Sunday, March 28, 2021

Heat Fogs Everything

Today's not been a good day.

I have a strange throbbing headache in the left hemisphere of my brain---I think it could be a result of sleeping at 0200hrs this morning instead of a more sane hour. The reason for sleeping that late was the ``wind down'' I did venturing into Night City, after having spent the morning of yesterday helping a friend move house, and the afternoon just hanging out.

But the headache aside, it is not a good day because of an unspeakable anger that has been brewing within me since yesterday. The anger stems from the apparent shade that was being cast on me by those whom I have supposed to cut out of my life. The anger is likely to be coming from an understanding of impotence, that understanding that yes, I am no longer there and therefore whatever is being said has no effect on me, but at the same time, there is this burning injustice that I feel that needs to be righted, except it is not I who can do it.

Gotta trust God on this one. He will handle it. But old instincts die hard, and it will take me a little bit more time to reframe and excise the thought from my mind.

I wanted to wait a while before I wrote about this, but after 9 weeks, I don't think I can wait any more and need to vent. My hiking boots are out of commission thanks to the breaking of the lacing hook, and I had sent it in for repairs. The repair person did not have the part, but had ordered it from the supplier, who is bringing it from China, and till date the bloody part hasn't come in just yet. This is frustrating because the lack of my hiking boots has significantly limited my mobility---I want to go for super long walks over all kinds of terrain in all places, but am limited by the footwear that I have.

My old huaraches are starting to fall apart from wear and tear (they've been with me since 2011/2012), and I don't want to drive them too hard because I'm afraid of losing them forever (the company that sold them seems to be re-pivoting to selling more conventional shoes instead). My combat boots are in semi-storage, and I don't want to pull them out because I don't actually have good working long socks to go with them (I don't want to pull out the stuff in my packed up duffel bag of military equipment in the very long odds chance of being called back). I have a pair of Teva sandals, but my ankle skin is raw and garbage, making it actually physically uncomfortable to wear them (which is why I haven't been cycling also)---however, I did run an experiment for two days where I wore socks with them; those worked out well in the comfort department, but for goodness sake, it is still socks in sandals levels of badness.

And I'm down to my two dress shoes that I alternate, which I use most of the time when I head out to places that are farther than just the neighbourhood. They aren't bad---I deliberately chose dress shoes that I can, in theory, run about in---but they do limit the amount of walking and the places where I can walk about in. The dress shoes have a slight elevation in the heel, and it does make it rather uncomfortable on the foot for long enough (think ten to twenty kilometres) distances of walking.

I really wish that my boots can be fixed soon. All this lack of ``hard core'' walking is making me feel down, perhaps more down than usual.

------

I have been thinking about life and relationships over the past couple of months in an on/off fashion, and there are some truths that I am starting to think to hold for me.

Before I go into them though, I need to add some qualifiers. I am not so well attuned to God's will like some people around me to the point where I can immediately sacrifice everyone and everything to follow Him. Call me a sinner, call me a loser, call me whatever you want---the judgement is of your folly to make, but it is what it is. In other words, what I say here in terms of what I think is my current so-called level of understanding is not at a high enough confidence interval that I will exclusively work towards these goals.

Because I'm a coward and refuse to commit so hard to thoughts that are happening in the echo chamber of my head during a period of time where everything is, for lack of a better description, fucked six ways to Sunday.

Okay, with that out of the way, let me write down some things.

I don't think I will have children. I cannot fully rationalise why I can/should have children. The society I live in is exploitive in more ways than I can count, and bringing in a new life to contribute as the exploited is not as just as I think it ought to be. Moreover, thanks to things that happen in the generation before mine, I am also a person without a real root, which makes bringing in a descendent even harder to justify---there is no true heritage to bring this so-called descendent to anyway. All these are not even about how children can ``cramp my style''---having my so-called style cramped is a minor issue compared to the larger picture of just contributing to an ever-more-fucked world.

If I cannot even contribute to solving the world's problems, why would bringing in a completely different person that needs twenty years of careful guidance, teaching, and nurturing be of any use? It's just another case of kicking the problem down to the next generation, something that every other fucking generation has been doing.

I can't claim to be a problem solver if I am a contributor of the problem, right?

Now, that said, I want to emphasise that this is my personal perspective on my personal decision---I do not look at those who choose otherwise in disdain, nor will I judge them. Maybe they know better than I because God inspires them better due to their sensitivity---good for them, I suppose.

I think that's enough of venting for now. At this point after I have said all these, it is still not that great a day. I think I'll scrounge up some whiskey that I have lying around and continue touring Night City in Cyberpunk 2077 for a while more. Playing Cyberpunk 2077 on Eileen-II in the afternoon of a place that is of high ambient humidity and temperature is challenging---despite all the counter-measures that I have taken to keep temperatures low, I was getting CPU temperatures hitting nearly 90 °C---it's bad enough that I decided to just use the keyboard from Elysie-II (currently sitting quietly in a corner not plugged in) just so that I don't burn my finger tips.

Such is life of one who lives in the tropics.

Sometimes I just wonder, why am I still alive now? Yes, a non-sequitor type of segue... whatever. It's not been a good day.

Till the next update.

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