The Ultimate Wish

 "I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you leave them."

Andy in "The Office"

Ain't Life A Bitch

Split Personality Disorder: Formerly known as multiple personality disorder, this disorder is characterized by "switching" to alternate identities. You may feel the presence of two or more people talking or living inside your head, and you may feel as though you're possessed by other identities.

Source: Mayo Clinic - Dissociative Disorders - Symptoms and Causes

There are two very different versions of me in my head and they are on a schedule. Every other fucking day.

I have talked about this before, I hope you were paying attention. But since 2023 has come around to torture me, the experience has been exponentially amplified.

I drink on the days I have to work, I do not drink on the days that I don't. I am furious and overcome with self-loathing on the days I have to work, I am relatively peaceful on the days that I don't. My temper is explosive on work days, I am much less likely to kill someone on non-work days. I feel despairing on work days and hopeful (maybe I'm fooling myself) on non-work days.

It is a strange and disorienting existence.

I despise my job more than ever this year - I mean I fucking loathe it with every fibre of my being, every waking breath. As I drive to work, I toy with the idea of swerving into the path of oncoming 18-wheelers. I don't do it because another life is involved. 

This job is the major source of unhappiness because it forces me to face myself in all my underachieving glory. 

Every single work-day for torturous hours at a time. Squirming in my seat like an innocent but condemned man, five minutes before execution. Shrieking in despair every time the phone rings. Succumbing to dread every time a fucking customer walks through the door.

This job is ground glass in my Ben & Jerry's Caramel Chocolate Cheesecake ice cream. It is an ice pick in my ear. It is razor blades in my Dr. Scholl's Heavy Duty Support Inserts Designed For Men over 200 pounds.

This job fucking sucks.

On my days off, although I am more relaxed, I am obsessed with nailing down a way to make money that won't slice up my soul. Overwhelmingly obsessed since The Meltdown. The job has to be something I can do from home, and it has to involve some form of writing.

Copywriting, technical writing, I don't give a shit, as long as I can write and get paid for it. You say "Joe - you sound like a dreamer and an idiot!" You forget - I wrote some stuff for a copywriting website last year and got paid for it. I fucking blew it because I didn't take it seriously enough and blew deadlines and fucked up re-writes. And the unforgiving motherfuckers dissolved our relationship.

Of course the only happy-time solution for my soul would be to get paid for creative writing. But only an idiot in my position would say "Hey, I'm going to freelance my way to financial freedom." Ain't life a bitch.

I am burning up Indeed and ZipRecruiter and will continue to do so until something falls from the trees. I will apply and apply and apply until someone says "All right, already - we'll give you a fucking job."

Or until I come up with a better plan.

So for now, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I am an insufferable psychopath. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and lately - even Saturdays and Sundays (now that there are more bodies to work shows), I am a sweet pacifist.

Except this week. I have to work a show Sunday night. I fucking hate working on Sundays, but nobody else can do it. On Sunday night you better believe I will be a raging psychopath. Customers may die.

I gotta get rid of this fucking job!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I Predict That on December 25, 2023 I Will Say..................

 "There was a terrible mistake when I checked my driver's license today and saw that I'd be seventy next week."

Jim Harrison

I'm not looking forward to it.

Fatal Prematurely

At this point I'd settle for the life Howard Ratner lived in Uncut Gems.

Including the bullet to the head that did him in.

His life was a pathetic struggle, built on a foundation of ridiculous dreams and schemes, but there are different levels of pathetic. Pathetic with money - even if it's temporary and an illusion - is better than pathetic with no money.

If you have stretches in your life when you live well, you are ahead of the game, ahead of most struggling no-hopers. So die young; at least you had some fun.

Carol went to bed at 11:00, leaving me in my recliner/bed. I was feeling lost. I caught the last hour of Uncut Gems (which I have seen before) alone, in the dark. It suited my mood perfectly.

I set it to record on Sunday so I can watch it from the beginning.

So I can empathize with Howard Ratner's enormous, and ultimately, prematurely fatal, struggle with life.

Sorry I'm Sad

I'm sorry I'm sad.

It makes you uncomfortable,

doesn't it?

You'd prefer that I fake it, 

wear the same stillborn smile 

you wear every day.

Pretend I'm ok.

I'm not.

You don't have to do anything special,

don't have to cheer me up.

Just leave me alone.

Accept that I hurt more than I can hide today.

You are not bulletproof, so don't waste my time and

don't expect me to waste yours.

I'm sorry I'm sad.

I won't laugh at your lame jokes today;

there's a lesson in that for you.

Won't engage in inane conversation,

won't say anything I don't mean.

I am pure truth today, against my will.

My truth today is stifling sadness.

I don't expect you to understand.

I expect you to leave me alone.

February - A Reckoning

I exercised 15 days in February.

I lost 4 more pounds in February.

Coming into 2023 I weighed 198 pounds; I now weigh 190. That is significant. 

At that pace I will weigh 150 pounds on December 31, and will finally look like Christian Bale in The Machinist, which has always been my goal.

I am happy with the weight loss. It will slow down but it's a damn good start.

My exercise record in February sucked, just over 50%,.....................................but I have an excuse (there's always an excuse).

We had a couple of guys doing some work in the house in February. There were in and out over a period of about two and a half weeks. Seriously fucked up my exercise schedule; I did the best I could but it was challenging.

I will come roaring back in March.

I am seriously motivated in many different ways after that fucking meltdown I spoke about recently. I am sick of me in every way possible.

I am attacking everything in my life with vicious abandon; releasing my inner Honey badger. (From Joe's March 2023 press release.)

Is He Talking To Me?

 "It is easy to mourn the lives we aren't living. Easy to wish we'd developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we'd worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga. 

It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn't make and the work we didn't do and the people we didn't marry and the children we didn't have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out. 

But it is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It's the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other peoples' worst enemy. 

We can't tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on."

From The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig