From: boesch@cs.washington.edu (Eric Boesch)
Subject: Re: more depression
Organization: maggots 40 feet long and as wide as redwoods
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 93 05:17:34 GMT

Thad_Engeling@quickmail.natinst.com (Thad Engeling) writes:
>Sometimes I wish I were dead, but that happens to everyone.

No it doesn't.  I heard some statistic that like 20% of people in the
US often think of suicide.  Sorry, I don't remember the exact phrasing
but the gist is that most Americans at least are not remotely
suicidal.  I could find an excuse to disbelieve the statistic but I
don't; I have seen plenty of evidence that most people don't feel as I
do, hell, for most of my past I didn't feel as I do.  I don't claim
that my mood is rational; it changes a lot more dramatically and a lot
more often than my opinions do.  My mood usually tries very hard to
drag my opinions about objective reality with it, and it always does
to some extent, but my mood has seesawed so many times that I'm
getting pretty immune to it.  Still I can't recommend being
intellectually detached from your moods, along with it I've become
detached from everything else, like my fingers and external
motivations, too, being reasonable and moderate is a horrible thing,
it takes too much time and there is little use in it.  I would like to
swear off valid and sensible opinions forever, being perfect and
better than everybody or being horrible and wretched are fine, but
being realistic is not.  (Well, in the US, you have to choose the "I'm
perfect" model at least outwardly, fools tend too much to believe
people's opinions of themselves, I don't know, maybe in Japan the
I'm-wretched-scum model is received better.)

Apropos of nothing, some old crap, I might as well post it now that
I've dropped out of grad school; at least it's a way to be
irreversibly done with the decision whether to post it.  Besides, I
like reading other people's whining, it's only fair to provide some of
my own.

Grad school was as bad as I feared it might be, but dropping out seems
to have gone better than I thought it could, it seems like a bit of a
waste that I spent so much time worrying about it.  It does make it
that much more obvious that I'll end up an irrelevant insignificant
speck, but what the hell, I knew that already, at least I'll probably
be a speck with a little bit of money, not that that ought to be
consolation.  (Planning to be nothing, I think, is better than
planning to be God; for one thing, there are a lot more nothings than
there are Gods; if you're going to be nothing, then the worthless
project you're on now means a lot more.  I don't know which is more
distracting, God-fantasies or Hell-fantasies; I just hope screwing up
won't bother me so extremely next time, and perhaps by expecting to be
zero, I can at least avoid one of the two sorts of useless fantasies:
if I expected to be God, then reality would force me to consider the
opposite type of fantasy as well.

At this point I would like to point out that I have almost certainly
learned nothing useful from any of this, as will be proven the next
time I'm in a similar situation, and whatever I resolve to do I will
not do.  This is not a reverse psychology gimmick; it has been true
every time.  All that getting older means to me right now is acting
increasingly foolish as I supposedly get wiser; people who see how I
act give simplistic advice, saying things I knew ten years ago, and
even _felt_ ten years ago, though I don't feel it any more.  Now I
think this downward-heading perhaps CAN last through a full lifetime.

 ... or perhaps one of these silly pills will actually work.  Half the
time, it has seemed that this most recent try actually does work, and
if now were part of that half the time, I would probably be defending
the efficacy of pills at length with a tiny disclaimer at the end
saying I might just continue downwards, just the reverse of this.
That's my version of trying to maintain the same opinions despite my
mood... I fail _almost_ completely.

---

Cheap sitcom's first 1 1/2 seasons

Everything you'd want in a sitcom except funny lines and variety.
Arnold Schwarzenegger stars; any resemblance to persons living or dead
is purely coincidental.

Premise: Arnold has just barely graduated from college despite the 
difficulty of having a tiny workload, being in a dorm environment that 
makes finding friends as difficult as breathing, having almost no 
paperwork to do, and not having to fully support himself.  Now it's on 
to grad school, where he has a tiny salary but even tinier expenses and 
lots more paperwork.  He will be spending much of his time in the 
company of Adults.  If you can't laugh at the funny lines, at least you 
can laugh at Arnold's pathetic unsuccessful striving for incomplete 
mediocrity.

Season 1: The electrifying joys of moving.  Arnold forgets to pay
tuition, pays $70 re-registration fee, forgets to fill out form that
allows him to have re-registration fee refunded.  Meanwhile, he also
forgets to show up for many classes, forgets to fill out forms that
will enable him to become a resident (and save $2000) a year later, 
forgets to set the alarm, forgets how to set the alarm, forgets to drop 
the morning class that he missed so often for having not set the alarm 
correctly, and gets a 0.0 grade.

Arnold visit the aquarium at night for the first departmental party,
and misses most of the smalltalk/public aging because he's too busy
chatting up the seals and fish and walruses and creating a bad but
mostly accurate impression.

Arnold sleeps later and later until late becomes early and it's OK 
again, missing lots of classes in the meantime.

Arnold gets to grade huge stacks of programs and find it's more mind-
numbingly dull than he feared, so he's slightly late about getting the 
papers graded.  He puts a joke on a student's paper; professor sees it 
and thinks it's serious and calls him in for a conference, where Arnold 
seeks to get out of there as fast as possible instead of to explain 
himself.  Arnold will be given plenty of reason to regret this 
impatience later.  But there's a happy ending when Arnold has 10 hours 
to finish grading the last homework, learns how to grade quickly and 
sloppily, and is done on time.

Season 2: Arnold is confident.  Why?  Because he's an idiot, of course.  
After all, he may have been terminally absentminded last quarter, but he 
did almost the same thing in his first semester of college and then 
stopped, so it's okay.  And Arnold has never flunked in a critical 
situation before.  (Oooh!  Foreshadowing!)  Arnold decides to take lots 
of classes so that if he does well the department may forget the 
previous quarter.







The flaws in this logic show up early when Arnold meets his new advisor.  
Arnold is chewed out and tries to cut the lecture short, but the advisor 
is in a groove.  Advisor is as much fun as a fundamentalist, and 
delivers the same message: young man, you're going to Hell if you don't 
shape up.

Next is the "Arnold mellows out" episode.  He's feeling stressed, but 
smoking pot fixes that.  The effect lasts into the next day!  Arnold 
hasn't felt like this since high school.  They're not ghouls, they're 
people.  It's not cement for your brain and a jackhammer, it's homework.  
It's still bullshit, but Arnold has a positive attitude and a wry smile 
about it all.  Yes!  He won't forget how to have a positive attitude 
this time!  For the first time this season, Arnold gets that sparkle in 
his eye and delivers the catchphrase "I've figured it out now".  Since 
this is the first time, the studio audience isn't prepared with the 
rotten eggs and the litany "It's all a dream, Arnold."

After 24 hours, the mellowing effect fades until it's gone.  Then it 
fades some more.  The others in the department may not be demons, but 
Arnold feels nervous when passing them in the hallway nonetheless.  
Inspired by visions of pitchforks and brimstone and a miserably boring 
compiler project, Arnold starts a two-week home vacation.  Well, more of 
a darkened-room vacation, with visits to the bathroom as necessary and
to the kitchen a bit less often than necessary.

				 -----

Bored silly again.  I won't work because that would be starting 
something new and I'm not finished with what I was doing already, which 
is nothing.  Been true almost all of the last few months, annoyingly.  
In debt.  Night outside.  Light on inside to make the outside darker.  
Do I go outside?  Do I figure out a way to get work done again?  Do I go 
bike riding and see if that permits me to slow down enough to start 
again?  Do I go bike riding in the morning and hope that it allows me to 
start again when there's a whole day available for it?  But the day will 
be over again after the first class so it doesn't matter.

I don't know what I want.  I know what I want soon.  The quarter only
lasts a small number of weeks.  I have to start getting the shit done.
Then the quarter will be done and I'll be able to defend myself better
from their criticism.  Why?  Not important.  How?  I had an idea.  Or at 
least I somehow convinced myself I had one.  I've forgotten it.  It 
doesn't matter anyway.  I've had many perfectly good tricks but they 
never work for long.  New problems show up as I try increasingly 
indirect tricks and I can't even remember what I'm trying to accomplish 
any more or why.  First I can't bear thinking about what I'm supposed to 
do, then I can't bear thinking about tricks to get around that problem, 
on and on until there's no thought of decisions at all, just doing what 
I want, and what I want to do is useless, hiding out.

I'm not old, I can't imagine waiting long enough to actually be old.  
When I really am old, I'll have to be different, so I'm not old now.

I can imagine being utterly useless in a decade or two -- it's not a big 






step.  Other people would have every reason to doubt I'd have a decent 
excuse to be useless, and I doubt it too.  I could probably persuade 
people that I really am weird and not just deficient, but the only thing 
that I clearly am is lazy.  In fact I'm already almost useless and it's 
just taking a while for my bank account and grades and job to find out.

So can anyone describe how one survives after you've felt unbearably old 
for so long?  There are actual adults here, right?  Do you have an 
answer?  I doubt I can have one.  When I'm in a good mood I have nothing 
useful to tell myself when I'm not.

I'm still more or less headed towards failure, but still not 
irretrievably.  I could fix it.  I could get the rest of my evil evil 
evil homework in, and meanwhile get that project done, and get my job's 
work done and get a better job. And then just (?) one more quarter and 
I'd be out of this hole.

 ... if!  A very tired, very forgetful, unstable person like myself 
getting all those things done in a row?  Don't bet on it! Bet heavily 
against it.

Old, old, old.  Not old, not old, not old.  Stupid.  Not really.

Too tired and lazy to live.  No argument.  Too defenseless against
real life to live.  No argument.

What does this look like to someone who's not in the same fog I'm in?
How would I know?  So shut up I don't want to know.  I really don't.
Either way.  I'm trying to forget this toy universe because I can't 
forget everything and I'm supposed to remember the evil evil evil real 
one.

This is not an emotional thing.  This is not a physical thing.  This
is a mental thing and I don't know what I can do about it.  Anything I
think of is subject to it.  Take meditation as an example: it doesn't
seem particularly painful to try it, and it seems to work a little.  But 
after doing it a few times, I just don't _wan't_ to do it any more.  
Certainly there are things that don't become impossibly difficult; 
otherwise I would just wait and die.  But every act that I choose to do 
becomes more difficult -- it's all well defended.  I drink and stop 
after one beer, but it takes at least two or three beers to make 
drinking worthwhile, and I'm left feeling as I always have.  I've called 
off the meetings with the headshrinker.  I've stopped taking the 
headshrinker's pills.  I don't ride my bike very often.  I enjoy riding 
my bike, as far as I can tell, but I do it less and less.

Oddly, I still write to this newsgroup.  I would expect this newsgroup
would go, too, because it involves thinking about my situation.  I've
learned to mostly dissociate thinking from doing, but I still wouldn't
think that would be enough, because I occasionally do figure something
out and I start working again.

And I was happy much of the time two summers ago.  And I was miserable
and useless in stints before that but not for longer than a few weeks
in a row.







And, before you get pissed, this is not a sympathy post.  Perhaps I'm
wrong but I think someone might find it interesting.

And it reads as garbage garbage garbage.

Well, the protection isn't that strong.  I'm going to drink two beers
tonight.  No argument.  It won't do me any good, but I'm going to
fucking try.  Three of them.  I'm going to try to drunk myself out of
this haze.  And it's wrong wrong wrong.  And perhaps I should go back
to the pills again.  But they didn't help.  It's all wrong wrong wrong.

Shut up.

(And I didn't drink the beers after all.  But strangely, I felt more 
productive the next day, for the first time in weeks.  Not really 
productive, not even close, but better.)

				 -----

I'm pissed.  Not miserable or worried or wired any more.  Pissed and ...  
Pissed and nothing.  Nothing that has kept me from getting much of 
anything done since summer began.  Nothing that has me failing this 
quarter and missing classes more than ever.  And not sending out checks.  
And not returning mail.  Nothing that has me doing nothing.

Not suddenly nothing.  Not completely nothing.  See friends, see friends 
some more, looks like things are improving, cheer up, get some work 
done, cheer down, stop working.  New self-delusion (or not a delusion, 
but I give it up, regardless), I work some, stop working.  I guess that 
sort of thing has been happening for a long time but it doesn't stop any 
more.  No more self-delusions.  No habits at all.  My new try at getting 
up in the morning (using an electric timer as a radio) has predictably 
stopped working.  I just sleep through it, mostly, or perhaps I get up 
and then go back to bed fifteen minutes later.  Sometimes I actually 
make it to class, but the number of steps involved in the process, all 
of them very unreliable, is immense.  Hell, I can't set the alarm with 
better than 70% accuracy at night.

I might be happy for a little while, and figure I have no excuses not to 
work, but I don't work.  I might be ... it might be ... *anything*, but 
the conclusion is always the same... I don't work.

Get a different job?  I don't know...  A 9-to-5 job might be better, but 
I may have reached the point that it wouldn't help.  And I could never 
get a good one.

This doesn't make me depressed, it makes me disgusted.  Shithead, vile 
bastard, fuckhead, dumbfuck...  Oh, but maybe I have a little room left 
to be depressed, or afraid, when I think about what I have to look 
forward to.  
Newsgroups: alt.angst,alt.suicide.holiday