The Never-Ending End of the World

Just finished reading this. It’s one of those novels that when I turn the last page, I sit in silent wonder for a bit.

I’ve mentioned before how much I enjoy Ann Christy’s writing. Unexpected plot developments, characters you come to love, the imagery evoked, and the sheer quality of her writing style. That last bit is a reason I love reading Poul Anderson and Robert Silverberg.

There’s always a danger of overselling something you’ve enjoyed. All I can say is that about 40 years ago, Martian Time Slip left me feeling fascinatingly out of synch with time for about two weeks. This is the first time I’ve felt about time this way since that time.

Today & Maslow’s Yardstick

Chances are you’ve seen this graphic before. I believe it’s a pretty clear picture of why poverty hurts the entirety of human civilization, stunting potential contributions to our advancement as a species.

But that’s beside the point for this post. For me, today, it’s a personal yardstick. And this post is a journaling. Because (a) there’s no way I can manage an actual journal on paper, I’m apparently incapable of such privacy, and (b) my blog and Facebook history have proved to be effective tools for long-term self evaluation.

If you want to come along for the ride, that’s cool, I can use the companionship. But if not, that’s cool too, you should probably get out of the car here.

So, Maslow’s Hierarchy, starting from the bottom:

  • My physiological needs are fine, always have been, one of the perks of having been born a Middle Class white guy in 21st Century USA. Same with safety needs; same reasons.
  • Belongingness and love needs, I’m happy to say, are better than I feel I deserve. I use the word “feel” intentionally, because I’m intellectually aware that relationships are give-and-take, and I “think” I’m doing okay with the give part. But emotionally I feel like a drain on those relationships.
  • Esteem needs and self-actualization have been in a decline for a couple of decades, with a pretty steep nosedive over the past dozen years.

Those last few years of employment in educational publishing were brutal, taking me from heading up creation of an e-publishing department to bottom of the editing totem pole. From glowing praise from upper management (I recently found an old annual review letter in my records), to suspecting the only reason I still had a job was unwillingness to fire a long-term employee. All I can say is that I didn’t change; something else did. Call me unadaptable; I don’t think a history of success from factory to medic to LPN to teaching to game design back to teaching would agree.

Having left gaming as an occupation, by family necessity, a few years before taking that job, was its own hammer blow, with one attempt after another to revive that career thwarted. Maybe some other time I’ll explore the topic more in-depth, but for now, I can only say that whatever the creative field, it seems apparent that people follow properties more than they do the creators, something I’ve heard often from even some very big names. It’s worse with work-for-hire.

Even retired and self-publishing, as much as I’ve accomplished, in retrospect I see the nosedive increasingly apparent. I used to power through deadlines; now the very thought of a deadline is crippling. I believed it was the result of a focal seizure disorder; now I’m starting to think the disorder itself may be a manifestation of long-quashed anxiety.

Drawing this post to a close, I remind myself that its original intention was simply to record several weeks of ongoing, devastating “What does anything matter?” depression, and gratitude for a couple of hours when it lifted: Once with surprised smiles while viewing a video link Abraham Limpo Martinez shared, 30 minutes of calculating dice odds, the math involved, and how physically modeling them with dice glued together in shells goes from 2D to 3D to increasing dimensions of hypercubes; and once a Thursday night role-playing session with Steve Sullivan, Kifflie Scott, David Annandale, and my oldest friend, Jim Cotton. (I hope you lot don’t mind my mentioning you by name.) That session was mainly combat demonstrations, starting with Dracula’s three brides, then 20 of his gypsy minions, and then Dracula himself! The last with a perfectly Hammer film style conclusion, Sully apportating a stake for Dracula’s heart, on the same turn the Count summoned a cauldron of bats to drive the heroes away, allowing both sides to escape to fight another day. I better understood my own game design from that session, and learned a great recording trick from Sully!

That last paragraph is the m0st important for this record. The others are just prelude. If you’ve read through it all, here’s the point where I say “Thanks.” You’re one of the folks who help give my life meaning.

First counseling session was today. Nervous walking in. Felt good to talk. Afterward I sort of dissolved into component atoms of focal seizure fog. It takes effort sometimes to stay tethered, and I suspect opening up about depression and anxiety loosened that grip, too.

Thanks for driving, Jennifer. And for being there, just a few doors away, waiting in the car for me. Thanks for having my back, for reminding me that I’ve had yours and that we’re in this together. Thanks for that vow 47 years ago. I’m starting to think that those folks who said our marriage wouldn’t last were wrong. 🙂

I can see my hearse from here!

Over the past several years, I’ve had a few friends, acquaintances, and artists I’ve admired commit suicide. And my immediate thought, like yours probably, has been, “Oh, god, dude. Why didn’t you call? I would have dropped everything to come be with you.”

Some languages have two distinct words for “to know”: one for “I’m aware” and the other for “I’ve been there.”

I didn’t really grasp the misery of asthma until spending a week with an upper respiratory inflammation that had me gasping for air. Didn’t grasp the misery of “fibro fog” until the recurring fog of my own intermittent left cerebral “static.”

Didn’t grasp the depths of depression that can make the simple act of phoning an act of hope, when there is none.

The gallows humor of my title says that I’m not there. Happily, I live with a couple of people who didn’t have to be phoned.

I wonder if things might have been different for those lost friends, if someone had phoned them, instead.