deal with it even if I could be"

Boy, this sounds real emo, a bundle of nerves and fears, moping about how awful I am and how scary things are - but I don't know what else I can do right now. It just seems like the same thing, every time, and I never get past it - that's the most frustrating part of it.

21 Mar 2002
After briefly cuddling this evening, I just feel horny and depressed and disparate and stuck in the way I am. I need to file the papers so I can feel like I'm doing something. I need to escape the southbay, I don't think it holds much shining promise for me (other than the lure of ready cash which is admittedly nice.)

Why can't I figure out who I want to be and what I want to do when I grow up? And with whom? Arrgh, best to cut this line of inquiry short right now lest I fall any deeper in.

19 Feb 2002
My, I haven't updated this for a while. I blame Livejournal. it's just... a lot easier to use and there's the voyeuristic thrill of knowing that people actually read what one types. However, it's gotten to the point where I'm starting to self-censor because certain people (winnie, namely) are starting to read and comment and give friends guff about what I write there... so to give in to my puerile sense of rebellion I'm writing this here and now. Ha. It's not that I really care if people are offended directly about what I write - it's that it causes ripples of drama to other people - and THAT I find immensely annoying.

Now that I've seemingly started a rant, I may as well go full-bore with it. God damn it, I fucking hate it when people get pulled into drama because one person doesn't like another person or is coerced into having to be a moral judge of goings-on. "but he did this! How could he do that!" ARRGH! This seems to happen with a couple people in particular. I just don't know what it is about people that they want to ascribe BLAME, to point a finger at somebody and say "according to the universe, THIS PERSON is AT FAULT and the CAUSE OF ALL THIS SUFFERING. Let's point and laugh!". It's probably tied in with the thirst for revenge, for the keening desire to feel like one can affect the uncaring universe somehow by imposing good and evil, right and wrong on situations where it's grey all over or doesn't even really apply.

One of the things that started this latest fucking round of Drama was the set of assertions I made about community: "I don't see community in San Jose." "I don't like it down here." "I think Oakland has things more together than SJ." What fucking part of 'I' does one not see? What indication of opinion is so goddamned opaque? Does it imply there isn't any of the above for other people? ARRGH!

I apologize to continue ranting like this, Gentle Reader, but it's the culmination of one of the topics some friends have been talking about: those with whom you just can't have meaningful discussion without it degenerating into Drama in some shape or form. I usually tend to talk about things from an analytical point of view and try to make blatantly clear about what opinions are about subjective things and about objective things. When I see somebody make a claim about something objective that I think is wrong, I'm gonna attack it - and people seemingly can't seperate their fucking arguments from themselves. They get all emotionally wrapped up in it, and to differ with them is to attack them, and everything goes ballistic. It makes it fucking impossible to discuss anything around them when they pipe in, and it inhibits any other discussion, too. I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it.

I guess this is why I decided to write here - it's not livejournal, it's very definitely MY SPACE, and you'd have to be very aware of where you're walking into in order to read this. I have a bazillion other things to write; perhaps I'll actually write about them, soon...

6 dec 2001

On a hill, under a raven sky
I have no idea exactly what I've drawn
Some kind of change, some kind of spinning away
With every single line moving further out in time
--- Eno/Cale, Wrong Way Up, 'Spinning Away'

I'm waiting to go to sleep (in that I hope I'll soon feel like I'm willing and able to sleep - and the two are not synonymous) and thinking about what Jan said a while ago about 2CT7 - words to the effect of "It puts you on the Death trip." However, I'm actually getting sleepy now, so I'll save that rant/blather for later...

1 dec 2001
Happy December, I guess. I'm in a mildly funky/depressive mood from looking over livejournal. Yet another community of which I ain't a part, where people seem to be enjoying themselves and talking a lot with other people.

I frequently feel that nobody wants to hear anything I have to say.

26 nov 2001
Nothing terribly special or new or exciting to write about today, except for the wackyass dream My sleep schedule is completely hosed; I couldn't get to sleep until 7:30, and woke up at 6:30 - and was nonplussed because it was still dark.

There are a bunch of things I've been meaning to write about for like two or three weeks - gender dysphoria, how buddhism (as far as I can tell) is kinda sour on life implicitly, how humans find it a pain in the ass to adjust to not having to fight for survival, the too-inwardly-gazing nature of the Bay Area, what's going to be after Postmodernism, what 'grown-up' roles are now... but right now I don't wanna. (But I'm writing what they are here so I can remember to blather about them later.)

25 Nov 2001
Soon, I will do that thing which all men know, but do not speak its name. The thing that is only spoken of in hushed whispers, the thing that is to be considered with dread.

I will be throwing out some old underpants.

22 Nov 2001 (thanksgiving)
It's 3:45, and I don't want to go to sleep - not because I'm not tired (I am), and not because I have stuff to do tomorrow (I have lots - need to make flourless chocolate cake, eat thanksgiving dinner at jorm's, etc) but because it feels wrong somehow to go to sleep, like I should be doing something. This is something that occurs fairly often for me - and it doesn't help that my brain is frequently whirring around in my head, 'round and 'round, when I'd really like it to calm the fuck down. (Ritalin helps - or at least, it feels a fuck of a lot different. Perhaps I should go back to the pshrink one of these days and try to coerce them into prescribing it for me. The tachycardia is way annoying, though.)

I've decided that part of my problem is that my mental focus is too far out - I'm usually pretty good at determining long-term consequences of things, but my short-term focus sucks ass. I'll frequently go to do something in another room, get there, and forget what I was supposed to do. I just can't keep things in my short term memory terribly well at all. It doesn't help that I'm also really easily distracted, and my mental state goes poof! Add those two together, and it's really bloody hard for me to concentrate on something long and boring (or even long and interesting); this is probably why I get the most work done when I'm really tired and want to go to sleep. I can just really crank stuff out like nobody's business - whether coding or writing (which explains why I've done so much on this silly page now that I've got the laptop in bed and can write when I'm tired.)

In some ways, being able to write and whatever else online in bed has dramatically affected the sorts of things I can do; in fact, if I could get a laptop with a larger display, I suspect I'd spend a lot more time in bed and able to work. It's far more comfortable, for one thing (a lot of the chairs out there really suck with my annoyingly long torso) and the screen is at a comfortable distance for my eyes.

Now, if I could just get a 1600x1200 display on a laptop...

18 nov 2001
Yep, it's definitely depressive cycle time. Woke up at 4:30PM today after going to bed at 5. I was either really really exhausted, or it's yet another symptom of depression (or both.)

My depression usually manifests itself as a malaise - that everything is devoid of joy, and that nothing I do really matters. This makes it rather hard to concentrate on doing stuff for work, doing my taxes, filing paperwork, etc. The worst part of it is the nagging feeling that there's something important I should be doing, but without knowing what it is.

Despite all that, I saw the Leonids this evening; some of them were mighty impressive. It's really too bad that there's so much light pollution around that you can't really see anything up in the sky without making a concerted effort to do so. One of the nice side-effects of going out to Burning Man early in the week is that people haven't set up their petawatt generators yet, and you can see the sky pretty damn clearly. Same thing goes for parts of semi-rural Minnesota, like where my uncle lives; I have fond memories of lying on the big hill in front of his house and just marveling at the sights in the sky.

One of the reasons I find it especially disheartening that you can't see the sky - and for that matter, one of the bummers of living out here in California - is that you have little sense of the passage of time. You can see the stars cycle through the seasons, repeating the same patterns. The seasons out here are damn hard to tell apart, though. No clear signs like 'snow' or 'the grass has turned bright green' or 'it's time to rake up all the damn leaves' that I've seen. (I do miss the winter in one or two ways: there's nothing quite like a bright and clear and cold day outside, where the light is kinda bluish, and the wind stops and everything is very still. But then the moment snaps when you step into yet another mound of greyish slush and your toes get soaked and the wind picks up and chills you to the bonel and you curse living in a place with so goddamned much snow.

All in all, I think I'm pretty happy to be out in California, though. I get paid reasonably well, and there are an awful lot of interesting people out here, although there seems to be a yearning amongst a lot of people to go elsewhere - Portland and Seattle, mostly. (This seems to hit about every four years or so.) I think I'd still have massively mixed feelings about moving up to the city (or to Oakland); however, I imagine things will become somewhat clearer as the nadir of the recession approaches and the city comes to its senses and realizes what it actually values when money isn't so easy to get. At least, that's my hope.

16 nov 2001
I think I'm going into a depressive cycle again. It's just so fucking pernicious and I've been dealing (or not) with it for so long that it's hard for me to tell at times when I'm depressed - or not. I know that sometimes it can be almost perversely comforting to be depressed, because it's at least something and you don't feel empty inside, or just completely overwhelmed with ennui.

On a related note, I have known a bunch of people who've said something along the lines of "Oh, I used to be depressed, but then one day I decided I wouldn't be and got better." This strikes me as being patent bullshit in some ways - I am quite loth to believe that either deep emotional or organic issues are just going to suddenly go away because one decides to "feel better". I believe that people are somewhat more resistant to changing their ways than that - or they're so shallow that changing one way or the other doesn't really matter.

I finally paid off my car, which was nice, although it dropped my bank account precipitously. Now, all I need to do is file my fiscal 1999 and 2000 taxes, and I may get a decent refund. Whee. Dealing with money sucks ass. Hate it hate it hate it. I'm definitely on the 'art' side of the Spindlers, not the 'money' side.

I dunno why it is, but I'm much better at writing these sorts of entries and just prattling on a lot with some nominal amount of content when it's relatively late, I'm just about ready to go to sleep, and I have the laptop in bed reclined up against my legs. It's just a nice comfortable position which seems conducive to writing. Not something I'm used to, but pleasant.

9 Nov 2001
I started throwing stuff out. Like, a Lot of Stuff. And it's taking a long while to make a dent in all the crap that's piled around. Tons of magazines, bunches of books, random printouts from years ago, all sorts of shit.

I've held on to a lot of shit on the off-chance that I'd need it someday, and I wouldn't be able to afford getting it again or be able to get it at all. I half-think this carries over to my personality in general, not just as how it relates to Stuff. Mmm, baggage.

The need to let go of things has been showing up rather a lot lately; I think this was partially catalyzed by it sinking in that as much as I'd like to be Buckaroo Bonzai and do everything, there's only so much time and energy to invest in stuff - and so some things, as enjoyable or interesting as they may be - have to go by the wayside.

As a corollary to getting rid of Stuff, I think I'm turning more outwards a little, maybe being more social, maybe not demanding everything right now, maybe being able to moderate things a bit better. Perhaps I'm beginning to figure out What I Want (aka "What I want to do when I grow up") - or perhaps I'm just being sanctimonious and self-important and deluded. :)

We all have to grow up sometime, whether we like it or not...

7 Nov 2001
Greg Gafflin of Bad Religion has a good essay on what it means to be punk. I had heard for years that Gafflin was working on his PhD in Zoology - and whadduya know? He's listed there in the Cornell directory as a grad student. Always wacky when rumors turn out to be true...

In other news, I failed to clean the house tonight, and the crackheads at WB delayed the long-awaited musical episode by ten minutes, thus cutting off my recording. (The very episode they've been promoting for months!)

Looking over what I've just written, it doesn't seem to be a whole lot in the way of oversharing. Oh well, I'll write some ode on the joys of prostate massage or something equally annoying later.

6 Nov 2001
For the first time in at about seven years or so, I'm below 220lbs. (However, I'm probably mildly dehydrated.) I celebrated by emitting clouds of noxious gas (having mongolian bbq earlier) and having some string cheese my sister sent me from Wisconsin. (Ya, sure, you betcha.)
 

I think that along with having an bizarro neurochemistry, my emotional processes are kinda strange as well. Like, when I see people, I don't automatically get the "Boy, it would be fun to associate with this random person I don't know!" emotional reaction. In fact, I suspect that I don't get much of an emotional reaction at all. This would at least partially explain why my social manners (to my eyes, at least) are kinda odd - lacking an instinctive emotional reaction, I have to feel my way around things on a far more cognitive level. For what it's worth, I believe this hypothesis about 30-50% - indicating that I'm at least half-full of shit.

Despite this shit-full-of-ness, I do find it really quite difficult to talk about my emotional state and what I'm feeling in a lot of ways. The two just don't go all that well together for me. I can talk about things in terms of small pieces (I feel bad about this, I'm motivated by that, I'm intruiged by this other thing), but descriptions of the larger whole - even with the broadest brush strokes - frequently elude me. It also doesn't help that when I look at something I've written with an emotional tone a couple of months after I've written it, I think, "Oh my god, this is embarassing. How couuld I have written something as juvenile or insipid or trite as this?" and throw it out. (This journal of sorts is at least a partial reaction to that - I've deluded myself into thinking that whomever reads this is willing and able to deal with this sort of oversharing. [That leads to the whole topic of what I consider oversharing, but I'll leave that for another time.])

This probably doesn't have much to do with emotional states, but it might.... when I was in a massively altered mental state on Halloween, I had the very curious experience of feeling a strong left/right body split, with the left side being feminine and my right side being masculine. Looking to my left or leaning over to the left made my thoughts/self-image more female. Also, my left hand/arm and right hand/arm felt ambidextrous to the point where they were doing things completely independently of each other. (Not that the left hand was as as dextrous [har har] as the right hand, mind you - but the sorts of things it was doing were just as 'major' as what the right hand was doing.) After thinking about this dichotomy after I returned to my (more) normal mental state, I remembered the following about my La Mosca experience: my left hand was attempting to masturbate as if I had a twat, and was positioned under my urethra underneath my scrotum, up and forwards towards the prostate - corresponding almost exactly to where the vagina would be.

I'm going to attempt to start drawing with my left hand in the near future, to see if the sorts of things I produce are any different than the things I produce with my right hand. No idea how it'll turn out (or if I can even get enough skill to draw anything more than a scrawl.)

3 Nov 2001
Today is Short Term Memory Loss, a party I'm supposed to help run - except I can't even get out of bed. I had depressing dreams, and woke up depressed - although it wasn't as acutely obvious as it is right now. Got up, read mail for a while, tried to figure out what to wear, and WHAM! Felt impotent, that nothing I did mattered or was useful or helped and that I wasn't worth anything. Sometimes this happens when I haven't eaten or slept well, so I had some OJ and string cheese and St Johns Wort and echinacea - and felt worse than ever. I fled back to bed, got in under the covers and vibrated for a bit with an intensely unhappy expression. I was somewhat hoping that concentrating on something would help alleviate the dull emotional pain in my head, but that doesn't seem to be working so well.

I think I shall huddle or go foetal for a while...

 
Later...
I think it was a conflagration of depression, being sick, and being hungry all at the same time. I had physical chills along with feeling crappy (both bodily and mentally). After resting for a while almost falling asleep, and talking to Jorm on the phone for a while, I felt better, but still tired. Throat's still sore, too. Oh well, at least I'm able to get of bed and out of the house.

(Another six hours or so later) Man, my stomach is bothering the fuck out of me, and my intestines seem somewhat unhappy. Throat is less sore, though. Stupid meatsack! Getting sick and surly on me!

1 Nov 2001
I love autotranslated language - especially japanese. Check this out.
"The ear it is: Overfamiliar Man insect. Both parties should die rapidly! should die!"

As my super-duper-occult Halloween ritual, I farted around the house with amazingly swelled sinuses. Owie.

I also realized this evening that La Mosca is important because the realization of that form - to give it shape somehow - is an goal that forcibly pushed its way up from my subconscious. Hadn't ever gotten an urge like that before, so it's mighty interesting. How'll it end up? Beats me. Will there be more? I shall see...

28 Oct 2001
I managed to lace myself all the way down in my 30" corset. yay. In other not-terribly-interesting news, I found out why the Mayan date and Julian date correlations are all fucked up.

I went to a rave last night, and it seems that everybody I knew who went to it had an awful lot of fun. Not me, though, nosir. I'm really really picky in the types of music I like and what I'm willing to dance to, and the stuff they were playing just didn't do shit for me. Some of the psytrance in the little tiny room was OK, but got really kind of dull after a while. (hey! let's have the SAME EXACT BREAKBEAT AGAIN!) The 10-15 minute wait to use the portapotties (two for ~300-400 people) was less than fun, as was the utter lack of available comfy surfaces on which to recline.

Some days I wonder if I'm missing something, like the camaraderie gene or the like - while I like people, I just don't find it terribly easy to talk to them, nor terribly fulfilling a lot of the time. Perhaps it's because I take absolutely everything really seriously (even silliness, even being intentionally non-serious) and the sort of full-on attention isn't what people want or like. I dunno. (On the other hand, I really enjoyed talking with JD while in the car.)

I suspect that in some ways, she was my idealized self-image; she was wearing something that looked absolutely fabulous (although I can't fucking remember what it looks like) and her visage just had a really great composition. It might have been a reaction to the Bianca event I went to earlier in the evening, as well; whereas a lot of ravers tend to have fuzzy and soft and all surfacey kinds of textures, La Mosca had leather and rubbery and hard textures she was wearing (or were part of her person, I'm not sure.)

I've had some really damn weird dreams before, but nothing quite like that.

20 Oct 2001
A friend (and former cow orker) of mine had heart seizures over the weekend, and was declared brain dead today. She had no indications of drugs in her system, and they're (probably) going to do an autopsy soon. She's the second friend I've had my age who's just keeled over and died of seemingly random causes.

Ah, mortality.

11 Sep 2001
Well. What a day.

Here's a rather different exercise in community and tribalism...

9 Sep 2001
(from an IRC conversation about my experiences at BM)

<moof> I've integrated some; basically, it's a lot to sort one's thoughts through and to sort of filter out the massive overstimulation from the environment.
<moof> take 24k people, with all their pent-up individuality going completely amok for a week.
<moof> and not just the people, but the activities, the art, the dancing, the drugs, _and_ the knowledge that it'll last a week and that's it.
<moof> basically, one's senses - both in the physical sense and in the social and emotional senses - are under a fierce barrage.
<moof> so you have to sift out what was done, and why, and how much of it was brought out by other things, and motivations of why you do stuff differently, and so on.
<moof> add to that the completely alien nature of BM, and you have to sit and digest for a while to figure out commonalities and differences.
<moof> as far as figuring out why I did what I did - it's not really the doing - it's the feeling, and the overall scope of things. the individual bits make sense, but when you look at the larger sense, there's a different flavor than usual.
<moof> I've figured out some.
<moof> like, one of the big things I realized is "accept endings".
<moof> don't try to draw things out past their ending point, and be content with what you had or have.
<moof> like, the night of the burn is the focal point of a lot of the activity. it's the zenith, the climax. it's silly to try and work up to that level again in the few remaining days.
<moof> the burning of the masoleum was a denouement. the somewhat somber and reflective finish to the events.
<moof> after the mausoleum went up, FWICT, everybody knew it was time to leave.
<moof> let me try to describe the burn itself, though: you've been running around all week, and then on saturday, the 47' neon/glowing man lifts his arms. this year, they had fire dancers and trucks belching fire for a while, to get the crowd worked up (partially because it was taking a hell of a long time.)
<moof> then, the fireworks start to go off, and the man lights on fire, the flames working its way up to the top. for a minute or so (or it seemed like it, anyway) the man is standing there ablaze, triumphant in his destruction.
<moof> and then the man collapses and the crowd just rushes towards the center and runs around and around the fire and the ashes.
<moof> there's plenty of things going on that evening, but everybody knows that the night is the swan song, and it'll be over soon.
<moof> it's a big emotional impact.
<moof> watching that gave me a lot more belief in the cycle of things, essentially.

7 Sep 2001
I wrote this on IAM:

I think I'll be off IAM for a while; the fractious nature of it has gotten to me, especially after Burning Man. It's a buttload of trees and no forest, no coherence that I can see, no active community in the larger sense. IAM is fine and dandy for one-to-one communication, but with the way it's structured, it actively discourages group activity.

And thus, I'm off to the real world, the outside world, the world that surrounds us (and is part of us, even as we huddle in little groups hidden from the larger part, a microcommunity in the void, in the hopes that we may be able to emerge one day and take over the larger group with our own.)

If you want to talk/blather/wander around SF and drink coffee or something, feel free to email. I'll be out and about and cavorting in the fields, and would be happy for you to join me.

Burning Man has helped me understand better the need for community and the need to not sink into private and hidden islands, disparate from the world.