The fundamental problem with my decision to leave the Internet was the loneliness, and feeling mute. So I came back.

However, this has been an valuable experience for me. I found that I had to use the computer for several things (like working on my budget), and as long as I had a very specific purpose for being on the computer, I could set myself a time limit and be off that computer after working on it. Or, in other words, I might have found a way to live with the computer without it taking over my life. It helps that I have a thing strapped to my waist which I have set to vibrating at fifteen-minute intervals, so that I can tell myself "I'll work for fifteen minutes" and then stop when I feel the vibration.

I'm going to work on developing a flexible schedule-routine for doing things.

Also, I've been getting more walks. That's good.

I'll probably be around somewhat less, but I'll be here. And my games can resume. That's a big reason I came back, actually, I had all kinds of ideas boiling in my head which demanded vent in the games (especially the Utena-inspired one), and I didn't want them to languish too long.

Besides, I said "up to a month", not "absolutely completely a month, and I'm sticking to it". I've already learned some possibilities, so it's already yielded positive results. I might've learned more by sticking it out, but I also might've gone insane.

Time to end this post and do something else. Have a good time, all my friends.

Okay. Bye until about December 8, give or take. I've spent today taking care of anything requiring the computer. Until my sojourn away has ended, I'll only turn it on when need really calls.

If you need anything, comment in this space. I'll get to it in December.

I didn't vote today. Went to try for a provisional ballot, but I pushed it late and forgot to get exact directions to the polling place. This sort of thing was why I didn't vote in 2000, too, didn't send in my absentee ballot in time (I was in college at the time).

Instead of voting, I walked around a little. And I sort of cracked, in a way that I hadn't done for quite some time.

Was wandering down 8th Avenue, out of my mind a little and knowing it. Had some interesting thoughts about "Why the hell am I here? What'm I to do in life?" Talked to myself and tried assuming the personalities of assorted characters to help me snap out of it. English was the one who helped the most and managed to nudge me back toward home while I was part way across the bridge to Pittsburgh. I like her. I know it's weird talking about my characters like this, but it's almost like a muse-relationship.

I entered a merry, almost maniac mood as I walked back and on the way did some needed shopping (groceries and such). Was very happy. Somewhere on the way, I got the idea to take a break from the Internet, indeed, the computer itself. I mean, I wake up with a mind to do a few things for the day but first check just a few things on the computer, and then it's nighttime. This is almost a spiritual thing, too, in a way, as spiritual as an atheist can get, anyway. Like a fast.

On this break, I could:

• Read the books on managing ADD I recently got
  
• Implement those organization strategies
  
• Possibly do some writing. Some of my most productive times've been on vacation away from the computer, and I do have a notebook.
  
• Do considerably more walking and exploration.
  
• And more.

Stuff like that. I'm thinking of one month at most. The issue here would be it disrupting the games I run, and I'm in another one just about to start. I think I need to do this, though, or something similar. I need so badly to shake myself up. I'm not going to start it right now, though. I'm going to prepare for it first, print out some reference materials I'll need for some of the stuff I'm thinking of doing, stuff like that.

I still have my old problems. Attention issues still plague me, and I still end up randomly concentrating passionately on things that bring me some pleasure but don't necessarily do much in the way of long-term improvements. Not only that, but I often end up neglecting other people. It doesn't help that I have trouble just with my own needs, let alone others.

In this house, I'm still socially isolated. The possibility of increased interaction hasn't worked in practice, largely because of the language barriers and the difficulties of crossing that. I expected slow progress on that front, but I didn't expect apparently zero progress. But, then, my ex's the only one I've known to learn sign language that rapidly, advancing to halting frequency within the space of a single summer or not much more, I think? Maybe more, but the point is that she was the exception to the rule. bossgoji had willingness, but it turned out harder work than expected.

I'm not sure how I feel about all this. The estrogen does slightly odd things to my emotions, I think, though I find it pleasant that for example I deal far better with anger for example. Or so it seems. Not that I don't still feel those things, but they seem easier to control. I seem more conscious of an overall detachment, but looking back, I can't think of when I haven't exhibited that detachment, I only seem more aware of feeling it.

How much of this is the estrogen, and how much of it is just the other changes in my life, moving to another state and such? How much of it is just regular life drift? Not using sign language at all (as opposed to back home when I mostly just used writing due to sitting in front of the computer screen all day but at least got in some signing with my immediate family)?

Finally, I've been looking at deaf groups in the area. Only one regular group I found through an online lookup, and they're some kinda club with membership fees and regular get-togethers as well as official meetings with well-defined (likely decades old like at least some of the rules, or the club itself) orders of procedure. I abandoned Deaf culture because it didn't offer me much besides a chance to stand around quietly and be out of the loop and occasionally make small chitchat. I don't know what seeking out this group would bring me, or if it would give anything bother trying for.

And, now really actually finally: in my experiences, what has gone wrong hasn't been the things I made actual plans for going haywire, mostly, but more the results of things I hadn't considered, or expected changes failing to happen because it takes more than just that, after all. So, I just try and go on, and that's life for me. Keep trying even with a bad historical record, heh.

On a note related to the last post, today I just told myself, "See, the secret is to open that scary one-way door that leads to a place you really want to go, and walk through it. Then keep doing it again and again until it actually sticks and you're no longer ending up where you were before. Until you're at that other place for good."

In short, embrace a future that's different from what you've known so far.

There's a lot of neophobic, xenophobic crap floating around in the cultural waters like raw sewage, like lumps of poop. Some of its slimy grime seemed to have rubbed off on me as I grew up, and I still struggle with that sometimes. Pure irrational reaction against something outside the familiar. And I grew up in a liberal family, too, even.

I feel like Little Albert, who was tortured as a baby into developing a phobia of anything associated with bunnies by people who never saw him in a truly personal light. All just for the sake of science, thank goodness my country and others banned such experiments. Or, in my case, all for some imprinted culture.

Some of this is human nature, mind, but it's also exaggerated by culture.

As I wrote this, I felt quite angry about this. Not so much now that I'm posting it, but it still bothers me.

On the positive side, goofy Japanese latex costume pictures are pretty healing.