Hiatus extended

The following is intended to inform. It is not intended to be cryptic or to elicit concern or sympathy. All is fine, if not well.
If you take nothing else from what follows, refer back to that please.
I'm taking a little time off from this blog that you're currently reading to figure some stuff out, that's all. People who know me are liable to say, "that means he's brooding." That's fine. It's accurate enough that I don't need to argue the finer semantic details.
This little enterprise (the blog you're reading) is attached to Facebook and Twitter and some other stuff which all seems very cluttered and noisy to me right now. And tacky, too. Thanks to people's over-reliance on communicating via "funny" pictures with text, Facebook is looking kind of MySpace-y these days, and that isn't good under any circumstances. 

That whole self-contained universe is not conducive to introspection and contemplation, which is what I need right now because I have to answer some questions for myself.
Okay, I can see how that part sounds cryptic and might elicit concern or sympathy. So here's what's up with that.
Recently, a series of (relatively) small setbacks, personal, professional and semi-professional, have caused me to question, if not my self worth, at least my role (specifically whether or not I have one) in The Grand Scheme of Things (but yeah, mostly my self worth). None of these setbacks alone is that big of a deal and if I detailed them here one-by one, your justified response to each would be something like, "Seriously, you big baby? Life is difficult. Get a helmet and suck it up, buttercup." And your assessment would be correct. But taken together, all occurring in a relatively short period of time, they've kind of combined to form one potent gut shot and have taken me off my feet.
You know how we're all supposed to have a place in the world with a role to play because in some way or another, we're all valuable? Well, I'm not sure that's necessarily true. After all, there are over seven billion people on the planet (an aside: when you start typing "what is the world's population?" into the Google search box, among the auto-generated suggestions you get are "what is the world's largest spider?" and "what is the world's hottest pepper?"); doesn't it stand to reason that a few folks are just hanging around, getting in the way, eating the food and soiling the linens? Not maliciously bad, per se, but just kind of...pointless. And if that's possible, is it impossible that I'm one of them? It's like when you sit down to assemble a model airplane. You open up the box and there are several plastic racks with all the individual parts attached that are needed to complete the model you see pictured on the box. But in addition to the necessary parts, sometimes there's also a weird, misshapen glob of plastic there. Probably the result of some glitch with excess run-off melted plastic from the mold at the factory. It didn't ask to be included in the box with the legitimate model pieces, but it's there. It's part of the package, just like the wings and the wheels and the flaps and valves and all the other stuff that goes into an airplane...except it shouldn't be there. Because it's not a part. It serves no purpose. It's nothing. And it is never, ever going to be part of the airplane.
People want to believe that they matter. That's a pretty basic, primal need. Now, I've been in therapy where I've been focusing a lot of attention on irrational thinking (how to identify it and how to combat it). When a bunch of stuff happens in a relatively short period of time that suggests that maybe you don't matter all that much, you (well, I) have to question, at what point does something go from an irrational thought to a rational one? How many...or how few...individual circumstances have to occur before a series of similar-but-unrelated coincidences becomes a trend?


Exactly how many flying dogs do you need
 to see before you say "Dogs can fly"?

 That concept is something that's on my mind right now and it's making me unhappy. Among my primary reactive instincts is to be hurt and resentful toward people I encounter who have nothing to do with my problems and certainly don't deserve to be treated that way.

For example: These people? Screw them.

 That's a shitty way to be. People don't deserve to be treated that way and I don't want to live like that. That's what I want to fix.
Anyway, this is just something I need to take some time to think about quietly and without a lot of distraction...like trying to bring the LOLZ to this blog three times a week and all the raucous cacophony that tends to accompany that. I need to find a nice, shady tree and sit under it without thinking how many people I could hang from each branch. I had hoped to jump back in with some new LOLZ by Monday, July 23, but this is taking longer than I thought it would so that arbitrary, self-imposed deadline is going to pass without new content. Sorry about that. Hopefully, among the stuff I figure out (eventually) is how to come back to this with new, good stuff...or whether to take things in a different direction entirely.
Cool?
Cool.