He said to his body.

Feeling somewhat nauseous due to a sinus headache at the moment, but I unclogged an ear to allow the fluids to drain out again and the headache is on the way out

And taking the nausea with it.

Which is good because a “sick headache” is a terrible thing. And I should know, because I have had a lot of them,

It was a happy day when I finally put the whole picture together and realized that my sick headaches were from sinus pressure and that this meant that I could find relief just by unclogging my ear.

Not to be too gross or anything, what is happening is that my nose runs a little bit more of less all the time. First that clogs my sinuses, but then when they fill up, the liquid backs up and starts oozing out my ears via the eustachian tubes.

But when my ears get clogged up too, then the liquid has nowhere to go and that’s when the pressure starts building and the sick headache comes a-calling.

Luckily unclogging an ear is quite easy. All it takes is a finger wiggle. And then the problem magically disappears. Poof!

Otherwise today’s been OK. Had a potentially game-breaking issue come up in my game of Morrowind – a key character’s dialogue was missing. I would talk to her and she would say nothing, just a blank speech window, in return.

How very rude!

And this quest is part of the main storyline, so I can’t just shrug and go do something else like I would if it was a side quest

I Googled the problem. No solutions. I asked Microsoft Co-Pilot about it. It had a number of suggestions, none of which worked. I was beginning to despair. Visions of having to start a whole new character/playthrough to only maybe get around the problem were swimming in my head.

It’s surprisingly damp in there.

But then I restored a game from before I entered the area with the character in question, and this time while invisible I actually bothered to steal the key to said character’s jail cell and used it, and that fixed everything.

I hadn’t done that before because, being part wizard, I could just spring the cell door lock with a spell.

But apparently the game didn’t like that. Go fig.

So yay, problem surmounted. I reign supreme. Feel my technical might. Etc.

I still haven’t done that third lesson. Doesn’t look like it’s going to happen today.. Maybe tomorrow after wound care.

I have to officially admit that I am definitely avoiding it now. It has joined the long and ever-growing list of avoidant aversions that wreck my life and leave me trapped doing the same things over and over again ad infinitum.

So what I need is to summon the mental fortitude to firmly resolve to do it, and other gainful things, at a certain time, and that means no video games during that time.

It also, hopefully, will let me prove to myself that I can overcome these mindless aversions in order to get what I want.

It’s not like there’s a genuine threat here. The worst thing that can happen is I spend an hour or so doing something I don’t enjoy and do not immediately understand.

And the feeling like something terrible is going to happen to me if I leave the fetid embrace of video games is just the addiction talking.

It signifies absolutely nothing. It’s just meaningless electrochemical noise clogging up my synapses and keeping me trapped in the same old negative but predictable cycle.

I swear to God that I will ctrl-break out of this loop.

Or die tryin’.

More after the break.

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The easy part is over

Last night, both before and during my writing about being all alone this Xmas, I had myself a good cry.

And I am proud of myself for that. I felt all that sadness and pain inside me and I let it out in a healthy way instead of just swallowing it back down and letting it make me depressed and angry.

So far so good. But once I’d gotten all my tears out, I realized that I still had a lot of pain in me and it was not going to yield so easily.

So now I feel like I successfully opened an infected wound and cleaned it and got all that nasty gunk out, which is great, but the wound’s still there and it still hurts and relieving that is going to be a lot more tricky.

The nurse has done her job and now it’s time for surgery.

So I am continuing to poke and prod at the wound. Digging around in it, looking for those pockets of infection that remain, and doing my best to feel it all.

Not an easy task. I have suppressed almost everything for a really long time in order to maintain the delusion of things not being so bad, so all my instincts are wrong and it’s hard to catch myself in the act of repressing myself because it happens so fast.

But I am learning. I have these occasional (but vitally important) moments when the emotions are close enough to the surface that I can give them a little push and have them actually come up and be felt and expressed instead of lurking forever in my all too densely populated subconscious mind.

Seriously, my unexpressed emotions are packed nose to nuts in there.

It’s not as fun as it sounds.

The truth is, I don’t even know how much feeling I have left to do. A lot, presumably.

But I am confident that I will get it all out eventually because I am honing my ability to “lean in” to my emotions and get them over with and take a sense of accomplishment from that as it’s way healthier than the alternative.

For now, my emotions are a vast and waveless underwater sea, dark and mysterious, and I am in the process of learning to swim in it.

At least I’ve stopped drowning.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.