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UFOs! Mental illness! Unproductive! Ugh!

2 years ago1,093 words

UFO disclosure seems to have progressed this week. Can't say the same about myself!

The UFO whistleblower thing continues to develop. Several more people from significant places are supposedly going to be coming out soon to corroborate the primary whistleblower's claims that some secret faction within the US military has in their possession a dozen alien craft that they've been trying to reverse-engineer (with about as much luck as someone from Biblical times might have reverse-engineering an iPhone, most likely).

r/UFOs - or at least one faction of it - is treating it as if the long-longed-for Disclosure is imminent.

Is it? I can't say, obviously, though I do get the impression things are a bit different this time due to the social status of the people involved and the channels they're going through.

I've been following UFO-related developments for a few years, and the impression I get is that there's been some disclosure efforts being slowly trickled out over the course of years. Maybe this is what it's all been leading to? Or maybe this is just another step in the process.

I find it all interesting, anyway.

(Though there's some stupid probably-a-hoax story about some teenager seeing ten-foot-tall ETs in his back yard, which is getting attention too, perhaps intentionally to throw people off, or perhaps just because minds are eagerly open to anything seemingly related at the moment.)

Though most people don't seem to care about any of this, in my experience. "Nutty conspiracy theorists have been claiming that for years, big deal. Still need to go to work tomorrow." Potentially-world-changing AI is demonstrably real already, though, and people in general don't care much about that either. I'm less shaken up by it all myself than I was a few weeks ago. I suppose we adapt, and find it difficult to care about these big, abstract, potential things when daily chores still need to be done or our friend's cat is sick or silly, or whatever.

The UFO topic has interested me since I was a child though, so it finally being validated - or whatever you want to call what this potentially could be - is a Big Thing to me, enough that it's made it hard to focus all week.



I say, as an excuse for why I've done next to no work... though it's not even the main reason.

I've been working on that Frayth/Belief Battles/whatever project for a few weeks now, though I felt bad about it because my main project is supposed to be Atonal Dreams, and I haven't touched that in ages. I wanted to spend this week trying to maybe address the reasons I'd redirected my focus.

But... they're mental-health related, and despite my efforts to just try and push through the mental barriers regardless, I didn't succeed. Worked myself into an anxious mess several times! But frustratingly it didn't amount to anything.

It all seems to boil down to the fear that I'll do something wrong due to ignorance and naivete, and that I'll face negative social consequences as a result of it. That seems to be the basic root of social anxiety in general, and in my case there are specific core memories like my experience with Fig Hunter that fuel the aversion.

I really wish I could see a mental health specialist to work through all this, since I clearly can't do it by myself. But it's not as easy as just making the decision. I just have to wait, for who-knows-how-long. If they haven't just completely forgotten about me or ceased to exist as a service or something.

Maybe next week I'll at least need to either contact the counselling service to determine whether or not I'm even on a waiting list, or look into alternate services or something...



One thing I wanted to do as part of that was finally sort out the Steam port of Clarence's Big Chance, but stupid mental barriers got in the way.

I have the files mostly ready and all I really need to do is upload it to Steam, then maybe share a link in my Discord to get some testers to ensure it all works as it should, but...

I could probably get it all sorted out in a day - an hour, even - but I just can't focus or motivate myself or get anxious about things like people deciding it's politically incorrect and I should be destroyed for being a bigot or things like that. Or I worry that I'm doing something wrong regarding money-related aspects that I'll come to regret because I don't understand the minutiae well enough due to not really living in the world and not knowing a ton of jargon people seemingly need to know to get by.

Some people commit crimes on purpose! So alien to me. I'm so paranoid about doing something I shouldn't by mistake. Avoiding doesn't help, but... well, ugh.



Loneliness is also a constant distraction, and I spend a lot of time just scrolling through Reddit, looking at several friend-finding or loneliness-related subs I've joined (put have never actually posted in), and feeling disheartened because 99% of the posts I see just seem so vapid, hopeless, and entirely uninteresting to me.

(What is a post which consists entirely of "im bored and lonely dm me" possibly going to lead to? Can meaningful bonds form based on absolutely nothing? I doubt it! Or maybe they're all just scammers anyway!!)

Or even in the 1% of cases I see someone who's written out something that even slightly piques my interest (by which I mean "they might be mentally ill in similar ways to me so they'd have a higher chance of being able to tolerate me, but they're female so I'd be motivated by something like a subconscious drive to impress rather than uncomfortable comparison either of life situations or to past unpleasant memories"), I end up feeling like some creepy, maladjusted old man who'd only be offending them by daring to reach out. Which is another Mental Health Thing - a maladaptive negative belief derived from past negative experiences - that I don't seem to be able to just shrug off without help.



So... I don't know. Will our alien overlords be giving a speech with President Biden by this time next week? Will I finally hear back re counselling?? Or magically manage to push through the issues myself enough to add the CBC port to Steam??? Who knows!!

(Also, it's too hot. Ugh. Only going to get worse, too.)