#199 Su (1/8/23) - foul mood (bright sunny day edition)

 Had two frustrating and annoying conversations (one with mom and one with Mike) that put me in a bad mood for most of the rest of the day.

Let's use this as a teachable moment to try to learn some lesson.

Spoke with mom in the morning and she had a lot to say, most of it negative, about Gary, Hope and Tom.  She was just relating as she often does, but managed to work in stuff about how noisy the downstairs contractors were being and also complaining about Jenny, riding in the car, and George and someone at her book discussion group, and also how difficult it is to volunteer at the Atheneum to take down the Christmas decorations, ("which is even more work than putting them up.") The annual oddysey about returning all of the Christmas gifts that she doesn't want that she gets from people like Sloan or Jenny or even gifts that Hope gets fromo her relations.  Who the fuck cares if you got slipper socks that you didn't want and why in TF would you spend a whole day driving around to try to find the store that sells them so you could return them and get $30????  I don't understand.  Did you tell them you don't need socks and minwaffle makers? No. Did you tell them you liked them? Yes. 

 It was really just a litany of grumbling, frustration and aggravation, which is usually my role.  I tried several times to swing the conversation to a more positive stance, but the connection was poor, she couldn't hear me well and consequently just constantly stepped on each other's lines. Mentioning frustrations about these people usually incites me to extreme anger since I cannot stand helpless, quagmire thinking.  When you repeat the same exact conversations outlining in detail a person's character flaws and these things have not changed at all (except in the particulars) in more than a decade, it is ridiculous to think that they will ever change. Then cliches abound. "We shall see."  I try to offer some constructive guidance - "How will someone know if you don't tell them that X makes you feel Y."

Then after that, I met Mike for lunch, and he was in his usual mood and wanted to "ramble about role playing games."  Which I find off-putting - we obviously disagree strongly about what is meant by "play" especially in the RPG context. But also hard to understand why he feels that this is interesting to me, especially since I have been dis-included from these sessions and I don't know the group dynamic that he is (endlessly) rehashing.  He always talks about his fears about "buy in." That players either won't commit enough or that they will for a while and then stop or that they won't take it seriously enough.  I know he is aware that there isn't one generic PLAYER, but that everyone who plays has their own personality and yet he continues to talk about this as if it is his job to build a perfect interface for everyone at the table. (I think DMing really exacerbates his basic control freak mentality - but just try mentioning that ever and you get a slew of justifications about how his whole philosophy of DMing is about the DM explicitly not being in control, whatever). Also, I know he plays as both a player in other people's games and as DM for his own. Yet I almost never hear him mention anything about other people's games, in which he is just a player.  I don't know what he wants from me and when this topic comes up again, I just feel like checking out. (It doesn't help that this is a GoTo topic for when he and Christina are together.  I remember listening to an extensive conversation about this right before the Christmas Pekara blowup. I think it really gets under my skins, especially since I feel like I a) have nothing to contribute, b) anything I could say, he has a dismissive answer for, and c) and actively excluded from participating.  It is hard not to become hostile when you are constantly being reminded of someone's other friends who they do more with than you. And then to hear he complain about not having enough friends who are basically willing to become his slave army and jump through all his pretend hoops as it it really mattered, is sort of beyond me. I just don't know what kind of feedback he could possibly want from me.  I can't argue, I can't contribute and I can't escape - its like being in some kind of mind control torture.  It can be infuriating and debilitating.  Then we went to the library and looked at some books and had some coffee and it continued for another long time.  Maybe we talked about other stuff too, but it felt like mostly this, coupled with the general "there are no interesting people in the Midwest, they don't engage and I have no one to talk to" stuff.  I think we talked about the gym memberships and working out, but it seems like (whatever it is) always becomes an intellectual abstract experiment about experience optimization that requires an endless, repetitious, procedural critique.

He did not mention his friend Bruce dying.  he wrote a long bio/history post full of academic engagements that was "all he had to say on the matter."

When I went home, I played Total War Empire for a few hours, and also worked out in the evening for at least 50 minutes, cooked dinner, did laundry and vacuumed the living room. Later in the evening, I binged Busted! for 3-4 hours. I tried to get moving and do something as opposed to just sit and stew. So I guess I was able to fend it off, but I feel like it did knock me into a mini-depressive episode.  Had trouble focusing on reading anything.  Retreat into Youtube for videos about Avatar, etc.