TENTH BLOGIVERSARY

TENTH BLOGIVERSARY

December 30th, 2010, was the 10th blogiversary of this blog.  I began it on December 30th, 2001

8973 posts.  

I'd like to chat more about this, and much else, but I'm preoccupied with a dreadful cold.  

I'm too sick to go out to tonight's New Year's party I was greatly greatly looking forward to, but may all unable to celebrate with others tonight have as much good cheer as possible.


It's always possible the next day may bring a wonder to any of us.


It's always possible the next year may bring many wonders to any of us. You never know where you may find an unexpected joy, whether for a moment, or a lifetime.


Another phrasing I like is: remember that everyone has their own struggles, no matter how invisible to you or me.


Try to remember to be kind. (I'm so good at that in some ways, and I realize I'm so crap in others, and must work so much harder on those!)


Meanwhile, an important piece you should read on Tech’s Relationship With Depression, Suicide and Asperger’s:

[...] Too many suffer Stanford Duck Syndrome, berating themselves for being "failures," causing depression  and suicide. 

Failure, failing, and being “a failure” is such a part of tech culture that it is a cultural locus for entire posts, blogs, pep talks and conventions. 

Failure is universally feared and derided, yet framed and re-framed again and again as a means of staying positive, of learning from mistakes, of using failure as a measure of working hard for success. 

The ideal of success in tech is married to the terror of failure. 

What undoubtedly makes it worse is the public nature of tech culture, populated with gossip bloggers happy to run any item for page views, the better if it humiliates their competitors. Add to this that the very nature of tech work itself is inherently isolating."

As is writing, and much other intellectual/artistic labor. 


The best preventive for suicide, aside from individuals finding professional help, is for all of us to do our best to help pick up others who seem to have fallen, or are in trouble.


I spend far too much time feeling the results of the brain weasels that insist the irrational emotional crazy pain/depression/anxiety is so strong that the least painful option is to just quit. 


I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

Then I read this: http://suicidescale.com/


And this longer summary:

Being Suicidal: What it feels like to want to kill yourself

I have to say that I find it a bit distressing to note that I've spent many years spending much time having gone through all five of the first six stages, stopping only part way through six: 

[...]  

Disinhibition 

Disinhibition happens when you cognitively deconstruct everything. Nothing remains. Your standard defenses are gone. You forget about purpose, suffering, others, and ramifications in favor of a self-focused task to end it all." 

When I'm feeling bad, I definitely feel like stage 5: "Suicidal people have an aversive or anxious awareness of the recent past (and possibly the future too), from which they seek to escape into a narrow, unemotional focus on the present moment." 

Suicidal people resemble acutely bored people: The present seems endless and vaguely unpleasant, and whenever one checks the clock, one is surprised at how little time has actually elapsed.

That is, I desperately desire to feel at all normal, let alone happy, but instead it's, during the worse times, all unbearable sadness, or terror, or fear, or disappointment, or just irrational crying, confusion, and inability to think about anything but the irrational pain one is feeling. 

Just feeling non-anhedonia for a while, and feeling able to take even small pleasure in some things, is a feeling of relative joy and wonder, too much of the time. 


But another thing about the sort of emotional lability I suffer as a clinical depressive/bipolar/anxiety-panic-disorder/etc is that statements about how I "generally" feel or have felt or done tend to strongly depend on how I'm feeling at the time. Not totally, by any means, since I'm not particularly delusional, but it's very easy to feel as if the way one feels at any given moment is the way one most commonly feels, and it's very difficult to emotionally, as opposed to intellectually, remember feeling mid-term differently in the past.


I think aspects of that are common to most everyone; it's the exaggeration and extremeness on the spectrum that takes it into the realm of mental/emotional illness.


Please, note to any readers: I'm not making plans to kill myself. I'm not making plans to make such plans.


I've just spent too much time in too many years perfectly understanding the feeling that it could be a relief, wanting that relief, feeling that feeling, and walking up to and past the border of, when it's bad, just feeling indifferent about the effort necessary to take steps to actively kill myself.


Why bother when I feel like I'm trapped into doing it in slow-motion? 


I wish I meant that in an "we're all dying" way, but the truth is that at various times, I've meant it somewhere beyond a metaphor, but not quite literally.


And at my worst, I feel far too dysfunctional to plan or take action on anything, let alone anything as involved as suicide. 


That's what's kept me alive. 


Mostly it's the hope that the brain biology will get better, that treatment will eventually help, and I'll be less subject to irrational emotional pain, etc. 


Hope is the one necessary thing.

And for that, you've perhaps already read and heard Mr. Gaiman: 

"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art – write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. May your coming year be a wonderful thing in which you dream both dangerously and outrageously.


I hope you will make something that didn’t exist before you made it, that you will be loved and you will be liked and you will have people to love and to like in return. And most importantly, because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now – I hope that you will, when you need to, be wise and that you will always be kind. And I hope that somewhere in the next year you surprise yourself." 

One lifts an eyebrow at whomever titled the YouTube upload, and their grasp of the apostrophe, but that's YT for you.

And for those who may be involved with a woman, you might learn something new -- you can't have seen these diagrams before! -- about The Internal Clitoris.

Happy New Year, and may 2012 bring you all joys and wonders you've never foreseen.

Maybe I'll even switch to a new blog template, and start blogging, instead of posting to Google +, Facebook, and Twitter, again.  That would be spiffy.

Yes, right now the formatting on this post is fucked.  It's a reason I've been posting so little.

Sorry.