Jan 17

 I overburned yesterday. Despite feeling shit all day. I stayed up. Played games. In a not great mood to be frank. I just constantly ground my teeth on the rough edges of a mediocre game. As much of a reflection of my lowered patience because I didn't feel well as much as the game being a bit shit.

I pushed on and on until literally my head was fuzzy, my voice picked up that exhausted fry at the end, like a californian girl, and my energy flatlined.

Went to bed too late. Midnight. Flicked the TV on. And in 1 minute I couldn't do it. And just crashed out hard.

I think. I must have slept better or something.

Perhaps. It was the fact that I inadvisedly stuffed myself with pizza earlier in the evening. A stupid move. Feeling ill. Feeling nauseous. How about stuffing your face with pizza ? Which you don't want. Why are you doing this ?

Sometimes. I feel a bit better after eating something high calorie. Fat. Salt.

It. Does crop up. Repeatedly.

I can't work out whether my diet is so shit I am going from famine to feast, and starving myself of things which is contributing to making my Bullshit™ worse, or whether it's just random fucking noise from the chaotic storm that is my condition.

Hard to say. There definitely is something weird going on there. I'm also fairly confident it's not anything stupidly obvious. Like duh. Just eat more. It's more subtle than that.

Anyway.

I am awake. 7.30AM. Way, way, wayyyyyy too short of a sleep for me. And yet. I don't feel super terrible. I mean. Not good. But better than yesterday. So far anyway. And my eyes are better. Way better. Still shit. But. Better. Let's check in 1 hour from now. Where no doubt at any moment I will suddenly pitch off a cliff and feel like shit.

I rattled on in slightly insane fashion last night whilst playing games. Just. Dribbling my thoughts out. I am sure it must be exhausting for my friend. Or maybe that's just my inner bitch telling me I'm shit. Maybe both.

We talked a little about my brother. About age and the passing of time again. And for the umpteenth time he said that ever since I had almost casually thrown out there that he wouldn't be around forever in his charity, his thinking had undergone a series of revisions, goal alterations, understanding, existential horror, a real major mental landscape shift.

Yeah. I am. Aware. I casually threw out that landmine. That caused you to suddenly become very aware of your mortality and that you didn't have that much time left. It was. I said. One of those existential revelations. Just. Casually tossed to him. Like a grenade. You do know that Santa Claus doesn't exist right ? .... wait... what ?

In hindsight. Arguably. Not cool. But what you lose in innocence. You gain in knowledge. And from my friends perspective. He has ever since been focused on trying to make his setup, the charity, the entity, self sustaining. Able to be a legacy. Not just die around him when he taps out. This is absolutely the sharp pointy bit. You lose the happy sense of innocence. And gain the weight of responsibility, foresight and planning.

To be fair however. It was done. Because of the computer system he wanted. Timescales. How long would it live. 10 years - to me - would be a good minimum. And also. Anything after that. You'd be looking at you not being part of the work any longer anymore anyway, so what do you care.

That. Was the existential mic drop.

He had until then never considered his age. Or that shit stops. Or that he was up the rear end of that equation. Not the front. One last throw of the dice. He was in magical thinking land that this just goes on forever.

He went from Peter Pan.

To oh fuck I'm going to die.

Because I am used to considering system lifetime spans, employee job lifetime spans, and how things change. ( because I'm the kind of IT person that loathes churn of stupid shitty systems that go belly up in 18 months or require constant fucking update maintenance. I come from a heavy iron, server farm, enterprise, big corp kind of perspective. Build software on the decades scale. Not the monthly scale. You want. A good, long, stable, predictable ROI. Something you can build empires around. Not a fucking fashion show of the latest bullshit buzzword bingo that then has to be redeveloped every 18 months. See. It's a sore point with me. I do not have startup mentality. At least. Not in that fruitfly lifespan kind of way. I like innovation. I don't like unreliable, unproven, unsustainable. Get fucked. Genuinely clever ideas exploiting gaps in the market, or a new approach. Cool. Bullshit buzzword bingo with fuckface investment money looking for a quick turnover. No. It reeks too much of "investment vehicle" and too little of "this is a cool bit of engineering" ).

I digress.

 I have pinged my sister this morning. Maybe. Perhaps. Possibly. If she has the capacity. The energy. The capability. Go have a cup of tea with The Brother. And just. Interact. As a human. I think. He could do with it. And if not. It doesn't hurt. I appreciate she is busy. Hands full. So. No shade if no capacity. But if possible.

Checking that parachute twice. 

Today. It feels like I have a sliver of energy.

No clue if it will last.

Oooooh. What can we spend it on. How can we burn this up.

Sigh.

Do you hoard it. Like Scrooge. Probably to no avail because it just evaporates of its own accord.

Do you take that as clearly a greenlight to push hard, do stuff and burn out.

Do you take it cautiously.

As obvious as the answer sounds. I can assure you. It is not to me.

Intellectually. I get it.

But the intellectual is not solely in control. Or listened to.

There is instead some miscreant at the controls.

I will probably noodle with some game code again today.

It has half crossed my mind to absolutely burn my energy immediately, jump in a car and go down and see my brother myself. Lead. By example. Of course. Hero Johnny. Strap the armour on. Grab the sword. There is a breach to stand in. So very heroic. Shaft of sunlight. Flapping cape. Uh huh. Unrealistic buddy. How about exhausted chronically ill fat middle aged dude wheezing into a car trying to hit a standard of care and energy that long departed. Much more like it. Hello inner critic. Always there to make sure the gritty details of life are accurately recorded.

But anyway. Doing that journey. Today. 

I know. This would burn that sliver of energy faster than you can say Rumpelstiltskin.

Do we say Rumpelstitskin anymore ? It feels like we don't.

My friend mentioned earwigs yesterday.

I Commented similarly about that. You don't hear much talk of earwigs in these englightened internet AI days do you ? Practically, archaic. Perhaps it is a reflection of more people absorbed by their screens, and a whole lot less people - and childen - turning over rocks outdoors to examine the things found there.

Narcissus staring into the reflection of a handheld computer device, oblivious to everything else around. If they wrote that story now. It wouldn't be a pool. It would be an iPhone. With a selfie filter. Obvious when you put it like that. The modern flaws of a collapsing societal order.