So I’ve put up a post everyday until last Saturday. True, sometimes I posted past midnight and often I put up nothing but a photo, but I did manage to have at least one post for everyday since the first of the year. It was a weird little commitment I made to myself.

I’m probably trying the patience of my readers here. The shutdown of Lavabit has created a bigger crisis in my life than I expected. Since I never store important documents, including emails, on other people’s hardware, I thought it would be as simple as getting a new email address and logging into various services like the one here on WordPress and updating that bit of information.

I should probably confess something here that I didn’t intend to get to for a very long time. About a year and a half ago, I was hospitalized for suicidal ideation. A complicated set of circumstances brought it on and I didn’t want to discuss it outside of the context, but, for better or worse, it’s part of the context of what’s going on now and I can’t talk about my current situation without referencing it. The short version, is that I never wanted to get married or have children. I wanted to have a significant career of some sort. I failed. I’m going on fifty and I now realize I’ll never achieve the things I wanted to achieve. This has led me into a depression although I didn’t have a history of it. I did have a history of anxiety and I am a little bit quirky. So I take medication now, and at least I’m no longer thinking about suicide. But I’m still struggling with how to make a life for myself that I can actually enjoy more often than not. I was enjoying getting some of my opinions out there.

I just don’t like the things other people like. They don’t give me satisfaction. I wish I could go shopping and feel good. Hell, I wish I could believe in Jesus, enjoy watching teevee, enjoy sports, accept the fact that women are supposed to act as if their vagina is a non-renewable resource, think people look better photoshopped, worry about what celebrities are naming their babies, and all sorts of things that are just a blank for me. In short, I wish I could be just a little bit more like other people. Life would be easier for me. I wouldn’t have much to blog about, but that’s okay. Facebook is sufficient for most people.

I’m not ready to hand over my whole life to the owners of Google. I have a lot to say about many things, but I just wanted to maintain a modicum of privacy. As I’ve said before, I wasn’t using Lavabit for their encryption or security. I was using them simply because they weren’t tracking me and selling my information to advertisers.

So now I don’t know. If I can’t find another email provider that allows a little bit of privacy, I’m going to take a significant part of my life off-line. What will remain on line will be under my own name, but I won’t have any opinions that aren’t acceptable to the majority. I’ll have to cease speaking out about atheism, politics, sexuality and women’s issues.

I can’t even begin to explain to everyone the pain I’m going through right now. I feel a little bit crazy right now. Am I overreacting? Everyone else is seems so happy with Facebook. Why don’t I like it? What’s wrong with me? Why am I not like everybody else?