2019.08.28
I noticed it last night, that I was self-medicating alternating with an iOS game (Archero - which is really quite a satisfying little adventure) and reading the novel "Today Will Be Different". I knew I might feel a bit better if I hunkered down on some porchfest or loveblender tasks but I was just not feeling it.
(Another symptom of something being off, from this very entry: I'm using colons and semi-colons. I hardly ever use colons and semi-colons, and I fear I don't use them well.)
I don't take much stock in my own intrinsic feelings, and that's somewhere between wise self-analysis and a self-fulfilling prophecy. (I am profoundly shallow, my entire nervous system and philosophical system are grounded in how surface interactions are more critical in their accountability than obscured inner states.) But I wonder if this very occasionally recurring heap of the blahs was accurately diagnosed by my buddy Dylan as low level depression (but I think think he thinks that about everybody) or as a pileup of anhedonia (inability to feel pleasure) my therapist once mentioned me having... and are those just descriptions or useful signposts for corrections or adaptions?
But despite being aware that this might be a "the call is coming from inside the house!!!!" thing, I can see some external factors:
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First and foremost: I got a new financial advisor who helped me do a general inventory. (Erica Hubbard in Charlestown- super recommended from friends) The news is generally solid and good, the result of the extraordinary terrific fortune of stumbling into a tech career without much debt and then dutifully maxing out 401Ks as they came up. In fact - almost too good, in that she plotted out a plan with me retiring or at least downshifting in 10 years, not the 20 I'd consider traditional. Holy crap! On the one hand, that's great. I feel like I've always been good at having a pile of personal projects going, and with just a bit if discipline would make good use of a retired state. On the other hand... to quote the poet Samuel Menashe:
Before long the end
The concept of early retirement opens some doors but closes many others - and bring homes a sobering realization that many of the paths not taken just ain't gonna be taken by me this go-round. (Or in the realm of romance, the haz-beens of breakups and the never-wuzes of crushes... or my poignant knack of being the penultimate romantic interest.)
Of the beginning
Begins to bend
To the beginning
Of the end you live
With some misgivings
About what you did. - Work is a bit of a grind. I'm doing a lot of stuff to increase accessibility on my company's website. Important stuff, but a bunch of small victories (and some frustrating deferrals) in an endless war.
- Melissa is having a frustrating time at work, and I know my advice for looking on the bright side or understanding about hedonic setpoints ain't always useful.
- My weight has been more or less stuck above 200 for a year and a half, and not that I'm that strict with myself but it feels like it requires too much discipline just to keep it there.
- I get some anxiety about not doing enough for the bands I'm in, or having to pick between competing gigs for two bands, or between a band gig where I know I'd be useful vs other commitments.
- I've noticed my typing getting somewhat worse - the odd phonetic typos I make becoming more rampant. I feel like it spiked a few weeks ago and receded but still... I feel it might be a side effect of a kind of growth but there's a risk that it represents decay.
- As always, the general fears of the age. The arctic's on fire, and our president is mostly intent on making the most compelling reality television possible.