Thoughts

Hoping not to mortgage any future I may aspire to

Pelgris1 Comment

Fantasies. We all have them. Some are pleasant and diverting. Some sexual and arousing. Some dark and deadly. But some are dangerous.

The ones I fimd most dangerous are the ones that seem tangible. The ones that could be. Often, these are the fantasies which do the most damage.

That dream of better furniture. Better car. Better computer. Better clothes. It all mounts up and we can convince ourselves that going into debt for these things is a good thing. That these things will make our lives better. I’ve been there. I’ve bought the nice thing. Hell, even enjoyed the nice thing. But the debt of it dragged on me. It made and still makes my life harder.

Now. I don’t indulge on the fantasy of the possible. I still have hopes. Still dream of better. But I don’t project myself into that dream. Don’t try to force that future into shape. Hoping that by having I’ll be happy. Mostly. I’m still human. Looking forward, looking back. To a tomorrow a little bit better than today. Trying not to sabotage my future, by leveraging my present, to aquire a few baubles.

No matter how much they call to me.

A belated book review

PelgrisLeave a comment

I’ve been reading a book series by an author going by the pen name Shirtaloon. It’s about a Australian man who gets transported to another world via a summons gone wrong.

I find the series intelligently written though with editing mistakes and word placement which can be attributed to the self publication process.

I tore through the first 3 quite large books which are available for purchase on Amazon or through Kindle Unlimited. At the end of book 3, with the next book slated for a December release. However, the author has a Patreon. And on checking, I found that he had the equivalent of 4 more books available to read. I signed up immediately.

I’ve blazed through those 4 books and am stuck reading each chapter as they come out.

These books have evoked strong feelings in the community of folks who read LitRpg. For 2 reasons. The first is that the protagonist is perceived as almost rabidly atheist. That’s not how I read the motivations. I found him to have some of my same attitudes. In a monotheistic society, any dissension is seen as attack. But any true theist should welcome contention.
Faith which is not examined, which is not tested; is not faith. Instead, it is zealotry and zealotry is not something to aspire to.

Now this protagonist has no innate respect for authority. Any authority. Including God or gods. And that resonates with me. Respect is earned. He’s new to their world. They haven’t built up any goodwill. Why should he bow and scrape.

The second point of contention is that he’s political and he goes on little rants. But that’s not contrived and his friends and later, even himself makes comments about it.

I recommend the series He Who Fights Monsters to anyone who likes cultivation or gamelit. Or anyone who just likes good fantasy. Cause this is definitely it.

Watching the weeds grow through the grass

PelgrisLeave a comment

Driving home from work though a corridor of tree lined streets with a mountain in the distance makes me regret that I work from home most of the time. Though not actually. Working from home is great for me.

I suppose what I’m missing is the world. Outside of the safe space of my home. In a place of relative safety, I can be whomever I am. Without the expectations of others or my pushing back against those expectations. I can just be.

Coupled with the almost too warm but not hot weather, it is a balm to body and soul.

Something I wish I could have more of.

More quiet. Less worry. More comfort.
It’s something, I think, we all need.

When the edge crumbles away

Pelgris3 Comments

The saddest part of growing older is that the relationships you’ve built and the friendships you’ve made all start to fall away.

People take different paths. They take different jobs. Communication slows. Then stops. And when you see them again, you no longer recognize the shape of their soul. They are strangers with vaguely familiar faces.

Good friends build lives with spouses. They have families. Which necessitates changes of focus. Leaving the person without a traditional life, like myself, with few points of juxtaposition. You still try. You all still try. But you can feel that point coming where it’ll be a yearly check-in and a promise to get together which never pans out.

Time grinds us all down and those lacking the ability to for new friendship fall faster and faster.

And here is me. In freefall.

An anniversary I would love to forget

Pelgris3 Comments

I’m coming up on 16 years since I lost Morgan. It feels odd to no longer feel the sharp pain of her loss and yet to still feel the dull empty of absence.

The last 2 years I haven’t even realized why I was feeling depressed until it smacked me in the face and I let out a soft ‘oh’.

I’ve grown around and beyond the pain of losing her but it never goes away. I know that for some it does and those people feel like aliens to me. I can’t understand how they can look back on everything and just remember the happy.

Or all those loss tropes of you have one year then go out and find someone new. Doing a disservice to whoever you meet as well as yourself. If you aren’t ready, aren’t at least healing, then doing that isn’t what is needed.

As if grief is something you can change by shear force of will.

No one asks the person with a shattered spine to run marathons in a year. Yet with grief and other emotional and mental damage we are asked to shed those bonds. As if we aren’t human. As if our humanity has to be put on hold so that society who was only tangentially effected, can move on.

Well, fuck that.

But also, fuck this horrible empty.

Dreams after insomnia are super weird

PelgrisLeave a comment

The dreams that really get me are the pnes which aren’t scary during the dream. The ones which are so real that it feels like living a whole other life. A life entire, until something completely weird happens. It this case it was a hole cut into my skull and inside was a steamer trunk full of bloody leather waistcoats and bloody jeans, a 5 gallon orange water cooler which sloshed in a disconcerting way, and a little jar of vaporub.

I was frantic that there was this huge hole in my skull but these items filled be with terror. Not of the items, but that they would be found and traced back to me.

It was super weird. And there was some subplot where a mobster was trying to escape but his lover dies and somehow she had a kid after dying and he was looking for the kid and the description for the kid was to just look for the most unbearably romantic starry eyed kid which was remarked to be the least useful description.

And the mobster or the kid or the lover weren’t me. I was just watching this unfold.

And during the dream this was all normal and fine. But now I’m awake, and I’m left with a what does it mean. Usually its bits and pieces taken from my day to day. The vaporub was from a youtube video about a Genie from the South. The mobster was probably from a article I read about the show, The Sopranos. The rest of it…. Just what the fuck.

Labor day has its roots in death and fire

PelgrisLeave a comment

Labor day is the direct result of labor regulations. The 40 hour work week is the direct result of labor regulations. The minimum wage is a direct result of labor regulations. The ban on child labor is a direct result of labor regulations.

The laws which made these regulations are less than a hundred years old. In fact, they are 84 years old. We have sitting members of congress who are older than these laws.

The minimum wage has been gutted. What was intended as enough money for a person to live a decent life is now less than a third of the average expenses of a single person living alone let alone a family.

The 40 hour work week is a farce. With forcing people into the so called ‘gig economy’, that protection goes out the window. Because they are now classified as contractors and contractors set their own hours. Even though most contractors, in fact, have set hours they must work. Add in office workers who suddenly find that they are listed as salaried workers which means they no longer have to pay them overtime and we see that the 40 hour work week has become a thinly veiled farce.

As to child labor? Children are allowed to work for family businesses or as young as 14 with the consent of their guardian. While this is the most unchanged of the original law, it is still being eroded. Albeit at a slower pace.

84 year. And the systemic dismantling has been ongoing for at least the last 40 years.

That’s what this day is about. And any conservative that tries to sell you some other bullshit about patriotism or other nonsense, I kindly ask that you sit down and shut up. For once.

Time travel sideways

Pelgris1 Comment

I hold with the maxim, “If you haven’t been to sleep, it’s not a new day.” This sort of tongue-in-cheek mantra is semi-necessary for someone who has insomnia as much as I do. It’s right up there with “Pain is weakness leaving the body”, for both being complete bullshit and yet oddly effective.

Our brains believe what we tell them. Especially with even a thin veneer of conviction. It’s why depression brain is so effective. I know it’s lying. I know that what it says is at the least an inaccurate representation. But the more it says it, the more my brain internalizes the false message. And to break those chains, it takes positive words. Words that you can believe which are, at the very least, neutral.

I substituted every time that my brain tried to insist that I would be better off dead, with I am loved. It worked though it took a long time and those thoughts aren’t gone but their power is greatly diminished.

That is my coping skill. I talk to my brain. To my body. And I try to flip the script.

Will it work for others? I don’t know. But knowing that there are different methods, knowing that there are different paths, has to help.

And, if nothing else, even if at some point in the future I fail in my battles, maybe if it helps someone else…it’ll have been worth it.

But that’s just me. What I feel. We all must determine our own path and finding it, walk it.

The slow failure of the great experiment

PelgrisLeave a comment

I’m tired
Tired of being affronted by their lack of compassion
Tired of the blindness they exhibit of their own hypocrisy
I’d prefer it of they were cynical in their reasoning rather than impassioned
Because at least then they would know that they are manipulating their reality
At least then they would know that what they do is to further their goals without regard to the human cost
Instead we have individuals who on any given day would be giving to charity and being kind
All the while frothing at the mouth over some perceived injustice where someone who is has less than them somehow makes them impoverished
As if the poor have some kind of leg up because they are getting help
Meanwhile they have figured out how to never pay taxes. So that their money doesn’t help anyone but themselves. So that they can keep crying that other people who don’t deserve it are getting ‘free’ things.
Its sickening and like watching the corruption of the human spirit in real time and I just don’t have the strength to be outraged.
I’m disappointed.
I wish humanity had not shown how thoroughly it has failed. How this nation has failed.
But there’s nothing left but the too tired flailing of someone without power begging for people to care
Even as my own capacity wanes

Thoughts on a mind in a broken world

PelgrisLeave a comment

Is it weird to miss that heightened state of alertness? That paranoid hyper vigilance which comes from trauma?
Because, I miss it. It was the one thing that made me feel power over my anxiety and depression. The thought being, at least I can see what others can’t. Can know what others don’t. Be aware of the world in a way that few are.

I know why I lost it. I spent alot of effort to no longer be constantly aware of every little thing. And I’m not saying it’s gone completely. When my anxiety flares or when I’m in a genuinely unknown or scary situation its back. But in my day to day, its gone.

But still, is it weird to miss one of the things which defined you? Which you used in proactive ways? Even if it was harmful overall.

It may be odd. It may just be human nature. To miss what was, even if what was, was harmful.