In short : money.

Let’s start with the numbers. Right now, I have $428 to my name.

My weekly budget is $150/week for four weeks. $600 totaly. Ergo, if I were on budget and on schedule, I would go into tomorrow (beginning of week 2) with $450.

Ergo, I am already $22 into next week’s budget and I am probabkly going to spend around $20 more tonight.

Ergo, I am around $42 over budget and I hate that.

Especially because I don’t know how it happened. I thought I had everything under control. But then I count my money last Friday and I am $50 short of where I should be.

And that makes me feel very insecure, both financially and emotionally.

Those tend to be the same thing with me.

Now this is not a financial crisis. I have $434 on The Card right now. I can make a cash withdrawal and get my financial ship back on course and that’s fine.

The enotional situation is far more complicated, though. I don’t handle the unexpected well even when it is not about money.

When it is about money and involves a feeling of loss, it really destabilizes me.

The problem began when I was so happy that, after the deposit I made when I cashed my check on Thursday, my total was over $500.

That felt good. That felt like an achievement. That felt like I was doing something right.

But that’s hoarder thinking. Miser thinking. The moment I felt good about essentially setting a new high score, I became attached to that number and that sets me up to not want to spend any of that money so I can cling to the feeling of financial security and safety it gives me.

But money is for spending, dammit. I don’t want to be the sort of joyless person who accumulates wealth and then does nothing but squat on it like a dragon.

I want to spend money to make myself happy. That’s what it is for. That doesn’t mean I will ever be the sort of person who spends it as fast as they get it, but I refuse to let myself become the kind of person who is incapable of spending it.

I want to have fun, dammit/. Buy myself nice things. Make investments in my own happiness and wellbeing.

Maybe even get myself some positive experiences some day.

None if that is possible if I lapse into a state of financial constipation, where no matter how much comes in, nothing goes out.

I’ve read about captains of industry who accumulated vast fortunes while continuing to live like paupers. My buddy Ebenezer Scrooge is the most famous example from the world of fiction.

He lived like a beggar despite being rich. And the real irony of that is that the only real difference between a miser and a beggar is that the beggar’s misery is justified.

And even then, the beggar is probably happier.

So no. I don’t want to go down the path of the miser and the money hoarder.

I will learn to spend it and enjoy it if it goddamned kills me.

Here comes the cut!

---

In other news, I am free. Ish.

Saw Doctor Vortel, infectious disease specialist and comedy alien, today, and he took a look at my leg monster and agreed that it is looking way, way, way better than it did when I came in two Fridays ago. My bloodwork was similarly vastly improved, and so without further adoodoo, he discharged me from the antibiotics program.

So no more going to Richmond Hospital every day for me. W00t. I especially like not having the IV… nozzle? interface? dongle? Dongle it is…. stuck in my arm any more.

Not that it hurt orrestricted my motion or anything. It was just annoting having it and all its gauze and tape on my arm all the time.

Speaking of gauze. a mystery : When I went to sleep last night, my IV dongle was all wrapped up in gauze like it is supposed to be.

When I woke up this morning, the gauze was GONE. As in missing. All the tape and stuff was there. but the gauze was gone, which should be impossible.

It’s like a locked room mystery. How the hell did the gauze escape while leaving all the tape holding it there? And for Dog’s sake, where did it GO?

I figure my body absorbed it.

It’s the only explanation that fits the facts//.

Anyhow, the upshot is that I have been transferred to the community home wound care program. And when I heard that, I was like… “really? they’re going to come to my home? That’s awesome! ”

But no. Of course not. Presumably, the “home” in the name means “we give you some stuff so you can go away and treat your own wound in your own home. ”

Typical, that. Having had the childhood I did, I am well aware of how “encouraging independence” can look an awful lot like “fuck off and leave me alone”.

“Hey, guess what, you have to do this for yourself now.”
“Um, okay…. is anyone going to teach me to do it?”
“Oh no…. god now. I already feel like I have spent more time on you that you’re worth. I’m just telling you that nobody is going to do that for you any more. What happens to you after that could not mean less to me. “

At least I don’t have a complicated wound, as far as I know. I am a little worried that I will go into that clinic and suddenly things will get complicated and weird.

The damned thing has healed wonderfully with just regular changes of dressing. And even then, the wound is draining so little now that I only need a change every other day. So I am not sure what I need the wound care people for.

I just need a stack of those enormous bandaids they use to dress my wound.

Those, I can change myself. It’s just a huge bandaid. Even I can handle that.

One thing of note : I was feeling trembly and weak and so I asked the nurse doing my IV for something to eat.

She said fine, but then got a worried look on her face, and asked me if I wanted to get my blood tested first.

I said sure. Hard to argue with that without looking like a stereotypical fat guy.

“NO TEST! FOOD NOW! ”

And it’s a good thing that the nurse had that foresight, because my blood glucose level was over 21 and normal is seven.

So it was triple normal. No snax for me. I sat there wondering how this was possible, and I figured it out, and it is Bad.

I had the symptoms of lood blood sugar because those are the symptoms of your cells not getting enough sugar, and mine were not.

But it wasn’t because I needed to eat, it was because my insulin response was so bad that the sugar was staying in my bloodstream and not making it into the cells.

That is Bad. Very bad.

So I am softening on the whole testing by stabbing my fingertips thing. It hurt klike a motherfucker whenthe nurse did it, but the information was extremely important.

I have no idea where my old testing kit went, so I am going to order a new one. Then it will be back the world of lancets and test strips and paaaain.

My thought is that I will test once a day. after lunch, and then again as needed if I discover my level is too high and I have to do some insulin and then check to see if that did it or not.

And that’s a good incentive to keep on the straight and narrow path right there : not having to puncture myself more than once a day.

Hopefully that will be enough.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

This half is going to be all about business, so if that’s not your bag, skip to the lower half of today’s entry, with my blessing.

To all business owners :

Gross revenue is not your money.

I know that’s how to think, and how you feel. You feel as though every penny that your business brings in is your money that you earned and should get to keep.

But you are wrong, wrong, wrong. And this fundamental error is the source of a great deal of tension and stress in all your business relationships.

Because that money is not yours. It belongs to all the people you have bought things from as part of running a business – from your employees to your suppliers to the people who water the plants.

They expect you to pay for what you bought from them the same way you expect your customers or clients to pay for what they bought from you.

When you treat gross revenue as if it is your money. it sets up a great deal of tension and conflict between you and those you deal with because it leads to you treating them like they are thieves trying to steal your money.

They patently are not. They, like you, are simply looking to be paid for what you bought.

But if you have fallen into this line of thinking, honor and responsibility and basic business ethics go out the window. No matter how legitimate someone’s claim on your business’ gross revenue might be, you treat them like they are thieves or bandits.

And not only is that simply unfair, not to mention highly hypocritical, it also leads down the dark path to a lot of dirty deeds that would be unthinkable to you if this moral affliction did not have you in its grip.

After all, you’re only getting “your” money back from those trying to “steal” it, and viewed that way, a lot of very bad business ethics (as well as bad business practices) suddenly become totally justified.

And it all starts with feeling like gross revenue is yours.

It is not. Gross revenue belongs to everyone you buy from.

Profit is yours. Once you have paid for all the things you need to run your business, what is left over is yours.

That is the proper and decent way to look at things. To own and run a business is to be part of a complex web of interactions with both customers and other businesses. Money comes in and goes out via many, many doors. The business world is highly interdependent. It behooves you to understand this.

To love the money comes in part and hate the money goes out part is childish, dishonorable, and counterproductive.

Accept that you have to pay for what you get just liek everyone else.

I won’t pretend this will be an easy transition to make. Once the human mind decides it owns something, it’s hard to convince it that it does not. The human mind does not like working in that direction.

But if you can make it, so much of the conflict and tension in your life will disappear and you will feel so much cleaner and stronger that you will wish you had done it years ago.

Just repeat to yourself. “That’s not my money. ”

And I promise, it will set you free.

---

All the above thoughts occurred to me while I was waiting for the bus so I could get home from the hospital today.

And I had my doubts about whether I should do it. After all, it’s certainly not my usual fare and I highly doubt it will reach its intended audience.

And I somehow doubt my existing audience (hello you wonderful people!) will be all that into the subject matter.

But I am glad I did it. I feel like writing it strengthened my writing skills precisely because it is unlike what I normally write. Gave my mental muscles a highly pleasant workout.

Plus, I like that I got it all down when the ideas were still glowing red-hot from the fires of creation. Time between concept and realization was quite short.

I want to move in that direction. Getting the thing done while the idea is still fresh in my mind. That way, a lot more of my thoughts make it to the real world and there is no time for me to go cold on the whole thing.

So to speak.

Not much to talk about in today’s medical adventure. Got dropped off, admitted, IV’d.

The only noteworth thing happened after I left. I chose the wrong moment to fish for my Compass card and missed the 407 bus. It pulled away while I was not looking.

D’oh! I checked the posted schedule. It said there wouldn’t be another for 19 minutes. God damn it.

After that, I was too agitated and impatient and mad at myself to sit and wait, so I walked to the next stop for the 407 in order to burn off the excesss energy.

And that worked. I was able to sit and wait and think business thoughts till the bus finally showed up at that stop.

The thing is,. I could have taken one of the other two buses that stop at that stop. They would have taken me as far as Richmond Center, and from there it is only a two block walk to my apartment.

But the 407 gets me to within ONE block of home. So clearly any other bus is completely unacceptable. Not an option. Can not do.

I hate all my weird compulsions.

Oh well. I got home. Wrote the top half of this blog entry. Slept some – I have been catching up on sleep lately, and it is a wonderful thing in the long term, but in the short term, it kicks my ass with that hyper-intense sleep that makes me feel utterly horrid when I wake up.

Sleep debt has one nasty interest rate.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Let’s talk about today’s medical adventure.

Got dropped off by Joe and Julian. They have been so good to me through this whole bullshit with the thing on my leg.

There was a wait at Reg because apparently the lady working there suddenly had to do a whole whack of paperwork while a pregnant lady who quite possibly was in for induction {{1]}today waited patiently, and another customer waited behind me.

Me, I was in no particular hurry. Not compared to being with actual emergencies. Sure, I was somewhat annoyed by the delay, during which she disappeared entirely twice. but that’s because it left standing and therefore in pain.

Pain makes people impatient. Remember that, we will touch on that again later.

What worried me most was that I overheard her saying something about her partner not showing up till 3 pm, and it was 2:25 pm when I got there.

So I thought she was going to just leave and then we all would be stuck waiting until 3 pm before we had a chance of being served.

Now that would have been unacceptable for me and I was just a fat dude with foot pain. But it was definitely unacceptable for the poor pregnant lady waiting to find out if she would be giving birth today.

So I have started quietly seething, and forming a whole speech about what it means to have responsibility and that it doesn’t matter if you were supposed to be allowed to leave now, it is your responsibility to stay at the job until your relief arrives.

I mean, you’re not flipping fucking burgers back there. You’re dealing with people
who are having one of the worst days of their live and who despertately need medical attention that they can’t get until you do your goddamned job, lady.

But of course, she came back five minutes later, was profusely apologetic, and got down to business, leaving me to ponder my own mistrust and paranoia.

Things went smoothly for me after that. Drop the purple form off, nurse comes and hooks up the IV, and so on.

But once more there was someone in acute distress in the ER waiting room. He was a Polish man with great foot pain that kept him from even being able to walk and he had been waiting to see a doctor for hours.

And then the doctor shows up and she seems kind and sympathetic but she doesn’t listen when he says pain relief is the most important thing to him and goes on to talk about how she can’t do anything because his doctor works out of Royal Columbian and they are on a different computer system and therefore she doesn’t know what work has already been done on his foot.

And I am thinking, so call the fucking Royal Columbian and get someone to read his goddamned file to you. Or fax it to you. Or email it to you. Or TEXT it to you.

My point is, this is a easily solvable situation, and you would see that, Doctor Useless, if you would just pull your head out of your ass and put the patient first.

Oh, I almost forgot : She also said she couldn’t call the specialist working on this poor suffering man because it was Sunday.

I don’t fucking care! The poor man is in terrible pain. I don’t care if you have to send a black ops team to physically abdiuct his doctor and drag him here, that goddamned doctor has a responsibility to his patient and that’s the most important thing.

It’s noit the patient’s fault he got sick on a Sunday, god dammit. And the response, “Well, you got sick on a Sunday, sucks to be you!” is….

But that’s as far as that poor Polish man got. Once her blatant incompetence and the extremely unacceptable nature of her responses started to make her uncomfortable. the doctor just told him she was going to go off and check something, and never came back, at least not in the half hour I was there after that.

And I could tell the guy was crushed by all of this bullshit. He had gone to the hospital thinking (not unreasonably) that they would ease his pain, and had pinned all his hopes on that,. only to be ignored for a couple of hours then got told they couldn’t do anything for him because of file systems and Sunday.

NOT FUCKING ACCEPTABLE. I kept my thoughts to myself but I really wish I hadn’t. This man clearly needed someone to advocate for him and I am just the person to do it.

I would have told that goddamned doctor to call the Royal Columbian and get the man’s file and do what it takes to get him some relief. Even if that means hauling his specialist off the golf course for a few minutes. You’re a healer, god dammit, and that means you are here to relieve the pain and suffering of your patients, whatever it takes.

And if she’s asked me if I was a doctor, or otherwise made an appeal to authority, I would say “No I am not a doctor, but you don’t need to be a doctor to know how the phone works. It’s true that I have no official authority over you and there is nothing I can do to force you to do what I say. But if you walk away know, you will walk away knowing that you are leaving a patient to suffer because you are too goddamned lazy to make a freaking phone call. ”

By then security would have shown up and tried to get me leave.

And I would go once I had said my piece.

It would have severely complicated things for me, but I would not care because someone has to stand up for what is right. Someone who has the tools needed to wake the system from its usual stupor and force them to face reality.

I mean, that doctor was waaaay too comfortable telling that dude she couldn’t do anything. She didn’t even seem to be trying to help him. She did not care. She had already dismissed him and was already on to the next patient
in her mind before she said one damned word to him.

It makes me want to just hang out in the ER and advocate for people, because they clearly need it. I’ve been treated fine, but others are clearly getting stepped on by the the big bad system.

And when the big guy steps on the little guy, the first thing the little guy has to do is stomp on the big guy’s toes till he is paying fucking attention.

And I have the feet and the weight and the big big mouth to do it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

[[1]] As in, “inducing labour”. Don’t feel bad if you didn’t get it, it took me a while and a fair bit of brain work to figure it out.[[1]]

At some point in my life, I absorbed the message that I was being obnoxious and that I really should tone it down some.

I overcompensated by a wide margin.

I certainly get where people were coming from. Were I to act in the real world in the flamboyant, over the top, outrageous way I do online as Fruvous, a lot of people would think I was extremely obnoxious.

And yet, that’s the real me – so to speak. That is who I am when I am expressing myself as fully as I know how and following my social instincts and doing what feels right. That is me without inhibitions, without shyness, and without fear. Me without all that social damage causing me pain and driving me into fear by playhing those time-worn tapes from my childhood when I try to interact with others.

So I can do things like just plonk myself down in a handsome stranger’s lap, or tickle a random person, or make silly jokes about people’s names or species, and not only does it not get me in trouble (most of the time), it actually works.

I charm the pants off of people. Sometimes literally.

The very notion of being able to do that in the real world makes me tremble and tingle inside with giddy fear and joyous chills.

Like I said, I’m…..complicated.

But first I would have to accept that at the very least, I am risking being seen as obnoxious by some.

There are worse things to be.Too scared to find love comes to mind. Forever trapped in the darkness of your own cold and fractured mind because you lack the courage to overcome your own resistance is another.

Been there, done that. Time for something new.

If I could somehow shut down the clusterfucking shitshow in my mind when I am dealing with new people,that would be a big help.

I mean, I realize now that my entire time at VFS was one enormous prolonged panic attack. I was freaking out the whole time I was there.

That’s why I was so dopey, disorganized,and confused. Important higher thinking centers of my brain could not function while my mind was waterlogged with fear.

And that’s also what kept me from really connecting with my fellow students. Sure, there was an age gap, but the real problem was that there was demonic chorus of abject fear shrieking in my ears the whole time.

I’m enjoying expressing my talent for imagery.

Looking back over my life, that has pretty much always been my problem. On the surface, I don’t seem perturbed or distressed at all. I seem calm and confident, maybe even a little big arrogant and/or smug.

`But on the inside, I am a burning firehouse full of screaming homunculi clawing at each other and myself as they try to escape.

Hmmm. Too much like the demonic choir one. Whatever.

So one possible solution would be to lower my inhibitions and actually express the fear I am feeling at the time.

That would be…. hard to achieve. It would mean abandoning my social mask in a way that leaves me extremely vulnerable, and that’s not easy.

And to be honest, it probably would not go well. If a petite woman breaks down crying and expresses fear and anxiety, odds are good she will get a sympathetic response at least from other women.

But if a big fat biker looking dude does the same thing, the universal response will be contempt. As if I am somehow failing as a man and therefore detestable.

Been there, done that. Trust me, it ain’t pretty.

I imagine the only place I would feel comfortable doing that would be some kind of therapeutic environment. My psychiatrist’s office,a psych ward, whatever.

That would be the only place where I would let my feelings out in that way because the people are professionals and presumably know how to keep their prejudices at bay.

They know that mental illness does not discriminate, and that a big hug guy like me can have some serious demons just like anyhow else.

So letting the dogs out, as it were, is probably not an option.

The other solution would be to calm them the fuck down.

Anyone know where I can by Xanax flavoured Milkbones?

Seriously though, I have considered whether using one of the common fast-acting anti-anxiety drugs would be to my benefit.

The theory would be that if I can take one of those and have them quiet my demons, I can then interact positively with others. Positive human interaction is the antidote to social anxiety. It is the opposite input and cancels it out in the long term.

So the drug would merely enable the real cure, positive interactions.

Sounds plausible. I will ask my therapist about it.

And it sounds a lot better than the way a lot of people achieve the same thing, which is by drinking. Not only would that absolutely trash my fragile health, the fact that it is a depressant would dull whatever inputs I am getting and make the whole thing useless.

Of course, if the drug worked and I actually got a few hours of respite from my all-encompassing anxiety, I would likely become addicted to it.

Seems like a fair trade to me. Maybe it would shorten my lifespan,but at least I would get to live a little before I die.

Right now, all I see before me is a slow and tortuous descent into illness and pain and suffering ending in an ignonimous and pathetic death.

I see myself living the exact same life as I am now 5, 10, 15 years from now, with nothing to show for my time on Earth and all my potential growth still locked up inside of me like I am a seed that was planted far too deep.

Hopefully one day my shoots will emerge from the surface of the soil and burst forth into rowdy bloom at long last.

But the clock is ticking. I am not a healthy man. I might not live much longer.

And you would think the looming specter of death would be enough to galvanize me into getting my shit together and making something of myself.

But it ain’t.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Sorta kinda more or less.

Went to the hospital today, of course. Ended up there at a bit before 9:30 am.

Took a cab. Can’t really afford it, but it helped compensate for the whole having to be up before noon thing.

I know it’s not reasonable, but I still resent the fuck out of that. What can I say, the one subject about which I am reliably grumpy is sleep. Mess with my sleep and you are bound to see the dark side of the Fru.

So I get there and get checked in and hooked up, and eventually Doctor Vortel shows up to check things out.

And it was way better this time. He still didn’t spend much time on me, but he at least made eye contact with me and smiled.

On the way home on the bus, I realized that it was not really fair for me to take the fact that he was in a huge hurry on Wednesday personally.

He didn’t know me from Adam, so how could it be personal?

But I forgive myself for doing so because it touched on a very sensitive issue for me and kind of got attached to that issue via association.

Anyhow, the good news from him was that, assuming the bloodwork from the blood he got a nurse to take today comes back clean, I will probably be off the whole daily IV antibiotics thing come Tuesday.

After that, I will be taking the ghastly monstrosity on my leg to a wound care clinic/

Speaking of my nightmarish flesh creature. when Maria, tje wound care nurse, took the dressing off today, we both agreed that it was looking way, way better. Nearly all of the swelling is gone, the area is pink and healthy and no longer inflamed, and the drainage is down to a trickle.

There’s just the little matter of a freaking hole the size of a hockey puck left to deal with.

And it’s extremely sensitive on the inside. All Maria did was lightly dab at the inside with an alcohol swab and it burned with the heat of a thousand suns.

But fuck it. It’s only pain. It was intense but brief. So whatever.

I am glad that I will soon be free of the daily trips to the ER, even though, as patient readers know, they have kind of been good for me. They get me out of the apartment and out into the fresh air and sunshine, and the fact that I handle the situation on my own (apart from drives from Joe) has increased my self-esteem and my sense of my own ability to deal with life.

So the trick, then, will be to find something to replace it.

I have pondered makoing a habit of walking to 7-11 and back once a day. I am not tempermentally capable of just taking a walk, so I would have to buy something small, like a Slurpee, to justify the trip.

It could work, at least during what’s left of the summer.

I will, of course, be back later.

---

Cocaine never sounded like a pleasant experience to me.

I mean, yeah, intellectually,I get it. Coke can make you feel invincible and powerful and super, super alive. I imagine it can also be quite the thrill.

But on a personal level, to has always sounded like something I would hate.I don’t like feeling super energetic and hyper. Like I need this massively mighty mind of mine to go even faster! I already feel like a runaway train half the time anyhow.

No, I lack is not energy but focus. If there was an illicit drug out there that made it easy to focus my mind and my energies so I could direct them into productive pursuits,I would be all over that like white on Norwegians.

Cocaine kind of takes you in the opposite direction.

As far as I know, no such drug exists. Focus is a little too complex and ephemeral a mental state to be the predictable and controllable result of a chemical intervention.

I could be wrong, though. Psychpharmocology is getting pretty sophisticated these days. Maybe an OTC mental focus aid is just around the corner/

If so, sign me the fuck up.

But what about the crash? Presumably. after the effect wears out, you would be left in a very unfocused. incoherent state of mind.

Yeah,well welcome to my world.buddy.That’s my default state!

I’ve always been a dreamer. Someone who is a lot more focused on their inner world than on what it going on in the outer world. Someone who gets lost in their own thoughts on purpose,and enjoys it. Someone who explores reality by exploring their inner version of it.

We dreamers, no matter how high our IQ (ahem), often come across as stupid on a practical level because we pay so little attention to reality.

To say this makes us less effective in it would be a wild understatement. We stumble about like, true to our dreamer designation. we are half asleep all the time.

We pay a stiff price for how stingy we are when it comes to using our precious mental bandwidth on mere reality.

And in my case, at least, there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about it. My settings are set. When needed, I can increase my attention to my surrounding etc by a modest amount, but that’s it.

Anything more than that would take some kind of super rewarding external stimulus, I would imagine. Something to convice my inner miser that there is something worth staying out there in the physical world for.

Like really good sex.

Otherwise, I am stuck with my head in the clouds and tripping over every puddle and pothole on the road.

And then I come here and whine about how mean the world is for having puddles in the first place and how they were clearly put there to hurt me personally.

But the truth is,I am just not built for survival.

And yet I manage it anyway.

Maybe I really am a wizard.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

So, out of the proverbial blue. I get an email that someone on LiveJournal liked one of my posts there.

And honestly, by this point. I had mostly forgotten LJ was a thing. Sure, I had the little doohickey that crossposts these blog posts to the ol LJ installed in my WordPress plugins, but that was strictly legacy.

In other words, it means that it’s not so much that I wanted it in there as there was never a good enough reason to get rid of it.

Kind of like Canada and the Monarchy.

So being as vain and desperate for validation as any other writer, I clicked the link to see what it was that this total rando liked.

And what I saw there blew my mind.

It’s just a piece of work I did for class at VFS, but it’s frigging hilarious. I am overwhelmed by myself. It’s so full of wit and energy and fun.

And it reminded me that I am truly one funny motherfucker.

Here it is :

The Legend of Michael Bertrand

“A+++. Excellent student. Would teach again. “

Mrs. McLeod, six grade teacher

Wonderful and Perceptive Human Being

“He and I had the same business agreement for years. And I can say, without a doubt, that there wasn’t a single day that I didn’t get my newspaper. “

Mr Peter Hogg, newspaper recipient

Fine and Upstanding Pillar of the Community

“You mean the fat kid?”

Mister Anderson, worst gym teacher on the planet

Owner and Operator of a stupid, stupid face

These are some of the things that critics worldwide are saying about future superstar and all around swell kinda guy, Michael Bertrand. But do any of us really know him? What is going on inside that fantastic mind of his? What powerful forces intermingle to create such powerful prose? And does he have a heterosexual brother?

Yes. Yes he does. Text him at (555) 555-FAKE and he’ll hook you up.

Michael was born, at a very early age, in the tiny Maritime fishing town of Summerside amidst the green rolling hills of Prince Edward Island, in the great nation of Canada, He likes to say he wasn’t born in the middle of nowhere, but rather in the place people who did live in the middle of nowhere meant when they said they were going into town.

He says a lot of things like that. You get used to it.

He was the youngest of four children, and that meant nobody cared what he did. That was both the best and the worst thing about it.

At school, he was a gifted student who did his school work with contemptuous ease and passed every test without ever studying.

This might have contributed to the constant bullying.

He went to college at the University of Prince Edward Island, which has the dubious distinction of being consistently voted the second worst college in Canada. (Suck it, Memorial!)

He excelled there as well, and would have graduated with a degree in Psychology from there had his parents not withdrawn funding half way through so they could retire early.

From there, he become a wanderer of the wilds of the World Wide Web, and beheld many a majestic and mysterious site. Long did he roam, having grand adventures and carefully gathering knowledge.

In other words, he surfed the Web and played video games.

But soon he grew bored of the vagabond’s road, and after a brief stint in traditional education, was accepted into the Writing for Film and Television program at the prestigious Vancouver Film School. He worked hard, wrote many things, and now, he is a proud graduate of that program.

And now he stands, ink still wet on his diploma, ready to join your writer’s room and use his talents to make your television show even better,.

Almost brings a tear to your eye, doesn’t it?

Me, a while ago

That’s funny as hell, in my not at all humble opinion. I know there’s a lot of people who would think I am coming on way too strong, trying to hard, or just being obnoxious as hell,. but what can I say.

That’s just the kind of queer little duckie I am.

And the more I accept that and work with it, the happier I will be, I think. I have a huge and vibrant personality that doesn’t take no for an answer and is perfectly willing to blast people with charm and risk being obnoxious rather than accept constraints I have never wanted or liked that are designed to make me “tone it down”.

Fuck that. I’m a high flying wonder of biblical proportions. Damn you tiny people and your tiny minds and tiny lives.

Then again, talent has never been my problem. I’ve always had enormous abilities. From learning to read when I was three to getting great grades without even trying to all those little incidents that pointed to me being a heck of an orator, I have always had an excess of what most people would love to have at all.

That pisses people off. But whatever. Those people are beneath my notice.

There is a whole amazing world waiting for me out there and I have loads of ability to offer it. I can do the fuck out of so many things it’s insane.

I’m a wizard, goddamn it, and surely someone wants my magic enough to pay for it.

The real problem is my psychological issues. There is this thick heavy clog in the pipe meant to take my energies and translate them into real world accomplishments.

And it’s that clog that keeps me from knockin’m dead in the real world.

That makes it sound simpler than it is, though. Get rid of the clog and everything will be okay and that’s the end of that, right?

But the real deep down dirty issue at the core of my problems is that part of me loves that clog for keeping reality out, and is not at all sure it wants it gone.

And until I resolve that conflict, this continuous stalemate where every move I make is countered and negated will continue.

I can write all I want about how I want to walk in the fresh air and sunshine after being so cold and lonely in the dark for so long, but unless I deal with the terrified troglodyte inside, it is never going to happen.

So it’s not the clog, it’s the trog. Let’s call him Trog, which of course is short for Troger.

He is one scared and angry dude. He fears the light of the sun and all that blue sky and wants nothing more than to squat in his cave all alone

That’s because he’s been hurt very badly in the past and it makes it hard for him to trust anybody and so as sad and lonely as he is, when someone enters his cave, he runs and hides till they go away.

Or, if push comes to shove, he will chase them away.

And those times where he does try to befriend someone are rarely successful because all the time he is trying to get to know someone, the crazy voices in his head are ringing very loud alarm bells that make it very hard to concentrate on what the person is saying and leaves him in a kind of stupor.

You’d be stunned too if you had a head full of lunatic monkeys shrieking and shitting everywhere every time you are dealing with someone you don’t know.

Eventually. the monkeys win, and poor Trog runs off to his deep dark cave where nobody can find him. And whoever was trying to befriend him wonders what the hell happened and what they did wrong, and concludes that Trog doesn’t like them.

Or at the very least, that he’s too scary and confusing to be around.

How he longs to explain to people that there are times he cannot stop himself from running away and that it doesn’t mean he doesn’t like them, it only means that the monkeys won this time.

But he would have to stop running away to do that.

So he squats in his cave instead, and busies himself tending his little fire. gazing into its flames, and crying soft black tears.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

First off, the medical update.

It’s so nice to have actual events in my life to talk about!

Anyhow. made it to the hospital ER by around 9:15 am. Was supposed to be there at 8:30 am, technically, but luckily the wound care nurse Maria (who is awesome, btw) and Doctor Vortel (whose name sounds like a telecom company from the 90’s) were both still there, no harm done.

Place was a total zoo, though. Absolutely packed. SO many people, in fact, that I had to take my IV antibiotics in a hallway, instead of the usual waiting room.

Makes me wonder if they knew what they were doing when they came up with this once a day IV antibiotics dealie.

And I did not like being in the hallway because it meant that nurses were constantly moving around me to get stuff and I hate that.

That’s why when I am in a restaurant, I always take a seat against the wall. That way, I don’t have customers and waitstaff passing behind me all the time.

OK, back to first positions.

I arrive at the ER, sit for a little while, then Maria moves me into one of the exam rooms so she can work on my wound.

Like I said above, she really is awesome. Kind, gentle. genuinely worried about hurting you, very careful as she works.

Plus she seems like one of those tough girls from the other side of the tracks of which I am awfully fond.

She cut some more dead stuff off of the wound, and managed to create a “tunnel” to the one little infected area she was worried about.

That hurt like fuck. Worst pain since the first night. I am glad it got done because I am keenly interested in getting ALL of the infection out., but holy smokes that hurt.

I think I know what it feels like to be part of a shishkebab now.

After that, this Doctor Vortel dude saw me for all of like, 45 seconds before hastily mumbling something about seeing me again in a week then dashed out like his dick was on fire.

So it seems that doctors who have never even met me before and know nothing about who I am as a person nevertheless will rush through my appointment so they can get to treating someone who is actually worthwhile

Or at least worth noticing.

They sense weakness in me, I suppose.

And I am serious when I say this guy was in a hurry. His whole attitude was ‘Yes, yes, whatever you say, uh huh, goodbye!”

I’ve got more personal interaction from a toll booth operator.

And I am getting really sick of that shit. If only the doctors were as nice as the nurses. All the nurses I have dealt with have been wonderful.

Come to think of it, my admitting doctor, Doctor Low-Beer (seriously), was great too.

Gee, what did they all have in common…. oh right, they were women.

I’ve had a few male nuses too, and they were fine, but they were nowhere near as warm and reassuring to me as nurses like Maria and Megan.

That might be me, though. When men deal with men, there is always an element of competive insanity that keeps us from really trusting one another, EVEN in a situation where that makes no sense.

And damn that sucks. There’s a bit of social programming I would gladly delete.

So anyhow, after Maria cleaned up my wound and I briefly caught a glimpse of Doctor Vortel’s afterimage (they say he is more legend than man now), I was moved into the frigging hallway for my IV antibiotics.

And that’s where I spend time in a very personal hell because I wasn’t there very long when I realized I really need to pee.

Now for someone without social anxiety, this is a no-brainer. You either just go to the bathroom dragging the IV setup on its little wheels behind you. or you ask a nurse if it’s okay if you do that, she says yes, and you go do it.

But not me. I was trapped. I could not summon up the wherewithal to ask a nurse and I was far too timid to unplug the thing from the wall and do it myself.

So I ended up just sitting there willing the IV to go faster as my bladder ached for release and made me downright miserable.

This is the sort of thing that is very hard to get across to people who don’t have or don’t understand social anxiety. They can’t imagine what it is like to be absolutely frozen to the spot by anxiety and that leading to things like my situation that make no sense.

Unless you’ve experienced it yourself, you really don’t get it.

Eventually, the fucking thing was done and I was released from my imprisonment. I went to the bathroom and took a damned good piss, then took the bus home.

I took a cab to get there, though. I was in a hurry and it helped me psychologically by removing a hurdle and making things just that little bit easier.

Little things like that can make a huge difference. Depression creates enormous invisible barriers to action and removing even one of those barriers can be the key to getting things done.

I wish I got more things done.

I think I am the sort of person who would take pride in accomplishments more than anything else. I need to feel like I have really done something.

Depression keeps me from doing stuff, though. At least, it has so far,. The closest thing I have to real accomplishments is beating video games.

And that’s no real substitute. Video games are good at making me feel like I am doing something and getting somewhere, but I am not, and I know it.

At least Sisyphus got a good solid workout out of rolling that rock every day.

Me, I’ll just get sicker and sicker until I die.

So…. yay me.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Medical update : nothing new to report. Joe dropped me off, I got the IV antibiotics, took the 407 bus home.

Two small things : I am quite proud that I managed to thank one of the nurses for helping me by name.

That’s a big deal for me. It took a pretty large dose of nerve for me to do so.

Because it meant leaving the shelter of passive anonymity and entering the world of interpersonal interaction, albeit in a very small way.

Basically, it meant I had to be a person, and that is very hard for me.

I feel like I am not really explaining it right, but it will have to do.

The other noteworthy thing was that when I was making my way from Registration to the ER and the door between them wouldn’t open.

I pushed again, no dice. Then some old fella jumps up, tells me not to push the bar and that I need a card to get back there.

I said the most logical thing I could think of at the time : “Since when??”

I had been through that door at least a dozen times before, and I had never needed a card. So what gives?

This threw me off enough that I asked my nurse about it. And she said that actially, that door has technically always required the card, but that the people in Registration are usually on the ball and push the button to let people through when they approach the door and Registration knows they belong back there.

Ergo, what made today different was that Registration dropped the ball.

And that’s…. weird. Not in an important way, just in a purely personal way. I had no idea this was happening… until it didn’t.

Other than that, my visit was uneventful….. for me.

But the emergency room waiting room has not one, not two, but three people who had been there more than three hours and were getting very frustrated at the lack of literally anything happening in their case.

And one of them had a legit broken leg. Like, they had done the X-rays and everything.

I mean, what the FUCK, people?

Being the sponge I am, I soaked up some of these peope’s frustration. And being a guy with a big heart and a super analytical brain that is fond of sytems, I had to figure out why these people were going through hospital hell when I had not.

Obviously it wasn’t their fault. They did everything right. Scratch that off the list.

So it had to be something about our cases. And after cogitating on that for a while, it hit me : the difference is that my case was very dramatic.

The hospital staff took one look at the septic nightmare on my knee and said ‘you know, that there looks like something we should take care of right away. “

And maybe they were right. I don’t know enough to say.

But I can’t help but wonder if there were people in a lot more pain and distress than I who didn’t make it to the top of the charts in triage simply because they had something boring and invisible like a broken leg or chest pains.

As to what the problem is in general, I do not know. Maybe treating people in the ER takes a lot longer than I would think. I dunno.

But the results are clearly unacceptable. People are pissed off and they have every right to be. Something has done terribly wrong.

I know the problem isn’t at Registration (aka Admitting). They are super damned efficient. I am very impressed.

The problem is clearly in Emergency. There is a distinct lack of urgency in the air. Now maybe that’s how it should be – after all, my main image of ERs comes from medical dramas, and they are always in a rush there, with gurneys being pushed through swinging doors while people deliver expositional medical babble.

“What do we have here?'”

“Reticular contusion of the medula clitora with a concurrent hemotoma on the third, fifth, and ninth vertebra, sir!”

“Dammit…. not another one. Get me 50 cc’s of hydropropolinoleum and prep the futon chamber for full fraffulence!”

That was fun as hell to write.

But without an understanding of how, exactly, things work in that ER, I can’t determine whether there is room for improvement.

Maybe this is legit as fast as things can go. I can’t prove otherwise.

I’d like to think there is room for improvement in any system, especially with me on the case, but that feeling is not, alas, evidence.

All I know is that if you ask the patients, things are fucked up and it’s not right.

Surely they can do better.

I’m going in circles. Time to change the subject.

---

Not gonna make it out to hang with Joe and Felicity today. Mostly because I have to be at the hospital at 8:30 am again tomorrow.

Apparently, Infectious Disease Specialists don’t do afternoons, period. My doctor is now Doctor Vortel, and he is only in the ER from 8:30 am to 10 am too.

Heaven forbid that a doctor show up according to what is good for the patient. That would violate everything they stand for doctors.

After all, they might have to play less golf that way. And all account of some peasant of a patient? Nonsense.

Not that I’m bitter.

I’m cranky. That’s totally different.

I don’t like having to get up that early. Granted, it’s a perfectly normal time for most people, you know, those people with like, jobs n’ shit.

But I am not most people.

I am a strange and unnatural creature. delicate and bizarre, shockingly unsuited for the tooth and claw world of the jungle but so charming and adorable that people are willing to protect me from the wild world out there.

But that’s not enough. I want so many things that are impossible for me to get while remaining the sad little puppy that I am.

I want to become strong enough to go out there and make it on my own. I want to grab and get all the things I have always needed or wanted but was never strong enough to seize for myself/.

I want to live, god dammit, and be a real person, legitimate, with my own identity and my own strengths and virtues and nothing to be ashamed of.

And some day, I swear, I will make it there.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I send mixed messages on many levels.

What can I say…. I’m a complicated man, and no one understands me.

And one of the biggest levels on which I send mixed messages I will call the ‘attract/repel level’, for lack of a better term.

On the surface, I am a friendly, affable, somewhat goofy fellow with a fair of unassuming charm and a small but vital amount of being completely frigging adorable. By all appearances, it seems like I am the sort of person who would welcome company and enjoy the approach of strangers.

That’s the person I pretend to be and the person I like to thing I am,.

But it’s a big ol’ lie.

Because underneath it all, I am a spiky, paranoid loner who doesn’t trust anyone due to massive social damage from his childhood and so at the same time part of me is being friendly and approachable, the other side of me wants people to go the fuck away so I can be alone and “safe” again.

And generally speaking, when I am around others, especially strangers, in a social setting, these two sides of me are at war.

It’s not a war I generally talk or even think about. I try hard to pretend that either I am only the friendly fuzzy Fru or, if pressed, that the dark side of the Fru exists but that it’s no big deal and I have it completely under control.

What a load of crap.

If that was true, I would have no problems at all. I would be a total extrovert and I would be out there charming the pants off the world and probably be a big success.

But that side of me, lovable as it is, is only a protective layer over all my paranoid issues. I am actually a-bristle with all kinds of antisocial issues.

I just hide it under my superficial friendliness.

And the thing is, without knowing this about myself, up to this point in my life I was almost as confused as those who deal with me. I was stuck kind of fumbling through lfie doing what I thought should work socially but it never really did.

And that was all the confirmation my social anxiety needed of how right it was.

So now I am dragging my dark side into the light and forcing myself to deal with it. I am not the person I pretend to be.

I am, in fact, so much more.

And I am not going to get very far in my recovery until I acknoledge, accept, and believe that. It is so tempting to go back to thinking I am just this harmless sweet fluffy dude.

It’s the social mask I wear, after all.

But under that mask is a lot of rage, hostility, and darkness, and I can no longer pretend that the dark stuff is not there or does not matter.

It’s what pushes people away from me. It’s the reason I have trouble getting along with most people. It’s a big part of what keeps me isolated and lonely.

And the only way to get over that is find some way to integrate my personality and end all this dualistic bullshit.

I might have two sides.

But I am only one person.

---

And I am back again.

This double barrelled approach is really growing on me. I think it’s because it feels like it is giving me more to do in a day,. even though it’s actually the same work divided.

But there is always a little twinge of sadness mixed in the with relief and pride and the sense of accomplisment when I finish a blog entry.

That’s because on a deep level, I know that I am happier when I am writing, and that finishing the blog entry used to mean it’s going to be 22-ish hours before I write again.

Now, it’s more like 18 hours for Part 1 and 6 hours til Part 2.

That’s a lot easier to deal with.

Of course, that’s just the system as it is now. For a long time now, I have been trying to overcome my laziness and fear in order to actually increase the amount I write in a day.

Because I know I can do a lot more. I did 2740 words a day for the Million Word Year, and when I have done National Novel Writing Month, I have done 2000/day.

Technically,. NaNoWriMo is 50K words in 30 days, and that amounts to 1667 words per day, not 2000.

But last time I did it, I just raised it to 60K words for 2000 words per day because it made the math easier.

In many ways, it would make sense for me to simply write all the time. I am happiest when writing, after all, and it would be a far more productive and healthy hobby than playing video games all the fucking time.

But I just can’t go there. Not yet, anyhow. At this point, I think it would require some kind of external motivator to get me to do that.

Like a freelance job, maybe. I remember those. Those made me happy.

But then Skyrim came along and ate my life.

I have been tempted to re-install it lately. But no. I can’t ever go there again. Last time, it took a lot out of me to finally escape its spell.

Never again. Not even on my fucking deathbed.

Oh right : medical update time!

Not a lot to say. It was nice that I got to have the wound care nurse work on my leg demon WHILE I was also getting my IV antibiotics this time.

Made me feel positively pampered. And oh, how I love that feeling.

Maria, the wound care nurse, was able to take a lot of dead stuff off. Not as much as we had hoped…. some of it looked dead but was not.

Found that out when pinching the area with the tweezers felt like someone was trying to saw my knee off.

She says she thinks it’s healing nicely,. but does not agree with my hypothesis that the infection itself is dead. Apparently, there’s some parts of the wound that still look infected to her.

Oh well. We have the thing on the ropes, anyhow.

On the way home, I got off the bus at Buswell (how apropos) so I could go to my pharmacy and pick up some Glyburide and Metformin.

My pharmacist always has a movie playing on the big screen TV in the pharmacy so people have something to watch while they wait.

So I got to see a few minutes of the new Shazam movie, and I have to say,. it looks pretty good to me. Very hip and fun.

Although there was one scene where some bullies pull up in their huge truck and actually slam into this kid on crutches, and that shocked and offended me so much that I said ‘Holy fuck!’ out loud and in the accent from back home.

For all my time away from the Island, when push comes to shove and in moments of acute distress, the Island in me still comes out.

Of course, then I had to explain to the pharmacist that I was not medical distress, I was reacting to the movie.

Which was a little embarrassing, but mostly, I was amused and pleased with myself for doing something so spontaneous and vocal.

Maybe there’s hope for me yet.

I will talk to you nice people tomorrow.

Total insomnia. Can’t even get within a nautical mile of sleep. Feel very wound up and tense and irritable.

Not a great start to my day. Not only am I frustrated by lack of sleep, I know that when this particular fit ends, I will be super sleepy and need to sleep a lot. 

And that’s a bitch because I have IV antibiotics in the afternoon and FRED tonight and then hanging out here after FRED with Le Gang and honestly, I am exhausted just thinking about all the spoons that will take.

There is no convenient long stretch of time for me to catch up on sleep, either.

I fear something’s gotta give.

And the only thing that could give is FRED and I really, really don’t want that to happen. I really want some social time,and I have been looking forward to this FRED for exactly that reason. I feel so cooped up!

Like some kind of….. chicken.

Also, logistically speaking, if I don’t go to FRED, I won’t get to do my usual Sunday shopping, and that will unleash a whole shitstorm of problems.

And yet, I don’t really feel up to doing FRED, either. I wish we could just do Denny’s like we did last Sunday. Just me and Le Gang and a relaxed and informal dining experience. That sounds real good right now.

FRED, on the other hand, involves a much higher level of both noise and social stimulation. It usually takes me a certain application of will to get me over the jitters before I go to FRED even when I am healthy.

I am not sure I have that torque to apply as I am right now, sick and tired.

Well there is no need to decide just yet. I will concentrate on making it through the whole IV antibiotics thing first and then see how I feel after.

Who knows, maybe I will get my second wind.

I hate all this bullshit. The daily trips to the hospital I can handle. It’s all quite routine to me now. Get my ‘big pink sheet (looks more liked purple to me) at Registration, put it in the designated tray at Treatment, wait for the nurse to come round and hook up my IV, then relax for a while.

Takes about half an hour for the drug to go in, then maybe ten minutes for the flush afterwards, then if there is nothing else I can go.

Speaking of the ol’ war wound, I took a look at it when I changed the dressing this morning (was Caesar, is now Ranch) and was quite pleased to see that a whole bunch more of it has gone white and translucent.

White and translucent means it is now dead tissue and will come off when the wound care nurse looks after it tomorrow.

And I am pretty sure that means the thing is healing up quite nicely. After all, if my leg is to go back to normal, that enormous whatever on my leg (abcess? tumour? flesh demon?) on my leg has to go, and how else would that happen except that the tissue of it would die and presumably slough off eventually?

So the good news is, I think I am on the mend. In my opinion, the infection is gone and the wound is drying up and blowing away.

And on that happy note – I will be back later, after the quite possibly no longer actually needed IV antibiotic treatment.

---

Back from the IV antibiotics. FRED is still seeming iffy. Right now I do not feel very good but that is probably due to the heat, so I am going to sit here, hydrate, and blog.

Ah, the eternal summer conflict : I want the fan on high to keep me cool, but I also want to listen to my music. And I don’t want to have to crank the volume of the music in order to hear it over the fan.

And really, it’s exceptionally cruel of the universe to make me choose between my music and heatstroke.

Which will he choose? The answer may surprise you.

I am starting to feel better. Maybe I will make FRED after all.

Either way, I am covered. I had the wisdom and forethought to ask Joe and Julian to take me to Price-mart on the way home so I could do my Sunday shopping before FRED. So that’s no longer a factor.

Oh, right. I better confess this now before it can lie in my head and fester any longer : last night I pulled a dumdum.

I forgot that I had paid for my Subway online, with the credit card, and paid the delivery guy for it as well.

Presumably he thought I was just a super generous tipper.

Which is slightly less than honest of him. I have made that mistake a couple times before and the driver was honest enough to tell me that I had already paid, and thus saved me from making a costly mistake.

Not this guy. Not that it is his responsibility to protect me from being a dumbass. It’s still my fault. And he came across as a total bro, so it’s possible that the sort of complex thought required to make that call is not his forte.

I can relate. It’s not really mine either.

As far as I cna tell, there is no way to get my money back. No way to even prove I gave it to him, for that matter. He could deny everything and I would be up shit crick.

So I will just chalk that up as a $17 lesson in paying attention and leave it at that.

I wish I could focus on the world as tightly and deeply as I focus on a video game or whatever I am writing. But I guess there’s internal deep focus, and there’;s environmental awareness, and the better you are at one, the worse you are at the other, like it’s some kind of spectrum.

That’s why what I really need is an assistant. One who’s everything I am not – highly focused, super competent, very organized, and above all, alert.

With someone like that, I could minimize the amount of stupid mistakes I make and concetrate entirely on pour my super concentrated mega awesomeness into the world.

Let it flow where it may!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.