My internet troll

In a moment of weakness, I put the address for this blog on a few comments I made at the New York Times' website. I comment there about four or five times a week but I only put this address on comments that pertained to health issues, as that's what I'm dealing with right now. 
Some NY Times readers have commented on some of my posts, and they've been what I would expect of NY Times readers: Intelligent, polite, supportive, and positive.
Except in one case. It seems I've acquired an internet troll. 
An internet troll is a guy (the majority are male) who posts whatever will stir things up. He probably has little influence on things around him so he yearns to have more. If you say you're enjoying an unusually mild winter day, he will say you're ignoring the reality of climate change. If you say you're enjoying a recent heavy snowfall that has shut things down for a bit and sculpted the landscape in pure whiteness, he'll say you're ignoring the reality of climate change and how it causes more and more extreme weather events.

You get the idea.
My anonymous toll is worse than this. 
What makes him worse, despicable, in fact, is the way in which he casts his attempts to make me—a terminally ill man who will turn sixty this year—more depressed than I already am. 
He tries to make it sound like he's offering wise and helpful advice. When he's not telling me what I should do to improve my situation, he goes on at some length about the errors of my past ways. It's transparent. If he doesn't know what he's doing, he is unusually unaware of his motivation. Most realize how pointless it is to point out character flaws in people of a certain age. 
There are three reasons why that's true.
First, while we can all improve ourselves at any age, some things, like a preference in the kind of music you like, are seldom malleable. 
Second, advice from strangers online, unless it's practical advice, like how to remove a tomato stain or something, is largely meaningless.
And third, which applies to my troll, nothing he has ever said—nothing—is new to me. I've either heard it before from friends and family or thought of it myself and even written of it in previous posts.
I am more aware than anyone else could possibly be of my failings. (If you don't believe me, see the title of this blog.) I can be stubborn, narrow minded, petty, angry, lazy, selfish and whatever other bad label you can attach. Fortunately, I learned in my twenties that taking things out on others has never made things better and always made things worse. This was in the mid 1980s before the internet was accessible to the general public. When I went online in 1995, I determined to follow a simple rule: Write nothing online I wouldn't tell someone in person, and if you don't have something nice or constructive to say, say nothing. And if I've said something wrong, I admit it. Not right away, but eventually. Admitting to being wrong is something internet trolls will never do; they just dig in deeper, like conspiracy buffs.
I have little to be proud of in my life, but I am proud that I've been largely successful in following that. If only it were true of us all.