Far Removed

It's almost Halloween.  I don't care about holidays.  Though predictability comforts me, I get nothing from ritual.  The list of things that I want to do is very small, likewise the lists of ways I want to do those things.  Holiday celebrations generally involve socializing, which is something I don't want to do.  And they involve what seems to me to be feigned seriousness.   People decorate for many holidays.  The decorations are unimportant to me but they're predictable and I like that well enough.  But then people go from demonstrably ignoring whatever thing a particular holiday is supposed to be about to apparently pretending to care about that thing.  Sometimes the pretense is very transparent.  This is also predictable but I don't like it because it's disorienting.  It makes people seem mercurial.  Capricious in what they value.  I don't understand the change - or the pretense of change.  And I don't und...

I do not feel that I expressed myself very well in this post. I have been trying to get disability.  It's a fight.  The process seems meant to be demoralizing.  For fear of malingerers the system resists helping.  That's how it appears to me anyway, and I know naught of the politics at work.  I have been denied twice.  Now a man from a law firm is helping me.  He said that he believes my case is good because of my seizure disorder.  PTSD, social anxiety disorder, and autism spectrum disorder are not enough to make a case, it appears. I have to prove to the government that I am unable to work because of my conditions.  This is difficult.  And the SSA already disbelieves me on principle.  Or perhaps even by necessity.  The thought of pleading to them is daunting because it seems to me that they're disinclined to help from the beginning.  I picture the SSA arbiters as austere figures with crossed arms and deep frowns. I...

In an episode of Parts Unknown , Anthony Bourdain asks a group of young women about their hopes and dreams.  One of them begins to answer by saying, "I want to be satisfied with myself." Am I satisfied with myself?  I'm not sure I know what that means.  I'm thinking about it literally.  If I am in a position to evaluate myself, then whatever of me is doing the evaluating could also be evaluated.  If I decide that I am dissatisfied with myself, then I could also be dissatisfied with being dissatisfied and decide upon reevaluation that I am satisfied after all.  Perhaps I might be dissatisfied with my inability to evaluate myself as satisfactory.  What part of me evaluates me but is not identical to the part that is being evaluated? The idea falls apart.  I overthink it because I don't understand it.  It becomes too heavy and collapses.  I am bad at understanding this kind of language.  I don't know what myself  definitely is...