4-16-2024

Humans have a very difficult time accepting and dealing with our individual and collective insignificance to the universe.

4-11-2024

 I’ve begun to cut back on my online social involvement.

It’s counterintuitive when the greatest part of my social life is online. I no longer have family or close friends. I don’t go out much, and when I do I tend to keep to myself. I can deal with people individually but 2 or more make me uncomfortable. 

“No matter how you care to define it, I do not identify with the local group. Planet, species, race, nation, state, religion, party, union, club, association, neighborhood improvement committee; I have no interest in any of it. I love and treasure individuals as I meet them, I loathe and despise the groups they identify with and belong to.” ― George Carlin, Brain Droppings

But I was feeling stretched thin. If I didn’t post regularly in Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, and my blogs, I felt like I was failing myself. 

So I’ve started shutting down blogs and unsubscribing from networks. My goal is 2 social networks and 3 blogs, one of which I’m only maintaining as it’s 23 years old. 

We’ll see if I’m successful. 

3-6-2024

 This has been a really strange week.

Last Thursday what felt like a severe flu hit me. My housemate had been showing the same symptoms so I figured I caught from him.

I felt like shit until Sunday, when the congestion showed signs of decreasing and I thought it would be over soon. But that same day I noticed my left hand was weak. I have sympathetic tremors but this was different. I texted the VA neurologist and carried on.

Monday morning I took my housemate’s son to school and went by his office to do some filing and data entry. I felt odd, brain fog, eyes wouldn’t focus just right, and my hand was still wonky. The neurologist called and said that maybe I should go to the ER to see what was going on.

So I left his office and headed to the VA ER. While I was talking to the intake nurse about my hand, another nurse came by and said she wanted to give me a Covid test just in case I had to be admitted for any reason.

I was put into a room in the ER and several neurologists and therapists came by to see what they could figure out. Finally a doctor came in and asked if anyone had told me I was positive for Covid. 

So I was admitted, waiting in ER for 11 hours while they prepped a room, and was discharged Tuesday after they were sure I was on the mend. It turns out my hand issue was from Covid-induced swelling. 

So now as soon as possible I have to smear my arms and forehead with chemotherapy cream to combat precancerous spots that come from years of sun exposure. 

1-2-2024

In six and a half hours I will have completed my 69th trip around the Sun and will begin the 70th. 

It's awe inspiring and humbling. 

Awe inspiring because of the things I've done in my life I'm extremely fortunate to be alive. Police patrolman, soldier, armored car messenger, freestyle rock climber, cocaine addict, lover of more than one married woman, so many endeavors that could have easily cut my life short.

But somehow, through luck and stupidity, I managed to cheat death just one more time. 

Humbling, because nearly everyone around me with whom I enjoyed either love or a close friendship is dead. No parents, no lovers, no kids, no intimate friends. I'm not whining, that's just the way things have turned out. But it's humbling to think that all those who I once knew are either gone or have disappeared. I alone remain, and I hardly deserve it. 

1-26-24

 It’s deeply disturbing to reach my age and finally recognize all the lies you’ve been told all your life. Lies about the country, lies about our society, lies about opportunities, lies about success, lies about humanity, lies about relationships, lies about equality, lies about peace, lies about history, so many lies. 

It’s as if I’ve been living in a collective aspirational fantasy for 70 years. Is there any reality?

1-20-2024

I have lived a completely unremarkable life. 

If I believed that regret served any purpose other than motivating depression I would have so many regrets. So many times I should have taken one path but instead took the other, only to realize later I’d chosen poorly. 

All my life I’ve suffered from depression. I couldn’t demand enough of myself to rise above mediocrity. Some of my choices were so bad that had I not been fortunate in the way they played out I could have done irreparable damage to my life. As it was they cost me dearly. 

Looking back, I’m sure had ADHD and autism been understood decades ago I might have gotten help with the parts of my character I didn’t understand. 

But here I am, about to turn 70, with nothing to do but accept my past and live in the moment. I spend nearly every day in my room with my dog and my housemate’s dog. I don’t go out much. I’m not especially productive, I don’t write like I should nor do I read as much as I should. 

In a very real way I’m waiting to die. I’m not anticipating it, I’ll do nothing to hurry it along. I am studying more about the right way to think about death and accept its inevitability. When Cleo died in 2018 I didn’t want to go on alone. I enjoy being alone among people, but I need a dog or cat to keep me company. So now it’s Stella and me, and most days Rosie as well. 

This isn’t the way I thought it would all end, but most things in my life haven’t gone the way I planned. Why should this be any different?

I have no idea how to end this entry gracefully, so I’ll just stop typing.

1-7-2024

In a way I feel cheated. If ADHD and autism had been understood better when I was in grade school perhaps high school and college would have been easier for me. If PTSD had been better understood when I was discharged the next few years might not have almost derailed my life for good. I wish I’d understood about controlling my life in the 80s.

But that’s all past. It does no good to regret. It’s a part of who I am, it’s what made me who I am.