Maybe we collectively eventually fall apart and die because we collectively look forward to it. Maybe the secret to immortality is simply making a better world.

Bad migraine today. Think triggered by flu shot that if I didn't get my health insurance would have cost an extra 890 dollars per year. Two lortab did absolutely nothing. A tourniquet around my head seems to be the only thing that has made it tolerable. I had started eating chocolate again maybe 3 or 4 weeks ago. And I seem to be getting headaches lately. Maybe it's a coincidence, but I shall stop the chocolate. Bloodwork the other day showed a 60 point increase in my cholesterol (207). So I shall severely curtail diary products from my diet.

On some level, if not in pure agony, being sick can be nice. My wife takes care of me. I put the Dark Crystal or The Last Unicorn on. Loki usually stays with me. The responsibilities I feel can be forgotten for a while.

Tremendously bothered by this though. I can't think straight when it happens. And in general I feel like my ability to think recently has been a shadow of what it once was.

Really trying to put together an outline. Thinking that perhaps I should try to put together two. One more of what I really want to do and then a second that is more conventional. What I want is a main character that is too much of a loner most likely in a world that is a little too dystopian. I worry that such won't be sufficiently escapist even if it's low tech, magic and the "hero" has special powers.

Mages/Assassins/great fighters/Generals/Soliders and nobles (kings, barons and so on.) So it goes. What is the power structure? Where is our hero in it?

As opposed to wandering on the red plain. Can't be just wandering. Must be trying desperately to survive... I guess. I suppose just barely surviving thanks to special powers in a place that would kill any other human. Still need a power structure. Still probably something like nobles/mages, etc. For both still need 15 to 30 main characters I guess. The one can be more escapist. Main characters can have friends, etc, despite suffering adversity. I can be disgusted at how good he has it actually. The red plain "demon" will be less conventional.

Looking at top 50 or so fantasy fiction, Gene Wolfe only comes close, but really he spent most or all of his time with others. Sleeping with many women, traveling with a troupe, etc. Must be others, surely.

I think it's a sign of creativity to simply be able to come up with a damm outline. And I've not done so well so far. Started and stopped many times.

---

Mythago Woods-really loving this idea of the subconscious interacting with something to create a type of magic.

Before the internet there was still TV and the concept of the world stage still existed in my mind. But I don't recall back then ever thinking about the people that I assumed must exist; that very small percentage of special people. I don't recall ever thinking of them but I may have. At some point though, after many years online, searching, I realized a horrible thing, that they were not out there.

On some level, though I don't recall thinking about them, I had previously assumed they were surely there. Then, finally, it one day occurred to me that they don't exist, they don't exist at all.

This, I think, was what primarily caused something of a breakdown for me. For this was the realization that there was no hope at all for this world, for my race was extinct. In desperation I reached out online in an increasingly abnormal manner. Desperately reached, desperately searched for any last remaining vestiges of the people that must surely exist.

But if they were out there I would surely have found them. Of this there is no doubt whatsoever.

At some point though I realized at least, that this perfect lack of hope took a huge responsibility off my shoulders. The end result was much more happiness, potentially a much longer lifespan and much more pointlessness.

Work/relations/anxiety: 5 not anxious. Not worried about work. 9 means making people laugh. 7 is really relaxing and enjoying people's company

Thanks to boss meeting plus chocolate dropped to a 3 or 4. But by 5pm I'm up to a 6. ..possibly the discovery of Roy Harper. And wife doing exercises...?

Energy/health: 5 is doing at least something productive in a day but also procrastinating 9 is doing it all. 4 is doing nothing 3 and lower is sick.

5 or 6. Procrastinating about cello but mainly because I'm working so much on writing. Straying from running actually as it's just a time suck. But not out of laziness, just because again, I'm trying to actually accomplish things.

existentially/life is meaningless 5 is feel not completely pointless as long as I'm producing something. 7 is feel happy about material stuff and being married, etc. 3 is feeling as all has unraveled.

Inexplicably a strong 7 this evening. Possibly the discovery of Roy Harper.

-----

Just reply to self in emails. Want to try to for a bit. Pasted once here just in case I manage to lose it... I guess. I don't know. Not much in the way of imaginary eyes/god these days. Definitely still there but has retreated. Or I could say my subconscious in general has. Or I could say I'm back to having one. Back to being largely unconscious like most people. Not exactly. But slightly true.
-----

....My grandmother and great uncle were long long dead by slow suicide from junk food and cigarettes. She a homemaker, him a butcher. My grandfather dead from an accident in the slave mines before I was born. My mother unable to tell me anything about him because he was always at work and she hardly knew him. My biological father left when I was one. I hear he's now been married 4 times. The one time he was going to meet me to talk, he canceled without rescheduling because he "had to go to church" that day. His mother (a homemaker) was the sort of lady who'd (actually did do this) scream at kids to get out of her yard because she was worried that if one got hurt they might sue her. A pointless nasty bit of uselessness. His father... a vacant former garbage man. Possibly a pedophile. My mother... a very ditzy woman addicted to some headache medicine I can't even spell for the last 30 years. Very sweet and not much going on upstairs. My sister, the same but more so. I think that the drugs, and maybe plus the headaches, has eaten away at her brain... My stepfather, a strange foreign man with no friends who has spent all his free time for the last 40 years laying in bed. And not because he's depressed or sick. The only thing he's ever been depressed about is my mom wasting money. He is completely eccentric. My wife's father has some social problem where he just can't relax. He never really talks. My wife's mother was schizophrenic and died young. And all her grandparents died very young.

My mom's sister was so depressed for years that she did lots of electroshock therapy. She's virtually never spoken to me my entire life. Her husband and two sons are nice but very quiet and introverted. They like guns. And hunting. And dirtbikes. And they live 3 hours away. It's not that we don't get along, we just don't speak to each other even if sitting two feet away.

Lots of "successful" people like to mention some teacher that made a big difference in their life. The best teachers I ever had were the very few who knew at least to just leave me alone.

I make it sound worse than it is I suppose. Both my parents were/are teachers. But my mom has been a science teacher for maybe 20 years and I just explained carbon dating to her last week. My stepfather is a professor. But he likes to brag he hasn't read a book in 30 years.

I don't seem to have had a very good environment. I see some of the doctors at work, well at least a few and I think with my environment I grew up in, I had NO chance. To think of me being say the head of neurosurgery... well at least the current head who is quite impressive, is laughable.

This is a thing I do when in a bad mood I guess. But I do it rather often. Actually the head of neurology is not really impressive. Nor are the residents. Some of the doctors are, some not all that much. But clearly I have deficiencies and my lack of any kind of role model growing up, the lack of anyone at all, ANYONE, that I could recognize as someone worth really learning from can not have done me any good.

At least I wasn't severely abused.

Two things though:
1. With writing I really don't think as well. In fact I can't even follow my thoughts correctly where they had managed to go on their own before I got to the keyboard. Maybe the brain power needed to type, snuff's out the tiny flame of my worthwhile thinking?

2. The point of the woe is me writing, wasn't woe is me. It was ................ on a fundamental level something very important has been shattered within me. A sense, my sense of....community. Of social relations, of family and such. Ripped apart. In it's place an empty nothing.

So.... On the road to cousin's for wedding this weekend. But it's all a sham. There is no meaningful relationship. Just the empty forms. The rituals are meaningless. It's all empty. Just sit in a room alone and stare at a wall.

Went two weeks ago for party somewhat related to wedding and was very annoyed/unhappy because of this underlying feeling. And this same feeling I think is always there in me. A very perceptful(sp???) person could see this emptiness within me I think upon first meeting me.

-----

In chocolate depression-beauty just means the most regular features. Which are beautiful because they mean fitting in. They mean being very normal and thus being a part of the community. We want to latch on to such people so that we too can be more a part of the overriding community of mankind on a subconscious level.

4th run was bad. 11 miles in 1:38:45 but I recuperated very well despite running very hard.
5th today was 11 miles in 1:35:55 on the harder hillier (BR) course.

Also started eating chocolate again a few days back and have not had a headache. I think eating chips (the preservatives in them...??) made me more susceptible and then all kinds of things put me over the edge. Now I can drink alcohol, cheese and chocolate even without issue.

So just doing a long run once every 4 days. Did my third 10 miler today in 1:27:52. Almost a 3 minute improvement from the first. Got really sore on the second one on a more hilly (BR) course. Felt pretty crappy afterwards for a few days.. Also gastric upset, maybe not adjusting well (yet) to eating a lot of fruit. Well I was doing good with apples and pears, but just eating a lot of cantalope maybe not as well. Who knows.

Afterwards I had much more energy than the previous time. But then I had some insomnia and thought I was getting a migraine. Finally broke down and took an aspirin, and then a lortab and relpax. And managed to get some sleep and felt very well the next day. Best I've felt in a while. It's possible to really feel awful after a hard long run. The first 24 to 48 hours after such a run can be far, far worse than the run. But you definitely get better at handling it. And it's quite enjoyable (usually) to run quite a bit beyond an hour at a decent speed.

Trying to make a template using a couple of a my favorite trilogies. Starting to spend too much time going out with people. Too busy.