we all hide who we are

This is from an email letter I wrote to a young mother in summer of 2010 who was feeling devastated with a life crippling illness making normal parenting almost impossible. The hard copy I printed out is a time-stamped proof of who I am. I have been sharing a very arduous personal journey for many years online, but all people see on the internet is just that. Well, there is truth, and then there is truth. 

Hi, J- 

Your mom occasionally forwards emails you send out, so I just read your latest one about Job.

I could write a lengthy book here, but I'm not going to. (Actually... ok, it's a book.) I don't openly share a lot about myself and my own pain that I've endured since my mid-20s, partly because others don't have the stamina to keep encouraging me since this is nonstop. They are at a loss what to say or do for me, and I have learned to 'let them off the hook' so they won't feel guilty for neglecting me. I've been literally abandoned by two different churches over ten years, which are still very painful memories for me. I've had many and very long personal conversations with God and have come to realize this is about me, not them, not the churches. Yes, it is shameful when churches let people with great challenges fall through cracks, but where 2 or 3 are gathered in His name, there He is among them, and as you know, we are NEVER alone.

I'm glad to hear you still have some support, mostly via that doctor who you know so well. At least that is something. I lost my 17 year long history with Cox when our insurance changed and I had to flip to St. John's, which forced me to drag through a long list of new specialists and spend tens of thousands more in copays, deductibles, tests, and ER to reestablish a new history, despite 500 pages of medical hardcopy from Cox. And ~still~ they debate about what is going on with me, and I have no relief. I was told by a pain specialist last year that he was afraid to even try a pain shot in my neck in radiology (fluoro needle guidance, they call it), as I have become so chemically and physically sensitive that my body reacts instantly now with lupus-like reactions even to the smallest disturbance. I no longer take contrast with MRIs because I finally had allergic reaction. I've had nearly every test from head to toe, and joke that I've had more brain scans than any person I know.

Then I see warnings on the news or something about radiation from over testing causing cancer, and I just laugh my head off.

The hardest part, as you were expressing, is losing vital social contact, losing activity that defines us, losing connections and hopes. Many people who go through these feelings go through horrible depressions and sometimes suicide. People who have never been through this don't understand the depth of despair we must wade through simply just facing the reality of being alone in our pain and defeats.

On top of the pain, there is the added insult of going through regular illness, or worse, debilitating illness that does not strike others because they are normal enough to handle it. Being worn down from pain and medications leaves a person especially vulnerable. A couple of years ago I spent months recovering from CMV, one of a thousand types of mono that most people never even know they have, and I lost even more ability and became so weak and foggy brained that I could barely function. I rarely tell anyone how bad things get, but I'm sure you know the drill.

I don't know if you blog, but there are MANY of us 'out there'. My biggest relief was finding other people who know how I feel, even if I just lurk and don't interact. My biggest challenge is facing death every single day (because it FEELS like death, and the doctors keep checking, and even though I ~seem~ healthy, this pain is daily death), and not falling into despair.

Some years ago it dawned on me that God 'gave' me lupus (or allowed it) to teach me something. We've reached the conclusion (so far) that this is a neurological illness that cause lupus flareups and is now affecting my brain (but no damage seen yet, thank goodness), but the common thread through it all is that it constantly ~slows me down~. Why? I think back on my life and realize that slowing down gives a person volumes of time to think, deeper realizations to reach, conclusions that others may not get to until old age or sudden horrible accident. I'm actually being allowed to learn *gently*. No sudden impact on my life that rips my world apart, just this long slow daily trudge, a death that has so far spanned two decades.

Realizing this point of view, I began to question- what am I to learn? I'm already forced to become the most patient longsuffering person I know, so what is this all for? I look at the world around me, busy Christians running hither and yon, and realize even more that I've already lost everything and have learned to be content. I can't even sit in my yard under a shade tree on a cloudy day without risking severe burns (I also have PLE, polymorphous light eruption), I can't walk through Walmart (and I crash into things when I drive a motorcart, gets pretty funny unless you're someone I've just barely missed), I can't travel with Scott to Florida when he sees his dad (travel in any form devastates me, I can be ill for months after a long road trip because of what sitting does to my spine and nervous system, despite all precautions), it's all I can do to meet my sisters at a restaurant every 6 months for a meal and then I need to go home right away while I can still handle a car. I seem to have a 'window' on good days, after that window closes my body and brain shut down and I become quite dangerous on the road.

(Much of this in the above paragraph has been resolving over the last couple of years, although I'm still nowhere back to any kind of real normal.)

I don't like telling people all this stuff, because I despise the 'you poor thing', although I don't mind the 'bless your heart' stuff. People can bless my heart all they want, just don't make a weird puppy face and put me in a spotlight.

What I want is to LAUGH. I told God some years ago, as I lay in my bed in such sadness for all that I'd lost in life, what I want is JOY, like the little lambs that bounce around in the fields. If I can have nothing else back, at least give me that.

Joy came to me that day and has never left. It's very real. I feel like I have a blanket around me, and even though I still go through my daily trudge and still have crippling pain and utterly embarrassing brain fog and seemingly no hope for 'happiness' and 'fun' with other people, I have an insight that fills me with stuff I can't even describe to you. It's like stepping outside of myself and being able to really see the bigger picture, the wondrous stuff. Never before in my life have I had understanding like I do now. I see patterns in human behavior, I see unique aspects in every person, and even though I'm NOT the feel-goodity type that loves the human race (I have Asperger's, I joke all the time that I was naturally born to hate people), I see their 'insides', pains and anguishes, almost like I see their hair and eyes.

I have chickens. I've often wondered what it must be like to live that way, no kisses or hugs for comfort, no privacy or escape from the group, no words to explain, and I can't even twist my mind around putting my head upside down while standing up and keeping my balance, on one foot while I'm at it. Encumbered by long pin feathers out of every part of my body. But if you watch them long enough, you see that they do find comfort. Even on hot nights, they roost shoulder to shoulder. If one is having a bad day, it squeezes into the middle. I used to think chickens were cruel, because they peck each other, but when Spencer (my freaky-outy chicken) flew cackling back to the group from the woods, Macy (the boss) pecked her in the face till she shut up, and it hit me that's what it was, "shut up, you fool, something could have followed your screeching back from the woods and gotten us all". Another time Spencer cried and cried because she was sick and molty in the winter time, and all the chickens gathered real close and grabbed little neck feathers in their beaks. At first it seemed mean, but as I watched I realized it comforted her to have them all right there, paying attention, and when she quit crying they still stood quietly by her.

Humans are like that. God watches us 'flock' together, doing what we do to comfort each other, or hang out doing stuff. And He can see us like I see my chickens. Only better, because He doesn't get tired and go in for a nap like I do. Just like I know every inch of each chicken and know from day to day how they are feeling and what brings them joy or fear, so God knows us. And if we have the time (most people don't have the time at all), God shows us ~us~, the way He sees us, and shows us how to see each other the way He sees us.

There was a reason God allowed me to be stripped of everything that made me me. He is creating a new me, a more blessed me who is less attached to this body and the things of this world, and more insightful to His real plans for us. What I used to think I wanted to do for Him was only a distraction. He wants more of me. Maybe I can no longer sit in a church pew or visit people in hospitals or get involved with VBS (and I do still miss all that), but what I can do is amazing. We have the power to transcend our bodies, and our pain. Doesn't mean we don't have pain, and I'm not for one moment downplaying your pain. I've had long weeks, months, years of pain that all but ruined me, and I'm here to say there IS hope, and light at the end of a tunnel, if you want to use that visual. Almost adding insult to injury, in what is one of the big cosmic jokes of the century, I am now allergic to so many meds that I no longer take pain killers. Yowza. No muscle relaxers, nada. I took handfuls of meds for years until the meds themselves nearly killed me. A swollen liver is no fun. And here I am, still going. Severely limited, but still going.

I discovered about 4 years ago that I can blog in such a way that I attracted a LOT of people. I found out that others were looking for the same things I was looking for, and they found me in the search engines, and I gave them hope. I tend to be more comical about it, but it held true for just about anything anyone was going through. There are certain things we are all here to learn, and I just happen to be on the fast track. I realized that just by sitting in my house I could reach thousands of people all over the world in an instant. Who knew a hopeless middle aged puny person could actually make other people feel better just by moving her fingers?

I have talked to a LOT of people online, all ages. Kids who have completely lost faith in their parents' religions (usually Christianity), women who secretly cut and abuse themselves out of guilt, men with rage problems that destroy their relationships, kids with terminal illnesses, you name it, I've run into it. Or they have found me. The biggest problem common to all of us is that we don't feel accepted or loved, we don't feel forgiven or forgivable, we feel lost in a big maze of people, none of us have lives like what we see on TV, and we all hide who we are. Even with all this technology and the most psychologically healthy century this planet has ever known, we are afraid to TALK to one another. Really talk.

God isn't finished with you yet, as they say. You will (hopefully) round a corner where you kinda forget about yourself and what you left behind. You'll see a way forward and feel useful again. You'll feel less picked on and more guided through your body. I have learned that any kind of pain spike when I'm around people means I am to ~shut up~ and let them talk. It's happened so often it's like I'm trained. I'll be fine, I'll be ready to open my mouth, pain spikes through my head or arm or something, and after I keep my mouth shut, someone else says something that was either more important and needing to come out, or shined more light on what I really should be saying, not what I thought I should be saying. I feel like a horse with a bridle on, like what happens in my body guides me. I am meant NOT to be more involved in certain ways, not because it's a bad thing, but maybe God wants others to figure things out their own ways. Maybe He wants me to enjoy THEIR singing (I sang in a church choir on TV, I know what you mean about missing singing). Maybe He even wants me to go out of my way to tell them how much I enjoyed THEM. And I'm not a flowery compliment-y kind of person, but I'm learning that other people need to hear it. It's like, and I hope you are 'old enough' in your pain now to appreciate this, it's like the weaker ones need the attention. Us stronger ones are subdued out of the way. Because, J, you are quite a strong person. You may not feel like it right now, and you may even resent me saying this, but you are so strong that you overshadow others. We are like a garden, God tends to us.

You said someone said that you are like Job (I happen to love that book, in my top 5 faves in the bible, because I love cranky people, and Job, honestly, was a demanding whiner who glorified in his suffering just to annoy his 'useless' friends) (ok, that's just my interpretation, but nevertheless), anyway, the point being made that every pain was being used against you, etc. That is true in the beginning and can be true for many years. Yeah, there's no 'escape' for people like us. BUT. God wouldn't have allowed it if you weren't strong enough. You are SO strong that Satan is taunted by your presence and takes glee in your suffering. The more you writhe in agony and anguish, the more he glories over you.

Or not... There comes a point in the human soul when a person has had enough, and pain becomes meaningless. It will simply always be there. There are men on this planet (and women, no doubt) who have suffered terrible things, many for 'nothing'. Men spend years in foreign prisons, starving, beaten, and tortured. People die in terrible fires, a horrible pain I would never trade this life for, no matter how fleeting that pain is. Men have had their heads hacked off, women have been stoned to death, all for others' whims or beliefs or madness, and mostly for 'nothing' but Satan's glee. Just being born on this planet means we suffer, in every conceivable way, whether physically, mentally, emotionally. Millennia of billions of people suffering. We must not let our recent illusion of freedom and shopping whisper that we somehow deserve to escape suffering, just because we live in a new nation with ideals and people going soft with cushy lives and what the rest of the world would call wealth.

What we choose is how we handle what we bear. We can become bitter, or we can become joyous, yes, even in our suffering. I had to ask for it, there was no way I could become joyous on my own. Life can sparkle again, even on your worst days. Little moments can transcend what once were great deeds (in our eyes). Perhaps that is the whole point- the little moments are more important and more precious than "a life well lived". It's hard not to feel envious of others who 'work for the Lord' and whatever, have sooooo been there. It's not fair, it's cruel fate, it's ironically stupid. But you are given an opportunity others won't be given because they are not strong enough for this kind of challenge- to step back, to see the bigger picture that God sees, and to become something even better. The key is to let go of the feelings that naturally come with being stopped in your tracks like this. Bitter disappointments, resentment, despair (no hope), anger. These things eventually fall away like scabs, but we must stop picking at them. Let go of what you ~could~ have been. Embrace who you are now, love your poor body for what it must go through to serve (it helps me to think of my body as my steed, my faithful companion through thick and thin, my vehicle that keeps clunking along no matter what, even if it has to crawl- I actually feel sorry for it having to go through this with me), prepare to rise to the challenge being asked of you, and pray for peace on your soul, protection from more harm, safety from disaster (read your tornado letter, too, that was amazing), pray for everything else to be EASY and SMOOTH, because your life is already hard enough. And pray for joy. Approach the throne boldly with your requests, knowing God will take care of you. It's hard to do that when we feel punished daily, with no reward of relief.

Off the subject, but one sleepless night as I lay on the couch asking God what it's all for, I suddenly thought to ask Him who I am, please show me who I am. I had the most awesome dream that night, one of those attitude altering dreams. I was so wowed, and there is no way I can describe it. All I can do is recommend trying it yourself, dive into metaphysical philosophical questioning (be demanding like Job!), and some really incredible stuff will be shared with you.

Love you. I won't say 'hang in there' because when people say that to me I'm usually mentally crumpled up in a heap on the floor and the hanging in there part is long over, but at least know that a shovel is coming to scrape you back up off the floor and set you back into a chair, and that even if this happens over and over, you soon learn to enjoy the shovel ride. I know, things get weird when you visualize through pain, but it really does work.

Again, some of my problems have been somewhat resolving, especially the pain levels I lived with for many years, and it's weird to look back at it now. I did leave one thing out in that letter, and that was to pray for healing. I did that one day about 6 months after I wrote this letter. I wrote down what happened at gotta see your face some more. I'll put an excerpt over.

Through all these things I've been learning how to balance my natural innate negativity through embracing publicity, challenging my baditudes and praying to be good for other people. I have prayed for 2 things for myself through the years. Usually prayers are for other people or all of us or something, but 2 very definite things I have prayed for myself.

• Years ago during my worst illness and growing ugliness (hair loss, weight gain, attitude affected by meds and pain), I cried and told God if I must lose everything else, at least let Scott come home happy to see my face. I looked pretty rough for a few years, and I had to stop fixing my hair and wearing makeup. I couldn't afford nice clothes with all the money going out for medical, and we went bankrupt before I wound up with full disability. I was so depressed. God, please let Scott be happy to see my face, because I don't know how he can stand to even look at me. Well, my hair still hasn't gone gray and I barely have a wrinkle on my whole face and I'm 56. I've been told that being on estrogen therapy for 20 years can do that, but was also told I'd start aging very quickly after getting off those in 2012. Not really holding my breath resisting, still can't wear makeup, but I've been able to grow my hair back out and Scott and I laugh together about something every day. I'm glad to see his face because he's my best friend, and I guess and hope he's still glad to see mine, even when I still have bad days and get very cranky with him, and he doesn't deserve it. My brain is my enemy on those days, not him.
• I also reached a point where I prayed for healing. I was raised stoicly believing that to pray for one's own anything was vain, so I've never really prayed for my own well being. We are all here to learn through our suffering, right? Well, after some deep thought just before I met my latest doctor in 2011, just before Christmas of 2010, I prayed for healing. I had come through some very hard years of months and months of back to back viral illnesses on top of severe nearly unlivable nerve disorder pain, and I was reaching a point where I wasn't sure I could keep hanging on out of spiritual duty. I was breaking inside and could no longer hide it. I reasoned for a few days that if I really do pray for healing, I mustn't be stupid about it. God doesn't work miracles for us to toss it back. If I commit to that prayer, then I commit to true healing with everything possible I can do to help take care of myself. I wouldn't get better to be stupid about it and ruin my health again. One day I was ready and I prayed. The next day the holes in my pierced ears had both closed up. They had never done that in 20 years. I immediately decided it would be blasphemous to get them repierced and gave all my earrings away. From then on has all been positive progress. It has been long and hard, but I wound up with the best possible primary care doctor, got diagnosed immediately and fast tracked so the right specialists and physical therapy. Years of doctors before him were just struggles with very addicting medications and the long slow descent into the hell of premature aging, without hope.

So laying there in pre-op, I knew I am ready now. I've done what I've apparently set out to do in this life coming to this earth, and I felt at peace. I've learned how to heal relationships, how to take much better care of myself, how to network with other real people with success and hope in mind for all of us. And I want to continue that. I know I'll have brain crash days and be very mixed up and brain chemical spills splashing on others, and I hope they can keep forgiving me. I'm facing a future of dementia as I age, and since brain problems run in my family, I've accepted the idea that I need to keep brain training now while I can to be good for people before I lose more control of this wonderful machine I live in.

This is very long and right now my brain is tired. I've made it through nearly 24 hours of fairly high dose opioids and enjoyed it immensely, but soon I let it go again. Addiction is a bitch, protracted withdrawal will make me mean again, and I wanted to write these feelings out before I forget I had them.

I really like this song, it got me through a lot of hard. At the time, I was deep in hanging on through fandoms. If you are having a rough life, so many hugs to you. 💗💗💗 Bless your heart. 

 

wisdom & understanding

James 1:5 (KJV) "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him." 

I was fairly youngish, early teens I think, when I ran into that verse on my own. I got baptized I think in 1974, pretty sure I was 13, and I never even thought about it being Mother's Day, but later I found out my mom was pleased about that. That's mostly how I remember about when it was because I am horrible with dates. My dad bought me my first bible, real leather dyed a beautiful blue, like this, 

although it partially faded to a sort of weird mossy green in patches over many years and heavy use. My dad rarely picked out anything to buy for me himself, so that made a big impact on me. Anyway, by the time I read that verse I was probably 14 or 15.

I took that verse very seriously. I very seriously prayed to God for wisdom and I have never forgotten it, partly because I've so monumentally screwed up my life a few times 😂, partly because I've learned so much from being an idiot so often, and partly because people have actually told me I'm wise. I've also been called a prophet several times. I said all that to say I wasn't instantly given a head full of utter wisdom, but in my opinion, that prayer created a thread of understanding I would eventually come to deeply appreciate.

I won't repeat all my idiocies because I've been blogging so long that they're probably all out there somewhere. Anyone who wants dirt on me can easily find it because I spent so much time dissecting my life, which I used to call doing an autopsy, spreading my brain out like a bunch of guts trying to see what happened.

If you are new to me, I am a dissociated person with scattered memories and fairly severe time disorientation, so blogging helps me keep a few things straight. I cycle through rethinking and remembering every so often, and through years of blogging I have discovered I can stay on track a little better if I do a yearly review.

So ten years ago I was PinkyGuerrero on twitter, freshly back from a hiatus where I completely stopped logging into internet, which was very refreshing. If you'd like to know more about my past without having to go dig, here you go. You're welcome.

5 years from now and scaffolding 👈click (I'll wait.)

Awesome, now I can skip all the rest of the in between stuff and move along. I can actually get to my point faster now.

Coming back out public was a focused attempt at a couple of goals I set to get through intense challenges, including a life crash involving my entire nervous and immune systems that sent me spiraling through 18 years of disabilities and depressions that were literally sink or swim, life or death. I'm doing much better now, but along the way I was easily distracted from my purpose and used by others for mostly attention and head gaming on social medias, but also by some who saw me as a possible money maker for things they were wanting to do. I bounced around like a pinball, nested with a group here and there, disentangled, moved on, etc. A lot of it looked like a waste of time, some of it was pure fail, but along the way, I kept blogging, kept writing, at least stayed focused on the discipline of what I was trying to do, even if I was flailing around and hitting walls. Pinky grew a small weird world fan base that turned into very weird business trolling, and I'm still getting contacted several times a week by people wanting to turn my stuff into their money.

I'm very tired of all that. I've learned loads, yes, but the last ten years of online presence have been ridiculous and not me but people steering me. As my psychologist said many years ago, I am easily led. I'm tired of that. I want to let go, delete everything, just live a very quiet life.

But I prayed for wisdom... My compulsion to keep checking the world pulse, keep seeing what you guys are thinking about it all, keep finding deeper truths and meanings, keep discovering who we really are in all this madness is what has driven me all my life. I was born to see not just bigger but biggest picture. Me and God have been talking this out all my life and I'm obviously not done yet. And God apparently wants me to keep writing because he literally helped me come back from such massive fail over so many years that I've become very, very good at it, despite ALL the challenges.

So I was in church about 3 weeks ago thinking about how I'd like to stop, just let this all go, and I got NO. So I asked what I can even do, I've screwed up my purpose so much skewing into entertainment writing and hanging out with weird crowds, and I got BE YOURSELF. And then I got KEEP WRITING. And that was really interesting because I had completely stopped writing for the first time since 2012. Over the last few months I've barely blurbed, and I didn't miss it.

Be myself.

Keep writing.

And then I saw it, how to do it. I saw how to keep it simple. I saw how to say it.

It would seem I'm not finished yet.

Back to wisdom and understanding, and I'll say this very simply. Sometimes you gotta throw up on a roller coaster ride before walking a path makes sense. Sometimes seeing from other angles and perspectives highlights why a path is important.

And here I'll say exactly how I see it.

This world was always magical and beautiful and bountiful, and coming into this world to experience it was always meant to be a blessing. Being here experiencing and learning the way we do is a neat thing. We're not just a tree or an animal, we're not stuck like a rock, we're not unattached like a wind. We can see and say after we do and experience. We can weep and enjoy and create and hug and learn so many things in a world like this.

But this world has been a captured operation from the git-go. Call it what you will, describe it how you wish, the fact remains that from the very start this 'program' was interrupted for reasons outside of US. We are captives in a very long war for control and dominance. Some call it Satan, some call it ETs, some call it AI, some call it the controllers, and so much more. I've been out there looking at all the ways people see this and all the things they call it and all the ways they describe it, and the common theme behind everything is that this world was interrupted from the outside by an outsider, not of this world. One of the reasons we've been given is that this outsider influence was bitterly upset about the way this world was set up for US and has been ever since influencing us to tear it up, destroy it, rebuild it, run it all differently, and we're to the point now of completely reprogramming every living thing on this earth if you look into all the research. Modification of plants, animals, humans, weather, gowing cycles, you name it, it has been or is being modified or is in process of planning for modification. Everything natural is being rewritten, recoded, reconstructed, restructured, redirected into MACHINE.

Because there is no other kind of natural. There is no other way to remake this world without making it a machine. The entire thing.

Who in their right mind would even want that? Who in the world could possibly think that big and that long to have been working on this for not just all our lives, but all our history? 

Who, indeed.

So that got me to really thinking from a different point of view. We might ask where God is in all this, why isn't he doing something about it...

I'm about to be very disturbing for some of you. I'll put it into simple religious terms and you guys maybe let the idea percolate and then see if it applies to the world we see around us.

Originally, if there is really a Lucifer, God loved him just as he loved all he creates. God isn't a hater. God likes making cool stuff and cool beings to enjoy cool stuff. God is a cool guy. If the story is even partially true, someone threw a fit about us being created on this world. Not just a fit, a nasty tantrum, an argument that led to heaven (whatever that really is) being ripped apart. So this isn't just about us, and we might not even be the main characters in this long story. If that or something like that really happened, whether you call it ETs or programmers or controllers or even an ancient artificial intelligence, very honestly given our worldwide history, then there is a main character outside of our understanding and a plot going on around something we aren't even part of BUT are captured into.

Let's think this through.

Our world was set up to be awesome by Someone. A someone else got upset about it to the point of a real war being fought over it and the dissenting followers all being banished from whatever. They hijacked the system, our world, with a vendetta that is lasting for many, many thousands of years. The goal appears to be to 'reinvent' this world into a different image and purpose, and the strategy seems to be using human minds to get this done, however long this takes.

Cut back to Someone, who also set up the someone else. The Someone loves all that he/she/it invents, even the wayward. The Someone is allowing the someone else to capture and try to control with conditions. We humans are prisoners of war, as it were, BUT when we cry out from our souls on 'the name of the Lord', we are allowed clemencies and given perks. We get cheats because it's not our faults this happened to us. And the someone else is being given every opportunity to say You know what, I was stupid and did a dumb thing and I'm sorry, because the Someone is that gracious, that cool, that tolerant, that every chance is being given for all this to turn around. But it's going to play out because someone else is so selfish and mean that every last one of us (or nearly) will be wrung to death off this earth before the Someone calls Time and makes it all stop and then says YOU'RE DONE.

I think we'd see it like letting someone wreck something up to make a point.

And I think that is why there is such dissonance in the bible about humans being so blessed and still being so tortured. Just making it through all this makes us heroes, and if there really are angels assisting and betting on outcomes, this is a very big deal that we don't even have a clue about.

And again, whatever words you want to insert to make sense, basically I'm saying that whatever is going on in politics and whatever, it's all part of a much bigger war over this world than we can imagine.

And if that truly is the case, it really is going to play out until it's just all wrecked or something. It might not look wrecked, like if whoever is left is herded into smart cities and transitioned into the machine, yeah, it might look like peace on earth, but free will might arguably be gone forever. (If you aren't aware of the UN agendas, digging into those might help with understanding what is coming.)

And back to wisdom again. I was out there getting lost in all the info, sifting and sorting it all out from opinionating and media whitewashing. I found stuff that would curl your eyeballs and melt your brains. The undertaking to synchronize us all into agendas is massive. But it's important to understand that is God's thing. He's the one monitoring the drags on his creation, he's the one judging when the time is right to say ENOUGH, he's the one keeping track of all the pain being dealt out on the rest of us. From where I am right now, wisdom for me is stepping back away from all that now. Focusing back on being myself is the right thing to do. I am a tiny person in a big world, and I'd really like to enjoy being here, now that some of my big challenges are resolving, because originally, that is what this world was made for, for me to enjoy being here loving my people. I'm done with the fear crap all around us, done with the head game playing and mind bending and compulsions to react.

My life here is between me and God.

[cliques] and menus

click to send an ecard

Happy New Year! Hope 2023 is kind to everyone reading this and all your families and friends. I've always liked Chinese New Year, but in these times I feel like I need to disclaim that I am not a CCP sympathizer. I really feel bad for people still being locked down in massive control measures and counter measures. So many people in the world have suffered for many years, becoming aware of it is probably a very good thing.

I've been rolling a few thoughts around for awhile.

We all like belonging to a group, a niche, as a friend used to call it. We all like looking at menus of some kind. In the olden days in my life, this would have described going out to a restaurant with friends and family.

I've been thinking for awhile about interactive clicks and dropdown menus in gaming. The particular game I've been playing for awhile is Elvenar. I'm sure all gaming is full of this kind of coding, but since it's so over the top on Elvenar, I think about it while I play. Of course there were countdowns in Minecraft for various productions, the days and nights passing, how many 'tics' until something dropped but not picked up dissipated or until produce ripened, etc. Elvenar is 100% tic countdowns. There's no running as an avatar 'physically' building a structure you can walk through in game. Elvenar is more like a ledger game, constantly keeping track of hundreds of countdown timers and the cost/benefit of real time choices against all those countdowns. 

Since I'm a time-disoriented person who winds up at appointments at wrong times, wrong days, even wrong weeks or even months once in awhile (despite calendars and a pocket planner), learning to stay focused through all those countdowns has been a bit grueling, but after right around 3 years of playing, it has really sharpened my awareness. I still don't actually feel time passing, sometimes finding by accident that several hours have gone by and I've forgotten to eat or do something important, but I'm learning to gauge time passing by countering that with real life productions. If I can list a number of things I've gotten done during the day, I can fairly accurately guess how much time as passed without once looking at the time. I was never able to transfer that kind of application from Minecraft to real life.

I used to gauge my time by TV scheduling, but notoriously smashed my days together so badly that I usually got it wrong. I don't do that any more. I barely look at clocks any more. The only time I need clocks is to sync into other people's daily schedules, like knowing when to make a phone call or something. 

Everything in my life is either clickable or nonclickable. Finding a recipe is clickable. Actually cooking food is nonclickable. Productions in interface are clickable. Productions in real life are nonclickable. Ordering chicks and seeds online is clickable. Actually growing either one is nonclickable. 

We already had the equivalent of drop down menus in our heads. I've been aware since I was young that I constantly run loops and counters. If this, then this or that. In game isn't very different. 

The niche is easier than real life. Compatibility sorts itself online. People look for groups that already fit their own agendas. If an oddball refuses to fit, sometimes a group will banish to reclaim a more peaceful production level. It's fairly impersonal for the most part unless a person has trouble not extending their emotional life into whatever group they wind up in. Sometimes peer pressure wins out, sometimes a bossy person becomes a group leader, but mostly it's about how advantageous is peer pressure to your gaming style. A person can reflect a bit on real life if they notice how that works. 

It's a litte different on social medias, which I've become extremely tired of. Information and funny things are fine, people having meltdowns and getting into fights is ridiculous. I don't have time for that.

One thing I've been noticing for awhile is that AI-guided intraction or interface seems to be as much about group sync as anything. Who is right or wrong doesn't matter so much as how quickly a mass will fall into sync with either side and the methods that work most efficiently and reliably. Most people don't notice how quickly they line up on their own without much persuasion. Trigger a familiar phrase or color pattern and they're sorted in minutes, not bothering to vet the trigger source, which is sometimes directly contrary to what they believe. People are easy like that. Give them familiar clicks and menus and they nest wherever you trigger them to. 

For the most part, I'm not against easy organization, easy interface, and smooth experiences, but I guess it's become the cult rage to notice that the easier it all is, the easier we are to control as real world populations, even when we aren't online in some form. I've been naturally irritatingly roguishly but mostly accidentally rebellious all my life, thanks to austism spectrum, and my first and biggest fail trying to join a crowd is how quickly I rile feathers and throw wrenches in monkeyworks and pretty much blissfully irk people around me so badly that they're happy to see me leave. I don't mean to be like that, I'm just naturally constantly backward engineering how everything around me works, which is very laborious and distracting but also an incredible joy to me. If my mind isn't busy figuring something out, I get so fantastically bored that I start all kinds of trubbas.

Here is a simple true story to illustrate how I affect not just the people around me, but entire franchises. I worked at Sonic one year, which I very much enjoyed, but I couldn't help coloring out of all the lines. This was many years ago. If you've ever had a cherry vanilla soft drink, that was just the beginning of my experimentation. I did things with limeades that had our little town in a tizzy, including floats. I put limes in everything with every flavor and the drink orders coming in after I started work there grew so complicated that the boss started charging for every single additional flavor. My favorite snack to order was a cheese sandwich with added bacon, which was over a dollar cheaper than a bacon sandwich with cheese, which was identical. I had the entire town eating cheese sandwiches with bacon, and the boss finally put a halt to it. No more additions to cheese sandwiches, because there was no way he could charge so much extra for bacon to make it equal to the bacon with cheese. These things rippled through the franchise and became corporate menu decisions. I don't know if that is still a thing after so many years, but back then it was a big deal.

Imagine me fixing a $7M tagging mistake in a retail store. In one hour flat I affected a worldwide manufacturer and a nationwide retail chain, and I got in trouble because I bypassed my manager to make the phone calls. I never got a promotion or even acknowledged. My manager got a very nice salary increase. I can't tell you how many times I was called into the office to be told I'd be fired if I didn't stop doing something. Everything I did fixed problems, but I didn't follow protocols or go through proper channels, so I was a bad person. The only way I survived 5 years in that store was by dumbing down my work ethic, although I was told that the entire middle pad fell apart for awhile after I left.

I've corrected college professors for being vague enough on test questions to allow either/or answers and automatically raised scores for entire classes. That, by the way, isn't cool in a chemistry class. Many people don't realize how vaguely they word test questions. But yeah, I don't mean to be irritating. I was born to be a natural pointer outer of incongruity. You'd think that would be valuable somewhere, but I've never found a real niche where that is actually valuable. I've even got stories of getting a hospital locked down several times over massive error of contagion that no one else caught, and that irritated so many people that my boss tried to pull me into administration just to calm everybody down. Meh, I just left.

Now I'm going to leap a weird fence and look at this inside out.

We can see our online activity just about anywhere we log in, like banking, gaming, shopping, writing, social medias. Logging in is like stepping into another world, a world within our real world. There are many worlds that we pop in and out of every day, even if it's not online. When we engage in a phone call, we create a temp world with an activity log. Everything like that is recorded. What about our real lives? We can't just pull up an activity log for what we did walking around our house or neighborhood for several hours. Or can we?

Many of us are nearly continually surveilled through smart tech in and around the buildings we are in, and sometimes around our neighborhoods if we are in smart cars, carrying phones or wearing fitness tech, in traffic, etc. That's a given. We all know this.

There is a place where our activity isn't measured. Maybe. Where is that? Well, if you have tech on around you, we're at the place now where it can 'read' your bio output and electrical activity to the point where even your thoughts can be discernable. If you are not aware of this, maybe it's time to go read up a little but on that kind of stuff.

Some of you know that everything is measured, even our thoughts, and it's not tech. We are all readable. Those of us who've had out of body and near death experiences understand that there this no such thing as real solitude or aloneness, and that our thoughts and feelings aren't secrets. We can interact from the inside of us without using the outside of us, which is our environment. Why do most of us not know this? Maybe it's because we've been taught all our lives that what we do in private is private, that we are separated from each other as physical beings, that our thoughts are autonomous and our own. What we really are from the very beginning of these lives is products of other people, our environments, our food supply, the treatment we receive, the expectations we are subjected to, the many many words of others all around us all the time, the many activity cycles of work and school and sports and holidays and shopping and entertainment....

We are products of this world.

What we do with ourselves as products is the challenge. Do we do as we are told and live up to expectations for emotional support and validation? Or do we take a look around and wonder why we don't go against the grain and stand up for something important once in awhile?

How do we decide what is important?

Our niches are prepurposed. Our activity logs are preset. Very few of us wander off the preconstructed path. Many of us stop at drop down menus. We don't invent ourselves, our lives, our activities. We think we make choices, but we don't choose what isn't on the menu.

Who do you want to be? What do you want to do or to happen in your life? What is important to you? 

I really do hope you have a great 2023. Some things will suck, some things will drag you back and progress will feel lost, some things will feel so fail that depression threatens to swallow you whole. BUT. As I learned through many many years of blogging, the inch forward sometimes means way more than the 10 feet you slide back. Every inch forward is real conquer, real work you put into what you want. Over time, every inch of discipline you train yourself into becomes marathon material.

I am an addict. I spent many years in health fail on handfuls of meds. There is nothing in this world that fixes anything quick. You can be wealthy and still feel completely bereft. You can be physically fit and still feel emotionally overwhelmed and drained. You can't fix anything with pills or drinks or money.

Do you love who you are? Do you want to? How do you find a way to love yourself? What do you change so that you can love yourself? 

That is the start. That is the path. And that is the goal. Everything else will get fixed along the way if you honestly ask yourself those questions and then honestly look at what sorts of answers you can say to yourself. 

Choose off the menu. Find your true niche, even if you think you are the only one. Make what you feel and want important enough to change what you need to love yourself.

You are important, and it's not just ok but vital that you learn to love yourself. Become the person you would love to be for those around you.

You can do this. Work on the inches. Forgive the fails. Keep your focus.

Invent your own menu.