Jim's Cafe - Friday, August 8, 2025

Hello SF family, I hope this finds you well as can be.

Thanks for playing along on the horse-sized duck question, I quite enjoyed that!

Here is a question for today:

What’s been taking up the most space in your brain recently?

Hey Angie, thanks for posting a cafe for today. Interesting question, not sure that I can really answer it though cos there’s lotsa stuff that feels like a pretty equal amount of space lol.

Some of those things are:

- Worrying about the people I care most about
- Wishing I could be a lot more popular on an art site I go on.
- Doing my best to not feel rejected or anything else negative about myself no matter what the current outer circumstances might be.
- Trying to feel content and grateful for what I have and not wanting more.
- Trying to feel hopeful and positive about myself and my future.
- Wishing for more peacefulness and happiness in the world in general

That’s all I can really think of right now :p

What is occupying a great deal of my brain right now is processing a new memory of trauma. It kinda sucks that at 66 years of age I am getting new memories.

The rest of my brain is occupied with a writing project and then Fall semester starts the 25th of this month.

The immediate answer would be water, since 3/4 of the human brain is water, though some people seem to have even more than that 😂

The other answer involves wondering when and how I'll be passing on, since this endpoint is most likely much closer than the other one now.

Typically next to nothing. I think that Baba Louie's description of Quick Draw McGraw can fit me also: I have a lot upstairs, no brains...an empty lot.

I spend half the time "grieving" my past mistakes. I daydream about what would be my life if I had some support from other people.

The rest I keep thinking about people I vaguely know that have girlfriends, wife and etc.

I don't know exactly the feeling I feel about that. It feel like envy, but I know it is empty and sometimes I feel like my life is better than their lives somehow. But I keep endlessly comparing myself to other, and feeling inferior than they, but it isn't clear for me in what part I feel worse than they.

I feel this kind of anguish about my life going nowhere, but at the same time I have energy to change it, but I just don't know where to begin. I feel like I know what I want, but I don't know how to give the first step.

I have to do it alone, but I need other people to help me.

Depression and how to improve my situation really. I have been able to make some new friends so I'm happy about that.

Just wanted to say I can relate to a lot of what you said here, especially the part about needing support from others and that not being available. It is very painful, just wanted to let you know you definitely are not alone in feeling that way.

I feel like it is quite a sad reflection on our kinda miserable species that such a thing can ever be true imo. It is so beyond wrong, and definitely deeply unnatural. I think anyone who has the will to want to become better should absolutely have at least a few decent people who are genuinely willing to help them in a real way.

I can also relate to what you said about not knowing where to begin with making changes, knowing that you have to do it alone but needing others. Exactly the same for me. I wish you lots of good luck that you’ll be able to find at least one or more decent, compassionate, kind and caring people to help you soon. No need to reply to this if you’d rather not, I know it’s a bit long (sorry lol) :p

A little late but still stressing about my friend and giving notice this week. Basically same old same thing different day.

Trying to figure out how to create a new normal, what that even looks like.

My life has changed dramatically over the last few years, and I’ve spent a lot of time just trying to get through the next few moments. I haven’t spent much time thinking about what my life as a whole will be like until recently.

Lots of time in regard to wanting to move in the next 6 months or so and deciding where exactly I'm going to decide to land. The moving and all that that takes is sorta mingboggling just thinking about that part since it has been 22 years since I've had to do it. And no real help with it. And the expenses across the board with it etc etc.

How I’m going to get better. I’m fixated on what I ultimately want and how much of a tall order it is to get there, like scrambling fruitlessly over the icy slope of a mountain. As of now, getting out of this house looks impossible. My therapist mentioned “chipping away” at the mountain by setting smaller goals that I can meet today, until the summit becomes attainable.