Status Report

Note: If this blog seems to exhibit an unrelenting pattern of sad hopelessness, there is a simple explanation.  This is my personal blog.  When things are happy, blogging about it is the last thing on my mind.

On with the report.

I've realized for the last couple of weeks that I was in a bit of trouble.  There isn't much going on in my life to justify it, but I've felt a creeping depression coming on.  Partly, it's that my mood seems to be loosely-but-inversely correlated to the success of the Republican Party.  They've had a good run the last little while, doing everything they can to make the country an awful and pitiless place to live.

Work goes not well.  As per usual, I seem unable to be satisfied with my own abilities and performance.  Objectively, there are areas where I need to improve, things I need to make happen.  But nothing to justify that gnawing failure-as-a-human-being feeling that frequently comes.  It makes it hard to work, thus qualifying as a self-reinforcing phenomenon.

I feel like the world needs me to be doing something incredible, something that would make it a profoundly better to live.  What I'm doing now seems tiny and ineffectual when stood up against the overwhelming, crushing need that exists all around.

I can't seem to shake the feeling that it's all on my shoulders, and I'm failing.  I know exactly how irrational that sounds.  I really do.

Precisely because it sounds so incredibly stupid and whiny, I've had trouble talking about it.  That's my fear talking, telling me that my people don't love me enough to put up with this crap.  So I've been trying to figure out how to ask for help, and failing.

Plus, whiny hopelessness doesn't attract the ladies.  Trust me.  I asked.

On the upside, just writing all this down provides some comfort.  It's a nice reality check, just seeing these troubled thoughts made concrete, where they can be subjected to scrutiny (by myself and by others).  I don't know if this is the best approach, but it feels more effective than doing nothing about it.

I read over my last post from six months ago.  I need to re-learn those lessons.  Writing this was a step in the right direction.  I think.