Dec 27

 Managed to pee the bed today. Excellent work. I can't remember the last time I did this. I'm pretty sure I have done this in the past, but, so long ago, can't remember it. Personally. I find these kind of things funny rather than anything else. Inconvenient mostly. But. I am sanguine about it.

There is a long standing conversation between me and Hazel about a related thing. My "philsophical" point is this. Everyone will shit their pants at least once in their life. It is. Like. A rite of passage. A human experience badge. Whatever.

Hazel is horrified at this idea. That this isn't true. And she has never done that. I am just weird. My reply is she hasn't done it yet. That just means she is due. ( comedically, not to get to into it, she came close this year. See. I said. When she revealed her state. Sometimes. Shit happens. She continued to refute my point. So far she has a "clean sheet". ).

It's a good natured funny debate. It comes up once a year. I can't even say that my point is factually 100% correct. But I think it's mostly correct. But. What it is actually doing ( and I am subversively doing, though, not super consciously ) is presenting the point of normalising what otherwise some people might freak out about. Essentially I am saying it's ok, don't worry, this is within lines of expectation. You're a wizard 'arry.

I am being subversively supportive and understanding. I think this is something in the lines of modelling non panic behaviour. If you don't panic in front of kids about situations. Your kids then tend to learn also not to panic about things.

All very lofty and bullshit. It isn't bullshit. I apologise. That's my inner critic being a douche. Behave.

I do appreciate the humour in it. Plus the slightly horrified take Hazel has on it. I take a small amount of glee in subverting her expectations. She went so far at one point to ask her nurse friend if this was true. He too was also horrified. She presented this as evidence I was wrong. I simply pointed out that he was despite being a nurse, young and quite a sheltered autistic type - which she absolutely agrees with - and I would expect him to have the same belief as Hazel. In other words. It doesn't prove shit except that he too is also due to shit his pants. Quod Erat Demonstrandum. QED.

In any case.

Peeing the bed. It wasn't a health thing. Or shit like that. Well. Maybe a little. A symptom of being deep in that sleep. But I was of course - dangerously - dreaming of peeing. And annoyed I couldn't so was trying very hard. Uh huh. Oh no.

Instantly waking up in my condition is not good. But you know.

Commence shitty CFS sluggish changing of bed, shoving it in the washing machine before slumping back into bed. Fortunately. I have a made up nice bed in the other bedroom. So. Not quite as big as an ask as it might have been. 

Weirdly, not that I need it, but I do appreciate situations you can learn a bit of humility from. Keeps you grounded. You are. Just a dumb ass ape. Or. From very very long ago when I was a super young whippersnapper in my first job, one of the nice but honest ladies would say, "he thinks his shit doesn't stink". Smart lady. Also, as evidenced, not shy of being brutally to the point. She also delighted in being mischievious. She would forever send fake valentines cards with vague messages between pairs of people she thought she could stir good natured trouble up with. Not in a you're a cheating ass way. More in a, they do actually have a crush on you but haven't said anything, here's a push. You can debate whether in the modern age this would be deemed in any way acceptable and not in fact some gaslighting major infraction of personal rights. Different times. But also. Possibly yes. There was no real malice to her. Just. Perhaps. Absolute lack of any boundary. Uh huh. I can understand that.

Anyway. In my humble opinion. One of the pillars of "try not to be an asshole" is some kind of handle on a healthy sense of humility. You are not special. You are not gifted. Which isn't to be a mean spirited asshole the other way, and tell everything they're all useless. But it's grounding. Be humble in achievements, graceful in defeat, empathising with others. And all that. Not that it's easy. Not that you won't fuck that up too. But. I think. This is a good compass to have. It does serve as that self asshole deterrent thing. It is a good aspirational point of perfection. Even if inevitably you will fail at some points along that path - because you can never be perfect. That's ok. Very human. Try. Adapt. Correct. That too. Be graceful. And humble. I can see many times where I fail at this. Because I am a dumb ass human. But. I try my best. Honestly. I try to run a tricky line of not kicking myself too much because I can very easily fall into that inner critic hole. My inner critic comes armed with knives, and a keen sense of ninja skills.

Anyway. 

We are all capable of being monsters. That old point I always make. Bang on about. The only true universal defence against monsters, is not about building better guns to kill everyone else, because they're all inferior and you clearly are superior, but is eternal self vigilance at not becoming a monster yourself. ( and to be clear I am not then denying a need to police others that fall into that - be very clear, that there is only one true universal defence, doesn't them mean it's the only defence period - the universal bit here is the important word in that sentence ).

This point gets lost on so many people. From all political stripes. It is a human universal in my humble opinion. Plus. It's so much easier, less exhausting, to project being a monster onto everyone else, whilst holding yourself to be the undeniable source of goodness. Far easier to sleep at night. Calorifically, evolutionarily. A smart play. Morally a terrible one that seals in an ever repeating, never fixing cycle of hatred and killing with no understanding. But. Releasing anger, pain and even death onto "acceptable targets" is also an easy default cathartic psychological outlet and coping mechanism. Even if. Morally. Hell even epistemically. It is irrational. No one ever said people were fundamentally rational.

Managed to get the phonecall into the dealership. They can fit me - or rather the car - in on the 31st. Which is quicker than I had imagined. I don't envy whoever has the task of debugging the car. I suspect it's a wiring issue. And to find it. You're going to have to a) keep recreating an issue which comes and goes unreliably and b) tear apart the entire wiring of the car to find it. Yikes. As a side note. I would like to again raise the point that cars are an example of absolutely terrible design. I made this point when our mechanic employee came up to look over my car. I said it frustrated me just how janky cars were. Nothing standard. Shit places to get to. Bad choices. Etc. Perhaps it was me and I was being naive. No our mechanic said. You're right. They're shit. He then launched into a bitter tirade against the latest design flaw that Ford Transits had with their disintegrating wet belts. Idiotic. In his opinion. And. A few years in. Now a known flaw with them, to the point they get regularly changed out, and constantly watched for problems. First thing he does on new Transits he said. Is to immediately replace the wet belt with something better.

Uh huh.

My view on this is this is another one of those areas symptomatic of old school design. It's like some 1970's clueless fucking idea before standardisation, or thoughts of maintenance capability were in place. Stuck in some kind of bullshit thinking from an earlier age. But progressed through into the 21st century. You can also insert a parallel here for other things like. Local government processes and capability. The NHS. Water companies. And so on. Things that are still following discredited and demonstably shit ways of doing things from some fucked up 20th century idea. 

I related to our mechanic that recently I had watched a video servicing an old school performance car. A bit of a fixer upper, but nothing too dramatic. And that the design of this car meant that the spark plugs on one side the engine were easy to replace. But on the other side. Were impossible to replace without deconstructing the entire fucking engine and half removing it from the car. As a result. The car had signs of one half of its spark plugs having been serviced. And the other half... still sporting the worn originals. What absolute monkey had designed this ? It seems a common feature in cars. Things that are impossible to get to. My battery is a good example of this. I have witnessed much cursing from people switching my battery out and noting that on this particular car, it's very difficult to get to. Because. No good reason. Just some twat stuck in there in the CAD phase of the design.

Some of this is why I tend to shy away from doing anything with cars. They are a level of their own bullshit.

Healthwise today. I have waxed and waned. When I had my surprise wake up I was utterly disorientated. Not sure of the time or day. And even after Alexa had told me these things - I still got it wrong. At my worst today I have been in the hole. In a place that for the umpteenth time makes me contemplate my mortality. This is bad. How am I still here. Surely it can't be long now. And then at my best. I feel somewhat capable. A tiny sliver of energy. Certainly there have been many worse days. Thankful for the sliver. It even has me - gasp - contemplating I could actually cook something for dinner.

We shall see.

Like a scrooge counting coins. What do you with it when you earn half a coin of energy. Spend it. Save it. Try and make it go as far as possible.

The answer is you're going to be fucked whatever you do. There isn't a correct answer.

Close your eyes. Breathe. Be one with the buddhist nonsense. Zen. And move with the flow of the river. Not against it. Don't try to swim upstream. Thus is the wisdom of the buddhism. Be like the grass in the river. Bend with it, but do not break. Do not be the rock. Resistant. And worn down.

Uh huh.

More seriously. This is probably the skill I have been ( had to ) sharpen the most in the last few years. Reaching out and sensing the "vibe". Listening to my body. My state. The voodoo. The bullshit. The thing that infuriatingly dances away from my methodical debugging skills. How to be quiet. Not trying to dictate reality. But listening to it instead. And getting a sense of which way the water is flowing and moving with it. And if the tide so happens to moving in a direction where I can do something I need to do. Grab it as you float past. But don't for the love of christ just swim against the tide to get to a point. You are a) not going to make it and b) flatline yourself in the attempt. Dumbass. Washed out to sea instead to drown like a hapless swimmer caught at the wrong bit of the coastline at the wrong time.

Tricky. But I do have a very finely tuned sense of how I am doing. I am good at that. If not the energy burn out masking bit - that I am still pretty fucking shit at. The mask is very effective. This also is not to say I have an equally finely tuned sense of wisdom in what to do with that up levelled sense of my state. I am still. Often as not. Infuriatingly stubborn, frustrated, angry and will "take the piss" and not learn my lessons when I get burned. This is not an error in signal detection. It is an error in executive decision making. The dial reading is often right. The manager in charge can often be wrong.

More therapeutically. You might call this at a high level denial. I refuse to accept the limitations imposed on me. I can defeat this by sheer willpower. ( spoiler alert, I cannot ).

But it's a little more complicated than that. Some of those decisions are educated gambles that I have to take. "Have to". It is a form of raging at the dying of the light. Grit my teeth, dig my heels in and say no. I will do this anyway. I understand I will die. But I will stand in the breach. So heroic. Such martydom. Very self destructive ( on brand for self worth zero Johnny ). But ask me on any given day. And the answer will be different. And the strength to do that. Is a whisper. Mostly. I lie down face first into the mud of the trench, exhausted. 

I can see... the clockwork of my own self. I can see it from a therapist point of view. I can see it from a mechanics point of view. I have it understood.

Living it is something else. And one capability does not - oddly - translate into the other. Knowing exactly how the car works. Does not make you an instantly excellent Formula 1 driver. Or perhaps. Knowing things. Doesn't automatically make you wise and able to effectively use that knowledge.

I'm stupid like that. Or maybe. Stubborn like that.

Do better dumbass.

Thank you inner critic.

Shut up ! 

We're perfectly sane. All of us. In here. Heh. I am not insane. Not like that anyway. I just am very perceptive of all the bits. My shrink said so. So there. I have a gold badge and everything.

Anyway.

I'm going to yet again leave this entry with the dying of the light. It is close to my heart. For all sorts of reasons. It is beautiful. And true. And has a weight. Smart stuff. Insightful dude that Dylan Thomas. And only made it to 39. That's a lot of weight in such a short lifespan ( so, no surprise, major alcoholic which almost certainly was the main attribution of this death. Alcohol being a very common coping mechanism when you are in pain - the classic tortured artist. Because. As we know. Existential revelation always comes with grief. Knowing sacrifices happy. And there is a point where being insightful is more harm than good - and you don't write poems like this on accident. You have seen the light. And it has blinded you. And even from here. A century give or take away from it. I can feel his pain. I can feel that tug. My antennae get a sense of the hurt and despair there, the desperation, the rage. I can feel it. And I am sorry. Sorry that he had to live with that. Sorry that it ended up consuming him way before his time. It is. Another one of those. Threads of tragedy that when you look, you can see woven throughout humanity. And that this is also a problem for me. A dysfunction. My earthquake detectors are so fine, I can feel that tremor in a different century. Too sensitive. Too far. Very problematic. Ho hum. ).

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.