I think I’ve reached a dangerous point: I’ve done the things I most wanted to do that were within my reach, and I can’t seem to want anything else badly enough to pursue it. I’ve written the stories I needed to write. I learned how to play the guitar and played for years. I produced dozens of songs. I programmed the projects that truly captured my interest. I dated someone for a while, and found out that I’m not about that life. The stuff that I would truly want to do at this point in my life is either out of reach for me (moving out to a more peaceful, quiet region; I can’t do that because of money and a lack of connections) or literally impossible (living through a previous decade, meeting certain people long gone or who never existed, being someone else).

I’ve tried to push myself through this conviction, but my attempts reach the same conclusion: I’m not really interested in what I’m doing. I don’t find it compelling enough. I’m just trying to find something to do. And I remain uninterested in virtually everything, including things I used to love.

I no longer read novels; not only do I despise what has happened to Western culture in the last twenty years or so and I can’t connect with any of it, but I also find my own daydreams more compelling than other people’s stories. You could say that I should just read old novels then, but I’m not interested in them either, because they depict a world long gone; reading about a vanished world only reminds me that I can’t inhabit it. Cormac McCarthy was my favorite writer for years and I connected with his stuff, but I’ve already read his best. His work gave me something so particular that I don’t feel any pull toward another writer. As a result of not reading novels anymore, I don’t feel like trying out writing experiments unless I’m compelled to do so by my subconscious, and that hasn’t happened for a long while.

I manage to watch movies from time to time, but they mainly feel like distractions. I go outside and I feel that I don’t belong to this world. I certainly don’t want to meet people in person. I’ve grown old enough that exercising is basically annoying maintenance in a body that can handle less every passing year.

I went to my first therapy session in eleven years about a week ago. I’m worried about the next one, because I’m afraid I will have little else to say. I should be looking for a job, but I feel that there’s nothing for me out there that would be tolerable. My therapist asked me if my reluctance to search for a job involves fear of rejection. I told her that the problem would be the exact opposite: my fear is getting hired and ending up at an office, surrounded by human beings, having to deal with other people to solve problems. Such circumstances sent me to the ER three or four times in my IT job due to unmanageable stress, and I’m fairly certain that if I had continued working there, I would have ended up suffering a stroke. My body would have broken down in some manner. The job circumstances that are suitable for a high-functioning autistic man with Pure O OCD are narrow.

One of the therapists asked the absurd question that I was also asked by another therapist many years ago: “Would working retail, as a cashier or so, be okay?” The fact that I could be asked that question as if the answer could possibly be yes shows the chasm between me and other people. For me, that would mean spending the day doing precisely the thing I struggle to tolerate. Apart from that therapy session, my only in-person conversations during these thirteen months of unemployment have been brief, reluctant exchanges with my mother and with cashiers. The only circumstances in which I feel safe are alone in a room. Having humans in my space makes me feel like I’m surrounded by unpredictable wild animals. To earn a paycheck, I forced myself to power through it, and my body proved that it couldn’t handle that strategy. I have my clear needs, and I need to respect them.

Virtually the only things I look forward to these days are sleeping, eating, and orgasming. Plain biological rewards. Once again, I wish I could just retire somewhere surrounded by nature, where I could focus on the barest facts of life and disconnect from everything else.

Revising this post reminded me of a novel I read ages ago: Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose. He wrote it, and set the novel, during the very late sixties and 1970. The book was published in 1971. Close to the exact period of time I would love to live through. It was also set in Grass Valley, close to Nevada City, which has special significance for me given that it was Joanna Newsom’s hometown. The protagonist of Angle of Repose was writing a book about a relative of his who died long ago. His goal was to recreate, to inhabit in the only way he knew how, a life that he would have loved to witness. To come to comprehend it. Whenever the narrator returns to his contemporary late sixties setting, you can feel that he doesn’t belong. I recall an instance in which a young, pretty woman visits him for some reason, and he notices something appealing about her breasts in her top, but it only reminds him that being involved in romance is out of his reach. His whole focus in what remains of his time on Earth is on recreating through his writing a period of time, and a life, he can’t experience. I would like to say that I could see myself writing such a book, hoping that it would whisk me away to that other period and life, but I wouldn’t even find that worth the bother.