Expectations

Cast me into a dungeon; burn me at the stake, crown me king of kings, I can ‘pursue happiness’ as long as my brain lives – but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can ensure that I will catch it.

Robert A. Heinlein

This should be the final write-up in this series.

YAY

I asked myself last New Year’s: “where am I and where am I going?”

The result?

It doesn’t matter where I am or where I am going.

If I try to change anything, it doesn’t change a thing.

Anything that I do have control over can not and will not ever change anything in my life.

However, I actually started to get expectations in my life and made plans based on those expectations.

I had started to think that I might be somebody, and very possibly that I had something to offer, and a purpose.

How funny is that?

And then everything vanished.

I didn’t disappear as I should have.

I foolishly kept hope alive.

That makes me laugh.

Totally my fault. All of it.

This is not only relationship-based.

I had thought I had gotten past many of the physical issues that had been holding me back.

Wrong.

The saddest part? I still have hope.

About everything across the board.

Hope will always be there.

That is super sad but in a funny way.

Since nothing that I do matters, it strongly implies that I do not matter.

Ever since the first post on this site, everything I wrote about my personal life has done nothing but confirm that I am nothing.

So, why bother with self-improvement?

I don’t even care that I fell behind on my landscaping.

I was cautious and still hurt my knees a bit.

That put me behind in my exercise schedule.

Don’t care.

It doesn’t matter.

Doing nothing to improve me has the same effect as if I work on myself.

It is just less frustrating to let go of silly ideas.

Just to keep this from turning completely dark, let’s do a ‘what if’.

What if I have an epiphany about myself and my path?

Everything falls into place.

I magically become a better person.

It won’t matter.

My life will not have changed.

Not even a little.

Watching the paint peel off my bedroom walls is a more productive endeavor than wasting my time trying to figure out how to improve my life.

I could gain 100 pounds.

Would it matter in any practical sense?

I could lose 100 pounds.

Okay, that is pushing it a bit, and can’t lose that much before collapsing.

Actually, that would solve everything.

I could ride my bike 8 hours a day.

Getting in better shape is an okay idea.

I could throw my bike away.

That would help me gain 100 pounds.

I could go skydiving with my broken knees.

It would be exciting to find out if I completely destroy my knees.

It would be interesting to find out if I get a boost of adrenaline.

I would be very surprised if my pulse goes over 80.

I almost got hit by a truck going around 50 mph.

My heart rate didn’t go up at all.

I felt nothing.

Inches away and had no physiological response to it.

It was sad that I did not get hit.

I could never leave my home.

I could watch TV every waking moment.

More helpful activities to gain 100 pounds.

I could leave the country forever.

I still want to so very much, but important people keep me here.

I could drug myself so heavily that I sleep 23 hours a day.

There are so many nightmares, it would not be fun, but what can I do that is fun?

I could sleep three hours every day.

That is pretty much every night very recently, but my sleep patterns are definitely cyclical.

I can do everything alone.

Nothing new there.

I can do everything with someo…hahaha.

I could retreat into my mind and not return.

There is a huge temptation to let my ill mind take over.

I could hike high up into mountains, far from where anyone else goes, with a tent, sleeping bag, knife, gun, and fishing gear.

Nothing else would be brought.

I haven’t done anything like that in a long time.

I could return after a week or two.

I could never return.

It does not matter.

Basically, I could live with reckless abandon.

I could also remain cautious and reasonable - knowing me, the most likely scenario - or somewhere in between.

The results will be the same.

It does not matter because I do not matter.

That is the truth.

I have been told that I do not matter, over and over again.

Repeatedly, by words, actions, and inaction.

Over decades.

There is freedom in this, so this is not a negative thing at all.

Ideally, it would lead to a strong sense of freedom.

That is likely not the case.

It is certainly not giving up, nor is it nihilism.

We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.

Thomas Merton

I do not matter because I have no meaning.

If nothing matters, I could do nothing or everything.

So I will continue to write, maybe - but not about self-improvement or relationship stuff.

Anything personal will be if I learn something worth sharing or do some cool gardening thing or maybe hit exercise milestones or whatever.

I enjoy writing despite being horrible at it, so even though it doesn’t matter, I can still do it.

I could also stop writing, and it won’t make a difference in my life.

It might seem like a bad thing to you, but I don’t see it that way.

It is a good thing!

I would like to make some fishing tutorial videos if I could somehow keep my face and voice out of it.

Programming video tutorials would be fun also.

Not as a potential moneymaker, but just as a way to be helpful and useful.

There might be a contradiction in all of that.

It still doesn’t matter.

After I complete the improvements in my house and yard, I could make videos or post photos.

Perhaps I could mount a camera on my bike.

Most rides would be kind of boring with gorgeous scenery, with the added chance of an awesome crash with multiple broken bones.

How exciting!

As long as I could remain off-camera and silent, I might enjoy that.

Just like I could continue to improve my health.

It doesn’t matter if I do or not, but if it is enjoyable, why not?

I could even be happy and take all the massive pain that comes with it.

If I do not matter, then happiness, sadness, and pain do not matter.

So I could either do it or not. Yeah, duh, right?

Fighting reality is painful, I will stop.

Here is my updated new year’s resolution; do whatever I want, whenever I want, regardless of the consequences.

There are no real consequences of a person’s actions when that person does not matter.

Once I am gone, if my ledger is at zero, I will have met my potential.

That is my bucket list: get to zero.

Tell me, how does it feel when your heart grows cold?

New Order - Blue Monday

One of many sayings I heard in the Army is: “if you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”

When I first heard it, it seemed nonsensical to me.

After some experience with being forced to do unfun things under not-so-great conditions, I understood it.

What it means is that you should disassociate yourself from your surrounding environment, along with your emotional and physical self.

You can be soaking wet, freezing, and muddy for days.

Or, you could be overheated and dehydrated.

You can be stressed and exhausted.

None of that will matter if you simply do not mind.

Well, at least until your body shuts down on its own.

If one can separate caring about such things, it starts to matter less, and your mind can stay focused on the task at hand.

The downside of this is that after some time under these conditions, and you start to care, it becomes much harder to deal with, and can consume your mind.

That is what happened to me.

Expectations caused me to care a little too much that I am nothing and have nothing.

My task is to help reach my new goal: to stop caring that I don’t matter.

That is the path to peace until I am mercifully gone.

Note: This was not written and posted during a psychotic episode.

Despite how this word salad turned out, this is not a stream of consciousness type post that I all too often write.

This is not something I wrote up just now and uploaded today.

It has been an ongoing essay for at least three weeks.

This is not a product of hypomania.

The week-long covid vaccine headache chased it away, and it doesn’t feel like it is coming back anytime soon.

I am sure the second shot may have scared it away, permanently.

This is also not a statement of suicidal intent nor caused by ideation.

It is also not a statement of changing myself into something that I am not.

I can not be a person of value, but I have never been a person that treats people poorly.

I will not start doing that.

There are worse things than being nothing.

I have no interest in being a horrible person.

So, perhaps that matters?

Possibly, something could happen that matters a lot to positively change my life.

Very, very unlikely, and it is entirely out of my control if it does or not.

I just need to let it remain an option.

It would be rather dumb to pass up on something that brings good.

It would be so easy to completely shut down.

Doing the smart thing takes a lot of effort and a bit of foresight.

Because of this acceptance, I am slowly getting out of my head.

Now things don’t seem quite as dark, hopeless, and painful.

I am hearing voices and other sounds less.

It would be foolish to think that the ever-present depression would vanish.

It will always be here, regardless.

Not that it matters.