2001-08-20 - 12:55 a.m.

betrayed by my own head

can't sleep again.

took a bit of time off from coding tonight and went to see Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Animation Fest. some incredibly sick stuff, and some incredibly funny stuff. there was one by the guy who did "Bobby's Balloon" that made me laugh so hard, i thought i might puke.

i've been thinking in recent days about escapism. i think i've been elevating it to an art form in recent weeks. there are many little details of my life that i can't seem to muster the effort to attend to. like my trip to Thailand. i really need to start planning that. exercise, another good example. thinking about a new job. i dunno, many things.

my mind just veers away from certain topics. or at least that's how it used to be. now my mind wants to veer away from any topic.

i don't want to think, or at least to think about anything real. i play computer games whenever i can, because they're so mindless. i can focus on something completely constructed and not think about my life.

i've been telling myself that i'm just a little down, or that i just don't like my job.

i'm starting to think that i'm in a serious depression here. i am profoundly unhappy.

my job is just a job, and i'm not sure why i hate it, but i do.

i have tons of good friends, who care about me a lot, yet i'm lonely.

i have a membership in a gym, the weather's been great, i have a million opportunities to be active and healthy, yet instead i'm a slug.

i have, in recent months, proved to myself that i can entertain complete strangers with my music. i have what it takes to be at least a reasonable amateur musician. so what?

here's the rub in all of this. from the outside, i don't have a bad life. really, i don't. but somehow as all this information enters my brain, it's getting filtered and distorted into cynicism, and unhappiness. the only thing that's keeping me from being happy is inside my own head.

my perception is the difference between happiness and where i am now.

it's all under my control, if only i could learn to control that part of myself, flip some little switch down deep in the ego or the id or the whatever, and make the world sunny and happy again.

betrayed by my own head.

i don't really know what to think about that.

but something around here is going to have to change.

and soon.