I'm trying a new approach to alcohol. For the past three and a half years, I've drunk the same way every day in the name of "cutting back" at the time. I allowed for one-third of a bottle per day (measured out, basically a ration), two beers, and some dipping into reserve bottles after the third of a bottle was done.

The drinking schedule would begin around 10 or 11 at night enjoying a beer, followed by the third of a bottle of gin or vodka. I'd pour into a shot glass and sip it by halves or thirds. By 2 a.m. lights out, I like to have left at least a shot in the bottle for the next day and the satisfaction of showing restraint in not finishing off the ration. The next morning I could have a beer around 11 or noon and then finish the third of a bottle. After that I could dip into reserve bottles (scotch), which would be restricted by my leaving for the afternoon around 1:30 p.m. That would be maybe 2 or 3 shots at most. 

But something I noticed recently was that this strict rationing had also become a license, encouragement even, to drink. Sometimes I'd get to the times when I usually start drinking and I'd start drinking because it was time I could start drinking, not because I necessarily wanted or had the impulse to. And of course once started, it's down the slippery slope. You could sooner stop a fat German boy in lederhosen after shoving strudel in his face or Alice going down the rabbit hole after taking a tab of acid.

So the new approach is if I've been getting along just fine through my night or morning without even thinking about alcohol, don't start just because I can. If I'm fine without, just stay fine until it does beckon and I "really want it". I'm not sure what that means yet. I think if I notice I'm actively resisting, that means I really want it, and I can just go ahead. Resisting like that just creates a mental complex and who needs that? I don't need another thing to be nutty about. It's a fine line between resisting and "showing restraint". 

I wonder about my motivation for doing this and whether it has anything to do with my funds imminently running out, ostensibly ending my life as planned. I wouldn't put it past my thinly-veiled subconscious. Maybe the less I drink, the less I spend money thereby adding a few weeks? I dunno, it's possible but I hope it's not that crass or desperate. I hope I don't hang on spending every penny before I realize what I have to do in accordance with how I've set my life up. It may come down to that knowing me, but I hope not. There is an even worse scenario (accounted in a Buddhist fable) whereby I run out of money and still can't do it but that's another story, nevermind. 

Another possible subconscious motivation is accepting that alcohol has decidedly failed to kill me (unlike before where it failed to kill me but there's still hope!), so . . . may as well cut down even further? That sounds weaker than the money theory. If the drinking schedule isn't making me miserable and is manageable, why change it? Or maybe I'm testing mindfulness practice as a tool for tackling alcoholism? Sorry, "alcohol use disorder" I think they're calling it these days, good grief (*insert facepalm emoji*). I've always held the belief that I could stop drinking if I wanted to just through mindfulness practice. But no, if this were the case it wouldn't be a subconscious motivation but a conscious decision. 

Actually that "why change it?" question may be more onto something. And that's the wrong question, rather why not change it? If I'm really facing the end of my life with the end of finances within a few months, everything's changing! My conscious mind wants to maintain normality and keep the day-to-day conveyor belt going, but that's a reality that is untenable. My subconscious mind (i.e., the "universe") may be telling me to shake things up and get rid of ideas of normalcy and stability for my own good. That does make a lot more sense. It's not just alcohol, but other things in my habits and routine and even external life and health have been getting shook lately and it's always off-putting or annoying and requires adjustment. I don't like it, and that's the point. I don't like it when the conveyor belt gets disrupted, but that's where a wrench needs to be thrown.

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 found I can "hijack" hot water for a bit from my neighbor. My room shares a wall with my neighbor's bathroom, so I can hear when water is running in his bathroom. By total coincidence, once when I was washing my hands I suddenly was miraculously getting warm and then hot water! My stars, I was shocked! I didn't know what to make of it or what to do, but when I exited my bathroom I could hear my neighbor's shower running through the wall on the opposite side of the room and started putting it together. Several times thereafter if I heard his shower running, I would go check whether I could get hot water and it worked every time. I began formulating what I could do to exploit this situation.

The hot water doesn't last long enough for a full shower and he takes showers several hours earlier than I do, but just touching, feeling, caressing, . . . light petting the hot water was doing wonders for my psyche. I've therefore decided to bifurcate my showers and rearranged my routine so that during the window of time I expect him to be taking showers, I don't have ear buds jammed in my ears and when I hear his shower running, I go and wash my hair and face with glorious hot water! Only my head gets wet and it takes just a few minutes.

Several hours later when I usually take my showers, I finish off the job under cold water which I can do very quickly. I'm probably under cold water for less than 2 or 3 minutes; head stays dry. I still have the "AUUUGGGHHH!!!!" mentality of jumping into a cold river at first, but I've also started working on transforming any negative, virulent energy into something like loving-kindness. It sucks, it's cold, it's miserable, but instead of reacting negatively emotionally I try focusing on a positive attitude. 

At first I tried focusing the energy as loving-kindness to all humanity as teachings encourage, but I'm not the Dalai Lama and have you seen the news lately? Loving-kindness to all humanity in a sincere manner is honestly just not in my capacity of courage. So then I tried something easier like my cousin Audrey who has been all but useless lately and has made it clear we have no relationship . . . yup, aiming it at her still works. And then my mother who occasionally sends photos with my brother's family in mass emails that I never respond to, but despite being the only person making any kind of contact is the last person I want anything to do with . . . yes, she actually qualifies! Sounds like strange psychology going on but I'm not sure this is psychology as much as dharma, or even karma. It occurred to me and it worked/happened without resistance or disgust. Strange things happen when stripped down to desperation or personally challenging extremes.

I don't know how my neighbor is affected nor if he's getting seriously pissed off nightly when his hot water drops off in the shower. I know nothing about plumbing, but from my experience living here two showers competing for hot water at the same time means everyone's quality and expectations are compromised. Yes, I feel like an asshole knowing my actions are possibly causing him anger, but . . . dude, it's hot water. 

What I don't know is how he'll react as this situation continues. I'd be surprised if he just tolerates it – he's paying rent which implicitly includes hot water and if he's losing hot water during showers, that's a problem. I don't know how he'd be able to figure out I'm the culprit. He might complain to the landlord but I don't know how they'd be able to pinpoint me as the source of his problem. Just testing his water without me running mine and there's no problem. But then they might guess that someone else must be running water at the same time every night and end up knocking on my door and directly asking me, which is a horrifying thought. I don't know how that conversation would go unless my neighbor speaks English, although it might be an opportunity for me to tell someone I have no hot water at all. If they fix that, I stop interfering with his showers and he's happy and I go back to taking hot showers after midnight and I'm happy. 

But that's just wishful thinking. I just have a feeling my hot water-siphoning won't be maintained for the rest of winter and he'll do something to stymie it. And I'll still have no hot water. Why do I think that way? Am I being unreasonably negative? Go ask the universe.

It shoulda been a no-brainer. If the broken space heater was the "actual trigger" for depression, then go buy a new one! The reason it didn't occur to me right away is: a) I've long had a moratorium on buying more stuff, new stuff; anything I bring into my apartment I need to have an idea of how it will exit my apartment, and b) I'm in my last few months of money. What I have left won't see out the summer and the sooner it runs out (if I don't go to the bank), the sooner that's supposedly the end of my life, so don't spend frivolously*. The option of buying a new space heater sat in a total mental blind spot. 

* I am aware of the many layers of contradictions and neurotic nuttiness leading to absurd formulations that just don't make any sense. Yet there they are. Story of my life. And I do find them outrageous, dismaying and infuriating in alternating and varying measure. If you were me, I'd bet you'd want to kill yourself furrow your brow, too.

But I decided under these circumstances whereby the universe isn't playing fair and is maliciously and artificially creating the perfect conditions for my personal misery (no hot water, broken space heater, possible record-breaking brutally cold winter with constant clouds and relentless drear . . . coincidence?! I think not), I felt justified in bypassing my own neurotic rules and at least go and price new space heaters. I went out with the aim of buying the cheapest one possible that will make showers bearable. I got one for a little over US$30 and is less than half the wattage of my previous one, but it'll do. It'll have to. I won't complain and I'm still armed with the attitude of treating the misery as practice. Actually, it's of minimal effect with limited range depending how cold it is, but I don't want to understate the importance of at least being able to take the edge off the chill at key times. 

It's still definitely better than nothing, but I think the most important thing is that I took control of the one thing over which I had control. If I had continued to treat the loss of the space heater like the water, weather and Siberian blast (literally), as something I couldn't do anything about, I could've risked falling into a hole of hopeless, helpless despondency. I'm not so confident about my mindfulness practice being able to ward off despair and realize it's only temporary and will pass. It's possible I would see it as an undeniable disruption of the day-to-day conveyor belt whereby all avenues of coping to maintain a modicum of comfort and stability would be gone. 

And it's only early January; winter is still a long way to get through. I bring myself back to my breath and focus on breathing and calm. It is only a little bit of comfort to see next week's forecast with several days in the 70s and sun. The temperatures then go down again perhaps suggesting a possible rollercoaster of a season. I can't project how my psyche will hold up or whether my resistance and mindfulness practice will fail and accept all my efforts have gotten old and I'm too exhausted to try to maintain them. I'm not that tough. I hope I remember to remember it's all alright. Otherwise it's narcissistic ego-attachment. Let it go.

Whoa, dude, I'm being hit by a nasty bout of depression. I know I've written about experiencing depression in recent memory (meaning a few years) since it's rare by my reckoning. When it happens it's confirmation, to me at least, that I'm generally not depressed. There's a big difference. To me at least, if not how I sound.

To catch things up the past few weeks, my left knee appears to have pretty much mostly healed from whatever that was, but the sciatica still dogs my right leg from time to time; not too bad, doesn't contribute to depression, just a limp. The weather has no doubt been a contributing factor in the depression. There were maybe three days that weren't gloom and drear and with temperatures creeping into the low 70s and pale sunlight fighting a losing battle. But that long-range forecast predicting cold temperatures right around New Year's was not only spot-on, but spot-on with a Siberian vengeance with probably record lows on New Year's Eve. I'd be surprised if records weren't broken or matched. Cold contributes to depression with not a promising forecast.

Contributing factors aside, I'm gonna attribute the actual trigger for the depression being my space heater breaking. A few weeks ago I tried out pointing my space heater into the bathroom during showers and it helped mitigate that misery to the extent that I didn't give a second thought about using it every night since then or what it might be doing to my landlord's energy bill (I don't pay it directly, but I still feel bad since he's my cousin's uncle). Using the space heater made me think I could get through this. Whatever however shit it was to plummet myself under a cold shower, there was that steady flow of warm air making it bearable and which was especially appreciated when I was done and temperatures only rose at that point. The space heater breaking was the universe laughing and telling me to go fucking kill myself already, daring me at this point. The universe has no qualms laughing at the big joke of my life and making it worse in the pettiest ways. So the universe is not so much #worstlandlordever, and more the model of #sadisticthirdworlddictator.

I have no problem putting a theoretical, ideated suicide (i.e., not to be taken seriously) back in the cards on the table, except one principle I hold to is depression can't be a contributing factor towards suicide. If I'm feeling depressed, I'm not going to do it. Clear out the depression and I'm good to go. I am fighting the depression with positive thoughts and energy and happiness-generating meditations. It's all part of mindfulness practice. Ironically, a contributing factor in the depression is feeling that my practice has been going no where, but then countering that by identifying that as subjective with limited validity; don't worry about it, just keep practicing. 

I don't know if it's just me and my personal version of mindfulness practice, but depression can't crush a turnaround in positive mentality and realizing all of these conditioned things shouldn't be taken as real, fact or substantive. Unfortunately, I also think a part of my method is what I mentioned before about getting angry to cope with situations. I recognized getting angry may not be ideal as any sort of weapon, even fighting depression. I'm confusing and conflicting myself now, so I'll stop. I don't have a conclusion to which this train of thought is heading.

I only have reasons to commit suicide and letting go of this life, and nothing but my ego-habit and attachments preventing me. All of those contributing factors towards depression are valid contributing factors towards suicide, except depression itself. Good fucking grief. Why can't I be a normal person and just kill myself if I'm depressed and without all the neurotic conditions I've placed upon suicide? Just take a gun and shoot myself, except this isn't the U.S. and guns are hard to come by. OK, buy a portable barbecue grill and burn charcoal in my bathroom leaving one of the small windows above open to clear out the carbon monoxide so no one else is affected. But I don't want to leave a body. I don't want someone to find me and have to deal with a body. Why? What the hell is wrong with me? But it is absolute, I won't subject anyone to that. 

Oh, Happy New Year, btw! 2021, yay!

I will mention that a superficial way of dealing with depression has been in the mix CDs I've made for every year I've been alive. As geeky and pointless that may seem to anyone else, there's nothing like being able to put on a CD that was personally curated by myself and guarantees every song and segue is an uplifting bop of appreciation of beauty, groove or emotion. I guess it helps that the one enjoyment I have in my life is listening to music. Obviously it wouldn't help anyone who doesn't care much for music. But I highly recommend that sort of project for its therapeutic benefits in both making them and in listening to them in the lowest moments.

Finally, I need to own up to a mistake I made trying to be clever in my previous post. I referenced the song "War" and then thought I was being clever by referencing the song "Low Rider" thinking both songs were by the same artist. They aren't. War is by Edwin Starr and Low Rider is by War. So you can see how I got into trouble; an honest mistake. Why I would think "War" was done by a band called War simply went over my head. Well, Japanese all-girl punk band Shonen Knife wrote a song called "Shonen Knife". That even made it onto my 1991 mix CD.

There's nothing like an infirmity to make you feel old, but those kinds of reminders are simply natural occurrences that come with age and everyone eventually experiences them. More relevant to my situation is that there's nothing like an infirmity to disrupt the conveyor belt of routine that gets me from day to habit-defined day. 

What I think is sciatica in my right leg has been behaving as expected, sometimes it hurts, sometimes it doesn't; sometimes it's a low-grade dull pain, sometimes it's an exhausting, distracting sharp pain. Sometimes it feels like a nut, sometimes it don't. It's annoying, but in terms of degree of pain it's nothing compared to whatever's going on with my left knee, often overshadowed by it. The knee will hurt so much that sometimes I'd look to see if my right leg hurts and with a bit of concentrating, yup, there it is. 

Mind you, these are two different pains in either leg, making for two different types of limp if they occurred individually. When the pain in my right leg is just dull, that just slows me down. When it's sharp it causes a severe limp. The knee is mostly problematic when I have to bend it, so on stairs or anything even slightly uneven. At first it was so bad that in getting dressed I had to lay out pants on the bed and then slide and worm my way into them. When the pain in both legs peak at the same time, I avoid walking in public lest I look like a total spaz or a drunk on a pirate ship in a storm. 

The knee is very slowly improving with help from upping the dosage of Advil. When I said before that Advil had no effect, I was taking it how I usually take it: one pill and expecting whatever pain to go away. It finally occurred to me to up the dosage to two pills three times a day, trying not to go over the bottle recommended do-not-exceed-6-pills-in-24-hours-unless-directed-by-a-doctor. 

I still have a lot of ouch, my knee doesn't bend that way moments. Only it's supposed to bend that way, that's the purpose of the knee otherwise what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Advil dulls the pain enough to improve range of motion and allows me to ride a bike. Oh, and by the way I wasn't simply being a total geek by setting the seat on my common street bike high for more power. After the stem broke (because the seat was set so high) and I stuck the seat post directly into the stem tube, placing it at the lowest possible position, it was very obvious how little power there is in not being able to extend my legs. Now, an after-effect of the stem breaking and riding a bike with the seat at the lowest position (low rider?) is that I have to bend my knee more than if the seat were set high, and even with Advil I ride aware that there is pain if I bend it too much. But at least I can do it.

I'll still be optimistic and take improvement for what it is. Improvement hints this is something that will go away by itself. Even though its cause is a mystery, making it difficult to gauge the outcome, it's probably, hopefully, not a permanent or chronic condition like gout. I'm very glad that when I asked my sister-in-law to send over a bottle of Advil a couple years ago she unexpectedly sent a jumbo-sized bottle! At the time I didn't think I'd ever go through that much Advil, now I'm hoping it's enough. 

All this griping makes me feel like such a hypochondriac. I write about physical or physiological ailments like they're some big production, but then they go away and nothing ever comes of them. They disrupt the comfort of the day-to-day conveyor belt as I'm forced to focus on the pain and not wander beyond my immediate neighborhood, but it's only temporary. If it wasn't only temporary? . . . I don't know. The thing is that I want the conveyor belt to be disrupted to spur me on to greater things (death is the greatest adventure), but it seems all my efforts and energy are towards desperately maintaining the conveyor belt (mundane living). Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't are.

All I have to do is not go to the bank. It's that simple. I don't need to do something, I just need to not do something. I'm expert at not doing something. Don't transfer anymore money from the States and face the fact that all I have left is all there is. It's a little bit like John's WTF I've Got Cancer? blog when he decided to stop chemo. He had Stage IV terminal colon cancer so he accepted statistically that he was going to die. Chemo just gave him increments of extra time to live, but he was never willing to sacrifice quality of life (subjective and fluidly assessed) to live longer. And it was when he decided dealing with the U.S. health care-pharmaceutical juggernaut was too complicated, farcical and frustrating, and that the emotional, mental effect on his quality of life was intolerable, he said 'fuck it', no more chemo. Even when the drugs came through, he was resolved to not take them. Fuck it. He was done with all that.

I think I've reached that level of resignation where it is no longer worth it to keep trying to get injections into my bank account that allow me to live a little longer, just to maintain . . . *this* (you have to imagine me spreading my hands in sarcastic presentation of my studio apartment that represents all my shattered hopes and, um, dreams). Going to the bank and dealing with the joyless and permanently cranky workers in the foreign exchange was always unpleasant. I'm sure not a single one of them listens to show tunes. It was also personally humiliating since it's not my money, I'm just mooching, and I'm constantly bitching and moaning about my worthless life when suicide is my affirmative goal. Even I can't sympathize with myself!

I should now consider the current remaining reserve funds definitely finite. We have loomage. Mind you, I haven't crossed the point of know return yet, meaning if I went to the bank today I wouldn't run out of reserves before the expected 2-4 months for funds to go through. So I'm still just spouting theory. But the more I just don't do anything, it will become reality. All I have to do is not do anything. Don't even think, even though thinking about it does remind me of the miserable experience of going to the bank and how I'd rather not. 

And remember (me, myself) I don't even want to be here anymore, I don't like being me, and any moment I focus on during the day just reminds me how worthless and undesirable every bit of this is (in a non-negative, not-depressing paradigm, believe it or not). Really the only thing I'm attached to is the habit. The habit of being me, of existence. The habit of being attached, the habit that resets every day just to go around and do it again; every day's little annoyances of things not going quite how I want, fixing the bits that I can and bits where they turn out fine, then shower, wash the shot glass, brush-a da teeth, lights out and reset. It's great! Just not my aspiration.

Oh yeah, and the alcoholism. Nothing going right there anytime soon. Or ever at all. You know what? I'ma take issue with alcoholism. I look up alcoholism and read up on it and I really don't fall under the definition of alcoholic. I only accede to the label to avoid being accused of being in denial. But no one's accusing me of anything, no one's even here, so I opine for the record that I wasn't really alcoholic.

Heavy drinker? That's harder to dismiss. I ration a third of a bottle of liquor per day, plus limited dipping into reserve bottles which also happens every day after the third runs out, usually the next morning. I look at a third of a bottle and it just doesn't look like much. But then I asked someone if he thought it was a lot, and for him he said that was a LOT. Mind you, I don't know about now but he was a pothead when I knew him, as much as a Ph.D.-former-NASA-employee astrophysicist can be a pothead. He now sells kalimbas for a living and the Grateful Dead is his favorite band of all time as much as Genesis is mine (he only quit NASA because they shut down their Socorro, NM, field station and he didn't want to relocate to D.C. to stay with the agency). I don't think he was a drinker, but he wasn't substance-free.

I'll settle for heavy drinker. I drink to detriment in that I can't deny ill health effects of alcohol consumption. I'm pretty sure my engorged gut is alcohol-related ascites without going to doctor and facing a bevy of tests saying that's probably so. And I'll attribute my gastrointestinal issues to alcohol, too. Alcohol wreaks havoc on the liver and the liver provides bile to the intestines to help with digestion, so if my liver function is presumably being compromised, then it's not a stretch to think that the gastrointestinal issues are alcohol related, even without an examination and a bevy of tests to probably tell me the obvious. 

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. 

After all I've boasted and bragged (not really) about never going to the doctor, I'm planning on going this evening. Excruciating abdominal pain didn't do it. The possibility of glaucoma and future blindness didn't do it. A plethora of niggling seemingly-health-related-oddities-that-make-me-wonder-what-the-hell-is-going-on didn't do it. Nevertheless, it should come as no surprise that what's doing it are symptoms suggesting possible "pulsatile tinnitus", according to a cursory DuckDuckGo search (trying to avoid using China-friendly, "evil is swell", internet-monopolistic Google). 

Something's messed up in my right ear and I can hear my pulse, accompanied by tinnitus which I chronically get having supposedly been a rock musician, as well as occasional pain and hearing loss, which I don't chronically get. It was something I expected to go away, but after a few days it persists and although some websites say it should go away in a few weeks, others warn not to ignore it and get a real diagnosis. In this case, I'm gonna err on the side of caution and not wait "a few weeks" for it to sort itself out before getting it checked out.

Deciding to plan to go see a doctor is no minor source of anxiety, mind you; the least of which is just the idea of seeing a doctor. If something seems serious enough to see a doctor, I'm good with that; it's just something I have to do. Anything seemingly less serious, I just wouldn't even go. The anxiety is more about navigating the national health insurance system which I've never done before on my own, and dealing with the language issue in case the office or the doctors themselves don't speak English. Now, most Taiwanese doctors have some facility in English, it's just part of higher education. I think all hospitals in Taipei can accommodate English to some degree.

But I'm not going to a hospital. Much of Taiwan's national health insurance also supports specialized local clinics; step-in places for spot treatment, I think. These clinics can be found on every business street in Taipei, easily spotted by a distinct national health insurance logo, and knowledge of written Chinese will tell what the specialty is. In my case, I can recognize characters for nose-ear-throat (鼻-耳-喉) and I'll go to one of those I've located in my neighborhood which doesn't open until 6:30 p.m. on Sundays. I'm just a little less confident about English-ability in these neighborhood clinics, but I may be able to get by with my cursory Mandarin if no one speaks English *anxiety, anxiety, anxiety*. Also in these situations, there's a distinct possibility there will be an English-speaking good Samaritan who will step in to help translate. That's actually not uncommon in Taiwan; I've observed people will help people in seeming need. 

I'll probably have to fill out forms, so along with my national health card, Taiwan ID and (expired) passport for good measure, I'll also take along my written address if I have to provide that in Chinese *anxiety, anxiety, anxiety*. I've re-memorized my old 2G phone number in case I have to provide a phone number. It doesn't work, but it's easier to give a defunct number than trying to explain that I don't have a phone, which nowadays is akin to having to explain how I'm breathing or that I'm here at all. 

Now, me being me, I have to blow this up to the wider issue of 'what if my hearing is going?'. Is hearing loss an end-game? Indications of oncoming blindness is probably end-game. If I went completely blind, suicide is no longer an option so I would need to do it while I can. Cancer I've already entertained is end-game. Other non-health-related circumstances that would force me into situations that I can't imagine adjusting to (like having to move) might possibly be end-game. 

Hearing loss? All other circumstances that I identify as end-game involve other people and my relationship with the world. Hearing loss is just me and doesn't effect anyone else. But as listening to music is among my last few enjoyments of being alive, hearing loss would reduce quality of living to under, let's say, 10%.

Still, if it doesn't effect anything else but me, it isn't the endgame of an untenable circumstance that I have no control of, but rather becomes part of mindfulness practice of not being attached and letting go. Being able to listen and enjoy music is very important, but that's what makes it an attachment. Being forced to give it up is a mindfulness challenge to that attachment. Mindfulness practice is more important than enjoying music. If the two can co-exist, there's no problem. But if they conflict, mindfulness practice prevails, even if it means a further step towards my ultimate goal of suicide, which is something I both want and am resistant to. 

I've continued to listen to music per habit these past few days. Sometimes the tinnitus is unnoticeable with earbuds and sometimes it's noticeable (can't hear the right channel). I've turned down the volume to prevent further damage and discomfort of high volumes (not that I blast music in earbuds anyway). But if forced to realize that continuing listening to music here on in would mean degraded quality, I think I'd consider it not worth it and giving up that enjoyment and adjusting. It might just be a great relief. If it's in furtherance of a next suicide attempt, then praise the lord it be so. To be clear, it's not an excuse or reason for suicide. It's just removing a lame excuse and strong attachment to keep living.

Actually, my iTunes collection broke the 20,000 files mark recently. Last month let's say. I've mentioned benchmarks I've broken in the past and thought about mentioning 20,000 when it happened, but it's actually a bit of a conundrum I'm a bit conflicted about. Who am I kidding? It's a total mess. 

You can never have too much music, I recently heard someone quip.

I disagree, you can. I do and I can describe what it means to have too much music. It becomes a total mess. It's such a mess I don't think I can describe how it all happened in any sane, rational-sounding way. Basically I'm a serial music chaser and hoarder, and it's pretty much gotten out of hand. The main basic problem is that there is a ton of music in my collection that I deem excellent – music that comes up on shuffle play and I don't have any thought of removing it – but I don't really "know" it.

It partly hearkens back to the regrettable hard-drive dumps circa. 2009-10. I think my brother had given me a 500 GB external hard-drive, and the brilliant but misguided idea dawned on me to hook it up to various music-loving friends' (I had friends?) computers and let them transfer whatever they deemed worthy onto it. I got a lot of music that way, and, mind you, everything got reviewed before I put it in my collection, plenty of what they gave didn't make it. And a considerable amount eventually got taken off despite my initial approval.

And I'm not even going to talk about Limewire* and K-pop, except to say without K-pop, those hard-drive dumps may have been manageable. K-pop probably makes Limewire look like a drop in the lake. Let's just say that since breaking 20,000 files recently, it's already up to 20,117. No more than a handful of files are added every three days in my very geeky system of listening and adding, but it's a constant drip-drip that has been going on for years.

Years of constant process has led to this collection of over 20,000 files, most of which I think deserves to be there, but quite a lot which I don't really "know". I think it's good, I like listening to it, but I don't know a whole lot about them. How many albums does that band have? Name some. Name one. Name some of their songs. Name one! Band members' names? My answers would be woefully deficient. Do I consider myself a fan? Using the criteria of bands I'm very much a fan of, I'd have to say no.

Then what the hell are they doing in my collection? Would I even notice if they were removed? Why don't I get rid of them? It doesn't work that way. Easier said than done. He hit me first. And I am constantly vigilant for files to remove. I have two folders named "Removed from iTunes" and "Removed without prejudice" (I'm a hoarder, I rarely delete files permanently). The "without prejudice" is a borrowed legal expression and that folder is for music I removed for whatever reason I felt at the time, but it wasn't because it's bad (and could theoretically be reinstated because it was removed without prejudice). The criteria for removing files is ever-shifting and is usually done spontaneously.

I think I just hit the geek-overload point in this post which demands that I cease and desist. It's such an over-bloated, neurotic mess that would cover topics such as my hoarding history, my listening habits/procedure, the growth of K-pop over the past 10 years, the "great unlistened wasteland" in my iTunes collection, etc., etc. It isn't pretty.

Needless to say, none of this is any big deal. It really doesn't occupy a whole lot of mental space, and despite trying to come up with strategies and criteria to trim down cull swaths of my collection, it's more of a background mosquito consideration. In the meantime I'm enjoying the listening, I'm hardly suffering. Except in the Buddhist way that I'm still acting out a delusion, which has karmic implications if I'm attached in any way. I don't think I am, or I tell myself I don't think I am. I'm aware this is just games I'm playing with myself and anything can change in a heartbeat and none of it will matter. Even the way I listen to music is heading towards obsoletion. What did I do before iTunes and iPods? What did I do before iPod Shuffle for that matter? What will I do after my iPod Shuffles die? I'll adjust. And breathe a sigh of relief.

* It's just a matter of time when no one will remember Limewire. It was a Napster-like file-sharing service that was widely used for downloading music, but almost immediately forgotten once it got shut down for copyright reasons. No mourning, no despondence. No nostalgia. It was great when it was there, no one cared when it was gone. Like my life, lol!! (I was thinking that had to be a metaphor for something🤣).

I've been looking for that passage from one of my Theravadan Buddhist books I mentioned about alcoholism being about chasing a sensation. I found something close*, but it was about addiction and didn't use the word "chase", which was key to me. I'm starting to wonder if that actually might be the passage, and what I found so inspirational was how I formed it for myself in my mind. I'll keep looking, I don't think it was an inspired idea but a direct read.

That "chase" is important as a mental concept because it emphasizes the willful pursuit aspect of alcoholism. I know alcoholism is now considered an insidious and complex illness that requires treatment, but that's not my field and I don't know anything about it. From a mindfulness practice aspect for my purposes, it's filtering all that out and focusing on the chase, the willful pursuit in the moment.

I've been applying mindfulness practice to drinking to locate that sensation, that breaking point where the lure of another shot and another shot becomes irresistible. It isn't there at the first drink. It takes a few drinks for it to appear, and mind you I sip through shots; about four sips a shot. It's been years since I've shot my liquor, well-named I daresay, brutal and violent. Fuh yuh uh quick. Sipping shots is more demure and dâinty. That's me.🌷

That actually does help with the mindfulness because it spreads out or breaks the effect into increments, and the first indication that the chase sensation is kicking in is when the time interval between sips noticeably shortens. Resistance falters and that's when I mark the sensation and I know if I let go and cross the threshold I'll officially be chasing the sensation, sliding down the slippery slope. It manifests in manifold ways that I won't get into, but needless to say involves more alcohol intake/sensation chasing until I either brush my teeth and go to sleep or get out of my apartment for the day, both of which likely involve final "one for the road" drinks to satisfy the sensation, but is usually never a good thing. OR I mark the sensation and mindfully remind myself that to continue leads to "feeling bad", and if I heed that I can then stop. 

I'm also trying to force myself back onto the buying-a-bottle-every-three-days schedule, instead of every other day. I'm not trying to stop, I don't care about that. If I'm drinking enough to be considered alcoholic, yippy-da-doo-day. I'm just trying to manage a schedule to avoid feeling like crap, whatever that means. I know it when I feel it. So I've saved two empty bottles and when I buy a bottle, I dole the fifth into thirds and those are roughly the three days portions. Imagine my horror when I saw how little that is. I felt I could chug that and still see straight. But it's only a guideline serving restraint, a self-warning. Buying a bottle every three days never meant that's all I drank. That's why I have a tiered system of reserve bottles, because I always finished a bottle by or on the third day and dipped into the reserve bottle. It's anal, neurotic alcoholism.

* An addict takes a drug because he wishes to experience the pleasurable sensation that the drug produces in him, even though he knows that by taking the drug he reinforces his addiction. In the same way we are addicted to the condition of craving. As soon as one desire is satisfied, we generate another. The object is secondary; the fact is that we seek to maintain the state of craving continually, because this very craving produces in us a pleasurable sensation that we wish to prolong. Craving becomes a habit that we cannot break, an addiction. And just as an addict gradually develops tolerance towards his chosen drug and requires ever larger doses in order to achieve intoxication, our cravings steadily become stronger the more we seek to fulfill them. In this way we can never come to the end of craving. And so long as we crave, we can never be happy. - The Art of Living: Vipassana Meditation as taught by S.N. Goenka, William Hart, p. 46.

This passage is more about the dharma view of craving as an affliction, which applies just as much to shopping, rather than the affliction of sensations we chase, pleasurable or not, such as alcohol.

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.

meet the new paradigm, same as the old paradigm

I started using the metaphor of the conveyor belt to cynically describe routine getting me from day-to-day, hoping to spur me to some sort of action. That was an abject failure. Even cynically observing that it had morphed into a treadmill has done nothing. Instead, the metaphor itself has transformed to accurately describe a "smooth ride". And who doesn't like a smooth ride? Would you rather be riding in the backseat of a car driven by a really smart kangaroo or on Space Mountain? It doesn't matter if it's a conveyor belt or a treadmill, my day-to-day is a smooth ride and I don't have to do anything, and as long as it's a smooth ride day-to-day, why do anything?

I'm well aware the smooth ride can get bumpy rolling on a dime. How long can a life designed like mine go on without something going wrong? It's become clear that I need something looming to actually do something, but loomage doesn't have to be some long, drawn-out thing where I'm watching the train approaching from way off in the distance, like finances dwindling away, and I have time to brace myself for impact and wane philosophical. Loomage can dramatically appear with the drop of a hat. I have a "go bag" ready (sort of) so that when I'm confronted with the situation whereby I assess I really don't want to deal with this thing and I'm done, I can go immediately.

For example, I have it established in my mind that I'll never move again. I can't imagine having the energy or motivation to ever put in the effort to futilely organize all the stuff in my apartment into manageable parcels to transport. My apartment now is the last place I'll reside. So if my landlord says he's selling the flat and I have to move, I'd look at all the circumstances and what I'd have to deal with to move, decide I don't want to deal with all that, and it's a go. I'd tell the landlord I'd begin looking for a new place and that's the last he'll hear of me (with apologies since he's been so good to me).

Actually, I don't know what situations would qualify as triggers, I don't even know if needing to move would actually qualify. I've been there before with the same attitude and duly ended up moving. Multiple times. I just don't know myself that well, but apparently I do have a survival instinct to deal with situations. My life is all about discrepancies between what I intend and what I do. Wait, everyone's like that, why am I tidying it up like that? My life is all about the discrepancy between intending to kill myself and never actually doing it. Imagine my surprise on the day that I actually do have to die. I'd just be so relieved that I don't have to do it myself. Disappointed, I'd consider it a failure, but relieved. Failure is overrated anyway.

How bad of a disruption to the smooth ride is necessary for me to decide it's more than I want to deal with; that finally ending it all would be the better option?
- Despite what I said, I think having to move still qualifies, past resilience notwithstanding. How would I even go about finding a new place? I don't have a phone. I can look up listings online, but convincing someone to deal with someone without a phone is probably asking a lot. How do I go about getting someone to move me? I don't have a phone. I don't speak the language. I don't know anyone I would be willing to impose upon to help me. Prior times I've had to move, at least I could figure out logistics of what I had to do. It was at least possible. Conceivable. Ideatable.
- Broken toilet that I can't figure out and doesn't affect anyone else? Things like water outage or internet down affect my neighbors and I'd just have to sit tight until they contacted the landlord. If it's something that affects only me, I'd have to contact my landlord. I don't have a phone. I could ring his doorbell. My Mandarin is pretty completely gone. Can't shit, commit suicide. Strange, but for me it's not so crazy. I'm a pampered, privileged bastard.
- Finances. That, my usual albatross, goes without saying. At some point, somehow, the money will be gone, and when the money's gone, the money's gone. It's math even I can do.
- Losing my keys. I've long contemplated that. I even mentioned it to Sadie when she was here that it was a trigger and she was like, "Let's get your keys copied NOW". I don't know how hard of landing or a brick wall this one is to go. First of all, forget the "go" bag, it's out of reach in my apartment. It may be a slow burn figuring out how bad it would be to ring my landlord's doorbell and get a new set of keys. Given my past and my psychology, I'd probably ring his doorbell despite long contemplating it to be an absolute trigger.
- Enlightenment! That strangely actually makes sense, but I'm not going to get into the mechanics of that. Believe it or don't, I couldn't care less. I think we just got an answer to the likelihood of this one.

All of this purely speculative and none of these likely to happen. But something will. I can count on that. 

Why am I still here, alive? The question has started to almost haunt this month, arising in my mind, whispering in my ear with everything I do. I ask it of the universe during morning sitting and to send me something I could interpret as a sign. Like a winning lottery ticket. It might not quite answer the question, but as signs sent by the universe go I wouldn't complain too much.

August last year I was hoping to hop off the conveyor belt of routine that took me from day to day in furtherance of getting to my goal of exiting this illusory existence. Not only was that endeavor a complete failure, but the conveyor belt has morphed into a veritable treadmill. I have no responsibilities; no job, family or friends to whom I'm accountable, yet every day is filled with inconsequentialities that make me feel I don't have enough time. It's totally neurotic.

At the same time, there is no "haunting". There is neither conveyor belt nor treadmill. Those are mental formations and descriptions that only describe assumptions about reality that can't be assumed; the illusory life. It's just neurotic.

"Neurotic" is a word that I've noticed popping up quite a lot in my Vajrayana readings the past few years, referring, I gather, to our conditioned thinking, reactions and behavior. Basically, a vast majority of our thoughts and behaviors are pretty much neurotic, with not just a hint of irrationality implied. Perhaps from a pure Vajrayana point of view, whatever that is, all. If we're mired in treating reality as it's presented as absolutely real, all of our reactions and interactions are neurotic. It's irrational to treat reality as presented as definitively real, solid, permanent. But that's a little extreme since only a slight percentage of humanity has been exposed to Vajrayana teachings and even a slighter percentage, including real Vajrayana practitioners, whoever they are, would consider all of their conditioned thoughts and actions as irrational.

A larger slice of humanity have family, and therein lies the low-hanging fruit to demonstrate how afflicted we are with our neuroses. We can choose our friends and form our social tribes who understand us better and who don't step on our every last nerve, but go home to blood family for the holidays (I'm no where near them, mind you) and see how fast you become neurotic about various things they say, do, imply and/or insinuate. With our friends, it may be to a lesser degree, but it's there. I'm here alone with neither friends, family nor acquaintance and the neurotic is totally right here, front and center.

I'm trying to start working on lessening my neurotic. Emphasis on the 'try' and 'start'. I haven't even started, and I'm only trying to do that. It's not enough to know myself that it's nutty and irrational. I already know it and that's not doing anything. It's not cognitive. I'm searching for the starting point.

For years I've been working on myself to reduce negativity and confront internal anger issues. It's ongoing work, but I think I can feel alright about being a lot better than I was. It's not like I was a gloomy Gus or a hair-trigger rager. It's in my personality to give and take my share of laughter and I don't think anyone would describe me as a particularly angry person. My bar for anger or negativity is pretty low, though. I don't want any of it; it's all bad, shut it down. As soon as I recognize it, it's *stahp!*. That happens all the time.

Those techniques were Vajrayana-inspired, if I dare say so, but a good deal of it was cognitive mindfulness, watching the energies and processing them to cognitively transform them rationally. Working on transforming neurotic obscurations is a lot trickier since they are by nature to some degree irrational. Rationalization isn't going to help because I already know they're irrational, yet freely maintain them.

I appeal to the energies to help purify or clear obscurations – karmic obscurations, negative obscurations, neurotic obscurations. The energies are the many intangible things about us, but subjectively verifiably real. All thoughts and feelings are energies, but feelings are more potent. I think we think of feelings as things that just happen and pass, but recognizing them as energies makes them something to tap into to enact change on subtle levels. 

Anger is a favorite example. If when angry we can stop being angry for a second and examine the feeling, it's an energy. You might even be able to locate where the energy is in your body. Once you stop and examine it and recognize it as an energy, . . . well, you've already just stopped being angry and you're in new territory. It's now a lab experiment and you can go, oh yea, there it is. What's it doing there? I don't like it. It feels bad. That's how it starts getting transformed. 

Sexual energy I've mentioned before as possibly the most potent human energy, but working with it requires a high level of discipline, removing all animal aspects of it and any idea or conception of desire, lust, attachment, self-gratification. Focus on just the energy aspect of it. Very difficult to do, but the same principle applies. When the energy arises, arousal, you stop and identify it and try to get to the point where you realize desire is not what you want. Lust is not what you want. Attachment is not what you want. Self-gratification is not what you want. Needless to say, spouse, house, mortgage, rug rats, etc. are not what you want. It's not about sticking your dick in someone else or someone sticking their dick into you. They may seem to be what you want, but where does it get you? If those are what you wanted, fine, you're there. If you're trying to get beyond it, then you have to realize they don't get anywhere and they're not what you want. I think I've said too much already. But it doesn't take too much to recognize that feeling as a very potent energy. Surprisingly it isn't located where one might obviously think, but activates the entire central energy channel. Oh, and the energy is subjectively pleasing. That's alright for some reason! There's no throwing out the pleasing aspect as something you don't want, but there's still no attachment and no object of pleasure. It's more like a communion or oneness of masculine and feminine energies.

This is not Vajrayana. It's my own personal voodoo. It might even be psychological self-brain washing. I don't know if the results I've noticed are an actual result of practice, or the obvious result of concentrated, psychological mind power. But even in Vajrayana practice, I think, whatever methods, techniques or visualizations are used, whatever deities or dakinis are entreated upon, it is emphasized that any results stem from not any outside source. Whatever outside source used is just oneself, and there's no separation from the self and the "outside" source. 

tbd I

At any time this month I could have disappeared off the face of the earth and no one would have noticed anything amiss. Nary a shimmy nor a wiggle in the Force. So why am I still here? Am I deep down really afraid of death? I don't think so. I seriously entertained the possibility and concluded on one hand, yes, I think humans have a natural fear of death and I have it, too. I looked for it and, lo, there it was, that unsettling complete erasure of the sum total of all I am, all I know and all I have been. All this subjective experience and reality, the only existence I know of, irrevocably gone.

On the other hand, I'm also kinda looking forward to dying. What's been so great about being me anyway? Recognizing it as something inevitable, I'm fascinated by it and interested in venturing into the experience. That sort of tempers the fear, albeit an intellectual exercise tempering an innate, visceral reaction. In the end, I don't think it's a deep down fear.

Am I afraid of doing it myself? That would just be pathetic considering all I've written. I just don't think that's the case. I sure hope not. Am I lazy? That's actually closer to plausible. Pathetic, too, but not as pathetic as being afraid to do it myself.

Thinking all of this out, the reason I'm still here is that I'm still in the thrall of the conveyor belt of daily mundanity delivering me from day to day, distracting and fooling me into thinking there's still stuff I want to do, that I'm not done or I'm not sick of it yet. Exactly the same as a year ago and probably beyond. I just marked exactly one year of absolutely no progress between realization and action.

Great, that's just faboo that I can pinpoint that out. Now what? It goes to the old questions how did Anthony Bourdain, Shinee's Jonghyun, Robin Williams know/decide it was time? But their answers would not be mine. And my motivation isn't like theirs, maybe isn't enough. Right, that whole "looming" thing. I'd be walking the plank and I'd turn around and go "What's my motivation?!", and the pirates would *poke* *poke* me with something sharp, and only then I'd finally realize I just have to do it.

I continue to mentally prepare through mindfulness practice and meditations and visualizations. I think approaching death should be joyful and positive. Like James Earl Jones's character, Terence Mann, giggling while walking into the cornfields at the end of "Field of Dreams" (there's a very loose theory out there suggesting that Terence Mann, like Archibald "Moonlight" Graham, is already dead and was a recycled soul for purposes of the "quest" and then is being reintroduced to the death realms).

. . . a person's wisdom should be judged by the effect it has on his or her life. If that wisdom doesn't have the effect of settling the problems and difficulties in one's life – of creating a sense of ease, well-being, space, happiness, peace, and freedom – then it cannot be the real thing. - Ajahn Brahm (The Art of Disappearing)

My immediate reaction was to ask myself whether whatever wisdom I have is the real thing, followed by a quick, emphatic nöpe! Mind you, I absolutely do not disagree with him. Reading things like that, it rings right. And I have no problem with anyone, myself included, telling me my wisdom is flawed.

But that was just my quick answer and pondering it with more nuance, it turns out to be more perplexing than that.

Does my purported wisdom or practice have an effect that settles the problems and difficulties in my life? What problems do I really have? Obviously it seems and feels like I have many, but when I have a goal of bringing my life to a close, my "problem" is just being here. Not to put too fine a point on it, the reasons why bringing my life to a close is the goal are not a problem.

Within being here, all the normative things that might be perceived as problems don't amount to much. The role mindfulness plays is that it keeps me from being overly neurotic or angsty about it like I have been in the past. It keeps negativity and negative reactions in focus and at bay and promotes the opposite, or at least neutrality. There has been a settling effect on the problems, but it may not look like it.

What difficulties do I have? I can't say I don't have difficulties. There are things that I find difficult, but they're mostly neurotic things that are difficult only because I create them or let them be difficult. Again, mindfulness just observes the perceived difficulties and tries to understand they're my own creation and not to get bent out of shape over them. Rainy days are difficult. My neurotic reaction about my neighbors is difficult. They're not really difficulties. If pressed, they fly out the window.

How about separately considering sense of ease, well-being, space, happiness, peace and freedom? That's where it gets perplexing because contemplating dying brings exactly those feelings: sense of ease, well-being, space, openness, happiness, peace and freedom.

They aren't what psychiatrists might point out in some suicidal cases where there's a feeling of euphoria once they've made the decision to kill themselves. That's a false sense of those feelings because it's conditional on knowing they're going to be released from their pain, rather than having a settling effect on their problems and difficulties.

Contemplating death, those feelings are very real for me. The feelings aren't contingent on having made a final decision and looking forward to it as a relief. They are there with the very contemplation and vary in intensity depending on the depth of it. But are they connected to wisdom?

Some would say true wisdom would make me want to live. I would call that dogmatic, judgmental attachment to living just for the sake of preserving life that's ephemeral by nature. That's not wisdom, either. Wisdom is an understanding, it doesn't make people do or not do anything. It's morality's job to police behavior, not wisdom's, and I've never cared much for human or social constructs of morality.

I think it is very possible for practitioners to contemplate death and connect deeply with the reality that one day we will die and feel that sense of freedom and peace; that letting go. It's not an abandonment or a 'why bother?' letting go, but it's based on wisdom understanding, accompanied with mindfulness training to not be attached or overly sentimental about our lives.

My finances are secure beyond my prior estimate of not lasting much beyond June. Several more stopgap months have been added with a possible scenario that could push things well into next year. Nothing of my doing. Same as it ever was. No looming anytime soon. No hands are going to be forced. We all know what that means. Well, that my hands aren't going to be forced, and I know what that means.

It means despite my intentions and aspiration, my life will continue to chug along for the foreseen future. And that "possible scenario" I mentioned I'm just gonna assume will happen with as much certainty as me not dying from some alcohol-related health failure.

If it doesn't happen? Great, we have loomage! And if I do die from some alcohol-related health failure? Great, plan B worked. When the aspiration is to die, not even laziness is a deterrent.

I'm pretty disappointed with myself, writing like this. Last August was supposed to have been the great wake-up rallying call to stop floating by on the conveyor belt of daily routine to get me mindlessly from day to day. I even cut back on drinking as a result of that revelation. In February I flogged myself for betraying my aspiration by attempting that humiliating failed money injection into my bank account. That said a lot.

And now it sounds like I'm resigning myself once again that since I don't feel the looming need to execute my life plan to die, I won't. No matter how I feel, no matter what circumstances I can point to about how it's different this time and need to do it, I've been through that before. I know it's a pattern. Past patterns of my behavior suggest I will continue to go from day to day on the conveyor belt of routine as long as there is money left; i.e., no looming. Because that's how lame I am.

I'm trying not to be defeatist about it. I still have my theoretical plan in place with a time frame, but the likelihood that I'll actually go through with it is doubtful to the point that it can be dismissed. This disgusts and frightens me. Sort of. Mindfulness practice prevents actually feeling those things as something real.

Actually, my mindfulness practice has gotten suggestions that this entire scenario is my path. It's not a test or a challenge whether or not I'll do it or not nor that doing it means success or not doing it is failure. It may very well be that is completely not the point. The point is to exist in it now and not be pulled by attraction or aversion one way or another. It doesn't mean to be lazy about it, either, like whatever comes happens and just accept it. That's lazy. It's more recognize what's happening, as well as my reactions, and focus a laser-like attention to it to try to realize this is the path in the most profound and personal way.

I feel that suicide is my chosen path for this lifetime? Fine, keep pursuing that instinct. I know from experience that's not going to go away. Circumstances arise which make me decide not to do it right now? Fine, it's not a problem. It's not cognitive dissonance. Or if it is, that's the path.

I have a Tibetan Buddhist book I've read many times over which has a title that I never quite understood, Confusion Arises as Wisdom. So many times I've looked at that title and wondered 'what does that even mean?' Recently I feel that I'm starting to get it intuitively, if not realizing it's obviously the simplest iteration of what's at the heart of Mahamudra teachings. The ontological or existential confusion that arises in our experience contains the wisdom that is embodied in everything in and around us and is constantly being taught and manifest. But no one would buy a book with that title.

I recognize the cognitive dissonance of feeling the need to commit suicide in this lifetime (at least) to further myself on my path, while also thoroughly not minding all the little distractions and enjoyments of living. There's this big thing I want to accomplish, but there are all these little shiny things I love. I'm not suicidal, but that's what I really, genuinely want to do. My life, all things considered, is pointless just living it otherwise.

There's the dissonance of thinking I'm on a certain path while rejecting the idea of finding a teacher to help me advance on that path. But there is likely no teacher that would accept or advocate my aspiration to commit suicide. Nor should there be, I'm not complaining. That's why I don't have a teacher. I've chosen this course and know I can't find a teacher, mentor or advocate to help guide me. I can't even find a friend to drive me, finding a teacher is quite out of the question.

But these dissonances hold the wisdom that I can learn from as long as I keep the core values in place, which is to not cling or be attached to anything attractive, and not to be averse to anything repulsive. Whatever else is going on around me is karma playing out, ignore it, not my business. Family? Not my business, ignore it. Where the money's coming from? Not my bidness, ignore it.

But even clinging, attachment, aversion and revulsion are confusion arising as wisdom, or perhaps neurotic dysfunction arising as wisdom in my case. They happen. But then also recognize that those things clung or attached to will need to be cut loose and let go. It's in their nature to happen and to be discarded. Things that are avoided and create aversion will still happen and must be faced and dealt with. In their nature blah, blah, blah.