y'know I have many enemies

and I often spend my time wishing things upon them. I muster my will and try to steer ill fortune and various disasters and cataclysms across their path. 

And covid is something I would definitely wish upon my enemies. The covid as I experienced it, I mean. It's a very fitting punishment. mild discomfort. isolation. I wish it upon my enemies. Maybe it will help them be better people/ animals/plants.

joseph campbell be like

All myth seeks to illuminate the mystery of life and death and show that they are one. For example, anytime the United States invades a foreign nation, that is justified. You can't change that or do anything about it. Also, women are subservient to men. But what you have to realize is that GOD is YOU. Empower yourself in a personal way that has no political consequences whatsoever.

perspective

nothing has made me appreciate how good my life was going than having it reduced to this pale imitation of existence brought on by this stupid plague. I wake up at 2 am because my throat is burning because I couldn't breathe out of my nose so I snored and exacerbated my already sore throat.

Then I read more of Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth which is simultaneously interesting and frustrating because poor Joe can't seem to stop himself from casually endorsing the patriarchy and western imperialism whenever he gets the chance. I won't go into detail but it's annoying for a guy who otherwise has some decent thoughts and life and the power of narrative. 

Other late night readings included the Wikipedia articles on the history of insurance and the history of race science. The history of insurance one was pretty dry. It's basically really old and dates back to mitigating the uncertainty of seafaring. I thought there would be more juicy nuggets but not so. 

The history of race science is CRAZY. There were sooooo many white dudes from like the 1600s to up to World War 2 who were so invested in establishing the myth of white supremacy in scientific basis. The really crazy thing is that all of these idiots were just copying each other and saying the same thing and they all get detailed little sections and even have their own articles and biographies. Anyway it's the Nazis that really pushed racial science out of the realm of acceptable discourse which must say something about the nature of change and progress I suppose. 

Anyway, I made some tea and that kind of helped. This is like 3am or 4am or whenever I stopped looking because I resigned myself to not sleeping. Then I made oatmeal and ate half of that. 

Then I flashed back to some of my earliest memories as a very small child being in the ER and not being able to breathe. I don't remember what they were doing to me but I have vague painful impressions of them doing things and me not cooperating because I was a small child in a lot of pain. And then I remember asking for taco bell at some point. 

It's crazy that I can remember very clearly waking up in the middle of the night and wheezing and being given a grape popsicle and then being taken to the hospital. 

Being sick always kind of reminds me of being a kid and these early somewhat traumatic memories of being helpless and occasionally on the brink of death. There's probably something fruitful in that, you know? I like to not take any medicine when I'm sick because I don't like the idea of masking how I'm feeling. If I'm sick I want to be all the way sick until I'm not. That's my right as a sick person. 

Anyway I woke up at 7 covered in sweat and immediately took a shower. When I'm sick I either do nothing at all or immediately get up and do a task right away. There's no inbetween. The other night I was feverish and at one point I woke up, stood up immediately and went to my living room where my AC unit is and kneeled before it like some sort of thrall in the presence of his demonic patron. And then I did that for like 5 minutes and went back to bed. This time I showered and went back to sleep until about 10am.

Right now it's raining and I'm still in bed. Hopefully tomorrow this will feel like it's on its way out.

i tried to sit outside for a bit

but I think the humidity was too high and I'm too congested and couldn't really breathe. back in my dungeon I go

apples really do make you feel better

what a great fruit. apples have really been here for me this whole time

i found a bug on my bed

this is the closest I've been to another member of the animal kingdom since Saturday

took my little covid walk

around the neighborhood and showered and I almost feel normal again 👍

on school and being out of school

When I was in college I had this idea that I was obsessed with failure and I tried hard in school because I didn't want to fail. 

I was thinking about it today and back then I was also focused on the idea of could I do it. Could I pass this test? Could I get an A in this class? Could I get an A in all my classes all the time? I remember learning about addiction in health class and hearing it was difficult to overcome and wondering if I could do it. I think it's so easy when you have so many challenges placed in front of you from a young age and receive a lot of positive feedback to just keep wanting more. To find out if you can. That was enough for me. 

And then I got out of school and started working and thought about what achievement meant. Or, I thought less about the degree to which I wanted to achieve something and more about what any sort of achievement did and how it made me feel. If you're constantly being sorted out and ranked and compared then it's hard to think about if that ranking means anything. Especially if you're doing well. You've got to keep going because if you're doing well and you stop then you won't be doing well anymore. And then you enter some state of absolute wretchedness I suppose. 

It's not like I regret it or would have done things differently. I feel like the structure of my education wasn't very good at teaching me how to evaluate things myself. And maybe that's just me being achievement focused and not having the depth of personality to say with any sort of confidence, "these things here are cool and these other things are lame."

But eventually I think I learned that. 

edit: it's not like I had in any way a bad childhood. I had a great support system and friends and lots of good memories. that was all crucial as well. the I'm just thinking about what I would tell myself to think differently about and it obviously wouldn't be those things. But also I think it's a discovery you have to make for yourself. Someone can tell you about the journey but you still have to walk it. 

there's such a deep tired behind my eyes when I close them

it's beautiful

how do I want to be perceived and why?

today a kid reminded me that one time at afterschool I made all these different eggs, they were just egg shaped pieces of paper, and each one was like

egg of truth

egg of kindness

egg of science

egg of egg

and if you were holding the egg you had to speak based on the egg's power. With the egg of egg you could only say "egg"

I forgot I did that. Pretty funny thing. good job, past me. 

I can't handle when a person's normal speaking volume is yelling

talk softer

tried to read all the words on the dr. bronners soap bottle in one sitting

too difficult

thinking a lot about coincidences and the things you find and lose

 today is Paw Paw's birthday and I ended up coming home to Harrisonburg. A lot of things lined up in a really particular way to make this happen. I ended up with a skin infection around my eye that wasn't improving and I woke up today and it looked pretty gnarly. But it just so happens that yesterday night I met up with a guy I've started running and doing workouts with and it turns out he's an eye doctor and basically diagnosed it on the spot. He happens to be in Harrisonburg on Thursdays so he was able to slot me in for an appointment in the middle of his busy day and got me some ointment that's helping the eye. And on top of all this I've been on the river a lot this summer where people lose and find things all the time and I always say the river giveth and the river taketh away. AND I probably got the skin infection from, among other things, THE DIRTY RIVER WATER. 

And it just feels like so many things are connected and aligning and so much of it is out of my control but I think about how I was able to choose my attitude and, even more importantly, I made that connection with the eye doctor because we both love running. And so I think if you do what you can and you do the things that bring out the best in you then people will see that and want to help. 

It's no guarantee but I'd say it's the best bet.

I love running

It's always been true and it remains true that if I have a good run, nothing else matters. I can't help but feel good about myself. What a gift.

can't let the little things get me down

if the little things are Vince then I must be invincible

if the imps are all ossible then that makes me impossible

all I need is the love of the people I care about

moved in to my new place

:)

blue ridge mountains

 Saw Grandpa Dave today. It was nice. He has a new home just outside of Charlottesville that he just moved into. I was a little nervous about it because we haven't talked very much since I've graduated from college.

I think there's been tension for a while because from a very young age I can remember a lot of conversations with him centered around certain things I should do and certain jobs that I should have and a lot of times those suggestions weren't things that I actually wanted to do. And I think it was his way of offering guidance and support and they were never unreasonable things, just things like, "you should be a lawyer" or "you should be a journalist if you like writing". But it kinda felt like there was pressure and I knew I didn't really want to do those things. And then when I finally figured out what I wanted to do and who I wanted to become then I felt like we stopped talking. So I don't know. I guess I felt like I let him down. But at the same time, those are my decisions to make and I'm not going to feel bad for not doing what someone else wants me to do.

But it was nice to visit his house and be in the same room as him. It was nice to be around an actual person and not be thinking about this idea of what the relationship was that I'd built up. It'd be nice to have a good relationship with him.