30th Jan

Another day, another stupid amount of sleeping and loss of daylight.

Stuck in perpetual purgatory. My brain is playing hardball. Either it refuses to shut off and let me sleep, or it crashes out and absolutely demands sleep right now, both of which mean I am hard pressed to change sleeping pattern.

Yeesh.

I had a long blurb here about people. I cut it. I second guess myself somewhat with the stuff in my head and what I say, and sometimes it reduces down to zero. Shut up.

Suffice to say. One of my secrets is a paradox at my heart.

I don't want to see people or engage with people.

vs

I need people and love pottering around them or when I am in the mood, peering into their heads.

I think. On the whole. I lean towards the hermit. Given an otherwise neutral environment, my tendency would reinforce and I would withdraw from everyone and just go live a solitary life in a tower in a forest. No people.

However.

As it turns out, I think I need people. Like. Absolutely cannot do without people.

As an idiot hairless ape I have all the same shizzle that shapes all hairless apes. Companionship, validation, social, support. All that stuff. And. That stuff is important. But. Here's the rub. I am pretty sure I can live without all of that, as maladapted as that is.

I think the thing I can't live without is distraction. I need people because they distract me. They distract my brain from doing whatever deep crunchy hole it's in, and instead forces it up to the surface to mostly just... doze. It switches my brain off. And it does me good, by and large.

It's not even about distracting myself from being miserable. It's just about stopping me thinking, period, because I heavily suspect, that when I do a lot of thinking it fucks me up.

I started noticing the pattern years ago. When both my mutts were at the peak of their fitness and we used to tromp around the woods for a couple of hours, many times I would hold a non stop thought process and conversation in my head. To the extent where I would walk in the woods, tromp around for 2 hours, and only really notice where I was when I suddenly emerged into civilisation through the gate. Sometimes it was a real shock. Like being doused in cold water. Wow. Where have I been ? Lost in thought. I would then worry I had walked around for 2 hours babbling like a madman to any who might have walked past. Eh well. Fuck it.

And always after such a heated brain session I would feel absolutely shit. Awful.

To the point where I started to recognise that if I felt myself slipping away too deeply, I needed to stop, and clear my mind. To avoid feeling like shit.

I didn't think much of it. But, as the years have gone on, and I think my thresholds are lowering, it has become noticeable in other areas - work when crunching, personal when crunching through someones issues, stress when crunching through my own issues.

That stupid statement from the neurologist back in the day lurks in my head. Where he said. The brain is like anything else. It needs a rest. You're overworking your brain. It needs to rest.

It makes me wonder if I don't just continually whip the ever loving crap out of my 3lb salty lump of bacon. Always pushing it. Keep going til it drops.

Anywho.

I think I need people to help me regulate my stupid brain. Because I'm fairly shit at it.

This annoys the ever loving fuck out of me. That I can't do it all.

Don't get me wrong. I like people. At times I love people. But really, in my heart of hearts, I can totally do without people. But it seems, in a literal sense, I really can't do without people.

Also. There has to be said that there is no shortage of ironic bullshit selfawareness in there. IE. Theres a high probability in there that only bits of me think one thing or the other. That I am not aware of what I truly need. And everything is a bit vague and paradoxical and shifts with mood. And I have rationalised it into a paradoxical setup.

Eh. Which. Is probably right. Occam's razor says I probably do need people for all the usual needing people reasons. Because we're social animals. But I analyse it to death, rationalise it, and come up with a paradox, because, at the bottom of it, I don't want to have to rely on people, because people are inherently unreliable and trauma, but I need people in my life because that's the lifeform I am.

In short.

Full of shit and sulky that I need to talk to people to maintain a semblance of being human.

Eh heh.

Sigh. I wish I could be truly happy doing something. All choices are just differing levels of unhappiness.

The buddhist dude sits in my head.

Unless you find a way to reduce the suffering... you will always suffer

I know. I get it my dude. Is there like, a pill I can take for that. A vegetable smoothie. An ancient CD of whalesong to play whilst asleep ? Because I can't find the goddamn answer in how to reduce suffering.