Tag Archives: Depression

Standing Up For Yourself is Pretty Cool

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Depression is nice in a way because it forces you down to a very basic level. You sleep, you eat, and you exist because nothing seems fun or exciting to do. Even video games, one of my most basic hobbies, falls aside when I’m depressed. Like what’s the point? Despite this sounding awful, it is nice starting with a clean slate. When the depression wanes you get to decide what you actually want to do with your time. After a while video games and blogging start to sound appealing — sure that ever-present nihilism is still there, but it’s in the background — and you might as well do a few random things you find enjoyable even if they are ‘pointless’. Sometimes you have to play the game of life knowing well that is, in fact, just a game.

Depression also makes me really irritable and unwilling to put up with anyone’s shit. It’s the same as before — life is a total game — and with this outlook of ‘nothing really fucking matters’ it becomes a lot easier to tell people exactly how you feel. If someone is being stupid or a dipshit or an asshole there is no barrier to telling them off. Being nice is one of those social games we play in some vague way to keep people on our good side, network, and have opportunities and friendships in the future, but it’s all a game and sometimes you don’t want to fuck around with playing games, let alone bullshit social games. I still try to not be a dick about it, but it’s easier to speak my mind being somewhat depressed.

My mom came over last weekend while I was in one of my moods. Not angry, not looking for a fight, but ready to be as open with people as I could be. She was upset that the kids weren’t around (I’ve long since learned to not wait around for my mom) and that kind of set the tone for the day. She was going to be bitching a lot and I didn’t have any patience to deal with it.

Anyways, she’s been upset that we haven’t let her take the grandkids. She used to take them on Sundays but the pandemic ruined that. My wife is also very protective and a borderline germaphobe which doesn’t help my mom’s situation at all. Last Sunday she made another one of her pleas to let her take the kids. She gave me the whole spiel: she’s depressed, she’s lonely, she wants to take the kids, they’re like all she lives for, etc., and why wouldn’t we let her take them? I asked if she had her COVID vaccine yet. “No, I’ve been sick and I have IBS and I work a lot and…”

I said, “And what does any of that have to do with you getting a vaccine? If you get the vaccine I’d be much more willing to argue in your favor. If you get vaccinated why couldn’t you take the kids?”

The conversation moved on and wandered around until she mentioned something about getting a lawyer. I was shocked; surely I didn’t hear her threaten us with a lawyer. I ignored it. She brought up the lawyer topic again, but this time I was paying attention. “I might have to get another job and get a lawyer. I don’t want to but I miss the grandkids and we’ll see what the judge has to say about that…”

Excuse me? What?! Non-depressed me would probably let this slide — it’s surely a bluff so who cares, let her say whatever she wants — but depressed and irritable me couldn’t resist. It was such a stupid threat anyways, grandparents don’t have any legal rights to force visitation on the parents/grandkids, and if there’s one thing I find hard to resist it’s telling people when they’re wrong. What did she expect the courts to do for her? Sure, if there were abuse issues with the grandkids, lawyering up is a smart and good thing to do, but we’re good parents. So…huh?

“You know you have no legal rights to actually see the kids, right? Getting a lawyer won’t do anything.”

She must’ve misunderstood what I meant by “legal rights” here, seemingly interpreting it as me saying she “…no rights to see the kids, at all, so please fuck off mom. You’ll never see them again.” She did what she does when an argument doesn’t go her way and stormed off crying. She walked to her car, said some mean stuff to me that I don’t think I’ll mention here, and angrily drove off.

I sat on the steps outside and vaped. I was kinda shaking — that didn’t go as planned — but oh well. I took that detached view that I’ve been trying to hold onto lately when anyone is angry or depressed or upset. Their feelings are their feelings and I can’t blame myself for how someone feels. As long as I wasn’t an improper asshole that caused it by being an improper asshole that is.

A strange feeling to feel at the time: guilt. I made her cry. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything? Maybe she was right when she told me to “grow some balls?” But wait, I did show that I ‘grew some balls’ by telling her how stupid her idea was, didn’t I? Ugh, nothing made sense, and I felt terrible for what happened. Logically when I thought about it I felt okay about it. I finally stood up for myself and felt good about it, but subconsciously I felt like shit. I felt guilty. I felt like an asshole. Is that normal?

I did a Google search of “feeling bad when asserting yourself” and that was fun. Apparently that’s totally normal when you’re used to putting everyone else’s needs in front of your own. It makes sense too; if you constantly care about other people’s feelings you’d naturally feel selfish and dickish if you suddenly put yourself above someone else. Huh, cool, that’s a fun thing I learned that day. And where does that come from? Probably something from childhood, probably something caused by my mom always playing the victim that I feel responsible for, but that thought chain was getting a bit too deep and uncomfortable so I shut it off. I haven’t thought about it since.

I’m a chill, passive person who doesn’t really have any strong wants or needs. I’m fantastic at worrying about everyone else’s moods and feelings while disregarding my own. Despite this it felt immensely good to stand up to my mom, even if I didn’t really stand up too much at all. I didn’t have to. Let her get a lawyer and see how that works out. That’s an old-me outlook. I’m proud I told her how dumb the idea was and how I didn’t cave and cater to her as she stormed off angrily. I thought long and hard if I was an asshole that day. Did I speak my mind? Yes. Did I stand up for myself somewhat? Yes. Did I do it in an unkind/unprofessional/cruel way that might’ve not been necessary? No. Did I overreact at all? No. Am I writing this so I feel better about what happened? Maybe. Did I do anything really wrong to upset my mom as much as she was? No. Was this her overreaction? Yes, probably. Pulling myself out of my guilt logically worked wonders even if it did take some effort. I really think I did what I needed and I shouldn’t feel guilty about it at all. Sure there’s a mental battle about it, but I think it’s a good sign of progress.

One thing I’ve seemed to learn in life is that people like those who stand up for themselves. Everyone seems to think they like wishy-washy people that don’t have strong convictions or who always agree with you, but the people with the strongest convictions seem to be the most well-liked people out there. Not assholes mind you, just calm and reasonable people that actually believe and stand for something. They might tell you off if you deserve it or say something stupid, but they do it in a respectful way that doesn’t hint at them trying to cover up their own insecurities. Maybe you know the sort of people I’m talking about.

Two days after that, I saw my mom while visiting my dad. I acted chill and calm — I didn’t have any animosity towards her — only to be totally surprised by her. She said, “Here, give me a hug. I’m sorry about what I said Sunday, I just miss the kids and…” Huh, imagine that. I said a flat, “Eh, don’t worry about it, it’s not a big deal,” and we hugged. I still haven’t heard from her since, no text, no call, nothing, but an apology after I finally called her on her bullshit was the last thing I expected. But that’s what happens I guess. You put your foot down, show you’re worthy of respect, and people start to respect you. That’s fucking insane, who would’ve thought?, at least to me. I can’t believe I wrote a pretty lengthy blog post about this but that’s how mind-blowing the little idea of being assertive is to me. I think it’s a great start and am going to try to stand up for myself a bit more in the future. And of course not be a pompous asshole in the process.

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Insomnia Sucks

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Looks like I’m doing this again. I’ve always been a night owl, but being a night owl is a bit different than having full-blown insomnia. Going to sleep late/waking up late is fine — at least you’re sleeping — while insomnia, the total inability to sleep, is hell. That’s been my existence for the past two days and it is not enjoyable. Anyone who has suffered through it knows exactly what that special hell is like.

I had a severe bout of insomnia years ago. I think I was awake for three or four days. Memory of this time is fuzzy, luckily. I watched a YouTube video about anesthesia a few days ago and it reminded me of insomnia. Apparently some anesthetics don’t stop you from feeling pain, they stop you from remembering the pain. Isn’t that a terrifying thought? In a way memories are all that your sense of self is; if you don’t remember something it’s almost like it never happened to you. Back to insomnia. Luckily I don’t remember the first episode very well. Nothing concrete sticks in my mind about it. All I remember is some fuzzy feeling that I was miserable, terribly miserable. I recall desperately trying to nap at work during one of my two-hour long breaks. I think I did nap for a bit and felt a little better. I suppose it’s nice that insomnia wreaks havoc on your ability to form memories. Once it’s over it almost seems like it never happened.

This time isn’t nearly as bad; I only suffered through one/two day(s) without sleep. I awoke at 1 p.m. on Monday and didn’t fall asleep until 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday, more than 24 hours without sleep. I slept until 3, a whopping 1.5 hours of sleep, so I could drag myself to work. Work was awful and I tried sleeping on break to no avail. After work I was tired and felt like my body was physically falling apart, but somehow I ended up staying awake until 5:30 a.m. reading The Wheel of Time. 40 hours awake with 1.5 hours of sleep. It was bad.

I slept okay last night, but still have trouble falling asleep. I have severe anxiety about insomnia which only makes the problem worse. Those vague memories from years ago terrify me, and laying in bed hoping to sleep while being terrified of not being able to sleep only makes it harder to fall asleep. It makes you feel like a dysfunctional human, a total failure of an organism. Sleep is as natural as eating food or breathing; can you imagine the insomnia equivalent of those two? Desperately wanting to eat or breathe but unable to do so. I’m thinking asthma is a good analogy for the later, and maybe a stomach virus or eating disorder as an analogy for the former. Do any other species have insomnia? Is this just a problem with being human, a problem with higher consciousness itself? It seems being as aware as we are is a downside in many ways — we’re prone to overthinking and worrying, stuck in the past while living for a vague future — and maybe this is another example of it. Do other animals have brains that are so overactive and filled with fear that they cannot sleep? Maybe they do, but I doubt it.

Sleeping is easy: you just have to stop your brain from having thoughts. Easy right? You get to think about whatever you want. No, that’s not how it works. Anyone who has casually tried meditation knows that this is harder than it seems. Have you ever read a book only to find out you read a paragraph only to have no idea what you’ve actually read because your thoughts just wandered away to whatever random shit popped into your mind? The mind seems to hate being idle, to have absolutely nothing to think about, so it just makes shit up. Meditation, having no thoughts and perfectly clearing your mind, is nearly impossible. Here, try it now. Stop reading and think about nothing for a half-minute or so. I just tried it. I looked at the wall and noticed the reflection off a picture of the TV that the kids are playing Minecraft on. One of them just said, “Come back in Kitty Cat,” and this simple input kicked off a chain of thoughts in my brain. Nothing important enough to cause insomnia or trigger bad thoughts, but enough to have a thought. It’s like thousands of needles popping the void bubble of zero thoughts over and over again. Once you have perfectly zero thoughts, one just appears out of nowhere making you start all over again searching for that perfect zero-thought void.

Yesterday in bed I realized how shitty controlling your thoughts actually is. My brain would not shut up. I thought to myself, “Okay, I just need to not have any thoughts. I’ll lay here and think of nothing. If I start to think about something, I’ll shut it down.” It worked for about five seconds. It felt like I was batting thoughts down like a person swatting flies or mosquitoes away from them. The act of not thinking was a thought in itself. It keeps your brain working trying to not work. Even when I didn’t have a thought I started to notice the strange patters of color that you see sometimes with your eyes closed. Even without a thought my brain was making up shit visually. With my eyes closed I’d notice how the colors flowed and note the shapes they took, and this became a thought. I also noticed how Talking Head’s “Burning Down the House” was continually on loop on the border between conscious and subconscious. Even without having actual thoughts things were still happening that I was hopelessly paying attention to.

This is what millions of people suffer through every damn day, and how do you even fight against this? It’s literally your brain, the thing that is YOU, not letting itself sleep. It’s doing what it evolved to do — thinking in a higher fashion that any other known creature — yet it undermines itself and the body in the process. Sometimes I hate my brain. Most of the time I hate my brain. I wish I was a goose; they seem happy enough eating grass and shitting everywhere. I doubt a goose stays awake until the sun comes up thinking about not thinking and how hard it is to do. I doubt a goose is kept awake at night thinking about it’s inevitable death, or the size of the universe, or how strange it is to exist, or asking itself what the hell is consciousness anyways?

Not to be a total miserable person here, plus people seem to read blogs to find out useful information and not hear someone whine, but maybe meditation is a solution? It’s not as easy as popping a few Xanaxs, but maybe by training your mind, letting it Git Gud at not thinking, you’ll learn to have no thoughts. And with no thoughts comes sleep. It’s like any other skill; practicing it makes you better at it. You know, that’s what I’m going to do. Maybe I can report back on it in a week or two, but probably not knowing my blogging history. Thanks for reading!

Check out my YouTube channel about off-grid green energy setups!

Or my Instagram where I post pointless artistic pics and shitty poems every whenever I get around to it.

Or my other blog where I sometimes post stories.

[20210523 Untitled]

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I’m on day 43 of sobriety. I don’t like counting days but the r/stopdrinking subreddit has this nice little feature that tracks the days since your last drink. I don’t remember the actual day of my last drink, I only know it’s been 43 days since then. I don’t care to do the math.

My last extended period of sobriety was eye-awakening. I was happy. I was social. I felt like my old self, whatever that meant, like I had solved all of my mental health issues. Like shit, you stop drinking and life is perfect! Not to cover that again but I started drinking again for a month or so, stopped, and here we are.

My mood was about what you’d expected; the first week my mood was awful (due to the lack of booze) and then I was great. Fucking riding in the clouds and finding happiness and purpose with my life. Until the past week that is.

For the past week my mood has been shit. Utterly depressed, unable to fall asleep, unable to wake up, unwilling to get out of bed. The only thing that does get me out of bed is the need to piss and to get some coffee in my system. Besides that there is no grand goal or purpose to going through my day. Going to work has been a struggle and I’m surprised I haven’t called in in the past week. It’s strange, it’s like my mood is so damn shitty there is no reason not to go to work and be miserable. Like why not go to work? It’s not like there’s anything else for me to do that’s enjoyable.

Doing physical exercise is mentally exhausting. Playing video games is mentally exhausting. Writing/blogging is bullshit and what’s the purpose? It’s been such a deep depression that I can’t even do those little productive things that make you feel better. Go for a walk, lift some weights, do something you enjoy doing. No, I don’t enjoy doing anything. And I don’t feel like pulling myself out of my current mood because my mood is crappy and what’s the point of doing things that will make you feel better.

It’s hilarious in a way. I don’t remember ever being this depressed. It’s not even a deep and suicidal depression, it almost feels deeper. Suicide is a way to escape your shitty life and the pain you feel nearly all the time and for me there is no pain or no point in trying to escape. There is nothing so damn bad and torturous that I want to escape, life is just fucking boring and useless and not exciting. If happiness is a loving doggie that you want to pet, and suicidal depression is a lion that is constantly chasing you, my depression is an annoying fly in the room. It’s there, it sucks, it’s annoying, it’s harmless, and it’s boring. The fly isn’t nearly as wonderful as a dog but it’s nothing I need to escape.

What’s even more hilarious about this is there is no cause to it. I have zero reason to feel this way. Nothing has triggered it. Nothing has set me off. Last Sunday I woke up to this blah mood and it’s been around ever since. Even with total and brutal self-honesty I can’t come up with a single thing that’s causing it. I haven’t drank in a month and a half. My mood is stable. My life is okay. Things are great actually. But this feeling? Eh, I have no clue.

It’s not all bad, operating on this ultra-basic level of existence. When you feel like you have no drive or purpose it’s pretty easy to convince yourself to do random shit without reason which feels like living life in a more natural way. It almost feels like the dry-erase board that is me has been wiped clean. I’m a blank slate and can do whatever the hell I want, like I’m starting fresh and new. Feeling like life and everything is pointless does give you a good foundation with what to start with. When nothing matters, what do you choose to do in the meaningless of it all?

I’ve had this random urge to bake bread. I’ve never baked bread before but it’s been a goal of mine during the Week of Depression. Life is pointless and shit, but damn I want to bake some bread! (My first loaf turned out nearly perfect by the way…) I also made tofu because that sounded stupid and fun to try even if life is pointless. (This tasted kinda funky…) I’ve worked on a new book with this blank mindset and my insomnia; life is shit so — oh, it’s 7 a.m. and I can’t sleep — maybe I should write to have something to do? Hell, I’ve even been eating healthier somehow; life is shit so what’s the point of blowing money on fast food that ‘tastes good’ when I can eat a fucking avocado and drink some water? I’ll be outside wandering the yard and find tiny bugs and flowers to take pictures of. Not to post on Instagram to farm social cool points, just something to do because there’s nothing more appealing to do. I even took a picture of the new Chinese space station on Thursday as it flew over. I’ve knocked out a book as well, Buzz Aldrin’s Magnificent Desolation only because why not?

Depression in Stardew Valley Sucks: Part Two

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Part One is here.

After platinuming Death Stranding (something I recommend only masochists do) I started Grand Theft Auto V. I had played it a year or so ago but never fully got into it. I was doing good for about a month — it’s a fantastic game — but it couldn’t stand up to the release of Stardew Valley version 1.5. This updates adds a whole new area to the game as well as local multiplayer on the Nintendo Switch. My wife and I started a game and me being the old pro at the game proceeded to boss her until she got the gist of the game. This has been my all-consuming addiction the past two or three weeks.

I can’t shrug off the feeling I get mid/late game though. I get depressed and bored while playing it. I already made a post complaining about video games endings and how games like Stardew Valley are especially depressing because they don’t have a hard ending. You can play the game literally forever raking in cash, fucking around, and whatever else you can find to do. Eventually nihilism comes in and you wonder what exactly it’s all for; does your in-game person even have a purpose in their life or is it just to make as much money before you die get bored and quit?

Having already written about that particular topic I didn’t think I’d have much more to say about it, but Stardew gives me a few more things to muse about because it tosses a bunch of capitalism and automation into the “everything is pointless” nihilism of late-game.

Stardew Valley, if you’ve never played, is a farming simulator. On it’s surface it’s a kid’s game; it’s easy, you can’t really die or fail the game, and if you want you can ignore your farm and fuck off the entire game with zero penalties. Sure, you’ll be poor, but since you don’t need to eat food or anything it’s fine. The music is cute, the art style is that of mid 1990s SNES games, and the whole thing basically shits cute/friendly/laid-back vibes. Until you get to the plot that is.

You inherit your farm from your dead grandpa. You leave your soulless, life-draining corporate job at Joja Mart (basically a stand-in for Walmart/greedy capitalism in general) to farm in Stardew Valley. The game stresses the importance of hard work and community, making real connections with real people doing fulfilling manual labor to contribute to your society. If you look slightly past the pretty/cute surface, the game emits anti-capitalism vibes and seems to be a statement against our current society where making money seems to be the most important thing to do in life. Why can’t we all leave our Joja Mart jobs and go farm in Stardew Valley?!

Now I don’t know if this is intentional on the video game creator’s part, but it seems most playthroughs end with you becoming exactly what you’ve been fighting against the whole time. Somehow I don’t think this was intentional. Game progression has to come from somewhere and starting with a quaint farm and turning it into a fucking money making machine makes sense progression-wise. But looking back on my current playthrough I wonder what the real message of Stardew Valley is, intentional or not. Is it that you can’t escape the rat-race? That every wonderful dream-fulfilling career turns into a slog? That there’s no escape from this? That eventually all you care about is making as much money as efficiently as possible? That you want to make the farm as easy to manage and as automated as possible because work fucking sucks?

At the start of the game, you’re a hard working farmer. You only have about 20 plants and you need to water them every day. You chop down trees, water, harvest the plants, and go to bed at like 5 p.m. because you’re so damn exhausted. This is fun for the first few seasons, but as the farm grows the work load increases. The chores start to feel like chores. You naturally want to make as much money as possible — who doesn’t? — so you upgrade your tools to make the job easier. You can eventually water 3, 5, and 9 plants in one go, so you expand the cropland. You now have 100-200 plants and diversify your farm into animals and artisan products. You make some fish ponds, start brewing wine and aging it, and before you know it you’re rolling in more money than you know what to do with. You endlessly farm for iridium ore so you can make the best damn watering sprinklers in the game — you’re sick of watering the damn crops everyday and just want enough sprinklers so you don’t have to do a damn thing on the farm anymore.

You also start doing a bunch of math to find out the best crops on a gold per day basis; some crops just aren’t worth fucking around with. You start growing only one or two crops to maximize your income. You know not to turn iridium-tier goat milk into cheese because you’ll take a slight loss on it. Let’s not forget the opportunity cost of making cheese either! You install junimo huts on the farm so you don’t even need to harvest the produce anymore: let the illegals junimos do all the work! You invest in the ‘auto-grabber’ tool so you don’t need to pick up eggs or milk the cows anymore. Hell, there’s even an ‘auto-petter’ that loves on the farm animals so you don’t even need to interact with them to keep them happy anymore. In a few short years you become Capitalism Incarnate.

Yesterday while playing my wife took care of everything on the farm and mentioned that she didn’t use any energy in the day. It was time for bed, she had been busy, but her energy bar was still maxed out. Holy shit, what happened? Remember the good ole days when we had to actually work on the farm and chop trees and pick vegetables? It was only a few years ago, but now our farm is so automated and easy to run that there’s not even a game to play anymore. Everything is a chore; you wake up, check the wine casks in the basement, sell and restock as necessary and that’s about it. I think that’s the point I’m trying to make here. The game wants you to use these fancy upgrades because that’s how it shows progression, but the progression is all about making the game easier and you lazier as time goes on. And as this happens you just don’t care anymore. As the work becomes easier, it becomes less fulfilling, and after the end of the third year you can’t help but feel that something went wrong, that this wasn’t the dream you had, and that you’re working another Joja Mart-type job, and worse, it’s a fate you walked into thinking it’d be better for your mental and spiritual health.

Like I said, I don’t think think this is exactly what Concerned Ape, the creator of the game, was trying to say, but the game is saying it anyway, and is saying it better than any other games trying to make this point. You try to escape corporate hell by farming but end up making your farm into a massive cash-making machine. All you care about is how big you can make that number at the top of the screen even if you have nothing to spend it on. You’re just as bad as Joja Mart, aren’t you? And by making things easier for yourself with better tools/automation, you take the achievement out of what you’re doing, but you’ve been wanting to get out of work all along, weren’t you? But now that the hard work is past you realize you don’t have shit to do, so you do what I’ve been doing in game. You set up a bonfire and some chairs around it in a quiet, unused portion of your farm, and sit ponding your purpose at 3 p.m. “My life in Stardew Valley sucks now. I’m rich but I’m bored. What the hell am I supposed to do now…?”

Not sure why I have three other chairs; I have no friends in Stardew Valley.

Check out my YouTube channel about off-grid green energy setups!

Or my Instagram where I post pointless artistic pics and shitty poems every whenever I get around to it.

Or my other blog where I sometimes post stories.

Winter Solar Power Sucks

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I’ve been charging my vape, my phone, and my computer using solar power for nearly a half year. It’s pointless for saving money because running these things only costs a few dollars, if that, over the year, but it’s fun to know that your phone, the thing that you carry around with you at all time, the little mini-computer in your pocket that can do anything, the games you play, and all the fancy stock-trading, money-making, email-checking, and social-media-browsing modern Swiss Army Knife of everything is being powered by the sun. Not powered by the sun in an abstract manner either (plants photosynthesizing millions of years ago, decomposing, turning to coal, being mined and burned, the heat flashing water into steam to turn a turbine to move electrons into your home via wires and transformers, to rearrange some chemicals in a lithium-ion battery) but directly. I’ve always wondered how people can be against solar power for this reason alone: it’s so damn simple and beautiful. The sun shines and makes electricity. Why complicate it?

Everyone not on the equator is well aware that the days are shorter in the winter due to the Earth’s axial tilt of roughly 23 degrees. In the summer the Earth is tilted towards the sun, and as you rotate around on a higher latitude, you get more sunlight. The opposite is true in the winter. Here in Northern Illinois (and for everyone around 45 degrees latitude; I also feel sorry for Europeans and Canadians being even higher up) we get about eight hours of good sunlight in the winter. Compare this to our summer daylight length of 15 hours; there’s twice the amount of daytime in the summer compared to the winter!

A nice graphical depiction of these Dark Days. The discontinuities in March and November are daylight savings time. Go check out your own day/night/twilight length!

This sounds stupid, but I didn’t think winter would cause my two solar panels much difficulty. Since we’re not using the lawnmower anymore (you don’t need to mow the snow) I took the battery and hooked it up to the solar panels. I currently have five batteries storing the solar power and that should be plenty right? Six hours of direct sunlight can charge those bad boys up and I can charge my toys off that the rest of the day.

Two of the five batteries…

It doesn’t work that way when it’s cloudy for two weeks straight. I’ve never paid attention to how cloudy it usually is in the winter, especially when those clear and cold winter days are so vivid in my mind, but apparently it’s cloudy a lot. And when you get only a few hours to make power, the clouds really do fuck you over in a way that they don’t in the summer. The summer months always have dramatic and quickly changing weather, sun for half the day, hellish storms in the evening, and then a bit more sun right before sunset. Now, in January? Clouds all day, every day. Boring grey clouds that hang overhead like a depressing blanket and refuse to leave for literal weeks.

The sun was out a few days ago, but that was only enough to kick the batteries up from 11.8 Volts to 12.1. As soon as I’d plug my phone in the voltage would drop to 11.5 and not wanting to damage the batteries had no choice but to charge my phone via natural gas/nuclear electricity from the boring wall outlet. The streak was broken, and my phone, computer, and vape are now methane/uranium powered like everything else around here.

The clouds aren’t the only issue. It sometimes snows in winter (big surprise there huh?) and snow does a great job blocking the sun. While the clouds are an ever present and annoying problem there isn’t much I can do about them except wait. Snow is a problem I have to actually deal with. Weeks ago we had some shitty ice/snow storm and the next day I found my panels iced and snowed over. Using my Amazon Prime credit card (which is made out of metal, 5% cash back at Amazon by the way!) I scrapped the snow off so they could make power when the sun eventually came out. The sun never came out and it snowed two days later. I walked out, brushed them off, and waited for the sun which never came. And then it snowed about a week after that. I walked out, brushed them off, and waited for the sun. It snowed yesterday and I haven’t even went out to brush them off because the sun isn’t going to come out ever again.

I guess the snow melted…

Remember how I said that I don’t understand why people don’t like renewable energy because it’s so damn beautiful and simple? It’s not. Solar is fucking great and I love it, but during these shitty dark, cloudy, and snowy winter months it’s not ideal. Solar always relies on good energy storage and apparently five fucking massive lead-acid batteries can’t store enough power to survive the winter. I could always add more batteries, but at $50-100 per battery do I really want to spend the money to charge my phone? Naw. I’ll just wait I guess. The sun can’t stay hidden forever.

Check out my Instagram where I post pointless artistic pics and shitty poems every whenever I get around to it.

Or my other blog where I sometimes post stories.

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Lessons From Substance-Free September: Life Goes On

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This is the second part of a ‘series’ where I write about what I’ve learned from Substance-Free September. The first part is here.

Another sad fact I’ve realized over the past month of being sober is that life continues on. There is no “finished” or “over” and there also seems to be no time to properly gain your bearings and figure out the best course of action. No time to take a break or reflect. Life is being stuck in an endless and problematic story where you never really get to take a step away from things and relax.

Maybe that’s just my life, but others probably feel this way too. It’s another trigger to my drinking: needing a break from life. Hell, that might be my main reason for drinking so much. It’s my way of having a few clear and foggy hours to not exist as fully as I usually do. It drowns life out to an acceptable level where I seem to be able to deal with it, until the next day that is. But that’s an easy problem to solve because you can always drink more!

Not a good idea, obviously. A friend of mine a few months ago pointed out that I feel too much, my highs are really high and my lows are supremely low. Apparently despite outward appearance I’m a highly emotional person and this friend being a very insightful person I tried to give him some credit. Sure, I didn’t see myself that way, but was he onto something?

To maybe prove this point, this friend moved away last month. People move, things change, but goddamn do I feel his absence in some way that others don’t seem too. Maybe they don’t verbalize  it (neither do I) outside of the occasional “I miss [person],” but stuck in my head I feel it differently. The fact that people always move, change, grow, decay, and that everything is temporary, everything is inevitably changing crushes my soul. I don’t like it at a visceral level. Something about it seems wrong even though it’s perfectly natural.

And this friend? He seems to be the embodiment of going with the flow and change, the total opposite of myself. I think I admire that about him. He’s the type of person who literally quit his job, embraced all the change through his own actions, and moved thousands of miles away with no guarantee that anything would actually turn out the best for him. No insecurity or hesitation about it, and the part I don’t understand, no fear of loss from leaving people behind. Leaving the memories behind. Leaving everything about your life behind for some unknown clean-slate where anything could happen, good or bad. It’s such a crazy and foreign thing to my insecure self that I just can’t comprehend how someone could go through with it.

It feels like I’m paralyzed by my emotions, hence the drinking to escape them. I used to be really depressive and have somehow managed to get better over the past six months. Still an episode of depression can be so intense that I want nothing more than to zap myself out for a while via alcohol. Strangely it’s not just the bad times I try to escape. Moments happen where something magical will happen; a good day where I see the beauty in everything and can savor every grateful second that passes. Inevitably, this feeling comes with the realization of loss. Why can’t everything remain beautiful? Why does anything ever change? Why can’t things stay in this moment forever? And obviously when that happens I can’t wait to have another drink to escape it.

So maybe I feel too much. Maybe it’s a curse, maybe it’s a gift. I recently read some story drafts I’d written and couldn’t help but see this is what I’m constantly trying to explain to my readers. I’m constantly trying to explain this bitter sense of loss, losing the entire point of life, and trying to understand the cycle of gaining and losing. Damn if I don’t have a heavy dose of loss, nostalgia, joy, and insecurity in everything I write. Everything seems to point to me feeling way too much about the smallest things in life, as if everything is a battle to find joy and survive, to appreciate those small moments when they decide to show up. Maybe it is a gift, maybe this form of suffering is a way to move forward? Maybe I’m just hopelessly bipolar or something.

See what I mean?

That was a hell of a rant. When you remove drinking as a solution there is no escape from life itself. No way to avoid the emotions. They fucking happen and it sucks. But even those are hopelessly fluid. Countless times I’ve been so happy and at peace that I want to cry, and this emotion always passes. It always fades into nothing. Countless times I’ll have a good day and try to force myself to remember the good times as clearly as possible, but I never find success…ever. You can’t remain joyful forever. The same is true for depression: the mood always changes given enough time even if you don’t realize it in the depths of it. Without fighting these emotions with alcohol I’ve learned to be clearly aware of them. Let them pass. It’s like being on a boat in the ocean; the waves pass by you, you’re up one moment and you’re down the next, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Ride the waves, let time pass, and learning to do this is nearly impossible, but you do make progress over time. No one wants to feel like shit, everyone wants to be happy, but it’s like trying to stop the earth from rotating. Find comfort in the temporary joy, and let the waves of depression wash over you. They’re equally temporary.

This has been my life the past month. Each day passes with its own joys and struggles and then…nothing. It happens again and again. A week passes. Two. Three. There is no break, this is no grand pause in drinking to reflect on it all. There is no award, trophy, or magical realization at the end to justify anything you work through. Just more…life I guess? More ups and downs. Endless emotions of ups and downs. In a way it feels like I’m slowly breaking down. I just want a break from life sometimes! Some way to not exist as fully as I seem to exist at all waking moments of the day. Is it just me? Is this how people are? Hell if I know.

There is no grand lesson in this blog post. Which kinda is the grand lesson in some strange way. Life goes on, it raises you up and lowers you like a boat on waves, and you’re nearly useless to do anything about it. Life seems to be about learning to float on the waves, dance on the highs and lows of life, where there is no respite from this dance of life. Up and down. Powerless at all times. Adrift in the ocean of life with no escape from the waves.

The next post: Lessons From Substance-Free September: The Endless Supply of Problems

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Alcoholism Sucks: The Slow Descent

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So it’s 3:20 a.m. and I’m pounding my seventh beer. I feel slightly better about life but not quite okay with it. It’s a struggle to drink enough to feel okay with life but not drink too much to lose your mind to the drunken haze. And with every drunken day that passes that line becomes thinner and harder to follow with less margin for error.

I don’t even know what the point of this post is but I hope it eventually gains some direction. Typing is hard and I’m hitting the wrong keys all the time. Constantly smashing the backspace button to erase any signs of my drunken typing while desperately trying to stay on topic. Maybe it would be a fun project to let the errors stand as-is and just display it to the world: this is what drunkenness looks like. That’d be fun, right?

I find it interesting that many bloggers have a “recovery blog” where they write about life away from alcoholism while no one seems to document the descent itself, which even in the midst of beI find immensely interesting. No one signs up to be an alcoholic and everyone that ends up as such seems to be totally caught off guard that it could, or was, happening to them for years. I’m in the fucking depths of it and the world seems so damn twisted, confusing, and depressing that I doubt anyone who hasn’t experienced it could imagine it. Here there is no hope. Here there is no progress. Here there is only limping along day after day just trying to survive the best you can, beer after beer. There is no outlet. There is no escape. You wake up hungover and try to get to the evening when you can drink again. One more escape after the last, until something happens, something to change the addiction. Something to change the hell of life.

After the past like two months of drinking everyday I just don’t care to work on anything. I haven’t anything in the past month due to the drinking. Not that I haven’t had anything to write about, it’s just that while being perpetually drunk it’s hard to string any coherent thoughts together. It’s hard to let your mind fester on a certain idea and let it lead to a natural conclusion. Alcoholism seems like a fucking blur: the past few days don’t mean anything, the past few weeks seems like a puzzle, and the past few months seems like some barely recountable dream that you’re not sure you actually lived through. When I try to recall the past couple of months I can’t seem to come up with anything. Sure, I lived through it, but I have nothing to show for it except vague memories, dream-like states and experiences, but it doesn’t seem like it was me experiencing them. It seems like someone else was there and I have no personal relationship with the memories at all.

The Descent

I don’t even know why I’ve been drinking so heavily over the past few months either. Surely part of it was due to my month long vacation and drunkenness, but besides that I have no idea. Well, maybe I am aware of a few other important issues but I don’t feel like discussing them here. There’s a bunch of stress in my life currently, and stress seems to be nearly as bad as alcoholism is. Stress wears you down and drains you, especially over long periods of time, and this is certainly part of it. Alcohol eliminates stress for a time, but it seems you must pay the debt back later. Any stress you eliminate with alcohol comes back the next day and if you continue to avoid it by drinking it’ll snowball into some intense hatred of life and anxiety, which only makes you drink more to avoid it further on.

It’s such a subtle descent that it’s difficult to realize how dangerous it really is. I had my first drink at the age of 17 and have fended off alcoholism until now — 17 years later. I’m 34 and never had any real issues with it — sure there were signs here and there but no obvious problems — until now. 17 years later! Half of my life I survived with a casual relationship with little to no abuse until now? Why did I fall at this time? What happened? If I wasn’t an alcoholic ten years ago, why am I one now?

For fucks sake, it sneaks up on you when you least expect it. With 17 years of not really having a problem I let my guard down. I decided I could drink once per week in 2020 and was fine with controlling the demon until a few months ago. Then something happened. I don’t even know what it was, but here I am drinking every fucking day. What happened? How did I fail? How did I become this person?

You don’t even notice it. A drink here or there in social situations just to ease your anxiety. A few drinks on the weekends to help you unwind. A drink on a weekday to help you deal with a stressful day. A drink the next morning to let you deal with the hangover. And then a drink after work because it was a bad day. And then another drink the following morning because you’re hungover from the drinks after your bad day. And…and before you know it you’ve been drinking for a fucking month or two struggling day after day just to survive life itself. It happens so slowly that you don’t even notice it, but eventually you realize it’s there. It’s you. You’re the alcoholic. You’re the person you never thought you’d become. But here you are, at 3:47 a.m. writing a blog post after eight beers trying to confess your soul to some strangers on the internet. You feel like you can’t escape and you feel like you’re in too deep. How do you even escape the person you’ve become?

A Way Out

I talked to my therapist about this a week ago. I said I felt fine, that I was doing okay with depression and social anxiety and that I felt pretty damn good really, but that I was drinking every fucking day for some reason. She gave some vague advice that I loved, “Perhaps you’ve gotten over the past issues you were struggling with and now the next problem presents itself. Understanding is like an onion, and maybe you’re moving on to understand the next layer.”

I sat dejected on the sofa and joked asking, “How many layers does this onion have?”

And she replied, “The layers never end…”

“So it’s an infinite-layered onion? Well…Fuck.”

And this gave me hope but also with a slight tinge of meaninglessness. An infinite onion never allows you to reach the core –to where you never fully discover your true self — but maybe I’d moved on from my other issues to confront the next issue: alcoholism. Progress, right? But it’s still strange. You’d think as depressed as I was months ago I’d be drinking a ton then but no, somehow when everything finally started to improve elsewhere in my life the drinking became uncontrollable. So maybe this problem is manifesting at an opportune time, the next problem to solve, the next layer of my personal onion, and it’s up to me to face it.

Two of the supervisor I work with (whom I consider friends) mentioned something about “Substance-Free September” where they elaborated on giving up any substances they struggle with for the upcoming month. They looked at me and said, “Hey Jerm, you want to do this with us? Substance-Free September?”

I gave them a glassy-eyed stare as I knew the one thing I’d have to give up would be alcohol; I was dreading giving up my singular coping mechanism for life. They kinda laughed and I eventually choked out, “Well, I’ve been drinking every day the past three months so maybe I could give up drinking for a month, but…fuck...”

I had been so used to drinking everyday that I wasn’t sure I could do it.

There is a certain appeal to involving others in your life choices. It seems easier to be sober if you haven other people you’ve made a pact with. It’s not just me making choices for myself when I’m suddenly accountable to others. It sounds strange but I’m a very competitive person: if I’m in a “competition” I give it my all just to prove that I’m a badass and if it comes down to me not drinking for a month, I’ll fucking try to prove everyone wrong and beat their asses with sobriety.

And I think this might be a way out, at least a temporary escape from the haze of alcoholism, if even for a month. A competition, a deal, a pact between a handful of us at work that maybe we can try to make it through September without any of the substances we’re terribly depended upon. For one of us, it’s marijuana. For another one, it’s nicotine. Another person is hooked on nicotine and alcohol, but to a minimal degree for each of them. For myself it’s obviously alcohol, perhaps one of the hardest to stop because I’m so goddamn depended upon it, and I think I got the short end of the stick here. But it’s fine because I want a way out. I want to escape, and I think this might be my first step forward. I’m terrified of Tuesday, September 1st, where I might have to face the world in all of its terror and beauty without anything to cope with it all. It’ll just be me and over the past few months I don’t know if “me” can even deal with it without freaking out. But I’m ready to accept it, face the challenge, deal with the struggle, and toss myself into the hell of sobriety after being almost perpetually drunk over the past quarter year.

I suggest anyone who reads this considers getting on board with Substance-Free September no matter what your issues are. Maybe just as a commitment to yourself knowing others are in the same September sobriety boat as you are. It doesn’t have to be anything major either — caffeine, soda, meat, cocaine, xanax, sleeping pills, whatever you use as a crutch — because any tiny act to make your life better can pay immense dividends in the future. We can all be strong by being sober and dealing with live as is without anything to assist us but our own selves. Let’s do this guys and gals.

Fear and Loathing on my 34th Birthday Sucks

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Well, today is sadly June 22 and I’m officially thirty-four years old. I suppose this isn’t quite true until 9:50 a.m. but still, close enough. I’m thirty-four, and what does all of this even mean?

Probably nothing but I still can’t shake the dirty feeling that overtakes you when turning a year older, especially while in your thirties. It’s a mix of emotions that is hard to really process and make sense of. I feel old, but in a strange and unclear way. Not like old-old where I’m going to die soon and not old where I know it’s well past time to work on my goals and dreams. No, it’s like an intermediate old where you know time is running out and it’s about time to get working on your dreams and goals because it’s about past time when you can actually do these things. Over this time it’s time to settle down and find comfort in your life, relax, and reap the seeds you’ve sowed in your teens and twenties. But what if, like me, you haven’t sown any seeds? What if you’re still cruising through life at the ripe age in the mid-thirties still not knowing what you want to actually do in life? What if you’re so misguided that you still feel mentally like a damn teenager where the world still doesn’t make sense? At the cusp of my thirty-fourth birthday this is how I feel: like someone who should have everything figured out but who feels as dumb and clueless as they did nearly twenty years ago.

It’s hard to not shit all over yourself during times of reflection like these. They naturally led your mind to the thought of, “What have I accomplished? What does my life mean?” and I regretfully come up with nothing notable to mention. Thirty-four. Say it again. I’ve had thirty-four years to figure out what the hell my life means, what I want to do, and haven’t came to anything notable. Halfway to thirty-four? Seventeen. Still as clueless as I am now, but still somehow younger, naive, and more full of potential that I still haven’t realized. Fuck, halfway during my current life I was seventeen: Fuck. I don’t know how to even process that. It seems so long ago but yet still so familiar because I’m still the same person really. I feel just as I did halfway through my life years ago: still clueless, still lost, but with some hope that the future might clear something up for me. Protip: It Didn’t. I won’t. Time doesn’t clear shit up for anyone. If you’re in your teens and twenties and vibing with what I’m writing, you’re in for some shit. You’re just like me. You’ll never figure it out, you’ll never know what you want to do. And you better find solace in this fact wherever you can.

I project forward to when sixty-eight years old: the point that I’m halfway towards. I remember being twenty and projecting forwards to forty. There was still plenty of time between forty and the probable end of my life so it wasn’t a big deal. But now being halfway to sixty-eight? Doesn’t the average American male die at seventy-four? Seriously, I’m likely halfway through my life and haven’t accomplished a damn thing really. Fuck. This is scary. Halfway. I’m here. This is it. Time to clear shit up and get my stuff in order. Finish the race on a strong note.

Let’s also not forget that my lifestyle will probably kill me well before I reach seventy, and sometimes I’m worried I’ll die before I’m fifty or fourty. And how do you deal with that fact that you could be 80% finished with your life at thirty-four years old?

As much as I love self-hatred, I still can’t get over some aspect of loving myself. I still think I have something to offer the world — that I’m special in some way — and that I haven’t realized how to channel it yet. It’s a struggle of how to view yourself that I can’t fully explain. I just can’t get over the fact that, yes, I might have something special and meaningful to offer the world and I just can’t seem to realize it and capitalize on it. Like I have all the talents needed to make something of my life but just can’t seem to put it all together into something useful. Like I’ve squandered any gifts that have been given to me and after thirty-four years I still can’t realize how to use the gifts that are somehow inherently what makes me, Jeremy, unique and special.

It leads to a feeling of uselessness: if I haven’t discovered this in thirty-four years, why would I learn it in the next year? The next five? The next ten? Or even the next thirty-four years when I’m likely to be near the end of my life? My life seems to be a mess of squandering anything good given to me in some twisted form of self-destruction. I could’ve been an airline pilot by now had I made the right choices. Hell, I could’ve been anything by now had I made the right choices. But what am I? Some blogger dude who works at UPS, still struggling and floundering to do something notable in the face of total failure that can’t seem to be proud of anything he has accomplished. Today is my thirty-fourth birthday, and it’s going to be a bland day indeed. Another day, another orbit around the sun, and another year of not doing a goddamn thing to further myself. Another day and year to squander my gifts. So, cheers, here’s to another year on the planet Earth…

Cops Finding You Illegally Camping In the Woods Sucks

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Note: This post is a mess. I originally wrote the first part while, well, sitting in a Rosecrance waiting room. I never got around to actually editing and posting it though. The draft of this was about three weeks old and I have some moderate frustration over the entire thing, like I went through hell a few weeks ago and think I could’ve made about five coherent blog posts about it all but just never gotten around to tying it all together. So it’s a mess. But this post kinda occurs after this post but before this post if you’d appreciate some chronological order behind it all. I’m serious, the narrative of my life is currently chaos but maybe I’ll make another post tying all of it together, but until then, here ya go.

To update anyone to this ongoing saga of mine: I’m in a Rosecrance waiting room right now feeling super sleep deprived and mildly hungover. And I’m not quite sure how I ended up here. It’s all a blur to me right now.

I slept better than the previous night but was awaken by a female saying something. I don’t even recall what she was saying. Asking if anyone was there, asking if I was okay, and maybe a few other questions that I’d forgotten. I mumbled “yeah” and groggily stuck my head out of the tent. And hey, the female speaking was a poliece officer. Fuck. Not something you want to wake up to at 8 a.m. after only three or four hours of sleep and heavy drinking. She had another officer with her, some dude with a fucking assault rifle. Jesus Christ! Was I imagining this shit? Nothing seemed clear in the moment. No: this guy was totally standing behind a tree with an assault rifle ready to unload the entire clip on me if I did something shady. Not something you want to wake up to, once again. To stress the point some more. Being shocked at sticking your head out of a tent and see a guy with a goddamn AR-15 behind a tree. Anyways, here we go. I fucked up. I was camping illegally in the woods and the cops found me. Whoops. And just to stress again that one of them had a goddamn assault rifle.

“Step out of the tent please. Do you have any weapons on you? I’m going to peek in the tent. Did you know drinking in a park is illegal? And smoking? Yes, we can’t have people smoking in the park; you could cause a forest fire. We can hit you with a ton of tickets.”

Fuck. Me. I was honest and told them that I was dealing with some marital problems and chose to hide in the park away from life and civilization and they the nice female cop were was nice and accepting enough to my plight. She agreed to not write me any tickets and they gave me 12 hours to get the hell out of the park. I didn’t know where I’d go for the next night but I had plenty of time to worry about it later.

My main fuck up was when they asked if I had any thoughts of harming myself. “Why, yeah, of course, here and there. But they’re passing things and I know I need to work through this. I’ll be fine. I’m in a good mental state really.”

Apparently this was not the correct answer. Once again it’s kinda blurry because I was so tired but they basically said, “Alright. Well, would you like to go see someone?” in that vague cop way where you’re not sure if you have a choice or not. I initially declined — “No, seriously, I’m okay. I’m not going to do anything,” — but then the female cop said “No, you really need to come with us.” Fuck. I didn’t think I really had a choice here. Tired and hungover and feeling adventurous I decided to YOLO it. I fucked up with my choice of words and I was being hauled off to a mental instituition. It wouldn’t hurt, right? Who cares, let me follow the adventure of life wherever it takes me.

They searched me for weapons and such and chucked me into the back of the cop car. She was nice enough and tried to talk me into religion while I pounded my Bang energy drink and vaped totally unhandcuffed in the back of the cop car. I was so tired, exhausted, and confused and just wanted to take a goddamn nap and relax. Like the last night was supposed to be the relaxing night where I finally succeeded in the woods and then this was happening. Man, life is shite.

I walked into the clinic along with my armed escort and plopped down with a silly smile on my face. I was totally lost and stricken by what life had just tossed at me. Was I really sitting here in a Rosecrance facility because the cops found me in a park, work me up at whatever a.m. hour it was, and thought I had mental issues. What? Really? I didn’t even know how to process the events of the day thus far. I felt disconnected with reality, feeling like a video game character experiencing life from the third person, watching myself outside as someone going through a really strange and disorienting morning. I could laugh about it in a way and I got my phone out to write a blog post about it, which is what I’m doing here. If my day is spiraling out of control, why not grab the demon by the horns and document it at least. Not like I had anything else to do. Just sit and wait feeling delightful detachment from what is confusingly my life in the moment: this is me and this is what’s happening to me and it doesn’t make any sense but holy hell this is my reality. It’s good in a way being able to view a terrible situation in an impersonal form where you can realize in the moment that wow, shit is crazy today. At least I’ll have a good fucking story to tell about it.

I talked to the counselor/therapist/whatever she was and did my best to prove that I wasn’t really suicidal and that those bad thoughts were just a natural reaction to what I was currently going through. Passing thoughts really, the random idea of how easy it’d be to go buy some rope and dangle myself from the trees that are naturally plentiful in a forest. Not that’d I’d really go buy some rope, just pondering how easy it’d all be to do, almost too easy in a way. The fact that you have so many easy ways out of life is really scary when you think about it. Luckily, she knew my current therapist on personal terms because she used to work there. I busted out the name of Michelle Johnson and she was instantly sympathetic to me. Yes, I was seeing some she knew and was on good terms with and, yes, I was making the correct steps to heal my flawed and utterly fucked-up mind. She seemed to thaw a bit during this revelation and things became much better after that.

She released me because obviously I wasn’t crazy or anything. I asked if I could go outside because I had a “raging nicotine addiction” and at first she was hesitant. If I wandered off into downtown rockford after I’d left it’d be her ass on the line. But she called the female cop again (officer Hodgkins I think) and she was only five minutes away, so she let me go get my nicotine fix. I sat on the sidewalk and vaped to my heart’s content pondering what the hell exactly I was doing with my life. Two days earlier I was happy and content and now everything was spiraling out of control and I felt like I was in a dream. Wasn’t I a writer? Wasn’t I blogger? Didn’t I have a job that payed well? Didn’t I have two stock investing accounts? Didn’t I have a college degree? Wasn’t I a fucking legit and certified commercial pilot? Wasn’t I successful enough and immune to any strange mental occurances in life? Is this what my current state really is? Wow, what a chaotic and hilarious mess; no one is immune to the problems of life.

Officer Hodgkins hauled me back to the park and drove like a fucking maniac on the way there. What sort of fuel mileage did these police SUVs have? It had to be dismal. She was stomping on the gas like we were in a race against someone and made strange radio calls about “Anna Page Park” and shouted out time frames and estimates. What would it be like to be a cop? I had no idea and my curiosity took hold of my mind. I tried to analyze and decifier what was being said and appreciate all the silly mundane and stupid pressures of her job. Hauling drunken campers with marriage issues out of parks at 8 a.m. trying to decide weather to toss the book at them or to have sympathy. Or to decide in the spur of the moment if I they were really going to kill themselves or not. And mostly, trying to decide in a minute or two if they’re worth the effort to save or to toss them to the curb; do you consider them a lost cause and remove them from society as effectivly as possible or try to save them? As much hate as cops get lately, she was genuinely kind and I found myself conflicted by it: weren’t cops supposed to be cruel assholes? Surely the jackass with the AR-15 was your stereotypical militarist police officer dickheard but Officer Hodgkins was a legit good person who commanded authority in an appropriate manner. We arrived at the park and I sheepishly agreed that I was going through some shit and that I’d be out later in the day. And she was understanding and we talked in the parking lot for about ten minutes. She gave me a card to her church’s pastor who had a YouTube channel and I held onto it as a genuine souvenir. (I’d link to it but in the past few weeks of chaos the card has went missing which is very sad to me…) Yes, people do care, strangers and cops none-the-less, and she showed me some grace and understanding where I could’ve very well found myself into some serious, expensive legal trouble, and probably jail. Officer Hodgkins, the middle-aged, very motherly cop in Rockford, Illinois probably won’t read this, but if she did I’d just want to say something like, Hey, thanks for being open and understanding and just helping me along in this bullshit struggle in life. I do appreciate it…

I walked back to my totally illegal campsite and drank some Alka-Seltzer and tried to get my life back into order. Maybe I could salvage the day and get my shit back together? Just a minor hiccup in the day surely. I passed out from the drug and the exhaustion and tried to grab some sleep before work. It was like 10 a.m. and maybe I could get my rest, find peace, and get about my day and feel comfort in my shitty situation. And I did drift off until around noon. But I was awaken by a strangely familiar voice screaming from a quarter mile away, “JEREMY?! WHERE THE FUCK IS YOUR CAMPSITE?!” But that’s probably another story altogether…

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Deleting Facebook is Awesome (and Something about the Riots)

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“The raging mob has lost its nerve

There’s more of us but who goes first

No one dares to cross the line

The cops know that they’ve won”

-Dead Kennedys, “Riot”

Christ, what a time to return to Facebook. I deactivated my account two weeks ago, more or less, and reactivated it Friday. Why? Because I’m trying to do the whole writing thing. In short I have my shitty author’s page on Facebook and I’m not quite sure how much traffic actually gets driven to my sites from there, especially to Wattpad. I think most traffic at this blog comes from Google search results (which is good) or WordPress itself, but nothing else seems to have that benefit. By trying to get my life and writing back into some semblance of order, well, I’d need that damn author’s page back.

I don’t have to explain much, but boy did I jump back into a total dumpster fire and was probably the worst time this year (so far!) to get back on social media. You know something has people hyped when there are countless posts about #AllLivesMatter and #BlackLivesMatter with zero subtlety to the subject at hand. Sure some posts seem to realize that this is a messy situation, but there’s always the majority that are either totally for the cops or against the cops, and in turn for black people or against them, although it’d never be worded that strongly. No one says they’re ‘against black people.’ Something about rioters breaking property and that’s…well…that’s just taking things a bit too far. Fuck everything in the world right now. But before all of that let’s talk about the pros and cons of deactivating your Facebook account.

Deactivating/Deleting Facebook: How the Fuck do you Do That?!

First off, deleting your account is permanent. You cease to exist on the site and when you commit to this option, it’s final. All of your pictures, posts, and other bullshit are permanently deleted from the site with no option to get any of it back. Before you delete your account, maybe use the option to ‘download your data’ or whatever, which packages all your shit into a handy .zip file (at least that’s how it was a few years ago) so you have all your photos and such. Deactivating is also exactly what it sounds like; it’s temporary until you reactivate your account by simply logging on and your stuff still exists, it simply isn’t accessable by you or anyone else. Consider deactivating like a social media coma whereas deletion is like social media death.

Facebook naturally makes it difficult and unintuitive to deactivate/delete your account. Why? Because they want you addicted to the shit so they can rake in that fat advertisement money. In short the more people on the site the more people they have to advertise to and charge advertisers for. I don’t want to get too detailed here because I don’t even remember, but somewhere in the ‘settings’ menu you can find a tiny and hardly noticable text link that says ‘deactivate/delete your account.’ It’s not a big, fat, giant, noticable button, so hunt around until you find it.

Oh, there it is. At least on the desktop version.

It’s not over yet because Facebook still tosses a few random desperate questions at you seeing if you really want to leave the site. “Are you sure you want to deactivate your account? Think of the friends you’re leaving behind!” as if the only place to interact with people in our apocalyptic society is on Facebook. Deactivating Facebook also comes with the option to ‘automatically reactivate’ in a set time frame, if you choose to do so. No, fuck you Facebook, I’ll choose how long I want to disappear for. They also ask you why you’re leaving, as if you owe the multibillion dollar company a reason for leaving. Once again, fuck Facebook.

To reactivate your account, you simply log in. It’s way too easy and the temptation to log back in is way to high. Just be warned of this beforehand.

Another fun fact about Facebook account deactivation is that, and this is a big one for many people, Facebook Messenger still fucking works. Your actual profile is gone, you don’t have to worry about seeing peoples’ shitty social media drama and Hot Opinions, but you can still message people on the Messenger app. Go figure, right? Some people who only use Facebook for the messenger app should take note of this. There really is no downside to deactivating.

What Happens After you Leave Facebook?

In short you become happier and less burdened by the worlds troubles. I’m serious. You’re not bombarded by a constant stream of hype and outrage and in your cute little home/apartment the world almost seems not that bad. Sure, you might be aware of everything spiraling out of control but it never seems as ‘important’ as what social media would lead you to believe. It’s a kinda mild detachment from the world’s problems that, while they’re still occurring, they’re not being constantly thrown into your face about how polarized and opinionated everyone is. The power is placed on you if you want to give a damn, be an activist, or whatever.

You’ll also have a ton of free time on your hands. I don’t think any of us realize how much we lurk around on social media when we’re bored and taking this away gives you tons of free time. Sure, you’ll be bored at first and wondering what the hell you’re supposed to do, but you’ll adjust fine. It’s similar to weening yourself off a drug or alcohol, it’s hard at first and you feel kinda lost but then you get your shit back together and work through it. When bored, the temptation is always there to smash the Facebook app icon and scroll mindlessly for some length of time, and when this is gone, you’ll feel lost like you don’t know what to do with yourself. But use it to your advantage and do something to benefit your own life. Stop giving into the boredom and pissing away time on social media.

I suppose you also might get in tune with who you’re real friends and family are, not just the Facebook friends that you might believe are ‘real friends.’ I have a handful of people who I interact with regularly on the site even though I never talk to them or see them in real life. This isn’t a real friendship and is only a vague ghost of what a true friendship is like. Quarantine aside, go hang out, text, and talk to real fucking people. Ask them about their lives, their hobbies, and get to know them. Sure, you might know know what their latest Hot Opinion on [topic] is, but who gives a fuck anyways? If you’re really curious, ask them. Facebook is not real friendship.

About the Riots: Outrage on Social Media

This is a prime time to deactive/delete your account too because social media is insanely toxic right now. I try to do at least one post whenever one of these ‘social outrage’ incidents happy not because I really have much to say about it, but to rake in views. How many people are Googling ‘Riots’ and ‘Facebook‘ right now? Might as well seize the opportunity right? Something about turning lemons into lemonade. Not that blogging about people rioting, dying, and police brutality feels good or is a noble cause; no, I’ve just realized that no matter what drivel I write here will be totally useless. The only person I’m actually in control of is myself — the only thing I can ‘fix’ is my attituide on things — so I might as well make a post. God, I sound like a selfish asshole here, but hear me out.

This seems like fifth of sixth post I’ve written about the pointlessness of social media outrage, and the last one that comes to mind was my silly post about The Little Mermaid casting choice. Remember that quaint time? Despite that being relatively harmless and unimportant considering what is happening now, the same fundamentals seem to be true: solidarity between opposing groups. Simplifying arguments. Groupthink. Outrage. No subtlety except to prove your point. “Delete me if you agree with [opinion], I don’t want a friend that believes [thing].” And so on.

And…I don’t even want to think about or analyze anything right now. My mind always boils down it down to something like this: will anything ever change? Probably not. I’d love to see real change, but it never comes. Remember Trayvon Martin? Nothing happened. Remember the Parkview shootings? Nothing. Remember all the high school kids protest for real change? Remember how nothing actually happened. Remember the Las Vegas shooting? Nothing happened. Remember the one preschool that was shot up years ago? Nothing. Remember Ferguson, Missouri? Nothing. I hope you see a pattern here. Despite people being more passionate this time around, I have no hope for real change to occur and I’m actually hoping the protesters burn everything down because maybe that’s what we need to give us real, lasting change, not that I’m hopeful. Why? Nothing has changed before, why would this time be different?

Ah, there goes my pessimism again and my mind is racing. I still can’t decide if this post should be about deactivating Facebook, the riots and the bullshit social media outrage over this Hot Topic, or my reaction and pessimism to it all. Maybe it’s a good example of what I was talking about: you can obviously see how pessimistic and shitty my mood was in the last paragraph, and why is this? Because I’ve been on social media for a half week and my mood is already degrading. It’s…ah…it’s a fucking mess. I think I’m done here. There isn’t anything to say that hasn’t already been said before. Somehow I think by not saying anything I might be saying more than everyone else screaming on social media for change that’ll never come.

One last thing that is obligatory for any ‘bitch about Facebook‘ posts: I wrote a book a year ago that was just one long rant about how shitty social media is and how it’s the cause of everything wrong with our society. Or it’s a microcosm of everything wrong with society. If you’re interested, please check it out, it should be free to read on Kindle Unlimited or whatever the hell it’s called. And if you really enjoy it or are interested, consider buying it. It’s only like $5 $3.

Check out my Instagram where I post pointless artistic pics every whenever I get around to it. For example:

Or my other blog where I sometimes post stories.

Or Wattpad where I have a Morrowind fanfic ongoing.

Or my Facebook page where I don’t do much of anything at all.