I've been re-reading "John's 'WTF? I've got cancer?' Blog" for a second time through. My methodology this time (instead of reading by month) was to start at the first entry and then click and read individual posts in sequence, and when I stop reading I'd bookmark the next entry for where to start the next time. His Blogger template is one where links change color after they're clicked, making it easy to know where I'd left off in the archives/entries list on the right. 

The first time I read the blog, it was a first impression thing and I think I made observations that probably don't hold up. Maybe I was nit-picking critical and making unfounded assessments that I'm not feeling this time (except the lack of editing, especially when he writes something had been edited). But if I was unfairly judgy it was probably because of an observation I did make before, which is that a lot of what I read in his personality resonated as being a lot like me. He was hitting too close to home. John, in some aspects, was me. And that bugged me (guess I'm not unique).

I think I made the unfair observation before that maybe he wasn't all that popular or likeable? He got a cat that avoided him far longer than the time it usually takes an adopted pet to adapt (kitty don't like you, holmes*). If I did make any such assessment, that is truly cringe-worthy since I'm very much at the bottom of any barrel of likeability. I'm in no one's consideration to even contact which I think is a fair measure of whether people like you or not.  

* My theory is that animals and babies don't lie. If they don't like you, i.e., you're unlikeable, they'll let you know. They can sense your dark clouds. That's why I stay away from people's pets and babies lest they call out and confirm my unlikeability. The closest I have is a robot vacuum cleaner that hates my guts and never goes where I want it to go or it comes right at me when I'm not looking, the fucker.

It's nice to read it for what it is without being judgy and I'm getting more nuances this time, recognizing when he's covering up freaking out or melting down, and he doesn't always try to cover it up. I probably got how funny he could be as his sense of humor is similar to mine (I'd be surprised if I didn't mention that before), and I still appreciate it. 

More prominent in my reading is the sense that I'm reading the thoughts of someone who is doomed. His uncertainty as to when and moments of hope are profound in light of the terminal diagnosis with a fairly absolute cap on how long he can be expected to live in the best of scenarios. But when hope peeked through, he jumped on the hope. He seemed to be a pessimistic skeptic, but willing to latch onto unlikely hope when it happened to manifest. He wanted to live. 

And he continued to live as much as possible despite being doomed and despite the misery of treatment. He continued to travel and worked on a bucket list. He still engaged with people and worked on projects like fixing up his condo when he could've just said screw this, what's the point? 

Actually it seems that he was cherry-picking his treatment to minimize the misery, even if that meant the treatment was less effectual (advantage: cancer). And even though he declined treatment that would be debilitating or would be so miserable that he couldn't enjoy what little life was left for him to enjoy . . . what he describes still seems pretty miserable to me. It was a very fine line he was delineating. I wouldn't be willing to go through even what he went through. 

I wonder if there are people who wouldn't be willing to go through even what I'm going through. People for whom my life and issues might be purely mental health issues and wouldn't suffer the idiotic, flimsy mind games I play with myself to keep living. They might have taken life more seriously than I do and ended this kind of miserable life long ago as I should have, except . . . I want to live. Don't get me wrong, I also do want to die, I view it as a great adventure that awaits, as moving on. I would even say I'm looking forward to it. But I'm still here, so logically, if not obviously, I want to live; my ego-self is still attached to my life despite how illusory and fleeting I know it is. My life isn't miserable, it's profound! (my god, did he really just say that?😧😒😲)

I also view my life as doomed since I still haven't gone to the bank to try adding funds and still don't plan to. I haven't panicked yet despite seeing the finite and dwindling amount of money I physically have left (actually less than I thought since the remainder is US$ that I have to convert and it just so happens that the NT$ is currently at record strength against the US$, so compared to any other time in history I'm getting the least amount of NT for every dollar I convert. Coincidence?! . . . I think not). However, realizing viscerally what it means I do sometimes feel my gut tighten and a dark cloud in my head and at least briefly question my constitution. Actually I think the amount of time I have left is comparable to the time John had left after totally giving up on treatment. 

I'm not projecting anything as definite. I obviously don't know what I might end up doing. As I've said, I just don't know myself that well. The evidence of my life is that I'll try to continue on, but I've always had the money to continue on. This is the first time the money is really coming to an end. This is looming. It's dire, but it's also great. It's by design, mind you; this is exactly how it was supposed to happen if I didn't end my life in the ideal way, without external pressure. 

Doomed, John slogged on until he couldn't. What else is he supposed to do? Same here, just no travel on my agenda. Forget riding a bike around the island. Not even revisiting old haunts and places I've been to in the Taipei area that surely may have changed. I hear they've started construction on a bridge across the mouth of the Danshui River, an incredible project that I would have thought unthinkable. That's a bridge I'll never cross. I have no bucket list. Suicide is my bucket list. No adopting a cat, I'm allergic anyway. Daily cat YouTube videos, though. 

I'm trying to not get paralyzed, confused and directionless by the discord in my psychology. It's annoying. For the past few months I've been letting myself get too wrapped up in worldly affairs, letting them get to my head and my ego, when ultimately those things are of the nature of "none of my business".

The root of the mess in the U.S. is obvious, so much of it could've been prevented or managed by strong, clear leadership. There's no use trying to sum it up beyond that or analyze it or even express anything about it. No one cares. Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and thinks everyone else's stinks. There's a lot of suffering and it would be good to be compassionate about it, but there's also a lot of stupidity which makes compassion a challenge. And it's none of my business.

On this side of the world we have the China evil. There's too much to say about that so I won't even bother. I've been saying too much in YouTube comments, which I know is a stupid thing in itself to do, but fortunately nothing I've said has gotten any response so hopefully none of it was read. I only posted analysis supporting or supplementing something specific in the video where most comments are the typical and predictable rhetoric and vitriol against the CCP, which is fine and good in showing how much support there is against them. Still, none of my business.

But posting comments on YouTube is stupid and I stopped, mostly because I realized whatever I have to say is coming from a place of Big Ego. Is what I have to say sooo important? Stop. Actually I've been doing an affirmative anti-ego practice of drafting comments if the compulsion arises and then deleting them after asking if it's something that really needs to be said (almost never). The Big Ego makes me think I have something to express, but then I slap it down and that time I spent was wasted; the price of being tempted by Big Ego. That is my business!

As offensive an affront as China's CCP has unleashed upon the world amid the pandemic they themselves started, their domestic situation has been worse! Relentless rainfall and massive flooding, droughts and locusts (read: Biblical) wiping out crops, threats of a dam collapsing that could kill millions, grain stores rotting and the threat of famine, skies in Beijing turning dark as night in the middle of the afternoon, snow in June, large coronavirus-shaped hail falling, dogs and cats mating, not to mention the political arena of reports of concentration camps to wipe out the Muslim Uighur population in northwest China and reports of live organ harvesting finally reaching the west and being accepted as credible, internal power struggles and rampant corruption in the Communist Party . . . I'm telling you, this is what you're missing if you're not following the China YouTube channels* and I'm hardly scratching the surface!

But just the natural disasters besetting China, some people mentioning the Mandate of Heaven being lost (a Chinese history thing), others claiming God is angry at China or that the apocalypse is nigh. But really, it is hard not to view the natural disasters happening all at once in China as not being supernatural. If there is supernatural attribution, I would imagine it not being God, but decades of Tibetan lamas who were tortured and murdered in Chinese prisons. High-level lamas who "decided" to delay reincarnating, and remain in the bardo in-between states to try to enact change on earthly realms. That can't be considered lightly. I imagine it would be extremely difficult for the spiritual realm to directly affect the earthly realm. The spiritual realm is energy, the earthly realm matter. We already know how difficult it is to convert matter into energy (E=mc²) but we can do it. Energy to matter? It would involve massive amounts of energy for even small effects, but I play with the idea that's what the lamas have been trying to do for decades (in human time frames), trying to concentrate energy to have physical manifestation in the world in the form of unleashing natural catastrophe upon China. It doesn't violate vows of compassion because it recognizes the need for extreme suffering by ordinary Chinese people for there to be change. It's not revenge or anger, but recognition of the need for suffering towards a compassionate goal. My mention of physics is a joke, not even a "stranger things have happened" consideration. Just an analogy of an idea.

Ultimately for me personally, these are all earthly, worldly matters that fall completely in the sphere of "none of my business".

* China Uncensored (sarcastic and snarky but serious) Hearsay that companion channel is pro-Trump.
NTD - China in Focus (the most mainstream-style news) Turned into a pro-Trump channel at elections, i.e., unable to maintain objective reporting.

Crossroads with Joshua Phillipps (good analysis into what's going on with certain news stories) Realized it was an egregious and shameless pro-Trump channel when he defended Trump as "not a racist" and that he was merely taken out of context.
China Observer - Vision Times (good analysis and including historical context) Nope, pro-Trump/conspiracy theories

WION (India-based international news currently covering a lot about China because of the China threat)

This is a pretty miserable life I'm wasting away. I'm just rehashing here, nothing new (August always seems to be the "wake-up call" month). There's little to nothing redeeming about my being here; little of any real worth. There's little that I actually like about being here or being me; it's just habit and attachment, two things Buddhism specifically tries to tackle on the road to enlightenment. I profess to not even want to be here, and yet here I am long beyond my expiration date. All of this old news.

I'm starting to wonder whether mindfulness practice in my specific situation is actually counter-productive (I'm sure I've gone through this before). Everyday I've been able to identify a moment when I emphatically think this sucks or I hate this or fuck me or fiddlesticks! (normal people call it "life"). And yet mindfulness practice immediately identifies those as descriptive and not feelings to attach to as significant or permanent. Any negativity borne out of those sentiments gets immediately dialed down. And as disgruntled or annoyed as I get or scowl-y my eyebrows furrow, the benchmark of my life is how equilibrium snaps back and somehow everyday starts anew pretty much in the same vaguely intolerably tolerable place (even my broken bike became serviceable again, as after the seat tube completely tore I merely knocked the adjustment clamp off with a wrench and jammed the seat post into the tube. I just can't adjust the height).

I'd been watching the HBO show Westworld whose third season aired earlier this year, and my life experience is what are referred to as "loops" in Westworld lingo. Loops are repeated programs for the AI to live out in the show, variation provided by the human guests, but it turns out humans in the outside world are also pretty much living out programmed loops believing they have freewill, and it doesn't take much imagination to extend that out into the real outside world we live in and realize we're more or less doing something similar, believing we have freewill. 

Mindfulness practice seems to be keeping me in my loop, which means I'm doing it wrong because I think mindfulness practice itself is pretty solid and the pathways to freedom well laid out. It's only wrong because of my "deviant" goal; something very different. Mindfulness practice is good for people trying to stay alive because it's a means to stay alive, sane, reasonable, productive and hopefully compassionate. If that's not the goal, then it's not so great. Ergo moi.

Not just mindfulness practices, but teachings of Mahamudra ("great seal" (not walrus)) of Buddhism's Vajrayana also play a part. A central realization being that practice is anything and everything here right now. Whatever is being experienced at any given moment, practice is applied; perhaps "living in the moment" in Zen terms, but also not quite. It's not a flaky term of art to chill out, but a realization that requires disciplined time sitting on a cushion, I think. I'm not saying I have any realization, but I also have to be careful to not unnecessarily downplay my practice in the name of humility. Without a teacher to tell me whether what I'm doing is on or off, I need to be positive and optimistic about what I'm doing or else I'm totally wasting my time and that would be idiotic.

So general mindfulness practice makes me put my miserable life into perspective and keeps everyday on an even keel, and Mahamudra philosophy pushes me to practice in a way that welcomes the misery and use it as applied practice, while all I want is to be decidedly miserable and do something in accordance with that!

This is all just rehashing, reviewing the situation, even just marking time. I don't expect anything to come out of dishing through this anew, maybe it's just renewing hope that some day something will.

Dragging myself through these days, appropriate because these days are quite a drag.

It's not that I'm not trying to throw something, anything, up on the computer screen, just nothing I throw is sticking. I've tried multiple ways of saying any number of things, but there's just not a lot to be said of these days. And this isn't gonna be any better.

Stupidity in the U.S. and the complete lack of unity or leadership? China emerging as world power evil as the CCP reveals its true face in pushing back against increasing global realization that China has ambitions for absolute world dominance by any means necessary (pretty much acknowledged fact through leaked internal memos) is a dick? World affairs are not my forte and the less I say the better. Saying any more about these things would just be a drag.

Zooming in to a more local view and, ugh, just hot. Daily life dictated by how to react and deal with the heat. Daily afternoon thunderstorms contribute to the rigidity of routine regarding where I am when. It's a drag. Time to buy some women's clothing, the kind lumberjacks wear.

Zooming into micro, I'm wondering if I really may be done with all this and a next serious attempt may be at hand. I think it's been over or about 10 years since the last serious attempt and I wonder how serious that was. Meh, I thought it was a serious attempt back then and I'll leave it at that without over-thinking myself. And a 10-year gap doesn't mean it hasn't been ever-present. Not writing about it constantly just meant I didn't want to constantly repeat myself redundantly over and over again. Unlike my jokes.

I mentioned before that my financial status quo would require a visit to the bank in June, and I haven't done that. And I don't think I will or can unless I get another attempt under my belt. The timeline has to be: attempt → fail → go to the bank. The important thing for me is the attempt. The important thing to note is the assumption of the fail. I'm just yappin', which just might be taking the edge off feeling the need to do it.

The thing about an attempt to succeed is that I can't be thinking particularly clearly, and recently I've found my thinking vague, scattered and unclear. I'm not even sure what that means. Writing this sounds kinda clear and suggests this will all pass, but even that is part of the fuzzy and spiraling and confusing and lacking in stability or solidity. These are good things!

Whatever, I have no idea. I said this wasn't going to be any better than the nothing I haven't been able to get out in the first place. 

I had a big scare a few days ago that my laptop was about to die, but it turns out the malfunction was just a Windows 10 update forcing itself upon my laptop without consent. I thought updates were supposed to be benign, that they get remotely downloaded to your computer while it's on and you don't even notice until you shut down and you're informed of the update and it prepares to load it the next time you turn it on. It's not supposed to put your computer into what looks like critical condition with everything slowing down to pretty much non-functionality. I was afraid my laptop was having a stroke. 

At points when functionality seemed better I did shut it down and turned it back on and there was never any indication that it was an update. It was so bad that at one point I started emergency back-up of music folders thinking it was about to die. And then during one shut-down, it froze and I decided to do a hard shut-down, convinced that was it and the screen had flickered its last. 

I contemplated the grand scheme of things. I contemplated whether I'd be getting a new computer that day. Laptop or desktop? This laptop hasn't left my apartment in the three years that I've had it. Are monitors required with the purchase of a desktop? I use my flatscreen TV as my monitor so why would I get a monitor if I don't have to. Nah, this flatscreen is a bit dodgy, definitely get the largest monitor possible. Really? New computer? That's a month of living. I live on a thou a month; a third of that is rent, most of the rest is alcohol and food. If I don't extend my funds in June, then I'd have until September instead of October. So I'd be buying a computer to live to September. But then I'd probably extend my funds just because I bought a computer. This is not any consideration.

What am I thinking about new computer and months of living and extending funds? The computer's dead, let my computer days rest in peace. For me, that's it, I'm done, this is the looming I've been waiting for. Fill out the May bi-monthly gas meter form that has already been posted downstairs, wait till the end of the month and pay June's rent, and finally go with Plan A. But wait, if my computer's dead and I disappear, then I won't even be leaving a computer to be investigated regarding my fate.

It's a total conceit to think anyone would bother, but at least leave the option for that one in a thousand dozen chance that months later someone, probably a cousin, will be looking around my apartment after my disappearance has been established as fact (and mystery) and my belongings need to be disposed of, and a flash question in his mind whether there may be any clue on my computer about what happened. Quite honestly, get on my internet browser and this blog is not hard to find unless you don't know what the Brave browser icon or the Blogger icon is or looks like. Actually, knowing my life, it wouldn't matter whether I left a working computer or not. This is just me over-thinking things.

I pressed the power button one last time without any confidence to see what would happen, and a few minutes later the update screen came on. No, it wasn't a stroke, my laptop wasn't dying or in critical condition. Instead it had been violated. It had been taken over by the Windows 10 update and done doggy-style right in front of me. But now it was being updated. I swear there's a lesson or metaphor here somewhere, and I swear it's probably going over my head. Story of my life.

Same as February last year, I went to the bank – with wary reluctance, mind you – to add funds which could last me until about November-ish. Unlike last February, there isn't a problem anticipated about the funds coming through, and unlike last February I didn't fall into a pit of squirming self-loathing regarding adding funds to survive instead of just facing the looming end of finances.

I think part of that self-loathing was borne out of the frustration of making the humiliating attempt to add finances and being told it might not go through because of the defective instrument. This time no defect, no problem anticipated, no frustration, ergo no self-loathing. But I also feel something else that helped fuel the self-loathing back then is different now, and does relate to recent posts about how I should be feeling now and what I should be doing.

I don't think I'm taking a lax attitude about continuing to exist or being comfortable about being here. I've established that these existential quandaries need to be bothering me front and center on a constant basis (even today, from my reading jumped out, "You understand that the time of death is uncertain, death comes quickly, change happens rapidly, and there is no time to waste" - Gampopa, Confusion Arises as Wisdom, p. 205). Maybe I've only found that I can't joke about it. But my finances keep getting extended. They got extended, obviously, after that bank failure last February. And it's alright for me to be alright with that. Finances aren't my great corrupter. They just enable dysfunction. Finances aren't the problem. You probably could've told me that.

Fine, all my past patterns indicate that I'll cruise along as usual until November. And then I have several more presumably non-defective instruments and all my past patterns indicate that I will continue to extend my finances as long as they're available. And it's alright for me to be alright with that.

The difference from before is having added into my awareness and mindfulness practice how suddenly things can turn. And I shouldn't let what all my past patterns indicate become cynical resignation to what will definitely happen. Even if they forecast what probably will happen, I need to navigate every section of time on its own merits of causes and conditions and contemplate whether it's finally my turn. Mindfulness zooms into moments and details, pixelating them, and stops time and feelings and all the old existential questions well up in new ways and dimensions.

And quite frankly, I think my practice – mindfulness practice with Vajrayana influences – has been becoming something that makes my existence at least worth something to me. That is to say if I happen to keep being able to live, practice is a reason to not feel so bad about it. It's no change of direction or reason to live. It may even help towards my goal as realizations, inspirations and even experience of the nature of reality align with them. It's good stuff. It's down the rabbit hole. But even I will stop short of the suggestion that practice can be a way towards suicide. It's not. But the more I write about it, the messier it'll get so I'll just leave it at that.

I was wrong about the two previous posts not needing to have been writ. They were actually helpful. Sometimes you need to go some place to realize it's not a place you want to go. Oh. That's kinda the story of my life.

The conveyor belt/treadmill metaphor was useless, albeit accurate, but realizing that still requires formation of some other paradigm. New paradigm. Different paradigm. What was wasn't working.

Nothing should be comfortable about my existence, considering how it has to end. Well, how it has to end for all of us, but trying or pretending to choose to in my case. Itsa big difference. For people in general, we all have to die but that's no reason to not get comfortable about existence as much as we can. Let it come when it does. Don't go where you're not invited until you're invited.

For people like me with the realization of death as a focus, there is no getting comfortable with existence. Death is a reality that can't be put aside because putting it aside is ignoring the obvious, and existence is by nature uncomfortable because it's fleeting and needs to be explored and understood as such. Maybe that's what the great adepts were getting at. Maybe they were as bad at it as me. Probably not.

I'm thinking I have to tap into sadness and despair, not as emotions but as concepts, which is a bit ironic since Buddhism teaches to do away with concepts. In this case, the concept is a tool in furtherance of doing away with concepts. Which in many ways is exactly what many Buddhistic methods necessarily are.

Sadness and despair are useful in that those are the normative emotions, tools, concepts that ordinary people avoid or are given as reasons or explanations for suicide. But I'm not ordinary, I'm not necessarily suicidal, it's just what I want to do and will eventually have to do since that's the way I set my life up. Not being suicidal makes it hard to commit suicide. Tapping into sadness and despair just as concepts, and not as the things humans generally attach to as real and things to avoid, can help. 

There's a lot of blurring that goes on. All the beauty in the things I love and appreciate become sadness and despair because they are fleeting. They won't last no matter how much I want them to be loved. Dig deep and deeper into those emotions of love and appreciation and they become sadness and despair because they all come to pass. It's still love, and joy is still joy, laughter is still laughter, but they take on more dimensions, they become multi-faceted. Anger is no longer a feeling but an energy that's pretty useless and can be stopped when recognized as an energy. Lust is no longer some base animal impulse for desire and self-gratification, but a very powerful energy that is very useful if controlled. Despair and sadness don't mean depression. Everything starts getting transformed in practice.

I don't know when it will be time, I don't know how others knew it was time, but I've come to imagine it's a full-body realization. I've never had that before. I used to talk about being at 100% or getting to 100%. As a full-body realization, I doubt I've ever been near 100%. I won't project on what I think I was, I may have never even been 1%, I may have gotten to 80%, I just don't know myself that well. 

Appalled. Fucked. Wack. Facked (Australian accent). Those are some words that have occurred to me to describe my previous post. I was poking fun at myself, but what I wrote is seriously twisted. Ah, another word. Some sick shit. I could probably go on if I put my mind to it. Totally muhfoofooh.

The suggestion that I should just comfortably accept staying alive just because shit isn't hitting the fan is mind-blowing and has been sending me into core code wtf? reality collapses and existential fishtail skids. Poking fun at myself as a coping mechanism for neurotic dysfunction and things not going my way is fine and dandy, but it's wack telling myself it's fine and dandy when all the screens start blanking on and off with static and white noise because the frivolous bit of code I introduced (the previous post) is just that bogus.

So no, no, no, no, no, no, no (oh mama-mia, mama mia) on that smooth-ride-day-to-day, wait-for-something-to-happen-first attitude. I should be stressed, I should be on edge, there should be existential angst. Mindfulness practice should take any emotionality and hysterics dramatics out of it, but the tension and cognitive dissonance is necessary. I should be constantly pressing towards suicide despite a pattern and history of failure (the 'failure is overrated' claim is still valid). There is something seriously wrong with this picture, this program that is my life, and pretending it's a smooth ride that I can be lazy about (lazier than I am, apparently possible) is way off mark. The previous post is just a sub-routine, a fail-safe. It's an aspect that's there and may actually come to pass, but it's not a primary paradigm.

This may come off as sounding really strange, but it also conflicts with my ideas of interdependence, which I believe in as a part of mindfulness practice. Interdependence is integral to mindfulness practice, actively recognizing the connections and relations between everyone in our lives. When you think and act independently and not interdependently, you risk running into trouble. The interdependence aspect of mindfulness practice helps avoid or mitigate those problems because you considered other people before acting.

In my case, consideration of interdependence of course comes with a twist. Where's the interdependence when my life has been all about isolating myself and cutting contact to some degree or another with literally everybody? But even with my idea to commit suicide, I'm aware of interdependence. And actually I theoretically couldn'twouldn'tshouldn't commit suicide without interdependence, it would be pointless. The interdependence is still there in the removing myself from their lives and affecting them as little as possible. It's a whole life thing, cutting off from people doesn't eliminate interdependence.

Somehow, though, distilling suicide to a knee-jerk reaction feels like an independent, selfish (yep, I went there) act. It treats suicide as just needing a trigger and becomes a matter of cause and effect and suggests I can be casual and cavalier until that trigger occurs. That all reacts badly with my ideas of interdependence which require continuous, mindful recognition that there is gravitas in such an act. However little impact it may have, it needs to be respectfully contemplated. I've done all I can to mitigate any impact, and there may be shock, but not any real impact beyond knowledge of an unpleasant fact; a fact of life I may add. I could've been killed by a bus and the impact should largely be the same.

So with the albatross firmly back around my neck, I'm back to wondering how will I know it's time? How did they know it was time? What strategies do I have to determine when it will be time? The spanner in the works is that time has long past, anytime will do really. Then the question becomes a perpetual 'why not now?' and I've been asking that for so long it's meaningless and ridiculous. Really, this and the previous post shouldn't have happened. I should've just posted about riding and the weather. Taipei should just cancel winter at this point. I think this is the first winter I haven't switched out my floor fan for a space heater. I don't think it's possible at this point for Taipei to get cold enough for a long enough period to salvage any notion of winter.

After over a year off bike, I got back on this month. I don't know how I feel about it yet. It was slow going, mind you. Not just the riding, but even the getting on the bike. I took it slow; step-by-step. The first step was pulling my road bike out from the corner of the room where it lives and wet-wiping off the layer of dust and spider webs. That was depressing and discouraging. And that was it for that day. And my first forays were on my clunker, daily-use street bike going farther on the riverside bikeways than I have in over a year just to test my fitness.

There are several reasons for doing this. A trigger excuse was getting sick of a growing paunch and wanting to do something about it, but I don't think this my paunch has anything to do with being active or not. It probably has more to do with alcohol. It was just an excuse; a feeling that exercising would be working on the paunch, but it isn't. Hopefully it'll help tone the paunch.

Another reason may have elements of self-punishment for not carrying out my ultimate goal in this time. August of last year I was wanting to stop or get off the conveyor belt of daily routine that got me from day-to-day, and running or cycling was part of that. Over a year later, I'm still on the same conveyor belt, but it's occupied by other neurotic activity getting me from day-to-day that completely fills my time. Forcing more than an hour of exercise into the routine is really inconvenient and it's me telling myself if I insist on continuing being here, it's not going to be just all comfort and convenience and doing what I want.

It's, quite honestly, so stupid. It's totally neurotic. And working on neuroticism is my next mindfulness project after years and years of working on negativity and internal anger issues.

Twenty miles on every rideable day weather-wise is the goal and limit, although knowing myself I will probably extend it to 30 to 35 miles if I persist. Neurotic demands it. The question is whether the neurotic schedule of things that artificially completely fill my time will be overcome by the neurotic drive to uselessly go farther and faster.

20-mile Nanhu Br-Bailing Br loop:

End of September. I read a local news article recently that confirmed what I felt about this summer that Taipei wasn't as hot as it has been for the past however many years; what I termed "hell hot". This summer was normal Taipei summer heat. It was blazing hot, but it was normal Taipei summer blazing hot. It wasn't hell hot and it turns out I can tell the difference. Because of the past few years, I would brace myself for hell hot heading out, but once outside there wasn't the immediate impulse to get out of the heat as fast as possible. It would be hot, but it was hot that I'd be taking my bike out for a ride in the years before the hell hot started.

Actually, weather has been rather unusual since winter, which was mild and dry compared to previous years in memory. And unusually dry weather continued to characterize the bulk of this year. Even during the springtime Plum Rains, there would be showers for a few days and then break. I'm usually griping about the solid blocks of rain for weeks in Taipei, but this year has not only been great and relatively dry, but there haven't been any drought warnings, either. No worries. Typhoons have been avoiding Taipei, either missing south and plowing into the Philippines or veering north towards recently disaster-prone Japan. Taipei has been grazed by non-events. Southern Taiwan hasn't been so lucky.

Rain has returned in the past month, so weather may be returning to normal crummy Taipei weather. The summer heat has broken with less drama than hell hot summers. Air conditioning has been turned off without fanfare, and even fan usage habit was easy to break. I anticipate within a week I'll sleep under covers for the first time in months. Change.

I wonder what change I'm prepared for. Earlier this year, I wrongly anticipated my bank account would run out not too long beyond June. A scenario developed that would keep me going without change well into next year. That scenario is on track, but hasn't manifested just yet; I'll see next month. If it doesn't manifest, no problem; I'll have loomage and change that I'm well-prepared for.

But since my life has a habit of not going my way, I have to think about change like . . . getting new eyeglasses. It's easily been over six or seven years that I've had this prescription and silly red frames that just don't suit me. I also need a new wardrobe of shirts. Early on, my uniform in Taiwan became light fabric, short-sleeve, button-down shirts. I never wore these in the U.S. Not only am I getting too fat for the shirts I have with paunch becoming embarrassingly obvious, but they're starting to fray and shred because of Taiwan's climate, I assume. I've never had shirts do that before. Fabric just disintegrating.

I'm not sure what other kind of change I expect in the coming year. Visiting the U.S.? Have things gotten so low that I'm willing to do that? Do I re-establish contact with . . . with whom? Audrey? If I haven't connected with her since we last connected, why would I in particular in the coming year? I do have to reply to an email from my sister-in-law, but that's not a change. We actually have a regular email correspondence: twice a year, I don't know if it's intentional. I don't know if she writes because she wants to or if she feels she has to and twice is the bare minimum she can manage. I don't know if she would like to write more but is too busy. But twice a year, one around the holidays and then another one further down the year; I respond roughly halfway in between those emails, so I'm currently a little tardy.

Nah, maybe I should just anticipate a forthcoming year with no change, keep floating along. If life wants to throw me a curve ball, whatever. See if I care. Or please!

I look back at my life and wonder, 'what was that?' Was that worth living? Whatever. I was born and had to live it. Worth is subjective. It is what it was. Was it worth my while? Did I live up to my potential? How exactly did I spend my time here? What was I? What did it mean to be here?

I was nothing. I made myself nothing intentionally. That was my purpose, so I think I was reasonably successful, flatter myself not. What was the purpose of becoming nothing? Spiritual pursuit, I think it's safe to say. All is vanity. Even becoming nothing is vanity, but that's better, I think, than a foundation of vanity to build a life thinking it's something when it's really just vanity.

I'm just trying to make sense of the whole journey and the whole ego lens with which we go through our lives.

I was nothing very early on. Psychology is in the works here, but it eventually mixes in with the spiritual pursuit thing. Of course that feeling of being nothing starts with my parents in childhood, but that's not to blame them for anything since I have two brothers with the same upbringing who became something. We were all nothing to my parents to the extent that making money was more important to our parents. But since their making money became integral to my brothers' becoming something, the transition was natural.

And once the concept of suicide was introduced to me, I latched onto that as a formulation for my life and I never did get beyond that and only embellished the philosophy and rationale behind it as a goal. I was döömed. That was it. My life in a nutshell was about settling into a pattern of constantly sabotaging anything that people normally live for (I'ma call it identity), realizing it's all vanity.

Identity as vanity. My years of stripping away identity was trying to strip away the vanity. All those things I did along my journey that I tried to base my identity upon were just vanity, things to do. Look at me, I'm this or that and I feel pride about those things. Drummer, bassist, runner, cycling, cutter, alcoholic, English editor, all identities and matters of pride.

In the end because of my impulse to sabotage my life and identity partly by alienating everyone in my life, there was only me left. What use is there of an identity when there's no one there to show it to, to be it? Then I stopped being impressed by myself. There was only me left to tell me I sucked at all those things, and I did suck, and I did finally tell myself as much.

So what was this all worth? Just the fact of it? Maybe. The fact without vanity, without pretension or thinking there was any meaning to it. I was not known, no one knew me. Even being unknown or forgotten is folly and vanity thinking I was anything worth being unknown or forgotten! Not even that. That's a great freedom actually.

People try to be an identity, what they present to the world. People try to be somebody. If people can't be famous and remembered historically, they try to be someone and mean something to their friends and family. But it's all vanity. So you're remembered, people mention tales about you generations down. Tales that even inspire. Yay? Good for you? I don't get it. Just disappearing suits me fine. Which is why I suppose I think of myself as Buddhist (albeit different from how many Buddhists think of themselves, as an identity).

Or the alternate last sentence is: . . . disappearing suits me fine. And yet I have this blog.

My initial reaction to Jonghyun's suicide may have been typical and normative, but those weren't the first thoughts I had about it. He died in the evening. Taiwan is an hour behind Korea, so I read the news after I got home for the evening, very soon after it broke in Korea. My first independent thought was a sadness-tinged, "He won't be going to sleep in his own bed tonight".

As news broke and sent shockwaves through the K-pop world in Korea and beyond, he was probably already lying in a hospital morgue covered with a sheet, not yet cold, rigor mortis yet to set in. No, he wouldn't be climbing into his own bed tonight with whatever he did and accomplished that day, with whatever demons he carried, with tomorrow's schedules and responsibilities still a night's sleep away.

He won't be going to sleep in his own bed tonight, like I will.

There's this word that has a common meaning, but my exposure to it is in the psychiatric field as, I think, a term of art. Ideation. All it means is the creation of an idea, really just a fancy, fairly useless word for thinking, but in regard to suicide it signifies a whole envisioning and fulfillment of the act. Ideation is a necessary step towards suicide.

A fundamental flaw in my ideation is that there isn't any not crawling into bed at night. Getting to bed every night has been an unconscious existential ordeal in its own way for I don't know how long. It only appears as such when I look hard at it. Every day the conveyor belt of getting from day to day culminates in going to sleep in my own bed every night.

The conveyor belt is a list of useless things I'll plan to do any day, blocks of time when I'll uselessly go where to uselessly do what, rinse and repeat, ultimately with the ideation of my bed at the end of the day. It doesn't serve committing suicide very well, does it? It just perpetuates uselessness.

I need to get rid of the idea of the conveyor belt even as I'm carried along on it. No idea how, that was reasonably zen. I have to get it out of my mind that crawling into my own bed as an ideated goal is necessarily desirable. At the root of the problem is being a creature of habit as long as things aren't going wrong. Doing the same things day after day because they're tried, true and safe. That's complacency. There is no value in that. I'm stuck in it.

"Yea, I'm alcoholic"
"Why do you drink so much?"
"Because . . . if I didn't, I wouldn't be alcoholic". Duh.

August-September-October-November, it's been three months since I cut back on drinking. It's no accomplishment. It doesn't feel like anything. And with the great revelation that a lot of the physical gripes I'd been griping about went away, there's a huge incentive to not go back to constant drinking.

It hasn't been hard. There have been the expected markers of alcoholism – pangs and temptation – but minimal restraint was necessary to get past those (restraint was necessary nonetheless). Also I haven't totally quit and I still probably drink enough to be considered alcoholic. Alcoholism, I shouldn't wonder, is not just the amount but the habit and regularity.

Ooh! That was quotable! Quote me, baby. Booyah.

Same as I mentioned before, I allow drinking before periods when I'm naturally not going to drink, i.e. before going to sleep and going out. But I also ration one beer outside of those times, meaning one in the morning and one in the evening is OK. I don't consider one beer a drink. It's a refreshing enjoyment, a quick buzz. More than one beer becomes drinking and I haven't done that at all.

To quantify, before I was drinking on average more than six bottles a week, but not quite a bottle a day. Now I go through a bottle about every three days; a schedule I've been on before.

Cutting back on drinking has also contributed to the cognitive dissonance since I'm clear and sober to contemplate the contradiction and futility of my continued existence. There are more spans going from moment to moment where I'm clear to question why I'm still here.

Cutting back on drinking has also put a full stop on insomnia, more or less. Same as I mentioned before, sleep isn't always perfect, but is OK and adequate. If I've been able to identify a bad night as insomnia these past three months, it's been a one-off.

Sleep, who can deny?, is a comfort. Waking rested after a good slumber is a feeling of all that's good about living and existing. For me it's cognitive dissonance. The feeling is quickly ambushed that it is temporary and I can't keep going on like this. The theoretical suicide is there first thing to contemplate during morning sitting.

There isn't anyone in my life, but if there were, this is where they start suggesting I go back to drinking constantly. Sorry, I'm done with feeling like shit all the time.

So physical activity is OUT because it would likely contribute to a false sense of accomplishment; no cycling or attempting to run. Until I do.

Fake reading Chinese is OK because it emphasizes the futility in learning the language in my case. I love the complexity in this pathology. I don't think I'm unable to learn the language in some fundamental failure of being. The key to learning a language is interaction and usage. You have to communicate with other people. That's what I'm unwilling to do and presumably the basic reason for my failure. 

Forcing myself to pretend to read a newspaper with Chinese phonetics just exposes me to a diversified vocabulary and emphasizes how much I don't know. It's not vocabulary I would necessarily need in daily conversation, or if it was I'd learn it in daily conversation. It keeps me mystified by a seeming impossibility of learning a new language because there's always so much more to learn, when basically the problem is that I've pretty much isolated myself from interacting with people.

Pretending to play bass or guitar is also OK for pretty much the same reason. I've given up any identity thinking I was a musician. I still have some basic technical facility on fretted instruments, so I can play along to songs and work out chord progressions and appreciate what went into the songwriting. 

I also have the Jamey Aeborsold jazz play-along series of workbooks and music files. These are apparently THE essential studies for anyone interested in playing jazz. Despite that not including me, I still wondered why I'd never even heard of the series, so I asked my sister-in-law's sister's husband, Tom Kennedy, an A-list professional bass player (go ahead, look him up), and he confirmed it. Everyone goes through Jamey Aeborsold. It's K-12 for aspiring jazz musicians.

It's an endless source of music learning and backing tracks to play along with for practical application. For me, it emphasizes that after however many years I thought of myself as a musician, I really know bupkis about music. Even the meager facility I have on fretted instruments, my fingers always do the same one kind of pattern and movements over and over, and even that I don't know what I'm doing. I assume it's some basic blues scale.

So in terms of wasting my life away on the conveyor belt of distractions to get from day to day, pulling out my guitar and bass is OK.

It's about getting me to a state of perpetual cognitive dissonance about my existence. I shouldn't be here, but I am only because I can be with minimal effort. I'm here because I'm lazy; too lazy to end my life even though the very framework I've built for it has been to end it.

The framework and foundation of my life, through attitude, theory and implementation, has all been set-up for ending my life. All the activities and things I've done and pursued during my life were just fluff and filler, false identity. I don't regret any of it, a lot of it was probably a blast as it happened.

But the fun should be over and I can't let myself be fooled by it now. I don't know what I will do, the pattern my history shows doesn't suggest anything dramatic *yawn*. The best I'll expect at the time being is continue to work on relatively sober development of perpetual cognitive dissonance and hope for the obvious and only proper outcome.

Where I am in life is the direct result of how I've lived my life with an affirmative aspiration or goal to commit suicide. Most everyone has an aspiration towards what they want to be. Most are socially acceptable. Mine is one that is not.

I don't know if I'm going to reach my goal. Many people don't reach theirs. But not reaching mine has consequences. People who don't have a specific aspiration still are or can be content, to varying extents, to float along.

The way I've lived my life precludes floating along indefinitely. If I don't commit suicide by choice, then I'll eventually reach circumstances where I'll feel it's the only option. That was the design. That was all the sabotaging I've done all through my life.

When it hit me that alcohol wasn't going to kill me and I'd have to do it, I balked. Isn't there any other way? It took a sleepless night of calm reflection to realize I didn't even want "any other way". That's part of the design, too. Run through the scenarios of re-entering living life, and nothing appeals. I don't even want to.

I can't suddenly decide that I want to live and re-enter living life. The thought only occurred to me because of fear and attachments. It is scary facing the end of one's life. And the attachment is primarily to these senses and this perspective that I call me, not to the stuff of the world. It's all I know and it's all going to disappear, and I'm the one who has to make it happen.

Anyway, I have to work on unraveling the routine of distractions that has come to make up my life. Or is it distractions of routine? Same difference.

Given its druthers, without external obligations or responsibilities, my daily life falls into routine. It creates its own things, a schedule, that it has to do. Much of it trivial and ridiculous, including being ruled by TV. This is a big problem.

The routine gives me something to do, creating a false sense of purpose and a conveyor belt to tomorrow, distracting me from figuring out that suicide is the only next step.

On Monday, I went out and got something to eat. Soba noodles. After coming home, I put on my running gear without any intention of doing any sort of jog or plod. Shin splints appeared again last week and I've been off since then.

I went out to the riverside path and confirmed I wasn't going to try any sort of exertion; I just wanted to be out. Ended up just milling about listening to music before puking up the soba noodles and then returning home. I try to be discreet about puking in public and I don't think anyone saw me.

Yesterday, Tuesday, I didn't eat anything. I didn't get out. Raging insomnia totally messing with my routine. I also didn't puke at all.

Today, still insomnia. Did go out and get something to eat and came home. Puked it all up after several hours of lying on my bed feeling deathly sick, listening to my heartbeat in my ears, unable to pay attention to the Harry Potter movie I was trying to watch.

I don't know if this means anything. This is just what happened. It's probably happened before and I probably even posted about it.

The decline continues with no end in sight. How far can the descent go without reaching a bottom?

I haven't had anything to say for the past two and a half months. That's not true. There's always something. It's been dark and getting darker, and still no proactive plan to end things.

Thoughts of death and dying have been prevalent, but still just a lot of stagnation and theory. There's no reason for me to be alive. There is no clinging to hope; there is no "hope", just the last lame selfish enjoyment of continuing to listen to music. That's all that's left really.

Clinging to any last reason to live, and all I can come up with is listening to K-pop? There is no other reason I'm still alive. I'm not living for anyone, I'm not productive, I don't produce anything, I don't contribute to anything; not to anyone's perspective, knowledge or happiness. I'd've made a terrible Protestant.

It occurs to me that this blog may ultimately turn against me. It's very possible it still may be found by people who knew me. It's very possible that people would be disgusted by my attitude towards my life.

You hear of people called heroes who fought for their lives in the face of adversity, and here I am just throwing it all away just waiting for an end. It should have ended a long time ago. Where I am is the result of how I've always lived my life and I never intended to live this long.

Ten years, twenty years ago people may have reacted differently. Maybe understanding if not sympathy, not that I would have expected it. If I died now, having written all I've written, I expect a reaction more on the lines of "what a fucking idiot, should've gotten over with it before".

I can't imagine anyone being affected by my dying; old story I know. I expect it to just be passing news. You hear of people dying and other people paying tribute. Even mentioning their death is a tribute. I can't even imagine a mention.

How can my death have any littlest bit of impact on anyone else when my life hasn't had the littlest bit of impact on anyone else? My life goal has been to have as little impact on anyone else. And it goes both ways. I don't expect anyone to be affected and no one has the right to be affected.

When someone dies, people close have the right to "own" the dead; the right to mourn, the right to acknowledge the person meant something. No one has that right with me.

Now I realize that the most I could expect is disdain and disgust.

The past two and a half months have been a mess. I don't even know what it means anymore to think that things are spiraling out of control. A logical train of thought leads me to conclude nothing is spiraling out of control.

Mindfulness practice has felt like it has gone off the rails, but mindfulness practice is what keeps things grounded. Daily sitting has suffered more than it ever has except during the worst of insomnia. I can't seem to understand, much less absorb, the readings I read and re-read anymore.

Still, mindfulness practice is still a skill like casting magic spells in the Harry Potter series of books. Certain unwanted negative emotions or thoughts arise and you can identify them and recite an incantation and wave a wand and make it fly off.

I am immersed, mind you, in reading the Harry Potter books and watching the films which are showing on HBO. Whatever works. Twenty-five years ago it was reading the Lotus Sutra and equating concepts from Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" series.

Such comparisons only contribute to the utter meaninglessness.

WordsCharactersReading time

I've noticed the efficacy of mindfulness practice has broken down completely recently. It's a continuation and extension of what I mentioned in January when I first noticed something . . . off.

My mind is clouded, my thoughts are clouded, my feelings are clouded. Negativity grows and creeps and I can't stop it. I apply the practices, the visualizations, the meditations and they just aren't working.

I've been going back to the teachings in the books that have been so illuminating in the past, and sometimes I'm reading sentence by sentence with negative responses and resistance arising constantly.

It's not that I think the teachings are wrong. I read and acknowledge they are right, but my mind is resisting, making excuses why they don't apply to me now; excuses that I know are wrong and deluded, but reflect how I feel.

It may be a problem of not having a social support structure; no community, no friends, no family. Even hermits living in caves have benefactors who check up on them and deliver food and supplies as necessary. Even hermits are not as nothing as I am in my current existence. They are especially not nothing.

Maybe weather, winter blues, is a contributing factor. If it's raining, if there is no sunshine or shadows it's just such an easy excuse to stay holed up except to get out for alcohol. Not even food that much as I'm never hungry anymore. Whatever sparse nibbles I have in my room are enough to not want to eat.

It's not that I'm giving up on mindfulness practice. Morning sitting is still the most important thing I'll do for the day. Occasionally I'll take a break day, but for most part, even if I wake up and don't feel like sitting, by the time I'm vertical I'll be preparing for sitting. Actual break days are often justified by physical health conditions that actually manifest.

Besides, I know from experience that the teachings work. If they're not sinking in just now, that doesn't mean they don't work. It's far more likely that certain conditions and attitudes are preventing me from realizing them in the present moment.

I'm not worried. I'm not going to stop applying the teachings, but I expect I'll be spinning wheels until conditions are right when the sparks start plugging again. It will be of continuing importance to keep objectivity and keep just observing internally and not reacting emotionally and uncritically. That would be a waste of all I've learned.

As the saying goes, "If you're going through hard times, keep going".

I experience people in this city, life in this city, and I'm astounded by how rude people are in this city. Then I realize if anyone, I'm the rude one. I'm the asshole. How did I become such an asshole?

Am I such an asshole because I'm alone, or am I alone because I'm such an asshole?

Is it a matter of nature or nurture? If it's nurture, then I'm a rude asshole because of my upbringing; the result of my parents' poor parenting. I don't buy that. My parents were shit parents, but I don't put what I am on their heads. I could've risen above it. Their shit parenthood only reflects what shit parents they were. Not my decisions.

So nature – nature of an asshole – what does that even mean? From a Buddhist perspective, I think nature (personal, not "primordial") is about karma, what has been spiritually inherited; habitually practiced and inculcated until transferred from one lifetime to the next.

So what about my nature, my karma, has made me such an asshole? Is it my self-imposed social isolation but with access to internet and media that has rendered me so self-absorbed that I no longer have any connection or empathy, ergo a sociopathic asshole?

It's probably just how I feel. I may even be exaggerating. It very well may be likely that no one even takes notice of me and my dark clouds at all.

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.