Cattywampus

My diet is going to hell now.  I haven't updated my tracking sheet in over a week.  I just pigged out in a major way over lunch today and I ate a big (500 cal) midmorning snack.  I can feel my stomach stretching from the huge lunch portion I consumed.

I am so freaking ashamed of myself. I have no excuse for my actions.  I have no self control to speak of.  So I just got finished with the weekend and it is a shameful mess.  I feel the need for fast for another 3 weeks until the new year.  But, of course I don't have the ability.  I will just have to keep trying (and hoping for a different outcome than before) which is, of course, insane.

There are a few basics I can depend on.  I have goals:

1. Be a good Christian
1. Study
2. Meetings
3. Prayer
4. Service
2. Take Care of myself physically
1. Loose Weight
2. Exercise
3. Take care of myself (and others as needed) fiscally
1. Work hard and feel good about the work I do (if possible)
2. Conduct myself in a fiscally responsible manner
4. Be a good Father
5. Take care of the things in my purview
1. Home
2. Auto
3. Other
6. Entertainment for the sake of Sanity and Continued Productivity

And the goals/responsibilities are so many that I just can't seem to deal with it all.

The ability to shake myself free seems impossible.

I am not making this I am failing.  It is like I need a friend to come along and work beside me to get stuff done.  To give me the encouragement to keep going.  This friend does not seem to exist.  If he does, I wouldn't ask for fear of taking his time from more important things.  I don't have any real friends to speak of.  I had a friend or two before.  But I didn't know what I had and didn't cultivate that friendship.

More Self Hate

So I am just a piece of excrement unceremoniously extruded from a dog's anus.  I am all grown up and now I am growing old.  When I was young, I thought I was some hot shit.  I have now come to realize that I am nothing more than a steaming pile.

There was a company "thing" recently (typical this time of year.)  No one seemed to want to talk to me.  Yes I was late and all the tables were taken.  No one with an excuse to do something else would acknowledge me.  I wasn't totally ignored when I broke into a couple of conversations.  It was telling though when shortly after breaking into a conversation with two other people, they both decided they needed to get something to eat, leaving me standing alone.

Something weird is going on at church.  About one per meeting, someone is speaks to me.  Not engaging in conversations but at least they say something.  I can't tell if this is a change in their attitude fundamentally or if it is because my kid started coming to the meetings with me. Everyone used to like my kid.  But once my kid was kicked out for breaking the rules then people stopped talking to me as well.  That doesn't totally explain it though.  My kid was coming with me to church for several weeks.  That all went to crap though. what worries me about the current situation is that I really believe it will stop soon enough.  It always has in the past.  This never lasts.

I have begun to really loathe my situation, who I am, what hangs over me.  I just want this to be over, but it won't end.  And when the end does come it will be slow and painful and embarrassing and humiliating.  I just can't get up, can't climb out, can't move hardly at all.  And when God finds me in that position he is going to know that I really could have done better and to the best of my ability to understand his expectations and the consequences of their failure, he will kill me.

Diet and Death

I'm into this diet for a few weeks now.   It is officially "on."  In other words I am taking it seriously but, as usual as soon as I get comfortable that it is working, it stops working.  A year or more ago I had started a diet like this in April and it lasted, for the most part, until Thanksgiving at which point I let it go totally.

I have discovered I have a major problem with nuts.  I can't have them around and I have stopped trying to overcome that temptation.  I just don't buy them anymore.  I have also taken to largely fasting during the work day.  When I have a lot of meetings, this provides enough of a distraction that I am not as bothered by the hunger.

Anyway I am sensing that this has an adverse affect on my thinking.  The brain uses carbs to restore its ability to make decisions.  I am finding myself coasting more (mentally speaking) and so I decided to get lunch today.  I did find that the much smaller food portions of late have shrunk my stomach and I couldn't even finish a small "plate" of sushi roll.  (Good for me!)

I need to get back to work though. It was really discouraging to find that the last corporate management change over is not working out well.  The new management team wants short term results.  No real understanding of the market we are in.  To them we are just another construction company, as though Health Care is just another business.

I am going to the meeting tonight.  I am excited and tense about it.  I always hate going, as any faithful reader of this blog can't help but note.

I think the motivation for this diet, (I have been trying to loose weight for decades) came from me really studying myself in the mirror and being thoroughly disgusted with what I see.  I have long known that I am fat, but I didn't see it for a long time. I kept looking at myself from the front.  Several years ago I looked at myself from the side and saw how big I look.  It took several additional years to work through the denial but I now know beyond doubt that I am fat, and how to take meaningful action to address the issue.  Of course there was the motivation to do so and, at least for the moment, I have enough to continue.  So much more to the story but I am sure I've exhausted my readers' (presuming there are any such) attention.

I really wanted to talk about death in this post.  It is sneaking closer.  I can feel it and smell it but it isn't as obvious as it typically is.  I think that I will be soon in a life and death struggle in my own head.  I suppose I usually am as I struggle to do God's will in the severely limited and stilted way that I do.  That is certainly life and death enough.

It is coming closer in a more tangible way as I wrestle with the final/ultimate solution.  I think I am getting exhausted with the hurting and the problems looming over my head.  I just "can't" handle that.  Now that the company is going down for another dip into the viability meter "Danger" hash marks, I may just check out.  The really wild thing is that the new owners are just making these bloodthirsty screams for profits and yet they know next to nothing about the market this company serves.

The Trap

Well, the kid moved  back in this weekend.  The drama was mild but certainly there.  Her insurance is almost cancelled on her car and I don't want her driving it around.  She agreed.  And then when she left for work today, she drove off in her uninsured car.

God loves me but I don't recognize my perception of it very poignantly now.  I feel like I am still an enemy of God, as I was labeled by my censuring committee.  I keep repeating the God will kill me soon.  And why not.  I know what he wants and I refuse to do it.  I don't tell others about his expectations and the benefits of ceding to them.  I don't like being with his people.

I went to the first "Sunday" service in months and it felt good because I wasn't surrounded by the congregation about which I would ordinarily be.  It felt much better.  Less stressful.  Anyway it is an awful time I am going into now.  I hate what I am presented with and I wish I could just end it all.  The final solution is looking pretty good now.  It isn't like I am really suffering much.  I am a typical spoiled american.  I am not hungry, my family wasn't killed by rebels in front of my own eyes.  I am now aware of any horrid disease that will leave me crippled and/or without sound mind.  I am simply  distressed about my abject refusal to serve God.  Why would I be this way.  I know Jehovah God to be a good and loving individual.  But the standards he sets are so very high, it seems impossible for me to reach them.  It isn't though, with his help even I could (presuming there is enough time to do so.)  Apparently, I just don't want it.

I seem to want what Satan offers more:  the "temporary enjoyment of sin."  I feel I am missing something by not having some of that sin.  But the more I have indulged in the sin the more bitter my life, and the more sin I want.  I see the trap, I examine the fine quality of its construction, I see (at least at some level) how it works.  I know the way out and yet I am still captured thereby.  This is one fine device.  When the victim can see it, figure it out, understand its workings and yet I remain clutched.

Damocles

So I paused over the title but, as is customary, I moved to the blog input box and just started typing.  As usual.  I'll figure out the title when I'm done.  In case anyone hasn't figured out, this is just the blog of a deeply disturbed individual who finds writing down his troubles to be somewhat calming.


Deeply disturbed is correct, but not as depressed as oh, say a year ago at this time.  It has been a long struggle to come up from the mire of depression.  The journey continues.  I am not well.  I still consider the ultimate solution but not with the seriousness and the propensity to act as once existed not so long ago.  Fear not, dear reader,  I am not a deeply disturbed violent criminal; or maybe to some of you that is a disappointment.  I am just a man fighting for his sanity.

It is a week later and in the interim my child of twenty something years has asked to move back home.  This is good news since I am falling apart.  He or she is worth living for to try to help.  Myself, well not so much.  I took a couple of days off, Monday and Tuesday of this week.  I intended to use it as a time to go to my other house and do a little much needed maintenance.  Instead I sat around eating and watching TV all 3 days.  Thankfully there was a need to be back at work early and I didn't spend the 4th day as such.

I went to "the meeting" what I call going to church.  For cryin' out loud for this audience (such that it is,) why don't I just say "I went to church?".  Ok, so, I went to church this week.  It was not any special meeting just the typical mid week service.  I resist going because everyone is so happy and cheerful.  The congregation censured me earlier imposing restrictions on my activity therein for the last 7 or 8 years so I can go but am not supposed to engage in certain of the activities.

I don't fit in there (really I don't fit in anywhere,) and my attendance is usually coming into the sanctuary with about 60 seconds prior to the meeting start.  I usually walk up the aisle next to the wall and sit on the far left side (as out of the way as possible.)  This time that aisle was clogged with people chatting happily amongst themselves.  so I had to walk up the more heavily populated (but wider so there was room to pass) left center aisle.  I passed the chief on my censorship committee and he did the customary "Hi, howyadoin' greeting"  I shook his hand but really wanted to just get past him.  I don't mind trying to make friends, it is just that these people just want make an appearance, a show of friendship.  It is supposed to be something more, but then, I am supposed to love God.  They aren't the problem, I am.  I was rightfully censured and probably should have been expelled.

I just hate what this is all about, but it is like having a tooth pulled.  You have to go through a whole lot of intense pain, but you are better off in the end.  I just feel like there is a ton of bricks (in actuality, it is the IRS) hanging over my head and ready to drop.  It might not be so bad if it fell all at once and I die not knowing what hit me.  But they (the bricks or the IRS depending on how literally you want to take this) will descend slowly.  I will see the pain and feel the crushing weight and watch/feel/smell the life being crushed out of me.

Decision Fatigue

So I heard/read an article recently that indicated that the brain can actually get tired of making decisions and as the fatigue sets in, the quality of our decisions decreases.  There are some perverse consequences.  The poor for example may experience decision fatigue while shopping and end their shopping trip with a stop by a fast-food restaurant.  The rich who go along filling their shopping carts without much of a second thought pass the (often in-store) restaurant looking down their noses at those poor people making such an unwise spending decision. If the tables were turned, however and those rich had just experienced the mental exercises of trying to get the most value from very limited funds, they may find themselves making the same or worse financial decisions.

I have long noticed (as I suppose many others have) that meetings in which I am an active participant are very tiring.  It used to be very exhausting until I grew accustomed to days with several meetings in each.

The research on the subject is clear and verified.  It is not my imagination.  It reminds me of the constant pressure from the "organization" to simplify my life.  I always figured that I could just handle it.  I know what the hell I'm doing.  I'm just more capable than the rest, so I thought.  In reality I am more stupid for not following that advice.  Each and every time I think I know better I am proved so totally freaking wrong.  What an idiot I have come to realize that I have been all these years.

Big sigh, so what else is new.  I remember feeling the crushing weight of the realization of my mistakes a few years ago, Was it 5, 7, 3 years ago?  I don't really remember.  I do recall that deep and burning shame, anger (with myself) and deep disappointment when I understood that I had totally wasted my life, that now I am old and the doors are almost all closed.  It still hurts, though living with that disappointment for years now, I feel the pain less acutely than then.  It is there though.  What a screw-up I am.

I keep hoping that something will break loose one day.  And it doesn't.  So I just carry on day by day.  Things are all to shit and I don't see a way out of it.  The ultimate solution seems logical from tactical viewpoint.  Strategically I know it doesn't make sense.  Oh yes and it's wrong.  So I just carry on day by day.

Music

So, I have to listen to music all the time now.  I can't work without it.  It seems as though the music quells some region in my brain that interferes with my ability to focus on any given task.  It seems almost like I have ADD (from an uneducated layman's perspective.)  Basically I think of a task and then think of a dozen other things that are tangentially related to that task (or to a task tangential to the original.)  It usually takes a good bit of time to organize all the tasks I think I need to do and then pull out one focus on that and get it done. 

When music is playing in the background (as it is now) I seem to be able to focus and carry out what I need to do.  Symphonic Goth Metal is my genre of choice.  Epica, Evanescence and Within Temptation are all my favorites.  I was even looking into flying to Europe for the release event of the latest Epica album.  Fortunately it only took several minutes to come to my senses and stop.  There are still dendrils (for you Asimov fans) pointing in that direction.

I go back and forth closer and farther from the ultimate solution.  Right now it seems to be receding from thoughts but with a solution nowhere close and continued frustration about my unwillingness to return to God, I know it is never far from consciousness.  I stop several times a day to grasp my head and emote over my desperation.  But there seems to be nothing I am capable of doing.  Professional help is just so expensive.  And I desperately hate insurance companies.