A Real Human Boy!

 For those of you looking for closure, my insomnia is letting up. Basically, over two nights I get about five hours of sleep.Which isn’t great, but it’s enough to keep me from losing my mind. I’m not sure why I called that “closure”. Apparently I assume that’s how it’s going to be from now on. I don’t know what this says about my mental state, but I put my friend Becky in charge of letting people know if I get coronavirus. My sister tells her and then she has contact information for everybody who would need to know. It sounds morbid. I mean, it is morbid. But I have some far-off friends who wouldn’t necessarily know if anything happened. It makes me feel a little better.  But man, depression has been kicking my ass the last week or so. I mean, it’s been an issue for a while, hence this sporadically updated blog. It’s just really kicked into high gear. I’m in a place right now where I’m super aware of everything that’s wrong with me and the terrible self-esteem, my old friend, ...

I like video games a lot, even if I don't have much time to play and also I think I'm getting worse at them. Right now there's a puzzle I can't solve in Luigi's Mansion 3 , a game for actual children. The big game release of quarantine times is Animal Crossing: New Horizons , a game where you maintain an island full of animal friends.  It's a popular franchise, but the social aspect made it really appealing during lockdown. You can get online and have friends visit your island and trade items, and it seemed like a lot of fun. My Nintendo Switch has issues with my home router. When I try to get online, I get an error message that I have to reconfigure my router, and you might as well tell me I have to kill a bear with a butter knife. It's not a possibility. But I heard that was an issue with earlier Switches and newer ones were less picky about getting online. So I bought a new Switch (a Switch Lite, to be specific) and figured it would be worth it since I ...

The issue with doing this blog and trying to update it semi-regularly is that my depression isn't really taking on new shades. I have nothing new to report because everything is exactly the same as it was, which is all part of the problem. So this entry is going to be like one of those Sopranos episodes where, like, Paulie is upset that he's not getting a piece of the church carnival concessions, a situation that has never been referenced before and never will be again. You know, that's one thing about The Sopranos that really stands out now. There are some episodes where nothing happens. Or more to the point, there's one small thing that happens to advance an ongoing storyline but that's three minutes out of the episode and then they still had to fill out an hour. Even though David Chase started in TV, he's a guy who thinks movies are better and he didn't seem to get that every episode has to be a satisfying unit of entertainment. In later years, Mad Men ...

I think I could handle everything - depression, anxiety, the fact that the world is burning down around me, if I could just sleep. I've had problems with insomnia on and off, and I realize now that I keep saying I've had problems "on and off". Has my life been a series of problems waiting in line patiently for their turn to mess with me and now they're re-enacting the big fight at the end of Avengers: Endgame ? Who's going to come through the next portal? Terrible self-esteem? Thanks for joining the party! Stress-induced stomach problems? Welcome! The one thing I haven't done is just emotionally collapse because I see something on TV where a dad is nice, but you know that's just waiting for Doctor Strange to wave him in. I don't know why I'm blaming Doctor Strange for this. But as it is, I'm lucky to grab two hours of sleep a night. Usually it's somewhere between zero and one. And I'm super busy at work right now, so I'm ...

“I'm going to get around to talking about a nice thing this time. But to get there, I have to talk about how depression flattens out your emotions. It's not really like you're sad all the time, even though I that's my short hand. I feel things less than I used to. It's like that Ren & Stimpy episode where Stimpy just keeps repeating "I don't care" in a frankly hilarious monotone. It's all kind of flat. Side note  - mentioning Ren & Stimpy reminded me of this recent thing that's been happening where I've been looking up creators I was really into in the Nineties and seeing what they're up to and it's always a game of "Sex Creep / MAGA/ Dead", because they all seem to be one the three. John Kricfalusi? Sex creep. Bob Burden? MAGA. Mark E. Rogers? Dead. It's always a depressing game with a bad outcome. Anyway, this is kind of turning me off of things that I enjoy. The depression, not the sidenote. Because I ...

On some level, I think I thought that writing one entry would help me manage my depression and everything would be OK. That turned out not to be the case and I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.  The last 24 hours have been bad. And I feel like I need to emphasize that I am not actually in any danger. Self-harm is not in my bag of tricks. This is not a cry for help and nobody should be worried about me. I mean, a little worried because, as noted, a podcast ad read made me burst into tears. But nothing worse than that. All that said, even on a good day I have problems with sleep. For so long, I would just stay up ridiculously late watching TV or playing video games and then get up very early for work and just eventually catch up on the weekend. I know it's not super healthy, but that was me. That segued into insomnia and about two years ago I discovered that I could sleep better if I slept on the couch with the TV on. Which is bad for seratonin or something, but it worked for me....