health

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Raveling down the knitted sleeve of care

Well, it’s Saturday morning, and I’m heading to the office‒way too early, because I still can’t get a good night’s sleep,  Even with recent interventions to try to help my pain and insomnia, it seems the sleep honeymoon phase might already be over.

I felt very much like the lone soldier in the jungle again last night, unable truly to rest and relax, primed at some pervasive level to jump up and react in case some threat developed.  This wouldn’t necessarily be a true external threat.  It might be some break in my routine, sleeping past my alarm*, realizing I had forgotten to set my alarm**, or there might be an intruder, some deliberate, secret assailant, come to attack me in my sleep***, or just a new flare-up of chronic pain developing.

It’s not a great way to start a day or to continue a life.  As I said, I had some temporary improvement not in the quantity of my sleep but in the quality thereof‒I wasn’t sleeping more, but I felt as though I was sleeping better‒for the past week plus a day or so.  This is probably why I’ve had the energy to write some blog posts this week.  But last night felt just like one of my typical, paranoid, restless, angry “sleeps” from before.  I have not stopped my new intervention, but apparently it’s no longer addressing whatever the roots of my sleep issues are.

I suppose I shouldn’t draw too sweeping a conclusion so readily.  One night is not a pattern.  But it’s such a familiar experience, and after such a short semi-respite, that it’s almost worse than never having a respite at all.

For at least 15 years (at least), I’ve spent most of my days and nights alone in the wasteland‒not literally, of course, don’t be stupid.  I just mean that I’ve had the sense of being by myself‒even when in crowded places, such as malls or prison‒and with no real recourse to anyone to help me defend against potential enemies, physical or social or “spiritual”, real or even imagined, external and internal.

To be clear, I don’t feel that the world around me is generally hostile.  In some ways, that would be easier, although considerably less stable.  If I were literally being attacked, I could literally take arms against that sea of troubles and let slip the dogs of war, imitate the action of the tiger, throw my warlike shield before my body and lay on*, fighting against assailants until they were all beaten or until I was dead‒and damned be him that first cried, “Hold, enough!”

Almost certainly, the outcome would be my destruction, but we all have that coming, anyway.  Dying in battle against actual attackers isn’t the worst death I can imagine, if I’m honest (it’s not the best one, either, don’t mistake me…I am not a Klingon or a Sontaran, and I do not embrace the philosophies).

Alas, I will probably be taken down in the end just by the progressive deterioration of my body.  It would be nice to die in a way that is heroic or at least useful, but that’s unlikely to happen.

I’m frustrated and angry about many things this morning, and I’m sick of feeling this way so much of the time.  What is the point of this?  Unlike Camus, I don’t imagine Sisyphus is happy.

It would be one thing if he had people whose company he enjoyed with whom to spend his time while he kept pushing his boulder.  Or, if he really were achieving some result, something beneficial, something that improved the world beyond himself.  But just to keep grinding away at his absurd and pointless task, with no benefit, with no entertainment, with no inherent joy in the process…why bother with that?

At the very least, he could try to plot his escape and enact vengeance against those who sentenced him to this fate!  It might take a long time, but it’s not as though he has anything else to do.  Even though he was made to roll his rock as a punishment, any eternal punishment would always be immoral when brought in response to any finite deed in a finite lifetime.

Of course, no one has put me in my current state.  Well, okay, the government of Florida and of Palm Beach County certainly did their parts in carrying out significant injustice in my case, and those involved are probably worthy of retribution, but it’s all really just so haphazard and so much a part of an unplanned, inefficient, and fundamentally unjust system that it’s not even easy to know where to begin.  Probably, we just need another really big asteroid, or a nearby gamma ray burst, just to wipe the slate entirely clean.

I guess we’ll all see what happens.  In the meantime, I hope you have a good weekend, whether you want to do so or not.  So there.

*Ha ha, I don’t recall whether that has ever happened to me.

 **This has happened, but almost always in the middle of the night, when I awaken, realize with a feeling of severe tension that I forgot to set my alarm, quickly make sure to set it…and then just stay awake until it goes off or until just before it goes off.

***I keep various weapons next to me, within arm’s reach, when I sleep.

****Macduff

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Monday morning, heading down

I already started writing this once, but it seems that Google Drive didn’t save what I had written, even though I had titled it and checked it.  This has not happened to me before, as far as I can recall, but it seems to be par for the course for me right now.  So, I’m starting over, though I’m not going to try to recreate the beginning of my previously initiated blog post.  It was just a bit of nonsense, anyway.

I’m really not doing well, though I seem to have a difficult-to-break habit of acting as normally as I can when interacting with other people‒I don’t want to cause problems or trouble for the people who care about me.  But I’m not doing well, even for me.  My depression is terrible (or I suppose one could say it’s very good and impressive as depression goes), made worse by the changing of the seasons and the clocks.  My chronic pain is as bad as ever and somewhat worse than usual.  My overall health is poor.

I’ve had more than one person from back where I grew up, including family members, tell me I should take a break and come to visit them, but when I try to consider it, I cannot see myself being able to work out the logistics of such a thing.  My “executive function” is at its lowest ebb.

I’m basically out of gas and coasting along until I crash into or go over the edge of something.  Or perhaps it would be better to think that I’m an airplane out of fuel, not a car‒gliding along as best I can and trying to see if there’s any way for me to make a landing.  But I cannot apply any power.  I can only go along with the air currents through which I am steadily descending.

Also, I’m mortified at the thought of anyone who used to know the person I used to be seeing me as I am now.  It reminds me of the stories of Syd Barrett coming to visit the band members of Pink Floyd in the studio after having to leave the band because of his mental health issues and them not even recognizing him.  Having seen the various photos, I can understand their confusion, and I can also imagine how horrifying it must have been for him to realize how much he had changed and how he did not belong with them anymore; that he was not the person he used to be.

So many of the lyrics in the greatest Pink Floyd albums refer to Barrett’s oh-so-changed nature, from Brain Damage‒ “and if the cloudbursts thunder in your ear / you shout and no one seems to hear / and if the band you’re in starts playing different tunes / I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon” ‒to Shine On You Crazy Diamond‒ “remember when you were young? / you shone like the sun… / …now there’s a look in your eye / like black holes in the sky” ‒and, of course, Wish You Were Here.

Anyway, I feel like I’m a warped mockery of the person I used to be, like one of the creatures twisted by the Illearth Stone in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever.  It’s unlikely that I’ll be able to land safely on my own, but I cannot bear the thought of trying to ask someone to help me, especially someone who used to know me.  I’m ashamed of me.

I’ve also been ill lately, as regular readers will know.  I missed work again on Friday, and‒of course‒the office did tremendous sales that day.  I fight to avoid superstition, since I don’t think there’s any sort of magical process happening, but I do think it plausible that my presence has a psychological effect on the other people in the office, dampening their spirits.

I feel sickly and sweaty.  The AC unit in my room at the house seems to be malfunctioning, but having it repaired or replaced would involve having other people come into my living space, such as it is, and that’s a repulsive thought.

Also, the washing machine doesn’t seem to be working right.  It washes, but I don’t think it rinsed properly yesterday, nor did it spin and drain properly.  You would think at least that would mean that my clothes should smell of detergent, which is not so bad, and at first that seemed to be the case.  Now, though, at the office early in the morning, I feel like I smell of cat urine, or something does.  I haven’t yet been able to locate the source, though.

Anyway, I’m just worn out, and I see no future of any kind for myself, other than the obvious and inevitable one.  I find myself wishing for something like tuberculosis (like that other infamous “Doc”, Doc Holliday), or even cancer, just so that I could have some inescapable deterioration that could not be denied, but that might afford me a chance to say goodbye to people I love.

I don’t think that’s likely to happen, though.  My version of cancer is the disease in my head, frankly‒or perhaps it would be more accurate to call it the disease that is my head.  Depression has a rate of premature mortality that is higher than that of many cancers.

Okay, well, that’s enough for now.  Sorry to be a bummer on a Monday morning, but then, I’m a bummer every morning, really, so it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. 

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The Day of the Moon and Guy Fawkes Eve

It’s Monday morning‒the first Monday in November.  It’s also my mother’s birthday, though since she’s no longer with us here, I doubt that she celebrates it any more.  Nevertheless, it’s still worth celebrating.  The world is a better place, I think, for having had my mother in it.  True, she did give birth to me, but you can’t hold that against her too much; nobody’s perfect, and the positive things she did (including my brother and sister) outweigh the negatives, both literally and figuratively.

I felt really horrible last week, physically and mentally (and not just because of my ongoing acute viral illness).  That’s part of why I just did my little sarcastic, blah-heavy blog post.  I had no interest in doing anything more.  What, indeed, would have been the point?  I doubt that I have anything useful or entertaining to say, even today.

Of course, the big election is tomorrow, but honestly, that whole shit show is thoroughly contemptible at nearly every level, and it’s hard to feel good about it in any way.  Of course, one of the presidential candidates is clearly the ethically superior person, but neither is particularly impressive.  I look back with real nostalgia on the Romney-Obama election.

Oh, well.  It’s probably appropriate that it’s Guy Fawkes Day tomorrow.  Penny for the Guy?  Remember, remember the fifth of November, the gunpowder, treason, and plot.  Let’s set this thing alight.

I have been rereading (and even editing) Outlaw’s Mind after removing the opening scene, thus making it into a story without that constraining ending.  I think it’s a good story; better and more involved than I would have expected when I started it, with a tone that reminds me, oddly, of Stephen King’s Revival, though I’m not at all sure why.

It seems very unlikely that I will finish it, though.  I would need to find some new lease on life, somehow, and right now my life credit score is abysmal, and the only existence I seem able to afford is metaphorically even more dreary and gross than the room in which I spend my evenings and weekends.  I live alone in a single, cluttered, old place, but my mental and “spiritual” existence makes the physical location seem like an all-inclusive paradise vacation with one’s closest and dearest friends and family.

It’s all I deserve, really.  I don’t want you to think I pity myself.  I mean, I guess in a way I do, but it’s a contemptuous sort of self-pity, a kind of “look at that pathetic, pitiful, putrid excuse for a person” feeling.

I really could use some help‒some serious help, some professional help, probably some emergency help.  But I know that I don’t deserve any help, I’m not worthy of help, I don’t merit any help.  It would almost certainly be a waste of resources.

I’ve also had a huge back and leg pain flare-up this weekend, of the cause of which I’m far from certain.  It has, however, made this last weekend almost anti-restful, even though I had Saturday off.

I did nothing to celebrate Halloween this year, despite the fact that it’s generally my favorite holiday.  Then again, I did nothing to celebrate my birthday, either.  As I said in a post on Facebook, I have no interest in anything.  Everything is uninteresting.  I would just like to stop being in pain, to stop feeling like I have to keep pushing forward, to keep moving and doing, just because that’s what one is “supposed” to do.

I can see, more and more, that the current shape of my life is the shape of the rest of my life.  This is the landscape of my continued existence:  doing an okay job that doesn’t involve my medical or scientific skills, working with people with whom I can’t really have conversations about anything that interests me, leaving work to commute to a dreary old room where I try (and fail) to get a decent night’s sleep, then spend the weekend basically doing nothing because there’s nothing interesting to do, and if there were, I would be too tired and in too much pain to do it.

This is all some of why I didn’t really write a post last Thursday.  I don’t know if I will write one this week.  But no matter what, one of these days (and it probably won’t be very long) there will just stop being any blog posts from me, and none of you will ever hear from me again.  And your lives will probably be somewhat happier because of that.

Most people seem to be happier when I’m not around.  Most things tend to go better.

Meanwhile, I can only try to distract myself from my chronic pain by inflicting other, more immediate pain upon myself.  Nothing else does an adequate job, but even so, it’s not really enough.

That’s it for today, I guess

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You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the blogs!

Hello and good morning.

I’m going in to the office today, since down my way, Hurricane Milton has not been very impressive so far.  This is not a surprise.  We were always going to be only on the periphery of the system, and on the leeward side of the state (so to speak).  There wasn’t even any rain of significance down by where I live; just a bit of relatively high wind.

We are going through a bit of rain as I ride in my Lyft to work, but for south Florida, it’s a piddling amount so far.  The wind is mildly interesting, but I’ve ridden a 650 cc scooter (basically a motorcycle with automatic transmission) through wind and rain much worse than this.  I don’t think that was a wise thing to do for anyone who cared about his or her life and health much, but for me, it was just fine.

I’m in a Lyft, by the way, because the train service is suspended today, as it was yesterday.  This was probably not absolutely necessary, but I respect the abundance of caution.

Traffic, at least, seems very light, which is also not surprising.  Most people in the area are not working today, I suspect.  We shall see how many people come to the office today.

I’ve been a bit frustrated lately, as an infection of some kind (possibly a few different ones) has afflicted quite a few people at the office, but I have not gotten sick.  Not only would such an illness give me the opportunity for rest for which I am able to excuse myself (and might even allow me to sleep, given the physiology of the immune response), but it’s also an opportunity potentially to develop some more severe, life-threatening superinfection*.

Apparently, some people used to call pneumonia “the old man’s friend”.  Well, I’m not that old (and I wouldn’t recommend my friendship to anyone, even a pulmonary infection) but apparently the average lifespan for people on the autism spectrum‒assuming that I am, which I give very high likelihood‒is somewhere in the mid-50s.  So, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for something to kill me sometime soon.

Of course, such averages are strongly affected by outliers.  People with the highest support needs are probably more likely to die at significantly younger ages, and that will tend to bring the average down.  It’s a bit like how the very high infant mortality rate strongly skewed the average lifespan in pre-modern times.  People who did reach adulthood probably didn’t live much shorter lives than we do now.

Actually, modern people in the west may be backsliding lifespan-wise, at least in America, as we eat more refined carbs and are less active and so are more prone to hyperinsulinemia, which brings with it not just increased risks of diabetes and elevated lipids, but even increased risks of high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, and many cancers, as well as infections.

The infant mortality issue illustrates one way in which reported average lifespans and similar statistics can be misleading, at least for people who don’t understand what’s behind the numbers.  It reminds me of something I may have discussed here before:  people (rightly enough) make fun of the fact that (to make up a statistic that’s probably not too far from reality) ninety percent of people think they are above average drivers.

Now, it is almost certainly true that ninety percent of people are not above average drivers; it’s just that so-called neurotypical people tend to have overinflated (and undeserved) senses of self-esteem.  But the notion that seems to be implied in most discussions of such statistics is that it’s impossible for 90% of people to be above the average.  This is not the case, at least not if “average” refers to the arithmetic mean, as it usually does.

If ninety people out of a hundred each scored exactly 51 (out of a 100, say) on some test of driving ability, and the remaining ten only scored 1 point each, then the average score would be ((90 x 51) + (10 x 1))/100, which is 46.  So, ninety percent of people would not only all be above average, but would be five points above average.  It’s not a very impressive score, but it is true.

Now, if it were said that ninety percent of people think they are above the median, then that would be erroneous by definition, because of the meaning of the term “median”.

Most people don’t seem to understand these and other mathematical concepts, and yet those concepts and related ones of many and varied kinds can have significant impacts on the lives of billions.  I once wrote a blog post on Iterations of Zero recommending that probability and statistics be more aggressively emphasized in secondary school education, because I think understanding them would give people far greater insight and even agency in the world.

And yet, we see “humorous” memes such as the one below, of which there are numerous iterations and variations:

pythagorean meme

I say the fault for that lack of use lies with the individual, not with their education.  Just because they don’t use the Pythagorean Theorem doesn’t mean it isn’t and couldn’t be useful**, and even if the specific theorem wasn’t useful then the capacity to do it and other, related things, is useful.

I feel I may have mentioned it here recently, but even when one doesn’t use mathematics*** in one’s profession, working with them strengthens the mind and makes it more fit for many other purposes.  Usually, one doesn’t do push-ups to become really good at doing push-ups, and one doesn’t jog in order to become a really good jogger.  One exercises to become stronger and healthier, more capable.  The mind is even more responsive to exercise than is the body, and if there are limits to how strong it can become‒in whatever sense‒I don’t think anyone has come close to reaching them****.

That’s that for today.  I hope you’re all weathering your personal storms reasonably well.  The one down here hasn’t done much to me; I probably could have slept outside in the rear of the house last night without any trouble.  The wind might have been soothing.  It might even have helped me get a better sleep.  It’s not as though it could have been much worse.

TTFN

*By which I mean an infection that opportunistically occurs due to the body’s weakened defenses caused by an initial infection, not an infection with exceptional nature or virulence.

**Understanding geometry is so potentially useful in so many ways that it’s said that the only time in his life that Isaac Newton laughed was when someone asked him what the point was in studying Euclid.  Newton is universally reputed to have been quite arrogant, vindictive, and impatient, to say the least.  One can only imagine the sheer amount of vitriol and scorn that would have been conveyed by that solitary gelastic moment.

***Or philosophy, or physics, or chemistry, or biology, or history, or literature, etc.

****Not even Newton or Von Neumann.

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An impromptu post I wrote but did not edit

It’s Tuesday, and I’m on my way in to the office, and since I’m not writing any fiction right now, I figured I’d see if I can write a brief blog post.  This is my only real interaction with the outside world, and apart from my sister, this is the only form of conversation I actually have with anyone in any depth.

As you know‒well, maybe not‒I’ve tried using my YouTube channel to express thoughts and ideas, but I get no real feedback or engagement there.  I even posted a little video recently on my hitherto fallow Instagram account, but though I got about two “hearts” on that, I don’t expect much more.  It’s a peculiar venue, anyway.  I enjoy the videos of the guy reading silly signs in a silly fashion‒he’s surprisingly funny‒and the people doing skits and especially the woman who does skits acting as everything from planets to fonts to the brothers Romulus and Remus deciding what to name the city they’re founding.  I also enjoy seeing some of the cosplayers, though the music they tend to put in the background is often terribly irritating.  I guess a lot of that is influenced by TikTok.

It’s the first of October, of course.  The month of the Autumn People (of which I suppose I am one, certainly by birth date). “We are the hungry ones. Your torments call us like dogs in the night. And we do feed, and feed well.” “You stuff yourselves on other people’s nightmares.” “And butter our plain bread with delicious pain.”

Of course, none of that sadistic nonsense really appeals to me.  I’m not a tormentor by nature; I’m a destroyer.  If something (or someone) irritates me, I want to obliterate it, not “punish it” or “hurt it”.  I don’t want my enemies to suffer, I just want them to die.  So I am more sympathetic to Melkor than to Sauron*.

And, of course, my greatest, most enduring‒possibly my only‒enemy is myself, and so…

I think what triggered me to want to write a post today was the fact that yesterday, on Why Evolution is True, Professor Coyne wrote a post about his previous night’s insomnia and his unpleasant dream and experience.  He has intermittent insomnia, it seems, and it causes him real discomfort.  I was one of the oodles of people who shared our own experiences in the comments, noting how I almost never remember my dreams, but haven’t slept well in almost 30 years, and that when I sleep I feel like a soldier in a battle zone, never willing to sleep deeply and always alert as if potentially under attack.  I don’t know exactly what’s behind it.  Maybe it’s just that I don’t ever feel safe, anywhere, at any time.  Which is an accurate feeling, of course.  Safety is an illusion and a delusion, and it always has been.  It’s not safe in the world, and no one here gets out alive.

Anyway, I guess I was perhaps hoping that maybe the erudite readers of PCC(E)’s website might have some new ideas about things that might help my problem, but alas.  Nothing so far.  I think I’ll quote the whole thing here, though:

“I almost never have any dreams that I can remember, because I almost never seem to sleep deeply enough (though that’s probably an illusion). In any case, I can remember (roughly) the last time I had a good night’s sleep: It was in the mid-1990’s. My sleep has never been great, even when I was a child, and it has gotten worse over time.
Even taking Benadryl (or similar medications, OTC or prescription) only gets me about four hours, and then I am groggy–but not SLEEPY–for the rest of the day. Alcohol only makes my sleep and chronic pain worse. Mostly what happens when I wake up–several times a night, usually starting about 1 am–is that I long for something like a V-fib arrest in the middle of the night. I feel like a soldier trying to sleep in a battlefield, always watchful lest some emergency happen. That was useful when on call during residency. It’s not so useful now.
I don’t remember the last time I woke up to my alarm. But I do remember that it used to make me rapidly hyper-alert, as if someone had just called General Quarters, and I would tend to sit up instantly and shut it off as quickly as possible. Nowadays I usually just give up on sleep by about 3:30 in the morning.
I SINCERELY hope that PCC(E)’s insomnia resolves or at least improves. This is no way to live.”

I received one comment reply suggesting Remeron, but I’ve tried that, along with various other antidepressants and sleep medications, prescription and otherwise.  I’m not sure what the issue is with me, but I really do wish I could get a good night’s sleep even just, say, once a month or something.  If I could get one regularly, I’m not even sure what would happen, but I feel that I would be so much better in every way.  I suppose I have a sort of gift of extra time because of the fact that I don’t sleep as long as normal people, but the time I have is miserable.  It’s a bit reminiscent of one version of the “Repugnant Conclusion” regarding utilitarianism.  One gains for or more hours per day of extra time awake, but that leads to all time awake being only barely tolerable‒and sometimes not truly tolerable except through the hope that perhaps the next day might be better, and the brutal biological drives to stay alive, even when life is miserable**.

It’s not clear to me that this is the proper or best or even a good choice, but there are so many pressures upon one to stay alive, even without purpose, without meaning, and without any real hope.  Of course, hope is insidious; even those who would seek ruthlessly to expunge illusion and delusion, at least from myself, cannot seem to embrace the freedom of despair (so to speak).  Again, I attribute this to “pre-programmed” biological drives, ruthlessly honed into us by natural selection.

Anyway, that’s enough.  Including my quote, I’ve given you all more than enough dreariness to imbibe on a Tuesday afternoon.  It’s bad enough that Tuesday afternoon is never-ending***.

Try to have a good day.

*When I began writing that, it autocorrected to “Sharon”, which seems a bit unfair to whomever Sharon is.

**And the desire not to cause pain to those one loves.

***If that were literally true, of course, then once the first Tuesday afternoon arrived, there would never be another day, and we would all, always be living in Tuesday afternoon.  That is, unless perhaps each Tuesday afternoon bifurcates in time, with the initial Tuesday afternoon going off on a higher-dimensional tangent and continuing in its course without end, while the other branch continues to cycle through “normal” time, but every week shooting off new, eternal branches of Tuesday afternoons.  That’s a weird thought.  Sorry.

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A surprise Monday post

It’s Monday morning, and I didn’t bring my little laptop computer back to the house with me this weekend‒mainly just because I hadn’t brought it all week last week, and so I was just sort of “in that mode” when I left the office on Saturday‒and so I’m not doing any editing this morning on Extra Body.  It’s possible, of course, for me to edit it via the smartphone based Word app, but the few times I’ve used that, I found it cumbersome and unpleasant.  So, I decided I would write a random blog post on my smartphone, using Google Docs, for “old times’ sake”.

I’m already somewhat tired of editing and working on Extra Body, and I haven’t even finished the third edit (I’m about 20 pages from the end of that).  I will try to complete at least that much this week, but after that, I don’t know.  I just don’t feel that interested in it anymore.  I honestly don’t feel that interested in anything anymore.  Everything is boring or irritating or frustrating or some combination thereof.  Even reading nonfiction about topics in which I have long-standing interest is basically almost more of a chore than a pleasure.  If you know me at all, you know that’s a true departure, and is surely atypical.  I just have no interest in things in general.  That fact doesn’t even feel sad, to me.  It doesn’t feel like anything that’s being or been lost.  It feels like something that’s long since gone, if it ever existed in the first place.

This week will see the Autumnal equinox and the beginning of Fall/Autumn (in the northern hemisphere), but here in South Florida, it’s still so hot and muggy that I’m sweating just from sitting here and waiting for the train.  And I’m not talking about a little dampness in the armpits.  I’m talking about needing to wipe my eyes frequently because of the sweat dripping down into them, and sometimes dripping onto the inside surface of my reading glasses.  I’m wearing a shirt designed for athletes, with that cooling, “wicking” nature, and I have a change of shirt for the office.  Honestly, I wonder if I shouldn’t have brought a change of underwear.

I know, I complain about the hot, muggy weather here quite a lot, but it really is annoying.  There are long stretches of the year in which it is not just unpleasant to do any kind of exercise outdoors, but it is actually dangerous, because one overheats and dehydrates so quickly.  Presumably, it’s only going to get worse down here over the years, but at least that won’t apply to me.

In other weather related stuff, I’ve been trying to initiate the habit of riding my bicycle.  I’ve adjusted the seat to a better height for me (it required buying and using a pipe cutter, but that worked and it is much better now), and I got some new, high quality headlights and taillights, and I was all set to ride it some yesterday…and then, just as I was finishing up my laundry, thunderstorms rolled in, and they dominated the weather for the rest of the day.

It may take one much longer to get anywhere when walking‒or even jogging‒compared to biking, but at least it is less impacted by rain.  You can always carry an umbrella when walking, and you can avoid the worst puddles and such by stepping carefully.  And parkas work much better when on foot (at least in my experience) than when biking.  If you have a computer in your backpack and you’re caught in a serious rainfall, it’s much easier to protect that computer when on foot than when riding a bicycle.

Not that I have any experience with this.

Of course, walking has its own issues.  I did a bit of fairly serious walking last week, and I’m having some surprising and quite uncomfortable left heel/plantar fascia pain.  That’s extremely annoying, and it is probably the result of some relative postural mismatch on the length and/or configuration of my walking.  Certainly, based on the pattern of wear on my shoes, I put pressure on the outer ball of my right foot much more than the rest of that foot, and the heel of my left more than the ball.  This is a long-standing pattern, and may be produced by even very mild anatomic and/or gait-related asymmetry.

Still, I already had/have heel inserts for shoes, specifically intended to counter issues with the plantar fascia, and I have them in, today.  We shall see if and to what degree they soothe that problem.  If they do not, then I may have to revert to not wearing socks, which (to my surprise) seems to ease many of my foot and even leg problems, though it entails a significant temporary increase in blisters and, of course, given the heat and humidity of south Florida, makes shoes wear out quite a bit faster.  If you do it, I encourage generous use of Lysol; just pretend you’re a bowling alley attendant every time you take off your shoes.

We’ll see what ends up being the best option, at least for the time being.

And now, it’s almost time for my train to arrive, so I’ll call this all good for the day.

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By medicine life may be prolong’d, yet death will blog the doctor too.

Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday, and so—as I mentioned yesterday that I would—I’m writing a standard blog post.

I’m writing in the back of an Uber right now, but I’m using my laptop, and that combination is a first for me, I think.  I know that taking Ubers is probably an unjustifiable expense, and I mean to cut back on them, but this week I’ve had very little useful energy*, and anyway, I’m only too happy just to burn through the quite small amount of money that I have, since I have no reason to save for the future.

I was briefly puzzled as I did the initial “save” for this document, since I save my blogs by date and day of the week, when I saw that last year the 23rd of May fell on a Tuesday, not a Wednesday.  Each year generally shifts the day (of the week) of any given date one day later than the previous year, since a standard year is one day longer than a multiple of 7: [52 x 7 = 364].  I think that the official mathematical term is “modulo” when you’re just looking at the remainder.  And I vaguely recall noting, earlier this year, that the dates this year were one day later.

But, of course, this is a leap year, in which we “add” a day to the year, specifically on February 29th.  So it makes sense:  early in the year, this year’s dates are one weekday later than they were last year, but after the end of February, they are two days later.  I suppose that means that next January and February will be two days later than they were this year, but after that things will revert to one day later.

Hold on to your hats, folks!  If the whole blog post is this exciting, goodness knows how you’re going to be able to stand it.

It’s a bit tricky writing in the back seat here, because my laptop computer doesn’t have illuminated keys.  When the bouncing around of the car throws me off too much, I have to re-find my typing location by trial and error.  Once I do, I don’t really need to be able to see; I know my way around the keyboard pretty much by proprioception.  After all, I’ve been typing at least since I was eleven.

Not to say that I don’t make plenty of typos.  My coordination isn’t all that great, and I often get ahead of myself.  But at least with modern word processors, it’s so easy to correct for errors that it’s not a big deal.

Actually, I suspect that if I’d been forced to keep using my grandmother’s typewriter, which is what I used to start my typing career, and on which I needed to use correction film to erase mistakes, I would probably be a better, or at least cleaner, typist than I am now.  Once word processing programs came into play, there was no longer as much of a price to pay for minor errors, and so there was less pressure to be more accurate.  As I’ve noted many times, everything responds to local pressures and incentives and disincentives.

I warned you that this might be exciting, didn’t I?

I almost didn’t go in to work today.  That was why I let myself get the Uber:  to help me to clear that activation energy barrier.  I am not particularly physically sick, though I feel a bit of a tickle in the back of my throat.  I just didn’t want to go in.  Yesterday, all day, I was extremely tense and stressed out, and the noise was particularly irksome, and I had payroll to do, and I was always just sliding along what felt like the razor edge of a true breakdown or explosion.  Yet no one seems to have noticed.

I banged my head on the wall quite hard at one point, and did several other things to cause myself pain throughout the day.  I don’t want to go into specifics too much; I don’t want people to think I’m a weirdo or something.

Ha.  Ha.  Ha.  Ha.  Ha.

Anyway, I’ve actually just arrived at the office.  I hope my hands and thumbs won’t feel too sore, today.  Yesterday, my thumb bases were painfully tight, and most of the rest of my finger joints were sore and stiff, albeit to a lesser degree than the thumbs.  It made it quite difficult to try to play guitar, so I didn’t do much of that.

Actually, because of the trouble with my hands, and my shoulders, and of course, the ongoing issues with my back and hips and knees and ankles—especially with my back—I decided to buy a huge bottle of Ibuprofen, and I’ve taken some of them starting yesterday afternoon.

I have been “off” Ibuprofen for quite some time, now, though it was my go-to anti-inflammatory for many years.  I started to avoid it when its use was associated on two or three occasions—possibly just by coincidence—with a relatively high occurrence of what I presume were premature atrial contractions, with associated palpitations.  It was nothing terribly severe, of course, but at the time, I wanted to live, so I switched mainly to naproxen.

I also use some aspirin, as well as acetaminophen for headaches and other things that don’t benefit from any suppression of cyclooxygenase.  But, despite its longer action, naproxen has never worked quite as well as ibuprofen seemed to work, though perhaps that’s been confounded by other variables.  It’s hard to do a double-blind test on oneself.

In any case, at this point, I don’t much care if I get palpitations, although if they happen, maybe I’ll find them unpleasant enough that I’ll change my mind.  Frankly, I don’t mind if I have a full-fledged arrhythmia.  Sudden cardiac death due to ventricular fibrillation, for instance, is probably one of the best ways to die.  You basically just faint, since your brain is no longer getting blood flow, and that’s that.  If no one defibrillates you, and if the arrhythmia doesn’t spontaneously resolve, you’re done.

It’s probably not quite as quick a death as being at ground zero of a thermonuclear explosion, and it’s certainly not as quick as being obliterated when the vacuum energy of the universe quantum tunnels down to a lower level**, since that process would spread throughout the cosmos at the speed of light, and no information within spacetime can exceed the speed of light, so it’s fundamentally impossible to know such an event is happening before it arrives.  It’s also impossible to know about it once it arrives, since everything currently existing in our universe, right down to fundamental particles, would by obliterated by the vacuum state decay—again, at the speed of light, which is far faster than the rate at which the nervous system can experience anything.

Unfortunately, even more than the thermonuclear explosion possibility, vacuum decay would involve taking other, “innocent” people along with me, at least some of whom both wish and deserve to continue living.  That seems a bit unethical—or at least rude, which I sometimes think is worse—and anyway, it’s not as though anyone knows how to make it happen.

It’s better to keep things confined to my person.

I guess even a hemorrhagic stroke wouldn’t be too bad, to be honest, and given my tendency to bang my head against the wall when I get too frazzled and stressed, it seems immensely more likely than vacuum state collapse.  I suppose I could even tolerate death by bleeding ulcer, though I really don’t like nausea***.

Probably, though, in the end, I’m going to have to take a more active and deliberate hand in things.  I suppose we’ll see.  It’s hard to work up the courage to face the discomfort and even frank pain associated with most such interventions, but practice makes better, and I already have a fair amount of experience deliberately causing myself pain, as noted above.

That’s enough blog post for now.  I’ve already droned on and on.  My tentative plan is to do some fiction writing tomorrow morning, and if I do (or even if I don’t) I plan to leave a little report about it here.  I am off work this weekend, so I won’t be writing anything on Saturday (barring, as always, the unforeseen).

I truly, honestly, and fervently hope that each and every one of you feels better than I do right now, and I mean substantially better.  You probably do; it seems likely that, in the phase space of physical and emotional states, there are many more possibilities in that direction than in the other.  But I could be wrong.

TTFN

Addendum:  While editing, I found that MS Word had underlined a sentence in the draft above, in which I wrote, “I think that the official mathematical term is….”  The editor gave the comment that “expressing opinions with certainty adds formality”.  I don’t think I could possibly disagree more than I do with that sentence. 

Bad advice in editor marked up

 PLEASE DON’T DO THAT, PEOPLE!!!!!!!!  Opinions are opinions.  Expressing them with certainty when you are not certain is tantamount to outright lying, and is a huge problem with human discourse!  I’m ashamed of MS Word for making that suggestion.  What a horrible, horrible recommendation!  What a nightmarish thing to say!

*And yet, my level of tension has been exceptionally high.  That’s a frustrating bit of irony, as I probably don’t need to tell you.

**This is purely a hypothetical possibility.  The vacuum energy of the universe may well be at its lowest/ground state, though it is patently not quite zero.  If it were, cosmic expansion would not be accelerating.  Indeed, I often say that cosmic inflation is happening now, based on all the data we have.  That’s what “dark energy” is doing, albeit at a slower rate than what is proposed to have happened 13.7 billion years ago.

***Weird, right?  I don’t like nausea?  How unusual!

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Both my ears are ringing down the curtain

I’m planning on writing at least a page on Extra Body once I get to the office, but I haven’t left yet, and so I’m starting on a bit of a blog post, which I plan to finish with an update on what I write.  I don’t want to get out the laptop computer and use it at the house before I leave.

I have some unfortunate news‒unfortunate for me, at any rate, though it may not matter much to anyone else.  Yesterday, May 9, 2024 AD, at roughly 3:25 pm Eastern time, I suddenly began to have tinnitus in my left ear, matching what I have had in my right ear since…about 2007, I think.  I have very poor hearing in my right ear as part of that process, and it’s hard to tell what’s going on with my left, so far.  I can only say that it’s quite distressing.  I felt like I wanted to scream in the office yesterday afternoon, when it happened.  I still want to scream.  It’s been going on for just over 13 hours now, and there is no sign of it abating.

I fear this may be the proverbial final straw for me.  I don’t know if I can go on like this.  There are already so few motivations for me to continue living, and so many things that make life unpleasant.  I really don’t know what to do.

It’s slightly interesting that the pitch in my left ear is almost identical to the pitch in my right ear, just perhaps an eighth of a step lower.  I’m not sure what might be behind that fact.  Perhaps that’s the pitch range at which my cochleae are most vulnerable.  I am not really sure how I would find out.

It’s worth noting, though, that there is no internal evidence of any form of “beat” phenomenon such as would happen with real, external sounds that are close in pitch but not exactly the same, as their waveforms go back and forth between constructively and destructively interfering with each other.  This makes sense, of course; they are not real sounds but are neurological phenomena, and are occurring in opposite ears, and are thus initially processed in different sides of my brain.  The “beat” phenomenon in slightly dissonant pitches is a literal, physical, external phenomenon, not a neurological illusion.  This, at least, my current experience is making clear and convincing to me, at least provisionally.  I guess I knew it already, implicitly.  Has anyone else out there had this experience?

Anyway, as I said, if this bilateral tinnitus continues, I don’t know if I can.  It’s one thing after another, or rather, one thing on top of another.  Chronic pain, dysthymia/depression, insomnia, possible ASD, solitude, and now double-tinnitus.  My cup of hemlock runneth over, and maybe it’s time I just quaffed that motherfucker.

I guess I can give this a few days to see if it resolves.  I’m not optimistic.  Since the right ear tinnitus began, in the latter parts of the first decade of this millennium, it has waxed and waned in intensity, but it has not stopped for a moment.  But one instance of a phenomenon does not a pattern make, though my knowledge of the subject from a medical point of view gives me more data, and it’s not comforting.

I’ll take a break writing now, for the moment.  I’ll complete this post later.

***

Okay, well, I wrote 728 words on Extra Body, which was basically one single-spaced page.  I guess that’s good, considering the circumstances.  It’s nice when the office is quiet‒it’s quieter than the house is when no one is here, because at the house, except in deep winter, I have to have the AC and/or fan on or it becomes unreasonably hot.

I still don’t know what I’m going to do, though.  The ringing in both ears is constant, like that high-pitched noise they play that only young people are supposed to be able to hear.  I don’t even want to play guitar or anything, for fear of it interacting.

I guess I’ll see what happens.  I’m off this weekend; maybe the noise will abate.  Or maybe I’ll finally go fully mad, like the Master in response to the drumming sound in his head.  Which reminds me, the new Doctor Who “season” starts tomorrow.  I guess there is that to which to look forward.  I really like Ncuti Gatwa so far, so hopefully it’ll be nice.  I’m off work this weekend; my coworker will be back in the office today.

I hope you all have a good weekend.

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This is not an altered Shakespearean quote, in case you couldn’t tell

Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday, and for the first time in quite a while, this is my weekly blog post, the way I used to do things.

I’ve not been very well lately, even by my standards.  By which I do not mean that I haven’t been writing.  Monday morning I wrote just under 1400 words on Extra Body, which I guess is a good thing.

Then, Tuesday I did not go into the office.

I’ve had a particularly bad time lately regarding my insomnia.  Since Friday night, I haven’t had a single night with as much as four hours of sleep, and many of the nights have seen significantly less.  On Tuesday morning, I just stayed home and took some Benadryl, which only made me doze off for about two hours.  Then, Tuesday night I got another few hours, and went to work Wednesday.  I felt a little loopy during the day yesterday, to be honest, and occasionally I even acted a bit silly.  I suppose everyone at the office thought I was feeling better.

But even my pain has been worse than usual, too, probably largely because of the sleep deprivation.  I don’t think that the causality works in the other direction, because it’s usually not pain that wakes me up; it’s the semi-panicked feeling that I must have overslept by hours and hours, even though it’s only been about five minutes or so since I dropped off.

In any case, I have some kind of feeling of anxiety or vulnerability while I’m asleep.  You’d think I was a Vietnam veteran or something, except I was born in 1969, so I would have been very young indeed to serve.  Whatever it is, I don’t feel safe, or at least secure, when I’m asleep.

Still, it’s not as though I’m safe when I’m awake.  The thing is, no one is safe, not entirely, and no one ever has been (as evidence, note that almost all people who have ever lived are currently dead).  And I frankly find life mostly painful and stressful and exhausting and lonely and dreary, so I don’t know what exactly I’m afraid of such that I’d feel worried about having anything taken away from me.  It’s weird.

Anyway, I didn’t even bring the little laptop computer with me on Monday when I left the office, so I didn’t have it when I was on my way to the office (extremely early) on Wednesday morning.  Instead, I decided to use the Word app, which I’ve mentioned before, and I started to write the beginning of HELIOS.  I did not plan to go far, and I didn’t, writing just over five hundred words‒just beginning to introduce the setting, really.  Then I got to the office and wrote a bit over 800 words on Extra Body, bringing my total new words that day up to nearly the same as on Monday.

On Monday morning, I even strummed the guitar just a little bit.

Unfortunately, there has been no joy in writing fiction‒nor in playing guitar, come to think of it‒since I’ve restarted doing it.  I don’t blame the fiction, of course.  Nor do I blame the guitar.  The problem is my own faulty hardware and/or software, my operating system or particular programs or I don’t know what.  To quote C3PO, “He’s faulty!  Malfunctioning!”

I wish I could get some kind of system update that would fix some of the bugs.  Or at the very least, I wish I could reboot from time to time‒in other words, that I could just get a restful night’s sleep.  I feel that if I could get just a good night’s sleep, it might be almost like a little resurrection.  I still recall how good it felt on that day in the nineties when I had my last (or at least my most recent) good night of sleep, from which I awoke refreshed and rested the next day.  I don’t recall what I did that day, but I felt amazing.

I don’t know how I could accomplish that, though.  I’ve tried medications of various kinds, but they’ve tended just to make things worse.  I can force myself unconscious with Benadryl, for instance, but I awaken feeling groggy and confused and more out of it than when I went to sleep.  I’ve tried getting massages of various kinds, from real massage therapists and so on, but I guess I can’t really relax with a stranger.  And massage chairs, unfortunately, just don’t do it.

So it sucks, and I’m tired, and I’m in pain, and I see no light at the end of the tunnel, not even a glimmer, not even a glint.  All I see is a vague sort of swamp-light haze, a sort of sickly phosphorescence.  There’s just enough light to be able to take in the dreariness of my surroundings.

Blackness would be better, honestly.  Black, silent, empty oblivion seems quite preferable to my life, in which the only joys I know are the guilty (and steadily diminishing) reward of food, and‒as Steve Martin said‒a dishwashing liquid.

I need just to opt out.  I need just to work up my nerve.  That’s the hard part.  Fighting against those ingrained drives to stay alive even though it’s not merely utterly pointless but almost entirely without joy (yet almost never without pain, both physical and psychological).

It’s been getting old for a long time.  I’m sure you’ll all agree.  From within, I feel about a thousand years old, or a million, or a billion‒but I’m not an organism built to live that long.  So, again, I’m faulty and malfunctioning, held together by gaffer tape and twine and mud and twigs and clothes-hanger wire and paper clips, with modeling clay stuck in some of the holes to keep the damp from getting in.

Anyway, that’s my status for now, which is nothing new, just more (and gradually worse) of the same.  I hope you’re all feeling much better than I am.  At the very least, you deserve it for being patient enough to read my blog.  That’s a definite trial by ordeal.

I will do my best to keep writing fiction tomorrow, and I plan to do next week what I planned to do this week, though hopefully with at least a little bit more sleep.  By which I mean, I want to try to write fiction every day but Thursday.

If you see a post go up on some other day, it means I lost my resolve for that plan, at least temporarily.

If you don’t see a blog post at all, not even next Thursday, then either I’ve gotten sick, or I’m dead.  The longer time passes with no posts, the more likely it is to be the latter.  We can always hope, right?  I don’t know, maybe you think it would be a negative thing for me to die.  I’ll even admit that I am afraid of dying, by which I mean the process.  I don’t so much want to die as I want, most days, to be dead.

Silence.  Oblivion.  These things so often seem so much better than the noise and stress and tension and pain of awareness.  If I could just become “comfortably numb” it would be a vast improvement.  But that’s not likely.

TTFN

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If you prick us, do we not blog?

Hello and good morning.  It’s Thursday again.  At least, I think it’s Thursday.  I’m fairly sure it’s Thursday.  I have on my Thursday trousers*, at least.

Yep, it’s Thursday; I checked my phone’s readout.  I was pretty sure anyway, but when my memory jibes with an external measure of which I have no current reason to be suspicious, that drives my credence even higher than it already was.  Most days I don’t need to double-check.  Most days, my internal experience of reality is persistent and consistent enough that I’m well aware of what day it is, usually even when I “first” wake up, to such a degree that if my smartphone’s readout gainsaid that, I would suspect that the phone was malfunctioning.

Today, though, I am mildly fuzzy-headed, relative to how I usually am.  I spent most of yesterday with some manner of persistent and non-peristaltic abdominal pain that left me very grumpy; it was good that I got started on payroll early and finished it early.

I didn’t leave the office early.  No, no.  I didn’t leave until nearly 7 pm, though it was different people who kept me late this time.

That’s part of the problem with things being so lax for my coworkers:  I have to be at the office first every morning (I do get there earlier than absolutely necessary, since I can’t sleep in the morning, anyway, and it’s better to travel before rush hour).  And I am also the last to leave at night, since I lock up the office.  Yet I live farther away than almost everyone else who works there, and I don’t drive.  So I am subject to the vagaries of each day’s least time-sensitive person, whoever it might be on any given day.  Often, the people who stay late do not arrive on time in the morning.  They are often also the people who work into and sometimes through lunch.

I ought to find a way to punish these people.  I ought to take extreme vengeance upon them, “in this life or the next”.  But I probably will do no such thing.

Anyway, that’s that.  I’m a bit fuzzier than usual because I didn’t even start eating any dinner or winding down until 9 o’clock or so last night.  And here I am at the train station slightly less than eight hours later.  So, plainly I did not have a full night’s sleep‒but that never happens, anyway.

On to other matters.

I still don’t know what to do about my fiction writing.  Writing this blog every day increases the daily readership by a significant margin, such that, in the few weeks in which I was doing 2 days a week, there were only about two thirds as many visits per day that I posted.  But, of course, it’s not as though I reach very many people even on my best days.

I am probably wasting my time doing this, both in potentially boosting the reach of my fiction, and in trying to improve my mental health by talking about it (there’s no sign of that making any difference, is there?).

I don’t know.  I suspect that if I suddenly just stopped writing this blog, there are only maybe two people in the world who would notice quickly, and they are both family members.  A few others might eventually vaguely realize that they were no longer getting posts from that weird guy who has insomnia and depression and goes on and on and on about it all the time.  Perhaps they’d wonder whether I just stopped blogging, or if I died, and if so, whether that was due to accident or illness or suicide

Actually, it’s reasonable in many‒perhaps most‒cases to call suicide a death due to illness.  It’s just a kind of illness that hasn’t been recognized as such throughout most of history, and still is not met with the attitude that would be useful from most people who interact with its sufferers.  Of course, it isn’t caused by any virus or bacteria (as far as we know) and so is not contagious in any straightforward sense (though memetic contagion cannot be ruled out in all cases).

Then again, people have only known about the contagious nature of things like smallpox and typhoid fever and the black death and the flu and various other infectious and parasitic diseases for a very short time.  But those are the comparative low-hanging fruit of illnesses, prevention and treatment-wise.  When a disease is caused by a definitive pathogen, an invader, there is a target that can be eliminated, if possible, to the unmitigated benefit of the one invaded.  It was a clear and definitive good for people when, for instance, smallpox was eradicated.

Problems related to malfunction or dysfunction or conflicting function of the organism itself, on the other hand, are much trickier.  The structure and function of a biological organism is akin to a vast and vastly complicated Rube Goldberg machine, where interventions in one region can have hard-to-predict effects elsewhere.  And, of course, once we’ve eliminated or at least significantly curtailed all the “easier” targets, then only harder ones remain.

Then people will complain about the slow pace of medical progress and the fact that some people must take lifelong medications to treat things like diabetes and high blood pressure, imagining that this fact is only and entirely due to, say, profiteering on the part of pharmaceutical companies.  Meanwhile, some of them will actually complain about and even resist the use of such things as vaccines, which have given them the luxury of being able to worry about things other than, say, how many of their children will die of measles encephalitis or will be crippled by polio.

It’s enough to make one want to paraphrase Colonel Jessup from A Few Good Men, and remind people that they rise and sleep under the blanket of the health and longevity provided by medical science and then question the manner in which it has been provided**.

I don’t know how I got onto that tangent.  Neither do I know why I got onto that tangent.  It’s all pointless, anyway.  I hope this hasn’t been too disjointed a blog post.  I also hope that you all have a good day, and a good rest of the week, and a good upcoming month, and a good rest of the year, and a good rest of your lives, and a good rest of eternity.

As for me, I’d be pleased just to get a good rest.  But I don’t expect that to happen any time before I die.

TTFN

*Yes, I have a pair that I wear specifically and only on Thursdays.

**But they don’t question it in any honest, serious, intellectual sense, such as would entail actually studying and deeply understanding even basic undergraduate level biology (to pick up a  weapon and stand a post, so to speak).  It’s remarkable how many problems seem so simple to those who don’t really, actually know Jack Shit about them.