health

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Celebrate good times? Come ON.

I had a notion this weekend that I would write this blog post on Sunday afternoon/evening and set it up to publish itself‒so to speak‒this morning.  Then, I would use this morning to perhaps review an/or rebegin HELIOS, or maybe to work on Outlaw’s Mind or DFandD.  I even thought I could write any of those‒especially HELIOS‒on my smartphone, since I have them on Google Docs as well as MS Word.

So I thought, anyway.  When I looked, though, I found that I don’t actually appear to have any version of HELIOS on my Google drive, so it must either be on Word or I never typed in the little bit I had of it.  Of course, I could have just decided to restart and bring one of my spiral bound notebooks and write in that.  The only trouble with doing it that way, if I write during my morning commute, is that I eventually have to retype everything into one of my computers or smartphones.

Now, I have never done the thing* of handwriting a first draft and then copying it into a phone, but I have done that with handwriting and computer word processors.  That method has produced some of my best stuff (by some measures), including Mark Red, The Chasm and the Collision, Paradox City, and even part of The Vagabond, though that last one was written mainly on WriteNow on a Mac SE.  So, maybe the handwritten-to-smartphone idea could actually work pretty well, now that I think about it.

Anyway, all that’s fairly moot, because I did not in fact write this blog post on Sunday afternoon nor yet on Sunday evening.  I am writing it, as I usually do, in the morning, in the midst of my commute to the office, which is so effing early, but which is nevertheless far later than when I woke up.

I’m more than a bit disappointed in myself for failing to carry through with that idea, but it’s easy to think of ideas that seem so doable when you first think of them.  And they are doable, of course.  Not only is it physically possible for me to have written this post yesterday evening and to set a precedent of doing the blog posts in the evening and writing fiction in the morning, it’s banal.  If you told someone that had happened, they would be unlikely to do much more than shrug and say something like a noncommittal “cool”, before going on their way.

But as we all know‒or should know‒it’s much easier to intend to do things in the future than it is to muster the motivation to do them in the moment when one was hoping to do them.  There are many shifting, often conflicting, drives in the human** psyche, and our actions are born of a kind of vector sum of all those “forces” in any given moment.

But not only do those forces shift due to things as seemingly mundane as one’s current state of appetite or fatigue, but they are also affected by what one has done immediately before; for the outcome of that vector sum in one instant feeds back on the system in numerous places, changing the sum (I was going to write “changing the calculus” but I thought that might be mathematically confusing and even misleading, since I am not discussing calculus) with every new iteration.  These iterations and changes aren’t quite happening on the scale of the Planck time***, but they happen quickly‒certainly at least at the “speed of thought”, whatever that might be.

Even the physiological, hormonal, energy state of the body from moment to moment changes those vectors, sometimes a great deal.  If you find yourself needing to use the bathroom while you’re trying to accomplish some task, it can certainly change the state of your concentration.  And if you should suddenly begin to have difficulty breathing, it will distract you from pretty much anything else.

That’s why on airplanes they tell you that, in case of cabin depressurization, if you’re traveling with someone who needs help putting on the oxygen mask, put yours on first, before you help your companion.  If you can’t breathe, your ability to help anyone else is going to tank very rapidly.  We can live weeks to months without food, days without water, but only minutes without air.

On a less extreme angle, if one is hypoglycemic (for whatever reason), it strongly affects all the functions of one’s body, particularly one’s neuroendocrine system.  Less extreme but more persistent issues can sabotage one’s focus upon much else.

I don’t need to tell you, probably, that pain makes it much harder to focus and bring effort to bear on other things.  This is one of the most annoying aspects of chronic pain:  one does not quite ever become accustomed to it, because that would miss the whole biological point of pain.  Making pain something you could ignore would be a bit like making a fire alarm that plays soft, easy-listening elevator music at unobtrusive decibel levels.  It would be less annoying, but being burned to death in a fire is a bigger issue, even if it isn’t very likely.

Of course, if your (typical) fire alarm is stuck on, you may not ever be able completely to ignore it.  You also will not know when there is a real fire. Or at least you will be less likely to know.  And since that can potentially be a matter of life and death, the chronic alarm, like chronic pain, is in its own manifold ways life-threatening.

All that is very tangential to my original point, which was that I am writing this blog today, not writing fiction (at least not this morning on my commute).

Oh, well.  If there’s one day I can let myself get away with slacking a bit, I guess it’s today.  I hope you all have a good one.

*How’s that for clever, descriptive writing?

**Or whatever I am.

***Though the processes that underlie them do.

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The brain may devise laws for the blog, but a hot temper leaps o’er a cold decree.

Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday, of course, and it is also the 2nd day of October.  Those two things don’t always coincide‒that probably goes without saying‒but in this case (and roughly one seventh of all October 2nds) they do.

It’s also Yom Kippur, and though if I were truly observant of the holiday, I would not be writing this or going to work, I still want to wish anyone out there observing (it’s not really celebrating) the day a very good and positive one (but if you’re observant, so to speak, you’re unlikely to see this until after the holiday ends).

And, of course, I have begun my fast.  That’s not very impressive so far, mind you; I just haven’t eaten anything since yesterday afternoon at about 4:30, which is not too much longer than usual at this time of day.  Of course, I feel fine, energy and hunger-wise, because I don’t usually eat anything by this hour.  I will be drinking water‒fizzy most of the time, but still water, even though it’s not still water, ha ha‒and possibly diet soda, but that’s it.  I have to have water, because I take a fair amount of medicine for my pain and such, and many of those things should not be sitting in an unlubricated stomach.

It’s not really that hard for me to hold off on eating once I commit to it.  Throughout high school at least, and part of college, I never ate breakfast and rarely ate lunch.  I was skinny, but my mind was as sharp as it’s ever been (though of course I am “smarter” now than I was, because I know a lot more, and that’s not just knowledge, but skills and habits as well).

I also had plenty of energy back then.  I’ve spoken before about how this makes biological sense.  In our ancestral environment, a lack of recent food would be associated with the need or urge to seek food out, and that requires alertness and motivation and energy for a hunting species or even a gathering species, and certainly for one that does both.

Anyway, I really hope not only that this fast helps to clear my mind a bit and to calm my “spirit”, but also that it helps reset my body somewhat.  At the very least, it would be good to get back to that high school (and college) tendency of spending less of my time eating.  It’s gotten to the point that what I do in my “spare time” is often just eating, for momentary pleasure, for distraction, for avoiding boredom, for escape, etc.  But, of course, that tends to lead to a negative cycle, and I feel physically worse and worse about myself afterward.

So, hopefully, I will cross the activation-energy barrier today and head on through towards a more stable plane (or plain) of mentality, and of metabolism.  I don’t know for sure how long the journey will last, or where I will end up, but I will probably keep you all posted.  Watch this space, as they say.

It would be very nice if I successfully get some degree of spiritual insight from this fasting process‒whatever that even means*‒but whatever happens, until the end, I will probably continue to post here every work day.

In the meantime, I’ve at least put in some absurd footnotes as tangential thoughts struck me while writing.  I even did one of my footnote-within-a-footnote thingys, which is always fun (for me, anyway).  But you have to be careful with such digressions;  it’s a bit like writing a computer program with lots of subroutines embedded within other subroutines embedded within yet other subroutines.  The potential for errors that confound your logic (and that make your program freeze, in the programming case) is quite high.

Anyway, G’mar chatima tova, everyone.  I hope you have a good day.  I think I will, too.  And if I uncover any special psychic powers though this fasting process, well…I probably wouldn’t say anything about it.  But who knows, I might.

TTFN

*I’m referring to “spiritual insight”, not “this process”.  I’m pretty sure I know what “this process” means in this particular case**.

**Actually, that’s a pretty unambiguous term nearly any time you might use it.  You might not understand what this process is, but you probably understand what “this process” means in most cases, assuming a decent command of English***.

***That’s a command of the English language, not command of the English.  Commanding the English, and the rest of the inhabitants of the British Isles, has historically been a tricky business, including by the English themselves.  Even the Romans had issues with the “English” and when it came to Scotland, well, Emperor Hadrian just said, “Screw it, put a wall up to try to keep them there up North, I don’t wanna have to deal with those crazy bastards”.  He probably said it in Latin**** though.

****I can’t even imagine the nightmare of trying to conjugate all the Latin verbs and so on in my imaginary quote from Hadrian.

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“I’m coming down fast, but don’t let me break you.”

I’m writing this post on my mini lapcom, as I call it, following the lesson of my own reflections yesterday on how my thumbs and whatnot are getting particularly sore and tender while writing on the smartphone, and it’s just easier writing with the “laptop” computer.

Of course, I don’t know what subject on which to write, but that’s typical, even usual for me, though I probably wouldn’t call it “normal”.  It’s just my personal, weird way of approaching this blog.  I suppose my subconscious is probably working on some of it ahead of time.  But I don’t really ever plan the posts, though occasionally I think about a general, vague kind of thing that I will discuss, like “What is that flat, circular thing that they throw in the Olympics called, again?”

Sorry, that was a really stupid joke.

There are some imminently upcoming matters that are of at least personal interest to me.  For instance, this is the last day of September in 2025.  Tomorrow begins October, which is generally my favorite month, though down here you can’t readily tell October from any other month.  But it’s still a good month, and it culminates in my favorite holiday (which is Halloween, in case that wasn’t clear).

Tomorrow at sundown also begins Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.  Now, I clearly am not “observant” in any serious way, and I have no local (or other) community of any kind, but pretty much every year, unless I am physically sick, I fast for Yom Kippur, from sundown to sundown (at least).  One is supposed to fast from food and water, but since I’ve been in south Florida, I tend to skip the water fasting part; even at this time of year, it’s too easy to get dehydrated, and I sure as hell don’t want any more kidney stones if I can help it.

I may try to extend my fast this year, beyond just one day.  I’ve done it before.  Once I get past a certain point, it becomes comparatively easy just to continue not to eat, and for me, at least, that point of ease arrives pretty quickly.

Clearly one cannot fast indefinitely.  Or rather, if one does it for more than a certain length of time, one is likely to cease to eat permanently (if you take my meaning).  That’s not so bad a thing, really, and it doesn’t seem like a terrible way to die, to me, though I know a lot of people seem to think it especially horrible.

But the thing is, ketosis (which happens when fasting) is fairly pleasant, as I know from personal experience; the brain prefers to run on ketone bodies (in the sense that it runs better on them), and one’s hormonal status, such as one’s bouncing stress hormones related to insulin and glucose zooming up and down, at least become steadier when one has gone without food for a bit.

It’s not a mere coincidence that many religions and spiritual practices make use of fasts.  Up to a certain point, going without food for a while keeps one clear-headed, less emotional and distracted (once one gets over the initial hump of habit).  There are hypothetical biological reasons for this; an animal (such as a human, or even me) needs to be clear and sharp when food has been scarce, because they need to seek it.

I wouldn’t mind achieving some type of epiphany because of a fast.  I also have a (slim) hope that fasting might help some of my pain symptoms, at least the more recent ones.  I have a slight suspicion that maybe I have some form of psoriatic arthritis (though it certainly could be a “second year medical student syndrome” type of thing), since my fingers are particularly getting more painful and swollen lately*, and I have new tendonitis-type symptoms and even a proximal interphalangeal joint in my right middle finger that’s popping in and out as I move it.

The left hand is not as bad, but then again, I am right handed, so the right hand gets more use and stress—not least from controlling a computer mouse.  But I also get a lot of pain that has become more localized to my ileo-sacral region, shifting from side to side (and various other joints, not quite symmetrically) which is a common spot for psoriatic arthritis to affect.  So, it could be a somewhat atypical presentation of psoriatic arthritis (I do have a long-standing psoriasis-like rash).

More likely, though, all of these symptoms are merely part of my chronic pain syndrome, which leads to awkward postural adjustments that cause irregular strain on various joints and tendons, and it’s all made worse by the fact that I am way too fat (because I often eat for “comfort” when the pain is acting up, which is likewise often).  So, whether by one mechanism or another, perhaps fasting would help reset things.

I would not hope to get carried away and fast forever, but at least it would be nice not to die a fatty.  I guess we’ll see how everything goes.  But I am at least going to fast tonight until tomorrow night.  I have plenty of internal reserves on which to live, but I will keep taking my vitamins and pain medicine, of course.

That’s pretty much it for now.  I hope you all have a good day, and by tomorrow night I’ll have begun my fast.  If I keep it up, you’ll be able to follow my progress here.  It probably won’t be very interesting, but it might be.

Talk to you soon.

*That’s discouraged me from playing guitar very often, which is annoying in itself.

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I’m back and (nominally) going forth

It’s Monday again‒the last Monday of September in 2025.  This day, in this month, in this year, will never come again.  Or, well, even if the universe is one big closed time-loop of some kind, it seems quite clear that the scale of it is so huge that it may as well be eternity before this time will come around again.

And then, of course, even if it does come around again, it’s not as though we would be aware of it.  I’ve brought up before the notion of it being like people in movie on a DVD or Blu-ray or what have you; at each moment, the characters are, from their viewpoint, facing an uncertain future with many possibilities, and yet we the viewers know that exactly the same things will happen to them, and they will do exactly the same things each time we watch the movie.

That’s all old hat, I guess (a weird expression, but somehow it works).  But it is interesting to consider occasionally, and then to think about where (if anywhere) quantum indeterminacy fits into such a picture, from the possible “many worlds” Everettian version of quantum mechanics to things like superdeterminism on the other end and so on.

Whatever.  Sorry, I sometimes get a little swept up in such matters, and it probably gets quite boring for my readers.

Anyway, I did not go to work on Friday, and that’s why I didn’t write a blog post.  My apologies.  I felt truly horrible at a sort of pan-corporeal level; it almost felt as if I were experiencing the effects of some kind of poison (though I do not actually suspect such a thing, it’s just a way to convey my experience).  I think something “global” and metabolic was going on, though I guess it might have been some viral syndrome or other.  I’m not feeling completely better, even today.

I also scratched my right eye in my sleep apparently, on Thursday night, and that didn’t help matters.  Thankfully, the conjunctivae heal very quickly, so that’s mostly better now.  It’s still a little irritated, and so it is irritating, but that should just be a matter of time.

As for anything else, well…I have nothing, really.  That applies in more than one sense, now that I think about it.  But in this case, I mean that I have nothing interesting in mind about which to write.  It doesn’t help that I’m doing this on my smartphone, which makes writing slower and also a bit painful.

I really should bring the mini lapcom back to the house with me.  It’s so much easier to write on it‒it really allows me to be in some ways more fluent and fluid even than when speaking (although if you get me started on a subject in which I’m interested, I can talk at a rate that will make most people wish for me to get severe laryngitis).

It’s tough, however, to talk with my six pm self to get him to want to bring the lapcom, when he’s globally fatigued at the end of the workday.  Likewise, he has a hard time making excuses to my morning self, who is still fatigued and who has sore thumb bases.

Nominally, of course, they are “the same” person‒and taking “the person” as the four-dimensional self-reinforcing and self-sustaining pattern that I am, like a complex braid in spacetime, one would say that they are indeed the same person, or at least that they are parts of the same person.  But as an experiential matter, they are subjectively quite different, instantiating different states of body and mind.

Oh, they are obviously far more alike than unalike‒the morning me is closer by far in overall state to the afternoon me than to any state of any other person, let alone any other animal or what have you.  But still, the Buddhist (and similar systems of thought) notion of the lack of any fixed “self” riding around inside the mind like a homunculus is clearly correct.

There is no “center” of consciousness in the brain except for the whole brain itself.  But even that does not exist in a vacuum*.  Its state is influenced by the states of the rest of the body, of the environment, of the information coming into the person’s mind via the senses, and so on.

It’s a fucking complicated system, okay?  It’s the most complicated thing‒at least on this scale‒of which we are aware.  By that, I mean human (and humanoid) minds and brains in general, not mine specifically.  I have a fairly high judgment of my own intelligence, but I’m not as egotistical as all that.

Maybe I should try to be.  Maybe I should cultivate a sense of self-importance and specialness (why is that not “specialty”?) that would keep me feeling nominally good about myself.  But people like that are so boring and annoying and even pitiful.  I don’t know if going that way would be more triumph or surrender.  It would probably be the latter.

Oh, well.  Try to have a good day.

*Unless it’s a Boltzmann Brain, which is pretty unlikely.  You can know you’re not a Boltzmann Brain if you continue to exist for more than a few seconds before disintegrating into the global entropy of a nearly empty universe.  Although, of course, your memories of having existed for more than a few seconds may simply be false memories, a real possibility in principle in any Boltzmann Brain.  But contemplating those possibilities reveals that they would make baseless any notion we have of consistent physical laws, including the laws that allow for Boltzmann Brains (if they do, which is questionable), so it gets pointless pretty quickly.

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“Don’t ask for favors. Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t axe me why.”

I’m going to try to keep this brief today.  I had a particularly bad night’s sleep, even for me, and I am in a significant amount of pain even after taking what I have for it (without massively overdosing).  Thankfully‒so far‒my thumbs aren’t acting up too much as I write this.

It certainly does get old, this chronic pain bit.  I don’t know if anyone out there is considering trying it as a way of being, but I can tell you that, after more than twenty years, I’ve decided it’s not a good lifestyle choice.  So please, if you’re considering it, then reconsider.

I know, I know, no one‒as far as I’m aware‒chooses to have chronic pain, not as such, anyway.  I suppose one might say that anyone who becomes a professional football player (American football, I mean, though all competitive sports have at least some tendency in the same direction) is in a sense choosing a life of chronic pain.

But at least there are compensations, and one receives them more or less up front.  The bill, however, almost inevitably comes due for those who play any kind of serious competitive sports.  Don’t get me wrong; I’m glad they do what they do.  I enjoy watching football, and to a lesser degree several other sports.  But even golf (which I also enjoy watching the pros play) gives its practitioners accumulated damage.

Is there any sport that does not exact a toll on those who take part in it seriously?  I don’t know.  Maybe free solo rock climbing doesn’t tend to give people quite the same kind of chronic, post-high-impact injury problems, because high impacts in that sport tend to be fatal.  Other than those, though, it appears to be a practice associated with great care and deliberation.  There is little to no tackling involved (they don’t even use other kinds of tackle, thus the “free solo” part).

I don’t know why I’m going into such things.  I was just speaking tongue in cheek about the idea of people actually choosing to have chronic pain, which was an absurd notion.  Then I realized that, in a way, people often do choose things that will almost inescapably lead to chronic pain.  But, of course, they aren’t consciously choosing the pain, and many of them probably don’t seriously think it’s something that can happen to them, not when they’re young and feel unstoppable.

Then, by the time they’ve come to recognize their own susceptibility, their own mortality and morbidity, it’s too late.

I suspect that chronic pain was much less common for our ancestors, at least if you go back far enough.  This is not because they were hardier or healthier than we are necessarily, though they probably had less occasion to be indolent.  But we are exposed to injuries they might not have been‒even minor traffic accidents can cause damage that accumulates and persists‒and also, we survive many things that would simply have killed them, thanks to modern science and technology.

Just because we survive them doesn’t mean they are harmless, though.  As Billy Joel sang, “You are still the victim of the accidents you leave.”  That which does not kill you can still leave damage; it does not necessarily make you stronger, any more than syphilis made Nietzsche healthier.

On that cheery note, I think I will wrap up this week and put it in the fridge for leftovers, where it will eventually go bad and will have to be thrown out anyway.  I know, that particular metaphor doesn’t really make sense.  I didn’t have anything in mind when I wrote it, I was just following the automatic thought that was initiated by the words “wrap up”.  If any of you have a good potential meaning for the metaphor that I just frivolously threw out there, please, feel free to share it with us.

Also, please have a good day and a good weekend if you can.

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I’m back, despite my back holding me back

I apologize for not writing a post yesterday.  I did not go in to the office, because the pain I was having on Monday just continued and worsened, and by yesterday morning I was just exhausted.  I’m frankly not feeling a whole lot better today, to be honest (and to be redundant, since I already said “frankly” which means essentially the same thing as “to be honest”).

In case any of you don’t already know, I have a thing called “failed back surgery syndrome”, which seems a bit unfair to the surgeon, who was a colleague of mine.  He did as good a job as science and technology allowed.  I just had a fairly bad lower back injury:  specifically, a ruptured L5-S1 intervertebral disk.

That’s not a bulging disk, that’s a rupture‒it was torn all the way down into the nucleus pulposus of the disk, which is the delicious jelly center from which the bouncability arises.  I had all sorts of investigations after the pain began, because it didn’t first present as back pain but with pain in my legs.  And then once the disk issue was confirmed, I tried a lot of less invasive interventions to treat my pain, none of which did anything much.

Even after the surgery, I tried and was on various medications, of various classes‒including opioids‒which helped some but which caused their own issues over time.  But the pain has never gone away since its onset, over twenty years ago, and which has contributed greatly to things like the failure of my marriage and the ruination of my career.  Still, the surgery did reduce the pain at least to some degree.

But of course, these last several days have been worse than usual, probably partly because I was exercising (low impact) to try to improve my condition and help my pain.  Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes, can’t it?

Anyway, I have to go to work today because it’s payroll day.  That was the same reason I kind of pushed to be let out of the hospital early with my recent kidney stone:  I had to do the payroll the next day.  That was unpleasant, I can tell you.

Such is my life now, it seems:  Chronic pain with varying intensity, insomnia, tension/anxiety and depression‒both at least partly (probably) related to ASD‒and work, then going back to the house to lie down to try to recover for the next day.  The only real bright spots are seeing my youngest child now and then (this was started by the kidney stone, curiously enough, so that at least paid for itself) and talking to my sister on the phone once every week or so.

In case anyone wonders why I have suicidal ideation, well, all the above should explain at least some of it.  Of course, I’ve had such thoughts since I was a teenager, long before my chronic pain developed, but I did have chronic depression (AKA dysthymia) starting at that time.  Looking back, this was probably at least partly because of my long-undiagnosed ASD (level 2).

I also had the other kind of ASD‒an atrial septal defect‒until I was 18 and had heart surgery for it.  Interestingly enough, there is a higher incidence of the heart-based ASD in people with the other kind of ASD, according to some studies I have read.  There’s also some increased prevalence of spina bifida occulta, which often has its effects very low down the spine.  I sometimes wonder if I might have had a very slight version of this that made me prone to have the back injury I had, but I may be going through “second year medical student syndrome” again with respect to that possibility.

Okay, well, sorry about annoying you with my medical history and medical/psychiatric complaints.  For the most part, it’s all I have to talk about anymore.  I don’t do anything interesting; I don’t do anything much at all other than work and trying to rest and distract myself.  It’s really quite pathetic and pointless.

I keep hoping that all the aspirin I take (among the other strictly OTC meds I now use) will lead me to have some form of hemorrhage and take this all away from me, but I have had no luck so far.  I guess it’s true what they say, that if you want something done “right” you need to do it yourself.

I don’t know if that’s always true, though.  I think what really happens is that people want to do something in a particular way for personal, often aesthetic, reasons, and want to be able to have some control over something, so they do it themselves.  Then, no matter how badly they fuck it up or how much better someone else might have done the job, they convince themselves that what they did was best, since confirmation bias is one of the easiest fallacies of reasoning into which people can fall.

Anyway, that’s enough for today.  I hope you feel better than I do, since that would at least be some comfort for me.  I’ll probably be back to write a post tomorrow, Batman knows why.  But he’s not telling.

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Is this my eigenstate? If so, I fear it makes me LESS coherent.

It’s Monday, and I really am going to try to keep this short.  The only reason I’m writing this post at all is because I don’t want anyone to worry about me in any unnecessary way.  I suppose it’s okay for people to worry about me in general‒I think I would, if I were someone else and if I cared what happens to me.  I’m certainly not in good shape, just as a general matter, and I don’t seem to be getting better at all, so who knows what to say?

But today, I am not taking off work or anything.  I am however in a significant amount of pain, above my usual baseline, and I have been so since last week.  It’s quite frustrating, and it takes the wind out of my sails for getting anything done but the bare minimum.  Certainly I have done no walking or biking.

I did have a lovely day on Saturday, because I got to spend time with my youngest.  That was, of course, quite wonderful.  So you will hear (or read) no complaints from me about that.  It was officially one of the two best days I have had since 2012, at least.

I wish that could make my chronic pain go away, but alas, it does not.  It does take the edge off my depression for a while‒certainly while spending time together‒and that’s obviously good.  If only there were something that could be done in addition to that.

Unfortunately, I’m currently in the state* that I tend to refer to as feeling as if I have already been embalmed despite the fact that I am nominally still alive.  This is meant to convey how stiff and constricted I feel, and how every motion is difficult and painful.  I at least did my dips this morning, despite feeling wiped out already upon awakening.  Yay, me, right?  Huzzah.

It probably comes as no surprise that I continue to have insomnia, and the pain exacerbation doesn’t help that.  Well, in a certain sense one could say it helps the insomnia.  It impairs the somnia, if you will.

I’m writing this on my smartphone, by the way.  I have the mini lapcom with me, but it’s too much trouble to use right now.  So I am using the smartphone.  Using it is, however, also somewhat painful for the bases of my thumbs, but almost nothing I do does not hurt, so there’s little hope of avoiding pain entirely no matter what I’m doing.

It looks like Chrome and Google Docs and everything have updated themselves again, and now it’s causing trouble with the way the computer starts and the way I write this on my smartphone as well.  It’s terribly annoying; they change things that don’t need changing and that seem to work fine, apparently for cosmetic reasons, because they think they need to…I don’t know, keep up with the other software giants?  Anyway, it’s terribly annoying.

Are they really continuously releasing a product that has so many deficiencies that they need to keep updating every other week (or so it seems)?  Perhaps they’re hiding nefarious changes behind these seemingly pointless ones.  How would we know if they were?  How can we know this isn’t the work of some AI that got out of the box, for that matter?

Though, honestly, I think such an AI would do a better job of not requiring so many pointless-seeming updates.  But maybe that would be the perfect camouflage:  artificial intelligence masquerading as human stupidity.

Heavy sigh, as Justine would say**.

Anyway, that’s gonna be enough for me today.  It’s 5:30 in the morning and I’m already exhausted.  I am not, however, sleepy.  Talk about a system that needs an update!

Well, have a good day if you can.

*Not to be confused with the state of Florida, though the two states have things in common.

**A character in The Accountant and its sequel.

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That small model of the barren earth which serves as paste and cover to our blogs

Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday, and I’m sitting at the train station as I begin to write this, having walked the five miles here from the house.

I’d intended either to walk or ride the bike today, having taken a rest break yesterday, but riding the new bike was just a little too intimidating.  I think I’ll need to get a bit of practice in over the weekend—a longish ride or two each on Saturday and Sunday—in order to get really used to it, so I don’t feel daunted when I arise in the morning.

I don’t have anything against walking, of course.  It’s actually rather enjoyable.  But it does take quite a bit longer than biking does, and it’s much more likely to cause me blisters, as well as irritation in my right ankle and left knee (though I have a spandex brace on for the latter issue, and it helps).

How’s that for a boring beginning?  Still, at least it’s a form of “good” news, in the sense that I have accomplished something useful already today.  That’s one reason it’s nice to get your exercise in before work—or whatever constitutes the morning for you—because then you begin the rest of your day with an accomplishment already under your belt, so to speak.  And, of course, over time you’ll be able tighten that belt, or so it is to be hoped, if you keep up the good habits.

In any case, I’m starting this post off much more positively than I did yesterday’s post, though that’s admittedly a very low bar to clear.  Hopefully there will be no minor catastrophes today involving the train as there were on Tuesday after I walked.  The announcement proclaims the train is on its way in ten minutes, which will make it right on time, so that’s a hopeful fact.

It’s not as though I don’t have plenty of time before work officially starts; I can’t seem to sleep past about three in the morning, and I wake up more than once before then, no matter when I go to sleep.  I might as well use that time to get some things done, and exercise can be one of those things.

Okay, well—what should I talk about now?  I don’t know.  I never plan these things out, as you know, and though sometimes I think I write better when I feel angry in general, I don’t feel especially so at the moment.  I keep trying to give myself positive “self-talk” as they call it, but it’s difficult for me to do, because I find that I don’t believe it.  I want to be able to say to myself that “I love my life and I love myself” but I really don’t.  Maybe if I said something like, “I deserve to love myself” or similar I might find that easier to stomach.

I doubt it, though.  Perhaps if I’m able to get into better condition, as I am trying to do, I’ll feel better about feeling better about myself.

***

Well, I’m on the train now, and we appear to be moving on time and on schedule and other redundant expressions meaning that things are going according to plan.  It’s quite chilly on the train, after the tropical mugginess of the very early south Florida morning.  Fortunately, I brought an extra tee-shirt to put on over my fancy one, the latter of which is supposed to allow perspiration to evaporate quickly.  I’m not sure that it really does that, but it at least doesn’t tend to sag as it sticks to your skin with your sweat.

Well, it doesn’t actually do anything to your skin or in response to your sweat.  As far as I know, no one else but I has worn any of my shirts.  That’s good.  I don’t really want anyone else to be in my shirts, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend to anyone that they try being in my shoes.

Ha.

Ha.

So, now, what to do otherwise for today?  Of course, I will go to the office, and I will work, which makes good sense, since that is the point of getting up and leaving in the morning.  It all does get quite drab and repetitive, though, and it is certainly pointless from any objective point of view.  Unfortunately, it’s also pretty pointless from my subjective point of view, and over time that view has become more and more definitively that my days are without a point.

Do most people have a subjective sense that their daily lives have some meaning?  I suppose if they live with a spouse and/or children and/or have a group of friends with whom they spend their time, they might not even have to acknowledge any subjective sense of meaning; they will simply instantiate it.  That’s probably nice.

And so it goes, and so it goes, and the train is also going, and there seem to be no untoward complications.  It’s still dark, but dawn is in the east, gradually drowning out the lovely morning spectacle of Jupiter floating a degree or so above Venus in the eastern sky.  Venus, of course, is far brighter than Jupiter, belying the actual relative sizes of the planets, since it is much farther away and light intensity falls off as the square of the distance, due to the geometry of space.

It’s interesting how many names Venus has, and how contradictory they are.  In middle-earth, of course, it is Eärendil, and we call it Venus, but it was also the original Lucifer, the morning star—and it’s also the evening star, depending on where in its orbit it is relative to the Earth.  And it is, of course, the most transitory of planets.

With that really stupid and bad astronomy joke I’ll end for the day, and none too soon.  I hope you all are feeling well and are accomplishing your own little or not-so-little successes.  Sometimes just living to the next day can feel like a heroic accomplishment.  And sometimes it can feel like a terrible mistake.

TTFN

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True hope is swift, and blogs with swallow’s wings: kings it makes gods and meaner creatures kings

Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday, and against popular demand (or at least orthogonal to it) I am writing another blog post.  I don’t know how you feel about that, but you’re reading it, so I guess you can’t complain too much.

I had a rough day again yesterday, pain-wise.  I basically took everything that was safe to take, and then a bit more, but it did not do a great job of getting the pain under control.  However, I did take delivery of my latest attempt at lifestyle change:  a new, folding bicycle, which is quite a lot smaller (and has a smaller wheel base) than my other one.  It’s also lighter, and so it is easier to transport, and starting this afternoon, I mean to ride it from and to the train in the morning and evening‒or, well, in the evening and morning, to keep the order consistent.

I tried it for a little ride-around in the afternoon, and while the smaller wheels make it feel slightly less stable (thanks to a smaller moment of inertia, proportional to the mass times the square of the radius of rotation, if memory serves), it’s still comfortable, and it is also easier to get on for me, since I can step through it rather than having to raise my stupid, stiff old legs and hip.

Hopefully, it will help me get around faster and get stronger/healthier again.  Even my little test ride yesterday seemed to loosen my back up a bit, which was a bonus.  I think the lower-impact movement of a bicycle is much easier on my joints* than, say, running, which I’ve otherwise always really liked.  It’s also just faster to get around on a bike than by walking, but you don’t completely lose out on the experience of being in the midst of the places through which you are traveling.

So, yeah, that’s my reason for guarded optimism today.  I have a hard time being optimistic even at the best of times, though.  It feels like I’m setting myself up to fall into a trap.

That reminds me, I rather like something I heard David Frum say recently.  I can’t reproduce his exact words at the moment, but he basically said he tries to follow the guideline:  think like a pessimist but act like an optimist.  Or,  as Mel Brooks put it in the theme song** for his early movie The Twelve Chairs, “Hope for the best, expect the worst”.

In some ways, I feel that’s almost become my default setting, because when I’m at my current clearest state of headedness, I am definitely depressive and gloomy and neither expect nor feel that I deserve anything good.  But I still keep moving forward (well, if you’re moving at all, then “forward” can be defined as just going in the direction in which you are, in fact, going) and trying new things.

With respect to everything else, well, because my pain flare has been so distracting this week, I haven’t done any music of any kind (even listening, really) nor have I written any fiction.  I also haven’t worked on any lyrics for a song taking off from the word “humility”.  Hopefully, if I can feel better from riding the new bike, it will help me have more energy to do things.  Of course, it will be physically taxing at first, at least a little bit, but that’s okay.

As for anything else, well, I still occasionally toy with the notion of adding a Patreon account or something to this blog, just to see if it does anything at all.  But one is expected to give perks to one’s patrons, and I’m not sure what I have to offer.  Of course, I could write special posts that are only available to patrons, but I don’t know how exciting that would be.

Maybe I could ask patrons to suggest topics or subjects for blog posts, or do some manner of “ask me anything” posts, open to patrons only.  I don’t really know what on Earth people on Patreon could possibly want to learn from or about me, but maybe there would be interest.  I don’t know what else might entice someone.  If any of you out there have any ideas, I would love to hear them.

See what I mean by “think like a pessimist, act like an optimist”?  It’s hard for me to imagine anyone wanting to pay to read my writing, since I barely want to read my own stuff for free***.  And yet, I would consider trying to start making money from even my non-fiction writing, because what have I got to lose by trying that, other than an expenditure of time and energy?

Well, we’ll see what happens.  I would greatly welcome your input on such things, O Reader of My Blog.  In the meantime, please have a good day.

TTFN

*As long as I can avoid repeating any of my two prior major bike accidents, which each did harm to one of my shoulder joints‒first the left then the right, first a connective tissue injury, then a fracture.

**Which, yes, he wrote himself, both the song and the movie.

***Okay, that’s a lie.  I tend to enjoy rereading my own fiction quite a bit.  Is that narcissistic?  If it is, I’m a very peculiar kind of self-hating narcissist:  I think I’m the most annoying, disgusting being this side of a palmetto bug, and yet I think my stories (and my songs) are pretty good, and I enjoy them even if no one else does.

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I have no title today (other than “doctor”)

I don’t think I’ll probably write very much today‒though I’ve been wrong about that many times before, so I guess I’ll have to wait and see.  I feel particularly tired already this morning, but that didn’t let me sleep uninterrupted for more than a few hours.  So far today I’m not in as much pain as I was the previous two days, but then again, on neither of those two days was my pain as prominent in the morning as it became during the day, so I cannot be too optimistic.

I am, of course, trying all my various adjustments and interventions and so on to try to improve things, and they have limited and temporary success in general.  But I will keep trying, until the day that I finally give up and/or die.  I suppose, of course, that I might even get better.  It’s physically possible.  But I’m not going to hold my breath, because I’ve tried many, many things to improve my pain, and they have not had much success.

With that in mind, unless you have something truly esoteric that you think I, a physician with a broadly curious mind and with chronic pain, will not have encountered or considered, I don’t encourage recommending or suggesting pain treatments to me.  You can of course, and I truly appreciate the sentiments involved in such offers, but they are often frustrating.  Also, when people recommend things that I know are just woo, it’s additionally frustrating to have to remind myself not to respond impolitely.  Good intentions aren’t enough to make good things actually happen, but they are worth taking into consideration and appreciating.  You shouldn’t be rude to people who are trying to help, even if they aren’t succeeding.

Anyway, my new thing that I mentioned yesterday did not arrive; it’s supposed to arrive today, now, having been delayed.  I won’t get into it yet, but I maintain my stupid pseudo-optimism, which I cannot explain nor justify, except to say that I’m stubborn.  But I have my limits.

It’s been a string of rather frustrating days, lately, and though none of the frustrations are catastrophic, in some ways that makes them more pernicious.  With major setbacks, one is allowed and expected to need a real recovery process, a bit of time, a bit of rest, or maybe just some sympathy.  One gets a break.  With more minor setbacks, one gets no respite, but they can nonetheless pile up, especially if one has chronic issues already.  But one will gain little ease from others with respect to them.

For instance, when I mentioned to a coworker that I was having a lot of frustrating things happen over the past several days, I got a reply that everyone was having a rough time‒based on what data, I don’t know.  His rough times apparently have to do with taking his daughter to the doctor for a thankfully not too severe issue and his wife being sick and so on.  I would give almost anything possible to have such “problems” again, or just to be able to be with my children in a significant way again.

Anyway, I was not terribly pleased, and in response to his statement about the claimed recent local preponderance of irritations, I said, “Well, that makes everything all right, then, doesn’t it?”

It wasn’t the cleverest of replies, but at least I was channeling the Toymaker a bit.

Anyway, I’m sure few or none of you readers are particularly sympathetic, either.  Why would you be?  I’m no one and nothing, just a weird little “voice” on the internet/web.  I’m a wisp of marsh gas, a flicker of movement in the corner of your vision, an occasionally annoying afterthought, like the water that gets on your shirt at the waist from doing the dishes, but that you don’t notice until you’re done.  I’m a tiny little grain of rock that gets on the bottom of your foot inside your shoe; it’s not quite bad enough to force you to stop, take off your shoe, and clear it out, but it’s there all the while, and you end up with a blister and other aches at the end of the day, from changing the way you walk.

So, yeah, that’s me.  That’s how I feel today.  I know, it doesn’t matter to anyone, but there it is.  Maybe today will be better than yesterday.

I wish I could say it couldn’t be worse, but that’s never true.  Reality has no lowest level.  Things can always deteriorate.