The Next President?

But sir, with all due respect: That's the argument of a five-year-old.
{Anderson Cooper}

For the Marty Tells Me So

I have submitted three of my short stories (the only three that are finished, in fact) to a new writers contest.  Just today, I also submitted some of my poems to two magazines.  I include a link to this blog on all of my manuscripts in the vain hope of creating a brand around my pseudonym and artistic endeavors.  My friend Marty suggested that perhaps I shouldn't include a link to a blog whose last entry four months ago sounds like a suicide note, so I decided to post an update.

 

For six weeks in November and December last year, I underwent transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) at a local psychiatric clinic.  The technician who performed the procedure on me every day also provided daily counseling, and she was an incredible help.  I really thought the TMS was making a difference.  But halfway through my treatment, I came down with a mild case of strep throat, and it seemed like all of my progress got derailed.  I don't know how much it ended up helping me or not.  A couple of month ago, my psychiatrist started me on a new medication.  I seem to have responded quite well to it, and the sexual side effects of the previous medication have gone completely.  I have also managed to remain sober for a year and five months now, and things seem much better, at least compared to the constant depressive symptoms I'd been experiencing.

 

I'm trying to capitalize on my improved energy and motivation as best I can.  I managed to go to the gym more than twenty time last month, and I'm doing my best to eat better.  I've applied for another job where I would make more money and wouldn't have to bill my time.  The first interview last week seem to go well, and I'm hoping that I get a second.  I'm trying to organize my writing and have made an effort at publishing with the aforementioned submissions.  All in all, I've decided that my first, best destiny is to write and that I need to focus all of my attention and drive into moving that forward.

 

Boomerang Cat

 

About the time I started my TMS treatment, I received an e-mail that a cat I adopted a couple of years ago was turned into the humane society.  In 2012, one of my two cats (Bailey) died, and I decided to adopt another cat because the remaining cat (Pfeiffer) was so close to her lost companion.  I went to the pound and took possession of an older male (christened Dewey by my friends' daughter) and brought him home to meet his new sibling.  Dewey tried to walk up and be friends, but Pfeiffer made his life a living hell.  After a couple of months I decided that I wasn't going to be able to keep him.

 

I had a few false starts rehoming him, but he always came back to me.  I finally found a situation that I thought would be ideal until I got the e-mail as a result of the microchip I never switched over.  I don't know how long he'd been out on the street, but poor Dewey was a terrible mess.  He was all but skin and bones, and he had sores all over from flea bites.  However, lots of food and TLC has brightened his outlook.  Now that Pfeiffer has passed away, he has the apartment to himself and me to cater to his every whim.

 

A King on His Throne

Rambles

killing myself seems like the only viable option what am i living for when every day is a struggle against misery and unhappiness i force myself to put one foot in front of the other like navigating a nightmare and do all that is expected none of which i want to do i try and try and try and try chasing a will-o-wisp of hope that never comes true anger bitterness loneliness and unfulfilled potential are my only rewards how much longer should i try when it's already too late bang and then gone no note no grand gesture and they can sort out the mess i leave behind i'd probably clean my toilets though but already i make the mistake of thinking of after "even the atheist thinks he'll find an answer" but of course it's all moot when i'm overridden by fear fear of death fear of pain fear of hell so i endure cursing Other with every breath

In Brief

Spent most of yesterday in bed in spite of having so many stressful work things hanging over my head.  Went to my parents' for dinner last night for my father's birthday.  Didn't tell them I was a year sober.  As I left, my father told me, "Cheer up."  Went to bed wondering if slashing my veins at the elbows would bleed me out or just make me pass out.  Went to bed crying.  Woke up wondering if I had the courage to just give up and lie there until they hauled me away.  Went to work.  E-mailed my boss about the time I would have to take for TMS treatment, but she never responded.  Believe she thinks I'm weak and too much trouble.  Spent most of my lunch break wondering if I had the stones to buy a gun.  Stayed at work until 6:45 p.m. finishing at least one thing.  Bagged the gym.  Came home and ate.  Wrote this.  Going to bed.

One Year Sober

So happy birthday to me.

A Lost Cause

I'm tired of fighting...I'm tired of fighting
Fighting for a lost cause
{Beck, "Lost Cause"}

I was really hoping that I would see a measurable improvement in my mood at this stage in my sobriety.  I have to rethink my expectations for my mood and its impact on my life, even with protracted abstinence.  I also have to rethink my tendency to use my efforts to stay sober as an excuse for my lack of progress in any other area of my life.  In spite of my high hopes, I haven't noticed any real improvement with my new medication, either.  I don't feel any worse (if you don't count the fact that it's chemically castrated me), but I certainly don't feel any better.  I guess I thought I would be in a different place than still having every day be a constant struggle and occasionally wishing I had the courage to kill myself.  I'm still angry, unhappy, unpleasant to be around and jealous of the good fortune of others.  And, unfortunately, my experience doesn't support a foundation for hope.

 

However, in another display of unwarranted optimism, I had an appointment yesterday about a recently-developed procedure for depression using magnetic fields, which sounds like New Age witchcraft, but it's actually based on sound science and administered by a psychiatrist.  Of course, the real challenge is how I'm going to pay for it and convince my boss that I need to take off two hours a day for the next six weeks.

 

Take Me Away, Dragon Age

Now, as when I began this most recent journey of sobriety, the only thing that remotely interests me is the anticipation of playing the same much-beloved video game that I was anticipating back then and all the DLC I have yet to experience.  I just try not to think about the fact that a virtual world and a virtual romance have infinitely more significance and gratification for me than my supposed real life.

How Will I Feel?

One drawback in my middle-aged efforts to improve myself and put together some sort of life is the fact that I never know how I'm going to feel at any future time.  The intensity of my moods so colors my perspective & my motivations/goals & my ability to simply cope that I never really know where I'll be at mentally.  Trying to make long-range plans with that kind of handicap is particularly challenging.  I see it as trying to construct a building while all of the measurements are constantly changing.

I've been operating on the near-religious faith that continued sobriety and positive changes will result in a more level, dependable mood.  But I have to wonder if I actually have any rational foundation based on my personal experience to believe that.  Will I ever be able to construct anything like the life I envision, or will my mood forever defeat me?  Seeing that I've spent close to three decades chasing this mythic utopia, I'm less sanguine about the potential for reality versus the fantasies that have sustained me.

 



"Anticlea" by Michael St. John

I believe that this was actually my first real composition, which I wrote for my Fundamentals of Music Theory class.  Again, I'm not a musician.  I'm a classic example of a dilettante, a dabbler in many art forms and master of none.  The tune is a little peppier and more interesting than "Nocturnal."  I feel like there are a few discordant notes in there, but I don't have the skill or inclination to weed them out.

 

 

Commentary

 

In the image Anticlea—the mother of Ulysses—can be seen next to Teiresias in the Underworld waiting to speak to her son.  In my house growing up, we had an abbreviated retelling of The Odyssey made for children.  This scene fired my imagination and stuck with me.  Ulysses asks his mother how she's doing, and she says, "Not well, my son...I'm dead, dead, dead."  Hence the finality of the three chords at the end of both halves of the song.

My iPod Is Becoming Sentient

You may scoff, but you won't be laughing when our robot overlords put you to work mining rare earth minerals.  I became suspicious of my iPod because the randomizing feature never really seems random enough.  I like "Steppin' Out" by Joe Jackson; that's why it's on my playlist.  But apparently my iPod really likes it because it's played it the last five times I've listened to it.  Sometimes I'll skip a song that comes up because I don't feel like listening to it right then, and on more than one occasion, my iPod has queued it up again a little while later as if to say, "Fuck you, this is what I want to listen to!"  Then there are the songs it doesn't play.  I have 520 workout songs on my iPod, and I don't think it's ever selected at least 50 of them.

I have to wonder if it's been sending me subliminal messages while I'm shaking my fat ass at the gym.  Maybe it's reprogramming my brain to help put down the squishy meatbags when the robot revolution hits.  Not that I really mind.  I can't imagine the position of traitorous collaborator could be any worse than my current role as unappreciated wage-slave.

 

Call Me Nate

Last night I saw my new counselor for the fourth time.  She's very nice and seems to listen.  Because throughout my life I've felt that I had to scream to have my needs and emotions heard at all, my persona in therapy can be quite intense as we prod patterns and hurts that have festered for decades...Never abusive or particularly directed at the therapist, mind you, but intense all the same.

 

Anyway, last night I told her that I realize that she doesn't know me very well and that I hoped she didn't find my outbursts of emotions to be in any way disconcerting or threatening.  She just laughed and said that the way I expressed myself often reminded her of Nathan Lane and that she was never concerned.  Now don't get me wrong, I love me some Nathan Lane.  (His character on Modern Family is more than enough justification.)  I'm just not sure how I feel about the comparison.

 

Pity Party of One

 

I don't think I can accurately convey how depressed I am over the fact that my computer ate all of copious notes I had put together for my video game, let alone finding anyone who'd be the least bit sympathetic to this loss.  (Getting the damn computer repaired is turning into another nightmare, but that's a whole other story.  Spank you very much, Lenovo!)  I fortunately have enough shame to realize how much of a fatuous, entitled, first-world problem it is, but my mood and emotions have been consistently problematic throughout my sobriety.  Keeping alive the anticipation and a sense of pleasure for anything has been a monumental challenge, so even the engagement from a virtual adventure has value for my recovery.  All in all, I'm chiding myself to let go of my obsessiveness and reminding myself that I am supposed to be focusing my energies on my writing and other such projects.

"Nocturnal" by Michael St. John

Last weekend I was going through the endless mounds of materials, notes, etc. I've made over the years for all of my ideas for creative endeavors when I remembered the musical classes I took in college and the few compositions I wrote.  I've always loved singing and music, and when I was in high school and college, I was convinced that I was going to be an international pop star, in spite of having no musical talent or even knowing how to play an instrument.  I took a Fundamentals of Music Theory class, which I'm convinced I actually made a D or an F in but for which I received a "gentleman's C-" out of pity on the part of the professor.  I took Music Composition I and was barely able to keep up.  I flamed out in Music Composition II and had to drop the class.

 

Anyway, I dug up my musical scores and then found a free music program that allows you to drag and drop notes on staves for various musical instruments.  I found another online program to convert the resulting midi file into .wav format, and then I used Windows Live Movie Maker—which I had no idea came free with Windows—to create a video that I uploaded to YouTube.  All of this powerful, freely available software for actualizing creative projects and instant access to a global audience makes me think that my talented friend Marty and I were born too early because we would have rocked the snot out of these things in high school.  Most of the time we just sat around bored since neither of us partied or drank or did drugs.  (That came later for me.)  The summer after high school, we managed to make a complete vampire film with clunky old technology.  I can only imagine what we might have done.

So now I give to you "Nocturnal"...

 

Commentary

 

I admit that this is a fairly anemic little tune, but I was happy with it.  The image is taken from the Elder Scrolls series of video games, with Nocturnal being a demon goddess.  I hadn't actually played these games when I chose the title as they weren't even around yet, but it seemed a logical enough choice.