I have been absent from the world of journaling for a while because my last post has received absolutely zero comments. Had I posted that same journal a year ago, I would surely have been inundated with messages from people who I no longer choose to associate myself with at present. Regardless of the reasons why I lost these associates, the fact of the matter is that I now know far fewer people than I did even six months ago. Now, even though this does not prevent me from writing very often, it does discourage me from expressing my thoughts and opinions through this particular format.

I'm not someone who talks in the middle of nowhere, when no-one else is around. Hell, I barely speak when I'm in the center of the city and surrounded by people. So much of our interpersonal communications fail to amount to much of anything. It's all just so much "Hello, how are you?" and "Ok, fine. And you?" Such conversations can last anywhere between a few seconds and a few hours, and most of the time little information of any real importance is exchanged. Whenever a situation like this thrusts itself upon me, I take quick, decisive action to end it. This isn't because I do not respect the intelligence of the person who is engaging me; I only question the intelligence of what he is doing. I am a direct, to-the-point person. This does not, however, mean that I reduce 'the point' to its most absolute simplest form. My world is a complicated, nuanced, and unpredictable one.

For example, three years ago, I felt as though I were a somewhat normal person. I'm an oddball, I know, but I always felt that I was only different because of my own personal experiences. This isn't to say that I felt completely normal, as I've always known that I was abnormal, perhaps extremely so. I was ignorant of one very important fact back then; a fact that I now cannot ignore, no matter how much I may want to.

The truth of the matter is, I am fundamentally different from the vast majority of my fellow human beings. One of the things that confounds me, day after day, are the bizarre motivations of those who share my company. The strange, repetitive speaking habits; the weird shades of grey in their emotions. People get into romantic entanglements, and then complicate them immensely. I'd see them fall victim to emotional attacks that I simply cannot imagine resonating with me. When someone dares to insult me on an emotional level, I simply reject that person completely. My Machiavellian view of humanity has always been at odds with something inside of most people, and now I think I know why this is so.

For a very long time I thought that I was a primarily emotional person, since whenever I did feel emotions they were extremely intense. It was as if a wrecking ball had come out of nowhere and clobbered me once or twice a year. Then again, I was spending a lot of time coming down off of antidepressants. Once, I was fascinated by the withdrawal effects of certain antidepressant medications. Whenever I'd quit a medication I'd become almost entirely emotional, and I'd think to myself, "Oh, so this is how it feels to be one of them!"

The 'one of them' I'm referring to, of course, are you relatively normal people. I don't really mean any offense by referring to my friends in this way, as it only means that in some sense I can't understand what you're all about.

All this thinking about my emotional retardation has led me to another grand moment of self discovery and revelation; today I discovered one of my deepest insecurities, and I also decided to share it with the world for the sake of understanding. While I was attempting to remember a very dark chapter of my own childhood I stumbled upon something a psychiatrist had told my parents; something they only told me in a moment of great distress. What this doctor had said about me resonates to this very day as a weakness in my soul: The boy, he said, is dangerous. By the time I was a teenager, he went on to say, I would be even more deadly. The only rational option he presented was hospitalization for me; that was the only hope for the world. I think that he may have deduced that I had the shallow emotional depth of a psychopath, a flattening of affect, while I only really have the outward appearance of flattened affect.

Or maybe he saw who I really was, and the sight of it terrified him. (Or, perhaps, I'm just exaggerating a very old memory!)

Back then, this revelation 'cured' me for the time being, and I managed to choke down all that rage and disappointment. For a while there, I passed as one one of you normal guys; I smiled when I was supposed to, and kept to myself. No more plotting to break free of society, no more waiting in the shadows to ambush and beat children who had made an enemy out of me. I was good, and just. For the sake of my own survival, I had chosen to give up my quest for the reasons why.

Ever since I was small child no-one ever tried to explain anything to me adequately enough for my curiosity. When they required me to do something the only reason provided was "Because I told you so," pretty much the most sorry-ass reason to do anything at all. Of course, I got no respect, non at all. They didn't even provide me with left-handed handwriting materials in school. As a consequence of this, I spent a lot of time feeling like a retard, and unable to keep up very well in school. This happened not because of any learning disability on my part, but a teaching disability on theirs. There's a lot of talk about learning disorders in this country because pompous ass teachers like having excuses for their own fucking incompetence. When children do not learn, we blame them immediately without question the educational system itself.

Writing in lousy print for my most of my life is the least of my frustrations at this point, however. What really digs into me now are interpersonal relationships. One of my deeper fears is that someone might actually care deeply about me, and that I, perhaps being a closet psychopath, would never return that affection; in fact, I would make a pathetic mockery of it. This distance is something I also experience whenever I communicate with my friends. I often fear that it's just a great, big, cynical farce, and I'm playing people that I care about because deep-down inside I'm still that conniving little boy who hurt everyone who tried to be his friend. No good at all can come from such a life, since all pursuits will yield the same utterly empty rewards. Without a rudimentary passion/reward system my life would not have any purpose or direction whatsoever, and my own inherent sense of order cannot allow that. I'm afraid of using people I care about, since it is my first instinct to manipulate others.

I have become addicted to my own weird, immature emotions because of this. Being an extremely introverted thinker can be a wonderful thing at times, though I doubt there's a human being alive who doesn't get tired of simply being himself. I have a plan now that involves perpetuating a myth about myself. You see, I'm might start telling people that I'm a high-level functioning autistic. That explains my lack of social graces neatly without having to go into the nuances of explaining that deep down inside I'm a scheming little Machiavellian dork-ass nerd, but despite these cynical tendencies I actually want a better world to live in. Evil could have served me very well but I decided to be a good guy, and that's actually quite profound. Alas, such a nuanced self-description will not connect with most people.

People do connect with autism, at least as much as popular culture does. When I came up with this idea I gave no thought whatsoever to how I may be misusing a very dreadful problem that many people suffer through. It took an entire hour or so for that empathic notion to hit me. Though, who's to say that I don't have autism? If my level of introversion is so great that my social skills are just as impaired as an intelligent autistic, what's the difference in perception?

Of course, I know there are great fundamental differences between autism and strong introversion, though I doubt that a lay person could tell the difference between them; controlling the perceptions that lay people have of me was the main purpose of my original scheme. Though, I suppose that now I'm just rambling on and on when I really ought to be getting to bed.

Now, I shall rest peacefully knowing that I'm a little bit more of a real human being. That empathy can be a part of my day-to-day life if I'm careful about how I interact with the world. Only you, friends, have readily perceived this inner well of humanity I have in me. Others will continue to see me as something like an inverse Terminator: robot on the outside, who knows what on the inside.

Though now, I know for certain now that I'm human on the inside, despite the inherent unnaturalness of my own expressions. I know I may never be able to prove this to anyone else, but knowing it for certain myself has made a ton of difference so far. Now I do not fear making friends and interacting with good, innocent people.

I'm back on my path, and I feel determined about my own future.

Good luck to all you emotional fuzz bunnies.

I apologize for my recent absence, especially when it seemed as if I were back to my old self again. The explanation this time is a certain small scale writing project the purpose of which is to explain the reasons behind everything that is wrong with the world. This new 'serious' essay of mine will be a return to the old style of essays that I used to write. Yet, I suppose, you couldn't really call them essays, as they were never really tightly focused on any one particular subject -- they meandered from one connection to another, which isn't really a proper way to write, if you ask anyone who really knows how to write. What you do when you really write is keep a laser focus on one subject and never, ever deviate, otherwise you're being tangential and your focus is poor and no-one will understand anything because of what you wrote.

Writing in this fashion has always been quite difficult for me, since this style is almost entirely contrary to my own way of thinking. I've always found that things that are connected to other things are more interesting than things that simply stand on their own. Like when I see a vehicle I don't just look at the vehicle itself, but also at all the evidence that might indicate where the vehicle may have been, and what sort of person owns it. Then I think about the things that are connected to those things, and then move outwards from there. So that I'm not just trying to understand a single thing, but also to understand its place in the world so that I may know its relevance, which in the end is all that really matters to me. Whatever may be said about my curiosity, I am not interested in things that don't seem like they can translate to some sort of greater understanding of the world. This is why I've always preferred styles of entertainment that are somewhat difficult to understand and very much involved.

But then again, I'm slow. Not a stupid sort of slow, but simply not very quick on my feet. My way is the way of serious calculation with no allowance for spontaneity. Given a choice, I would buy skis in summer and mountain bikes in winter -- thinking months and months ahead. Oftentimes I surprise people by not talking about things that are relevant today, but things that will be relevant many months from now. So this means that the moment a need or a desire of mine is taken care of I'm already thinking ahead to the next instance. The very moment I finish eating I'm already thinking ahead to my next meal; and once my birthday is over I'm already thinking about being one year older again. I don't even think of myself as 22, but as 23 or 24 already. And when I'm 24 I'll probably act like I'm 26, and so on and so forth.

This kind of thinking I believe is a consequence of having grown up on antidepressant medications. You see, because they forced me into an unnatural mental state, my own natural balance was altered to compensate for the adverse emotional effect the chemicals were having. When I felt far too happy, and I knew deeply that I shouldn't feel that way, I compensated by dwelling on unhappy things and forcing myself into a more neutral mood. This has resulted in an almost complete inability to enjoy any one particular moment -- I am either thinking about the past, or the future, and the present is just the only time I have to act in, not the only time that really matters. Sybaritic self-indulgence and pain relieving hedonism -- options for so many of my miserable peers -- are completely impossible for me. I have to live in two very bad places, the past and the future, in which both I'm completely powerless to even affect the most minor of outcomes. What is done is done, and what shall be will be, and there's no room for free will whatsoever. I am often quite defeatist.

I do not choose to be this way; it is who I am. My pattern is very similar to a lot of other high-stress personalities who are completely unable to relax because they never exist in the here and now, when things may be just fine, but in a future when bad things will happen and in the past where terrible things have come to pass. There is never that one, singular moment when everything makes sense, when all is at peace. I know that I have a horrible time sleeping at night because I feel as though I am being watched at all hours, no matter where I am. Ever since May of 2004 I have had this feeling and it has motivated me ever since. I have a neck ache half the time from constantly looking over my shoulder to see who's watching me.

Those who have not shared experiences similar to my own would discard this as a paranoid fantasy of my own making, while those who have could at least be able to understand my odd behavior. When I imagine a surveillance room where my every move is being monitored by strangers it's not just part of a delusion, but my own metaphor for understanding the harsh scrutiny of society at large. This scrutiny is something I've often tried to simply stop caring about, and I have succeeded at this on a few occasions. Perhaps I could have succeeded more had I not experienced so much anguish in my childhood because of that scrutiny.

Society, as I see it, is like a gigantic eye that can see everything but itself, and because of this one blind spot it might as well be completely blind. Observation without reflection is useless because it lacks relevance. If you see all and judge all without knowing yourself you can't possibly grasp the relative positions of things -- this is why I never say that I am objective, for I cannot be. What I can claim to be is subjective, but enlightened. The closest we can get to objectivity as subjective beings is to become as aware as possible of our own subjective feelings and emotions, without necessarily rejecting them. Just because an experience is subjective doesn't mean that it doesn't have relevance for the rest of mankind. In this way I suppose that I'm a little unscientific, though I don't really mind. As far as I'm concerned I need a little mystical thinking in my life if only to counteract an increasingly cold and detached intellectual life.

What I think I'm saying here is that I do sometimes act as though there is some inherent dignity to life, even if that dignity has long since been defiled. I don't think that it's something you could prove with logical deduction, since logical deduction by nature has a reductive quality -- we must follow Occam's Razor, of course -- so therefor anything we perceive to be magnificent and huge must always be explained in the most absolutely smallest way. This is the core of the reductionist philosophy, where the universe is reduced to its elemental components so as to explain it with as little assumptions as possible. This is quite a useful law when it comes to predicting outcomes, since it works in general to help elucidate a confusing subjective human reality. But can this philosophy really help us to understand life? To live and to grow and even survive for a few more generations?

How we understand the global environment is a good example of reductionism; we understand the components of our environment, the localized and simple day-to-day weather. Were we to assume that each weather event is part of a greater pattern, we come to see that human activity has caused irreparable harm to the Earth's environmental systems. Often there is little benefit to be garnered from such a narrow view of existence except even more confusion, the reduction of which is the general purpose of such an ideal. We need a systems level of understanding to know our planet and what we, as a system, are doing to it, which is a system as well.

That said, there is another side of the philosophical spectrum which always seems to see things as being greater than they actually are. Whether they benefit from it or not they must add deeper meanings to everything, and soon the universe is a grand and wonderful place again. People usually are attracted to these ideals because the reductionist view very often paints an incredibly bleak picture of our reality -- an inevitable consequence of a great deal of discarded assumptions and theories. So we get a great competition between those who want to hack off, and those who feel the need to tack on. We could call this competition the war between Science and Faith, though that's not entirely accurate -- and it's certainly not accurate enough for me. We could also call this a schism between the thinkers and the believers, and that would serve to explain a great deal. However, there are those who have a great deal of 'Faith' and thought -- people who have come to their grand ideas from over analyzing everything, searching for any little hint that opens up the universe, assuming that there is.

For the purpose of my own understanding I'll call these two different shades of thought Adding and Subtracting, and they both serve a large number of different lifestyles. However, neither of these two schools of human intellect serve my life in any fashion. I'm far too skeptical to be an Adder, and I'm too much of a daydreamer to be a Subtracter either. What I try to do in my ratiocination is reckon the actual sum total of my existence; not one digit higher or lower than what is actually there to be counted. I want to go in with no assumptions about the size of it and just open myself up. Not to accept anything, but to consider everything. Such is the purpose of this one particular moment in time. Sitting here in the darkness, hunched over my keyboard, listening to music. I'm trying to consider a different life, and I'm trying to understand what kind of person I need to be.

So far this entry has lived up to the statements made in the first paragraph. I have, as usual, diverged far from my original topic and got carried away with other ideas. These ideas, given enough time, will eventually lead back to and enhance the entirety of all ideas I've ever posited. For when it comes to the act of creation I am a gestalt thinker, and much to my detriment I have had great difficulties bringing my unwieldy concepts to fruition. I have to work in reverse and just hope that others can appreciate the inherent quirkiness of my methods. Now I leave you with this reverse product which is where I've arrived, and hope that one day I'll be able to work out exactly where I've started. Then I'll really have gotten somewhere, I think. But then again, I don't really know for sure. I can only try, and dream, and think. What else is there to understanding but those quiet moments of warm contemplation?

Spring is here, and if it has arrived for you as well I'd advise that you stop and watch the clouds slowly drifting by overhead, in perpetual movement. That, for all we know, is all life really is. Until I think that it's anything more than that, happy trials everyone...

Pain, sickness and a trip to Emergency Room. There, I found more sickness and something I abhor as much; bureaucratic indifference.... Yes, I tried to wait. First sitting down and then on my hands and knees vomiting up a unique medley of acid, phlegm and bile. People then scatter away from me as I wait to be admitted... and like this I wait even more. In my entire life I don't think I've ever experienced more pain than I did while suffering from this mystery illness. The typical flu-like body aches were around my hips and I often felt as if they had broken. Still, I puked and I waited -- and I had come to E.R. in the hopes that I wouldn't wait because, well, I couldn't wait. After all, I felt like I was dying, why should I ignore that? Yes, when I get sick I usually get far sicker than anyone else I know. This is true even when I know for certain that I share the virus with others. Somehow my immune system is quite weak -- this is probably the main reason why I resist the idea of travel so much.

No member of the hospital staff made an effort to make me feel like I was going to be cared for. No, the only person who did anything at all to help alleviate my misery was the kind of person few would associate with compassion; a cop. He first brought me a wet rag and then a fresh bucket to puke in. Funny how that would happen to me, being that his profession is one I've spent a long time hating for all it represents. While I was laid up in bed later on I thought a lot about this and came to the conclusion that the cop didn't just bring me a rag and a bucket, he brought me the Bodhisattva view of humanity that I used to have. That's not to say I'm a literal Bodhisattva, as I have no connection to Buddhism whatsoever, but that in me own definition that's the best way for me to see the world. That even people I dislike greatly may have little pockets of good inside of them, that the world isn't black and white like I sometimes like to think it is.

My theory, now, goes like this:

There are about three personality types when it comes to understanding humanity: The Saint, The Crusader and The Bodhisattva. Perhaps there are more types, but I was only sick long enough to come up with these three. The first type, I guess, would be The Saint, one who sees only good in people no matter what. The Saint is the kind of person who will try to forgive everyone their faults. Even serial killers and pedophiles are redeemable, because human nature is inherently good, or so they believe.

Contrary to this viewpoint, The Crusader believes that human nature is inherently bad, and forgiveness comes at a price. He will try to reform anyone he can to comply with his ideals. The fires of passion burn bright inside of him because of a strong sense of duty -- because he knows right from wrong and the rest of the world does not. Therefore, it is incumbent upon him to teach and enlighten everyone else.

And there there's the Bodhisattva, who needs to understand human nature. He isn't one to pre-judge like The Crusader or The Saint, as he feels an intense desire to have an understanding of humanity. Often, he cannot fathom the depths of another's soul, but he knows that he must try. He's very slow and meticulous when it comes to making friends, for he only likes those he can understand and he knows that understanding takes time. And in situations of great hostility between him and others he's likely to feel a deep sense of tragedy above anything else. Burning hatred isn't something he's fond of because he feels such pity for those who deeply wrong others. Such people, he thinks, are missing something profoundly important to being alive -- the precious ability to empathize with another's suffering. He may not be an altogether good person, but these are the values that he wishes to live by.

And that tiny bit of empathy back in that hospital reminded me of who I was and what I stand for in this life. Even though I'm too depressed and foggy to enact much of what I feel, I hope that doesn't diminish the validity of my ideals.

And then I was admitted, finally. My hopes were soon dashed as I had to answer a series of questions and have my blood pressure/heartrate measured. I was made to wear a mask, and I felt like a contagious corpse in plagued Europe, ready for the mass cremation. This whole damnable process seemed to take far too long, and that may have been because my mother was admitted the same time as I was. You see, she was very sick too. Eventually we got through and then were placed in a room in the back. There I waited again, and called out for medicine, which eventually came.

I forget the name of the medicine they injected in me, but it just about probably saved me. For those unfamiliar with the experience it's difficult to describe the kind of relief one feels at the administration of the proper medication in a desperate time of need. My temperature was nearly 104 degrees and the medicine helped to bring that down. When my vomiting had been alleviated I lay down in bed and watched the drip-drip of the I.V. solution as it flowed into my body, the first liquid my body could absorb. Then I submitted to an X-ray of my chest, was wheeled back and forth while lying on my bed. Suddenly I had a chill and my right hand was ice cold from the I.V. solution. It all worked out OK for me though, because I remembered penguins.

You see, I was thinking back to a documentary I had watched years ago about penguins, and specifically the part about how penguins keep their feet from freezing solid: Heat exchange blood flow. Their feet are kept warm by the circulation of warmer blood from the rest of the body. After thinking this, I realized I could do something similar with the long tubing that fed me electrolytes and fluid. So, I bunched up the tubing and began to breath on it as hot and heavy as I could. My plan was to at least reduce the degree to which it was cooling my body, and I have to say that it worked out better than I thought it would. Slowly, I began to feel my hand warming up, then the rest of my body warmed too, and in time I drifted off to sleep. It was as good a sleep I could have had, given the state of crisis.

What I'm trying to convey in this journal, I guess, is that I had been really taking a licking lately. Just a few weeks before this illness I had been bedridden after having my wisdom teeth extracted, and then a week before that I was sick again. I hardly feel alive anymore, as I'm starting to forget what it was like to just go outside and maybe eat in a restaurant, or visit the park, or anything else I do in my pathetic life. All I really have going on now is my touch typing project, and so far that's going well. You see I've never been a very good typist. My posture is terrible and my technique was abysmal. Now that I've been practicing obsessively, and at the expense of other pursuits, I can type in spurts of about 60 WPM and if I'm really cooking I can hit 100 WPM -- though that's only if I hit a series of really easy -to-type words and phrases. Even on most of my sick days I practiced, a rare level of dedication for me.

My goal in all this is just to develop a skill and maybe feel better about myself. Then maybe if I feel better about myself I might be bold like I used to be, more willing to think that and outcome may be different that I think it will be. All I do now is nothing because I swear that I know the outcomes because things don't ever really change; not for me, at least. I had an audience once and I insulted them all away, and now I'm back where I started -- where I need to be, I suppose. My problem is that I just can't accept that I'm supposed to be alone because I'm a loner, no matter how much I hate being alone. Sure there will be moments when I seem normal, and pursue a normal sort of social life. Once I have people close to me, though, that's when I'll flare up and throw them away. So if you feel that maybe I'm shrinking into a sort of shell, that's only because I want to keep what few friends I have left.

That's news for now, anyway. So long everyone, for what it's worth.

I've picked up a new habit/obsession in recent weeks that pertains to the current state of politics in America, as pathetic as that is. You see, I'm trying to find out for sure whether or not I actually am a jinx on anything that I vocally support. Think of it as an experiment in quantum possibilities; do I change things as they happen, or am I simply moving myself into an alternate possible reality? And if you really need to know, I've been a very vocal supporter of Hillary Clinton's. Superstitious, I know. But it's not like I've had anything else to do with my life.

Baseball games are next, I'm sure. Though that doesn't mean I'll be watching baseball games anytime soon, as my entire theory depends on not observing events at all because -- according to my crackpot theory -- the moment I observe something I'm instantly locked into that possibility. However, the more I ignore the more possibilities are in the air. Perhaps that's the secret of the 'home team advantage'... all those observers locking in favorable realities for their team. Though I don't quite know how television cameras factor in all this.

Anyway, I've done pretty well so far; the more enthusiastic I force myself to be for Hillary Clinton (And boy is that difficult!) the more she tanks. Which is great for me because for once I'm off the hook. No more compromising for me; I just have to come out and whole-heartedly support to worst, absolute evil of all possibilities and thereby transfer my terrible jinx upon it.

That said, I haven't left this town in about four months. It's starting to wear on me... the routine of it all. Every single nook and cranny of this place has been observed and quantum-locked into its current state. I live in a place where all possibilities have been exhausted and things are simply just the way they are -- the way they've always been, or so I've been told. My curse is simply knowing of more possibilities than those around me, and this, too, is the cause of my obsessions. What can go wrong? Where is that going? What if were to be surrounded right now by thugs and knifed in the back? That could happen, of course, and if I move one step off my path I will let it happen. And every person that enters my life is also caught up in my web of causality; even if they so much as breath the air I exhale they're in it for life. Then they spread this web across the Earth and I'm sure every one who reads these words has touched at least one of my causality-webbed victims, absolutely. They all probably lost money and stump their toes more often after running into me.

If you could theoretically grasp every single causality web in the universe, you could predict the future. How far ahead in the future is all dependent upon Free Will, and whether or not it even exists. Perhaps the more we know about how things are the less free we're likely to be. For example, what would a person who knew the consequences of any single action do? Would he be free to choose in favor of pain and consequence? Or would he simply live out his life by filling in the spaces between dots. Caged of course, but at least free from guilt.

But of course I don't really know, no-one does. However, I have had time to think through the possible consequences of every action -- far too much time, if you ask me. In essence, I've locked myself upon one particular path by observing too much about myself. Perhaps this is just the underlying cause of cynicism; nothing can ever change for the cynic because he's locked himself into a particular sequence of causality. Or perhaps I'm just crazy now, and that's that. Just trying to cling on to any sense of mystery and wonder in a universe that gets duller by the day...

Then again though, my silly idea isn't really about mystery at all. Instead, it's about how mystery gets completely expunged from our lives, and a way for me to explain my faltering convictions about free will. I don't think I really think that free will exists in the universe as it is today. Not for life such as ours, you see, because of all the shit that happened before this very moment. Things happened that caused you to happen and that will make you cause other things to happen. My notion of the causality webs we all have is slightly misleading -- what I really mean is that we are products of a localized web of causality, and in turn what happens to those around us is heavily influenced by our presence. This is what we'd call 'luck', though I prefer 'a distinct pattern of causality'.

For example, let's say that thousands and thousands of years ago your ancestors got caught up in a web of causality that promoted the likelihood of events that are positive for human life in general. Then they as a consequence of an infinitely complex sequence of events always seemed to acquire more food than otherwise equal individuals, and escaped danger while others died young, so on and so forth. Then you would be caught up in a pattern of events that's much more likely to give you a better life. But then again, it's probably more likely that you're caught up in a mix of different webs, and the interference patterns create the entirety of your existence. Yea, makes sense...

This is same kind of logic we use to understand why certain places are bad, such as 'the bad part of town'. Why is the 'bad part of town' the way it is? Because of all the events that happened before that created this great pocket of negativity. Surely it's the endeavor of every denizen to attempt to extricate himself from the causality of such a place. One could of course could hope to try, and I wouldn't advise against it either because there's hope if the center of the misfortunate web is not yourself. However, those who are the center of their own bad luck are truly hopeless because every action they take is part of that pattern. For the very nature of their actions only deepens their misfortune.

When you play a game of Tetris, the very single first piece you put down affects the rest of the game, no matter how long the game lasts. Just because we're not smart enough to be able to deduce what the first piece was doesn't mean it wasn't there or doesn't affect every single piece that comes after. And even though thousands upon thousands of pieces may come, they're still greatly influenced by that very first one because the placement of other pieces was affected by it's type and position. So on and so forth... my life may very well have been decided by the movement of a couple molecules when the universe was young.

And dammit, I'm on a luckless streak. If this is my luck when I do nothing, I'd hate to see my luck if I acted at all. For example, right now my mind is clearer than its been in months. Perhaps I could do a great many important things in the next few days, if something didn't interfere with that. But then, even as I write this, I begin to feel that distinctive scratchiness in my throat that means I'm most likely coming down with influenza. One week of misery to replace one week of productivity. This is how my life works, and this is why I come up with crazy ideas like this. Whenever I seem to improve my condition somehow an event occurs to delay my ascent. Often it seems as though I can feel the forceful assertion of my causality web as if it had physically snared my arms and legs and bound me to this particular life. Then again, I don't expect anyone to believe this crap. I've come unraveled a bit in recent months, I'll admit it.

Now I resort to mystical thinking, as I've always done when stressed. Perhaps it's only this stess that has opened myself up to this awful virus. Man, I would really hate to be wrong this time, because if I am there's no explanation whatsoever for why I'm getting sick now. And if there's no explanation then there's nothing for me to root for and then jinx. Just like how I may have -- crazy, I know -- sunk Hillary Clinton by reluctantly hinging my hopes and dreams on her (Hehe). Though now I may have reversed that jinx by mentioning my plans, but I doubt it. For the sake of the experiment, my hopes and dreams are still hinged on Hillary. If by some crazy chance this plan of mine works, I'll start rooting for all sorts of horrible things. I'll have to start cheerleading cancer and AIDs, just to jinx them. Oh yea, and I'll also cheer for influenza, tomorrow and tonight, because it doesn't hurt to try.

That's all for now, I suppose. I felt like I needed to write something a little more hopeful after that last very depressing journal. Now for me to go and be sick for awhile. Who knows how long I'll be sick before writing another journal. And that means goodbye for now.

I haven't spoken much about the future because my mind is stuck in an infinite loop that should be a part of my past. This loop of mine ponders the lie we tell ourselves so we can sleep at night; the idea that we actually are, after all, good people. When I used to write every day I could tell myself this lie every hour on the hour or as needed. But then one day, last year I think, I stopped telling myself this lie, and started to come to grips with just what kind of person I really am -- a bad person.

Unlike other bad people, though, I know the source of my poison. My journey down this forlorn road began with one of those big family decisions that come about every great once and awhile that are so important as to require unanimous approval. As always, I was the last to be asked and the last to know, and the veto power was all mine. Somehow, I could have stopped a lot of misery -- I could have prevented all this misfortune.

Though, I did not. I said yes without knowing what 'yes' really meant.

The details of this mistake have never left the contents of my head. I cannot even bring myself to type it out, for inside of my mind there are locks I cannot break, locks put on thoughts that I dare not think too long. One day I may break down all these barriers, but only if I'm far stronger than I've ever been. Given my recent decline in courage I fear that day may never come. My mind has slowed to a nearly glacial time-frame and a mental thousand-yard stare has overcome me. Often, I'll remember events from years ago better than I can remember today... as if my life will just flash in front of my eyes and that'll be that. Tomorrow I'll wake up 40 years from now with little more than a legacy of abject failure, or so it seems...

My mood is sour because I had to ask myself a question the other day, a question whose time had come: What does life teach someone whose every decision leads to failure? What would such a person believe, consciously or unconsciously? I asked myself this because I needed some way of explaining myself that wasn't an excuse or some kind of pathetic clinging on to my stupid little dreams. All I wanted then was to know the reason why, because I think everyone who must die wants to know why. Every failure wants to know why he never got off the ground.

"What is the question?" you ask, and when the question is revealed you already know the answer.

Life teaches people like me futility. Enough people hurt and enough wounds sustained and anyone in the world would give up, no matter what he or she actually believed. I've never in my life made a conscious decision to just quit, instead I just let life drift away from me after something inside myself shut it off. Why else would my mind be clear all day long until the time comes for me to do something important? Why does my resolve wait until that moment to cut and run away from me?

Even a life of disaster and failure, however, would never be enough to completely kill the soul, at least not mine. No, what causes the most extreme damage is when someone like me actually dares to try again, despite all better judgement. So then I try again, and it's when I fail that time that I'm completely devastated by enormous, impenetrable doubt. Oh, at first I'll deny it because my pride can't stand the thought of giving up. But I do nothing at all, and I allow it because I tell myself that tomorrow I will do all the things I need to do to make right with myself and the world, only to tell myself the exact same thing the next day.

I used to be nicer than I am now, and I'm so sorry that I'm not like that anymore. Often, I used to listen to others and try to make them feel better about life. As cynical as I am, I'd only wish my stiflingly bleak worldview on a select few. Sometimes I wish I could feel that benevolence again, just to feel any hope at all.

What the world wants to know about people like me is why never change. Why do we insist on wallowing in our failure and despair? Why do I do it? Why doesn't desperation somehow translate into courage? Often, I used to wonder the same things about other people because I couldn't admit that I, too, was among the afflicted. Now that I admit this I understand these things:

As horrible as things are, we still fear any sort of change. Humans in general fear change, and to reform the content of your character in drastic ways is not something we often do, if ever. For despite the outside world's viewpoint on misery and hopelessness, these are things that one can adjust to. We reorganize our minds early in childhood to run on alternative fuels; instead of being motivated by reward and fulfillment, we become motivated to avoid the negatives, the sting of futility and disappointment. Once you have made this transition, the odds are very good that you'll live a very sad, dull and futile life. It's how slaves live, I think. I say that in present tense because I think that slavery is still very much alive and well.

And I say the word 'we' a lot because I can't bear the thought that I am absolutely, positively alone in this. Just yesterday, when I was too depressed to eat, I wondered through a hardware store because walking felt better than not walking. When I tired of walking, I sat down at one of the patio furniture displays and stared into space. There was a sign about 50 feet away from me, and I could read what the larger print said: "You are not alone". Why an advertisement for lawn care products would offer such a heartwarming sentiment, I don't really know as I didn't care to read the small print. I didn't really care much right then and there. Seeing that sign only reminded me more how much I didn't want to be alone right then and there.

I often think of a place to represent what I wanted from life. Just imagine it as a field of flowers in late spring... Imagine butterflies and this gentle, round sort of warmth you feel in the presence of someone who loves you without any resentment whatsoever of that love. What kind of air would you breathe in a place like that? Much lighter than the air I breathe right now.

What inspires me to write this now is my elation at discovering a very important part of myself, as depressing as that may be, it's a discovery all the same. As well, it's also a relief to finally stop making excuses for all my shortcomings. Because when it comes right down to it, I don't do a fucking thing to make my life better because I honestly don't believe, deep in the core of my being, that human existence is really worth a damn; that's there's any dignity to it at all. For me, it's all just so many different ways to wait for death. All this time, I've tried so goddamn hard to convince myself that I believe otherwise, but now I know better. So again and again I sabotage 'myself'...

One day I want to go for a walk, but I get sidetracked because 'there's no point in it, at the end of the day you'll still feel like shit'. So I give up because I'll do that thing tomorrow. Again and again... I know it's wrong, but I'll soon forget every fucking word I write today. Somehow the presence of a keyboard and an empty text elevates my moral standards to the point where I actually know right from wrong.

Now I know that I don't fear social interaction just because I think most people are disgusting, but also because some of them might still have souls, and their souls will remind me how I drowned my own soul in a bathtub long ago. I'll hate them for nothing more than having something that I do not possess; for merely progressing, for allowing themselves the folly of life. My jealously burns inside me until I feel like I must hurt someone who is happy if I possibly can because I can't stand that sunken feeling in my chest anymore. Only in the presence of absolute personhood can I feel this, but when I do it plunges me into an even deeper depression than I am in now.

So I hate good people even more than I hate bad ones, since bad people, as awful as they are, are my people. Good people make me feel small because I've never, ever, in my life cared about anyone else other than myself except to assuage my own guilt. No-one, ever... I only care because I feel bad when I don't. Why else would someone who doesn't think human life is worth a damn care?

This isn't the explicit worldview that I write down in words; this is the implicit worldview of my actions. More truth to that than anything else, I think.

No, I don't t think about the future. My mind seems to have lost that faculty. So much so, that I no longer conceive of tomorrow, or even tonight. When I wake up, that moment is itself, and then later on I can't even remember what I ate for breakfast. So that is that I suppose, and the reason for my absence at least has been explained honestly this time. Perhaps I've just given up, and whenever I seem to have this great renewed passion I'm running on the elation of some anomalous event, and not any impetus at all within me.

But that's that, I suppose, and there's nothing more to say. What's there to say when no-one is listening? But then again, I shouldn't regret my solitude so much, for that means at least I am not alone in feeling that my life isn't worth a damn. Beyond that, there's little more. All this is today, and all that you'll know of it is tomorrow.

So farewell... tomorrow.