Self-conscious annihilation is the only freedom
Everything else is a self-generated illusion
Does consensus happiness increase with your end?
Willing and able to come to this conclusion

Based on the idea to make legal the choice of euthanasia at age 75.

Today I’m feeling:

Exhausted again. What is it with Saturdays? Last night I was up til 1am and I think it was purely because I did my two hours of work in the afternoon when I might normally have had a nap on a fully free day. So my energy levels were up. This morning I ignored my alarm and the cats until Amy woke me up calling from Chatswood. My brain wasn’t functioning but after she hung up I decided I should get up. A couple of coffees had the desired effect and made me feel so good that I had a third along with some free coconut ice cream. All was good until about 3 pm and I couldn’t fight my aching eyes. Waking up again a couple of hours later and I still can’t seem to get going. My left eye is still aching and is pushing me closer to actually going to the optometrist tomorrow as I’m starting to feel more concerned about it.

Today I’m grateful for:

Twenty minutes of evening rain. It’s not much but almost every day for a week it has looked like rain was coming and it just disappeared again leaving the days humid and the nights stinky hot. The temperature is reasonable again and the sun is gone so hopefully it will stay cool until tomorrow.

The best thing about today was:

Definitely, the buzz I got from my coffees this morning. I really hope that whatever the issue is with my eye that I’m not told to stop drinking coffee! I know I could do it but damn I enjoy coffee so much sometimes. 

What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?

Amy’s friend Paew, who had recently moved back to Chiang Rai from Bangkok has found that things here are not going so well for her and her husband and will move back. That’s a shame as having her around may have made Amy more comfortable when she’s back in October. Now I’m starting to feel that Amy will not be settled here at all. Ever. I will be disappointed about this but won’t stop her from making whatever choices she wishes. At some point, I will have to go with her to whatever our next decision dictates but my disappointment will be centred around the fact that I have found relative contentment here, especially with my job as a teacher. I could teach elsewhere but I know it would involve far more work and stress than I currently have. Whatever the next thing may be it will be more work and stress than I have now. It’s hard to psych myself up for that.

Something I learned today?

Reports are that there have been secret talks between the US and Russia about ending the war in Ukraine. My question is why the fuck were they secret? It seems because arms dealers can’t keep making sales whilst folks become aware of possible upcoming peace.

How do I want to grow as a person?

I was just thinking, as I was reading an interview from 1997 with a lesbian punk musician, that these days I don’t feel so connected with what they’re saying. One thing is about my age and relative experience but another is also that I no longer run around in the circles of young political punks like I did 10 or 15 years ago. It’s interesting to look at the outside and into something very familiar. I appreciate the fight for something important whether I believe in it or not. 

So I was imagining talking with the musician and trying to understand more about their passion. Or alternatively, imagining someone talking to me trying to find out more about me and my beliefs.

Now, I know we can get brief glimpses into people’s beliefs and ideas through even mundane conversation but I feel that I cannot express myself eloquently enough in verbal exchange. 

When I write I can sometimes feel that certain words and sentences accurately explain my beliefs but they are intermittent and spread throughout the mess of lots of other thoughts.

To feel some growth as a person perhaps I can get some of these core thoughts into order that help me to be more eloquent.

Having said that I also consider the fact that identifying and clarifying certain beliefs could be the beginning of close-mindedness. That’s something I would like to avoid as I can still recall how my younger self could consider ‘old’ people who had become set in their ways. Perhaps it’s inevitable.