Not a Physicist

I hail from Sydney, Australia. Male, 50. Divorced of course. 

I drive a bus on the creepy graveyard shift, not really capable of much else.       

I was a Scientologist for nearly 25 years. I drank the Kool-Aid and asked for more. Then Scientology went to war with the Internet, and the Internet went to war with Scientology. The Scientology hegemony inevitably lost control of the flow of information and before long my bubble burst, along with so many others. I am 10 years free of the Scientology mind-fuck. 

I continue to hold some spiritual beliefs, metaphysical woo-woo mostly. My experience has left me leery of universal laws and prescriptive codes of conduct, so I would currently label myself an ethical relativist, or a moral anarchist. (But go easy, I'm yet to read Stefan's books.) 

I left school at 15 and began life as a sheetmetal worker, and survived with all ten fingers. I drove taxis. I hold a two year college diploma in architectural technology. I got into asbestos removal, and was a roof plumber for about twenty years. For previous ten years I've been driving a bus. I've tried several times to go back to school, each time fading away or outright flunking. Short courses I can manage. My last attempt was a degree in physics at the University of New South Wales.     

I'm a quiet, timid person, handsome once, but fading. In a nutshell, I fail to process emotion: it crushes me into a petrified pellet of wood (pun intended). I wreak a kind of emotional havoc on others, which I know stems from my own fear of connection. Beyond that I am helpless. Unable to tolerate the shame of my closure I have simply retreated. 

Today I am a recluse. A sociophobe, disconnected and estranged, disappeared from all I have known and loved: family, friends, lovers, wife, child, associates, one and all. Gone. Anonymous. The weirdo who keeps to himself. My implosion is almost complete.    

And worse, I rarely finish what I start. That would be a saving grace to achieve something of merit. Alas, my life is a collection of unfinished, half-began projects, my library a stack of abandoned tombs on everything from macrame to quantum physics, my garage a pile of neatly packed abandonments, my files a pile of abandoned specs.   

I am currently enrolled in a bachelor of architecture. I do it completely online. There are early indications that I will flunk in this too. But the game is far from over and I may yet rise to the task.  

I am fascinated by 

• complexity, 
• emergent phenomena, 
• quantum physics, 
• string theory and 
• the physics of consciousness. 

Surely these things are the most important things to know. We use labels, but no real fundamental understandings. It may as well be magic. When I attempt to these subjects I'm like a fish swimming through gelatinous goop. I'm cursed with wits enough to sense the trail, but not the smarts to follow. That there is the real tragedy of my life.

I avoid television. I read science fiction-fiction. Some literature. I hide, mostly. Thank the gods for the Internet. We live in an enlightened age.  

I truly admire FDR. Something fascinating is happening here. I listen to the podcasts with gritted teeth at times, often wanting to tell the caller to stop being such a baby, to grow up, to be a man or a woman and face the world. But my turn will come, I'm sure, and there I will be, bawling like a baby.

Fun times ahead. 

Perhaps I'll meet some fellow souls on the road. 

Cheers.