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About this blog

I have found blogging to be useful to me in the past. I get to write what I would write in a journal; anonymous people get to read and comment; everyone is happy.

Entries in this blog

A Few Questions

Do I love me? Do I love my family? Do I love my friends? Do I love my fellow humans? Do I love my world? And how would each of them know? Just things I think about when I realize I'm past the halfway point.
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Twine (and exploring the labyrinth therewith)

So, I've had a few days to work with the image of a couple of childish conscious parts trying to cover up for certain perceived but nearly unconscious weaknesses, and I thought to give an update on that. First, the idea has helped to organize some widely disparate observations that I've made about myself lately. Not just obvious things, like my avoidance and procrastination on the divorce issues (i.e. fear of giving my ex a new handle by which to manipulate me, and instead giving her a differen
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Labyrinth

Bear with me: this is likely to be fairly long. First, I want to list a series of "developmental deficits" that I perceive in myself. I define these as areas where I fell "behind" others, or did not develop to my full potential, due to my struggles with social anxiety, particularly in my younger years. The list is inherently subjective, but I believe the list itself is fairly accurate. What I'm not sure of are the degree and importance of the impairments. The first deficit is a direct result
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Long Overdue

So yes, I've once again said it all in the title: this blog update is long overdue. However, the problem is that I could either deal in trifles, because really, not much has changed about external things like the divorce, or rather the post-divorce appeals, or I could delve deeply into labyrinths of my psyche (two Greek words that, taken together, probably mean that I won't.) For one thing, there isn't enough time tonight. Maybe tomorrow. How's that for a teaser? ;-)
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Jokes

Luke Skywalker was training one day with Master Yoda when the latter gave a deep loud sigh. Luke: "What is the matter, Master? Did you feel a disturbance in the Force?" Yoda, irritably: "Judge me by my sighs, do you?" Okay, now that I have you in a mood of heartfelt gratitude, because the joke is over, I have another one. Apparently, I won the appeal that my ex filed against the financial award in our divorce, and the whole insane motion recounted in my last blog entry was dismissed without
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Snort Spews

Anyone acquainted with the comic strip "Tank McNamara" recognizes that immortal quotation. It's ex-football player Tank, on his first day in television sports reporting, attempting to say "Sports News" on the air while nervous. So, in other news ... My ex just filed a motion, attached somehow to her appeal of the financial decision in our recently completed divorce case, requesting that the court continue that appeal for eight months while it investigates her allegation that I'm an internationa
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The Princess Unseen

The Princess Unseen A Fairy Godfather Story A Brief Natural History of Fairies Fairies, on the whole, are just like you and me, except where they're different. For one thing, there's the flying: they're better at it than we are. They're better at it than most things, actually, even other things that fly. They can hover at will; they can do complex aerobatics; and they can speed off faster than you can see. And well, that's another thing: they can choose whether to be visible to peopl
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Bad Day Yesterday

Just to illustrate that I have problems too, but that problems don't last forever, I'm going to share excerpts from something I wrote to myself yesterday, when for some reason I was feeling unusually connected to what one might call "the bad thoughts". Ellipses (...) mean I left something out. Now, part of my point is that I talk to folks here fairly often with the same cognitive distortions. Yet, when they're my distortions, they still "work". I'm aware enough to know that they're distortion
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The Way of the Bunny

The Way of the Bunny A Panda Warrior Story He was not like the other bunnies. Oh, he was an ordinary enough rabbit, but one day he decided that he was tired of being afraid all the time. He no longer wanted to spend his time sneaking around, nibbling on juicy leaves in the moonlight, and running away at the tiniest sound. So he set out to find another way. He wanted to be a warrior. He traveled in the laborious manner of bunnies. He skirted open areas, choosing instead to sprint in zigzags
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Questions

What do you call the place where you touch the ground? Can it ever be the same as someone else's? What do you call the means by which you move across the ground? Can it match the way another moves? What do you call the destination that you wish to reach? Can you tell whether it's the same one someone else is aiming for? What do you call the process of picking a direction to move? Can our directions ever really coincide? Do you aim straight for your destination? Do you compensate for forces you p
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Contrast

Well, after commenting on Freud, the next book I took up was Abraham Maslow's Toward a Psychology of Being. Talk about contrasts ... As I told a friend elsewhere, Maslow spelled "optimist" with a capital 'O'. He preferred to focus on the behavior of the most successful healthy people, as a guide toward individual growth for each of us, instead of focusing on sick people and how they got that way. It's a totally different viewpoint. Also, he (being a professor in the 60's) preferred not to pre
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Whiz-dumb

I've been reading a lot, lately. Trying to self-teach some of the foundations of psychological thought. I read (as much as I could of) a collection of Freud's work, including Interpretation of Dreams and Totem and Taboo. First, he's hardly an exciting or even a very clear writer. In his defense, he was writing in German around the turn of the 20th century, and I'm reading 100 years later in translation. And, he was wrestling with the task of defining new terms for things that most of us don'
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Peace

I'm going to echo Mary's simple wish, that you all find peace this holiday season. I can't give it to you, because that's not one of my powers. But I can hope you each find it for yourselves. Happy Holidays
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Something

Once I thought I was right, but I wasn't. Once I thought I was wrong, but I was wrong about that too. Then I thought I was part of something, or maybe it was a part of me. Then I thought it was a part of everybody, but that everybody felt apart from it. Then I saw a baby smile, the moon in the daytime and the stars at night, and boy did I feel silly.
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Differences

Bear with me: this is coming out on the fly, as it were. People are different. Perhaps people who seek out our help here are more diverse than the general population. We represent the fringes; the bulk of "normal" people will never need our help. The result is that we often misunderstand each other, when we meet. Some people come here angry about something that happened in the outside world. Some are belligerent only on the surface, as a cover for their own insecurities. On the other hand
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Half a Century

Well, as of tomorrow, I will have been on the planet for half a century. I was tempted to wax philosophical ... but who needs a shiny philosophical, after all? Strangely, I've become much more light-hearted as I get older, and I don't much care why. So, I'll leave you with a possibly relevant headline from Yahoo! News today: "Study confirms many of us go online for no reason" They don't say why they were doing a study for no reason. :-)
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It's Hard, Being Super

It's Hard, Being Super Another spinoff of the Fairy Godfather stories Yes, I can't seem to help it: I've written a story about another character spun off from the second Group Participation Fairy Tale. Someone came up with a character named Superhamster, and I felt the need to explore his life story. He wasn't born "Superhamster". In fact, hamsters generally don't have any names at all, except the silly ones people give them. Why would they? In fact, you've heard the old cliché about "they
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Thankful

I know I'm a few days late, but this needs to be said. I'm thankful I'm alive. There was a time I thought I should die. I'm thankful that there's someone I love. There was a time I thought I'd be with someone I didn't love until I died. I'm thankful that I have friends. There was a time when I had none. I'm thankful that I'm in touch with my feelings and my creativity. There was a time when those parts of me were barren. And oh yeah, I'm thankful that I'm alive.
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Malign is ...

Back? :-) I had wanted to say "I am divorced", which is both true and worth celebrating, but I realized that to say it that way is similar to the problem that kept me in the marriage. I keep identifying with only a part of me, as if the rest of me vanishes when I focus on a part. But the fact is, throughout, I am Me, and no one else can be. I can have all kinds of facets, positive and negative, but none of those exists without the whole. Maybe that doesn't make sense; I admit that I lost th
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I know it's been a while

Hey all. I know a lot of you have missed me. Modesty might make me describe that as a surprise, but since I've missed you all, too, I guess it's not that surprising. What has been a surprise has been how many people took it personally, as if it was something I was doing to them, or as if it were because of something they might have done to me. Just to clear that up: it's not. Besides the very real busyness with which I've been occupied, the real major issue seems to be how I can adjust to the
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It's ... ALIVE!

I guess the first thing is: I'm sorry. Sure, the commute to work takes longer, and involves my introvert self being shut into subway cars full of people, usually. And sure, the divorce is heating up, with my answers to interrogatories and document discovery due to my lawyer next week. And I did come home tonight to find a new protective order filed against me, though I haven't been anywhere near my wife for months (I can't remember the last time I saw her.) The part I'm sorry about is the rest
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Someone Else's Words

Since mine aren't coming out right, today. Jimi Hendrix: "Is this love, baby, or just ... confusion?" Grateful Dead: "This is all a dream we dreamed one afternoon, long ago ..." "It's just a box of rain, or a ribbon for your hair. Such a long long time to be gone, and a short time to be there."
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Dream

I'm on a journey inward. The first door I open leads into a closet-like room so large that I can't tell how far it stretches. The room is filled with clothes racks packed with costumes. It looks like an enormous dry cleaner's. But I'm not here to pick out a fresh persona. I hurry along the packed ranks of fakery towards the back of the room. The wall at that end is radiating an extremely bright but diffuse white light. As I leave the clothes racks behind, the scene changes entirely. Now I'm
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Change in Habits

Well, the new work assignment is finally going to start happening for me. I start Tuesday September 6th (Monday's a holiday here). It will mean that I most likely will have very little time for the site during the day, unlike my current very boring workplace. The commute may even be long enough to keep me offline most weeknights. I'm sure that if that's the case, I'll be online on weekends more, but we can all see that the result will be a major reduction in my activity, on the site. It's no
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