As I write this, I’m sitting in a theater “watching” the (hopefully last) Indiana Jones movie. It’s too damn loud. And after less than 10 minutes, I hate everything about it. It’s clear they aren’t even trying to tell a decent story anymore. It’s all of the tired shit from the previous movies that was fun the first time or two, but that is beyond tired now. I want nothing to do with “artifacts” with mystical powers and caricatures of screaming Nazi bad guys. I’m tired of progressively implausible escapes. I’m tired of Harrison Ford. I’m tired of CGI taking the place of creativity and story telling. I’m tired of explosions covering all empty sound space.

I’m tired of popular culture in its entirety, and the laziness of those who would spoon feed me numbness in a bottle by way of a glowing screen.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that Hollywood is fully to blame. I think I have hit a point where I am impossible to satisfy. Almost everything either bores me, or makes me angry. Even a mindless adventure movie like the one I’m watching has to preach to me about racism. I’m sure it’ll get to gender theory and liberal feminism before long. Fuck Hollywood. I expect nothing more than to leave angry that the bastards got money out of my wallet, and that they took hours of my life for nothing. Because I expect that, my expectation will be fulfilled.

What’s wrong with me? I can’t stay happy. I can’t be happy for more than a few minutes. I’m excited and happy on the fire ground or responding to a medical emergency. A few hours later? I’m back where I was. I’m satisfied, if not happy, when I’m working on a project for myself. But that only lasts until I run out of energy, or money. I run out of energy much faster than I used to. Everything hurts too much. Even with the extra income that comes with working as an engineer, I can’t afford to entertain myself even in the reduced hours available to me after work and before I’m worn out.

I’m incredibly lonely much of the time. I have sort-of friends on the fire department, but only see them once a week unless there is an emergency. I have sort-of friends at work, but not really. I don’t really know how to be a friend, I think. I’m too screwed up. People don’t really want someone like me in their already busy lives. I disturb some with darkness. I make others uncomfortable because of my experiences and background that I’m terrible at keeping to myself. I’m too much of a heathen for the church crowd. I’m too straight-laced for the party set. I’m too much of a redneck hillbilly for the uppity crowd, and far too educated and have too much time in muckety-muck society to fit in with the rednecks. I’m a walking contradiction that makes me feel alone in almost every crowd.

I used to cope by staying super busy. I never let myself slow down enough to notice or at least think about it for very long. A therapist told me to slow down. Told me to spend time doing things just because. I started watching YouTube based on that advice a few years ago. Now I’m bored, but essentially addicted to it. And it has done nothing to make me feel better. All it has done is left me sapped of the motivation I need to do the things I used to do to cope. It has made me feel even more lonely and isolated than before. No friends. No interests. No progress.

I used to fill space with learning, but the “Academy” has lost it’s fucking mind. It is almost impossible to find interesting lectures or books that aren’t full of the new-age horse shit that preaches my privilege and original sin. Many of the great classics are hard for me to read now too since I find the eternal inhumanity almost universally addressed in them hard to swallow anymore. I feel bad enough as is without reading, listening to, or watching the corrupt nature of men, whether that’s part of “great literature” or a brainless attempt to paint white men as the perpetual oppressor and root of all evil.

My one enduring friend has found a new focus and commitments that contribute to my loneliness. I feel like in some respect I have taken a back seat to this new focus while I sit alone at night listening to the result while trying unsuccessfully to find something to watch on YouTube that doesn’t make me angry or depressed.

I understand that she spent years putting up with a similar but reversed situation. I don’t know how she did it. I have to figure it out though. This is important to her, and I need to support her. I just wish I were in a better place where I wasn’t already emotionally tapped out.

I wish I didn’t feel resentful when I spend a weekend on things I don’t want to do like go to a movie theater. I wish I didn’t feel resentful when I trade time and energy I wanted to use for a project trying to help keep up with things around the house. I wish I didn’t feel guilty when I don’t pick up all the slack so I can make some headway on something for myself. I wish I didn’t feel resentful when I lay in bed alone at night listening to practicing. I wish I didn’t feel like what I want doesn’t matter. I wish a lot of things I seem unable to bring to pass. It’s been that way for a long time.

When that happened, I don’t know. I was happy, hopeful, and generally satisfied most of my life. Shit happened and I moved on. Watching a very scary and sketchy childbirth (my niece) while my dad was in the hospital with cancer… bad, but I moved on. Dealing with chronic financial uncertainty as a kid… I moved on. A couple of scary car accidents… I moved on. Getting buried under a house from hell… I moved on. Terrible pregnancies that culminated in my kids being born early and struggling when they were newborn… I moved on. Schizophrenic and abusive brother in law… I moved on. Dangerous other brother-in-law who tried to kidnap my sister… I moved on. Leaving behind family and friends over and over again… I moved on. I used to be resilient.

I’m not anymore. I’m stuck, and unhappy. I don’t seem able to get over the loss of my friends and home in TX. I struggle with fear and the fallout from Liz’s illness. I’m still angry to the point of physical impacts over what the military did to me and my family when we moved to NM. I struggle with accepting where we are now as home. I struggle to put respectable effort into a job because I hate the government that pays the contract. I feel hopeless at the physical degeneration of the last several years. I don’t seem able to put a whole host of things behind me starting about the time we got to TX.

I’m lost too. Aside from not having the drive required to make my business work, I’ve accomplished pretty much everything I’ve set out to do, but feel like it was almost all a waste. Those accomplishments have not made me happy. Rather they have contributed to turning myself into something of a monster that is unsuited for the things I’m told make people happy. Too educated to be useful. To broad to be an expert. Too polished to be a grunt. Too rough to be a dandy. What have I done?