So today I discovered a new and horrible….growth on my body,

it’s big, it’s gross looking, and it burns when I touch it. The pain is otherwise fairly minor, but obviously I am rather concerned with this atrocious development.

I mean, what the ever loving fuck, right?

But that’s life in this body of mine. Never know what horror show it will produce next. I wish I could just reboot my entire body and return it to its factory defaults so I could start over with a healthy body that I will treat with the utmost care.

But that’s not how these things work. Life does not give us do-overs. The best we can do is start from where we are,no matter how crappy a position that is,and fight through the forces of all our bad habits in order to try to live a better life.

I’m working on it.

I’ve eliminated most of the carbs from my diet. Don’t miss them. In fact, I pretty much hate carbs now.

Or well, I hate the cheap simple carbs that make up most of what we call “snack food”. It’s all devious poison to me now. Evil candy that tricks you into screwing yourself over by tasting so good. So good that you just keep eating this nutritionally worthless food instead of giving your body what it needs.

I won’t lie. All the sugary and starchy stuff still looks good to me. Part of me still wants to eat donuts, chips, chocolate bars, and all that other tasty stuff.

But then I remember how bad it made me feel, and the desire dies, and all i feel when I look at that stuff is nausea and contempt.

Fuck that stuff. I eat real food now.

But I am still quite damaged and that makes it hard to make more substantial progress because everything fucking hurts.

I don’t think people factor that in when they judge themselves and others on their health. If you are in bad need of lifestyle reform, every single step of that process comes with a great deal of pain. It will feel, subjectively speaking, like the universe is screaming at you that this is a huge mistake and you should stop right now.

Asking someone to overcome all that while also telling them to give up all the little pleasures that keep them going is one hell of a big thing to ask.

Getting healthy means going through hell. Twice. Daily.

Anyhow, back to the topic at hand : this thing on my body,. It’s particularly ironic that I found it just now because only a few days ago, I realized that a lot of the old wounds on my legs had closed over and were now just discolorations of the skin.

So obviously, some new nightmare had to erupt on my body in order to crush any hopes I might have had that I was actually getting healther.

Ha ha, joke’s on yo, you’re still gonna die. Psych!

More after the break.

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I’m a sick, sick man

Thing is, it’s more than just this twoonie sized bubo that appeared on my left side, below and behind my left nipple.

I would post a picture of it but the program I use to access my camera is being weird.

So, you folks dodged a bullet there.

No, in addition to that, I have been very hot and very thirsty all day. The feverishness I can ignore and the thirstiness I am handling by indulging it slowly so that it doesn’t accelerate out of control and turn me into a guzzler.

I’ve been that state before. Drinking tons of fluids because my fucked up brain, after a period of dehydration, has lost the ability to say “enough!”.

Don’t wanna go there again.

The worst symptom by far is that I tire out so quickly. It’s been two hours up then an hour of sleep all day.

As symptoms go, it’s fairly mild. Kind of annoying to need to sleep so often, but I can get by that way for a while.

But when combined with my feeling feverish and dizziness and my latest skin horror, it paints a pretty clear picture of a man with an infection.

And I should really get that looked at. An immuno-compromised person like me can’t afford to fuck around with infections. /Honestly, I probably should have called up my GP and arranged a Zoom call already.

But meh. Have a lot of resistance from the bad part of my brain to overcome first. It remembers feeling stupid after that doctor in the ER at Richmond Hospital treated me like I didn’t matter and he couldn’t wait to move on to a patient he cared about, and that has it and my social anxiety spooked.

So if I do end up in the ER, I will be brings a change of clothes, a book of crossword puzzles, and a huge attitude.

I will not be treated like that again. I will defend my right to be treated like a human being no matter what it takes. I refuse to be pushed around, glossed over, fast talked, or otherwise “managed” and I will bring the full power of my intellect, my verbal skills, and my power of presence down on anyone who tries.

Honestly, I am sort of looking forward to it now. Go fig.

But I suppose I should give my GP a chance first. It depends on if things get worse or not. Right now, the symptoms are mild and stable, but if things start going downhill, then it’s the ER for me, no question about it.

But if things stay the same or get better, I will call my GP and see if he can Zoom me a diagnosis and, presumably, a prescription for some kind of antibiotic.

I’d hate to end up in the hospital again. Being in the hospital sucks. But seeing as I might be in a lot of trouble, healthwise, I will endure it if needed.

Plus I have serious on spec work for a writing gig to do.

Shit comes in waves.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Well I did it. I wrote down my thoughts on the show I might end up working for, and now all I can do is wait and see how (and if) they react.

I’d rather they hated it than ignored it, to be honest. We writers work in a lonely little world of our own, and so we are always desperate for feedback,

Really.I am begging you. Give me some indication of whether I am doing this right our not. Otherwise, it’s all too easy for my inner demons to make me hate it.

Thank goodness I am actually quite talented. That really helps.

Of course, I have worries. I worry that my in depth thoughts about the show might be way too much for them. They might not have expected such a deep analysis and they might just shitcan the whole thing in bafflement.

Or they might understand it fine, but are incensed at my presumption in daring to criticize the contents of the pitch document.

I mean, who I am I to tell them what to do? They are people with impressive CV’s and deep contacts in the industry and I am just some pretentious VFS grad with a lot of big ideas and clearly have no idea how the real world works.

And that’s true, at least when it comes to status. I don’t usually have any idea whose head I am going over and it would honestly never occur to me that I should go through some sort of official channels in order to get things done.

I just do the best job I can. Sometimes, that results in work that is way, way better than anyone else can do. And while I don’t want to hurt anyone, if doing my best is the cause of their distress, I don’t feel like I have done anything wrong.

Still, it makes me wonder if I should practice being more openly arrogant. You know, to give people some kind of warning. And give them an easily understood and accessible reason to hate my guts as opposed to making them struggle with the disparity between my open friendly manner and how jealous I make them.

I don’t set out to make anyone jealous. But I don’t care if I do.

It is baked deeply into my nature to always, always do the best I can. To pretend to be less awesome than I am just to spare someone’s feelings is anathema to me.

And it just so happens that I am frigging amazing. Incredibly intelligent, massively talented, charismatic and personable, and a heck of a nice guy too.

And it’s high time I accepted that and used it to my advantage. I am a goddamned miracle, and I am going to shine, shine, shine as hard and as bright as I can.

And that means I am not going to dim my beacon for any reason.

Hell, I’ve barely started to learn how to turn that shit up. I don’t even know how bright I can go yet.

So if that hurts your eyes, I am sorry, but I ain’t turning it down.

So either learn to live with it, or get yourself some…

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A health update

Not much to say, really. I feel about the same. Still feel too hot, still thirsty, still having a hard time staying awake, still on a two hours up (if I’m lucky) then one hour down cycle.

Stayed in instead of doing McD’s with Felicity tonight. Did not feel up to travel. I will see her on Zoom at midnight.

Can’t tell if my symptoms are getting worse or I’m just feeling bored and depressed.

Either way, I ain’t exactly happy at the moment. I have that “slow burn” feeling of crankiness and peevishness. Like if I was a cartoon character, there would be black smoke above my head.

This too shall pass, I imagine. I am probably just tired of being sick and sick of being tired. This shit gets on one’s nerves after a while.

Eventually, my irritation will burn itself out and I will adjust once more.

Times like this, I wish I had a USB port on my forehead so I could plug myself into my computer and run a diagnostic on myself.

I certainly don’t feel well, My muscles are starting to ache. Along with the feverish feeling, it makes for pretty good evidence I got some kind of inflammatory response type thing going on in my body,.

Of course,. part of me wishes I didn’t even have to have a body. It’s sick of having all this diseased meat to lug around and maintain. If this irrationally rationalist part of my mind had its way, I would shed my flesh and exist as a brain in a jar that plays video games and occasionally masturbates.

Well okay, maybe not JUST a brain in a jar.

Then again, they are doing amazing things with peripherals these days.

I guess that’s what happens when you live your life in the world of your computer like I do for long enough. The physical world begins to seem like a hassle. All this pesky eating and drinking and sleeping and pooping….what a bore.

But that’s not a good way to look at things. It is, in fact, quite sick, and is a symptom of a terrible power imbalance in favor of the ego over the id.

What I really need to do is unplug from this a-here computer box of mine and spend some time in the real world just… experiencing things.

Because the idea is to remind myself that there is a real world that exists outside my mind and that I am free to go there whenever I need to escape the demons in my head by allowing myself to get absorbed into the here and now for a change.

Who knows. If I land this writing gig, maybe I will have enough money coming in to go out and do fun stuff.

But probably not. After all, there’s plenty of fun stuff I could do now.

Instead, I play Skyrim all day.

Because at least in that reality, I feel safe.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.