It's been almost a month since I wrote anything, but I've been meaning to get back to it, but haven't really had the time at work (and never did get into the habit of working on it at home), nor did I really feel particularly compelled to do so...just haven't had as much on my mind, I guess?
The upswing of depression has mostly held, anxiety has remained high, but I have been sleeping better. Most of my general frustration has been work related, but I do keep coming back to a familiar problem, which is my own strange dissatisfaction with my own lot in life.
I often find myself wishing I could just, y'know, be okay. With my life, in general. I have housing (while not great, it exists and is relatively affordable), a job that pays okay (even if it is often frustrating and fills me with considerable anxiety and irritation), relative health (?) and at least a few good friends, even if they aren't necessarily close by and/or available for regular hangouts...I mostly spend my time watching movies and television and taking edibles, and that really ain't so bad, since it's pretty much all I really want to do. Media makes me happy. All I really want out of life is to watch movies and television and talk about them with my friends.
So, why aren't I happy?
I mean, sure, I'm lonely and would like to experience love. There is that. With spring beginning, I suppose that sensation begins to become more prevalent: the wanting of a partner and everything that comes with it.
And, sure, I share a bathroom? That is an issue, too.
I feel ashamed of my living situation? I'm in my forties and live in a single room in a bad neighborhood, it's not exactly spanish fly with the ladies...or so I assume, since I haven't spoken to any women I might be interested in (sans awkward maybe-kinda-sorta flirting with a coworker I have a little crush on), so I have no idea. I know I always believed that the kind of woman I'd be interested in being with wouldn't care about such shallow things like living situations, income, body hair, height, weight, and amount of hair on my head (I mean...she'd have to be) but it's one thing to believe in that, and another to actually experience it. Not to mention a ton of rejection sensitivity that had always been there, but hasn't gotten any better in my advancing age.
Often, I find myself thinking that I should be doing better, most people my age have families and houses and long term jobs and all sort so things that I probably should have. I can't tell if I don't have those things due to my tendency to self-sabotage, my mental health issues, or simply bad luck (it's probably a combination of all of those things), but here I sit without them. And I know that at least part of it is my own poor decisions and a general sense of never being satisfied with things I do have.
I don't know how to fix half the shit that's wrong. I don't really know how to fix my housing situation (money is easy enough to put together, really, I just haven't been bothering, spending money on things that momentarily make me happy instead of planning for any long term goals) without dealing with frustrating things like credit scores, accounts in collection (pretty sure the roach haven I lived in briefly in St.Louis renewed my lease and then evicted me, so applications for housing keep coming back with less than stellar results), and other fun things. Unfortunately, the current state of our country doesn't help much of anything, as housing becomes even harder to manage. But I can't blame it all on that.
The point I'm getting at is that I always had this thing where I look at what else I could have instead of looking at what I did have. There was always a better job, a better place, a better life...but never any sense of satisfaction with my current position. Like Luke Skywalker: always looking to the horizon, never focused on where he was, hm? What he was doing.
And now I fear it's too late, and this is where I am, and what I am doing, and I'm worse off than ever. I made a decision when I moved into the room, that I would take my time and stand still instead of chasing the next decision, the next hurdle, the next goal. But I find that to be very difficult and stressful, to not be planning, or just to not even have a plan. I always had a plan, folks, always, and now I don't. Just podcasting, working, and trying to sleep enough to manage those things. Which is going well enough, at the moment, I suppose, even if I sometimes worry that I'm losing my voice (not literally) in a lot of ways.
Partially, that was what this was for. To regain that voice. I probably should try to write some fiction, put together some kind of art. This situation does feel like a starving artist kind of scenario, and maybe that'll give me some confidence to figure out what's next, or at least, y'know, talk to a girl. Because, while maybe I can't change my circumstances much at the moment, I can probably do something about my confidence.
Perhaps productivity can be the first step towards a new horizon.
There's probably more to say (or at least a more coherent point to make), but things are beginning to get busier at work, so I should probably stop writing.
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