Thoughts Part ?

So I guess I'm probably suffering from low-level depression. Or male mid-life stuff. Or just the doldrums. Or maybe I just "live in my head" too much. But whatever it is, I'm just not enjoying life. To be honest I've never been one of those people who are packed to the gills with joy, though I've prayed for it often enough. No, I just kind of persist through life.

In other words, I feel very beige. Very bland. I used to think I was a deep person but I was probably just full of myself. For years now I just feel very thin and that I don't have anything creative to offer to others or myself. Creativity used to be my identity. I would create art and music and video and I realize that I got into computers because they were tools for creation. Now I'm lucky if I painstakingly pull one or two short stories from my brain per year and maybe a cover song. Original songs? They used to gush forth from the boredom of sitting in a classroom and now that well has gone dry. So what to do when that which was your identity is gone?

I'm tried and am trying various things to boost myself up. I mean, there's prayer. And I have a great wife and kids and I enjoy doing things with all of them. Lately I've been trying new things, such as last year when I became a secret shopper. And a couple of weeks ago when I climbed up the hill and spent about ten minutes going down the railroad tracks that run by the place where I've been parking my vehicle for work for the past fourteen years. Funny, it's been there all this time but it never occurred to me to check them out. There were tracks behind the house I grew up in and a number of times I would travel down them, exploring. And alone.

That's the other thing. Alone. Other than my wife and kids I have no friends. Growing up I usually had one friend at a time, the last one being in college. Since then it's been a desert of friendlessness. This whole stupid Facebook/email thing makes you seem like you have friends but there's no one I hang out with. But I suck at hanging out. I'm a doer. So maybe guys just like to "hang out" like the men in King of the Hill. I can't do that. When I think back to it, the person who I consider the best and longest of people I considered my friends, well, we only hung out now and then. Most of our time was centered on recording songs at my wee little studio. I've lost track of the guys I've reached out to these past 20+ years. Sometimes the guys wife didn't care for me and I was out of the picture. That still hurts.

I hope I'm not coming off as complaining. I know that God hates whining and I hate it when my kids do it. Journaling is supposed to help and I'm just trying to get this out of my head so maybe I stop living inside my head so much. I don't like that I'm a wet blanket for my wife and kids and wish I could be a different person. I'll just leave it at that.