Just did my lunchtime trip to the kitchen. A brief one, because all I really needed was a piece of fruit and a can of pop.

And once more, like usual, I feel like someone is standing on my heart. My head is pounding and I feel a little shaky, like I might be trembling a little. And the tingling in my fingertips is worse than usual.

And if I had not already been through this, I would be considering a trip to the ER. Those are all cardiac symptoms. I could be at risk.

But they are also the same symptoms I had when I dragged myself through the whole rigmarole of passing through the hospital’s slow-moving guts and it turned out to be nothing, or maybe just acid reflux.

And I must admit, my stomach is very acidic right now. And the feeling of pressure around my heart is accompanied by a burning sensation… just like heartburn.

So I dunno WTF. I guess all I can do is watch the situation closely for some kind of more definitive sign of cardiac distress, and hope for the best.

It’s like my ailments are as elusive and hard to pin down as I am.

Hell, even my veins are flighty, and try to hide from needles. Doesn’t work though, the nurses find them anyhow.

I was proud of myself when I went for the testing last Friday, though, as I was able to point the lab tech at the exact spot on the inside of my right elbow where there is a very good vein for her to use,

And boy, did she use it. She must have taken at least 12 vials of blood. Made me wish I had glanced at the lab req before handing it to Lifelabs.

Like, how many tests did she order?

And the tech was oddly firm about me filling the pee bottle too. That’s never happened to me before. Usually they mark a spot about an inch from the bottom of the container and tell me I only need to fill it to there.

Dunno WTF is up with THAT.

Oh, and a confession : I confidently told them I had fasted, and then when I sat down, I remember that I had forgotten to fast.

Had breakfast just like normal. Annoyed grunt.

So that fasting a1c is going to be a wee bit high. Oops. I forgot not to eat, then I forgot that I forgot.

My absentmindedness has gone meta.

I thought about telling the LifeLabs people about my error while I was there, but I was far too timid for that.

I mean, I have trouble working up the nerve to ask a waitress where the bathroom is. Telling a stranger that I had made a very foolish mistake – two of them , actually – was just not in my emotional vocabulary that day.

Social anxiety is a bitch. I know deep down that I have no reason to be so scared. I’m articulate, charming, and personable. All the bad stuff happens entirely in my head.

But that satanic circus in my head sure can kick up a fuss.

More after the break.

Against the thaw

But um, not THAT thaw.

I’m still all for the thawing out of my heart and my emotions so that I can be a real person, humanity intact and truly alive, at long last.

In fact I wish I could speed that one up. This glacial pace is killing me. Literally.

And I am working on it. Any time I feel like I have energy to spare, energy that would normally go to waste, I direct it into the giant space laser melting its way down my cold and fragile heart.

Must remember : I am not my ice. The ice is not me. I am a real live actual human being , with the pulse and stents and diabetic neuropathy to prove it!

It’s probably not good that those are things I chose as testimony to my viability.

I am not my ice and my ice is not a part of me, so the ice can melt away and die and it has no effect on who I truly am except to free it.

Me and me are getting the hell out of here, you dig?

As long as I remember that I am not my ice, I can blast away at it with gay abandon, and hopefully speed up my release.

And when all other power sources fail, I will remember my rage.

Yes, my rage. The ever burning clean radiant heat of all the righteous anger it has taken me more than a decade to finally get aimed where it belongs : at my depression itself.

Die, you unholy hobgoblin of the mind. I can’t believe I used to think you were me.

When I think about it, a lot of the most productive things I have done in my life have been fueled by my being pissed off.

Including writing an entire play just because the jerks at Samuel French (play publishers) wouldn’t release the rights ot the play I wanted to do.

Not a standard solution, but very very me.

So anger can be a productive force, and not just senselessly and abusively destructive like it was with my late father.

Repeat until believed. I get the feeling that this is a lesson I will have to really pound into my head in order to make it stick.

Otherwise it will just get washed away in the tide like everything else.

So I must remember : anger GOOD. Use it to get things done. Use it to melt through te ice that forms on my intentions and freezes me out. Use it to shock myself back to life like a defibrillator for the soul.

I am beyond worrying about pain. I want more life, fucker. That’s all that matters to me now. If that hurts, fine. Pain tells you you’re alive.

Now I just need to treat my fear the same way.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Like the Supertramp song.

That’s what I feel like I am doing with all this writing and navel-gazing and therapy. I feel like I have no choice but to attack my depression via the indirect and clumsy route of talking it all out instead of dealing with my problems more directly.

Not that I can easily explain what I mean by that. Sigh.

It’s like in order to be translated into words, my thoughts and emotions have to be very carefully packed up and sent all the way across the country just to then be sent back and unpacked and such, whereas if I were not so alienated from myself, shit could just stay in the same damned room.

Or something like that.

Oh well, at least this way, I leave a written record of my journey, and God knows, that might even help someone else on theirs some day.

And, of course, there’s all the great writing practice I have been getting writing to you lovely, lovely people every day.

I can feel the sheer amount of bulk, flexibility, and power I have added to my writing muscles over the years. Back when I started this thing back in 2011, I was barely a writer at all.

I was just a talented dreamer with good verbal skills.

But now I am a mighty juggernaut (small j) of words. I honestly should be seeking bigger challenges by now. Doing this has become too easy.

Not that I am going to stop any time soon. I need this outlet, at least for now.

But these big writing muscles of mine demand a much better workout. Right now, I get that mostly when I occasionally do a fiction.

And I always feel better after doing a fiction. Like I got a good amount of my excess nervous tension out by giving my mind a real workout.

Maybe I should start writing another crazy experimental fiction novel, like my last NaNoWriMo entry oh so many years ago.

Or try my hand at writing the next big Hollywood blockbuster movie. I mean, I could totally pull that off. It would be jam packed with kickass fight scenes and explosions and cars flipping over AND have a lot heart and a deep and moving emotional plotline AND be top notch science fiction.

Fuck it, why pick and choose when you can have it all? Hire me and get EVERYTHING.

I can’t think of anything “bigger”, in any sense, that I could write. Anything I can think of would just be more of the same. An epic novel cycle. A whole season of an Emmy-worthy ensemble dramedy. A truly breaktaking and groundbreaking porn script.

Oh, if I had unlimited budget and total freedom, I would make an animated erotic epic that would not just cause a billion orgasms overnight, but it would bring genuine sexual healing to the world by returning sex, in all its forms, to its natural state of innocent, pure, enthusiastic lust.

It’d make Rocky Horror look like Mass For Shut-Ins, baby.

But who the heck would fund such a mad experiment in radical liberation? I would have to find some old rich dude who wants to see the cartoon bacchanal I create.

Fair warning, though, folks : there will be a little of EVERYTHING in this flick. The less publicly acceptable stuff will be preceded by a warning, of course. Or better yet, the whole thing will be interactive, so people can choose what they do and do not see beforehand and then everyone is happy.

People will be encouraged to watch as much as they can, though, even if it is something in which they have no interest. The idea is that we all learn to understand and accept all sexuality, after all, even stuff that leaves us cold.

It’s up to the viewer, though. Nobody will be shown anything without their consent.

Consent is the only rule of sex, after all. Everything else is fair game!

More after the break.

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Do not hesitate!

This one has been rattling around my head for a long time.

There are pains and defeats and humiliations you will suffer purely because you do things hesitantly and weakly instead of confidently and strongly.

And it’s all because you are, on a deep level, reserving the right to flee or abandon or abort at any second. If you could somehow banish all thoughts of failure or disaster from your mind, things would work out for you like they do for everyone else.

But that’s mighty big “if”.

That’s why you can do things when you’re not thinking about it that you can’t then do when you are. When you aren’t thinking about a task, your automatic system takes over and it is perfectly capable of doing it.

But when conscious thought enters the equation, neurosis steps in and micromanages the task to death and with that kind of interference the task becomes impossible.

So you fumble the simple task, hate yourself, and become even MORE hesitant.

We nerds are particularly prone to this kind of thing because, being intellectuals, we “lead with our head” and try to accomplish all things via brain power.

Which works great in the classroom but not so good on a soccer field.

Because you can’t learn to pass and kick via brainpower. You have to get the conscious, logical mind out of the way so our excellent suite of incredibly sophisticated motor adaptive instincts take over.

Again, easier said than done. It goes against our entire cognitive approach to the world. We use our big brains for everything.

Now you also know why the dumb kids are good at gym. Because they don’t have big cognitive computational apparatuses interference with their motor functions.

I’m not sure it’s possible for us nerds to learn to relax our smarts and just keep trying to do a thing without thinking about how to do it or how we’re doing at it.

Luckily, none of these motor tasks really matter. Nothing you learned (or failed to learn) in gym class has the slightest relevance to your adult life.

You’re more likely to use your algebra.

And if you do find yourself needing to do something that requires complex motor skills, you can always hire a dumb kid to do it.

It’s what they are there for, after all.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Decided to check out Amazon today in case the RAM I want was on some crazy kinda sale due to this being (eyeroll and SIGH) Black Friday.

But no. No it is not.

Fair enough. It’s only gonna be $60 plus taxes etc. anyhow. Then I will have to either put the stuff into Mister Computer here myself, or wimp out and get spuug to do it.

If you’re reading this, spuug, stand by. 😛 Love you! *hug!*

I should be able to afford it once next Deposit Day (Cheque Day’s hip younger brother), which is next Wednesday, rolls around.

And hopefully, after that will come a new CPU, and then maybe an SSD (an HD’s hip older brother), and after that all I will have to replace is the motherboad and case and my computer’s Ship of Theseus transformation will be complete.

Although from what my pal Maelkoth says, motherboards have changed very little over the years, and they don’t make much difference to performance, so the main reasons to replace it would be philosophical.

I mean, is it even the same computer any more? Class, what do you think? Paws up!

Anyhow, a new CPU will run me at least $200, and ironically, I might need to buy a new motherboard because new CPUs won’t fit in my now 7 year old motherboard.

And what the hell, might as well get a new case too, as my current one is a bitch to work in and I am due for a new look anyhow.

Maybe get something in smooth white plastic for that late 60’s, early 70’s science fiction look of which I have become so fond.

Going to have to do some nontrivial saving up first.

---

Today was busy for me as I had to go get a bunch of labwork done.

Had to go to the LifeLabs near 3 road and Ackroyd. Man I hate that place. It’s very cold and clinical in atmosphere and there is always a long wait.

Of course, if I was more on the ball, I could have made an appointment beforehand and skipped the wait. But apparently I still think of medical labs as little places where you hand them a form and then pee in a cup, with very little waiting.

Even though I know better.

While waiting, I had time to ponder my long history of lack of forethought, planning, and preparation, and what was up with that.

I know it has something to do with spontaneity, and something to do with my weird way of dealing with impulse and drive, and something to do with my motivation deficit.

I deeply intuit that all those factors have some central pivot around which they all turn, and when I figure out what that is, I will have my answer.

After the lab, and a brief stop so Julian could get a snack, we were off to Wound Care, which went smoothly as usual.

One weird thing : the lab tech told me that one of the tests Doctor Madhani assigned is not one done by LifeLabs.

Apparently I would have to go to a hospital lab to get it done.

I don’t know if that’s even a thing. I will have to call the folks at Richmond Hospital and see what the procedure would be, if any, for my bringing in testing from an outside doc.

Apparently its some sort of test for autoimmune conditions.

Well I have been saying I think I might have one for a long time now, so… good!

Still, weird of Doctor Madhani to hand me something like that. Maybe she explained something about it and I just didn’t understand.

They always dump so much information on me at the end of a visit and as a certain linguistics class taught me, I can’t take in information as fast as I could.

Maybe I need to swallow both my pride and my shyness and ask them to slow the fuck down and put it all in writing.

More after the break.

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Further on not preparing

It’s not just a matter of being absentminded, though that’s usually what I blame it on.

No, something in me actively resists planning ahead. Like that would be too much of a commitment for it.

Maybe that’s the answer right there. I know that my mind optimizes towards keeping my options open in order to maximize my ability to shapeshift in response to situations.

If I plan ahead, I prepare for one set of circumstances. But if I stay loose and ready, without commitment, I can be ready for anything.

Or so the thinking goes.

The logical part of me knows that such thinking is narrow of scope and not based in anything other than a deep seated and overwhelming fear of being trapped.

I’m the fox who is always looking for an alternate exit from any situation.

I can always escape anything. It’s staying in the game and fighting that’s hard.

I guess that’s what makes me so Avoidant. Although what I have been reading about Avoidant Personality Disorder lately has made me doubt my self-diagnosis.

Like with autism, I have some of the indicators but not enough for a diagnosis.

It’s a very tricky thing to get a handle on, though, because a lot of the questions have hidden assumptions built in to them.

Like if they ask whether I avoid social situations, my truthful answer is no, because I don’t have any coming my way to avoid.

See what I mean? I’m not dodging because they’re not firing.

I do have an enormous amount of anxiety about meeting new people and entering into situations where I don’t know anybody and I have to “improvise dialogue”, as it were.

But I have been making some progress. I have dismantled and/or disarmed a great deal of the negative delusions about myself that fueled by social anxiety, and I now believe I stand at least a decent chance of getting on with new “normal” people as long as I can remember to keep things at their level.

Which means getting over my fear of being boring.

Sometimes dull small talk is exactly what the situation calls for.

Now if I could only learn to radiate intelligence a tad less…

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

I won’t bother linking the Kate Bush song. Google it yourself.

Something that occurred to me during therapy today (Therapy Thursday) is that I need to learn to choose the higher stimulation option.

Right now I can’t, for the most part. Thus my languishing at the bottom of the stimulation scale in this farcical tragedy I call a life.

*sigh* Or being alive, anyway.

It’s a steady downward gradient. And I am so far down it that the very idea of choosing to do something that would increase my level of physical or social or emotional simulation gives me the cold sweats on my heebie-jeebies.

It’s like the overcompensating reflex of avoiding stimulation in order to avoid my anxiety became in and of itself a phobia of stimulation.

It’s very unhealthy.

And this means that in order to get out of this hole, the only way to go is up. Uphill, against the grain, away from the cold and dark and into the hot and bright.

This will not be easy. All my instincts will fight me on it, at least at first.

But at least I have a potential answer for the dreaded “why can’t you do this?” question.

Because that would involve increasing my stimulation level and therefore the idea of doing whatever it is you’re suggesting scares me even though the suggestion itself seems like the least scary thing in the world.

Time to learn to ice skate uphill, I guess. At least until I figure out how to reverse gravity.

---

Today has been OK. I’d say I am mostly back to my normal level of debility.

But I am pretty sure I lost more ground to my mystery ailment as a result of my most recent attack of the “flu”. I feel weaker and more frail and my heart, in particular, feels like it is working a lot harder now.

And that ain’t good.

Time to go to see Doctor Ebtia, my cardiologist, I think, And it probably would not hurt to run it past my GP Doctor Chao first, too.

After all, I will get to see Chao a lot sooner. And it might be something pretty bad.

One thing I know is that it sure as fuck ain’t heartburn. When I stand up, it feels like my entire weight is resting on my heart for a moment. Said heart starts beating VERY hard, and I feel a sort of squishing, squirting feeling going through it.

That might still be acid reflux, I suppose,. but I am still pretty worried. I don’t want to pop a stent and have a heart attack like so many of my male relatives.

They say one little heart attack or stroke can ruin your whole day.

At least I know I don’t have a bad diet. I don’t eat a lot of carbs, or fat, or unhealthy meat, and I don’t drink the alcohol either.

But I barely move. Wish I had moved a whole lot more back when I could. What I wouldn’t give to take all those walks I meant to take back in the day.

Or at least take a leisurely spin on an exercise bike.

More after the break.

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Second verse, same as de first

Still doing alright. Nothing new there.

I noticed when I was wandering around the kitchen getting food that I had this odd “big” feeling, like I was actually a balloon shaped like me gloating around and somehow occupying a space slightly larger than my physical boundaries.

Not sure waddy fug is up with that, but it feels potentially vestibular. Like something subtle is up with my inner ear.

I also still have vestiges of that “covered in ice” feeling from last weekend. I can feel it almost like static electricity on my skin. Like I can feel it crackle as the breeze from my desk fan ripples over me.

It worries me almost as much as the cardiac symptoms I alluded to earlier. I know I just got a pretty good bill of health (like a B, maybe B+) from Doctor Manhani, but my peripheral neuropathy (affecting my fingers, feet, and printer) feels like it is getting worse, and my index finger and thumb on both hands continue to feel tingly.

And that’s new.

What’s not new is that I am back at Zero Point Appetite again. I thought I was over it. I was able to eat lunch with a healthy if not exactly hearty appetite.

But lately it’s like my stomach is playing Red Light / Green Light with me. One minute traffic is flowing normally, but the next everything shuts down and it’s a ghost town.

Well, I hate to admit it, but normally when my appetite shuts down like that, it means I am constipated and my body quite sensibly has decided that if nothing’s going out, nothing’s coming in either.

Problem is, I still gotta eat. Mikey no eat, Mikey get sick. Ergo, I once more have to force myself to eat.

At that point, all I can do is treat food like medicine. Eat it like a robot. Get as much of various food groups into me as I can before revulsion kicks in.

And hope to feel better soon.

Because, at the risk of going meta, it feels good to be hungry and want food. It feels even better to get it when you are hungry.

And I think it takes a loss of appetite to make us realize that.

It’s like when I first went on Paxil, and my libido went into hibernation. At first, I didn’t miss it. Didn’t want sex, didn’t get sex. No problem.

But then when my libido started coming back, I realized I did miss it. I missed the heat of it, the passion, the craving for more connection with another.

And heck, even now, I have great nostalgia for how horny I was in my 20’s. I was having text sex with everybody on FurryMUCK. I was a happy and enthusiastic slut.

Plus I was a gay man trapped in a small town in Canada. It’s not like I had a lot of other ways to explore my sexuality.

These days. even when the mind is willing, the flesh is weak. I rarely get off, despite all the porn I keep making.

Oh well. Maybe some day I will be off the antidepressants, and horny again, god willin’.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Believe it or not, by just typing the following text into a place called invideo and selecting a few options, I was able to turn this :

The time for playing by the old rules is over. It is time for the people of Earth to rise up and force our governments to make emitting greenhouse gases a crime globally. This crime will be stopped by any means necessary, up to and including acts of war, and the complete and total confiscation of wealth. The billionaires and their lackeys and mouthpieces are killing the planet, and in doing so, killing us all. They are killing you, me, our parents, our children, our favorite celebrities, our favorite politicians, and everyone else on the planet. Because when the food dies, we all die. Global warming will destroy the world’s ability to grow enough food to feed 8 billion people, and most of us will not survive. Our only chance to survive is if we cease all carbon emissions immediately and pour our resources into clean energy and carbon capture technologies. But we can’t do that while the billionaires still own the politicians, the system… and us. We need to rise up and tell them they need to get the hell out of the way. It’s us or them, everybody – and there’s billions of us, and only hundreds of them. They don’t stand a chance.

the man who will save us all!

Into this fiery little vid right here :

Which blew my mind, is blowing my mind right now, and is projected to continue to blow my mind well into 2024.

That’s all I did. Typed in my speech, chose a few things, told it to work its magic, and boom. A very professional looking video.

Boom. Mind. Everywhere.

It’s a writer/director’s wet dream come true. I now have my video production department just waiting for my scripts. I can make any number of political videos like that with very little effort, and believe me, I will.

But what if it can do even more? What if I could get it to do…. DIALOGUE?

Pretty sure my heart stopped beating for a second when I typed that.

Just wanted to get that out of the way.

---

When the bonfires burn black

Dealing with a fairly large chunk of depression right now.

Whatever. Nothing newly tragic has occurred, just me getting ill yet again. Possibly what I am experiencing now is a delaying stress reaction to what I went through on the weekend. I don’t know.

But it’s all just neurochemical bullshit anyhow. I will continue on, pushing through the numbness, knowing that I am still alive under all that half-frozen blubber and semi-necrotic tissue gobbing over my heart right now, and that as long as I keep going, I will reach the other side of this.

When you’re going through hell, keeping going, and all that.

On the physical level, right now I am contended with a Zero Appetite sitch. I am not nauseous. Food doesn’t seem gross to me, nor does the idea of eating.

I just have absolutely no desire to eat.

Nothing. Zip. In fact, the whole concept of food seems quite abstract. It’s like the numbness mentioned before has engulfed my entire emotional connection to food and I just don’t feel anything about it at all right now.

Which means I have to force myself to eat. Never fun. But I am at least managing to get a little bit of food into me this way.

I was originally planning to order in tonight, but now I’m worried it would be a waste of money because no matter what I ordered, I still wouldn’t feel like eating it.

And if that’s the case, I might as well diffidently eat a peanut butter sandwich. I would enjoy it just as much and it would cost a heck of a lot less.

I dunno. Maybe Donair Dude food could raise my appetite.

We will have to see.

More after the break.

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Five whole views!

That’s what my attempt to set the world on fire with revolution before the billionaires set it on fire with actual fire has generated so far.

Oh well, it’s a start. I made that video mostly just to see if this miraculous new technology was really really real or not.

And it its. Lord have mercy, it really is.

The first vid I made was meh. It was based on a prompt I gave it about global warming, and it was okay, but it banged on about how we can all change the planet through personal choices, and um, fuck no. We’re beyond that.

Yes, our revolution needs to include things like the planned ten year phase out of the internal combustion engine, along with single use plastics and possibly low efficiency meat like beef, but the real criminals are the billionaires and their lobbyists who are still preventing any meaningful climate reform because god forbid a billionaire should get cranky about their taxes.

Shut up and pay up like the rest of us, chump.

So I was not happy with the first one. But then I saw that one of the workflows offered to build a video around my exact script.

And I had just been wishing for that very thing!

And the clouds parted and the angels sang and the children all got lollipops.

The only way to make it better is if it worked off my own voiceover. The AI voice did a fine job but my message needs to have my conviction and my proven oratory skills behind it to really fly.

What I want is for invideo to provide the video to my audio rather than having to dig up clip after clip after clip myself.

That shit be tedious, and that is not gonna fly for me. Having a computer program do it for me sounds fab.

I am going to turn myself into a major YouTube commenter and finally take my place as a thought leader, a revolutionary, and an intellectual ninja.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Ya know, for the most part, getting old makes it feel like the days are whizzing past.

But for some reason, last Friday feels like it was a thousand years ago.

I guess time drags when you are really sick. Saturday was miserable and Sunday was only marginally better. Yesterday was Monday and I felt somewhat human, especially after I got the energy from that strange bout of political messiah mania out of my head, and today has been fairly okay so far.

I don’t feel “normal” yet, unless this is my new normal. I have been haunted by that “haunted” feeling I get sometimes all day. It’s a strange, eerie feeling like my soul is slightly out of phase with my body, and I am slightly out of phase with time, and something terrible is approaching me silently in the dark.

It was especially bad this morning. Back then, it was accompanied by this feeling like there was a one molecule layer of electrified ice all over my body, and that was enough to nudge me from “oh no, one of my weird mental states” into “oh crap, maybe there is something really wrong with me” which is just around the corner and down the block from “OH GOD I AM GONNA DIE!”.

Um, if I recall it correctly.

In fact, I was honestly wondering if I should go to the ER or Urgent Care, and I think the only thing that prevented me from doing that was that I couldn’t even begin to imagine how I could have explained what was wrong to them.

I hadn’t thought of the ice thing then. Not that it would have helped.

“911, what is your emergency?”
“Yeah, I feel really really wrong…. I have this kind of… spooky, I guess, feeling? And I feel kind of cold and… tingly? Plus there’s this… hello? HELLO?”

And, scene. In the previous piece, the part of me on the phone was played by Eugene Levy. The part of the operator was played by Luba Goy. And the part of the silently lurking triple headed shitbeast with testicles for a mouth was, as always, played by Canada’s darling, Wayne Gretzky.

Luckily, I went to sleep instead, and when I woke up, my limbs were warm, the ice was gone, and the creepy haunted feeling had receded. Phew.

But I still don’t feel right. My appetite is low, my nose is tunny, I have tingling in my thumbs and forefingers, and I feel like the emotional wall between me in the world is thicker and more inflexible than ever.

Hopefully, more sleep as well as regular meals will fix that. I know that I am not fully recovered either physically or emotionally from this weekend’s plague du jour, so I have great hopes that I will feel a lot better relatively soon.

Until then, all I can do is limp along the best I can and take solace in the arms of video games, AI art generation, and of course, the shitbeast.

More after the break.

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Topics are a thing

Well there goes another cheap, ha-ha I suck topic idea.

Feeling somewhat better than before. As predicted, I needed more sleep. Must remember that connection.

Feeling haunted, Fruvous? Try SLEEPING.

I should get one of those “make your own AI chatbot” things so I can use it to give myself advice when I am mentally disabled impaired deranged indisposed dumb.

Been having a lot of, “so this is my life….?” type thoughts lately. I think having my usual life taken away from me by a mystery illness then having to come back to it gave me some much needed perspective on the subject.

Now it’s not news to say that I am deeply dissatisfied with my life as it is and how has been for around 30 years. In fact, none of what I am about to say is particularly fresh or new to you wonderful, gorgeous, amazing people who read my words.

Have I mentioned how much I love you all lately? Because I do.

No, the new thing is harder to define than that. But here goes.

While I was in the throes of my recent attack of whatever,  there came a point when I said to myself, “well if I want a better life, I’m going to have to go out there and get it!”.

Again, not exactly the most breathtaking of revelations. To some, that would be a truth so obvious that to tell them that would seem insulting if not an indulgence in tautology.

But for me it’s a big deal in my struggle to face reality and deal with it instead of turning away from it and hiding from it behind my screens.

And obviously, it’s true. My life is never going to get any better unless I take charger and make the changes happen.

That doesn’t mean I have to do it all alone. It just means that I will be the one performing the executive function by putting the whole thing in motion and keeping it moving in the right direction.

I think of this as one facet of the progenitor role. They are the ones who create something out of nothing and then nurse it along till it can survive on its own.

And that it who I have to be to make a new life for myself. One where I can respect myself and feel like a real person and a true adult because I can finally support myself.

And that means I need to wrangle some way to make money out of this crazy world. Probably through something like freelancing, but there’s an outside chance that I might launch myself on to YouTube and TikTok as that wild-eyed commentator with the crazy opinions nobody has ever heard before who’s really shaking things up by taking on all the biggest dogs he can find.

Billionaires who are killing us all, I am coming for you. I know you’re just people. You have names and addresses and lives just like us. And that means we can find you when the food dies and we will arrive not with placards and picket lines but with nooses and bonfires and guillotines.

Don’t wanna die? Me neither. So GET OUT OF THE WAY.

I Will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Or, the Messiah’s Burden

I made it to Denny’s last night, possibly unwisely. At least I didn’t feel very wise when I was sitting there trying to participate in the conversation while being racked by chills.

God, do I hate chills.

And after I got back and had finished the day’s blogging, I found my head teeming with political speech. It was like I was delivering a free-flowing, rambling interview slash speech aimed at a revolving cast of worthy adversaries in my head.

Not that unusual for me as far as that goes. But the points I was making were devastating. Stuff I didn’t even know I had in me , or at least, not in that form. The sort of political speech that could destroy generations of rotted and unworthy bullshit and give politics the enema it so desperately need.

The type of speech that can change the world, and usher in a new era of mass enlightenment as the scales fall from people’s eyes and they finally realize that we are all on a hot train to hell right now and it’s entirely within our power to stop it.

Billions of us. Dozens of them. They don’t stand a chance.

It’s simple. Emitting greenhouses gases will be illegal, on both a personal and international level, for everyone on the planet.

And on the international level, “illegal” will mean “grounds for invasion by the UN”. A very limited invasion – no occupation, no regime change, no new treaties – just the immediate and total destruction of that country’s capacity to add to global warming.

If that makes the people want to rise up and overthrow the government that got them into that hot mess, that’s up to them.

It’s either that, or resign ourselves to humanity’s epitaph being, “to be fair, it was this or make a couple hundred billionaires sad”.

Now a lot of people aren’t going to like what I have to saying because if you can overthrow the elite and save humanity and the lives of everyone you know and love not to mention civilization, well you kind of have to, don’t you?

And we don’t want to have to rouse ourselves from our consumerist coma long enough to do something as lame and unfun as saving us from having to consume the flesh of our weaker children as the global economy collapses when the food dies.

And the food is definitely going to die. Not all of it, but most of it, and there will be nowhere near enough left to feed a billion people let alone 8 billion.

So maybe that epitaph should read, “to be fair, it was this or have to make some kind of of personal sacrifice, and that was clearly impossible”.

I am sure the ghosts of our children will see that we made the right choice there.

But here’s the thing : this devolves all the way back down to the personal level for me, because if I can see all these things coming and knowing that I have the ability to create powerful warnings that would spread all over the world and possibly actually spark the revolution that will save humanity…. well, I kind of should, shouldn’t I?

And I’m scared.

More after the break.

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The birth of a giant

Well at least I’m too old to die young.

I am scared by the enormity of it all. This mission or message or whatever of mine could be so much bigger than my sad little soul.

And if it had any measure of success, it would be a very large commitment of time, energy, and wherewithal. Possibly a lifelong one. It could pull me out of my cozy cocoon and thrust me into the glaring spotlight of the world in a way you can’t come back from.

And I mean, who am I to take on trying to save the world? I’m just some guy. Yet another fat nerd on the Internet. A nobody.

Yeah bullshit. I’ve never believed that.

I’ve know I was special since the day I learned to read at the age of 3. I have lugged this giant brain of mine around for all fifty of my years and I have done so like Gulliver among the Lilliputians, always making sure not to step on the pygmies all around me.

I’ve alwaysI known that I had power beyond what most people could reach due to my intellectual gifts, as well as my powers of personality.

I stand out in any crowd because my brilliance makes me shine like a lighthouse on a hill. And the older I get, the brighter I glow.

And the power grows.

That’s what it really boils down to. There is an enormous power differential between me and most of humanity, and I think that has given me an enormous sense of responsibility that I have been unconsciously dodging for my whole life.

Not proud of that, but it is what it is.

And I have been feeling that responsibility quite acutely ever since my brain spontaneously switched into political oratory mode last night.

I am hearing the call of destiny, and like many who were called to greatness before me, I do not want to go.

Well, part of me doesn’t, anyhow.

It’s a clash between the personal and the transpersonal. One I feel like I have been preparing for all my life, in a way.

Once I embrace my destiny, there is no going back. The personal is permanently supplanted by the transpersonal, and that’s a hell of a lot to ask of a guy.

But I don’t really have a choice. The egg I have unknowingly carrying around for my entire life is starting to hatch, so like it or not,

And whatever I am now will be utterly destroyed in the hatching and whatever that beastie inside me might be, that’ll be me.

I guess I can learn to live with that.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Good news : I am feeling a heck of a lot better.

Not out of the woods yet. In fact, it feels like whatever kind of infection (??) I have is threatening to move into my lungs. Grr.

But I feel a lot less dead, and that’s what’s important.

Hello, at least I am finally awake. I spent the entire morning going through the same cycle over and over :

1. Wake up because I need to pee, pee
2. Sit down in front of the computer and try to do stuff
3. Five minutes or less later, realize I am too sleepy to do anything, go back to bed

It was most annoying. Well, what of it I was awake for, anyhow.

I also had some breathing troubles of a sort with which I am familiar. They happen when the “used air” in the bottom of lungs has accumulated past a critical point and I am just not getting enough fresh oxygen per lungful any more.

Yet another thing I should probably tell a doctor about at some point.

Anyhow, normally, this is not that big a deal. I have breathing exercises I use to clear out my lungs and that put things right.

But I was not awake or coherent enough to remember them this morning so I went through a period of feeling like I might be dying.

Luckily, I was able to remain calm and keep reassuring myself that I have been through this kind of thing before (apparently I remembered that much) and that everything would be okay in the end.

Pretty good self-coaching, if I do say so myself.

And I do.

I did remember what to do eventually though. And the pee/sleep cycle calmed down enough that I began to get some real sleep.

And that brings us to now. Like I said earlier, I don’t exactly feel well, but I feel alive, and that is a striking improvement.

Which means it is time to reluctantly turn to the question of what this all means.

Christ, I don’t know.

I really hope it doesn’t mean my muscles are even weaker now. Like I have mentioned in this space before, I don’t have a lot of room left on that scale before I become more or less bedridden and my life gets even worse.

But I can’t ignore the pattern. Things like this just keep happening to me. I get these nasty one or two day infections and they drain the life out of me and make me miserable and incoherent and afterwards I can’t help but wonder how many more times can it happen before one of them “gets” me and turns into something much worse.

At least I have the medical establishment at least mildly interested in my case now. Maybe they will pay attention long enough to actually figure out what is wrong with me this time, or even be able to treat it.

I’m such a dreamer, I know.

Right now, I am going to lie down yet again and hopefully bank some rest so I can make it to Denny’s tonight.

More after the break.

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I shouldn’t be thinking like this

You know, it occurs to me that in the ensemble dramedy of life, I might just be super loveable, funny, highly sympathetic, character who dies near the end to create pathos.

That is not literally possible, of course. Life is not a script and as far as I know, there can be no authorial intent because there is no author and we are free to live our lives completely free from the rules of narrative.

But it seems very metaphorically possible in the post modern sense. And I have had enough moments in my life that seem scripted (except then they would have to be plausible) that I can never entirely turn my back on the idea.

And that’s not even counting the subconscious influence of the rules of narrative on the mind of a writer, which technically I am.

Not that this means anything

Wow. At the end of the previous full paragraph, i had written exactly 666 words. Spooky.

Trust in J&J

It occurred to me tonight while we were at Denny’s (more on that later) that I completely and totally trust my roomies Joe and Julian.

Let me repeat that with emphasis. I completely and totally trust Joe and Julian.

And that’s quite an accomplishment.

Because that means that I not only trust their intentions (relatively easy) and their characters (a little trickier), I trust their competence, and that’s nigh on impossible.

I know that if I entrust a task to them, they will not only do it to the best of their ability, they will do it right.

This is the glory of living in an all Taurus household.

And even though I have become a rather high maintenance friend. I have never and will never hear a single complaint about it from them.

They just shouldered the burden and moved on.

And that is why I am so god damned lucky to have them in my life, and why I can’t imagine having any other roomates ever.

The only thing that could change that would be if I moved out on my own, which is something I have the urge to do presumably based on some kind of nesting and/or territorial acquisition urge.

I won’t claim it’s rational. Presumably it is something I just have to do in order to satisfy that urge and then I will get over it and be rational and pragmatic again.

But I promise I won’t do it until I can afford not just my own place but at least own and preferably two high competent nurse/assistants to keep me from killing myself.

I know that by Taurus standards, I am a stumblin’ fool. I can think very practically, but by behaviour is clumsy. clueless, and naive.

It’s a good thing that I’m cute.

Oh crap, I really AM the breakaway sympathetic character from a ensemble dramedy.

Enjoy me while I last, folks.

Because I may not live to see Fin.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

OK, let’ ee how far I can get.

Well, at around midnight last night, thing began to seriousl6 suck.

It started as an uneasy feeling, like this was the point in the horror movie where the heroine first begins to suspect something really bad is going to happen.

And got worse from there. Before long I was lying on my bed pretty incoherent from th4 feeling of illness.

That’s when I very reluctantly had to beg off hanging out in the living room with Le Gang because I was just too ill.

Thus began a lazy pas de deux where I drifted in and out of mental coherence.;It was all very dreamlike and surreal. Every now and then I would be compos mentis enough to realize I needed water badly – I was terribly dehydrated.

It was very had o focus enough to do things. It’s like I would set out toward some goal and immediately lose focus and have to start over, and just keep at that until I got there.

That’s why it took me more than an hour to get from lying down in bed to sitting up in front of the computer.

That’s how I got here.

I’m doing better than I was last night, but that’s not saying much. I have managed to get some sunflower seeds and trail mix into me.

It’s not nearly enough, but it’s a lot better than nothing. I wish I could eat the other half of my Pizza Hut Meat Lover’s Melt from last night, but just thinking of taking a bite out of it makes me feel like I’m gonna puke.

I ate an orange earlier. That was good. Tasty and made me feel healthier too.

Yay Vitamin C!

Dunno if I will make it to 500 words. My general feeling of unwellness seems to be creeping up i me

Wish there was someone around to get me water and fruit and the like. But J&J are off to Joe’s parents’ place to play board games like they do every Saturday night.

I am so used to doing eerything myself that it would never occur to me to ask someone to hang around just for me.

I mean… that’s not a thing peope do, right? Sacrifice their own convenience and effort in order to look after a sick friend?

The very idea seems bizarre to me. How could you even ask for such an outrageous indulgence? How could you be so selfish as to make people neglect you in an obvious way? How very cruel.

I’m exaggerating, of course, but you know, in other kinds of family,. people look aftr each other like that all the time, as a matter of course.

And these are the people we middle class types manage to feel superior to when they are a hell of a lot gentle, warm, human, and loyal than we’ll ever be.

Personally, I would happily trade my middle class lifestyle for he feelin of being cared for.by people who love me.

More after the break.

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The big decision

Well I can’t avoid it any longer. Time to face the truth.

I really should get my butt to the ER

Not that I want to go. The ER is a drag man .,All that waiting and all the tension and worry in the air and having to pout my brai in Hospital Mode for enormous swathes of time while my brain feels ike it’s slowly oozing out my ears.

But I have felt quite lousy for almost 24 hours now. I have spent all day nauseous, dizzy, weak, and above all dehydrated. I have not had nearly enough to eat or drink and I haven’t taken any of my medications,

Isn’t itgreat how being sick makes you do things, like not eating or getting enough fluids, that make you sicker? Fun.

I’m having trouble reading the text on my monitor and everything seems too bright. My muscles feel swollen, stuff, and “rusty”.

I definitely feel like I have a case of inflammation of the everything.

So by all rights and the tenets of basic comon sense, I should go o the ER/

But I don’t wanna.

And when I feel this crappy, common sense has an uphill battle to be heard. I feel cranky and peevish and irrational. and not at all like hauling butt to the ER.

I just want to lay down in the dark and hide from the world and all its painful stimulation.

I wanted to ve hooked up to IV fluids, stat. I desperately need hydration and it does not seem like I’m going to get it the usual way.

Not unless I somehow rig me a situation where I can get and drink more water literally whenever I want to.

Then I might be able to catch up with my hydration needs.

I assume that I dehydrate so fast because I am running a fever. Which is another potentially worrying symptom to add to the file.

The thing is, none of my myriad of symptoms are particularly severe. That’s why I can dither over this issue. If I was in a lot of pain and distress, it would not even be an issue, I would have gone ages ago.

But as is typical for me, it’s all kind of diffident and noncommital. I’m definitely not well but I am not SUPER sick and it would be all too easy to just take a “wait and see” approach, hoping for something more definitive to come along.

Like keeling over. That would be a clear message.

Honestly, I think I will end up waiting and seeing regardless. I will see how I feel tomorrow afternoon and make my decision based on that.

Of course, I could just wait till Monday, when the hospital will be WAY less crowded..

That would probably be pretty god damned stupid of me.

But that doesn’t mean I ain’t gonna do it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Well, here I sit, waiting for Doc Chao to call.

Our call time is between 3 pm and 5 pm, and it’s 4:30 pm, so I am becoming concerned.

I just need to remind him about the cortisol test and how he needs to fax the prescription for the pills I have to take beforehand to my pharmacy.

Otherwise, they would just be testing my normal cortisol level, which I bet varies a lot between people so you need something to compare it to.

I also want to share my latest thinking on my mysterious condition with him. To wit :

Lately I have been bummed out about the results of my neurologist’s office visit. It was clear to me that all of my muscles tested out to be perfectly healthy, and not only did that raise the long dead (I thought) specter of psychosomatic (attic insane) illness and undermine my sense of reality, it left me with even less of an idea of what the ever lovin’ fuck is wrong with me then when I entered Doctor Madhani’s office in the first place.

But it has occurred to me that perhaps the problem is not muscle weakness, but muscle pain. I have been describing it to medical folk as muscle weakness because that is what it feels like to me.

It feels like my muscles are not strong enough to hold me up properly.

But maybe the problem is not in the neuromuscular system at all. It could be an unusual cardiac symptom, or a hormonal issue like Cushing Syndrome, or god forbid some kind of brain issue, like maybe I had a mini-stroke at some point that damages the neuromotor center of the brain and it’s not producing enough signal any more.

The important thing for me to remember is that I am not out of options yet. Sure, the muscles seem to be fine, but a lot of other things could be fucked up instead.

And I just can’t believe that the whole thing is psychosomatic (attic etc.). It’s too pervasive and bizarre for that. And it came on gradually over a span of years, and psychosomatic (etc.) illnesses tend to come on suddenly.

In fact, I was just thinking about the whole progression of the disease and how I ignored the symptoms for a long time out of total denial.

And it was easy to deny because I got around the apartment OK and I spend most of my time sitting down or in bed anyhow, so the problem didn’t come up a lot.

But then the incident that landed me in the hospital for 16 days in August 2022 happened and I could ignore it no longer.

---

Well he finally called…. late.

Well why should phone appointments be any different?

Still processing it all. One takeaway : apparently Doctor Madhani ordered a whole lot f labwork for me.

I did not know this, though it seems obvious in retrospect.

I can be such a dope sometimes! Derp.

I will look in the papers she gave me and get’r done if I can.

More importantly, apparently her report did not say it was all in my head. She thinks it might be a form of ataxia caused by the nerve damage in my feet spreading up my legs.

Apparently, the thing that was all in my head was the overly negative conclusion I leapt to based on what I thought she thought.

Man does it suck to be crazy.

More after the break.

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The necessity of opposites

I’ve come to understand how futile it can be to always push for the middle.

Balance is key, but trying to achieve it purely via self-control is ridiculous. That is not how the teeter-totter of life works.

True balance may well require you to forego moderation and face a large problem by putting a large amount of its opposite on the other end of the scale.

And I think that’s been my mistake. One born of the larger mistake of playing by reality’s rules instead of giving myself permission to put my thumb on the damned scale if what I am getting from the world just ain’t enough.

You don’t need to embrace Jesus for that, although I’m sure it helps.

The solution, therefore, to far too much depression is not to hug the midline, like dysthymic depression tells you to do, while telling you that it is perfectly acceptable to forego the highs in order to forestall the lows.

But it ain’t.

Because your soul is starving. It needs the highs and lows in order to stay healthy. Hugging the middle means you never reach a point of renewal, and so you fall apart inside instead of participating in the cycle.

Obviously, people with bipolar can skip this discussion.

Mental and spiritual health requires participation in the highs and lows of existence. And that means letting go of the illusion of control that false moderation can bring.

Trust me, instinctively fighting and suppressing all strong emotions, even the positive ones, is not real moderation.

It is cowardice on a profound level. Real moderation means actively dealing with your emotions, not just stuffing them down and burying them and pretend they never happened. And then acting like that’s any kind of solution.

You have to open yourself up and let the big feels happen. And if that means a loss of “control” that leads to (gasp!) acting on your emotions, so be it.

There are far worse things than acting on impulse. And soul starvation is one of them.

Impulses must be acted on at least some of the time in order to stay healthy. Otherwise, you end up with the classic “lack of motivation” because your impulses have grown too weak to actually move you to do anything.

Believe me, I know this firsthand.

So if you find yourself stranded in the doldrums, try acting on your impulses in small ways. Pick a YouTube video entirely by gut instinct. Browse Wikipedia by clicking the first link in every article and seeing where you end up. Type a genre you are completely unfamiliar with into Spotify and give it a listen.

Above all, keep those impulses of yours fed so they can grow up big and strong, and you will never lack motivation again.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.