I need to change

It occurs to me that this blog, itself, is an addiction for me.  I feel like whenever I am confronted with some physical task to do–like painting my walls or cooking a meal–thoughts occur to me I am driven to write down, here.  And I think some of them are good thoughts.

But the process itself is compulsive.  What I am trying to create in my life is continuity and consistency, and right now I think my computer in general interferes with that.  I’m addicted to it.  I spend hours every day on it.  This is not good.

There was a time before computers.  There was even a time before TV’s.  I can’t say people were saner then.  I don’t know.  Certainly actual and blatant and violent racism, sexism, hatred and fear of homosexuals and many other social ills existed.  But there were not also the high rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide, despite the standard of living being much lower.  Divorce rates were much lower, no doubt in part driven by economic factors, but also cultural ones.

And it is odd to speculate that when you look at a shelf of “literature” that much of it more or less amounts to people with a compulsive need to speak, to be heard, to tell stories, to organize words somewhat or nakedly compulsively.  When you look at the classics, you are perhaps looking at a gallery of neuroticism and personality disorders.  I recently started “The Once and Future King”, because it is a classic in its genre, but T.H. White was a mess.  Look him up.

For me, I need to remember a time before all this, before I lapsed into all these bad (somewhat: although this blog is not a complete waste of time.  Many men my age spend this time on porn or even video games) habits.

This is audacious, and I’m not at all confident I will succeed, but I would like to give up blogging until May 1st of next year.  I need to channel that energy into cooking and cleaning and reading and walking and hobbies and working out and Kum Nye.

I need, most of all, to directly confront all the negative energy in me, without an escape route.  It is time for this work to begin in earnest.  I have put it off long enough.  To be sure, I’ve needed to do a lot of preparatory work.  This was essential.  Timing in life is everything: if you fuck it up a sure thing becomes a failure.  But I think now is the time.   I am going to draw a new Tarot, for new winds, and leave it up until then.

Wish me luck. If you pray, pray for me.  This is, I hope, the final test, at least for a long time.  I’ll be back.