I wish I had something clever to say to start the blog post for today, but nothing is coming to mind.  Maybe this is one of those Socratic type moments in which the recognition that one is not clever is the cleverest thing possible.  I doubt it.  Probably it’s just a failure of creativity and writing ability.

     I really had a rough day yesterday, with respect to pain and tension and alienation.  First off, the pain‒it was particularly intense and persistent.  No matter what I took for it or did for it, it didn’t want to diminish, let alone go away.  I couldn’t relax at all, all day, and no matter what anyone else was doing or saying, I just wanted everyone to shut up.  I even took to saying “shut up, shut up, shut up” under my breath when things particularly annoyed me.

     Not that people were doing anything bad or inappropriate or unreasonable.  They were just interacting, being friendly with each other, talking about stupid, unimportant, frivolous things, like people do.  They were not knowingly harming anyone.  I was the one full of malice and negativity, as usual.  Perhaps I should say “as always”.

     I think that I’ve been a negative, evil person‒at heart, anyway‒for nearly as long as I can remember.  It seems to be my natural inclination.  I’ve always resisted it, though, I’ll give myself credit for that.  I’ve tried not to be cruel or spiteful or nasty, even when I want to be, even when I feel so irked and irritated by every aspect of the world.  I’ve tried to do good in the world, going so far as becoming a doctor even though that had not been my dream.  I tried to do good by doing that, but I’m not sure how much good I ever accomplished, whether through that or through anything else I’ve ever done.  I think I’m pretty much rotten at the core, to be honest, and it’s just gradually spread outward as my life has progressed.

     Speaking of rotten, I feel kind of rotten right now, in that I feel pretty nauseated.  I took a lot of OTC pain medicine yesterday, even for me, combining Naproxen and Aspirin and Tylenol, oh my (no name brands, though) to the point where I’ve reordered a new bottle of acetaminophen for me to use at the office because the other one was getting low*.  Now, this morning, I already had to take something, because I woke up no less sore than I went to bed, and indeed, I spent a fair fraction of the night applying my massage gun to my foot and hip and lower back and so on.  When one side improves, the other side starts hurting more, as if in compensation.

     I think I may not go in to the office today.  I need to see if the nausea passes or not.  I don’t want to throw up on myself while walking to the bus stop, but even more so, I don’t want to do it while on the bus or the train.  I guess people might assume I was a drinker or that I was withdrawing from drugs if that happened; not that I really care what other people think in such circumstances, but the inconvenience of having to deal with getting sick in public is something I’d like to avoid.

     Of course, I have gotten up and gotten showered and gotten dressed, as I do pretty much every day, but I may change my mind.  The combination of being in pain and being nauseated is a bit much.  I don’t like to let myself give in to weakness too much, but it may be necessary.

     It’s too bad this isn’t the pain and nausea associated with a heart attack.  It seems unlikely, given how much aspirin I take, and how much exercise I get, though of course, neither of those things is perfect protection.  I do have some degree of family history, but again, my symptoms don’t seem to fit the usual presentation.  I think I’m just in a lot of pain and chronically sleep deprived and have some gastric toxicity due to the amount of pain medicine I take.

     If I don’t go in today, there will be that much more to take care of tomorrow, on payroll day.  But I guess I could try just to get in early in that case.  I don’t know.

     I also don’t know why I bother doing any of it.  There’s no point.  I have no long-term goals or plans or hopes or even dreams, anymore.  Well, I guess I would like to see autumn one more time before I die, if that’s possible.  And I mean real autumn, where the leaves change and the weather gets cool and people put up Halloween decorations and things like that.  I do like the semi-tropical aspects of Florida’s ecology‒the reptiles and (occasionally) amphibians and the birds and the spiders and even some of the insects…dragonflies are big down here, in more than one sense.  But as the time comes nearer for my birthday and for Halloween and so on, I always miss the northern Fall.  It has always been my favorite season.

     I don’t think I have the will or energy to get back up North, though.  I’m not good at vacations, certainly not by or for myself.  And goodness knows I barely feel like I want to survive to the end of the week, let alone until the end of the summer.  I don’t know what I’ll do.  Probably keep continuing, which is what I’ve been doing.

     I think I am going to stay at the house today‒I can’t call it “staying home” because this is not a home for me‒and try to rest a little.  I’ll post this, since I’ve written it.  I have to go in tomorrow, though.  So I guess I’ll write another post then.

     Sorry for the melodrama; I know it’s pathetic, but I guess that’s just the way I am.  I’ll try to keep it under wraps more tomorrow if I can.  It can’t be very much fun to read.  Thank you for toughing it out, those of you who do so.  It’s much more than I deserve.

*And there are so few remaining that, if I impulsively swallowed them all, it probably wouldn’t kill me, though I would surely get quite sick.  Once, in college, I got so stressed out by something‒I don’t remember what‒that I took all the remains of a little bottle of Tylenol at once.  It was either 7 or 11 pills, I know it was a prime number, that probably contributed to my decision.  Anyway, I got sick, but not severely so.  Still, the effects were apparently obvious enough that when I went to a music class the next day, they said I should go home, because I didn’t look well.  I’ve never spoken or written about that before, to anyone.  You’re welcome.  See, I’ve been fucked up for decades, at least.