Thank you, but it's not your fault that I am stuck in the Pattern. And I apologize ahead of time for the wall of words.

When I ask myself what I want out of life, I get no answer, just the howling wind echoing inside. Healing is no longer possible, and I've given up wasting energy on trying. Finding a job is a joke; besides the two and a half decade old felony, I've got a disintegrating disc and my back decided that now would be a great time to stiffen up and add that pain to the mix. I've never really had friends since being released aside from those I knew from the joint, and they're 2,000 miles away. Moving to a better location is shot because I have no money and I'm stuck in a lease for another six months in a city that is utterly devoid of interest.

The right job for me is a job wherein I have only to deal with paperwork and answering phones, not cold-calling people. Except that of all the computer programs I've learned, QuickBooks was not one of them, and my formula knowledge in Excel is less than stellar. I would love to work as a file clerk in a law office, except that is an impossibility because it would open up any case they would be working on to ancillary attack in court due to the fact my hands touched the file, never mind that I can write motions and paperwork that would make Johnny Cochran blush. I almost went back to Kirby sales, but I cannot commit to 12 hour days, six days a week when my back is the way it is.

I'm a cynical realist. I've realized that life only offers me pyrrhic choices, so no matter which way I go, I end up regretting it. Oh, I can find jobs, but they're always jobs that turn out to be utterly unsuitable for whatever reason. I do what I do for a reason, that reason usually being the elimination of variables that I cannot control or will easily forget. Getting rid of them keeps them from popping up in bad ways. It is exhausting to always have to triple-check every single element of any given job (including things that everyone else takes for granted) to make sure that changing one variable doesn't cause some other variable that was otherwise unaccounted for to change, all while battling my own inner need for absolute perfection and symmetry. As a result, if there is something I cannot control with any logical sense, I walk away and lose interest immediately. I can take nothing for granted; every single variable (and usually, they number in the dozens, if not hundreds) absolutely must be accounted for, and every time there is an error, it is because I didn't account for something or assumed that a default would stay in its default state.

I no longer recognize society as something familiar. It has taken on an alien aspect that I cannot reconcile with my internal expectations, and I find that I have zero trust or tolerance for those trying to convince me that everything is normal. Paying a staggering inflationary increase on everything is not normal, no matter how much it is parroted by talking heads. That is, I believe, the end-goal of the technocracy that has seized control--discriminate, dehumanize, and ultimately destroy the middle class by starting with the fringes of society and working inward. Reminds me of Weimar Germany, only no one reads history anymore so saying that aloud just makes people look at me in confusion.

No, no insurance or state aid. I hate the idea of accepting state aid, and SSID is out because I'd have to work longer than I would live in order to make enough credits to even be eligible for it, a Catch-22. And down here in Austin, there's a thousand and one bureaucracies, so nothing ever gets done.

The financial aspects just exacerbate the problem. To wit, I had a loan application in to try to convert my credit card over to a bank loan. Bank instead gives me a flaming line of equity credit at 20% interest. Then, I applied to change product or whatever so I'd get a near-0% interest loan and be able to pay it off, only I was fired due to my own mess and now, I've not heard from the bank and the loan application deadline is long since overdue, so we can all guess what happened there. And my credit score, the one thing I took pride in, is now dinged for nothing.

Wisdom is knowing that I know nothing and can expect nothing, and that the momentum of nought will continue until interrupted by the momentum of something else. Once in motion, a trend will continue to stay in motion until acted upon by another outside force. It's a law of physics, only applied to the probabilities of life, and my life experience has shown me that this is a valid and utterly inviolable law.

Or, put another way, I am both the condemned gladiator and the lion, and the world is the audience. When I put myself down with conclusions drawn from the perspective of realism, the crowd cheers. When I succeed in something, the crowd holds its breath while waiting for the next blow I strike against myself. Do they not erupt in bloodthirsty applause when I draw my own blood? If I am thrown a weapon, it is one meant for me to use against the lion, but when I strike, it is I who bleeds, and the crowd who cheers for more.