Personal Journal

Balance needs adjusting

I spent way too much time smoking herb this weekend, as I’ve been smoking a lot. Not exercising enough. Eating too much.
I’m debating going back to a therapist/psychiatrist. I’ve never seen a psychiatrist before, and I’m thinking that I want to learn more about brain function. That’s on my near-term to-do list, and I’m even considering abandoning this journal entry and going to do that.
I ask myself: Why do I feel the need to smoke so much? I’ve never been this kind of smoker before, but now that it’s “legal” (for me, in Colorado, through the Medical MJ registry), I’ve been on some benders. I tend to be an ‘all things in moderation’ type but I don’t feel there’s much that’s moderate about my chemical happiness pursuits.
I’m also a person who believes “artificial happiness is still happiness”.
There are actually only two down-sides to my usage right now:
a) It’s costing me some lung function which I need to exercise (which I desperately need in order to lose weight)
b) It’s causing me to eat poorly (well, it’s not ‘causing’ that: I am) which is counter to the goals I have for myself.
I don’t mind the amount I’m spending on it, and it doesn’t seem to me like my home life, work life, or school life is taking a noteworthy impact from all the time I’m spending intoxicated.
However, I have a problem with my usage because in my heart, I know it’s ‘too much.’ I don’t know by how much. I just know that it is. And I think if my weight goals were being improved upon, I wouldn’t mind that much. Perhaps this journal entry is really more about me and my weight goals and my recent inability to pursue them with the dedication and fervor which I think it deserves.
Yes, the month-long lung infection did not help (during which time I quit smoking for more than 2 weeks, and smoked little in general otherwise).
I’m smoking more because I am bored and/or unhappy than I am for any other reason. This pit that my life is stuck in, and by that I’m alluding mainly to work, has me in a fit of a sort of desperation for an improved outlook, and my outlook improves when I’m high.
I feel particularly dejected about the job search. And that leads me to reflect on how I got to where I am today, and I can’t help but feel like I didn’t do anything terrible. I didn’t make any egregious mistake that should keep me stuck in this dead career in a dying industry.
It feels like there’s very little I can do right now, and it makes me hurt in a deep and existential way.
I did take the career path of least resistance: I’m a writer for a living (a technical writer, which isn’t really much to brag about as a writer, at least for me, when I know how much more I’m capable of). I avoided people-jobs, and I avoided people, because I suppose generally speaking, I find people do more harm to my life experience than good.
And it turns out that keeping people around to use when you need a job is something I never really understood. I wonder if I haven’t fucked up my life with this dedication to being an introvert and in only having close, meaningful relationships (and few of those).
What career is there for a man with a graduate degree and who doesn’t like people?
And I wonder always: shouldn’t the graduate degree in progress be making a difference already? I think the universe is answering that question for me: No, it doesn’t.
What will it look like next May?
Maybe it’s the nature of the job market and the structural changes going on right now that I can’t get a new job. I don’t know. I try not to think about it. Which is why I smoke.
I began the Spring recognizing that the goal I have the most influence on and that would mean the most to me to make progress toward is my weight. I need to retool toward that, smoking or not.
I’m waiting on the ocean to blow something ashore… But it feels like I’m a pretty tiny island in this big big ocean.


It is never too late to be what you might have been. -- George Eliot
Courage to start and willingness to keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success. -- Alonzo Newton Benn


It is never too late to be what you might have been. -- George Eliot
Courage to start and willingness to keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success. -- Alonzo Newton Benn