Just checking in

 Difficult to say anywhere else without offending people, but my life online feels a mile wide and an inch deep. Nothing to do with the people involved, I think what's missing from my in-person life just overshadows everything else. Apparently I have the same gross, animal needs as anyone else. Who knew?

Also, some days, I just really question the value of social media in general. I mean, it very well could be a specifically me issue, but I've been on here for well over a decade now and it's just done fuck all for my personal life. And there's not even the pretense of interesting discussions half the time anymore, or long blog posts, it's all just short burst dopamine hits, and everything else is hidden behind a paywall if it still exists. I feel like I need a richer existence than online life seems to offer. Or at least a more meaningful artistic outlet than the occasional blog or bluesky post.

Well, and therapy. Lots and lots of therapy.

Perhaps when my brain stops being broke I'll be able to go on at length about other topics again.

the times they are a'changin

Very strange vibes out there this month. I am working on being less of a crazy person, but I've been also getting a lot of "time to build something new" messages if only by virtue of the fact that all of my old connections seem to be more or less done with me at the moment. I have exactly one close friendship that feels "good", a bunch more that are just a ? and a few more that have been moved to the "bridge burnt" column this month. I could leave this town, or find something new here, but I think I just need to frankly confront the fact that the 14 years or so that I've been in Portland have amounted to exactly nothing in terms of my personal connections and it's time to stop trying to salvage some of them. So that's fun.

In other news, I have started sleeping in an actual bed again, as opposed to the hammock I thought it would be fun to sleep in "for a week." and i have made some progress on getting the rest of the room in order which I am excited about. I would like to live in a space that does not look like movie shorthand for "character is at a low point" and will probably be investing in therapy sooner rather than later.

Still awaiting some divine epiphany on who I am, what I'm here for, and where I belong, but maybe something will occur to me in the meantime.

breakdowns in communication

 In many ways the trajectory of my life, lo these many years, seems like just a slow series of painful falling outs. Since the pandemic especially it seems more difficult. I'll cop to have gotten weirder and less accessible, but every one I know seems to be struggling in that regard too, to some degree since then. I guess I am frustrated because i feel in several of my long term relationships we probably need to talk some things out, but no one seems able or inclined to anymore. So that's fun.

Anyway, i want to move to Norway where being unable to talk to other adults is just a healthy cultural norm. Also: fjords.

Twilight is a liminal space

 I sat on my porch for quite a while last night, just staring into the twilight sky, listening to the wind and politely waiting for some higher being to give me with an epiphany. I waited a long time. I don't think things really work that way, but I didn't think there was any harm in making some space for divine intervention. 

Before that I had been googling "gods of the lost", only to find there aren't any. or rather, I suspect there is, but few know his name, they just shoot a quiet prayer into the aether when they've lost their way and, thankless creatures that we are, forget when they're back on familiar ground, the memories of their terror willfully forgotten in favor of louder and prouder gods and the festival of souls that attends them.

You could argue it's the domain of patron gods of travel, your hermes, poseidon, khonsu, etc. I would buy it. You could also argue that actually getting lost means you've lost their favor and your prayers must find their way to the nameless wanderer in the quiet spaces instead. I would buy that too.

I kind of go back and forth about the utility of prayer in general. On a practical level I think good prayer is akin to good meditation. It doesn't matter so much who you are praying so, so much as you are quieting your mind and focusing your intent. Or, simply taking a moment to exist in your body and with your breath for a few moments without being swept away in the seemingly endless narratives the mind generates to move us forward. But also, it's just nice to find a quiet spot for a while sometimes.

But certainly change requires action, not just thinking, not just sitting. And action has not been my defining characteristic, for what, eight years now? I keep thinking it's been a decade, but I broke up with my ex in 2015 and I thought "well, I'll give myself a month to feel down about this" and well, 8 years later, i'm still more or less in the same funk. Not a smart choice to be honest, and I do not recommend it.

I have trouble expressing how empty my life feels right now. I have always preferred less people to more, and have relentlessly whittled away at my own social network until virtually nothing remains. I have no friends in town who want to hang out more than once every couple months, no confidants, no partners in crime, no friends with benefits, no prospects, no memory of how to make this happen for myself, and the crystal clarity in knowing this is the direct result of how I behave and the choices I make, for whatever reason. It's not great! I am very unhappy with the life I have made for myself, but I can't blame anyone else for it, not even the gods, they've been relatively generous to me I think, and I've largely squandered my opportunities.

And it's not so much that I'm wallowing in self-pity, although that is a daily challenge, but I am just sitting with it. This is where I'm at. I think I understand that the core issues here are indeed core issues. Beyond the anxiety and self-loathing, which are also daily challenges, I have no strong sense of self or purpose, I have no community and no clear idea of what kind of community I would even want. And lately, born out of too long a period of isolation, a very clear and deep longing for connection with other people, but no clear idea of who exactly, setting aside the fact that my social skills are at this point deeply atrophied. 

And so I sat on my porch last night, in the twilight, waiting for some epiphany that never arrived. No helpful and shocking bit of context and clarity, but I did, for a few moment, catch some glimpses of what I used to like about myself and about how i was in the world. I'm still not sure who I am or where I'm going, but I guess a higher resolution version of me is in here somewhere.

Good enough for now. 

a brief note in these stupid times

 God, this place needs a make-over, especially now that social media is entering it's dramatic death phase. I'll have to think about that. Stay here, start a blog somewhere else? I have no idea. But I am missing the days of blogging and RSS feeds this week.

Adding: Permanently deleted the twitter micro-feed. Fuuuuuuuuck that guy and that place.

the daily jumble

I have been hesitant to write more, simply because my thinking feels so disorganized lately and I can't imagine it doesn't come through in my writing. I write offline a little more than I used to though. Imagine, thoughts that don't immediately need to be broadcast! Anyway, I may try and write though it, online or off, and I guess this is fair warning? 

Honestly, my particular tragedy, and maybe not that unique, is I have always wanted to write, but am not sure i have every really had anything to say? That is probably the trap, thinking I need to have something IMPORTANT to say. 

I don't know, I started reading Fairy Tale by Stephen King this last week and he mentioned somewhere that during the pandemic he just asked himself what kind of story he wanted to write and that's what came out. I think, that is the correct approach. I just need to write what I would want to read or simply what pleases me and if it's stupid it's stupid. The older I get the bigger the universe feels and the less impressive my ability to grasp any sizable portion of feels anyway. Which is to say, age is slowly teaching me humility in all things, which must surely apply to my writing as well.

One thing at a time

I keep trying to get my thoughts clear enough to post, but clarity of thought has not been a strong suit lately. I have a tendency to process nothing or everything, all at once and it's not an ideal binary to be stuck in. So this week I am allowing myself to ignore ALL the mental alarms going off in favor of dealing with the most urgent, which last week was my sleep schedule.

I woke up at 6pm and after doing some furious air punching and kicking out of frustration over once again letting my sleep schedule get THAT ridiculous, decided that was the most urgent and baseline problem in my life at the moment, and reset it by just staying up. So now, a few days later, i am once again daywalking, huzzah! I am trying to really understand that daywalking is the foundation for all the other changes I need to make. when I wake up in the afternoon it's hard to get my errands done, my exercise in, you know?

Usually, I try to fix all the things all at once and then flame out spectacularly. Get up early AND start exercising AND go on a date AND clean the house, AND sort out everything other problem I've been stuffing under the bed for nearly a decade now. Multi-tasking to this degree is WELL outside my current capabilities, however well-intentioned. 

So this week and last I am allowing myself to just maintain the sleep schedule. That's the job, outside of my actual job which I am also doing. I am stacking rocks with a slow and steady hand, not throwing them all at once hoping they end up neatly stacked. and while I am very much having to resist the urge to still try and do it all at once due to this crazed sort of middle aged "you're going to die! there's no time for this!? fix it, fix it now!" neurosis, for the moment it feels good to just get one little bit of my life kind of under conscious control and just sit with that for a minute. Hopefully that will help me get my thoughts in a bit of order too.