Tag: mental-health

“The De-Transmogrification Process (Went Swimmingly)” (Prose/Essay) + Bonus Material

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Silhouette of person standing on ruined building amidst twisted skyscrapers under stormy sky

by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmith@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com

To transmogrify means to transform in an often strange, surprising, scary or grotesque way.

I think when a small town person grows up and goes to the big gnarly city to ‘make it’, they tend to transmogify.

It cannot not happen.

After all, a giant gnarley city is usually strange, surprising scary and grotesque.

Of course I am not saying small towns are heaven.

You get cornered into selling yourself to the big gnarly city.

It’s about Jobs, the need to make enough money…and usually a side of debauchery.

When I was young I was quite miserable.

I didn’t learn how to know how to be happy until perhaps 37.

When the big gnarly city has spit me out like a annoying chicken bone.

This is all not abnormal – that is to be miserable by default & to be spat out like city trash.

Of course a big gnarly city will spit out many a small town kid all grown up.

Again – this is not anything new.

Children have no power and cannot usually choose to escape.

The kid who grows up with high trauma will internalize the misery that surrounds.

Deep into their nervous systems and psyhe’s.

And by default all kids like this -we all soon transmogrify into degrees of ‘broken adults’.

I’ve talked about my trauma before so I will not rehash other than three epitets:

Poor, Neurodivergent, Child of Divorce, my father a magician (i.e. disappeared).

Now I am for many an ‘older man’ – but by now I’ve learnt like others do – to to ‘steal happiness’.

It’s not really happiness per se,

It’s really a rolling feeling of semi-wellbeing,

Because I’ve learnt to curb the most destructive habits:

Being too drunk too often,

Being around too many assholes in big cities & offices and bars.

And I’ve learnt about a few easy cheats:

Eating home cooked meals,

Having creative hobbies that could sprout into something bigger – e.g. writing.

Learning that it’s ok to say no to something.

Getting some regular hard physical labor under your belt.

And also remembering about ’embracing the inner child’.

And post apocalypse – I think the writing & the hard labor may have saved me entirely.

I’m purely speculating here, but you never know –

If I’d never started the hard labor and the writing –

And was spat out into the gutters of the big gnarly city

Perhaps I wouldn’t even be here now.

If your life’s over in a big city – it’s never wise to stay.

You will likely become a zombie of the city.

Yes in my younger, darker, big city days I have known deep despair.

If I had not died and been essentially reborn and exiled at 38 – who knows where I’d be.

But I doubt I would have ever died by my own hand.

Maybe I would have suddenly became just another a big ego driven depressed ‘success story’ in the bright lights –

MAYBE.

But I think I was one of those people that had to be essentially destroyed in order to ‘get better’.

The weird thing about my ‘Big City era, was I was within a couple of steps to some ‘city success’.

But something inside me warned me off opening that door.

It’s just as well as I was taken out before that happened.

For I probably would have been just another semi-wealthy miserable bastard wearing a mask.

Transmogrified by the big gnarly city.

Now after the war has been over for well over a decade,

I get to sit quietly and reflect.

On how good it is to have a soul, quiet times and the occasional smile.

That’s where the wealth’s at my friend.

You know it, I know it, your cat knows it but your big city office crank boss doesn’t.

Of course I don’t want to sugarcoat – I’m probably still a old curmudgeon.

And Big Gnarley cities have their good people and places – yes.

It would be remiss of me to pretend that was not the case.

Today I do love a few cans of beer at night in the country quietness.

As I sit in solitude.

And why not? haven’t I earnt it?

That war is long over and the peace settlements have been signed.

I’m entitled to a beer with my thoughts as the country stars twinkle.

Yes – I have remnants of big gnarly city bastardry – and that’s ok.

A remnant and defeated psychological ghost army can’t do much harm anyway.

I really can recommend blowing up your horrid big city office life for the country air.

Of course if your lucky the city will push the controlled demolition button for you.

And they’ll save you well ahead of ‘natural time’.

And I realise all this as I sit with a beer breathing clear air.

Writing away happily.

Yes loneliness is real but I like to think of it as being ‘functionally lonely’.

I have memories of the War – but it is so long ago,

It’s edges are rounded off and some fuzzyness has emerged .

The Big Gnarley cities are expert propagandists and tricksters.

The old Roman Bread and Circuses till abound.

The Big Gnarly daily wars do allow its footsoldiers to get laid regularly.

Amongst all the other vices.

The Corporate-denizen-slave need something to forget their cubicle-screen-work-dystopias.

And I was no different to everyone.

It’s actually what the psychologists call mass psychosis.

This is why it’s far better to visit the madhouses than live in them.

Anyway this was my tale of how the ‘concrete jungles’ are well named.

For that’s exactly what they are.

I’m merely reminding people of the facts.

I’m a mere reporter just ‘tellin’ it how it is’.

Personally I’m happy I was spat out versus consumed and transmogrified into the abyss.

In writing and in life – you gotta call a spade a spade.

Your best audience will love you for it.

Who doesn’t love a good trauma-based, haphazard-but-believable, de-transmogrification tale?

Bonus Material: There is a related Essay on my sister site – see the link below.

https://martinantonsmith.wordpress.com/2026/07/05/article-are-mega-cities-inherently-bad/

“Today I am feeling Jaded and worried about socialization – or the lack of” (A Blog Post + Bonus Material)

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Elderly man sitting on bench reading book outside bookstore in the evening

by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmith@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com

Right now I am feeling very jaded. Yes I am very tired. So that’s part of why. But I feel it’s only a small part. The larger part is because of ‘life’ as a single 48 year old guy living in a small town, where people casually disregard the need to exchange ideas (via deeper conversation) and socialize.

You see I think as a human being – you cannot ignore these two big requirements for well being and get away with it.

As a New Zealander – I think we have a curse related to this. The curse must come from the hardships of the pioneer era. If you are too close to the ‘pioneer epoch’ in time then your culture has not yet achieved ‘social maturity’.

A place which has not achieved ‘social maturity’ will – either unwitingly or wittingly – choose to ignore the need to exchange ideas, have deeper conversations and socialize as a regular part of their common ‘rituals’ (the antrhopologists like that term ‘ritual’).

You see a socially mature population would a) recognize that ‘widespread social immaturity’ is a cancer and b) chose to combat it on an individual level.

In small town NZ we seem trapped in these insular pioneer manacles – and we cannot seem to (or want to) override this tendency.

This begs the question: Is smalltown NZ (& NZ especially as a whole) addicted to this ‘social immaturity’, that results in either a deep form of loneliness or a situation of co-dependency (via you girlfriend, boyfriend, wife, husband etc)?

You see NZ seems to be bifurcated between the two camps. One camp single @ not getting enough social contact, conversations; and the other camp that board themselves up at home wth their partners or perhaps wider family members.

The Australians seem to be better at this than us Kiwis – they seem to be wiser in knowing that they need proper socialization also and making it happen. Of course I would be a fool to not mention that much of this is due to the ‘big city effect’ where perhaps 75% of Australia lives in the big cities of Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth Darwin. Big cities by there nature (a lot of people in a small space) make it such that a certain amount of what I might call ‘surface level socialization’ is unavoidable (in cafes, public transport, at the larger headcount workplace, neighbours in higher density apartments, at the bars etc).

But Australia I think is more social than NZ ( and so less ‘lonely’) not just because of the size of their cities. I think Australians are perhaps further over their ‘pioneer syndrome’ than NZ. There is a certain necessary pigheadedness about ‘pioneering life’. You have to ignore the fact that it’s a lonely place while you build the country into something more than a few huts with dirt roads. But if your society can’t ‘shake off’ this cultural programming once it has been sufficiently built then surely this becomes a societal -wide pathology. I think we in NZ do suffer this pathology and Australia does too, but to a much lesser degree.

Of course the question then becomes “how does a country that has this a-social pathology affliction get out of it, treat it etc”? I think it’s a very hard question and a very hard task. You see the pathology self reinforces itself. Once someone is insular, they become less confident with others, less skilled in conversation, more likely to be embarrassed about things, more likely to be offended – so they shut themselves away more.

When a society does this, we must then see declines in all the institutions that promote sharing of ideas and socialization. The most obvious decline is that of the ‘great western pub’. You see for a long time the pub was perhaps the center of socialization for the wider community.

Speaking as a NZ’er or an Aussie (or an American or a Canadian etc) The English Pub is obviously a part of our collective Western ethnic heritage. The pubs (and its offshoot the night-club) have all been in decline in the West over the last fifteen to twenty years. This is just one example of one formally strong institution where wider socialization between people is the whole point.

I’m sure that more than the pub – i.e. cricket teams, Netball teams, rugby teams, table tennis, sewing clubs, amateur dramatics etc have all dwindled in participation. This is proof that the pathology has been spreading. At this point there’s no real debate against this fact, other than perhaps the argument that ‘yes but what about the internet – people socialize and communicate on the internet now’.

Yes this is true – but it is not a like for like replacement of the pub, the cricket club, the bowls club etc. Many would say it’s an unhealthy bastardization of socialization. Some might disagree and say that that is being to dogmatic – after all should not the way we socialize be able to change? I guess the answer lies somewhere in the middle. Internet socialization or communication is perhaps best described a ‘half-measure’, that is fundamentally imperfect.

On a personal level – yes internet communication has been great for me – but I do feel its imperfections acutely. For example when I was younger in the nineties the pub scene was a great way to meet the opposite sex and socialize with friends and the wider community – but now that that has essentially gone, and I perhaps chat or send an email to someone it’s clearly something that leaves me wanting a richer experience. If it’s not a long term friend your messaging (I’m messaging) you never really meet up with them – and most the time you don’t request a physical rendezvous. If it’s a relative or complete stranger you say a few lines, like their posts and you might rehash the scenario for a while or you might lose interest and stop doing that.

I should mention the ‘online dating’ situation briefly. Again compared to the pub or the amateur dramatics club of old, it is a debasement. When I was younger – perhaps around thirty I did try this online dating. I found it to be shallow. This really is because the technology is designed to keep you single and having casual realtionships, because that is where the tech giants get there money. There’s no point in saying much more other than this is how I experienced it and I dropped it as a consequence.

I myself am of course talking from the perspective of a very well educated middle age man (of forty-eight), living in small town New Zealand and being single. I am a Gen Xer. I guess I am luckyin that up until thirty-odd I the old world of the social institutions was mostly still in tact. If I was twenty-five I would be more upset about this non-socialization pathology that I am. If I never socialize again, at least I can look back to the old days and feel warm inside. When the twenty five year old is fifty will they be able to do the same? Or will the doctor have done their best to tranquilize the feelings out of them entirely?

And I should mention that I think it is good that more people realize we are in a ‘loneliness pandemic’. I’ve seen that mentioned a lot – on the internet in particular. My fear is we talk about it online, and therefore basically almost make it worse. I myself feel lonely a lot of the time. I worry about this.

I am concerned that my romantic/dating life ground to a complete halt at about age forty. In small town NZ as a over forty male I feel you cannot hope to make a new friend. My friends (bar perhaps one or two others who is really just acquaintances) I have all known since high school. I do not see this changing while my environment remains the same.

In the interests of keeping this digestible – I will end it here. I don’t know what the solution is. I have a hope that there will be a mass movement to be online less. I see some anecdotal evidence of this – but I would say it is ‘scanty at best’. I haven’t mentioned the ‘gender wars’ that seem to be terrible at the moment – but I will say now that it surely is amplified by this pandemic of the a-social. We really need to make a nation-wide and indeed a global emergency of this situation we face.

It is such a thorny issue. I feel sorry for myself and all the millions of others effected by this, especially the young. But it’s bad for everybody. We’ve drifted into this at base totally avoidable situation. I will try to remain positive about the solutions. I will try to champion people to get over their ever increasing social inhibitions meet more in the real world more often. After all a problem (or an idea) shared is a problem halved as they said in the (sometimes wiser) olden days.

Perhaps tomorrow after a good sleep I will feel less jaded about everything. Perhaps this is nothing new and past societies have suffered through and came out the other end of this anti-social quagmire we seem so stuck in. Perhaps the cyclical theory of History can give us (& me personally) a rational form of optimism. Perhaps by 2035 the pubs will be bangin‘ again just like 1999 and before (But did they also ‘banged too much’ back then? Perhaps).

BONUS MATERIAL: See the expanded version (more Philosophy based) of this post on my essay based site https://martinantonsmith.wordpress.com/2026/06/27/today-i-am-feeling-jaded-and-worried-about-socialization-or-the-lack-of-an-essay-expanded-version/

“I Was Once ‘Unhappily Labelled’ – But Now I’m Clean-Skinned” (Prose + Bonus Material)

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Whiteboard listing ADHD treatment options and a man looking puzzled in a home office

By Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmith@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com

These days I am wondering if I have adhd.

I mean it is ‘all the rage’ these days.

It’s all so tempting to join the conga lines.

But I am in a quandry.

I cannot decide whether I am:

A – Delusional (just an ‘attention seeker’).

B – Partially Correct (I am only a ‘half-pie’ ADHD).

C – Totally Correct (I am full blown ADHD).

D – Not ADHD (but am some type of ‘Neurodiversity’).

E – A Hypercondriac ( aka version of option ‘A’ – Delusional)

And here’s the interesting thing:

I hate the idea of being ‘diagnosed’.

BY SOME FUCKING QUACK (Ok I added this line simply for schoolboy-crass-charm)

You see – I think I can think my way to the best solution.

And I know via reflexivity (thinking about thinking) that this kind thought might just mean that I am.

(PRONE TO BEING NEUROTIC THAT IS).

Oh and I forgot – I also think I may be an ‘Avoidant Attachment’ type.

However it’s not all bad.

You see as I am now old – I know myself to know all these things are a mirage.

A GIANT GREAT BIG FUCKING MIRAGE THAT IRONICALLY YOU CANNOT IGNORE.

I know that even if YES you are all of these things, you still have to make life work for yourself.

For example let’s say I have all of these things and I go see the local factory-issued big-pharma doc (they all are).

They (of course) robotically dish out said Class A drugs in disguise as a fake remedy.

I take them and they are basically just ‘party uppers’ I take to sweep everything under the rug (always are).

P.s. I’ve been down this route between age twenty and thirty-two with Scam-Stress-Pills TM).

Now I’m pushing fifty I know all that to be a giant swindle:

That’s all a game of fakeness to make mules of everyone for cash.

Now with hindsight I know this deduction to be cromulant:

We’ve been around many many thousands of years.

The design has not changed.

The only solutions to make you feel better from the African savannahs to the Melbourne office are:

A. Stop hanging with a-holes that pick on you (you can tribe hop).

B. Get the right mix of exercise & rest (avoid flourescent lighting).

C. Eat better natural foods (Pick a nut-bush when needed).

D. Express your creativity (Draw on a cave-wall-equivalent).

E. Have a change of Environment once in a while (Go visit the next watering hole).

You see what we’ve always had available to us must be the only real solution.,

To any and all chronic feelings of dissatisfaction mental (& most physical) disarray.

And if the seconds set of A – E’s can’t fix all the feelings of anguish in the first set of A-E’s nothing will.

(And you don’t need to go to A & E to know that either!)

And the drug pushers with certificates on their walls of course will call me a ‘witch doctor’.

But who now twenty-five years into the twenty-first century trusts any one them these days anyway?

I’ll go with what has always been & what I’ve seen work for me over the last fifteen years.

How can that be wrong?

Yes when you lack wisdom ‘being miserable can be addictive’ –

But what can I say Joe – ‘that ain’t it babe, that ain’t it’.

For yes – I was once ‘happily labelled’ – but now I’m just a clean skinned beer drinker.

What more could I ask for?

(SO AM I LIVING IN A FUCKING PARADISE ALREADY ???)

BONUS MATERIAL: Let’s see what the WordPress AI Bot thinks of this Prose!

“When two avoidants did collide all those years ago” (Prose)

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Two people in vintage attire reading newspapers in a busy café.

by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmith@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com

Literary Proviso: Re the subject of ‘avoidantism’ – I’m pretty sure I’m not pathologizing ‘being a dickhead’ (But you never know do you? Perhaps the entire DSM V could simply be whittled down to an A4 page entitled ‘The Seven Types of dick’eads’).

So what happens when two avoidants collide?
I think this happened to me in a gnarly unforgiving mega-city long ago.
She was a ‘dismissive avoidant’.
I was an ‘anxious avoidant’.
Of course I am not qualified to diagnose –
But ain’t pop psychology fun? – the joy to diagnose everyone with at least something.
And that something is only only ever half real – at best.
BUT some diagnosis are more real/useful than others.
And I think the ‘avoidant’ attachment style theories are quite good.
But again – what do I know?

This is the beauty of writing – it’s your universe up until the ‘blackshirts’ arrive.
Now going back to us ‘two avoidants’.
At the time (in the gnarly mega-city) I also hated my job.
Yeah sure for that you can call me a copy cat – I agree entirely.
In big gnarly cities the jobs are ‘created to be hated’.
That is their raison-de-tre.
And you can quote me on that

I think she did (hate her job) too, but not nearly as much as I did.
But at least she made – as they say -‘some decent coin’.
I had foolishly and blindly made myself an immigrant slave.
Well I guess I was an immigrant coming from New Zealand to Melbourne.
Pseudo-immigrant maybe, but still an immigrant non the less.
Maybe I had a better ‘class of slavery’ over there than in NZ – maybe.

Now that I am older – I realize it’s (i.e’ your life) is all about self-confidence.
It is one of the many ‘glib but true’ things.
You life falls or rises to the level of your self-confidence.
Both of us ‘two avoidants’ had low self confidence (a neccesary condition of the disease).
Of course you can be high in confidence in some areas and low in others.
It’s all a complex thing – and we Kiwis/Aussies are also bred to have low confidence.
Glib but true thing number two: The brain is the most complex thing in the universe.

I was high in confidence in picking up bar-women for example,
But low in chasing a job or generic situation that reflected a higher-self.
Of course there’s really no way to win being an corporate employee –
They’ll fire you if your confidence isn’t fake anyway.
Confidence is allowed when you ‘own the thing’.
Confidence is for Entrepreneurs with 100% or at least 51% share loadings.
Confidence is for Artists/Muso’s/Writers with shitty day jobs @ glorious creative nights,
And there’s not much in between.

Anyway of course me being the ‘anxious avoidant’ wanted to be around her (the dismissive) more.
I guess the ‘anxious’ part overrided my ‘avoidant’ part if she was the one avoiding me first.
It’s all such a ridiculously complicated thing.
It was far too complicated for me to figure out,
Mainly because we men (us with brains) get better with age – and I wasn’t old enough.
A young man cannot really put guard rails on the powerful forces that exist in him.
It is when we age the forces ebb away a little so the train can stay on it’s rails.

But I must say in my case of the ‘two avoidants’
I will always wish that somehow I could have prevented the book-end-implosion.
But as an old man I accept that is also wishful thinking.
And I still wonder about her some decade and a half gone (well -more than that).
I wonder what ‘the ol’ dismissive’ will be saying her poems about it all – & about me.
I’m sure she agrees that we couldn’t have changed anything much at all.
And only as an (almost) old man ‘ave I came to accept that.

It was a wise decision to dismiss me after all.
If the cards fell a little more to the left –
I would have easily done the same thing to her.
And she was only following her ‘nervous systems orders’ after all.
And to be fair to myself – I was wise to be anxious about her.
I too was merely following my nervous system’s orders.
We were both relative novices riding that selfish bucking beast.

But Avoidants or not – at least we did at least ‘attended class’.
We sat next to each other in class – the naugty ones at the back.
And my now my self-imposed detention (exile?) is surely over.
I’ve written the same line a million times now:
“In time good executive function can & will tame any prior emotional dysfunction”.
And upon writing the millionth line – it came true (or did it?).

And so in summary: in relative youth two avoidants must explode,
But many years later the remnants can gravitationally collapse over a lovely cappuccino.
And I don’t care if someone complements my rose tinted glasses.
For with age you don’t care what others think.
You finally and sans apology do what’s best for you.
And now I will finally stop rambling (it’s artistically legal via Prose) of the time –
“When two avoidants did collide all those years ago”.

“My Friend Kaboosekov”. (A Prose Poem/Open Letter + Bonus Material)

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By Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com

My Friend Kaboosekov

He’s over six foot and is not just as lanky as a bean pole .

well to be more true, he is as lanky as a bean pole that’s been whittled to javelin-like proportions.

He is in his late forties.

Perhaps this ‘whittled-javelin’ look he’s cultivating is about ‘getting into character’.

Only the character is the guy on the news who was ‘just arrested for putting a mirror on you shoes and going up an elevator’.

Never mind Kaboosekov – ‘ya canny win ’em all’, as my Scottish forebears said between whisky glugs.

Now Kaboosekov lives in an empty (formerly goat filled) paddock at the very bottom of his parents hobby farm.

This where he feels safely insulated from the calamity-filled outside world.

He might say that the exigencies of the hard-nosed and not at all anodyne 21st century reality specifically demand this orientation.

But he wouldn’t do this because his vocabulary couldn’t muster it – he’s not at all reader of books.

Of course he says he works everyday but I highly doubt that.

I think like the office worker who endlessly reads his newspaper in the lavatory – he to is running a good cover story.

He came to visit today and I’d I quizzed him with ‘pointed questions about his laboring duties’ –

To see if he had done anything at all on that day in question.

You see percentage wise, I think he’s mostly just ‘pretending to work’.

In answer to the pointed questions he umm’ed and ahh’d and I picked up ‘sheepish deception’ (excuse the pun).

I think to talk like the revered NZ dirt digger of yesteryear- ‘He’s clearly had done F all’.

I reckon he must only do one hour a day on average, perhaps two or three during ‘lambing time’ tops.

He’s almost certainly quasi-autistic – he can’t really communicate properly in conversation –

Eye contact is indeed a problem.

And when talking to him you have to pry out the answers and he so often answers a totally different question you never asked.

He does all these highly technical electronics things which are quite impressive in themselves (more autism evidence?).

He is as cheap as an old Scotsman – and he feels no wider social compunction to support local businesses etc.

I’m not calling him a ‘parasite’ but let’s just say if he was a parasite – his kinfolk would harass him for not pitching in enough.

His main trick is going to a Supermarket to buy a single can of bens – and nothing more.

If everyone was as cheap as him there would be a dire unending Great Depression probably ending in cannabilism.

Alas with more Kaboosekovs, the world would resemble what the Nazis did to the Russian POW’s.

On another level sometimes I conjecturize if he has that thing called “temporary prison homo-sexuality”,

But then again this kind of thing is probably rife in every small rural town where men are punished for talking to women.

Kaboosekov is a bit too ‘clingy’ and sometimes I wonder about his vibes – & no I am not ‘projecting’.

I am pretty sure ‘I am not gay’ but you never know – after all I do like Italian architecture (p.s. I’m not gay).

Kaboosekov studied Computer Sci at Uni and did ONLY computer related courses – not a single liberal arts or business paper.

After university he went into the world for 18 months, and it was all too much for him –

He was soon scampering back in a beaten up rusted honda-civic to his safe womb-like parent’s lower paddock,

Where he has been ‘paddock-maxxing’ (as the kids say these days) for the last twenty five years.

Consequently he has never benefitted from a ‘layer of real world programming’ to help combat autistic behaviors.

I would say – to hazard a guess that Kaboosekov has a mental age of perhaps twenty five (he’s now pushing fifty).

Perhaps he’s not quasi-Autistic – perhaps its ‘only’ Asperger’s.

Alas, perhaps my diagnosis is an overdone one.

Maybe he’s just ultra-ultra-eccentric.

After all we all know the field of Psychiatry has been inflated syndromes to make more cash at least since the DSM 2.

Kaboosekov – He’s not a bad guy of course, BUT if you’re stuck mentally at twenty five – you are going to stay ‘too selfish’ (autistic or not).

Of course I am not perfect, and there are some parallels with how I’ve lived my live and I have some similar odd/life avoidant traits.

BUT

I’ve always realized (after many psychic crash outs) you have to fight those internal programmings that socially hold you back.

Life is so much about fighting your bad human traits and doing it on a daily basis.

I won’t say I’ve succeeded in winning the ‘war for your own mind’,

But I’ve had a few ‘battlefield wins’ at least – I will not bore you with a list – lest it fall into enemy hands.

I do try to be a good influence on ol’ javelin joe when he visits me, which is clockwork-twice weekly.

I don’t mind, as life in these tiny towns we both live in are by their very nature ‘isolating old-world alternate realities’.

Kaboosekov does have some interesting socio-political views, albeit very naïve ones.

This is why he voted for the very insane Green Party at the last election.

Pretty soon they’ll be stuffing crayons in various orifices and calling themselves post-modern art pieces.

So executive decision made!: I’ll keep sociio-culturally looking after him for a while.

Alas all-in-all – Kaboosekov is not a bad egg.

And being a ‘normal office blat-blah-clack-boob’ would be infinitely much worse than a paddock-grown-quasi-autist-asperger.

And besides,

He’s very good to ‘casually pick on’ on account of his schoolboy-ish naivety.

And a friend that takes being ‘casually picked on’ is priceless no matter what.

I guess in that way I am half-Australian after all – born with a bent to pick on/be picked on (in equal spades).

That decade in Melbourne has infected me or perhaps just amplified me that way.

So long live my cheap-ass weirdo friend Kaboosekov – ‘the closet-quasi-autist-asperger’,

Who is probably not suffering ‘prison-gay-syndrome’ but you never really know for sure (and if he is that’s ok).

And ‘the skinny prick’ (as we say in the woods in NZ) will probably live to be a hundred too –

That is prob thanks to his father’s overly restricted calorific diet regimen he is shackled to.

And also thanks entirely to his now elderly farmer parents – he’ll be probably a multi-millionaire soon.

Which reminds me of that like by Bukowski (Life’s funny – some people get rich and others get to east s**t).

And what of the future you wisely ask?

When I finally meet a new woman (or return to the a back catalogue item female #56-00-ASP/B) yes – I’ll tire of him somewhat.

But until then, I’ll keep him on as a patient with with his ‘weekly psychiatrist visit’ intact.

The prescription will be as always ‘listen to my wisdom fool & take my casual picking on you with good humor’d warmth’.

Yes friends – It would be mean to kick Kaboosekov to the silt-filled-apple-containing-kerbs.

I agree – that would be Treasonous.

After all I’ve known the freak Kaboosekov since we were thirteen.

Since he was standing at PE class hugging and rocking himself to reduce psychological stress overload.

And I have always been way too overly loyal to a flaw.

But that’s probably a good thing overall.

It is far better to be too loyal that too disloyal.

And these is why we live in the faded grandeur ruins of some poorly resurrected Roman Empire.

But I am not here to talk of Rome.

Back to Kaboosekov.

Sometimes in life’s relationships – you’ve just got to give the baby their bottle.

And bedsides,

Excuse me if I talk like a fridge salesman for a moment:

Isn’t the feeling of being better than your friends just so flippin’ fantastic?

For is it not just ‘the other side’ of the famed Australasian sport called ‘Tall Poppy Syndrome’?

Yes I know what you are saying – YES I am indeed guilty – of soaking in ones own crapulence.

But all the same in this letter I hope I have raised a few ideas and at least one bushy literary eyebrow.

Ahh Isn’t it great to not just wallow but to crawl on all fours militarily style in these shallow delightful social quagmires?

This the low-brow delights of being ‘better than your friends’.

Like alcoholism that fiend called Reverse Tall Poppy Syndrome (RTPS) is a hard illness to shake off.

So Kaboosekov better not move out of his giant green paddock or start acting his age,

Lest I lose my sense of being ‘better than him’ – I couldn’t take the blow to my ego.

Consider his execution stayed indefinitely.

P.S. In touting my superiority I am discounting my quasi-bankruptcy (inter alia) of course, as you do.

P.P.S I hope dear reader, that I don’t sound to much like an arrogant solipsistic bastard (for I usually hide it so well).

BONUS MATERIAL: Here is what the new WordPress AI Podcast Bot thinks of this poem:

Update: I’ve been on rooves clearing gutters – I always knew I’d make in to ‘high society’. (A Blog Post)

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by Anton Martin Smith Antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com or Martinantonsmith@gmail.com (I use this one most)

Yes we came up from the gutters…and the wrong side of the Tracks – Lemmy Kilmister

I’ve been on rooves clearing out leaves from gutters. This is one of the tasks I do to make some money in my day job. I’ve done 2 rooves in 2 days. Wealthy folk with big houses where if your ladder falls your in for a trip to the ER. this week I got ‘lucky’ – I got 6 out of 7 days booked with jobs. This little business keeps me mentally healthy, fit and allows me to do fun things like work on this creative site. Yes it is the ‘day job’ although since I’m self employed it’s a bit more than that. In theory it could ‘take off’.

But of course – theoretically I’d rather have my writing take off. If I was really smart I’d ramp up my advertising and employ some sucker to do all the work and I would write all day and try to get things published. That would be pretty wild to do that. I wonder if it would be easier than it seems.

Sometimes I think about the ability to make money. I think growing up poor gives you some good and bad programming. On the good side you can learn to live frugally – because you had to growing up. I think that ability stays with you for life. in business that’s a ‘cost side benefit’. But on the negative side – I think growing up poor makes you think that having a lot of money is some kind of ‘mystical thing that’s not for us because we are poor’. In business that would perhaps be called ‘revenue atrophy problem’.

You see in business you got to go out and get sales, then you get money. The poor programming doesn’t see this reality. In my business I have to go out and make sales – so I have broken that old cycle BUT I don’t think I have broken it enough YET. You see I don’t really push sales – I tend to ‘go after’ them with the pressure of a low bank balance. If I was truly over my childhood no money upbringing of thinking ‘money was a mystical thing we don’t see’ I’d push myself to make more sales.

Oh well I have time to improve in this life on many things & this is one of them. The good thing is when I make a sale I am truly helping someone, clean their driveway or take leaves from the gutters, mow lawns, fix a fence etc. This is good as I don’t need to feel I’m a ‘corporate sell out’ who is (for example) selling overpriced insurance to people that don’t need it etc.

In other news we are heading into winter here in South Island NZ. It gets freeezing here – which is great for reading and writing so YAY WINTER.

On the writing front I am editing my new novella which I am worried is too boring – I’m wondering if the main character needs to do something wild. But I’m also thinking I’ve never done a story where nothing much happens, so perhaps this could be a test case. It does have a lot of underlying existential philosophy in it, so I’m hoping this will be the thing that makes people like it. It’s about a guy that lives in the higher plain of the ‘holographic world’ and is having one of his regular jaunts as a physical being on a planet as a joe schmoe. In this case the joe schmoe is a High School principal who is a functional alcoholic that travels to the neighboring town to get drunk at the pubs. This happens a lot I think with the ‘teacher’ set.

For the record I don’t like teachers much (and at root it’s because they live in an cloistered Marxist intellectual fishbowl) but let’s not get into it NB(people always pretend teachers are ‘great’ yet everyone agrees the good teachers they had were few and far between). And yes there are always that 10-20% V. Good to Great Teachers – I won’t be so mean spirited to deny that truth. The good ones must suffer their colleagues with grace no doubt.

Anyway these were just some quick thoughts.

happy creativity everyone and thanks for reading and liking my stuff – especially the guys who do it regularly – I really appreciate it!

Now it’s time for me to have a beer (I have 2 a night and it’s a fantastic tonic).

‘May all your gutters be clean’.

We who grew up poor may have (As Lemmy said) ‘come up from the gutters…’ but I will add this to that line

…that doesn’t mean we can’t bloom be be a giant sunflower that somehow crawled out of a deep crack in the concrete after having finally seen the light of the eternal supernova

p.s. My DM’s are open (email me an idea or comment)

Anton Martin Smith

Am I happy? Or am I sad? Is this a dumb question? How do you know? (A Blog post)

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by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com

This is a strange situation. If you would back the clock to when I was between age 19 and 21 and for 18 months was unable to get out of bed in my student flat in Dunedin NZ – then the answer would be obvious. I was not happy – quite the reverse. If you asked me that question at age 32 with a poorly paid corporate job in Melbourne with a bunch of regular drunken escapisms/escapades attached – again I would say ‘no I was not definitely not happy’. You see in those two situations of my personal history, there was an element of ‘black and white to it all. When things are black and white it’s easier. But things are only ‘black and white’ from certain perspectives. This is why a common car thief or the socialist student that burns down a business can explain to someone with a straight face that they are helping society. Delusions/Ego stop us from seeing the black and white realities about ourselves.

So I can see that when I was younger I was not happy, from the perspective of many years later I can see the black and whiteness of it. But what about my happiness or sadness right now? Now I’m officially middle aged at age 47 soon 48, the answer is still at this very second as I write not truly obvious to me.

There is a ‘grey area’ to it. Of course, I have talked in the past on an intellectual level about whether the well known traditional Philosophical question ‘should we aim to be happy’ – but I won’t dwell on that now other that to summarize that overall the position held is that it is a little foolish to want to be ‘happy all the time’ as an adult – as we struggle under the many life pressures the world puts upon our shoulders day to day, month to month, year to year.

The smartest position as a grown adult is (possibly) to exchange contentedness for happiness. I agree with that idea. It’s a more reasonable position. Even with this newer definition of happiness – I still see that I wasn’t ‘content’ at those age 19-21 or at age 32 prior self-examples. That’s because they were genuinely unquestionably full of obviously bad things.

With this in mind – at 47 soon 48, I guess I am at least ‘arguably content’ most of the time. For example there are quite a few times when I really do feel ‘happy’ (which I’ll now redefine as moderate to high elation) and even more with the lower definition of ‘contentedness’. I won’t bother to define contentedness – I think it’s roughly self explainitory (but go to a dictionary if needed!).

Ok so nowadays I’m quite often content. Lets say that now. I’ll add some more life data points:

I am not rich – I live a hand to mouth, self employed, low income, low cost life. I act as a part time caregiver to a family member. I have access to a cheap lodgings, though that may change in the medium term. My job is physical – carpentry and gardener work. When I need more money, I have to find more work. This has mostly been working in terms of ‘survival money’ – I eat ok, go for a coffee a few times a week, a takeaway meal a two or three times. I do not make enough for middleclass holidays, like I was able to at age 32 working in corporate offices. I live in a small town of 6000, picturesque, quiet with little urban trappings such as events, nightlife, dating culture etc. I have a cat, and another that visits and lives on my roof.

More data points: I have for the last 5 years written lot of creative stuff (on this website/blog). I am single, which now looks like ‘life long bachelor’ status. I have not gone out with anyone since I was in Australia a decade ago. I put this down to the fact I never actually meet anyone a little like me these days. The few regular male friends I have I’ve known since I was 13 or even younger. I don’t really have any female friends, like I had in urban Australia. So that’s the generic raw life-data on me.

You see I had some on the face of it some plusses in Australia (socially, more money etc) but it did not translate to happiness/elation or general contentedness. I do miss the conversations here and their & the female energy friendships – yes I do. BUT you see those things were ruined because at age 32 I had not had the years to have worked on myself as much as I have now some 16 years later aged 47 soon 48. And I think this is the difference – I needed to put the self reflection and mirror looking and question asking work in before I could ever have the chance to be content, let alone to have a shot at ‘regular happiness/elation feelings’. So I guess I have answered my quandry in a very simple manner. I am at the least mildly content because I have benefitted from ‘working on myself’ for perhaps now for fifteen years straight.

I guess I have to now think about the regret that this kind of improvement to contentedness brings. Their is a sadness when looking back to all the chaos that being discontented brings. The pressure of relationships. The broken relationships. When with one discontented person or two discontented persons ‘go out with each other’, there is a natural tendency towards disaster, war, hurt feelings, grudges. And the sad thing is that when you have done work on yourself, you know that when looking back to your raw troubled unworked self – you know you simply got back ‘what you were putting out onto the universe’. This is not to be all ‘woo woo’ – it’s just really about congruence and vibration. Troubled people with unresolved or repressed issues will resonate in environments that have the same dynamic. Be they Jobs Lovers, Wives, Husbands or Friends.

The good thing about self-work is you can see the past for what it was, accept it. Forgive. Ultimately you accept it as the learning experience you had to have to become the person you are now – at least ‘somewhat content’ – and with more potential for becoming more content in the future. As I write these words I can’t help but think it’s all a bit too glib, to much out of the pages of some ‘self help’ shelf in a non descript early 2000s bookshop. Even so I think it is true. With my advancing age the self-work is now paying off. Yes glib but true – ‘time can heal many wounds’. I’ve realized that just to be ‘half decent’ actually also takes work. If you do zero work on yourself you will be not be very nice – that’s the default. Yes there are probaly people who are great from birth to death (because of great parents? A great town?) – but that would be the exception that proves the rule.

We live in a world that is far too throwaway, stressful, competitive. And more so in bigger and bigger urban environments like the one I was in in Australia when I was 32 (Melbourne). I think those big cities if you are just flowing along the ‘social corporate urban river’ the toxicity can become like the goldfish bowl is to the goldfish bowl. I think when I was in that environment it was too easy to ignore how extremely important self-work, healing work is. For example in big cities relationships can be disposable – because there’s always a new sucker just around the corner.

I guess I could be wrong – perhaps I am more unhappy than I think I am – but perhaps that unhappiness is just like an artists car – it breaks down because the artist owner refuses to do the basics of maintenance – check the oil, tires, lights, clean the McDonalds wrappers out from the foot areas etc. I now know that that kind of ‘stock unhappiness’ in the car example to be a good example of how to cure these kinds of ‘peripheral unhappinesses in yourself’. Just like if the artist isn’t feeling well one day and puts oil in their car, checks their tires etc, a persons ‘temp unhappinesses’ can be worked away by things such as exercise, deep rest, good nutrition, avoiding having mean people as best friends etc.

Anyway I thought I would share these feelings on the journey to wellbeing & contentedness, with a few jolts of elation sneaking in just for good measure. I wrote this personal post as I think we should all support each other on this very common journey, and to do that we need to talk openly of our lives and struggles.

Because a lot of discontent (and so also the downstream effects of chaos) is not nearly as permanent as your prior 19 or 32 year old self thinks at the time. But you do need to focus and spend the time, & that won’t be easy. I should also specifically add that being creative seems to help a lot. I think we were all made to be creative. To not express it at all surely creates some kind of amorphous blob internal discontent or energetic ‘blockage’ of some sort. And remember creativity for health does not need to be ‘good’. Many years ago (when I was still very unhappy with a lot of work to do) I once shamefully told a lady that her art was ‘not good’ because of perceived technical reasons…oh how I missed the point.

For others on the well being journey – I hope my words help in some way, perhaps you have similar or different takes (feel free to share in the comments!).

Let us all heal as we peal the oranges of life, and may the many slips on life’s banana skins whisk us away to a beautiful beachside towel with a responsibly drank pina-colada and a great book (haha!). Rose-tinted but wise? Perhaps we may be so lucky for those we wronged long ago to one day see or hear that our older and wiser words are indeed genuine and forgive us. That would of course ne a cherry on the top – as our internal wellbeing is the main prize.

Anyway these were a few thoughts of my ideas on journeys to better places.

See ya on the next update post!

Anton Martin Smith

On the night of April 28 2026, NZ.

An Update From Me ( A Blog Post)

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By Anton martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites or martinantonsmith@gmail.com

So what’s been happening?

Well the world is turning to crap again with this oil crisis. By now at my age I realise this is all a game. There are all these tripwires in the ‘global economy’ – & every now & then they trip one of them to distract you. Why distract you? because they know you are being served from restaurant that never cleans the floors or wipes the tables, & is always cooking frozen food. The restaurant has only foul mouthed waiters that scream at you, call you ‘fat & stupid’ & then force you to pay a 50% tip….you look at the menu & you only have seven only slightly differing sh*t sandwiches you can have the Hawaiian sh*t sandwich – which has pineapple – you can have the “Mexican sh*t sandwich” which has hot sauce…you can have the ‘big daddy sh*t sandwich’ which has a slice of cheese in it. All these International “crisis” are there to distract you from the fact you are in these dirty restaurants of theirs eating sh*t sandwiches. Everyone should be able to see this by now.

It’s also “funny” that this Iran/Oil thing happened after the “Epstein files” wasn’t going away easily. No coincidences. The big boys in geopolitics are all playing “good cop bad cop” & just carving up the world between them. Anyway I won’t go on any further on that. Just know what restaurant you are sitting at & why your food always tastes horrible.

Outside that, the writing is going well – the website has had a great start to the year – 3 very good months & the traffic/visitor level has already passed that of the entire last year! This must be what happens when you play along with the ‘persistence pays’ motto!

re specific works – I am still of course doing the high turnaround poems – they are the ‘bread & butter’ of the site & my work. But on the harder level stuff – I not long ago finished a first draft quick Novella (14K words) called “Full Circle Indeed” – it is about a man (Mal Matakinski) who was once bullied & has organised a get together of other nerds who were bullied at ‘Trudgerton High’…all is going well until an ex bully turns up…what follows for Matakinski is a lot of soul searching, as he tries to reconcile the past & his present and the future in his mind. here is the link https://antonmartinsmith.com/2025/12/30/full-circle-indeed-a-short-story/

Of course the other big project is my Novel – I am still editing/proof reading it – this was started exactly 1 year ago now, so I need to keep going with the editing/proof reading so I can publish it before the real world happenings make my book ‘old news’.

This Novel is called “Trafficlight Dystopia” – it is set in 2045 where Techno Fascism has taken over the world, and a AI management/surveillance machine is in control of every normal joe & jane – called ‘Trafficlighters’ because they all exist in three tiers (Red,Orange,Green) of slightly increasing subordination & slightly decreasing Freedoms/Perks. Matakinski unlike the others somehow has retained his memory of the ‘old world’ and so can see more of the hellscape than anyone else – he wonders about starting a rebellion – but how can he under these tough ‘perfect prison’ conditions that have been enforced on the world?. There is a love element too as Matinski aims to finally meet up with his old flame Kelly in his old city that he is now exiled from – ‘Big City’ – will she reject him again or will she let her guard down after so many years of non contact? What with the AI mega-manager called The Database do about Matakinski when it has a face to disembodied face chat? The Novel link is here https://antonmartinsmith.com/2025/03/31/trafficlight-dystopia-a-short-story/

Other than that, I’ve been working on putting insulation in my studio ceiling – it’s getting cold and this year I want to be warmer. It really is wise to learn carpentry – you save a ton of cash.

Happy reading & remember the words of George Carlin “The world’s a giant private giant club & you ain’t invited!” (so f*ck ’em all!)

Anton Martin Smith aka Martin Anton Smith

31 May 2026

“The Rosy Life Of The High IQ + Neuro-divergent” (A Prose Poem)

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by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com

If you have high IQ and Neuro-diversity you tend to live in your own world.

A world of ever-swirling-ideas, stacks of sky-high books & mindsets of never wanting to be ‘pinned down’.

And of course, at least a few decades of voluntary poverty – that goes without saying.

But let me explain the ‘pinned down’ thing.

You see people like us – who are smart & also neuro-divergent (I reckon I have ADHD) –

We love ‘Ideas’ much more than the current version of ‘bland Earthian reality’ dished up.

So this explains our tendency to not want to commit to a single-probability-wave-collapsed, long term course of action –

It is too much connected to the ‘real world’.

We would rather talk about the myriad of pitfalls that the ‘real world’ has waiting to ensnare.

When we do this with a beer or tea or coffee we are in our version of ‘heaven’.

For example I don’t like the idea of being a Lawyer with two kids in private school with a high price wife on a hill.

And then we would have dinner parties where we all sit & rattle off narrow upper-middleclass epithets to each other.

“Oh I’ve decided to rebalance my portfolio”

“Oh really – that’s wise”

“Yes I decided that while drinking bitch juice at Portsea Polo last week”

“Oh what a great Idea Ms X, and I have got my reno going – we are adding an extra room & two new bathrooms”

“Oh isn’t that wonderful Ms Y – but will Burt still pee on the toilet seats?”

Cue the laughing like Hyena’s & all in front of poor Blushing Burt.

That kind of life I would see as a ‘living hell’.

The performative narrow-band blandness of it all is stomach churning.

Why would anyone want to live like that?

When I see people like this I think it’s all because they have killed off their inner child.

They have ‘human sacrificed’ themselves.

You can’t think of them as the playful child they once were – it is impossible to divine from their adult faces.

Someone that has a high IQ & is Neuro-diverse sees these things very easily.

We see the unhappiness & the unhappiness out there in the world.

We see through the smoke & mirrors of this ‘reality tv’ world they’ve sneaked on us.

Of course we suffer – for we are usually poor – but perhaps a few might get wealthy off Art/Media/Music etc.

Those ones often can’t handle being back in the world of empty epithets, status, & bank balances – so they do themselves in.

So we are better off being alone on our rooms with books piled high & living off the food scraps the world throws up.

If we die under a ditch early in life – we can accept that.

For at least we saw the swindle and had a original few ideas.

We let the dull have their dinner parties, & we were happily uninvited.

It’s far more fun to make fun of them.

They can swig their overpriced bitch diesel & practice their sneers in their expensive cracked mirrors.

We will be writing of it all with full epistemological & philosophical accuracy for future generations to enjoy.

While they will be outed as the ‘intellectual sludge people’ of the ever-declining post-post-Roman era.

All in all I’d say us high IQ-Neuro-diverse have it pretty good.

The only draw back is we need to raid the back of the couch to buy milk,

And our rooms are book laden dusty debacle obstacle courses.

Other than that life’s Rosy for us.

The only weak point we have is when there is a sudden ‘crisis of confidence’:

Where we wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night with the thought:

“Are we just a rehahsed version of them but don’t know it?”.

It is a terrible conjecture indeed.

If it were true, I would act to bury it deep in my psyche forthwith – to protect a fragile ego.

If it were not true, I’d be willing to write a poem about it.

Dragon slayed my friends – Dragon slayed!

We are not at all like them – we are not like our natural enemies.

We have not yet became that which we fight against.

But this is not the end of our problems:

For what of the next conjecture:

Are we High IQ Neuro-divergent family still just ‘bunch of assholes’ none-the-less?

I call this the ‘Griswold’s theory’ and I hope the answer is not of the ‘one hand clapping in the woods’ type.

But let’s be honest with ourselves: we can easily slip into the territory without knowing it,

So perhaps all of us can be assholes some of the time,

Some of us can be assholes all of the time,

But all of us can’t be assholes all of the time.

This is called the Dylan-asshole-theory.

Of course I could continue, however this is a poem and not an essay.

And I think we can all agree, be us High Iq Neuro-divegent’s or Upper middle class pustules or somthing else:

Only an asshole would write am essay and call it a poem.

I reader pals, would never do that.

Though I am also sometimes a unscrupulous liar.

I regard this as an inalienable right my artistic license,

Which strangely is now made to expire every five years, & limits the number of passengers I can stage dive onto.

And now this essay, er…I mean poem must end.

For more than enough intellectual chaos has been metered out,

And ‘world befuddlement stocks’ have been greatly enriched.

My work is done here.

“The Journey Of The Master’s Apprentice Part 2: Personalized Abysses & The Start of the Journey” (A Serialized Essay)

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by Martin Anton Smith martinantonsmith@gmail.com

The Journey Of The Master’s Apprentice Part 2: Personalized Abysses & The Start of the Journey

This is a continuation of the prior link https://antonmartinsmith.com/2026/02/21/the-journey-of-the-masters-apprentice-an-essay/

…..On that, if I was to speak as a English person from the 20th century I might say that “just because the ‘working classes’ & the ‘middle classes’ hate each other, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t just on different sides of the same coin”. I once said to a long term childhood friend of mine, who I talk of sociological matters to, “the working classes take their profits in sex, & the wealthy forgo sex to get the cash”. A little crude but it was a good analogy. We like to think talking of upper & lower classes as a old fashioned – but I ask if you – is the world we see really more egalitarian? Or is that just a polite and weathered façade?

But back to the story of ‘climbing out of the abyss’ – which from the last paragraph’s explanation – really is a task for everyone (Yes – even though the ‘trust fund baby’s life’ seems a total lark). It is a task for the child of the ‘crack addict parents’ and the child of the ‘CEO dad & Lawyer mother’, and all the children (who then of course grew into adults) in between. If you are born of a human being, you will have to face a personalized ‘abyss’ at some point and quantum science also implies it will also look back at you.

In short we are all tasked with crawling out of our own ‘personalized abyss’ (for the ‘modern organized world’ designs so many traps casually) the child given everything by wealthy highly networked but emotionally distant parents has to crawl out of their own ‘personalized abyss’ too. This experience of life’s casual pathology is something that the ‘boarding school syndrome’ sufferer is acutely aware of. We all need to create our own healthy and true ‘meaning’ in our lives – a cliché but a true cliché.

So as you as an adult (emerging from the standard & various childhood traumas already mentioned) start to ‘crawl out of the abyss’, you see the light is getting stronger. You continue walking towards the light. It is like a ‘near death experience’ if things are good the light should increase – if things are bad the light will diminish. But real life is complex in that something ‘eventually Good’ can have this iterative journey:

Bad, bad, bad, no so bad bad better, bad, better, not so bad, better, good, bad, GOOD.