21 September 2012

Tumbling Down, Crawling Along

This week has tried my patience. I cannot point to any one particular event or difficulty. It simply started bad with the general bummer I had on Sunday, and never got much better. Since I will not shut my brain off with alcohol, I've had to sit in the full light of my life as it is, in all it's blandness and restrictedness.

I felt particularly bad the other night when a young man whose blog I follow on Tumblr expressed a lot of discontent and self-loathing. He wasn't quite suicidal, but he did sound very down on himself and his life. I tried to communicate care to him, but beyond that, I couldn't in all honesty say, "It gets better," especially since a lot of what he was bummed about are the same things I'm bummed about (loneliness, feeling unlovable, being overweight, etc.). I let him know I was concerned, but I could offer him no advice. I felt very inadequate, and it was only my concern for him that outweighed that enough for me to say anything at all.

I will say this about Tumblr: the community is pretty good about taking care of each other. Yeah, there are some haters; but usually when anyone expresses genuine sadness or even suicidal thoughts, people rush to send them messages of support. Who knows? This world might get better yet.

My weight seems to have hit a new "set point": ~194 lbs. That's good compared to a year ago when it was ~210 lbs. But I need to get it lower. I like to drop at least another 20 lbs., but I would be happy with 15. The biggest struggle I have now is that my traditional way of dealing with ongoing bummers is to eat (especially if I'm not drinking alcohol).

I need to start focusing on other things I can do to occupy my time. The evenings are just so fraught with opportunities to make things worse. I need to fill them with ways to make things better. I need a hobby, other than reading, surfing the web and watching television. Something that engages my attention fully for hours.

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