Journey to Nothing

[LastThursday]

It's becoming apparent that I've got a split in my personality or ways of interpreting the world more like. Playing chess regularly, I can see the parallel with the way I think a lot of the time. Programming for work, involves taking many factors into account and then finding a solution within those contraints, not too dissimilar from playing chess. I've learned to think effeciently that way over many decades, it's not natural per se, but I do have a predisposition for symbolic representative thinking.

The other side of me is more "artistic" for want of a better label. I'm a bit of a dreamer or drifter, I like being spaced out, out of my mind. That all is, when I'm not in logical-mode. Younger, I would encourage that dreamy sensation by getting drunk (it's UK cultural and acceptable). I dabbled in various substances, but only by proxy, I've never actively sought it out, but neither have I rejected it if it was offered. I also directly enjoy the arts, especially music of all descriptions, I enjoy making music. Of all the arts music is the one that immediately connects me with something that isn't logic - my truer self. I'm very reliant on intuition and gut feeling to make decisions or choices.

It makes for a strange mix. I like building models of how the world fits together, by plucking from my knowledge-base and then intuiting my way to an answer. I like to try and defend a position to see if holes can be poked in my mental models, but in the last instance I'm not wedded to my constructions. I like to keep things fluid, which is my more artisic side coming through.

A lot of what I've learnt through Actualized is pure knowledge and fact building. But paradoxically the more I absorb, the less and less relevant it seems. Some amount of the constant inner turmoil I feel is the tussle between logical sense making, and intuitive, being, sense making. I think in the last decade I've slowly swung from the former to the latter. There will come a tipping point where I start regarding logical sense making to be the less worthy of the two ways of seing things: as much as I love thinking abstractly. After all, if I'm building mental models of the world, but also not ever holding a particular position, what is the point, where does it lead? How much better it is to take the world as I experience it, directly and head on, without the distractions of the mind.

 

[LastThursday]

I'm fascinated by how other people live. When watching documentaries like this, you realise how homogenised Western culture is.

 

[LastThursday]

YouTube thinks it knows me, but I'm constantly trying to outwit it:

[Preety_India]

On 07/09/2021 at 3:02 AM, LastThursday said:

Some amount of the constant inner turmoil I feel is the tussle between logical sense making, and intuitive, being, sense making.

I sometimes tend to struggle with this as well. It's like a see-saw. But I have come to realize that intuitive thinking is also logical, just a different type of logic. I'd call it emotional logic. 

 

[Leo Nordin]

@LastThursday I don't know why you are still doing this but thinking is a feverish activity of the brain. In the way you are doing it. If you want to share some love on your mind and body try this meditation. 

Be concious, what you are concious of at any time has to be an activity within yourself which you can continue forever. So you can't for example have tension in your body because that is an unsustainable doing. Now your mind might be too feverish already to go deep enough but this way you might find stillness. At some point when you go deep enough take the last step of jumping of the cliff. Hello enlightenment. 

Did not mean to waste your time, cya. 

 

[LastThursday]

@Preety_India I'd have to agree with you. But I would say that my intuitive logic abilities are unhoned or untrusted, I don't know which. A lot depends on speed. If I need to decide and react quickly then it's mostly intuition, more slowly and it's regular logical thinking. Given space I tend to fall back on logical thinking. But even logical thinking has to have a foundation somewhere, and I would say that foundation is mostly made of emotions. I wouldn't say that all intuitive sense making is emotional though, a lot of it is neutral in character - but there's a definite intelligence to it.

@Leo Nordin I'd disagree that what I'm experiencing or doing is feverish activity of the brain. It's more born out of curiosity and learning about the world. To swim with your analogy, I like to think of myself as more of a graceful swan, gliding along, with his webbed feet kicking feverishly away in the water. At some point I'll hit the grassy bank to freedom. In any case, I'm nothing like the picture you paint of me, but I can't blame you for that because that is what I present myself as in this journal - slapdash, haphazard, with my fingers in many pies. You'd be surprised at how "unfeverish" I am IRL, quite the opposite in fact.

[Leo Nordin]

@LastThursday ohh that's amazing then, haha. Yeah, I really don't think that much philosophically. Didn't think that somebody had it in them, lol, though if someone is that person, that would be you.

Ahh let's just say that my thoughts are largely determined by the situations which I exist. Which means people, and a whole lot of children and constant changing situations (that's my fault) haha. And I am not even enlightened yet, I don't know how but somehow I had an sudden enlightenment last year and drifting between the worlds I came back because life situations wouldn't do and then I gone the furthest way to unconsciousness just to not accidentally drift into that world again, fake or real. Now at a certain date last weeks I have gone through almost all stages of complete unconsciousness and all you can do there to consciousness. I always thought that enlightenment was just beyond the wall, so I jumped over and over but every time, every new transformation or change I find myself not there yet. I didn't understand how extremely important consciousness is and how it is to be used before reaching the 'ultimate'. 

You know that you could just be thinking that your thinking is sustainable. But it is really putting a limit on your precence or other forms of consciousness. The mind has so many other parts than thought, maybe just maybe you are attached more to thinking than to all the rest of the mind. And won't allow it to take all shapes at any time. Maybe you have fear of a undirected totality of raw consciousness. I dont know how many chakras is of the mind but there is a lot, haha, that much I have seen. Too love body and mind, every part of it is stillness. 

 

Omg sorry for making you read all this shit, such a waste of my time. Sorry my ego has gone wild today, with the choice of course, I want to not hurry the process too much, body and mind felt like it needed a day to adapt to consciousness and I dont fucking know what my mind is doing right now, mental diarrhea to keep me from not becoming healthy too concious too close to something higher, the next step... 

Sorry, have a good day, with much love. Peace 

[LastThursday]

@Leo Nordin I believe you're lost in thought stories too no? You are creating a story about @LastThursday based on a story he has written about himself. But that's ok, it's all good fun.

Elisabeth come as you are,

Don't change for the stars,

Only you can show me,

Well, that's what I believe,

Elisabeth, Elisabeth!

Elisabeth we came so far,

It was written in the stars,

Your heart had shown me,

Everything that I believed,

Elisabeth, Elisabeth.

Elisabeth why did we part?

Now I look from afar,

Please come back to me,

And again help me believe,

Elisabeth. Elisabeth.

[LastThursday]

For a sensory experience watch this on a big monitor or TV with one eye closed (or if you wear glasses cover over one lens). Wear headphones:

Play this in the background:

Yeah, I know, I'm weird.

[marinaaniram]

мдамс

[LastThursday]

What I like about Alice Cappelle is that she talks about stuff that I'm not even aware of, and deconstructs it intelligently. I'm all for broadening my awareness of different aspects of social media and electronic media. Although, the video above is not a case in point, I follow all the people pictured above! Probably why it caught my attention in the first place. Anyway, give her stuff a try.

And this guy makes slick and entertaining and informative content:

 

Edited September 15, 2021 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

Привет @marinaaniram . Моего русского не существует. Что такое мдамс?

[LastThursday]

What is philosophy? Lofty mountains made of words, about words. Like algebra each word X and Y stands for some portion of reality strung together with operators of equivalences, subdivisions, analogies, compositions. As such philosophy is circumscribed by your native language's lexicon. Each word has to be heavily laden so it can take on the weight of describing reality. Reality is always larger and stranger than philosophy and language. Yet we're confronted by raw experience constantly, why philosophise about it? Is the rawness excessive and overwhelming, so that we need to hide behind the flimsy constructions of language; that we need to comfort each other by reciprocally checking that our raw experiences match? Is reality so strange that it needs to explain its own riddle, and you've been chosen to do it, created for the sole purpose of doing it? Simple acceptance is unsettling and ridiculous. We need to talk and shout our existence from the rooftops, even if it's futile.

 

[LastThursday]

I'm the product of contrarian parents. My mother married an exotic foreigner and moved away from her country and family. My father doesn't know how to be conventional, he doesn't have the mentality for it. What about their son? I've felt like I have to constantly fight against conventionality and yet some part of me wants the security and ease of living of conventionality. I've ended up being an uneasy blend of both, not quite one or the other; there's always a tension and tautness there.

I feel strongly that society largely wants me to be an automaton. This is especially so with working for a living, employers simply want you to work and make them money, everything else is secondary. Even in a so called skilled job, you're simply an interchangeable cog in the corporate machinery. In work there is the constant farce of pretending that you're not an automaton: you have days off, and meetings and team activities. And then there's being professional, your life outside of work, your fears, desires, wants and emotions should be orthogonal to work, but the model leaks and begrudgingly HR departments mop up those leaks. The clue is in the title however: Human Resources, an oxymoron if ever I saw one. Our entire society is predicated on work, without it we collapse. It is entirely a product of the industrial revolution and the mindset of science, both seeing the world as a machine with many "un-godly" parts. But we are godly, we are hugely larger than some definition of work.

Outside of work, it is much the same. The larger frame of society has a certain trajectory that it expects from its citizens: schooling, working, reproducing, retiring. In a free, Western, society it pretends that each one of us is free to choose how we want to live. But this is only a matter of degree. Wandering too far from the norms of conventionality risks ostracization and outrage: being gay is still difficult for example. Or for another example, workers demanding that they continue working from home post Covid, which works directly against the corporate mindset of compliant automatons. Naturally, I'm not completely blind to the fact of diversity in society, there are pockets of unconventionality everywhere, but these are always minorities and outliers.

But for me the most insidious and innocent conventionality is simply surviving. I have to wear clothes, I have to eat, I have to be hygienic, I have to look presentable and on and on. In that sense my body is desperately conventional and absolute in its needs. Even the Queen of England or the Dalai Lama are not immune from their bodies. Surely @LastThursday you've lost your mind? How can you moan about the needs of your body FFS?

What I see as being robbed by largely being or being treated as an automaton is mostly time and godliness. Work and survival takes up so much time. Time seems expansive as a young person, but it shrinks exponentially as you age. Eastern philosophy would have you simply accept your lot in life, because fighting is futile (see my previous post) and breeds unhappiness. Unfortunately, my parents didn't program me that way, I do have the spark of divine creation, how dare that spark be wasted as a mindless automaton! The divine spark is outraged. 

What to do? What occurs is that I simply want to shut down everything that requires me to behave like an automaton. I don't want to work. I barely have the desire to eat and clothe and bathe myself. I don't want to be in a conventional relationship. I find the endless merry-go-round of seeing friends and family tedious. No buying houses, no having kids, no holidays once a year, no paying bills. I just want to SCREAM and reject it all. So very childish. If only I could switch off consciousness on Monday morning and switch it back on Friday evening, and simply just let the automaton do its thing in between that would go some way to making all this grind bearable. I lay in bed most nights and hope that some amount of deviation from the norm happens tomorrow - it mostly doesn't. Let me wake up on a desert island, where only the concerns of the body take over, the rest can mostly go to hell.

Edited September 17, 2021 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

I inherited a melancholy streak from my parents. In a lot of ways they lacked the insight and awareness to solve some of their most ingrained problems. I'm lucky. I do have enough insight and awareness to solve my problems. My melancholy doesn't have to be the driving force in my life. It's like a dead weight wanting to drag me down to its depths as far as it can. I've indulged in its mesmerising ways far too much. I was enrolled with a life coach a number of years ago, and he made light of the fact that I was suffering "existential angst". It triggered me at the time, I thought it was unprofessional of him, I wasn't paying him to make fun of me. However, I see how funny it is now, existential angst is kind of ridiculous. I exist, and there's no particular purpose to that existence - so what? Existing is absolutely absurd, why have angst, why not just laugh? Melancholy is just an excuse not to engage with existing.

For a long time I've felt like something died within me somewhere along the way. The last post was partly me trying to work out for myself what it could be - and indulging a bit of that melancholy. I don't know exactly what died: freedom, optimism, laughter, being loved, awe, youth. Maybe none of those, maybe all of them, who knows? In fact, who the fuck cares? Whatever went, it's gone and scrabbling around trying to get it back is pointless. Being depressed about it is pointless and absurd.

What needs to happen now, is I need to sow new life into my existing; the shape of that new life doesn't matter so much, just that I'm reborn, a new beginning.

Edited September 19, 2021 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

One of my great loves is playing piano. I'm not vaguely professional by any stretch, it's purely a hobby. I do like trying to push my limits though and learn difficult pieces (for me), mostly classical. What really holds me back though is my abysmal sight reading. Whilst I can read music score no problem, I read it like a five year old (no not like Mozart), so I have to be really determined to get through a piece. The consequence being that it takes me an age just to learn a piece, and I tend to just remember it through repetition rather than reading the score. I really want to change that.

The biggest challenge is that a musical score is dense. If you take something by Bach or Chopin or Beethoven, it's very dense. Unlike reading words on a page, which is a horizontal process, piano music also has a vertical overlapping component and two hands playing simultaneously. In that sense it is much harder that conventional reading. At the moment my process is to look at the note written down, find the letter say "F" and then press the note on the keyboard. One speed up is to cut out the middle man, and just to read and press, there should be no talking to myself in between, it needs to be instant. The only way to get there is through rote learning. A further complication is key signatures, which flattens or sharpens particular notes, this adds to the cognitive load. There is also rythmn and accenting and phrasing and tempo, but that mostly can be done by feel once the notes are learnt.

To take the bull by the horns I thought I'd code up a program that can test me on all these aspects. I have played with writing code to interact with MIDI, and I have a MIDI keyboard. So the ideal usage is for the test to display a note with a key signature and treble or bass clef (right or left hand say), and I press the corresponding note on the keyboard and it says "yay" or "nay". Ideally, the tests should be configurable to be able to select particular keys or hands or ranges of octaves, and even perhaps chords or at least multiple notes in succession. Ideally, in the end it could display a small set of notes with different lengths, but that's way harder to code.

This is my process for coding it:

• Find a way to display the notes and other paraphenalia of music score. For this I'm using a music scoring program called Lily Pond. I need to work with images of notes, so I just blat out a bunch of notes and key signatures and output to PDF through Lily Pond, and then laboriously cut and paste each note of the scale as an image. My program can then choose an image(s) and compose it together with a key signature and clef symbol.
• So it chooses a random note, finds out how it wants to display it, and then waits for the note to come from the MIDI input. If it's correct it shows a nice green tick or whatever and big red cross otherwise.
• Working in different keys is trickier because you have to map the displayed note differently to the MIDI input coming from the keyboard, but that's just a bit of maths.

Yesterday I coded up and got a working prototype. So I spent an hour or two using it to learn the first two octaves of the piano. And it works! I can now sight read a bit of the range. Ok, I'm still not super fast, but my god it's easier than it was. Just another 60 odd notes to learn!

 

 

 

[LastThursday]

What sort of life do I want?

I've never really been very future oriented. What I mean by that, is that I've never really given much thought to the big things in life. This has become acute as I've learned to mostly live in the moment; whereas before I would have had anxiety and constant mental rehearsal about future events, I have none of that now. The great pay off for letting go of the future, is peace right now. But perhaps I've gone too far?

The only reason we get motivated and excited by the future is that we have a certain anxiety or itch that needs to be scratched right now. I see it all around me, friends making plans out of some sort of neurotic restless need for peace. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to elevate myself above others, it's just that the pattern seems clear. We want to buy a home, because we believe it will make us happy and secure: because we are not happy and secure right now. We want to party with our friends, because we are feeling unconnected and bored right now. We want that holiday because we are stressed right now. We want a girlfriend, because we want intimacy and love right now. We want all these future things because we are imbalanced in the moment.

So when I'm asked "Guillermo, what do you really want?", I feel that I'm simply listing a set of unmet needs and desires. Is that really the right way to guide myself into the future: neurotically? This feels wrong. On the other hand, what other guiding principle do I have at my disposal? So far the best thing I've come up with is to live purely in the moment, this feels like the most aligned way to live and the least stressful. But. I want a girlfriend, I want warm sunny weather, I want to tinker on my own projects, I want to work when and how it suits me, I want spontaneity with friends and family, I want connection, I want to be recognised for my skills, I want collaboration, I want my own time, I want to stay healthy and fit, I want to own my own home and space, I don't want to be beholden to anyone at all, I want to stay financially healthy.

Maybe one way is to have a grand big picture of the future. I have fifteen years in mind. By then I'll be properly old and health concerns will start to kick in, and I won't have that energy and drive any more. Most folks here would probably say something along these lines: dream big, don't worry about how you'll get there. My only concern is wasting time, I don't really have it to waste. Yes, my future goal can shift around to a degree, but if I'm going for it, it's all or nothing. So far I've spent well over ten years just drifting in limbo, I know it's a phase, I now know I needed it to mature and to "fix" myself. I feel the pressure of commitment intensely, it goes against my high value on freedom. Being committed doesn't feel freeing, being committed to something big that doesn't work out doesn't feel worth it. Doing nothing, is also a tragedy.

 

[LastThursday]

Are we living in a story? Whenever I think, I seem to do it with the baggage of my history, places, people, events, phases and the story arc of my life. It seems inescapable, like without all this stuff going on it would all be incomprehensible. Everything is history it seems, no sooner has a new part of the story happened than it becomes yet more past. There are two clues that my story is a fiction.

The first clue is that I know how and what I think about my past has changed over time. How can something really be true if it changes? The past is malleable and can be re-configured as new insight comes in. The second clue I'm staring at. It's my complete immersion in this moment, it is something which never appears to go away, yes, it changes but it's ever present. If something is unchanging then that is truth, non-fiction. The story of me is a fiction couched inside a truth. The raw sensation of a me with all my mental baggage and history is truth itself; my mental baggage and history is a fiction and so am I. I am both a fiction and a truth together. The paradox is resolved by realising that I am the ever present moment, but I'm not its content. I exist and that is truth, but I am not the story of a me.

 

 

Edited September 23, 2021 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

I'm slightly bothered by the formality of my writing in my journal. Somehow my unconscious tendency is to write like I read, I mean, using the same level of language that I'm used to reading. I don't know, I feel as though I want to be more informal in my writing but I also want to express myself concisely and using all the words at my disposal. I don't talk to my friends the same way I write! Then again I don't talk to my friends about the "weird shit" I talk about here. Maybe I just need to use a different level of language to get my musings over?

I thought I'd go back to talking about dreaming. I just find the recurring themes in my dreams fascinating. I thought that maybe I would try my hand at dream interpretation for a laugh. Although, I think that on the whole trying to decipher dreams is pointless. If there is some sort of hidden message in dreams then it's only meaningful within that dream space. I suspect that given enough time though, the reason why certain themes repeat themselves becomes apparent. Here's a few of those themes and reasons why:

Running

I have a fair number of these. Normally I'm just running and feeling hot and sweaty. I do run in real life (or used to), so there's a connection there. My suspicion is that those times I'm just too hot in bed and I normally wake up sweating. Sometimes though, there's a kind of urgency in my running as if I need to make it to some appointment or other - maybe I just need to wake up and cool down.

Swimming/toilets

I have a fair few dreams where I'm either in a swimming pool or open water. I'm not a hugely great swimmer in waking life, but I do enjoy being in water. There's normally no particular reason for being in the water and no anxiety, it's a pleasant experience. 

The other side of the coin is trying to find somewhere to pee (in the dream of course). Usually, it's a failure. Mostly either it's too exposed, or the toilets are too disgusting to use, or the toilet floor is flooded, or I'm naked or partially undressed and I feel too uncomfortable to go, or I simply can't find somewhere to go. I suspect there is some form of anxiety around this that is a mirror of waking life. Although the level of disgust is unsettling, which I don't normally get in waking life. Occasionally I'm successful within the dream. Yay!

Both of these I've worked out is because I actually need to pee, most times I wake up desperately needing to go. Good brain.

Ex girlfriends

This is a very frequent theme. This is despite having not been in a relationship a fair while. Normally it's just very run-of-the-mill, and the ex is just sort of in the background of my dream like an extra or there's minimal interaction. There's nothing sexual at all about these dreams. For many many years I dreamt about my first girlfriend (I was about 15/16 when I was with her!) and her family. This is strange because I haven't seen or had contact with her since I was about 19. Although I have met up with her brother in the last ten years (who I was also friends with), and her sister is on my Facebook (strangely). I won't use her name but these dreams were so frequent I actually used to call them E------- Dreams, to myself. 

The E' Dreams I think has something to do with an intense curiosity about what she's up to now. She was always the black sheep of the family, when I met her brother he could tell me nothing about her, he hadn't spoken to her in a very long time. I had no pictures of her either. She seems to have no internet presence at all. At the time, being a teenager my parents had already separated, and her family sort of adopted me, and they became my second family. I suspect this had a deep impact on my psyche. A lot of emotion and other things are bound up in that period of my life.

However, I recently found a couple of photos of E in my mum's photo albums. My E' Dreams have now stopped - weird.

Flying, levitating

See my previous journal entry about this. In general I think its caused by being horizontal in bed, but upright in the dream, because IRL my feet are not touching anything, so this is interpreted as being off the ground in my dream.

Exploration

For many many years I used to explore buildings in my dreams. I would go room to room, and through corridors and up and down staircases. There would rarely be people around and normally it would be dimly lit. There would be a lot of attic spaces with weird assortment of stuff up there. Occasionally I would have to climb over balconies to get from one place to another. One particularly memorable dream I was on a balcony and realised I needed to hide from someone, I had nowhere to go, so I climbed over and hung from my fingers from the floor of the balcony, hoping my fingers wouldn't be seen - it would make a great movie sequence!

I am an inquisitive type of person. I lot of the reason why I enjoy walking is to explore new places just to see how places fit together. I think my dreams are an extension of this curiosity. However, I have no explanation as to why there are always inside buildings. I'm not the sort of person to get lost normally, and I don't normally go wandering around abandoned buildings, who knows? Maybe there's a computer game element to this, I did used to enjoy games like Half-life and Counterstrike, which are kind of "room based" and exploratory.

These types of dreams have largely stopped recently. But have switched mostly to staircases. They're bloody annoying in my dreams. It's like Hogwarts most of the time: staircases that lead into walls, staircases with scary large drops into other staircases. In last nights dream I had to slide down the shiny metal handrail to get from one staircase to the other. Why!? Don't know.

Trains

Again the frequency of these types of dreams has decreased. It's everything around trains, from waiting in stations, trying to find ways to get to my destination, walking on tracks, mainline trains, tube trains, walking through train tunnels from station to station, and on and on. I mean, most of these things I've never done in real life. I don't even travel on trains frequently any more (I drive). Saying that, I did used to travel on trains a lot in my teenage years and I was fascinated with trains from a young age. In a nerdy way I still am (see my post about subway maps!).

I worked out in the end that the trains are just a metaphor for travel in general and especially commuting. They were more frequent when I had to drive into work longer distance. 

Aliens

I don't have these types of dreams much any more. Normally there was a nightmarish or scary aspect to these dreams. A lot of times I would be staring into the sky, normally at night and weird stuff would happen, like stars would move about. Or, I would be in dimly lit or dark rooms and would feel a presence there. It's hard to describe the scariness of these dreams, I mean most of the time I wouldn't even see anything, very rarely I might actually catch a glimpse of an alien; but there would always be a kind of malevolence about the whole thing. I would often wake up scared. Normally on my back. One suspicion is that maybe I momentarily stop breathing because I'm on my back, it's possible, I do know I snore, so possible sleep apnea?

I don't really know how to interpret these dreams really. I do have an interest in the paranormal, and there is something about the possibility of aliens that I find unsettling, it's one of those things where I think it's mostly bullshit stories, but there's a tiny sliver of doubt about my conviction. I found films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind fairly unsettling as a kid, and maybe that's embedded itself in my psyche. A boogeyman of sorts to be scared of.

 

[LastThursday]

I've offhandedly thought about giving up alcohol and being teetotal recently. It seems to be a recurring thought. I'm finding I'm paying attention to it and not just dismissing it like I have before. This has happened before. I was quite addicted to Facebook for a long while, it slowly sucked me towards its event horizon, but I was saved before I became whatever happens to existence inside a collapsed mega star. Sorry... I digress. In short, I gave Facebook up and never looked back. Mostly, I nip on there once in a blue moon, and instantly regret it, but that's enough of a reminder.

I did the same with consuming the news. Every time I watched it or listened to it or read it, it made me angry, miserable, helpless or digusted. Eventually, I paid heed to all those that said: just stop it. Again, I've never looked back. It may still catch me unawares if I'm listening to the radio whilst cooking (wtf's a radio hmm??), but I let it wash over me and I switch it off soon after.

Alcohol is different. It's part of the fabric of socialising in this country (The United Kingdom of...). Stopping drinking puts you into that category of people who are nice enough but completly vanilla. That thought really pokes at my ego - I should just let it burst that ego, but my ego is tough and rugged, with a square jaw. Several things have confluenced to make thoughts of not drinking ever again rise up to the surface. One was visting my dad.

In a bid to try and save his health (he has heart disease and diabetes), he in hunkering down on diet and being strict. I know that having to do this hurts him, he loves his food. However, its extremely likely that that food has over his lifetime given him type two diabetes. There is also a strong correlation between diabetes and heart disease. Seeing all this, makes me not want to embody his health issues for my self later on - it's making me think about my own consumption and how I could clean things up: alcohol would be a relatively easy win.

I don't drink particularly often, especially I haven't in the lockdown. I was bought a bottle of Armagnac back in May and I haven't touched it, I just so rarely drink alone (I love Argmagnac). It's the Facebook effect, every time I do have even a glass of alcohol, I feel like shit the day after. For some reason feeling like shit never bothered me that much before, I just waited a day and all was good. But nowadays it just really bothers me. I don't want to feel shit at all, especially not in a self-imposed way. Why do it?

Now that the UK is opening up, I have been out socialing and drinking as a consequence. Other than the feeling a bit shit the day after, I also behave like an idiot if I drink a bit too much. I don't have a big build, so I don't have body mass to soak up a lot of alcohol - I get drunk quickly. I mean, I'm harmless I'm not an aggressive drunk, I just talk a whole bunch more than I normally would and I'm just even more uninhibited than normal. Mosttimes the lack of inhibition friends find entertaining, but occasionally it crosses the uncanny valley and it gets irritating. I won't go too much into drunken stories, but let's just say I should stay away from taxi drivers, and attractive women half my age with big burly boyfriends.

Whilst really IDGAF about my drunken uninhibition, I do care about my friends. If my behaviour is not fun for them or annoying, and I only do it because I'm drunk with them, then really I ought to just stop it and grow up.

Is it possible to go out out and have the same relationship with socialising with friends without drinking at all? That's a big nope. That is to nearly a degree where I may even think about not going out - I just can't bear to be that vanilla teetotaller, and watching others being drunk is no fun at all.

Bah! I know I will become a teetotaller, it's just a matter of time, I can feel it coming. Ah well.

Edited September 28, 2021 by LastThursday