I'm tired and I can't sleep. I'm noding instead of sleeping. Trying to sleep is actually some how more stressful than writing in a dark room. I've finally reached the point where panic is making it easy to write. It's the same crap every year. Right near the end the burst of creativity comes rushing through my brain from nowhere and let's me actually perform in a way that somehow eludes me the whole rest of the year.
There's that one line in Fight Club right after the scene where the narrator gets a chemical burn from Tyler: "It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything." I've always found that way more comforting than I think I'm supposed to. The feeling I'm trying to describe is probably better encapsulated in Just Lose Hope Already. Losing hope isn't supposed to feel good but I'd highly recommend it as it can be a huge relief.
I'm frustrated with myself because I don't engage in basic self-care. I don't get enough sleep, I often ignore eating because I don't get hungry if I don't move, and I'm unambiguously addicted to the internet. And the worst part is that while I want to become a better more effective person I can't envision it making me any happier. I want to be clear that I'm not saying I don't think it will make me any happier. I don't know. What I'm saying is that I literally can't envision myself in any situation where I'm happy with my life. I've seen enough sad-sack, self-pitying, self-sabotaging, neurotics on reality TV and elsewhere make the turn around to recognize that I am probably not so unique in all of the world that no circumstances could ever bring me lasting joy but I really can't begin to imagine it. I'm speaking from experience. I've had the question put to me point blank and I've tried to engage with it and THERE'S JUST NOTHING THERE. So I try things with no expectation of reward. This years been a lot about putting in the work and hoping something comes of it. It's been mostly fruitless, not completely fruitless, but mostly fruitless. This is where losing hope is really important for me because I came kinda unglued in one day several years ago for reasons that are too complicated to go into here. In so far as I can rate these sort of thing my average life satisfaction went from a 6/10 to 2.5/10 and I spent the next several years in a fog of depression. What made me start to try and put myself back together was the realization that it wasn't getting better with time, that I wasn't going to be alright, that time doesn't heal all wounds. Sometimes your soul just festers. In that moment I actually had the impetus to operationalize some kind of personal recovery, not because of an epiphany about my self worth but rather the opposite. If I waited for the point in time when I actually wanted to like and care about myself and my life I'd just keep wallowing in depression, self-pity, and self-loathing.
If your inclined to argue with the framing of "losing hope" all I can say is that that's what it looked like from the inside and I stand by it. Wow, did not expect to share all of that when I started this day log.
IRON NODER THE THIRTEENTH