Category Archives: Life With A Mental Illnes

November 12 2019

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It’s been another good day.  I spent the afternoon hosting my neighbors as visitors.  They were here for a couple hours.  I forgot how good it was to have visitors that weren’t family.  I had been isolating more or less for months.  I hope this is because of paranoia on my part.  But I just don’t feel safe in public anymore.  Haven’t for a long time.  I guess spending most of my time at home, reading books, writing, and working on computer games has become the new normal for me.  I no longer want to deal with outside drama. Some people can be so mean anymore.

I’m having fewer aches and pains overall.  The worst is when I wake up in the mornings. After a soak in a hot bath, and my morning routines I feel better.  I make it a point to stand up for a couple minutes every hour or so.  Used to be I would sit for hours on end when reading, writing, etc.  I don’t want to do that anymore.  It wasn’t healthy.

Been writing a few emails.  Got a couple responses from an old friend from high school. I find it easier to communicate via email than social media.  Social media is alright to drop in for a couple minutes.  But it simply wasn’t designed for long, drawn out conversations.  Those are the exact conversations I crave.  My best conversations have never been over facebook.  But I and my friends are rediscovering emails.  I now treat them like traditional letters.

Removing Myself From Social Media and Thoughts on Change

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I decided I’m giving up social media.  I cancelled my twitter account and have put my facebook on inactive status.  I spend too much time on facebook and not enough time actually writing and researching.  I have only a couple close friends and a few cousins I really hear from anymore via facebook.  I would have given it up over a year ago if I wasn’t fearful I’d permanently lose contact with my friends and family.  I tired writing more emails several months ago, but got only one response from the dozen I sent out.  I suppose it feeds into my paranoia that my friends and family really don’t like me that much.  Every time I call my parents, the bulk of the conversation focuses on what I can do to improve myself and how to make my apartment more presentable.  I find this irritating.  I really do.  I can’t even just live anymore.  At this point in my life, I don’t care if I impress people or am popular.  I have never been popular, not even in college or high school.  But I had a good time in college because I got to spend time with people even more eccentric and academically oriented than myself on a daily basis.  I know many people condemn academic knowledge, scholarly pursuits, and intelligence.  I have endured this my entire life.  And I have given up on people ever changing their attitudes towards intelligence and wisdom.  I just want to live and be allowed to pursue my goals, which include learning as much as I possibly can about as many subjects as I can.  I don’t give a damn if I ever make a cent off my pursuits of knowledge and wisdom.  As long as I have enough money to make rent and keep my pantry stocked and myself clothed and my psych medications current, everything else is just add ons.  I don’t need a large house, a prestigious career, a trophy wife, lots of kids, a fancy car, designer clothes, or the respect of people I have nothing in common with.  I never have.  I was, like many ambitious teenagers, brainwashed into thinking I needed such nonsense to have a fulfilled life.  It took a serious mental illness and struggling for most of my twenties to realize that wasn’t what I wanted for myself.  And it took a few more years to where I got to the point when I no longer felt shame for not wanting a life I had no say in designing.

I don’t feel shame for not wanting to be rich or famous.  I don’t write blogs every few days with the idea I will get noticed and make a train load of money.  I write for a record of what it like to be a mentally ill man in early 21st century America.  I don’t write just for my current audience.  I write for future generations so there is at least one record as to what mental illness meant in the early stages of the Information Revolution.  And make no mistake, our species and our civilizations are going through a period of transition at very least as profound as the Agricultural Revolution thousands of years ago and the Industrial Revolution hundreds of years ago.  It should be no wonder so many people are afraid and angry.  Afraid of what’s happening and what is going to happen.  Angry that we found that much of what we learned in our youths and what worked well in previous generations is starting to no longer apply.

We are at a point in history when our science and tech is advancing faster than our institutions of government, religion, education, finance, industry, and social norms.  At this point in time (November 2019), the world is far different than the one I went to high school in during the 1990s.  I’ve recently rewatched some of the tv shows that were popular when I was a teenager, and it’s almost quaint looking at some of the tech that was considered cutting edge twenty five years ago.  Even in the Matrix series, there were no smart phones, social media, video sharing platforms, laptop computers, etc.  There were still phone booths in that series and that was made only twenty years ago.  I didn’t notice the subtle changes that were happening over the course of a year or two when things were happening.  But looking at it over the span of twenty years, I am as a 39 year old man living in a world that is foreign to the one I occupied at age 16.  I’m not even sure my niece and nephews have seen a VCR tape anywhere outside of a history show or museum.  I sometimes chuckle when I see older people who don’t research online as much as my cohorts do.  But my teenage nephews would chuckle that I have never run a 3D printer or used a VR headset.  One of my nephews recently bought a VR headset from money he raised working odd jobs for his parents and neighbors.  He set up a VR flying simulator for my father.  As for me, I’m waiting a couple of years for the prices to drop and the tech to get more user friendly.  As crazy as the changes I have seen in the last twenty years have been, I guarantee the next twenty will be even more so.  At this point I’m just content to buckle up and enjoy the ride from my apartment in small town Nebraska.

Asking For Assistance

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From my earliest memories I always wanted to be of assistance to others.  My dad sometimes tells stories of when they were building their house in my childhood hometown I was often fetching tools for my dad even as a two year old.  I often went with my mom to feed some of the stray cats in our town and try to find homes for them even before I started school.  When I was in high school I always made a point of being one of the cool upperclassmen who didn’t harass the freshmen or junior high kids.  In college, I had stash of over the counter medical supplies that I sometimes gave to my dorm mates.  I was the guy on our wing who always had toe nail clippers and anti itch cream.  I also proofread a lot of research papers for classmates as I had a good eye for wording things better even as a teenager.  When I moved out on my own I used to help people move as I owned an SUV for several years.  I also took people to the grocery store whenever I needed supplies more often than not.  I eventually had to start charging people as a few people were overusing the service.

Now that I am more home bound and have more aches and pains, I’m now the one asking for assistance more often.  I now have a cleaning lady come in to scrub my place down once a week.  One of my neighbors now helps me wash my laundry a few times a month as long as I pay her a small fee and provide the soap and laundry money.  Her husband sometimes makes supper for me on the weekends.  Last weekend it was meat loaf and made from scratch gravy and mashed potatoes.  Perfect cold food weather that I, as a bachelor, don’t make for myself very often.  I probably would have made more complex dishes than my grilled steaks, bratwursts, and barbecued chicken strips if I was cooking for a family or a girlfriend.

For the first several months of hitting the middle aged wall, I had a tough time accepting that I would be wise to ask for more assistance.  I had always been the one giving my assistance to others, often with no expectation of any return.  I don’t how much of this is my illness, being a man, or having the independent streak that I do.  But it took some pride swallowing and soul searching in order to come to the realization that 1) I’m not as spry and healthy as I once was, 2) twenty years of schizophrenia took more of a toll on me than I wanted to admit, and 3) there is no shame in seeking outside aide.

For years I was the one aiding others.  I guess now that my health isn’t as stable as it once was, asking for help more often will become normal.  But then again, I will be 40 next June.  And many of my friends the same age as I am are starting to experience the early stages of declining health.  A friend of mine has arthritis in her hips.  Another friend of mine now wears glasses and his hands aren’t as stable as they were even five years ago.  A third friend of mine is fighting cancer.  A cousin of mine died from cancer in her forties.  My brother had to have eye surgery because his eyes were getting so bad.  A cousin of mine had a surgery a while back that required him to do rehab for awhile.  The wife of one of my cousins has had several surgeries already and she is my age.  A friend of mine from high school has a wife who has some kind of blood disease, I think.  All of these people are my age or only a few years older.  None of us smoked or did drugs in our younger days.  But things tend to fall apart in middle age.

While I feel guilty that I couldn’t manage both my schizophrenia and physical health perfectly ( I opted to focus more on mental health than physical health in my younger years), I am grateful I have family and friends who are willing to help me out now that I am no longer as physically strong as I once was.  In short, being decent and helpful to people eventually pays off.  It may get you taken advantage of once in awhile, especially in your younger and healthier years, but the world does seem to have a round about way of rewarding people for making efforts to be decent to others.  It may take decades to get a return, but what comes around sometimes does come back to you.  In short, it doesn’t pay to be a jerk to people during the early years.  Some people do seem to get away with being jerks and hypocrites but eventually things can backfire on them.  If nothing else, history is not kind to people like that.  Whether it’s God, Karma, Justice, the Universe, etc., just because life starts unfair and unjust people get rewarded short term, they often get their due even if it’s only being remembered for being a jerk by future generations.

Confessions of A Mentally Ill Blogger

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Going off subject for this post.  I decided to bring more of my online confessions.  Yes, there is a real live middle age man behind the scribblings and musings of A Life of Mental Illness.  So here goes:

  1.  I’ve had the same best friend since high school.  And my best friend is a woman my age.  I didn’t understand the whole ‘males and females’ can’t be friends trope back then.  I still don’t.  Just because I am a man and she is a woman doesn’t mean we have been or ever will be romantically involved.
  2. I never understood why just because I am a man that I’m supposed to want sex all the time.  I never have, not even as a teenager.  And I used to get such a hard time from my school mates because of it.  I got it worse from my female classmates than I did even from my teammates on the football team.
  3. I never enjoyed dating.  And it wasn’t just because I was most of the time turned down even for something as simple as a cup of coffee at the college student center.  The few times I did date, I always felt like I was under investigation for the pettiest offenses and slip ups.  It was nerve wracking and not worth it.  Angered me that I couldn’t just be honest with women I found attractive.
  4. I don’t understand adults who forget what it was like being kids.  Even though I’m almost 40 years old and starting to get a few gray hairs in my beard, I still remember vividly what is was like growing up.  I don’t romanticize those days nor do I completely condemn them.  I had some good times and I went through some serious trials I never want to go through again.
  5. I don’t understand adults who hurt children.  I think it’s cowardly that some adult would do anything to a kid they wouldn’t dare dream of doing to an adult.  I have less respect for adults who abuse children than I do just about anything else.
  6. I don’t understand the mindset of bullies, especially adult bullies.  I can’t understand how messed up a person’s moral compass has to be in order to feel like they are powerful for messing with people who can’t fight back.  It doesn’t show power in my mind to yell at, berate, manipulate, and abuse people.  It shows a complete lack of character and courage as far as I’m concerned.
  7. I don’t understand people who think that yelling, insulting, threatening, and throwing temper tantrums are the signs of a good leader.  They aren’t.  The only reason people, myself included, put up with this kind of nonsense is that we have no choice.  At least not temporarily.  All the while I am agreeable to someone who is a verbally abusive boss or leader, I am silently bidding my time until I have an opportunity to where I no longer have to deal with them.  I have quit several jobs just because I got tired of dealing with abusive bosses.  And I refuse to go back to any job if I get the sense that a work place tolerates abusive bosses.  Thanks to my disability and my pension, I can say ‘screw you’ to bad bosses.  I am convinced if enough people could get several months worth of living expenses saved up and just start walking out on abusive and toxic workplaces in large numbers, we’d see these employers attitudes improve pretty fast.
  8. I never accepted why workplace politics are what they are.  Never have and I never will.
  9. Sometimes I am convinced that the adults act worse than the kids.  But it didn’t seem this way when I was growing up.  Maybe it’s something that goes in generational cycles.
  10. I don’t understand how weekly news and sports magazines are still a thing even after almost thirty years of the world wide web.
  11. I don’t understand why people still write checks.  I still have to write checks for my rent.  Irritates me to no end.  What century is this anyway?
  12. I don’t understand people who go on and on about the ‘good old days.’  When exactly were these good old days?  And if I make it to age seventy I’m sure I’ll hear some fools talking about the 2010s as ‘good old days.’  The good old days never existed.  They were just when you still had good health and weren’t held back by constant aches and pains.
  13. I’m glad I was never popular or cool.  I don’t want to be popular.  I just want to make people think.
  14. I don’t begrudge twenty somethings who still live with their parents.  Multi generational housing was more normal in previous eras than now.  Sometimes I would love to live with my elderly parents or my brother or my aunts.  At least we could look after each other easily.  And I wouldn’t have to deal with some of the screw balls and loose nuts who come with living in an apartment complex.
  15. At this point in my life, I’m tired of living in an apartment complex.  I would so buy my own house and not deal with land lords and close by neighbors if I could afford it.  I just want some privacy and not have people looking over my shoulders all the time anymore.  Dormitory living was more fun at age 19 than at age 39.
  16. I often fear that I don’t get through to people.
  17. I often fear my friends and family secretly don’t like me.  I hope it’s the illness talking.
  18. I sometimes go days at a time without leaving my apartment.  I’m just burned out on the stress of dealing with irritable, angry, and rude people all the time.  Socializing with most people is toxic for me anymore.  At this point I’d rather deal with a machine than most people.  At least machines won’t give me a hard time or tell me how bad of a person I am.  People sometimes suck.
  19. I love to sleep.  I’d sleep even more if I didn’t wake up with aches and pains every morning.

Routine Changes and Intellectual Pursuits With Mental Illness

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Been staying home most of the time lately.  The weather is turning colder, like typical Nebraska Novembers.  We had our first snow a couple days before Halloween.  Even though I have essentially been cabin bound for several days, I don’t usually feel that lonely or irritable.

I have made a few changes to my routines.  I decided to give up on coffee, again.  Even the morning cup that was my standard for over fifteen years too often makes me irritable and twitchy.  I am sleeping longer too.  I usually go to bed around 9pm, wake up at 2am, work online or read until about 6am and then go back to sleep for another three hours.  I also usually nap for an hour in the afternoons.  It seems like I am sleeping some at least three times a day.  It may make it tough to get a lot done, but it does alleviate anxiety and allows me to declutter my mind.  I still sometimes get vivid dreams, but fortunately most are not scary or violent like they were in my early twenties.  Most just don’t make sense or they are the ones where I’m naked in public and no one seems to notice.  And I often have those dreams where I am back in school and I can’t find my classes or even open my locker.  Needless to say when I wake up and realize I’m in my late thirties again, I feel relieved.

Since I fazed out coffee and sleep more, I have found it takes more to make me irritable and distressed.  It also seems like I recover from aches and pains faster.  And I catch my breath quicker when I get winded now.  I don’t feel much for aches and pains when I stand for long periods of time, but I do find it annoying sometimes.  One of the reasons I started doing my shopping online was mainly because I got annoyed with standing in line for more than a couple minutes at a time.  The worst was when I was at the gas station and needing to pay for a tank of gas and I’d have several people ahead of me buying lottery tickets.  It was especially bad on the days of Powerball drawings.  I am convinced that lotteries are a tax on people who can’t do math.

I’ve also cut out as much sugar as possible.  I didn’t even buy candy for Halloween this year, not even for myself.  Then again, I enjoy watching people in costumes more now than I did even as a ten year old when I got to dress up.  Sugar was another thing that made me sluggish and occasionally irritable once the sugar rush burned off.

I am making friends with some of my neighbors.  I usually hear from them at least once a day.  For a small monthly fee, they’ll help me out with my laundry once a week as long as I provide the soap and laundry money.  They were also good enough to make dinner for me a few days ago.  While I do cook for myself, it’s usually simple things that don’t require a lot of ingredients.

Gotten back into listening to audiobooks on youtube.  I also listen to science and tech themed podcasts.  I occasionally listen to Joe Rogan if he’s interviewing a scientist or tech person.  I still avoid politics.  I have enough beliefs across the entire spectrum that is doesn’t qualify me for any traditional camp, party, or tribe.  So I catch flack from all sides just because I try to think for myself and am not dogmatic about my politics.  I swear politics has become like religion for far too many people.

I don’t post much on facebook anymore.  Then again, about the only people I hear from at all anymore are my best friend, a couple cousins, and a couple college instructors.  Even the tech groups, with only a few exceptions, have become fear mongers and hopeless these days.  Even tech enthusiasts are too often guilty getting their science news more from Hollywood and less from actual scientists.  I don’t read most science fiction and I don’t watch any science fiction shows just because they are so dystopic and such doom porn anymore.  No wonder most people are filled with fear and dread.

I try to tell people what’s actually going right (and far more is going well than not), but I’m just waisting my breath on everyone it seems.  About the only person who doesn’t think I’m a delusional liar is my own mother (and my best friend when she’s been doing well).  And even with her, I don’t know if she actually believes what I’m telling her or if she’s just humoring me.  And people wonder why I dropped out of society and don’t socialize much outside of close friends and family.  What’s the point of socializing if most people just suck the life and positivity out of you?  It seems that optimism and empathy are the modern rebellions.  It isn’t cool to be an optimist, but that may be just because we are years ahead of the curve.

People think I’m lucky because I’m on disability and don’t have to work a regular job.  While having freedom (at least to the extent the pension money doesn’t run out) is amazing, it is also a lonely life.  I spend most of my days reading, watching science lectures, lifting weights, listing to podcasts, but not much socializing.  It’s like this scholar I sometimes watch on youtube said, “If you seek the truth, the truth will set you free.  But it will also make you lonely.”  But I’d rather seek wisdom and knowledge than popularity and prestige.  I’ve felt this way my entire life.

I believe I now know what my purpose in life should be.  It is to be an independent scholar/philosopher.  Sure such work will mean I will never live a wealthy life.  Then again, some of the smartest and wisest people in history will never be known because they spent their lives in monasteries or libraries or lecture halls and laboratories.  And that is only if they were lucky.  Many more spent their lives never fitting in, seeing absurdities every where they went, and died frustrated and bankrupt.  Fortunately, the internet gives an outlet for people like me, who in previous eras would have had no options other than monasteries or academic life.  The true geniuses who drive progress may not be the billionaire entrepreneurs, but the engineers and scientists and instructors making the entrepreneurs visions possible.  I suppose people like that do the intellectual grunt work that make modern society possible.  Yet most people will never hear of them, much like no one hears of individual master carpenters or plumbers.

November 1 2019

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Saw my parents over last weekend.  Picked up some supplies I was needing and had a good visit with them.  Also decided to sell my car.  I wasn’t using enough to justify having it.  Besides my town now has Uber service in addition to a shuttle bus service.  And I can still get my groceries and medications delivered to my place.

I’m spending more time with my neighbors.  One of them volunteered to help me out with laundry once a week for a small monthly charge.  After having them over a few times I now realize how much I was missing from not socializing much.  I still don’t leave my apartment very often but I do make a point of standing up and walking around at least once an hour.  It seems to help keep the back and knee pain at bay.  I took a few days off from lifting weights but am starting back on that today.

Decided to shave my beard and trim my hair.  I buzzed my hair quite short.  Any shorter I’d look bald.  Haven’t had my hair this short in a few years.  I also haven’t gone clean shaven for a few years too.  But I figure if some people can update their look a few times a week, I can update mine every couple years.

Overall things are looking alright as we press closer to winter.  We got our first snow a couple days ago.  We had patches of snow still during Halloween.  I didn’t do much for Halloween besides play some background music via youtube for much of the morning.  I was going to watch Dracula (the Francis Ford Coppola version) as I own that on my amazon account but didn’t get to it.  Chatted with a couple old friends last night on facebook.  I’m still going to bed earlier and waking up for a few hours in the middle of the night.  I get my sleep and I’m still able to enjoy the quiet hours.  Best of both worlds for me.  Haven’t had any bad flare ups for a week now.  For awhile I was having them pretty bad for a couple days.  But I changed my routines some, changed my diet some, and got more consistent sleep.  So far it’s working.

Starting To Feel Better After A Rugged Patch

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While it has been a rough last several days for myself I think I’m beginning to pull out of it.  To help myself pull out I’ve been going to bed earlier, limiting myself to only one cup of coffee per day, avoiding foods that are tough on my stomach, trying to avoid less than positive people and news stories.  As much research as I do online for the blog and my own intellectual nourishment, it can be a steep climb.  Fortunately I’m getting back to where if I see a news story or a friend’s posting that irritates me I’ll be fine after a couple minutes of silent contemplation.  I also spend more time meditating too.  I usually have a couple times per day I just lay in bed with my cpap and just pay attention to my breathing.  It seems like the best way to do meditation, at least for myself, is to not concern myself with whether I’m doing it right.  It’s trying to reduce stress and calm down, not building a steel bridge.  There probably isn’t one right way to do it for everyone.  I don’t even really think of it as traditional meditation or prayer that much, I just look at it as decluttering my mind or taking out my mental garbage.

I am sorry for the blow ups I had over the last week.  I wish I could find a more constructive and less threatening way to let go of my fears and anxiety.  Yet I do know it could be worse.  I could just have just as easily turned to alcohol, narcotics, gambling, arguing with complete strangers, etc.  But in all my years with dealing with schizophrenia I have never laid a hand on anyone, no matter how bad it got.  Hopefully I never go down that dark route.

During this time of increased distress for myself I am grateful to family and friends who haven’t given up on me.  I know I can be real difficult to deal with some times.  Hopefully that is all the illness and that I’m not a malicious man by nature.  I have some friends who also deal with depression and anxiety issues.  I also have friends stressed real bad over debts and stagnating careers.  Right now for many things feel hopeless.  It is easy for anger and depression to come into play in these cases.

I’m feeling more upbeat than I have in a while.  My parents will be in town today.  Hopefully they can help me get some things straightened out I have let slide over the last few months.  I’m happy to be getting company.  I don’t get company much anymore.  Maybe moving to be near my brother and his family would be best for me.  I do feel kind of apprehensive about the move as my brother and I have never gotten along.  We are just complete opposites I guess.  And my diseased mind makes it real tough to let go of the past sometimes.  Having a near photographic memory doesn’t make things any better.  But I just can’t do this life thing alone anymore.

Rant About Jobs and Finding Meaning

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I would welcome a cure to my schizophrenia but I have had bad enough experiences with work place environments that I never want to hold another job again.  I used to vomit from anxiety probably 50 percent of the time when I went into work customer service jobs.  The only job I didn’t do this was my janitor job.  But then, I didn’t work around crowds and I had to see my boss only once a day.  Yet, good luck finding a job that doesn’t involve working with crowds or office politics nonsense even with a college degree.

I would be completely content to be where I had to be around the same group of people day after day and only rarely interact with others outside my work team.  Almost no jobs like that exist anymore.  A significant number of jobs will likely be taken over by machines within the next ten to fifteen years. I have tried to tell people this for several years now.  But almost no one listens or if they do they tell me I am a liar.  The future is coming my friends.  These jobs, at least the ones we fight over now, will be going away.  And there isn’t anything even populist politicians or professional Luddites can do to stop it.  Sure, they can delay the inevitable.  But it will only put their individual businesses and nations at a competitive disadvantage and make the transition to a largely automated economy a lot tougher than it has to be.

Some people think I’m crazy or hopeless dreamer or a liar when I tell them this.  I am not stupid.  I am just ahead of the curve.  And being forced out of the workforce because of my schizophrenia meant that I was forced to find a different way to define myself than what I did for money.  But, in many ways, I am thankful I was forced to redefine myself at age 25 as opposed to age 45 with a family and a mortgage.  I went through my identity crisis when I was still young, flexible, and physically healthy.  It would be much tougher now that I’m 39 years old if I got laid off from a job because a machine can do it faster and more precise than I ever could.  The future is happening.  It just isn’t evenly distributed.  Changes are coming hard and fast in the next ten to twenty years, even more so than they are now.  It is time to stop denying it and adapt.

Losing Friends and Mental Breakdowns or I’m Sorry For Having Feelings

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Haven’t been writing lately.  Been having a rough go the last several days.  Finally had a breakdown a few days ago and a second one just yesterday.  I still feel like I’m putting the pieces back together.  I hate that I have breakdowns.  Unfortunately, it seems the only way I can let go of much of the pain and depression that comes with my mental illness.

I get that it’s not socially acceptable for me to rant and rave as a way of dealing with my mental illness.  But it is also unmanly for me to cry or even show any sign of weakness.  I can’t even cry at this point in my life.  I haven’t broke down and cried in over fifteen years.  I didn’t cry at any of my grandparents funerals or even my nephew’s funeral.  I guess after years of being told to ‘man up’, ‘straighten up’, ‘snap out of it’, ‘what you whining for’, and ‘I’ll give you something to cry about’ I am literally unable to express sadness.  It’s not manly to cry so I don’t.  Yet I put off expressing any distress as long as I can because it’s not socially acceptable to rave and verbally express anger.  Of course this is a vicious cycle that has become predictable to me.  I only fear that someday when I’m having a breakdown at home, my neighbors will call the cops on me and I’ll lose my apartment.  And having a breakdown in public would be even worse, knowing my countrymen’s attitudes towards carrying concealed firearms and violence.  I fear for my own life anymore.  I can’t vent about my problems in a cathartic way for fear of repercussions and even physical violence against myself.  And if I were to get shot by anyone, my side of the story would never be heard by anyone, not even my family.  Hell, the person that shoots me will be hailed as a hero even though I am never armed.  Tell me again how we are a compassionate and civilized society.

It’s because of fears and anxieties like this I almost never leave my home.  I still sleep a lot but some days that’s all I want to do.  I want the fear and pain to go away.  I want to stop living in fear of my neighbors and people I talk to online.  I even fear my relatives anymore.  I haven’t gone to family reunions in several years for fear of having a breakdown in case the conversations turn to controversial things.  I have ended contact with a significant portion of extended family members because of their hateful attitudes about politics, science, and religion.  I haven’t even spoken to my own brother in over two years.  It seems like I do better with complete strangers I meet only online than I do with most of my old friends and family.  About the only people I hear from on a regular basis I have known for more than five years are my parents, my best friend from high school, and my best friend from college.  I ended the friendship with my second best friend from college because of his attitudes towards politics and religion.  I asked him to tone it down, at least online, he told me to stop being triggered and he didn’t care what I wanted.  So I ended the friendship.  Angers me that most people care far more about politics and religion and money than they ever did even their best friends and family.

I really don’t know why I put myself out there like this.  It only makes me look weak and needy.  But I am burned out from always having to be on guard even around those I love.  I am tired of losing friends and family members.  Even before the whole world decided to go insane all at once I had troubles making friends.  I didn’t have the same interests as most people and I find it impossible to dumb down for most people.  I have to vent, even if no one in my friends and family has any empathy.  I have to for my own sanity.

My Online Confessions

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I’m going off subject for this article.  It has been too long since I wrote a just for fun piece.  For this one, I’m going to disclose some facts about myself.  Some will be funny, some may be unpopular, but all of them are true.  So here goes:

  1. My three favorite hobbies are computer games, writing, and weight lifting.
  2. I love nonfiction science books.
  3. I can’t stand dystopic novels or movies (which, unfortunately, is most of tv in recent years).
  4. My favorite pizza toppings are pepperoni and Italian sausage
  5. I can’t stand most fast food.  I haven’t even had a Big Mac in over two years
  6. I get very irritated when people ask me “when are you getting married?”  Sometimes I want to retort to them, especially if they are older than I am, “when are you going to die?”
  7. I don’t like watching sports as much now as I did when I was in my teens and twenties.  But I do mainly so I can have something to talk about with family and friends.
  8. I can’t stand most cable news channels.  I like some business news channels, namely Bloomberg, because they report on things like science and tech breakthroughs more than politics and disaster.
  9. I don’t tolerate rudeness from others in my online interactions.  And I never give second chances to people I don’t personally know.  No exceptions.
  10. I often go out of my way to defend younger people, especially college age and those just starting out in adulthood.  I remember how bad it hurt being stereotyped as a “damn kid” even when I was in grade school.  When I was a teenager I promised myself I would never put anyone else through what I was forced to endure.  Certainly makes me unpopular with my elders and even people my own age.
  11. I don’t understand why it’s popular to be dumb.  Never have and never will.
  12. I don’t understand why it’s evil to be smart.  Never have and never will.
  13. When I write, I find writing in the first person point of view far easier than third person.  Always have.  My best material has always been with myself serving as the narrator.  Even most of my early poems and novel rough drafts were in the first person.
  14. I once had an outline for a science fiction series of novels.  It was mainly about humanity several thousand years with various human settlements declaring independence from an interstellar empire.  Pretty much think Star Trek, Dune, and a touch of the American Civil War.  Sadly I no longer have those notes.
  15. I once had the goal of becoming a best selling writer where half of all my writing and speaking profits would go to philanthropy, namely mental illness research and to the college I graduated from.
  16. High school was some of the toughest years of my life.
  17. College was one of the few places I felt that I wasn’t a complete outcast.  It was one of the only places I met people more eccentric than I am.  I loved college.  Kind of too bad I can’t live in a communal type setting with other researchers, academics, and eccentrics.
  18. One of the few parts I don’t like about being an adult is how tough it is just to spend time with friends.
  19. One thing I absolutely love about being an adult is that I don’t have to act like I care what other people think about me, at least as long as I’m not breaking the law.
  20. I don’t understand the whole ‘Oh God It’s Monday’ and the ‘Thank God It’s Friday’ nonsense.  I never thought it was funny.  Never will.
  21. I don’t understand why it’s funny to hate your in laws or argue with your spouse.  My two best friends I’ve known both for over twenty years.  I can count the number of major arguments I’ve had with the two combined on less than five fingers.  And it certainly doesn’t make our friendships sterile or lifeless or meaningless.  The only time I argue with my parents is during psychotic breakdowns, usually only a couple times per year.
  22. I absolutely despise the phrase “man up.”  I think it’s possibly the stupidest phrase in the English language.  I have never heard anyone tell a woman to “woman up” or an old grandfather to “young down.”  I don’t even hear adults tell kids to “grow up” very often.
  23. I get irritated when I present facts and statistics in a discussion only to be blown off or told I am a lair.
  24. My favorite ice cream is vanilla, simply because it goes good with most toppings and favorings.  It mixes with almost anything.
  25. I like poetry, particularly poems about war, struggle, and overcoming challenges.
  26. I don’t understand why many people can’t see that mental health problems are real.  I mean, the human brain is the most intricate and complex piece of machinery we know about.  Yet, too many people act like nothing can go wrong with it.  Shows a lack of critical thinking on many people’s part.
  27. I am extremely distressed by most education systems not teaching kids how to critically think or be adaptable.  We have known our schools weren’t adapting to the challenges kids would face as adults as far back as the 1980s (at least).  Yet we still teach our kids in 2019 like it was 1919.  I am convinced that is why so many people are anxious and depressed about their lives as adults, simply because they weren’t taught how to adapt to the current realities.  In short, we train kids and teenagers for a local and stable world only to dump them out in a global and rapidly changing world in their early twenties.  And then we have the gall to wonder why they are anxious and struggling in their lives.  We trained them for a world that no longer exists, often to the tune of many thousands of dollars in student debts that will take most of a career to pay off.  If that isn’t child abuse, then nothing is.
  28. I am sometimes lonely.  But I don’t socialize because I don’t want to hear my family and friends endlessly complain.  About the only people in my life who don’t unload their problems on me are my two best friends and my mother.  And it weighs on me and can cause me to be resentful.
  29. I hate being told I’m lucky.  I hate it almost as much as I do being told to “man up.”
  30. I don’t understand why the only manliness most people respect comes out things like war and violence.  Personally, I think Einstein and Newton were every bit as manly as George Patton and Napoleon.  Why is being a thinker considered a sign of weakness?  Hell, if it weren’t for thinkers, there would be no civilization and humanity would probably be extinct.  Think about that the next time you condemn someone for resorting to their brains before their fists or guns.
  31. I don’t understand zero sum thinking.  The idea that someone has to lose for me to gain a benefit is a load of crap.
  32. Don’t discuss politics with me.  Ever.
  33. I have never thought having lots of sex makes a man manly or a woman immoral.  Some people just like sex more than others.
  34. I have lost more jobs and friendships than I can remember because I never gave up on trying to think for myself.  Found out the hard way the world doesn’t respect original thinkers, at least not before they make major breakthroughs.
  35. I am convinced societies love their living tyrants but condemn their living benefactors only to reverse it once their children become the leaders of society.  So maybe there is a sense of justice, even if it’s only in history books and the minds of future generations.
  36. I don’t believe in most conspiracy theories. But I do believe that just enough of them have just enough truth to them to make the entire subject a dark, addictive, and dangerous one.
  37. I believe we live in one of the coolest times in human history, at least as long as you don’t watch the news channels.  News channels report only negative news precisely because that is what we are hard wired to pay attention to.  Good news sites fail, not because they are “fake news”, but because no one pays attention.
  38. I believe we as a human society can solve our problems (or at least adapt so to minimize the impact) and have a really cool future that we, even in 2019, will be jealous of.