I’ve had a longstanding conflict with the idea of this site. <\/p>\n
On the one hand, I feel that focusing enough mental energy on my problems to write about them has the side effect of amplifying them in my mind, bringing me to a deeper level of depression than I might otherwise experience. My only workable strategy for handling my depression these days is to try to think as little as possible about my life — this means, no planning ahead, no thought about my failing health, dental problems, financial and tax nightmares, basic income shortfalls, occupational difficulties, mental illness, loneliness, social disabilities, etc. I live as much as possible moment-to-moment, an approach which is almost certainly ultimately adding to my problems, but keeps me from being completely overwhelmed emotionally.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, I think about these things anyway as it’s impossible to avoid it completely, and as I wrestle with the possibility of ultimately taking my own life it seems like it would be best to leave some sort of record of how things could reach that point. I feel like I have many problems that are nearly universal, but many more still that I have never heard anyone else discuss, and writing these things down might help answer some questions later on.<\/p>\n
So, once again I return to contributing to this journal. <\/p>\n
What’s changed, or happened at all really, in the past couple years? Not a lot beyond what you might expect. My life has continued its downward spiral, the car project I’m working on still hasn’t been finished and I’m in a state of perpetual panic about it. My situation at the hackerspace with the obviously derelict project is becoming a deepening embarassment to me and a subject of increasingly frequent and confused questions about its status and my own. My morning conversations with my mother, once a source of mental stability and a guiding hand through times of unrelenting darkness, have now become nearly meaningless. I can no longer talk to my mother about the pain in my life; it’s too much for her to bear. As a result she thinks that my life is trending slowly upward, a misrepresentation I feel powerless to correct.<\/p>\n
Of course, I am still alone. And I still can’t focus on anything or remember anything. And I am heading down exactly the path I’ve been afraid of for years, and I still have nearly zero hope that there will ever be a meaningful improvement.<\/p>\n
Until I get off of this train, I might as well make note of what happens along the way. I’ve set up an Android client for editing posts, so this is something I can do somewhat more conveniently from a tablet now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve had a longstanding conflict with the idea of this site. On the one hand, I feel that focusing enough mental energy on my problems to write about them has the side effect of amplifying them in my mind, bringing me to a deeper level of depression than I might otherwise experience. My only workable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/phototropia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/phototropia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/phototropia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phototropia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phototropia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/phototropia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40,"href":"https:\/\/phototropia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions\/40"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/phototropia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phototropia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phototropia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}