June 2022

It's June.

I love PRIDE month. It reminds me of the qualities I find awesome about humanity.

So that's positive. 

I don't know how long I want to take on this entry.

I wanted to start writing on my blog again.

It's a new month, and I have a new computer - thanks to a local organization.

No excuse now to not at least get back into the practice on a daily basis.

Or to keep track of my life the way I used to.

I've been keeping an audio diary.

I have thousands of recordings.

It's easier to free flow with my ideas.

I don't have to stop and edit or correct the format of a sentence.

And you can hear my tone of voice in the recording

I feel like it adds meaning that can never really be replicated through text, only hinted.

But there's thousands of hours of work -

ideas, stories, worries, research, archives...

I guess it's a trade off.

What do I want to keep track of right now?

My job search.

My health.

My emotional status.

Project ideas and progress.

Current events.

Did it ever matter that I wrote it down?

Did writing on this blog ever really matter?

There was that one time, years and years ago, when some teacher in Canada said he used a piece I wrote for college in his own classroom. His high school students were reading Catcher in the Rye. (I forget if I'm supposed to italicize that book title or if capitalization is enough.) He sent me the paragraphs they wrote, comparing my life to Holden Caulfield. If I remember right, one of the kids said I was more resilient because I didn't dwell on my struggles the way Holden did. Makes me laugh inside thinking of that now.

Laugh in a sad, cosmic irony, way.

My back has started giving me some trouble. I had this horrendous pain that came in waves at the start of the month. I stopped eating for a few days, not knowing what was wrong - I threw up. I had to sleep sitting upright in a chair. I've been taking naproxen all month. It was my mid/lower back, on the left side. It felt more like an organ issue, but I only have theories of what went wrong. I'm fairly certain extreme stress exacerbated the problem. It was scary. It was the kind of pain that has you just begging the universe to make it stop.

 

Now it's the start of June, and a few days ago I noticed the back of my right thigh is numb to the touch. I looked up some exercises for sciatica last night. There's been some lower back pain, especially if I stand for over an hour. It's a different kind of pain - not in waves - more bone and muscle soreness than whatever the hell was wrong before. It's hard not to think the issues must be somehow related. My bed is sunken in - that can't be helping. I haven't been very active. I've been depressed and also haven't left my small studio apartment in two years. I feel like I've been saying "two years" for longer than two years...

I'm trying to stretch more. I have a stepper thing I can pseudo-walk on. If I drink enough caffeine I can dance around without a lot of effort. Just worried things will only get worse. I never want to feel that off-the-charts-pleading pain ever again if I can help it.

 

Also, my tooth has crumbled more. I'm down to about 1/4th of it left. Part of me wishes it would just make a clean break and leave the gap. If someone were looking real close, there's a silvery lining all inside what's left of the tooth. It's as if the filling was just covering a hole, and whatever was meant to fill it had slipped out years ago. I got the filling when I was about seven years old, and it still is strange to me that it fell out in 2020 after all that time - and no one had ever mentioned anything to me - not even that I had bad breath or something. The dentist had taken multiple x-rays of my mouth when I got braces in high school - but they either never saw anything amiss or just didn't think it worth addressing.

 

Oh, I learned something silly but related about myself last night too, thanks to Reddit. I have a "sacral dimple". I didn't know it was anything, much less had its own name. The internet says 3 to 8 percent of the population has one, but it's not a concern unless there's a compounding factor like hair, skin tags, or skin discoloration. So unless, again, people forgot to tell me something - it should just be fine. I've got a dozen reasons why my back would start to hurt - it does feel like people just left me out of the loop of my own life sometimes, though.

 

Looking over what I just wrote - it's too much.

Who the fuck cares.

No one is going to read this.

That sounds angrier than I feel - I mean it more in an exasperated, shoulders shrugging, kind of way.

I just wonder why I bother.

I was going to play audiosurf for a little while before I went to bed.

After all these years, it's still an awesome game. Simple, colorful, easy, fun. And I find it therapeutic now that I haven't left the house in so long. It's the closest I get to that zen sort of feeling from a long drive on an empty road in the middle of the night, just singing along to the music. It lets my brain release in a way it hasn't been able to for ages.

 

Before I go, some important things: I'm applying for work. 

I got an invitation to take an exam for a remote job.

I would be more excited about it, but people online report some issues that worry me. There isn't always work to do - which means you don't get paid. Some people have gotten let go suddenly and not known why. It doesn't feel like a secure position and I just worry I'll end up wasting my time and be worse off than I was before. I've applied to other jobs, but so far I've been rejected by pretty much all of them. I think I need to end up with a paycheck within the next two weeks, or I won't make it for July. To have suffered through all this time only to end up on the street anyway just feels so fucked... There might be more rental assistance, but that has had some issues. I hate being reduced from someone who might have big dreams and big ideas to a desperate person just begging to survive. I switch thought processes on a daily, even hourly, basis. One minute I'm trying to save the world, the next I can only think about how I'm supposed to save myself. I know I'm not the only one, and that makes it even worse.

Almost every day I watch the news.

I cry.

I go on rants about what's wrong with the world, wondering why, as if I were a therapist or a social scientist and could unpack what the hell is going on in our collective minds. Trying to find an angle for evolution that I've never heard someone speak of before - though I'm sure every idea I've had has been elaborated on by someone long ago and I just never heard of that book or theory.

 

I make food, grateful I have any. Wishing I had a more interesting way to express that gratitude.

A kind of humanist spirituality. 

The same for the names of the dead.

Some kind of ritual to just acknowledge the people who will be forgotten because time always goes forward - just something to hold space, a moment, for them, and for how fucked up it is that they died that way.

A way to send nice feelings out to people I miss and wish good things for.

A way to know whether people have grown, changed, and how.

A way to know the truth about anything.

It seems religious systems have found ways to address this desire in people. I just don't really have something I can do that fits. Make art, I guess. But that almost feels self-indulgent - some reflection of myself instead. I want to focus outside of myself, not on what I can do with my feelings. Maybe this will make more sense later.

 

Since I sound a little funny talking this way, I just want to say I haven't had any cannabis in ages. It's not like I'm getting sappy or too in touch with my emotions over something that lowers your inhibitions. I've got nothing but caffeine and naproxen.  I wish I could prove that not having cannabis was effectively doing more harm than good, but I would have needed an unbiased medical professional studying me all these years to really prove that. If people are right and inflammation is the real problem when it comes to pain, illness, and even mental health issues, though, then it makes sense being without cannabis is hurting me. Also why the naproxen helps so much. I just can't afford it, or I'd still be taking RSO. I've also quit smoking cigarettes since 2020. I bought some pineapple cider at one point that summer - two years ago -  but it just made me feel sick and I haven't bothered since. Sometimes I still want a cigarette, but I think I mostly just miss the times and people and places I remember and getting to have that mental break that came along with smoking. I miss who I thought I was back then. I don't honestly give a shit if I never drink again. If I could only have one thing, I'd rather have cannabis. That does feel like a medical and spiritual resource to me, far more than just something "fun".

 

As a side note, I have wondered if - in terms of preventative health care vs. the system we have now - you might want to consider that cannabis, and anything else that makes someone feel better, is good for reducing inflammation and can stop issues from getting worse, but can also potentially cover up your body's natural alarm system so when something goes wrong, to the point that you don't even know until it's too late. In other words, you want a situation where you have a quality doctor you can trust who sees you regularly your whole life and can know when things change in you. Clearly, our current system is not set up that way and often prices people out of being able to survive.

 

Again, I stop myself and wonder why the hell am I talking about this?

Why is this what I'm focusing on at all?

Every choice you make, every moment you spend, comes with an opportunity cost.

There's always something else, maybe more important, you could have been doing instead.

Is this really the best I can do with my time?

Why not get out all the ideas I keep perfecting?

Talk about the homelessness crisis. 

Talk about the psychology behind every horror story I see on the news.

Talk about why people don't seem to understand each other.

Talk about false flags and psych ops and ways people are being divided.

Talk about what I see unfolding in the world and how we must think different to circumvent disaster.

Always asking who benefits most from things being exactly as they are right now?

Why wouldn't those with the most power to change things just do that - change things?

Isn't that more important then my back, my health, my feelings, my - whatever?

It all seems like a lot to get into.

I could go off on subject for hours - I do it every day. 

I have the recordings to prove it.

But I don't feel like I've perfected my thoughts, yet.

If I talk about these things, I want to really have something substantial to contribute to the conversation.

What do I have to say that hasn't been said, and said better?

How can I say it in a way that's any different - that would get the kind of attention it needed?

Especially from people who didn't want to listen in the first place?

And why do I particularly have a place to speak on these things - as if I should know anything?

It's just my fucking opinion, man.

And I could always be wrong.

 

It's like I've been practicing writing this book about life

and when I finally do it

I just don't want to fuck it up.

 

And like I said, my inner wold shifts on even an hourly basis.

One minute I'm miss writer/artist/activist bitch.
The next I'm just worried about getting evicted and whether anyone will care if I died.

 

A moment ago there was a sound outside like a car accident.

I froze in my chair.

I feel like an asshole.

Under normal circumstances, I would have at least looked outside right away.
But I don't really trust anything that happens on my street anymore, especially if it seems dramatic.

Again, normally, I would have gone outside or called 911 if someone seemed hurt or needed help.

A rush of "responsibility" running through me.

I have to tell myself there are other people outside. There are people who will call if there's a problem.

Otherwise I feel like I'm bring tricked into something.

And what am I supposed to do? Go out and get sick?

I could die. It's not a joke. Not an exaggeration.

Is it selfish? Am I an asshole?

I did end up looking outside anyway. 

Nothing there - no car.

Five people gathering in the alcove across the street, chatting.

A couple people in front of a bar across the way.

Cars parked along either side of the road.

My neighbor just threw something at the wall by the sound of it - so they're there.

No one needed me. The world did not end without my help.

For better or worse, I guess.

The image of someone, car smashed in, tire popped, face pressed up against an airbag, flashed through my mind like a bad dream.

But there was nothing there.

I guess I'm stuck on this page now. 

The gears are turning, reprocessing all these things I've been composing in my mind.

Poems unwritten, sentences unsaid. 

I want to just get it all out at once, but like trying to smoosh beads through a funnel, that's just not going to work. 

I need a starting point, and then - one at a time - they might spill out as they should.

And again, I'm tired.

It's oddly quiet.

I wanted to play audiosurf - that can open the flow of my writing mind sometimes too...

but part of me just wants to go to sleep.

Try again tomorrow.

My body is aching. Maybe a 3 out of 10. Not the worst pain. But uncomfortable.

It's almost 1:30 in the morning.

Happy birthday to my dad.

We don't talk anymore.

I don't talk to anyone anymore.

Someone makes a sound outside.

A bottle on the pavement? But it doesn't smash.
Sounds like it bounced.

If I put the binaural beats back on, I probably wouldn't be able to hear it at all.

My brain is starting to scatter - you can see it in the writing.

I don't know what to say.

I'm unfocused, a little pained, and tired.

Sad mostly.

I could deliberatly chug caffiene. 

Pretend I'm in college and have a paper to write.

But I would probably end up just jittery and staring at the screen.

It makes it sound like I have no ideas or projects, no direction, but that's far from the case.

Why don't I just pick a story I've come up with recently and run with it?

Why not?

The CEO who plays god

The tax bracket gladiators

The sad robot and the lost child

The compound at the end of the world

The home invasion

Potluck

What's in the Water?

The Shapeshifters

Or elaborate on some old story that I never really finished or perfected:

Unicorn at the Glue Factory

Night in the Astronomer's Garden

Vegas Story

Season to Sleep

Comfort Road

The Fish

The Lake

Chicagoland

The Wild Alternatives

Another One for the Rocketship 

I've got a whole lifetime of work.

I don't know why I don't finish it.

I don't know why it's not easy or even energizing to throw myself into it.

Let me put it this way: I love music.

But even then, it's like I forget to listen to it. I forget how good it makes me feel.

I forget until I put it on again, and then I wonder how the hell I live without it.

But it's so quiet right now, I don't want to ruin it (as someone weirdly beeps their horn outside).

It just doesn't feel right to spoil such a rare moment.

I've been so harassed by sound.

I'm so tired.

So uncomfortable.

I just want to lay down.

Maybe I'll wake up again at 4am.

Like I used to when I was younger.

It's 1:42 and it's still early to go to sleep compared to what I'm used to.

My life is all over the place even though I've been in the same room.

I'm just rambling now.

I want to stop typing.

I feel bad about it.

I but I want to lay down.

Talking in circles makes me look foolish.

It's realistic - it's genuine - but foolish.

Just stop. Stop and sleep.

Try again later.

What if there isn't a later?

Well I'm fucked then, aren't I?