A Lesson on Why Never to Leave God

So I am still here bloated belly and all.  I still HMS, no surprise there.  I feel like I might after a very long workout.  Yes you can drag yourself into the shower and do the perfunctory business, but you feel exhausted; raising your arms is a chore.  I feel mentally exhausted with working for a living.  I know that I need a long break.  Looking forward to that.  Much work to do in the meantime, though.

I was up at 2:00 AM today.  couldn't sleep due to an impending deadline.  Feeling the pain of such an early rise right now.

I guess I don't have too much to say now.  I am OOC on my diet.  Spirituality is at a really deep low.  Spending fast and loose.  Cars breaking, needing tires and stuff.  What a mess.  I am afraid to mention other things that seem to be going not to badly for fear that I will break that as well.  F*ck!! IHMS.

I don't like using language like this.  I prefer to express myself more eloquently.  Using the correct word that expresses my sentiments precisely.  However I am not a writer, not one with broad vocabulary such that the precisely correct word animates my fingertips as the emotion rises.  So I resort to street language.  A poor choice, but it gets the message across.  Of course another message comes right along with the intended message.  Oh, this guy is just an ignorant street thug.  Well ignorant may be correct, certainly ignorant of a better choice of words.  "Street thug?"  Hardly.  I wouldn't survive 2 1/2 minutes on an inner city street.  Enough of that SOC.

Back at work on Saturday.  Still can't develop the motivation needed to get myself working productively.  Oh well.

Big leap forward to Thursday.  I feel like I am just falling again.  Loosing all the things I tried to work through, spiritual progress (and all the meetings, prayer, study, etc  .  .  . ), eating too much, watching nrop, not working hard enough, living like a pig, derelict houses.  It tears at my psyche.  Everything drags me down.  Now my kid is living with me.  Trying to be a good pattern for him in some ways helps, and it feels like more pressure/pain.  His mother has just thrown up her hands and said, you handle it.  In some sense that is good because she is so awful at it.  Of course she allowed him to fall as far as he did and then she hands him back to me.

I even stopped trying for a while, but it is like a walking motion.  You keep striding in your sleep.  Even when presented with obvious chances for sex, I refused or somehow screwed up the opportunity.  But I am coming to realize again that this situation is all but hopeless.  God wants more than what I am willing to give.  He wants exclusive devotion.  Certainly that's reasonable.  He created us, so he gets to set the standard for what is acceptable to him.  He wants us to be happy; He wants what is best for us.

I continue to decide against God's standards and do things that are diametrically opposed to his measure of correctness.   So when I run to his congregation, I bounce off.  All Satan has to do is just put a small object (doesn't even have to be very bright or shiny) in or along side and just off my intended path and I take that tangent as it arcs rapidly away from the one God would have me follow.  It goes down rabbit holes that are murderously hideous and complicating.  My life is like a labyrinth of missed opportunities and failed chances.  The rest is a complicated web of left over attempts at careers that failed or stalled.  Nothing ever works out well.  I am just so thoroughly ashamed.  But shame is a selfish emotion.  I just have to get over that.  But how?

Every solution is a long and complicated path.  Several things have to go right for a long time before I get back on a good and decent and reasonably correct course, even if it includes, as I anticipate, paying back a 300,000 dollar debt.

I just hate what has become of me.  I can't help but realize my problems, but I can't overcome them either.  There seems to be only one constant solution that gets me out of this with a level of complexity that I can really handle.

I hoped that it would work out with the "truth."  But the committee is just so intent on not opening that stinking festering box which my case has become.  I think that they just want to keep ignoring it, replacing it with other important business, of which there is a superabundance.  So the box remains closed, stinking and festering further.  So far 3 separate CO's (Read: super elders such as those who sat on my censorship committee) have tipped the lid on the case at various stages of putrefaction.  In most cases they didn't know what they were dealing with and never got the full sense of the problem before they started dispensing the "general" advice:  "read your bible, go tot he meetings, study for them and go out in FS."  Of course if all I needed was this advice, I really wouldn't need their help.  I have known the magic formula "study, meetings, prayer, service" for decades.  As any long term reader knows, the issue is to put it into practice.  How do I get myself to actually do it.  And how do I avoid the pitfalls that are carefully positioned along that path?

I am concluding that I am just not what God wants.  It is not that He doesn't love me.  He loves everyone.  It is just that I have disqualified myself due to my own error.  My addiction to badness precludes the level of assistance that would be needed to help me overcome this.  God has forgiven people who have sinned deeply.  However there are two outstanding factors that make my case severe.  1) I know better.  Having known the "truth" for so long, I know when I am screwing up and choose to do it anyway.  2) I am addicted to the badness.  3) I repel other people.  Most never get to know me.  It isn't a known and conscious thing.  It comes naturally.  It isn't just as respects people in the religion, the same thing happens at work, even though I don't want it to.

The thing about these voluntary committees is that the people on them often don't stay in the same place.  Of my original committee 2/3 of them have gone.  Even of the replacement members (there always have to be 3), 2/3 of those replacement members are gone again.  This case has been alive so long that there is more information forgotten about the original issues than can be reintroduced at any given meeting.  So they sit around and look at the current situation, guess at the past and come to conclusions, that can me made before getting tired of talking about it.  I'm there for part of the meeting.  But based on the overly general questions they ask, they themselves are not focused.  They do ask some specific and focused questions, but they don't seem to respond to the answers.  It's just OK well you know you need to read your bible and study more.  Usually that means kicking the can down the road (unless one of the CO's just scolded them for the age of the case.)  I feel a sense of injustice being done against me, but I also know that if these people have errored, it is not intentional.  They are really doing the best they can in the context of the rest of their lives.  And if, maybe, they are taking short-cuts and aren't giving adequate consideration, who am I to judge them.  God lets it happen, quite possibly because he doesn't want me back anyway.  Bad fruit may be automatically rejected for the wrong reasons, but the decision is nonetheless correct.

It reminds me of the double error that resulted in coming to 1914.  It was the right year, for two of the wrong reasons, but does that matter?

So why don't i just give up, give in to Satan and just totally abandon the desire to do God's will?  Well, the reward is pretty awesome if I could myself operating correctly.  2) I would be happier now if I did so.  3) my kid would benefit from a good role model and would quite possibly die from a bad role model, as is currently happening.  On the other side of the coin, what I am doing now is so freaking painful.  Every day I wake up to my failures.  I can't get even two steps in the correction before failing again and incurring all the frustration that brings about.

One of the reasons I can't seem to get of my posterior is that I am in depression's deadly embrace of despair and hopelessness.  As you can see the situation is pretty hopeless.  Yes, I know, "with God all things are possible."  But this has been going on for almost 8 years now.  I am not moving forward, rather, I am receding from the goal of returning to God.  Is this an elaborate test?  Yes and No.  It is a test, and as it is happening, it is allowed by God.  However God will give us the strength to endure tests if we are faithful.  I am not enduring, hence I am not faithful.  I am being further damaged as time goes on.  I am failing the test.  I have been looking for ways to pass the test and I am failing.

I reach out to little known friends in the hope of building relationships.  The reach is pathetic and fails in all cases.  But God wants me to use that energy reaching out to his organization.  I haven't abandoned the attempt.  I do go to meetings frequently.  I study to varying levels of intensity but less rather than more.  The point is that I have not given up entirely.  I just don't try hard enough.  I know part of the reason I don't try hard enough is depression.  But that's not the whole story b/c If I gave this my best effort I would succeed.  God wouldn't allow Satan to suffocate me for 8 years unless I was complicit.

So I have managed to strike that balance where I hang around this religion, sucking down the resources of its senior staff (elders) and giving nothing (except money, which I won't give to the local congregation choosing to send it to NY instead) in return.  I wish there was a way to bring this to a close.  But, I don't know how to make that happen.  It's all so complicated.  But then again, it really isn't.

What it really comes to is this:  I don't want to do God's will.  When I don't I get mad and look for others to blame, and there the elders are.  So my life is forfeit.  There's no ransom left for me.  The longer I live the more I get in the way of my kid, who seems to want to  do God's will.  Or in the way of my ex.  I should clear the path and stop stumbling them.  It's time for the final solution.

Options

Given my last post, the Easy Button takes on a whole new meaning.  I'm not ready to press just yet, but d*mn I am so tempted sometimes.  It is of course concerning because I really don't have a tough life.  I am soft and untested.  (Not successfully tested that is, I have failed many such, and I continue to do so.)  When a real test comes along I am afraid I will fold like the proverbial house of cards.

I also mentioned earlier that 1 out of 3 is kind of bad.  Well now it's 0 out of 3.  I am at this very moment munching on crackers not intended to be part of this diet, and swilling coffee with powdered creamer.  (The latter is part of my regular diet but certainly not irreprehensible.)  I suppose that I will start again after the new year.  I actually intend to take several days off (5) and try to relax a bit.  I haven't planned it at all and I really need to do so or else it will turn into a nrop fest leaving me again begging forgiveness and very possibly in front of another censure committee.  A df decision could lead to the death of my surviving parent.  It isn't like Christ with the weight of the world on my shoulders, it is just like me with more than I can carry even though it isn't a heavy load at all.  I continue to be so ashamed of myself.

So there are a number of options, 1) visiting my surviving parent, 2) visiting my house down south, 3) visiting my house way down south, 4) a staycation, 5) a location (local vacation - staying in a hotel near several points of interest) 6) a real vacation.  The latter is likely too expensive especially planned at the last minute such as it is now.  #5 is also pretty expensive especially with the transportation bills I recently incurred.  I visited my surviving parent recently (#1) - a good visit, but it was enough and longer visits become really uncomfortable.  #2 is a must.  That has got to happen but I could make it largely perfunctory and not a working time at all.  I do need to get it ready with phone line and cable.  Just being there is stressful.  #3 is worse still.

Finally I could do a staycation and maybe focus on come clean-up and do something "fun" on 3 or 4 days locally.  The only images that come to mind harken back to the days of my earliest posts.  Not good, very expensive and again in a situation as mentioned in the second paragraph of this post.    So #2 & #4 it is brief visit to my house down south followed by a staycation focusing on 3 fun things and working around the house.  Fun things might include going out to eat or going to a museum.  None seem really doable.  That is affordable and fun enough to actually plan.  I know the feel of this.  Spend a lot of money to have a nice time or spend nothing and waste your time off.  That is what this is boiling down to.  The result is just so d*mn predictable.

Life, it just isn't so easy at all is it.  Hence the label attached to the final option.

Preemptive Strike

I have truly come to hate my life.  Of course any reader knows that.  Again it comes to mind whether it is time to end it all.  I want to kill myself before God does it.  He doesn't promise a peaceful death for those he executes.  He just gets the job done.  I suppose I don't deserve a peaceful death.  There is no dignity in death like this.  I suppose there is dignity when you die like Christ, with the weight of the world on your shoulders but with success.  When as one of your last acts you direct your friend to see to your mother welfare and when you solemnly entrust your departing spirit to God's hand confident that you have accomplished his will.

You don't have to be perfect either.  You can die like my mother, surrounded by loving family.  Confident that you have done God's will to the best of your ability.  Simply enduring until the end.

No, not me.  I die a coward.  Ashamed that I failed to carry out God's will, that I performed so poorly that my sick wife left me and my daughter left not just me but the God I tried (weakly) to teach her about.  Of course she saw my own hypocrisy and  imitated it, resulting in her own failures.

She told me that she had a pleasant dream this morning where a number of people at school heard lots of good and positive things about the religion.  For the first time in forever I felt like she had hope to really return to God.  I remembered that I cannot recall for 10 + years having a good dream.  It is all just a struggle for survival.  It isn't like so many in foreign lands, living in a jungle, chasing rats for food, sweltering in the heat of day and/or shivering in the cold.  I have food, clothing, shelter, a congregation (which on some level is loving.)  I have no excuse for my present ills.  Normal people would look at me and say something like:  "Get off your buttox and do something you lazy moron!"  and they would be right in every point:

1. I am on my butt,
2. I am lazy,
3. I am doing nothing and
4. I am a moron (well maybe not technically but I certainly act foolishly which was the intended spirit of the imagined comment.)

Helium is the method of choice.  Party City is the source.  It is expensive and I don't really know if I am ready.  But I don't want to wait until I need it and then not have access.  It's a bad idea all around.  No question.  It is just that I am such a coward, Helium seems like the easiest way out.

Anti Meatloaf

Off the exercise wagon, off the spiritual study wagon.  Still eating right. 2 out of 3, Hmmm that's kind of bad.

Actually I know I am judging myself harshly.  But this is how it always starts.  There is a really good (sort of) reason.  I had some work that really needed to get done.  So I didn't study this AM and didn't exercise either.

I did pick up snacks for work (it was my turn to do so) and have thus far declined to consume any of the fattening treats I purchased for my colleagues.

Not so bad right,  Didn't exercise this morning, well, OK.  Didn't study much this week (umm, well that's troubling but not necessarily an indication of doom.) However, this is how it alwaysstarts.  Some reasonable reason, a "normal" excuse.   And boom, I stop studying, stop exercising, before long stop going to church and as surely as night follows day, I start eating like a pig again.

Now at this point, I have to figure out what to do so that that pattern doesn't repeat.  Pray?  Well that's an excellent idea.  Take a memo to do so as soon as I finish this post (we'll see right?)

Schedule -  OK fine been there, done that.

Ask for help?  -- Ask who?  No one cares except those who can't help.  I have no friends.

Ask the Elders?  Really!!?? and have them stare back at me and say "What do you want us to do?"  I don't mean to make fun of them.  (Actually I suppose I do although i have to acknowledge in the same breath that they are probably doing their very best to help.)

Hmmm, prayer sounds best.  I'll let you know, gentle reader (if there are any such,) how that works out.  It occurs to me that there was just recently an article on prayer I studied for this week's services on prayer.  Maybe I can think of some pointers from that as I finish the studying.

So I have prayed a couple of times, but, of course no answer can reasonably be expected in an abundantly apparent fashion.  It has to be sustained and over a long period of time before you slowly start noticing some improvement in "things" in general.  Most people, including me, really want a more immediate feedback.  But there is simply enough evidence that I can read about that it works.  I just need to swallow my skepticism and make do like the bible, and hence God tells me to do.
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On another note I am supposed to go over to my Ex's place to help her hang a shelf tonight.  She is DF so I shouldn't do it, but, as I said, I have no friends and could use a little human interaction (see earlier post on the subject.)

So I went over hung the shelf and talked another hour, kissed and left.  And that's my allotment for HI (Human Interaction) for another month or so.

Eat Right, Exercise Right, Be Spiritual

 

So as of the last post I was thoroughly disgusted with my recent failures, as any long term reader would realize is typical.  Eating too much, not smart enough, not spiritual enough.  Today I can say that yesterday was not so bad in all but a secular way.  I went to church, I exercised and I ate well.

I reset my spreadsheet to track spiritual and food progress.  Maybe one day I will add exercise, but I am not too worried about that.  The spiritual issues are by far the most important.  The food problem (I eat too much of it) is the thing that I find particularly disgusting in myself.  I am nearing another peak weight.  My clothes don't fit right now.  This makes my appearance slovenly.

I keep trying the same solutions hoping for a different result.  I did have some success with the weight problem using the spreadsheet about 18 months ago.  So it isn't such a long shot.  I also exercised regularly about 8 years ago.  I went to meetings regularly about 12 months ago.  Now I just need to put all these things together and possibly they will start to reinforce one another.

That leaves out the financial and material mess I am in.  And oh by the way, it's not like the food, exercise and spiritual problems will be solved by the plans I am putting in place.  More work is needed there as well.  Overall it is quite a hopeless situation, but I can't just throw up my hands and stop trying.  I actually tried that about 8 months ago.  I figured F*ck it.  I am just going to do what I want.  I did quite a lot of damage to my spirituality but I just wouldn't throw over the big things.  So now I am back, trying to resolve those things, and yes it is just as difficult as it always was.

Another SOC Post

I am feeling better about myself because I worked out for the last 3 days.  Big whoop!  Well it really is if this is the start of something new and permanent.  I can't know that now, but this I know, every time I have started something like this in the past it peters out to nothing after a few days, weeks or, at most, months.  I just cannot keep up any good routine. I guess it is worth continuing to try rather than giving up totally, yet and still again.

I do like the way I feel afterward.  Sometimes I feel like I can't lift my arms or walk up a flight of stairs, but I feel good like I have done something worthwhile.  I suppose this is an idea of what it feels like after a weak JW does some rare Field Service.  I won't know that feeling for quite some time.

The other thing this getting up early so I can work out does is to make me sleepy during the day.  I just don't get as much rest as otherwise.   I should be able to fix that by going to bed sooner.  It has the added benefit of reducing the time spent at home with the munchies.  I am just desperate to loose weight.  I am, obviously, more desperate for comfort food throughout any given day.  Another reason IHMS.  I need to spend maybe just a few minutes a day looking at my fat body in the mirror each morning just to remind myself of why I want to lose pounds.  Then when the moments of temptation occur (such as it is now,) I have a better chance to resist.  I just need to give myself time to call the image to mind and my own disgust.

And now it's Monday and the weekend was awful.  Wasteful and indulgent on multiple levels.  The only good thing is that I went to the meetings. I ate virtually all day Saturday and half the day on Sunday that I wasn't eating.  I didn't work-out as I intended.  As a matter of fact I didn't work out at all.  Another day in depression IRRHMS.

And now Tuesday - a bright spot as this is the 5th week day in a row that I worked out.  It is hard to get up early enough to get here in time, but as a matter of fact I have done so a few days in a row.  Who knows how long this will last.  My best guess is another week or two.

I dreamed of an old quasi girlfriend last night.  She wore a blue cotton nightie and we almost had relations, but not quite.  Her night wear  were incongruous with what I imagine she would wear in real life.  I recall in my dream looking twice and thinking that her attire wasn't as nice as I would have imagined she would wear.  There must be some meaning in that.   As thinking about it driving in I reflected on the fact that I will never be with a woman I love or even admire for years to come.  It is sad to me but my fate is still superior to some and it could be the most one could hope for, if I would just do God's will.  But that just isn't happening.

Oh the name?  "Stream of Consciousness" for those unimaginative and a little slow, such as myself on a really good day.

Cowardice

I worked out this morning for the first time in 8 years (about.)  What a fool I am to have skipped such a vital part of a healthy lifestyle for so long.  I hope I will keep it up, but I really doubt it since I can never keep p any good habit.

I missed lunch today but more than made up for it eating nuts throughout the day.  At one point I though that if I worked out I could eat like I wanted.  I put in all the correct numbers into the elliptical trainer and discovered that in my workout this morning I had burned enough calories to cover the Hershey's chocolate bar I had for breakfast yesterday.  Didn't cover all the X-mas cookies someone brought into work that I have been snacking on voraciously.

I feel like this is hopeless, but I've given up for so long, I just need to pick myself up off the floor and try again, as hopeless as it seems.  If there were a neat (and destructive) alternative that at least promised some small happiness, I would probably jump at the chance.  That never seems to happen though, and when it does, I screw it up.

It has always been a long held but totally distant dream (similar to dreaming of winning the lottery big) that I would sit beside a pretty female on a plane trip and strike up a conversation that turns into something.  When I would travel during college and early years of professional life I would think about it nearly every time I boarded a plane.  The one or two times that someone pretty was seated in easy conversation range, I didn't know what to say and ended up ignoring her (didn't want her to know how incompetent I was.)

So about 5 years ago, long after I had quit thinking about it, it finally happened.  The gal was very pretty but not "high maintenance" pretty.  I started by saying hello and noticed a positive and engaging "hello" in return.  "Good sign" I thought.   Normally I would freeze up but it was still early and I hadn't yet gauged that she was in-fact very cute and slim, both characteristics I really like.  So I was lucid enough to ask if she was headed home or headed out (I know it was a dumb, pathetic line.)  She was headed home as was I (something in common.)  We chatted about where we each lived in the metro area and then where we were from and then a little bit about family and occupation.  We had actually engaged in conversation before the normal freeze up took place.

Then something truly amazing happened, as the discussion on one topic petered out, she took the initiative to bring up some additional topics.  (I know this sounds normal to most guys but this almost never happened to me before.)  With a few brief, and not uncomfortable pauses in the conversation we literally talked from Oakland to DC.  But then, as always happens, I screwed up.  Being so inexperienced, I hadn't asked for her full name.  I knew this as we got close but couldn't think of/bring myself to ask before we landed and parted ways.  I really thing she would have given me her digits.  What a freaking idiot I am.

I actually searched for her on the basis of her employment (USG, urban search & rescue), hobby (singing with a piano player in clubs) and location Arlington, but I never found her again.  I didn't deserve to. The only solace was that I know it would have been one of the worst things I could have done to keep being a good Christian.  That was good, but I certainly felt really bad about it.  I still look back on that whole episode as an example of extreme cowardice on my part.  I am very ashamed of that episode in my life (as I am of so many others.)