Re-reading the last post, it occurs to me that maybe it looks like I was reading something left-wing but actually I was reading something right-wing

I’m capable of taking just about anything more seriously than I take myself (on some level, at least temporarily)

You have to go really far out (e.g. Scientology) to get to stuff where I can just say “yeah this is just plain bullshit” without the laughter catching in my throat a bit

I shouldn’t spend time reading things that press the button that generates thoughts about how maybe people like me are what are wrong with civilization.

“Ah, but might it be true that people like you are what is wrong with civilization – ”

Actually, it might, but what would I do then?  The thoughts only make me less capable of doing the things which the thoughts themselves claim are the only things that could make me not reprehensible.  The (hypothetical) people who hate me don’t want me to self-deprecate.  I don’t want to self-deprecate either.  If I’m what’s wrong with civilization then I have to dedicate myself to opposing myself, and I don’t know what that would look like, and I imagine it wouldn’t be a look that would please my hypothetical denouncers anyway.  Not worth it, not worth it.  Bide my time until the worries are gone – at which point there will more space in my brain, and that space can be filled up with knowledge that might make me less reprehensible.  Thinking about the problem constitutes the problem; feeling bad about self-absorption constitutes self-absorption.  You can’t be a strong, respectable being-in-the-world in this state.  Fine.  Watch a dumb movie or something.  Do what you can and wait until your other side returns.  No one can stop you from waiting.  Maybe you really are reprehensible some of the time and maybe some of the real or hypothetical objectors don’t even know it.  Rejoice in the trick you have pulled on these self-proclaimed masters of shrewd perception.  You’re getting there.  Good.

I came in near the end of Act 5 which was a point where Homestuck had just built up all of this tension and mythic weight and was very well suited for seeming “important” to overcaffeinated and lonely October 2011 Rob

Maybe the special thing it was doing for me at the time is part of why I’ve always been so annoyed by that particular breed of Homestuck fan who’s all like “it can’t be important or moving because it is A Comedy”

Being funny helps things seem big in my head, because the real world is big and it’s also funny, is this not kind of obvious

(Unfortunately over the course of the next year or so Hussie gradually became that type of fan himself)

I read the last 250 pages of The Instructions the day before [S] Cascade came out, during a week in which I had unwittingly started drinking coffee with way more caffeine than I was used to

I could not handle all of the feels

That was a somewhat different Rob in a lot of ways.  I’m not sure what changed, and whatever it was it was mostly for the better, but late 2011 Rob had his moments

I was looking back through my iTunes library for songs I was listening to in October 2011 and JEsus Christ these Homestuck songs have high play counts…………

I think Homestuck was really doing something important for my mind in late 2011 / early 2012 and it’s something that’s actually pretty hard for me to remember or recapture now.  I guess I was pretty lonely at the time, having just moved to a new city, and it was very appealing as an all-consuming obsession that could take the place of talking to people?  Anyway, it seems like it was very useful to me and I’m glad I found it when I did.

Oh hey there’s Worst Person using “useless” and “broken” as generic derogatory adjectives

What a surprise

A lot of my old writing from ca. early 2011 was all about this weird idea I had that everyone around me saw life in terms of pleasure and desire where I saw it in terms of fascination and curiosity (or something), and that this was this fundamental difference that would make me forever alienated from everyone else

And that curiosity was a “childish” thing and desire was an “adult” thing – in childhood you learn about the world and then in adulthood you apply that knowledge to satisfy desires – and so I was fundamentally still a child and couldn’t relate to “adults”

I LIKED to be confused (because that meant the world was excitingly complicated) and I thought this was this baffling trait that no one else had (?!)

I have no idea why I thought all of this ludicrous stuff and I’m glad I got out of it after a few months or so.  I think I just wasn’t talking to enough people at the time and started to think of “other people” as this anxiety-based abstraction rather than anything associated with immediate, memorable experiences

Most of the rest of looking through my notes folder is like

“Huh, this is kinda well-written, I’m kinda proud of my former self, maybe I’ll post it on tumblr or something

… [reads on] …

… this is getting weird …

… [reads on] …

oh my god I was so isolated and unhappy and wrapped up in my own bullshit when I wrote this, no one else can ever see it”

nostalgebraist:

In 9th grade I read The Poisonwood Bible for extra credit in a class that I was too stupid (because of RIsperidone) to get a good grade in without extra credit

Except because of Risperidone I also couldn’t read books from start to finish so my father read it to me (yes, I was 15 and I had to be read to)

There was a character in The Poisonwood Bible named Adah who was mute for most of the story and had this weird internal monologue and really liked palindromes?  (I remember this all very hazily because I must have only been paying attention for maybe 10% of the book.)  Later in the book started talking and turned out to be the “smart” member of her family.  I remember in my confused Risperidoned internal monologue thinking she was pretty cool and kind of having a crush on her

Then later I went off Risperidone and came back to the world and my self-worth got attached to my intelligence

Cool aesthetic symmetry I guess though it isn’t very subtle

I really shouldn’t have mentioned this without also mentioning another example of my life’s artistic heavy-handedness:

After I finally went off Risperidone entirely (after half a year of a lowered dose), I had this whole “whoa, I can read books again, this is amazing, the vast external human world is opening up to me in a way I never would have expected” experience

And the book I happened to have this experience with, because it was the first one I happened to pick up at the time, was … Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age