Depression?

"Depression" is a strong word that I've always been loathe to use in reference to myself, but there's times when I can't really think of anything more appropriate. I occasionally hit these deep, extended lulls where I feel unusually anti-social and totally overwhelmed by life. The overwhelming side of things is often self-inflicted as "keeping busy" has always paralleled "drinking too much" with me, and as I've gotten older and a tad bit more responsible, the former has gotten much worse than the latter. (The latter has shifted more towards periodic bingeing.) Things to do and things to drink have both frequently served as filler for the emptiness - or the helplessness, perhaps? - I tend to feel at these times.

It used to be the poetry stuff that consumed all of my free time, and often went hand-in-hand with drinking too much, and nowadays it's the comic book stuff, though with significantly less drinking. I've already fallen ridiculously behind with my school work, and the Buzzscope stuff has been piling up as I'm trying to accomplish way more with the site than I reasonably can on my own. But I'm a control freak, you know?

Heading out tonight to 13 since Eric is in town, and that means a night of hard drinking and in-the-moment merriment that I will hate myself for tomorrow. The lack of self-discipline, specifically. And not just w/r/t the drinking, but generally speaking, the fact that I can knowingly go into something I shouldn't, and not just go in, but go in whole hog.

I took an online Asperger's assessment a month or so ago and wasn't completely surprised by the results. I had Salomé take it, too, based on how she perceived me. Her test came up with approx. 25 out of 150 matches; a relative blip. I hit 77 matches, much of it on stuff that she wouldn't have necessarily caught seeing as how well I've supressed those traits over the years in an effort to adapt and compensate. One of the things that particularly stood out for me was the whole anti-social aspect of Aspie's, how they're not typically good with other people, and how for me, alcohol has always been the key to my sociability, especially around strangers. It was more than a year before the first time I ever took a stage completely sober, and a relatively rare occurence in the years after that.

This, of course, isn't to say I have Asperger's Syndrome. It takes more than an online inventory to assess that. But I certainly wouldn't be surprised, and the idea makes sense when I think about it. I've been trying to avoid thinking too much about it, though, because it threatens to be an obstacle. The whole thinking something vs. knowing it. Knowledge is power, but it can also be de-powering, too.

So tonight, I'll do what I ultimately do best...drink the bad thoughts into oblivion and focus on the good stuff. Friends I don't see often enough, a wonderful family waiting for me at home, and the hope that the light at the end of the tunnel is real, and not just another ill-fated traveler's discarded lantern.

Yay, winter! :-|

Seeing the Good in the Bad...

A day that includes having pee all over your t-shirt and leaving a movie early to run out and buy a change of clothes for one of your kids - India, not Isaac; don't want to give him a bad rap! - usually doesn't get filed in the good memories section of your brain.

But then you get a glimpse of how good it actually was and it puts everything into perspective:


Thanks, Dan!

"How Are You Doing?"

"Why Haven't You Called?"

"Did you get my email?"

"When are you going to hang out next?"

"Come on! It's only for a few hours!"

I get some version of one or all of these questions all the time, and the same way people don't really mean "How are you doing?" when they ask, "How are you doing?", I usually give some half-assed excuse of being "too busy" or "too tired" as an answer every time. It's not that it's untrue, because I usually am "too busy" or "too tired" at any given moment these days, but it's the details I tend to avoid.

I realized a week or so ago that in the past year, I've dramatically scaled back my social life to the point that, other than Dan and Xia who now live next door, I frequently go weeks without speaking to (or in many cases, even emailing) the majority of the people I consider friends. Salomé just posted a sobering account of our typical day, and seeing it spelled out is rather depressing, in a "Why the fuck are we killing ourselves like this?" kind of way. American Dream, my ass!

Anyway, a quick update for those of you wondering:

1) Westchester poetry gig went well, though Zork exaggerates quite a bit on my performance which I felt was rather flat. The bad weather didn't help any, but the handful of people that turned out seemed reasonably entertained, so it certainly wasn't a disaster. Nevertheless, if I perform again any time soon - a consideration which Zork literally browbeat out of me! - I'm going to have to make a point of hitting an open mic or two and shaking the rust off beforehand.

2) Things at Buzzscope are moving along pretty smoothly as I continue to develop an editorial staff that I won't feel embarassed to be associated with. ie: The fucktard I gave the boot a few weeks back - in an email exchange that ranks up there with the best of Guy vs. Keith, minus Keith's intellect - popped up with a column on The Pulse, one of the few comics sites left from which he hasn't been either outright banned or burned bridges with, and got ripped in the talkbacks as someone posted a negative comment he made about his new editors on his MySpace blog. (The internet is a wonderful place, no?) Ironically, the column is exactly what he was going to do for Buzzscope before he imploded, and after seeing the first installment, I'm glad it never had a chance to run with us!

3) Eric's in town next week, which means the band will get back together at some point for drinking and other obnoxious behavior. "Lock up your children and sedate your wives..."

NOT Like Riding a Bike

There's plenty of things you can go back to after years away - particularly stuff that's bad for you like smoking, and poetry slams - but school definitely isn't one of them. Another weekend, another cram session, made that much more stressful by a week laid up with something flu-like and all day yesterday taken by Isaac's 5th Birthday party.

The party was worth the delay, though, as Isaac had a blast with his first birthday/costume party, and even India got in the on the fun.







What? I used to own the real thing! :-P

Now, back to the unrelenting dungeons of higher - as in, "What was I smoking?" - education...

Like a bad penny...

Me and poetry, together again for the first time in ages!

Tuesday, October 25, 2005 @ 7pm
Barnes & Noble Bookstore
3105 East Main Street
Mohegan Lake, NY 10547
Helping Zork bring poetry to Westchester. Cover: FREE!

This is right near where I graduated High School, so I'm paranoid I'll bump into someone I once knocked on the door of during my two-year stint as a Jehovah's Witness! How times have changed...