I have to admit things have been tough recently. I've found that mindfulness practice actually tackles a lot of mental health and emotional issues, although that's not something I'm about to proclaim. It's not a cure-all. More of a management device with effectiveness that depends on the individual.

It's just something I've found for myself, and I should note that it has taken a lot of time and continuous practice and dedicated reflection over years and even decades that has transformed and developed and has plenty of its own ups and downs.

I imagine most modern people would prefer to shell out for therapy. But, of course, the purpose of mindfulness practice isn't necessarily for its mental health benefits. I noticed it just as a by-product. As part of the investigation of the whole thing, the whole self, the techniques can be applied to mental health and emotional issues that (may) crop up.

But the mindfulness practice has been challenged recently. The isolation has been getting to me. The purposeful pointlessness of my life has been getting to me. The darker emotions have been emerging and giving me a scare. Sometimes they've even been whelming (can't quite say they were overwhelming).

It may be a matter of degree. Mindfulness practice has managed things effectively automatically to a certain degree, but then above that I have to make an effort to remember and actively implement the practice.

I haven't quite pinpointed what it is. I've questioned whether it has something to do with my father dying, and I haven't discounted that it has, but I don't think so. Certainly not directly. If it has anything to do with him, it's about the living and how completely insignificant and meaningless his life and subsequent death has been on the living.

His death hasn't brought anyone together. I went back to New Jersey; I was the person who traveled the farthest because of his death and it was totally meaningless. And since then, I don't know of any expression of galvanizing any meaning regarding his life. No connection. No one fucking cares that he died or that he was ever alive. At least no one that I know of, which I suppose isn't saying much.

Now that's emptiness. But not in the zen sense. He was no practitioner nor philosopher. It's nihilistic emptiness. And that's reasonably depressing when it touches your life. He was my father, so at the very least it brushes against mine.

My sister-in-law remains in contact. I haven't heard from my brothers, but that's expected for different reasons. One because he doesn't need to, the other because he's made it clear he wants nothing to do with me. Whatever. I don't hold it against him. Whatever his reason, I remind myself that because of what he's done in the past, he automatically gets an out-of-jail card.

No word from my cousin Audrey who was the one who convinced me to go to New Jersey, but I think she's trying to help me in cutting all karmic connections to people in this life, including her. I've been tempted to send her a message to see how she and the kids are doing, but then wondered why she hasn't done the same, given the circumstances. When I realize she might be trying to help my aspirations, I let it go.

No word from my mother, either, no surprise. I think my father was a passive stabilizer in our relationship, and now that he's gone, she just can't deal with me. Or if she tries, who knows how it will blow up? His moral ambiguity suppressed her moral vacuousness. She voted for Trump, need I say more? He voted for Trump only because she did (that's not fact, just my projection).

If it is the isolation that's getting to me, I have to keep in mind that it's my own design. And I have to keep my end-game in mind as also my own design. How much longer I can live like this is parallel with how much longer can I actually live? It can't be much longer, given my lifestyle.

2017

Years ago, I used to look ahead to the year 2017 because the numbers match my birthday and I'd calculate how old I would be and think there was no way I'd ever reach that age. And yet here we are.

In the normative view, what a waste and mess I've made of my life. I've done nothing with my life. What was there ever to make of my life? From a young age, suicide resonated. I've never considered living life a goal, much less a long life.

At every point in my life, any decision I made about my life precluded long-term considerations. Even simple things like airline mileage programs I saw no need or purpose. I just didn't ever expect to live that much longer into my future.

Owning property was never something I could even conceptualize. Starting a family? Settling down? Steady job? Not things that were ever serious considerations. That attitude pervaded my entire existence. That's just how I always lived it.

Obviously I don't subscribe to the normative view of how to live a life or I'd have lots of regrets and would be trying to "turn my life around". I don't disagree that it's been a waste and a mess, but . . . it was supposed to be. For me, the waste and mess of my life is a description, not a judgment.

And for the past six years I've really been doing pretty much absolutely nothing. Nothing of any benefit to anyone. Why am I still here? On the most fundamental level, I think it's because I can't truly grasp my own mortality, despite death constantly being on my mind and in my meditation and studies.

Intellectually I embrace the idea of death as a part of the cycle of life. Viscerally, I examine my physical self, my functioning, my conceptualization (mind) and I can't deny it with death. It's a fundamental flaw, the understanding of which may be my main pursuit of my life.

Something's going to have to happen at some point. "You can't run away from what waits for you" (Sixx A.M.). If my birth date suggests the year, then my birth year suggests a date as a goal. Not that I'm very good with goals.