4/09/2008

In the latest ep of "I Should Be Writing", Mur was interviewing Jared Axelrod. In the course of the interview they talked about feedback to podcasts and confirmed that it's not just AAP that goes over like a lead balloon with regards to feedback. I believe the ratio was something like 1 in 1000, or possibly 1 in 400. So that helps. I simply must be content with the slowly rising numbers of my audience, and learn to expect no other feedback. It's like you can hear the crickets chirping, being a podcaster. Yes, I really am just talking to myself.

Still, it does nothing for one's level of motivation. Lack of fan mail is still lack of fan mail, whether one refers to fanfic or origfic.

So despite spending several weeks now trying to come up with some kind of outline and the gumption to write on the next Z5 story, I'm stuck again. It's DOA at the moment. And I have nothing to podcast again. But since I have no feedback or indeed any reaction, it gives the appearance that no one cares. Oh well.

For lack of anything better to do, I started piddling around with Danger getting a new body, or rather getting a used body since they can't afford to get him a new one. I barely have any motivation to work on that and will probably abandon it.


You'd think being on St. Johns Wort, B Vitamin supplements and an herbal anti-anxiety mixture, I wouldn't be feeling this empty and depressed. All it seems to do is make my mind clear enough to be fully immersed in the misery. Should I give up and try yet again to go to a shrink? Even though a myriad of experiences have shown me even shrinks don't understand and cannot help me? What can they really do to change my life? Not a damned thing. They sit and nod like bobbleheads, then give you a prescription for anti-depressants to turn you into a zombie, and instead of helping they screw you up even more. Most of them freak out like you're cutting their throats if you tell them you're on St. Johns Wort and quite happy with it, thanks ever so much. Afraid of losing their kickbacks from the pharmaceutical companies, most like. Or they try to convince you St. Johns Wort is toxic or something.

Which would be my cue to leave, since I've been taking the stuff for years and it's worked better than 80mgs of Paxil ever did.


For the most part my mood is stable. I can tell the St.john's Wort, et. al., is working. But yet I still exhibit symptoms of clinical depression. Withdrawal. Feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness. Losing interest in things I was formerly interested in. Loneliness. Anger and resentment. I've been getting increasingly isolated over these last couple of years, not that I was a social butterfly before but it's getting profound now. Partly that's everyone I knew getting their own lives. But mostly it's me, I guess. Every time I open my mouth in front of anybody these days I end up embarassing myself or alienating myself or insulting somebody. And in a few cases it's turned into downright hatred on my part. I refuse categorically to take part in any relationship that I view as unhealthy to my mental well-being. I had ten years of that and whatever progress I've made emotionally and spiritually is due to learning when somebody is screwing with my head. So everyone else has gotten married or gotten involved, and I'm the last one standing. Eleven years on my way to a lifetime of celibacy, chunking down that track toward "bitter and weird old woman in the shack on the hill."

That's my mom's gig. I don't want to be that.

But there doesn't seem to be any way to avoid it. What am I gonna do, kidnap somebody and keep them locked up until they like me, like Stephen King's "Misery"? That's undue influence on the choices of another sentient being, and as a Jedi I don't do that. You can't force (or Force) somebody to like you.

I remember back in my pagan days I used to cast the Tarot for myself a lot and every time -- I am not kidding, literally every reading I did -- had the Hanged Man in it. Every single reading. The Hanged Man. I got to where I HATED that card. With a passion. I still hate it, because it's turned into my life.

I don't want to spend my entire life marking time. What is the point of living a life in suspension? There is no point to it if you're not making progress. If you're not producing works that will live beyond you, or at least learning something. It's a waste of energy, mass and time to live otherwise. I'll end up warehoused in a nursing home somewhere, drooling and senile, with the staff sticking me in a corner to rot while they burn through my retirement accounts. I'll have lived for nothing.


In other news, I'm considering moving this blog to WordPress. More news as events warrant.

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