Awake

I'm sick. Only moderately, I believe and hope, but I've been sick off and on for nearly a month now. It started as a sinus infection, for which I had two different antibiotics and a week off work (for the first time in recent memory). The second antibiotic did the trick on my sinuses, mostly, but left a dry cough. Last night, for whatever reason, the cough "itched" so strongly that I've now hacked my way to a murderous sore throat. Guess I'll go see the doc again.

In other news it's Spring here. Tulips are up, lizards are sunning themselves on the windowsill (and getting into the office and running around in piles of paperwork for a half hour before being persuaded to leave again). Went for a walk at the Bärensee with G and U and the kids on the weekend, 20°C and sunny.

In other, other news I'm going mad. I've lost all sense of time: it seems that the kitchen always has a pile of three or four dirty cereal bowls to be washed, meaning that three or four days have gone past since I last looked in the kitchen. Clearly this isn't so, since I had to be there to eat the damned cereal, but … I don't know. Just between you and me, I think I'm arriving at the point where I am so lost, and so worried about being lost, that I can finally admit my "failure" and ask for help.

How does one go about finding a therapist? It was easy in London in the early 90s, I had a friend who happened to be deputy head of social services for a particular borough and asked him for a recommendation; he sent me to his own therapist. Perhaps I'd have the same luck if I just asked around here, but my impression is that German society is less tolerant/respectful of psychotherapy and mental unease than England was. We shall see. I'll ask the doctor, whom I like and trust, whether he can recommend somebody.

One of the topics that came up at the retreat in October was "letting yourself be seen." This is not something that I do, my natural inclination is to dissemble and conceal — despite my blogs and Twitter and Faecesbook and whatever all else. It occurred to me in conversation with a friend in SL that, were I to kill myself, there are only three or four people in the world who wouldn't say "But his life was perfect, he was so happy." (Don't worry, I am not planning to kill myself, not even thinking about it; that was an extreme way of saying that I hide what is going on in my life.)

I'm going to start telling much more of the truth here. I'm not going to say that I'll tell it all, and I'm certainly not going to promise that I'll write regularly or even more frequently, but I'll do my best not to reply with a shaky grin and a please-change-the-topic dismissive "Just fine" whenever somebody, even myself, asks how I am.

Wish me luck.

The view from here and now

I realized something this morning as I lay in bed unable to get back to sleep.

My internettery is all about contact and community, about not feeling alone and lonely. I started blogging out of curiosity, but kept on because of the community of readers and commenters that developed. As I became ever more deeply immersed in SL, the "hotter" and more immediate community feeling there took up more and more of my time and attention. It also shifted my "day" later into the evening and night. I used to be a very early riser a few years ago, but I couldn't tell you when I last saw the sun rise, unless you count the time I played Dragon Age: Origins until after 5am. The reason I stopped blogging regularly is indeed, as somebody once asked in a comment, that I am spending in Second Life the time that was previously my blogging hour.

The reason I stopped reading blogs is different: as fear and unhappiness took the upper hand in my life, nearly two years ago now, the pressure that I felt to read — and to comment insightfully and with compassion and warmth — came to be too much for me emotionally. I simply didn't have enough emotional resources to spread around, or so it felt. And for what it's worth, I was retreating in SL at that time too: there were evenings when I'd just log in and literally stand around alone in a park, unable to gather the strength to find and talk to anyone.

My absence from your blogs is not a sign of disinterest, dear friends. On the contrary, it is in a perverse way the proof that they and you were valuable to me, because I did continue to read sites that I didn't give a damn about. That was OK because there was no emotional load in them. (That is also why I was able to follow you by reading your RSS feeds: there was no personal involvement in that, no pressure to reply.)

Most lately, of course, much of my compositional energy has gone into Twitter, the internet-literary equivalent of eating peanut M&M's while a fine meal lies on the table before you: superficially appealing but essentially worthless. And most lately, I've been writing about my "coming of age" in SL and the meditation group. I might be posting those here, but not for a while and certainly not in their current form; if anyone is interested to read them drop me an e-mail at the address in the left sidebar.

It's been a long dry season, my dears, but there are signs of change. Thank you all so much for bearing with me, for enduring my silence and neglect with such patience and forebearance. "I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, in my fashion."

Meh.

There are days (today, for instance) when even apparently simple tasks (e.g. calling up to get a phone line reconnected) seem just too difficult to deal with. I don't know where to start.

There have been pleasant events recently, and there is big news to tell, but I'm just too far down to talk about that now.

It occurs to me that this is perhaps the start of the anticipated downturn following the retreat in Halifax last month (post-euphoric stress disorder, if you like), as happened this winter after the Malta retreat. As such, I should know from experience that it's nothing new and nothing to take too seriously. I will try to keep that in mind.

Sorry to be such a wet blanket.

Grim

I'm having a "Ballad of Lucy Jordan" moment.

I'm not quite sure whether what I am wallowing in is self-pity or self-hatred. (It's 6am and I was woken by toothache after four hours' sleep, this may play a part in both my condition and my inability to judge it.)

Toothache: in addition to the two broken upper molars that I wrote about last year, I've had an aching lower-left molar for a few days. I'm afraid that if I go to the dentist to fix these, that he will tell me why my teeth seem to be going soft and falling apart. I actually worked up the courage to send an e-mail to his office over Christmas, asking for an appointment in January and an invoice in advance of work for 1000 Euros as a token of my earnest intentions. Had they replied with a date and time, I'd have kept the appointment, but they didn't and so I have aching teeth and (presumably) another unpaid invoice somewhere in these mountains of unopened mail (think of the landscape of Wall-E).

My life is closing down around me, I'm unable to see farther than about a quarter-hour ahead and utterly unable to take any constructive action. Getting dressed and going to work in the mornings drains my supply of self-motivation. My kitchen table is piled high with unopened letters and empty cereal boxes, because in order to open the letters and throw away the boxes I would first have to empty my paper-recycling-box, already full to overflowing, and I can't do that because don't know whether there is room in the bins outside to put the paper into. That is the state of my soul: I am unable to organize myself sufficiently to go outside and look in a garbage bin. Dear gods.

I was in Malta on a meditation retreat last week. What a laugh. It seems like centuries ago and what happened there sounds like the absurdly exaggerated tales that travellers tell to gullible strangers in bars. It amazes me that I can sit in the meditation group in SL or in the office, and nobody sees that I am broken inside. It seems ludicrous that other people look to me for support and advice (which somehow I am still able to give, how odd is that) — and grossly unfair, too: who supports me? Perhaps maintaining this false front is what's consuming all my psychic energy.

I spend a lot of time in Second Life, actually, until after 1am every night; being there lets me feel that I am still functioning normally. Who knows, perhaps it's even true. I don't know what I'd be doing with my time if I weren't there. Reading more than I do anyway, perhaps, or drinking beer in front of the TV that doesn't actually work. Meh.

I understand the appeal of going mad — really mad, rubber sheets and no-sharp-objects mad; of abandoning all responsibility for oneself and letting somebody else take all decisions and instigate all actions. Psych wards have to be awful places staffed by sadistic scum, simply to prevent themselves being overrun by would-be inmates. Take it as a sign of my state of mind that surrendering and letting myself be locked away seems like a good idea. I'm not going to do it, but it sure as hell appeals.

There. I dare you to post this.

Don't worry, I'm fine, really; at least for certain values of "fine." I am not about to jump in front of a train, nor to have myself committed, nor even to bash out my aching teeth with a hammer. I just needed to get this shit out of my head.

.

Swamped by a tide of hard feelings: wasted my life, squandered so many opportunities, don't even do things I enjoy doing, idle sod.

Realizing that this self-loathing arise from two principle causes (leaving aside the issue of whether any of those feelings might have a basis in fact): far too much time spent in front of the computer, and too little contact with live humans. The last person I spoke to face-to-face was the cashier at the supermarket, thirty-one hours ago.

[Updated two hours later] I considered taking this down, but have decided to let it stand. In the time since writing this I've had a good long conversation with Corvi and done the dishes and washed down the stove and countertops, and am now feeling much less frantic. I'm going to bed in a better frame of mind than I have done in a long time. Life goes on.

Dilemmas and decisions

The Münstermeister called just now, to formally offer me a permanent job on his team.

He asked whether I would consider working fulltime (instead of half as presently), I said "yes." Being the clever salesman that he is, he only then said that the job would be based in Münster, 375 km away in the frozen flatlands of the north. Damn. I would at least not have to move immediately, I could continue to work via VPN from Stuttgart with biweekly trips to Münster until Autumn; but it is clear that he wants to have the team located physically in Münster in the long term.

I am torn. On the one hand, I enjoy the work and the money is very good. On the other, I am happy here; my friends and my clients and my favourite shops are here; I have a doctor whom I trust and an excellent dentist. I know exactly one person in Münster: him.

Decisions, decisions.

Well, actually, the decision is made: I will take the job unless the salary or conditions are insultingly low. As far as the rest goes, moving or staying or whatever, I shall have to see what happens. Perhaps we can work together well enough with weekly meetings that I could avoid having to move?

This is great news, really; why do I feel vaguely sad?

Interestingly enough G too wanted a serious discussion with me today. They are unhappy with the way my using their office is turning out: they are confused by still needing to ask me if I have time to work for them. They had anticipated that they could simply shout "come here" and I would drop my mouse and scurry over to work on their drawings, i.e. that I would go from working largeish blocks of time with a fair period of notice to working tiny chips of time with no notice at all. In other words, that my "work" is just a little amusement to keep me from boredom while waiting for the call to assist on their More Important Things. Well.

We agreed that I may continue to work there — as long as they don't need the space — but will now pay rent in the form of 10 hours' unpaid work as system manager per month, and that he will look for a full- or halftime employee to do those Things at the drop of a cursor.

So here too the offer from Münster is welcome and timely.

Sick

Bronchitis. Feels like I'm tearing great holes in my lungs when I cough. That is all.

In other news, Luke Pittard is surely one of the most sensible men in the world.

What now?

Being a short exercise in self-flagellation

Blogging in the not-so-new office, on my own on a partly-sunny day, Beethoven's 6th Symphony (filtered through Liszt) is playing quietly, throat and lungs behaving only moderately badly.

G and U invited me to move my office here should I wish to do so, and I am thinking of taking up the offer. Several reasons: first, the one or two cappuccinos I drink here are healthier than the half-litre of filter coffee that I would drink at home; it would give me a guaranteed minimum of 2 x 8 minutes' walk every day, which I sometimes don't manage otherwise; thirdly, the discipline of coming here to work, and really working when here, would be very good; but mainly because my landlady has given me notice to quit. (Yes, not even the scare last summer could make me pay my rent regularly. Am I not the biggest idiot alive?) I am looking for a much smaller apartment to save on rent, so moving my office here would be a sound first step.

Discipline would be a fine thing too. I charged 55 hours to the Münsters for January, eleven half-days, in practical terms a quarter-time job. What sort of arsefoolishness is that? Do I expect to keep this job with that piddling pittance of work? To put things in perspective, I spent nearly three times that long lollygagging about in Second Life last month. I haven't touched my own database since before Christmas, customers and partners are beginning to grumble and whine.

The plan for February is to find a new small apartment ASAP, do 120 100 hours work on the Münsters' translation and 50 hours on my own database, and get caught up on taxes for 2007. SL can have what is left; how annoying that I should have just yesterday been offered a Second Job there, but it's highly unlikely to pay an hourly rate that is comparable to what I can earn from the Münsters or even from McDonalds.

So I sit here and wonder in more practical terms, how to move my office here. What is "my office"? Four dictionaries and a computer, really; the translation needs nothing more now that we have access to the Internets here. If I were to do this sensibly, I could get by with hardly any new investment at all: I could use this current (office) computer's keyboard, monitor and mouse with Alberich, carrying him back and forth (because I would still need to send and receive e-mail at home, and no other machine there can run SL. Priorities again, bah). The second-most cost effective step would be to buy another Mac Mini and leave it here, still using the existing KVM setup. Probably the least cost-effective step would be to buy a new laptop as I fantasized before Christmas, when I thought I'd be earning 5000 Euros a month from the Münsters (an impossible dream, I now realize, given that my brain starts dribbling out through my earholes after about five hours' translating; but the real obstacle was and remains my laziness and rabbit-in-the-headlights hysterical frozen-stiff panicking).

Make it so. I shall arise now, and go to the local Mac dealer, and a KVM adaptor buy there, and try carrying Alberich back and forth for a week or so. We shall see.

With that in mind, dear friends there may be some interruptions in blogging and commenting (as there were during the last few months, I know)—and should be some interruptions in SLing—in the weeks to come.

And finally here's Régis Debray writing on "the material forms in which [ideas] were transmitted" in the New Left Review, in which he suggests a new way of looking at historical, cultural, time:

First, what we may call the logosphere: that long period stretching from the invention of writing (and of clay tablets, papyrus, parchment scrolls) to the coming of the printing press. The age of the logos, but also that of theology, in which writing is, first and foremost, the inscription of the word of God, the ‘sacred carving’ of the hieroglyph. God dictates, man transcribes—in the Bible or the Koran—and dictates in his turn. Reading is done aloud, in company; man’s task is not to invent but to transmit received truths.

A second period, the graphosphere, runs from 1448 to around 1968: from the Gutenberg Revolution to the rise of TV. The age of reason and of the book, of the newspaper and political party. The poet or artist emerges as guarantor of truth, invention flourishes amid an abundance of written references; the image is subordinate to the text. The third, still expanding today, is the era of the videosphere: the age of the image, in which the book is knocked off its pedestal and the visible triumphs over the great invisibles—God, History, Progress—of the previous epochs. […]

Yet although these three regimes succeed each other in historical time, each asserting its own predominant forms and modes, it should go without saying that any one of us contains all the ages at once. Inside each of us there lies a calligraphic East, a printed Europe, a widescreen America; and the continents negotiate within us without losing their respective place. Each one of us is, simultaneously, God, Reason and Emotion; theocrat, ideocrat, videocrat; saint, hero and star. We dream of ourselves as standing outside time; we think about our century; we wonder what to do with our evening.

Love that last sentence; how true, how sadly true. Even if you don't want to read the (long, slightly pompous) article, do please follow the link and scroll down to the bottom, and have a close look at the comparative table there (from which the tripartite examples of the last paragraph are taken). I found it fascinating.

Shabbat shalom, my dearies. Enjoy the weekend.

Blah

Feeling a bit miserable and sorry for myself these days, what with Christmas looming over us, and fiftieth birthdays being celebrated and my own beginning to cast a shadow over next summer, and my mother's seventy-fifth birthday today and my father's upcoming eightieth birthday in May. So much time gone by, poured away in idleness and inattention. Blah.

Go read Doris Lessing's Nobel Prize for Literature acceptance speech A hunger for books (courtesy of Jean).

Go see Harold and Maude (courtesy of Zhoen).

Go see this week's secrets, some of which are just heartrending. (Do watch the video.)

Sans titre

From a recent (outgoing) e-mail:

The translation is on hold for a week, as the competition creeps towards the submission date.

Re database: I can't complain, the translation is saving my bacon this year. The truth is that my own database is a failed product, if it weren't the child of five years effort I'd close it down and move on.

Not sure how feel about having written that.

Cf. Ecclesiastes 2:11.

In more cheerful news there's a fresh meme going around: the first three commenters to sign up for the meme here and post the same promise on their blogs will receive a smallish present-thingy from me at some point during the next 366 (leap year!) days. Note that this will require informing me of your real-world identity and address, so those intent on secrecy and anonymity should probably refrain from joining in. [Updated: there have already been three volunteers, but hey: if you really really want to play, go ahead and sign up anyway.]

Seven down, twenty-three to go.

How's business, you ask?

Thought for the day: a business plan that includes the words "win the lottery" is not planning a business.

I've spent much of the last two days looking through online job-ads, and a disspiriting time it was too. There appears to be no market for the database toolkit software that I've spent the last five years learning. Much as people talk about continuing education and career flexibility and such, there appears to be only a tiny market for people without a computer science degree. And while the population is ageing rapidly, there is apparently no place in IT for people who are more than five years out of university.

I really don't know what to do.

Ageing Yuppie isn't answering mail or returning phone calls. I assume he wants to wait until he can tell me some good news, i.e. a job that starts "tomorrow morning," not realizing that the information "there's nothing before December at the earliest" would be nearly as useful.

The Münsters are still farting about. It appears that my contact there is only a middleman, that his company is offering translation services to someone else, and that this someone is being terminally indecisive.

G and U have been selected (drawn from the hat) for another competition, which we have already started and hope to have finished in mid-October, shortly before her baby is due. But that's like playing the lottery, I will be paid only a nominal amount (250 Euros) for my time.

I need to spend 5600 Euros to update my copy of the database toolkit to the newest version. Sales of my database and associated consultancy have earned me 2177 Euros so far this year.

Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn, damn and damn.

I shall now do the logical thing and walk downtown for a cappuccino before heading to the office for work on the competition. To leave you in a better mood, here's XKCD on romance and dating, a former ad executive who loves his job at Starbuks and nice short post by Jeffrey Zeldman on his daughter's first day of pre-school:

Nothing says Buddhism like raising a child. To cherish what has already changed as you look upon it. To hold most tightly what you must most let go.

[Updated: a kind of follow-up on the former-ad-executive story, about the store manager who hired him.]

Moving rapidly along

... as I do think we should, here is the latest, hot-breaking news from the employment front: There isn't any.

The Münsters are still farting about struggling to make up their minds. The job is unlikely to start before October, which means November really because I'll be in Canada for two weeks in mid-month and it hardly makes sense to work a week and then leave for two. I'd forget all that I'd acquired during that initial week-long induction phase.

Ageing Yuppie is considering the possibility of recalling me to Hamburg for another session, nothing definite and certainly no dates and times. If it does come to pass, he will call on a Saturday morning to ask whether I could start on the following Monday. Fine.

One of Princess' colleagues mailed me a few documents in German and asked whether I could translate them to English: sure, why not. Replied with a price which I thought reasonable, she agreed in principle but now wants only the two shortest pieces done.

The database enters a new and exciting phase of problem-finding, as the first customers switch to Windows Vista. Apparently, something in the database makes Vista's implementation of the Windows Explorer crash, rendering the computer pretty damned useless (not that Windows is ... ah, skip it). De-install the database, and WE runs again properly. Damn and blast.

My only solace is that there are several programmes which trigger this crash, all of which work perfectly under Windows XP. The logical inference would be that Vista is at fault, not the programmes, but that doesn't help when the customer says "everything worked just fine until I installed your programme." (I then inquire, "what does work?" and get the reply "Ah, well, I haven't actually installed any software yet, and my files are all still on the old computer." Presumably, the customer means that the power-on button lights up when he presses it.)

What makes this even worse is that there's no solution. I am still using the previous version of the database toolkit (programming environment), which is no longer under development and not certified to work with Vista, therefore this problem will not be addressed by the makers of the toolkit. Upgrading to the newest version would cost me 5600 Euros, which I don't have—and would not even guarantee success! According to colleagues who do use the newest version, it too occasionally crashes Vista, although it's certified to run. What a mess.

We Mac users really are pampered beyond the wildest dreams of you poor Win-Victims.

On the roosting of chickens

I've just found in the pile of mail that arrived while I was in New York, a lawyer's letter informing me that my landlady has annulled our contract and wants me out of the apartment on the 31st of this month, i.e. the day after tomorrow. I've spoken to G's brother who studied law, and fear that she is legally in the right: if the rent is more than three months overdue the lease may be cancelled without notice. I shall see a proper lawyer on Monday but have no great hope of achieving more than a grace period of at best a few weeks; and even that is entirely at her discretion. Damn.

I've got to stop thinking about this. There's nothing I can do before tomorrow morning, if I sit here and think about this I'll have a bloody heart attack. Good work, Udge! Well done.

[Updated] well, it's possibly less dramatic than it first sounded. According to G's brother the process dissolves into thin air if I can pay the whole arrears plus incidental costs plus lawyers' costs within a month of issue of the demand. Which in itself suggests that telling me on the 18th to leave on the 31st is not entirely kosher, but that's beside the point. G and AY have both loaned me money against future earnings, and I have enough to pay all bills that I'm aware of tomorrow.

Still leaves me being idiot of the year, though. Damn.

Night terrors

Awake still in the dead of night, making hot chocolate amid visions of emptiness and feelings of despair. I am close to panic, though you might be excused from not having inferred that from previous posts: it's been my habit to keep these feelings dark, for a very long time.

I have not a love or a family of my own, I haven't even had the gumption to have a pet. I have no pension, no insurance, no work, no money, and no idea what to do about any of it. How fortunate that I enjoy what I do, because I'll never be able to retire from it: I must hope to die at my desk, still able to work.

I have screwed up my life so badly, thrown away so many chances—and for what? To live here, like this? Bah.

I despise myself for writing cheerful posts about work or furious rants about politics, as though those were the things that occupy my mind. I sit here all day pretending that I'm working, hunched over like a bloody rabbit on the highway, hoping against reason that the wheels will pass to either side of me.

So hit "publish" now, and don't look back. Go on, I dare you.

Odd

It feels odd to be on my own again, to spend a day without talking to anyone—face-to-face, that is, e-mail and telephone don't count; to be hearing German instead of Spanish or English; to be sitting instead of walking; to be in a city which is known to me, with no immediate prospect of leaving it; to be listening to traffic noises instead of the wind and birdsong; to have nowhere to go.

It feels odd to see around me normal people going about their dailynesses with the usual blend of self-absorbtion and blithe oh-the-unimportance-of-it-all, rather than the purposeful directedness of the pilgrims (whom we were not).

It feels odd to have to think about w*rk again, suddenly to have deadlines and targets instead of leisure and a very active kind of slothfulness.

It feels odd to be in the well-known squalor and disarray of my own home, the home of my making, rather than the clean, pretty and comfortable hotels (and L's apartment) of weeks past.

I am not particularly happy here.

Night terrors

Awake again at 3:30, I lay in bed for half an hour hoping to drift off, then got up to have a glass of milk and the now obligatory quick blog post.

I feel like running away screaming; except that there's nothing to scream about but my own behaviour, and nothing to run from that I haven't created with my own hands; and furthermore that running away screaming is both foolish and childish, and something of a habit.

"You were so cool back in high school, hey what happened?" © Tom Petty

You know what needs to be done, fool, so just stand up and do it.

[Updated an hour later] I've paid two months' rent, made a backup of Alberich's important bits, and shall now return to bed. The birds began singing a quarter-hour ago, though the sky is still quite black.

Awake

Well, this hasn't happened in a long while. I can't actually remember (and Google cannot find, bah) the last occasion on which I was awake at this time because of insomnia - as opposed to still being awake at G's father's party.

It's a pretty morning night, the sky is clear and full of stars, the air is still and not too cold to stand on the balcony in my housecoat. A slender bright-orange crescent moon has just risen, with Saturn a finger's-length away, like an open-mouthed fish leaping after a fly. The moon's dark side is clearly visible, lit by reflected light from the earth.

I have been avoiding writing, because there are things I don't want to write about but which loom too large to be ignored. I am unhappy: dissatisfied with myself and my life, appalled at the circumstances in which I live, and afraid of the future (both my immediate own and that of the world). The words "failure" and "loser" have been used, in English and in German, and I cannot really deny that they fit. I have squandered my time and my talents as though both were infinite, and have turned away from love when it was offered as though it were my due and would necessarily recur, and have done so all my life.