Check out all that lovely sunshine. Maybe today won’t be so bad after all.
Back pain was a monster sized bitch this morning. Such torment. Felt like a giant was trying to make me shorter via compression.
Pain got to be so bad it made me ingenious. I wanted Aleve and I wanted it bad. So I thought to see if there was anywhere on Skip The Dishes where I could buy it.
Score! 7-11 had it. Got myself some. Took it and…. it didn’t help much.
Because the real problem was that I was constipated. Ain’t no pill gonna make compacted poop vanish out of your colon like a really gross magic trick.
Luckily, there has been progress on that front. Some of the problem has been eliminated. So bully on that.
I think I need to start drinking more water. Seems I need to step up my game if I am to keep things flowing along, So I am going to have to get back to making sure that river keeps running through me.
None of this is new. My link between constipation and back pain is well known to me and my most patient readers. I figured it out ages ago.
But I forgot for a while. I’m only human. I can only keep so much in my brain at one time. Sometimes things get misfiled.
Oh well. I am back flying on the right beam now. I will do what I can to pay close attention to what is going on in my lower intestines and try to keep from getting all backed up again.
I had even noticed that I had gone three and a half days with nary a poop. But I somehow forgot that this was a “stop what you are doing and deal with this” level emergency. I guess because that would get in the way of bein lazy.
It would help if I moved around more, of course. But my health issues have other plans for me, it seems. Movement just keeps getting more painful and draining, and that, to put it very lightly, kind of reinforces my compulsive laziness.
On the other hand, nothing makes me want to move more than being told I can’t (or shouldn’t or whatever) so maybe I can tap into my natural reserve of sheer cussedness to get me through.
Would be nice to be able to get some regular exercise even just for the sake of tension reduction. I know in my bones that I would be a far calmer, happier, saner person if I could just drain away my excess nervous energy via expended effort.
But so far, the old mindless aversion to effort reigns supreme.
If only I could exercise under the direction and supervision of an expert. My main concern with exercise is that I worry that I will hurt myself.
I can handle the strain and pain and sweat-stains, but not the threat of something suddenly going POP and not working any more, with me lying on the ground in agony.
What I really need is physiotherapy. I would happily let a physiotherapist put me through ten flavours of flaming hot hell if I had faith that I would come out stronger in the long run and that they wouldn’t cripple me.
It’s just pain, after all. I’ve been through enough of that lately to know that it sucks and is best avoided when possible, but that it’s not the end of the world, either.
And that some things are worth it.
Some good things can only be birthed in fire.
More after the break.
Somehow, I have to fly
Chose that song as my launching pad because it touches on the very pragmatism versus idealism issues that I have been pondering lately.
Patient readers know that I am a hardcore pragmatist and have been most of my life. To me, results always come first. I don’t care what school of dogma you prefer. And I don’t give a shit how “beautiful” an idea is. And I especially don’t care whether or not the real answers are too rough for your delicate sensibilities. Fuck YOU.
All I care about is whether it WORKS. When I see the problems of the world, I want to fix them, and that means embracing whatever means necessary to accomplish that goal, regardless of how they make me feel.
To me, that’s what being dedicated to your ideals is truly about. Doing what is right regardless of how YOU feel about it.
That said, as I get older and less peppery, I find my sympathy for the tragic idealists of the world growing, and while I can never (realistically) join their ranks, I am increasingly conscious of the advantages of that point of view.
Because the thing about pragmatism is that it ties your hands. You are bound to the wheel of what is real, with no way to access whatever you need in order to keep your soul and psyche balanced and afloat. If reality does not provide it and it is not within your reach, you have to do without, period.
With potentially lethal results, at least in the case of depression.
Idealists are not so limited. They have a part of themselves walled off from the rough and tumble of the chaotic and unrewarding “real” world and that is where they keep the power supply of their soul safe from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
To a blinkered intellectual like my former self, this makes no sense. How can their be an advantage to blinding yourself to reality? Aren’t you just setting yourself up as easy prey for whatever dangers are out there?
Maybe. But in the process, you might just make yourself far better to withstand them.
You are exchanging awareness for resiliency. The hardcore “realistic” route means you are always betting the entire farm on your ability to correlate and integrate all that information into a cohesive and useful form of consciousness that improves outcomes.
And that’s too much.
No matter how bright you are, nobody can think that hard all the god damned time without their being serious consequences.
Like depression, for instance. Le sigh.
So I am doing my best to expand my mind beyond the cage of my poor reason.
Time to get out of my own way for a change.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.