Jesus Christ People

Dreamwidth's front page is awash with people posting every single log of every single roleplay they ever did ever and it's mostly two people just posting constantly.
No one cares. Knock it off.
This one person just signed up today and they already have 20 posts.
Stop.
But luckily amid all the garbo I found this jackoff.
Look at this motherfucker's avatar. Have you ever seen such a fedora tipper in your entire goddamn life?

I was very depressed this morning, and am less so now.

I essentially gave myself permission to do whatever I wanted today, as long as I was doing something, so naturally I defaulted to coding on LiSE. I've nearly got the map editor working again.

How long until there's a post about My Little Pony or atheism?

I'm not feeling well lately. I doubt I have any very compelling reason for feeling this way. The stresses I am reacting to are ordinary, and I know how to deal with them generally. I need to refine my approach a bit, and I'm having trouble with that, because I'm not feeling well, and planning for the future is difficult.

"He felt the hate engine stab rage into the meat of his mind."
-- Aaron Denski-Bowden, Betrayer, 2013.
Seriously one of the best Warhammer books ever written. Listen to the audio drama Butcher's Nails then read Betrayer for some shit, man.

It may be difficult because I haven't examined the present closely enough. To examine the present I need to examine my feelings, since they are rather directly relevant to my plans.

I was going to quote something but I forget what it was and I ended up listening to The Geto Boys for some reason.
I think it was related?
Can you imagine if blogs were as well written as Mind Playing Tricks on Me?
This blog wouldn't exist.

Any amount of self-reflection upon my emotional problems is going to sound very similar to self-pity. Maybe it is self-pity. I'm not sure. Is it always called "pity" when you try to empathize with sorrow, your own or someone else's, and want to make it better? Is that condescending? Regardless, this is what I need to do. It will probably sound bad, even to myself. So I shouldn't dwell on it any longer than useful, and I shouldn't try to share it with people who aren't already interested in it.

What the fuck are you talking about you nut?

I'm feeling disappointed in myself. Not for any particular failure. There are a few that I can point to, but they're either recoverable, or they're old news. It's stupid to be disappointed that I didn't put enough effort into high school, or I shut myself off from my would-be friends. I don't even remember those experiences very well.

I forget who said it but someone wise said he never trusted a man that has never felt disappointment and failure.
Who knows how you'll act when you inevitably face failure if you've never felt it before?
Best feel it early so you don't feel it when it really matters.
And then fail that.

I lack motivation.

To get motivation, I need to form an emotional association between what I want and what I need to get it.

There is no greater or purer emotional assistance in aiding motivation than anger.
Studies have even demonstrated you make your best decisions while mad.
Contrary to most conventional wisdom.
Except, of course, the sanguine wisdom of the true wise men.

To form an emotional association, I need to go about doing one thing in a way that evokes the emotions of another thing. To form an association with something I want, I need to find bits of what I want that evoke an immediate, visceral emotional reaction, and insinuate them into whatever I need to do.

I am not in the habit of finding the visceral bits of things. I'll need to practice.

To viscerate something is to find the visceral bits of it.

To enviscerate something is to insinuate those visceral bits into it.

And to feel like you need to eviscerate something just read this tripe.

I am a nihilist by disposition.
I do not subscribe to any of the various belief systems called "nihilism," unless you're one of those people who think that moral relativism is strictly equivalent to moral nihilism. However, I dislike belief, and try to avoid believing in things whenever it's reasonably practical. I rejected theism just about as soon as I understood it, 

BOOOM
ATHEISM POST
I'm counting it
fuck you
a thousand points to me
I am the greatest

rejected the notion of American exceptionalism (past or present) once I understood it had to do with identity politics, and rejected most notions of group identity in general when I learned how easy it is to identify as anything you damned well please.

I think I was thirteen when I did that. I was trying to reject the relevance of mathematics, too, but that didn't stick.

I rejected the relevance of mathematics in my life when I was like 10 and haven't looked back.
Have I mentioned how well my fake stock portfolio is doing?

Why not just describe myself as a skeptic? Well, I guess I could say that, but skepticism to my mind implies a degree of curiosity and inquisitiveness that I only demonstrate on occasion. My urge to disbelieve is more like a reflex. I rarely think about it, and I don't remember a time when I didn't have it.
I have a theory about how I might have learned this habit.

>I reject belief
>here's what I believe about what I think
hurrrrr

Today wasn't terrible.

Can't ask for more than that I find.
That's what I do when I look for jobs on the substitute teacher system. "Well that probably won't be terrible or get me killed or fired."

I have power issues.
That's nothing to be ashamed of. Everyone has those. It's like saying I have "health issues". It's trivially true, because "power," like "health," is an exceedingly broad category.

Me too.
My power issue is I'm not caesar.

Power is a confusing concept. Most of the time, when we say a person is powerful, we're not really referring to the number of joules or amperes they can put out. We're referring to who obeys their orders and under what conditions. So "power" in the common use is intrinsically conditional.

There's soft power and there's hard power. Soft power people feel obligated to do what you say based on some sort of fallout for not doing what you say or whatever. Hard power people want to do what you say because they're compelled either through mutual interest or admiration or whatever.
Machiavelli makes this all very clear in his definitive guide to the subject.
As Machiavelli teaches and is so often mangled by idiots misinterpreting his wisdom it is better to be feared than loved if you can't be both but he never goes so far as to say being feared is preferable to the point of exclusion.

Even if you're commanding an army, your power is contingent on the cooperation of everyone in your chain of command. Getting that chain of command to the point where it's reliable enough that the people giving the orders can be meaningfully said to have power is a very difficult problem that takes up a fair portion of the national budget.

Wow your understanding of power politics, government and military spending is breathtaking.
Clearly, clearly the US government spends a lot of its budget ensuring the loyalty of the troops.
That's why troops make so much money, obviously.
Not, you know, the fact that guys are firing rockets that cost more than they'll make in a year at people who won't make that much money in their lifetime. 

As an aspie, I have to think harder than most people in order to accomplish basic tasks like talking, eating, and getting out the door.

Are you genuinely autistic or are you just an antisocial, lazy cretin using that as a screen?
If you're genuinely autistic then no harm but if you're just saying that then you're a fucking asshole.
Like what, I'm just sitting here having the time socializing, eating and getting out the door?
Life is a fucking wide awake nightmare and no one has an easy time doing fucking anything. We just pretend we do because if we don't then that's when motherfuckers get shot.

Because I am accustomed to thinking about every action, I often fall for the delusion that thought is action. 

I do that a lot. "Did I do that or did I think about doing that?"
Most of the time I don't remember.

I think I've worked out what my issue with "pride" is.

It's rare for a person expressing pride to say exactly what they are proud of doing.  

Oh let me break this shit right the fuck down for you before you launch into a 3 page treatise of pretentious garbage on the subject.
Pride.
I am proud I lived.
I am proud I died.
Simple as that, dipshit. It's a trait you either have or you don't.
The old Pagan cultures engender a healthy sense of pride in its men in particular believing that's what caused people to aspire to greatness.
And I think few can argue with the glories of Rome or the Han.
Christianity was quick to quash that idea and instead opted for meekness and submission.
Dark ages ahoy!

Usually they point at the result of their efforts instead: "I'm proud of you, son" vs. "I'm proud of the way I raised you, son". The intended meaning is the same. The former phrasing means something different by the pronoun "you" than usual: instead of referring directly to the person the speaker is talking to, as they stand right here and now, it refers to some experiences that the speaker had with them.

Usually when someone says "I'm proud of you" it's more of an empathetic thing or perhaps a notion of being proud to know the person.
Because, you know, usually we're judged by the company we keep because we tend to surround ourselves with people who are at least similar to us in some regard so if someone does something you're proud of you likely possess a characteristic at least broadly similar to them.
Also pride is a pretty serious thing. It's easy to not have pride.
Having pride suddenly makes you intolerant of a lot of shit you'd otherwise be fine with.

To use my empathy to its best effect, I need to turn it up and down at will. Perhaps I already have this ability. I seem to be pretty good at turning my emotions off; my new task is to turn off particular emotions when and where they cause trouble.

For example. My calc teacher will be disappointed to see how far behind I am on the homework. But it's still his job to help me, so I should ask, and when (if) he makes his displeasure apparent, I should acknowledge that, and not care.

You're in college, dipshit. His job is to lecture and your job is to figure it out on your own.
He can help you and probably will if you're a nice guy but no, his job is not to help just you when you need it, plebeian. 
See that's what I mean about pride. If I were a college professor and you said that to me that'd be my reaction.
I didn't get a fucking PhD in mathematics to babysit spoiled bitches like you.

Starting today, I am going to award myself experience points for every moderately difficult task I complete. Ten points is standard;

If only life worked that way.
I'm serious.

I am a coward.

“It is better by noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half of the evils we anticipate than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what might happen.”
-Herodotus
I love these essays on bullshit that can be answered with one sentence by me or someone else.

Years spent actively pursuing indifference have left me with a general tendency toward indifference. This is causing problems.

Wow what do you fucking know
If you think something over and over it becomes your thoughts
Beat your thoughts to the mold of your will.
Fuuuck.
Anyway work tomorrow and shit so time for the SONG OF THE NOOOOW.