So about that depression... in Journal of life stuff

My walkstation is doing its job today. I didn’t walk yesterday, but I did help install a drainage pipe that tuckered me out pretty good. But today…I’ve overeaten, I’m paying for eating potato wedges yesterday (I have gained about 4 lbs of water weight, plus the wedges themselves…SO.MUCH.SALT!) and I’m generally worrying about life and my future. The crypto market is 100% recovering. So in a few more years, I’ll be set for life in all likelihood. Now I just need to focus on the road between where I am and where I should end up.

I did some interesting math today to determine whether I should invest in altcoins now or later. Turns out, my intuition is spot on. Altcoins don’t really grow until the final year of the bitcoin booms. Bitcoin will grow for ~2 years before having explosive growth in the third. But the altcoins will remain nearly flat that entire time. So when you do the math, it turns out that it’s best to buy bitcoin during the recovery year, hold it for 2 years to see gains, then use the increased value to buy whatever altcoins you think look promising in the January-April time frame of the year you expect to grow explosively.

The difference between investing in altcoins and not? Depends on the altcoin, but in my example it was the difference between taking 7700% growth and taking 97,000% growth. Granted, that coin grew particularly well, but any altcoin which grows faster than bitcoin (which is most of them in the top-20) will yield you a multiplicitive return on investment vs just holding bitcoin itself.

I am not providing investment advice. I am saying what my own numbers show me. Your risk tolerance and investment strategy will form your results. And bitcoin/crypto investing is INCREDIBLY risky. Like, stupidly risky. If you can’t stand seeing value swings…don’t bother.

Back to the Thor topic. Thor, and the reddit post, helped me realize I am depressed. I live exactly like Thor. I gave up in 2017 when the girl I went on a date with broke my spirit, and when Aye-star broke what was left of it. I’ve been depressed ever since then. The constant thought was “I worked so hard and this is what I get? Nothing?!”

If you spend years not eating food you want to, being hungry, being angry, denying yourself pleasure, and the reward at the end of the road isn’t what you wanted…well, I ended up bitter. I ended up not seeing the road as worth taking. I ended up feeling like there was no point in trying anymore.

The thing is, I know I won’t be happy if I go back to being fat. But I also know that I feel happy eating food that has too many calories in it. I know that if I eat at 1500 calories/day, I will be grump (hangry) ALL.THE.TIME. It sucks. And like, to be clear, this isn’t something I ever realized until I started eating > 2000 calories/day while working at Aye-star. I realized I was a nicer person, and that my anger had all come from not eating enough. It was eye opening. So why would I want to go back to being an asshole? No. I don’t.

But let’s skip the self-pity bullshit and jump into the most helpful parts of this discussion. First, if you’ve never dealt with depression or depressed people, you need to understand that there are two different kinds of depression (there’s a lot more, but consider this a gross simplification). There is depression that exists for a specific reason, and there is depression that exists because you lost the genetic (or maybe just biological) lottery.

People who lose the genetic lottery need medication. They’ll always need medication, and on the right meds they can be mostly or completely normal. There will be value in teaching them coping mechanisms, and showing them ways to treat their depression without meds, but these people can’t be cured until medicine develops something to permanently change brain chemistry. The common thread with people like this is that they have been sad for years and there was never any particular reason why. They never lost something, they never failed something, they never feel like they missed out on something. They see nothing wrong in their lives, but they are depressed all the same.

The other kind is the the type that Thor and I have. It’s specific depression. Something happened, something went wrong, we lost something or failed something. There’s a specific reason or set of reasons why we are depressed, and we will stop being depressed the day those problems are dealt with. Medication will be of nearly no use to us, outside of covering up emotions. But giving people like us medication has a better chance of causing harm rather than fixing us because we will know we feel happy artificially, and our minds will rebel against that.

What Thor needs is covered in Endgame, so I won’t bother going into that. What do I need? What broke with me?

1. Religion. I realized that the religious people I grew up with and can find are not religious at all. They view church as a social club where they can say or think they’re better than other people, or at the very least ‘different’, and they will do anything to get that ‘special’ stamp for themselves. Oh, sure, some believe they really are saved and holy and whatever. But most just want that special stamp so they don’t feel like just another cog in the wheel. I find this disgusting. Religion is true or it isn’t. All or nothing. This half-assed belief and desire bullshit drives me away from other Christians. I like the concept of absolute right and wrong, I like the concept of a God, but I really hate most Christians in the U.S. because they’re so full of shit there isn’t enough laxatives to get them cleared out.

2. Weight loss goals. I started losing weight because I wanted to get dates and be attractive. I got all the way down to ‘normal’ weight, with just a small pudge left. And what did I get? The same trouble getting dates I have no. Either I’m ugly or I just need to get professional photos, or the minimum to get attention as a guy is to have a shirtless 6 pack photo. Or I…shudder have to only do it IRL. The shudder is faux emotion, I actually think that’s the best path forward. If I wasn’t terrified of dancing (PTSD, not terror) I would go that route because it really is the best route from what I hear.

A lot of me wants to finish my weight loss before I retire with my millions, because it’d be nice to start day 1 ready to go. But other parts of me say it’s ok if I have to delay and start after I win. Get a personal trainer, get some work done (dye my eyebrows, or get surgery to get them darker permanently), get professional photos, hire a stylist to get me clothes that make me look amazing. Fix the things that keep me single. Admittedly, most of these I can do without money. I just have to believe the end result will be worth it, and my personal life experience shows that the odds of me finding a girl that isn’t obese, isn’t a lesbian, and is interested in me is a pick 2 of 3 problem. So why bother fixing any of them for something that doesn’t exist? In this one, I need to win first and achieve victory second.

I spent decades of my life telling people I had to get a girlfriend to fix my problems and they told me I was wrong. I finally got that girlfriend and my problems all got fixed. Every problem I said would be fixed was fixed. So…I know exactly what I need here. I need someone to strive for. I need to win before I win. And, I’m not wrong. No matter how much bullshit people hit me with. That said, if I can make any progress towards being better looking before that I should do it because…I wouldn’t date obese me.

1. Life goals. What do I want to do with my life? Do I really want a wife and kids? Would I find fulfillment with just want friends with benefits? How do I make and keep a group of friends?

I know, for a fact, that I must have a social circle. If I can get over myself and find it at church, that wouldn’t be a bad place to find it. But I think that’s…a bit ambitious. Maybe start with a trivia club or racing. Kart racing might actually be a good idea. Maybe. I don’t love Habitat enough to make that my passion. But maybe I could be that guy at a maker space who knows how all the tools work and can help people build anything at the skills level, if not the creativity level. Essentially, I need a hobby. But, I need a hobby whose sole purpose in existing is the social group it creates, rather than the hobby itself. I live for people, not things. That’s always been true for me. And that’s where I get stuck. I don’t know how to have a hobby where people are the hobby. I have no fucking clue what to do to accomplish this goal. Help? Advice?

–end list

Fixing any one item on that list would bring about improvements to my depression. But all three focus on the same root problem. I’m alone and I don’t want to be. I don’t know if I have to have a girlfriend/wife, or if a good group of friends is enough. I’ve had both at different times in the past, and I know that either will bring about a lot of healing and improvement. So, from that standpoint, both are worth pursuing.

Yea, that’s really it. I’m depressed because I don’t have a people to call my own. That’s the thing I have to fix to end my depression and make progress in life. Fix that, and weight fixes itself. Fix that, and hobbies fix themselves. Fix that, and “Portals” from the Avengers: Endgame soundtrack will start playing.

That movie is seriously dope. I want a BDRIP of it already (I’m not opposed to buying blu-rays, but bdrips often beat blu-rays to market).