Let's have some personal talk on habits.

Let's have some personal talk. I have heard from the 12-step groups how having a sponsor helps one grow and have appropriate expectations, because of the rigorous self-honesty practiced in that relationship. I would like to salt this blog with a little such rigor.

I am living these recent weeks in a kind of strange limbo.

I read somewhere that Angels are our good habits, and God is a urge to grow. In that case my God has not deserted me, but certainly my Angels seem to have.

How can I feel sad for something which comes and goes so strangely that it seems not to be me or mine even, but which simply visits? Habits are like that.

(When Isaac dreamt of a ladder of Angels, ascending to and descending from and heaven, it is instructive that in his dream he did not climb. He was an earthy kind of man, and was content to see the ladder of his own virtue manifest in his dream. But when I heard that fairy tale as a child I wanted nothing more than to leap up those angels heads and see what lay beyond. It was, I thought, a reasonable expectation.)

Two weeks ago, I was regularly waking early, doing yoga, writing a thousand words of my Gaia project and three hundred of my Excellence nonfiction project. Two weeks ago I was reading a chapter a day of 7 books, over half an hour or so, and simply enjoying life enormously.

Today I am writing only a few dozen words. The reading lies untouched. I feel desperate and annoyed with myself and afraid. I feel like a caged animal in this society, when in my conscious self I know it serves as best if not better than any world in history could have, whilst the worlds in science fiction do not exist for me to compare. I am deeply unhappy here and dissatisfied with philosophy and action both. And yet the source of my irritation cannot be identified. I simply don't want to be here. I don't hate it; I'm indifferent to it; I would prefer it all go away and leave me alone. I do not find the world is made of pliant stuff to build from, nor do I wish to build what it would reward, nor do I find the effort to be expended on plying a trade to force it to reward me worthwhile. It is all rather depressing and unpleasant to consider.