6 AM - the start of my week-long internet fast. Woke up 2 hours before my schedule started. Need coffee or something. Already tempted to check reddit, YouTube or discord. I’m probably gonna cave and let myself have Spotify, at least.
Woke up feeling a bit shitty. Fingers don’t want to type. I can’t recall my dreams, but they were loud and chaotic.
Not even 7 AM and the silence is bugging me. Time to put on some instrumentals, but I’ll avoid lyrics at least. Starting with Mercy by Max Richter and Mari Samuelsen. It’s sort of a melancholic song to start the day off with.
I gotta eat soon, I bought food yesterday so that puts me in good spirits. Going hungry is among the worst feelings, sadly not worse than nicotine withdrawal as evidenced by how routinely I dip into my grocery bill to pay for some smokes.
I have to clean my room today and do the dishes. I have two smokes left. I picked a weird time to do an internet fast, considering I’ll run out of nicotine today and knowing the dreadful feelings it’ll bring. I don’t want to be angry. I don’t like being angry, but it’s strange how far it gets me sometimes. People will often do nearly anything to satiate a mad wo/man, though just as often they’ll just leave you to stew in your own bullshit.
I feel like I’m in some kind of pain but nothing specific really hurts. There’s a dull ache in my wrist, and this acid fog in my head. What hurts most is the hole in my heart, where a word I cannot define refuses to fill. Where is my spirit?
I have Personality Theories by Barbra Engler and The Art of Memetics by Wes Unruh & Edward Wilson open in another tab, and a spreadsheet I made while attempting to come up with a schedule for this week.
I kind of want to throw up and go back to bed. I felt a lot better, physically, when I quit smoking for a few days there. It’s really amazing. I feel hot, but somehow I have goosebumps, sitting here in a sweater and shorts with my legs crossed.
And now I’m just.. staring, at nothing, because I’m unsure where to go next. This song is a good one though, I’m not some connoisseur of classical music but this one, The Blue Danube is everywhere for good reason. It’s hopeful, and energizing, but makes me feel tense - like I’m staring over a cliff at something beautiful, while simultaneously risking my life for the view.
I have $17 with which I can spend on weed that’ll last me a few days, a reward to myself on Friday in the form of some Chinese food, or I might cave and spend it on smokes once I run out, to avoid losing my mind in an undesirable way.
Still just playing catch up with myself. I have a lot of people on my mind, strangers and friends I’ve made online. I have a lot of support but a vast amount of it means very little to me, though I wish it meant more.
I did a personality trait test recently and I maxed out the negativistic, hypomanic, depressive and masochistic scales - and got high-ish scores in histrionic. I got low scores in compulsive, schizoid, and avoidant tendencies - which really surprised me. When I finished the test, it said I might’ve answered randomly, not understood the questions, or had multiple sets of personalities for various occasions. I don’t know why I thought that was funny, but it made me laugh.
…
To be honest sometimes I wonder who I am. If I am not my impulsive nature, then I am the restraint. At one point, I associated my ‘self’ with my thoughts.
Maybe the self is, all of the above? The point where impulse meets restraint, as mediated by one's thoughts and control of one's thoughts.
The problem becomes restraint, if one thinks that they are too impulsive and veer too far in the other direction, they become subdued, impotent, and unable to speak when evil rears its ugly face.
Conflict may find each one just the same, but the impulsive-reactive create it themselves out of the smallest contradictions, seemingly out of thin air.
…
I have a headache, and this thread of thought is hard to navigate. My stomach’s been bothering me this morning. The silence was getting to me but now this music is.
This fast has 3 rules: no social media [Reddit or Discord, mainly], no YouTube, only music without lyrics. I could add a fourth, restricting myself from playing games, but I don’t really play them anyways. As an unspoken note to self I’ve been refraining from using any other part of the internet, aside from this text document and two pdf’s I have ready, but I can’t resist the urge to use google.
I also don’t really want to read. I want to eat but I have a feeling I’d throw up. I smoked the last of the dust that was once 7 grams of weed, just now. I have to return the salt shaker to the kitchen, because I stole it for a day to disinfect something strange rotting away at my back, bottom left molar. The gum has torn away a bit, leaving a crack for food to fester in, it’s really quite gross but at least it’s not painful in the slightest.
My body tells me I need meat. Nitrous depletes your B12, so maybe I just have that concern on my mind though. I’m hungry but my stomach is full, so that tells me I have some kind of nutrient deficiency… or something. I’m not a dietitian, but I’m supposed to be talking to one soon. Which reminds me to answer my emails. I hate answering emails and keeping in touch with my welfare worker, but I do it because I must - I’m always happy when she hasn’t responded in a week, because I do the same sometimes and feel bad about it.
I love the smell of eucalyptus. The last time I got very sick, it was the only relief I could find. I put a few drops in boiling water and breathed it in, and when your throat, nose, and lungs feel like sandpaper because they’re so dry - oh my god, does eucalyptus feel nice. It also lasts an obscenely long time, I have a 30 mL bottle that has lasted me several months and it’s only a quarter way empty. I would probably go through it a lot faster if I had an air diffuser or something, though.
8:20 Am. Whenever I state the time I feel a priority shift, a topic change, a U-turn. I haven’t written anything yet today that makes me feel any kind of pride in my words, but my mind is starting to feel a little clearer and my fingers are warming up.
Looking a little into refeeding syndrome. I think undereating consistently, and then eating a bunch without proper build up is why I probably feel like shit - not to mention the obscene amount of sugar I’ve been consuming. There’s a lot of factors to consider, like that I just bought and smoked most of a pack yesterday. What’s amazing is that I don’t feel worse, considering all the things I’m doing wrong.
I guess that discredits the things that I’m trying to do right, though. I guess I see how I maxed out the negativistic trait. I’ve been exercising pretty consistently, enough that I’ve noticed improvements in the mirror and in my number of reps before failure. I only have 40lbs of weight so I can’t test to see if my max has increased yet.
I’ve been paying closer attention to my meditations. Just remembering to breathe lately is an improvement. I’ve also been a lot better at not letting people drag me down, while remaining forgiving and tolerant - tolerant, even to people who might not deserve it, because of how intolerant they are. I’m not a saint but I have aspirations, and I’m not violent, but I respect and have started to understand how, and when, to channel the wrath of the buddha.
I’m not violent, but I am pretty angry.
Couldn’t help but listen to the first 10 minutes of a debate released recently between Zizek and Yuval Noah, while I ate. “Everything is nature” they agree, with the caveat from Zizek that there are patterns and rhythms on the earth that humans have admittedly disturbed.
Down to my last smoke. I want to go back to bed. I have some ideas for things to write but I’m hoping the inspiration hits before I have to explain myself.
It’s hard not to be mad at the entire affair of the world. It’s all relative though, I hold no anger for the sad, desperate, suffering. My blood boils at those who are responsible, and it depresses me how little of an impact I have - how hard it is to really have a positive influence on someone, how many people just want to die. I am furious at the concepts, the ideals, the systems we empower. It’s tragic that we’ve become so entangled in the sins of history. Despite all of that I love people, I just wish they were less full of hate for one another, and more understanding that what they are is not just a result of their culture and upbringing, but actually just human too. We’re apes on a rock fighting over dirt, over lines in the sand, hoarding as much as we can instead of helping the starving members of the herd.
It’s not all that, not everyone is only out to help themselves - though, it feels like it is, a lot of the time, and our system is set up with nothing but profit in mind; you have to earn money, or you have to starve, hardly anyone can realistically live off the land. If you’re ruthless, you take chances despite the consequences and oftentimes, succeed. If you are overly concerned with how your product might affect people in a bad way, you’re a lot less likely to ever attempt it.
Our society is dominated by actors who’ll smile at you while they slip a hand into your pocket.
Here I am, stuck, trying to process plans to build an ethical business, an apparent oxymoron when money itself is a corrupt tool used to exchange wealth between the needy and the cunning.
9:40 AM. My back is a bit sore. I’ve opened discord a few times by accident, on impulse. I checked reddit to see if I’d missed anything, just to see if I had notifications. It’s a terrible addiction, the fear of missing out.
I’ve just been sitting here for 3 minutes trying to catch thoughts so I can put them down again. I’m still chasing something instead of being that something. I am watching myself run ahead, and I’m hesitant to run along too. I can’t ask the hard questions, because I don’t have an answer.
10:40 AM. My coffee is still lukewarm. Gonna start reading art of memetics again
“Propaganda of the Deed”
How others have defined it:
"Ideas spring from deeds and not the other way around."
"We must spread our principles, not with words but with deeds, for this is the most popular, the most potent, and the most irresistible form of propaganda."
"Let them show their love by the works they do for each other, according as the Apostle says: 'let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.'"
"We preach not only action in and for itself, but also action as propaganda."
“... meant the creation of libertarian social forms and communities that would inspire others to transform society.”
Reasons for a non-violent approach:
"A structure based on centuries of history cannot be destroyed with a few kilos of dynamite"
“...individual acts of violence by anarchists as useful for little more than providing an excuse for state repression.”
“Violence, i.e. physical force used to another's hurt, which is the most brutal form the struggle between men can assume, is eminently corrupting. It tends, by its very nature, to suffocate the best sentiments of man, and to develop all the antisocial qualities: ferocity, hatred, revenge, the spirit of domination and tyranny, contempt of the weak, servility towards the strong.”
Finished two chapters of Art of Memetics, and whitewashed an old painting.
11:40 AM. Already starting to count the hours until I’m done. I created a discord for my town and region because I noticed there wasn’t one yet, and would like to be intellectually active with people I can easily meet in the 3D world - what a concept.
I think I want to do this more often, restrict myself from using social media and binging youtube. Doing a full info-fast for a week is not something I want to do often though, limiting myself to 2-3 hours of informational barrage a day seems healthy. What’s troublesome is that I need to be so drastic just to stop myself from checking for and responding to notifications, I really just can’t help myself - the urge to stay connected is strong in me, and I feel like taking time away from social media in particular, is taking time away from the rhizome I hope to build. I rely on others to help lift me up, and others rely on me for the same.
Part of the process is lifting each other up to the point, where we can stand firmly on our own feet. To rely on each other temporarily isn’t a bad thing, everyone needs that when they’re low, but to gain self-sufficiency is the true goal.
There’s only so much you can do for others, until you’re too drained to even take care of yourself. It feels strange to advocate selfishness, after the above rant, but a healthy amount is.. Well, healthy.
My coffee is cold now, but I’ll still drink it.
I really want to go talk to someone, about nothing in particular. I used to be a lot more asocial, according to Myers Brigg I haven’t changed much at all - still an INFP after all these years - but I long for a connection more these days than I ever have. I want to harass my friend about his goals for the day. I want to send her some pictures of octopi, or some sea spider, because I think she’d like that and the thought makes me smile. I want to dig into Wikimedia conspiracies with the manager of Pizza-hut, I want to join the discussion about how we might better improve the ways we think. I want to complain to some Nihilist's about the lack of meaning in life. I want to show off what I’ve written and see who responds, with what. I want to argue with this jackass who’s points keep getting the better of me - and I want to help the stranger who I met yesterday, who seemed to be in some kind of great pain.
There is an abundance of pain going around, but I know even a small kindness can go a long way. Don’t you DARE underestimate butterflies, or their effects.
I’m going to take a shower, because I’m starting to smell funny. Today is LAUNDRY DAY. Don’t forget.
12:30 PM. I feel clean. I actually feel a lot better, too, for some hard to define reason. I’m going to go sit in the sun to dry off. I want to check social media again, it's where my mind first goes when I get bored. This feels like a war against my own attention span. I met my “quota” for writing today, which was 3 and a half hours.. It’s been about 6 and a half, minus some distractions.
I don’t want to follow my own schedule, writing is more fun than most of what I have on the list. Doing diary writing like this is especially easy, there’s no real way to do it wrong. Gonna brush my teeth and begin to meditate/write down some goals for the week.
…
First a prelude about how hot sauce affects your gut biome and thus your MIIIIIND
Capsaicin increases the abundance of Akkermansia which has been associated with decreasing the rate of cognitive decline, and Faecalibacterium, low quantities of which has been associated with major depressive disorder
Capsaicin decreases the abundance of Helicobacter bacteria - this bacteria is associated with ulcers and cancer - potential benefits of this bacteria remain unclear and controversial
Increases Roseburia— a bacteria associated with weight loss and reducing glucose intolerance— in male mice but decreases it in female mice, indicating sensitivity to sex.
Decreases Bacteroides—a bacteria associated with higher levels of myo-inositol, serotonin and creatinine— in male mice, but increases it in female mice.
…
On that note, I’m going to fry up some noodles with a splash of ghost pepper sauce.
2 PM. I’m feeling pretty done. Watched a bit more of that conversation between Zizek and Yuval while I ate. Turning my music back on…
What now?
Meditate on and set goals for the week, I guess. I’m going to set a timer for 7 minutes and sit on my bed.
I have no new ideas for things to write about, but here are the ones I’ve been stewing on -
8 pages perfected for the Memetics Division
Finish book
Start a new story
Word salad
A meta-physical special
Some poetry
Proposition for business
Find a copyediting job
Find someone to copy edit my job
Wallow in self pity
Make grandiose and delusional claims
Write some new Discordian canon
Start a new religion entirely
Forget the brilliant thought you just had
Excommunicate self
Write about your earliest memory
Go so far back it’s a past-life memory
Go back to the index of imaginary books and start making them real
Library of babel fan-fiction
Get thrown off a staircase in a library riot
Land quietly as to not disturb people trying to read
Make an absolute ruckus and wake up the sleepers
…
I have to turn discord off again. I was proselytizing the miracle cure for depression that may be hot sauce. It’s at least kind of funny, and it might actually be helpful. I’m not a doctor.
I’m back to feeling really stupid. I don’t know why this is so difficult, just don’t check discord, reddit, or binge YouTube. It’s simple. I just don’t know what to do with myself, though.
Hunter. S Thompson claimed to have typed up one of Hemingway's books, word for word, twice - the goal being to ingrain some of his style into his own. It’s a good idea, though it seems kind of extreme. It doesn’t seem incredibly fun or engaging but I might try and do it with a story of two of Jorge Borges, since his writings are generally short enough not to lose my mind typing out.
I had forgotten how dense the Library of Babel was. It’s 3:40 PM and I’ve written 2 of 8 pages. I’ve never studied the book this closely before, and it’s made me find new ways to use google docs in attempting to replicate it as closely as possible, like the simple use of footnotes for example. I also noticed an apparent rarity of comas and the frequent use of dashes, something I was trying to use more of but typically use hyphens instead, because alt+0151 is slightly cumbersome and hard to remember.
4 PM and starting to feel shitty again. I ran out of smokes but I saved the butts, because I’m disgustingly addicted, and smoking hand-rolled tobacco without a filter is a stupid thing that I do when I can’t afford to buy another pack to feed my habit.
5 PM. Today I will smoke the rest of my tobacco and quit AGAIN. The difference is this time, I have the built-up resentment of the past 30+ times I’ve tried to quit to empower me through this tribulation. My will, will not be deterred.
I am crashing pretty hard though. My laundry is in the dryer, my stomachs full, this is the 8th page I’ve written today—not counting the two I copied from Borges story—and I’m officially out of tobacco. Tomorrow I will indulge in a bike ride into town, and spend the last of my cash on a pre-roll or two, depending how hard the Taxman bites.
…
I feel stupid, again. As if this is nothing but a worn out show. I’m a monkey dancing, and I’m not even dancing very well. I don’t know what to do, there’s me admitting it. I don’t know who I am. If I am my thoughts, I would like to die. If I am the restraint, I want to find a better way to live. If I am the impulse, I feel like a shadow of some former self.
I would like to get that “I want to die” thought out of my head. It is both very annoying, and very persistent. This is usually the kind of energy I dissipate by finding someone willing to argue, and shit-posting back and forth for a while. I’ve made a lot of friends doing that, surprisingly enough. I’m almost just too tired to complain, that’s part of the reason I started this social media fast, I just can’t complain anymore without annoying myself with the repetitively, with telling the same stories over and over again until all these traumatic events just become a well-rehearsed explanation of the current circumstance.
How did I get here -
Well it involves a lot of screaming, a moderate amount of violence, feeling unsafe for the majority of my childhood, feeling neglected by my peers and let down by many of my teachers. It involves meeting a serial killer and playing Wii golf at his house, while my parents were probably buying crack. It involves a dramatic confession by my first father - one of 3 - about him killing a loved one who was in a diabetic coma. It involves fear, chaos, confusion - and how I was forced to adapt to it, turning chaos into a tool instead of a weapon thrusted at me. It involves prescription drug abuse and childish attempts at demon summoning, self-medication via weed and rationalization of mysticism because the regular therapy wasn’t working and I wasn’t willing to blindly believe in anything, I knew better than that, my role models only managed to show me the ways not to be. I uprooted my life for the love of my life, and they left me without a second thought. I was cheated on, I cheated. I was desperate, and so were they. My friend died of an overdose and I lost my grandfather while I was busy flunking out of university. I watched the man who taught me how to play chess, and raise me, die slowly. The last words he spoke landed on deaf ears. I watched my step-brother decay as he fell deeper and deeper into hard drugs. I'm watching my sister suffer with a child with severe autism and the father—a man who’s confessed to dumping a body in a swamp for some bikers— won’t even visit them. I have tried to commit suicide, I have talked to dozens of suicidal people, I have talked a few of them out of it, and I watched one who would not believe me when I said I cared kill themselves with gasoline and a lighter.
I have never committed a sin I couldn’t forgive myself for, but I have hurt people before. I’ve broken hearts and when I was younger, I often defended myself by breaking balls. I almost lost an eye in a rock-war that I started, back in grade 3. I have memories tattooed on my skin, with ink and scars - self-inflicted, and given to me by others. I was raised by the internet, and watched two girls one cup in elementary math class. By the time I was 14 I had seen beheadings and all of the genres of porn that man has invented. I saw the birth of bitcoin and was laughed at when I told my parents about it. I was there. I have seen more than I ever wanted to see, and there is still so much I wish I could be witness to. I’ve watched good friends turn bad, and have had good friends leave because I was the one who changed.
I have sat in piss, felt for the pulse on a corpse, had the tendon on my ankle rip a chunk of bone off by, I have been in pain asking for help and was ignored. I have dreamt a thousand dreams, in a hundred nights, and they’ve all ended painfully - with the waking-realization that I’m still here, doing this, in this place, instead of anywhere else. Stuck with these people, whose only relation to me is through blood.
I have seen evil.
I am tired.
Everything other people seem to care so much about, feels so petty and trivial to me - but I can’t find anything really meaningful either.
I’ve failed my friends.
I’ve failed my parents, but they didn’t exactly set me up for success.
If I could I would put it all down on paper, and leave it all right here. Take it and burn it, cut it up into origami cranes and toss it in the river, I don’t care what you do with it.
I just don’t want to have to look at it anymore.
…
Hopefully I can get all the complaining about life out of the way today, and write something less real tomorrow. My harsh reality has led to a really rich inner fantasy, and I’m detached enough to hide it but I have a few parallel multiverses in my head. I played with my own imagination while most kids were playing with their Xbox, and I was fascinated by how malleable it was. It was in my mind where I found the only place I had real control, no matter what the external world was like, I could escape, and no matter who told me to shut up - I could exercise my inner voice and no one could ever stop me.
It’s hard to admit but the knowledge that I could always just leave, kept me intact. My existence was a struggle to fight for my own rights as an independent being, and knowing I could just end it all gave me a sense of control over my reality. I’m at an age now where, if my freewill is threatened I can just call the bluff and ask for an eviction notice, because I truly don’t care anymore. If it’s a choice between my freedom being taken away and homelessness, I’m ready for the streets.
It’s 8:40 PM and I’m officially done writing, no more. Not gonna count posting this as breaking the rules because, uh, I made the rules.
Good morning, good afternoon, and Good night
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