lifestyle

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Top o’ the workweek to ye.

It’s Monday, and I’m writing this blog post at the train station after having walked here from the house.  I did a bit of working up to the trek over the weekend, walking about four miles wearing my boots on Saturday (and getting a modest sunburn in the process), then a shorter distance yesterday, wearing lighter shoes, all to try to counteract some possible deconditioning.  It seems to have worked at least to some extent, because I was able to walk the whole way this morning without stopping to rest.

Of course, it’s possible, in principle, that my preparations over the weekend were of no help whatsoever.  It’s even possible (in principle) that I would have found it easier to walk this morning if I had not prepared at all.  However, given what I know about the nature of adaptive physiology in humans (and humanoid creatures like me), I give both of those possibilities fairly low credence.

I downloaded the MS Word app onto my smartphone over the weekend, hoping that thereby I will make it easier to work on my fiction even if I don’t bring my laptop computer with me.  The app is linked to my OneDrive account, as is the program on my computer, so I can use the phone to write and update not just Extra Body but also, if I so choose, Outlaw’s Mind or even The Dark Fairy and the Desperado.  I think no one is interested in having me work on either of those stories (possibly ever again), but please, correct me if I’m wrong.

I am considering changing my blogging pattern, especially if I can keep up my regimen of walking to (and also, at least part of the time, from) the train station.  I plan to cut back on the blogging to Tuesdays, Thursdays, and on the Saturdays on which I work, which will be every other Saturday.  That way, I’ll keep getting at least some new fiction writing done three days a week.  Thursday and Friday (also Wednesday, if I recall) of last week, I got no work done on my new short story once I’d written my extremely gloomy blog posts.

Much of this, like other plans, depends on me getting a minimally tolerable amount of sleep.  My sleep was still fragmented quite a lot this weekend, but I took two Benadryl tablets on Friday night and one and a half on Saturday night, so I slept relatively well, at least for me.  The Benadryl has unpleasant ill-effects on my ability to concentrate, so I took none last night.

Interestingly enough (to me, anyway) the time adjustment this weekend was somewhat useful.  When I started waking up on Sunday, quite early even after the Benadryl, I looked at the computer clock and thought that, well, at least I wasn’t waking up too early.  Of course then I looked at the microwave clock and realized that it was “spring forward”* time, and I was waking up really quite early for a Sunday, especially after 1.5 Benadryl.

Still, given the shifted time, that particular “early” isn’t quite as early relative to everyone else as it might have otherwise been.  I still started waking up well before my intended time to get up this morning, but not as much before it as it would have been before the “time change”.

I’m hoping that the walking and such will help me be prone to rest (or supine to rest depending on how I lie down, ha ha) a little better.  I think a lot of what prevents me from being able to do what I mean to do a lot of the time is my lack of sleep.  If I can manage to improve that, things may seem better.

I remember, when I was young and even more foolish than I am now, I used to wish I didn’t need to sleep, or at least not to sleep much, envying the people I’d heard of‒truthfully or not‒who didn’t need to sleep as much as others.  I didn’t quite recognize that I was already beginning to be that way, myself.  After a certain age, I was almost always the first person to get up in the morning at home, and even when my friends and I would stay up very late, I was almost always the first of us to awaken.

Sleep doesn’t actually feel enjoyable or even pleasant to me.  It’s not something to which I look forward; there’s no reward sensation associated with it, and if anything it is filled with stress and tension, partly my dread of how early I’ll awaken and how tired (but not sleepy) I’ll feel when I wake up.

I know there are people who really like and enjoy sleep.  I am not one of them.  I simply become tired, and that’s unpleasant, and so I go to bed and go to sleep, and eventually start to wake up, usually not feeling good, not feeling rested, but feeling perhaps a bit less tired than I had‒though not always.

The only time I ever enjoyed the prospect of going to sleep and felt good going to sleep was when I was on Paxil for depression.  Unfortunately, that came with a host of side effects that made it not a great answer for me and my depression.  But it was interesting to have the subjective experience of looking forward to sleep and really feeling good about the prospect.  Weird, isn’t it?

All right, that’s enough for now.  I’ll write another post tomorrow, and hopefully I’ll have had a tolerable amount of rest and so won’t be too depressed.  Then, maybe, Wednesday I’ll just write fiction.  I guess we’ll see.

*It’s annoying that the new paradigm for “Daylight Savings Time” is set to have the jump back forward so early, because now the mnemonic “spring forward, fall back” is technically inaccurate, because it’s not spring yet for more another week and a half.  If they’re going to squeeze the time change in so close together, why don’t they just get rid of it completely?  It doesn’t actually change time, after all.  Within any given inertial reference frame, time is conserved; gaining an hour now entails losing an hour later.

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Yeah, yeah, whatever.

It’s early morning and I’m waiting at the train station again.

It’s also relatively cool out, and it looks like it’s going to be so for most of the rest of the week, if the forecast is correct.  I should probably have walked to the train today, but even though I woke up hours ago, I just didn’t feel up to walking.  Actually, I didn’t feel up to much of anything at all, and I still don’t.

I almost just stayed at the house today, even though it’s payroll day, because I didn’t want to get up and move.  I’m really feeling that each and every thing I do or can do is utterly pointless, even taken from the scale of an evanescent mammalian lifetime.

Our boss apparently intends for the office to be open on New Year’s Day, but I am not going to be there.  I think it’s bullshit to make people try to work after New Year’s Eve and also to expect to sell anything.  In past years on those occasions when we have worked on January 1st, we barely made any business, and a good percentage of it was canceled.

I have no interest, and I have no motivation, to do anything at all, and certainly not to come in to the office on New Year’s Day.  Other people had their three-day weekends last weekend, and their family holidays, and you can bet dollars to donuts that most of them will not be coming to work next Monday, anyway.

Of course, it’s not as though I have anything better to do with my time by staying at the house; that’s one of the reasons I’m going to the office today.  I have nothing better to do.

I have nothing.

I had been looking forward to the 60th Anniversary and the Christmas Doctor Who specials, but now they are done.  They were good, and I’m glad I watched them.  But the regular season isn’t starting until May, apparently, and I’m sorry, I can’t wait around for that.  Five months is way too long.

I am tempted not to go to the office the rest of this week, or next Monday…or ever again, really.  I’m tempted not to go anywhere ever again.  What’s the point?  There’s nothing to which I look forward.  Life is just a series of discomforts‒many of them not at all minor.

My whole body has been hurting more than usual lately, despite aspirin and Tylenol and naproxen and icy hot and a massager and ankle and knee braces.  My back, especially, has felt as if the spine is becoming completely disconnected at its base and I am about to split in half.  And I’m getting some new form of sacro-iliac/coccygeal inflammation/arthropathy, too, the source of which I do not know.

I wish I could go into a coma.  I wish I could simply sleep.  No more.  ‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.

I’m tired, and I feel horrible (and horrifying, come to think of it).  I hate my life.  There’s no point to it, and it gives me very little in the way of positive things.  Even thinking of my kids‒the best part of my life, ever‒just makes me miss them.  Since yesterday morning, I feel that I’ve just been fighting back tears most of the time.  It’s pathetic and disgusting.

I really do often wish I had some kind of drug problem (other than OTC analgesics, ha ha), but even alcohol gets unpleasant really quickly.  I bought a few bottles of wine for the holiday weekend and ended up pouring out as much as I drank, or more.  It doesn’t even do a good job of blunting my anxiety and tension, let alone making me feel good.

I don’t really want to see 2024.  I have no optimism about the year, and if anything, I feel that more and more of the little, stupid aspects of my life are falling apart all the time.  I’m just a net detriment to the world‒not that it deserves anything better, but still, I don’t enjoy that fact and process, and I don’t want to keep feeling the guilt and shame of my life.

I don’t know what to do.  I’m useless, even to myself.  I hate this world, I hate the social and political state of things (see yesterday’s post), I hate my body for its chronic pain, and I hate myself above all else.

I think I’m pretty close to being done, here.  I hope you all are having a more pleasant holiday season/experience than I am.  Tomorrow is Thursday, so if I do a post, it will probably be in my old “traditional” format.  If I don’t, you’ll know that I decided not to go in to work.  If I don’t ever do any more posts, I guess that will become evident after a while.  Though, of course, as with the halting problem in computation, you could never truly know that I was never ever going to release another blog post until you had waited until the end of time.

You could pretty sure, though‒sure enough to bet your life on, after not very long.  You could even bet my life, but that’s not worth much, so it’s not much of a bet.  It’s also a bit too self-referential and potentially paradoxical, given the subject matter.

Anyway, I’m sorry.  I know this isn’t pleasant, and you all deserve better.  But, it’s in my nature to disappoint and to bring people down, so that’s what I’m doing.  Have a good day if you can, nevertheless.

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Methought I read a blog cry, “Sleep no more!”

It’s Thursday again, and we’re in the middle of the first week of Autumn (in the Northern hemisphere).  For the next six months, the nights will be longer than the days.  As someone who tends to write about the darker side of possibility, I don’t think that’s so terrible…or it’s terrible in all the best ways.

My writing has been steady but rather slow this week, mainly because I’m struggling badly with insomnia.  I’m not referring here to the Stephen King book by that name (though coincidentally I’m in the middle of rereading it at this very time), but to the chronic, and occasionally incapacitating, sleep disorder.  Over the previous two nights (before last night) I slept for a rough total of three hours; this is, obviously, not adequate, and it has a noticeable impact on my ability to concentrate and to think clearly.

Nevertheless, the writing continues.  Hopefully, when I go back to rewrite and edit, I won’t be dismayed by how horrible my work product from these past few days is; I don’t honestly expect it to stand out as either better or worse than average.  As I’ve said previously, the way I feel when writing something is poorly correlated with how good the writing turns out to be.  Sometimes when I feel lofty and inspired and superhumanly gifted, I produce nothing but great, steaming piles of oozy excrement.  The converse is also occasionally true.  It’s unpredictable.  Thus, we will always need to edit and rewrite.

Today, for the first time in quite a while, I’m riding the train in to work, due to certain vehicles being in the shop and matters of that sort.  It’s nothing to worry about, just routine maintenance, despite an event I obliquely mention below.

It’s curiously nostalgic to be taking the train, and not entirely unpleasant, though it’s far less efficient—time-wise, anyway—than driving.   I’ve been inspired to write at least one story (Prometheus and Chiron) while waiting for a train, and I see many interesting people when using mass transit.  Little of note happens on the Interstate, especially when one rides a vehicle that is fundamentally solo.  One can have occasional exciting, even life-threatening moments on the road, such as one I had three days ago, but they don’t make very good stories.  Not to me, anyway.  I suppose I could throw some details of such an occurrence into the midst of an action scene to add to the realism, drawing from my personal experience of feeling my right leg squeezed against the passenger door of some idiot’s car, which is changing lanes without the driver looking, but it happens quickly and—thanks to the fact that I don’t tend to rattle easily—is rapidly over, with no harm done.

I’m having a peculiarly good time working on three stories at once, as I mentioned in my previous post.  Of course, my primary work right now is still Unanimity, which is grudgingly proceeding toward its conclusion, but I’m enjoying both the writing of my new short story and the rewriting of the older, uncompleted story, In the Shade.  I remember when I wrote it originally, and more or less why I stopped—I just lost steam, I wasn’t inspired by what was happening, and I had other projects awaiting my attention, to which I turned (with good results, I think).  But rewriting it now, I have to say that I’m pleased with what I made then.  I think it could turn out to be quite good, even if it is just a gonzo horror story.  We shall see.

Skipping to a non-sequitur:  I must say, I’ve so far been consistently disappointed by the lack of response and feedback to the “My heroes have always been villains” episodes.  From my point of view—admittedly biased—I would think people would find such posts particularly interesting.  I wonder if my title for the series throws people off, making them wonder just what kind of horrible person I am, but it’s honestly just an ironic play on the title of an old Willie Nelson song, “My heroes have always been cowboys.”  I don’t actually idolize villains, in the sense of wanting to be like them, though they tend to have character traits that, in the right place, in the right amount, would be quite admirable.  That’s just the nature of the tragic character with the tragic flaw:  Much of what makes a villain a villain would, in proper measure and in the proper circumstances, make them admirable and even heroic.

Likewise, many attributes we admire in our heroes, real and imaginary, can be terrible drawbacks in the wrong circumstances or in different proportions.  Harry Potter, for instance, is one of the most admirable, inspiring, and pure-hearted heroes in modern literature.  Nevertheless, Professor Snape does occasionally have a point when he decries Harry’s reckless disregard for rules and his difficulty controlling his emotions (though I think he’s completely wrong when he calls Harry arrogant).

Oh, well.  I’ll continue to write those episodes roughly once a month, even if they find no readers other than myself, at least until I work my way through most of my most prominently beloved malefactors.  Hopefully there’s someone else out there who enjoys them, but since I think a writer must write primarily for him or herself, and only secondarily for the outer audience, it will only be a moderately devastating heartbreak if there isn’t.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I’ll continue to write my weekly postings in both of my blogs, and more importantly, I’ll keep writing my fiction.

TTFN

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Thou art a boil, a plague sore, an embossed carbuncle in my corrupted blog.

Well, it’s that day of the week again (Thursday), when I write yet another blog post for the entertainment, and occasionally the edification, of those who want to read it.  As I did two weeks ago, I’m breaking up my author’s notes, interspersing them with less specific ramblings on my current, past, and planned writings.  Next week, I’ll continue my author’s note series, with a note on Son of Man.  Once I’ve caught up with the notes up to and including my latest published story, I plan to start periodically posting sample first chapters of my published works, as teasers to get readers interested—or, alternatively, to let them know for certain that they are uninterested—in the books and stories from which they’ll be excerpted.  This should be fun, I think, and will certainly be less work for me on those weeks when I post them.

Right now—so to speak—I’m near the completion of preparing to publish Hole for a Heart.  We at Chronic Publications are still struggling over the final form of the cover design for the story, though the basic design is already confirmed.  As those of you who have read it when it was available here know, it’s a dark story (how atypical for me, right?), but I like it a lot.  Thankfully, that’s more or less universal about my stories, and I can’t stress enough how thankful I am for the fact.  Of course, there are flaws in all of my works, and my earlier ones are less polished than those that follow, but I still enjoy thinking about them, and occasionally rereading them.  This almost always leads me to find errors that were missed in the editing process, as well as stylistic issues that I would now have changed…hopefully to improve upon them.  In the long run, I may create second editions of some books, especially the earlier ones, but that process requires time, of which commodity I am in short supply.  As is often the case (and as I think I’ve mentioned before) I frequently find myself quoting Andrew Marvell to myself: “If we had world enough, and time…”

Alas!

As is the usual case lately, I’ve been having difficulty finding new fiction that grips me enough to read, and I find this terribly depressing (it’s not the fault of the books).  Likewise, because I lost essentially everything I owned seven years ago tomorrow, I don’t have physical copies of all the hundreds of books that I’ve read and reread over the course of my life hitherto—for entertainment, inspiration, and edification.  Over time, I’m gradually trying to re-accumulate at least some of them, mainly in Kindle format, because that way I can carry my library with me wherever I go.  But even with e-book versions, to reproduce my previous library would cost a great deal of money, so it’s a piecemeal process at best.  I’m also always looking for new recommendations, and the other day on his Facebook page, Stephen King gave one for a book called The Chalk Man, by C. J. Tudor.  I looked up the book on Amazon—it’s available on Kindle—and it does look good.  I also like the author’s name, not that such a thing is of great importance.  Still, I can’t help playing word games, and inevitably thought of the fact that if you combined the surnames of the recommendee and the recommender, you’d get the phrase “Tudor King.”

Such are the processes that take place in my mind.

In any case, that book will likely be the next fiction book I purchase, and I’ll try to remember to let you all know how it is, once I’ve read it.

I do find myself able to read nonfiction, and I also use Audible, listening to a great deal of nonfiction on my commute to and from work.  Lately, I’ve been in Steven Pinker mode, a fact at least partially triggered by the recent release of his newest book, Enlightenment Now.  I’m currently visually reading one of his earlier works, The Stuff of Thought, about language and the human mind, and listening to his second most recent book, The Better Angels of Our Nature.  Once that’s done, Enlightenment Now already awaits on my Audible app, and I look forward to it eagerly.

I couldn’t easily exaggerate Pinker’s value as a thinker and writer.  His books are not short, and neither are they diffuse.  He packs a great deal of information and ideas into them, but his writing style and style of thought are exceptional and engaging.  If you want a taste of the enthusiasm and fun he brings to his work, and engenders in those who come to it, watch the following video of his presentation on The Stuff of Thought at Google.  His discussion on the nature of swearing—with numerous examples explained and explored—is both hilarious and thought provoking.

 

As I think I’ve said before, reading about ideas and concepts, even rather difficult ones, isn’t merely a way for me to pass my time between reading and writing fiction.  Even if it didn’t have any other value (it does), such exploration strengthens the mind’s muscles and makes it more fit and able to perform every task to which one puts it, including the writing of fiction.  Also, I think it improves one’s skill at narrative.  When an author can take a dense and complex subject and write about it in prose that’s both gripping and clear, that style of writing is surely one from which a writer of fiction can learn many lessons.  Some stories are good enough that they can be carried along simply by the power of the plot, even if the prose is awkward, but when one can add to such stories a structure made of language both beautiful and elegant, well…that’s a spicy meatball!

I’m about a hundred years too young to consider comparing myself to someone like Pinker, or to other great writers of fiction and nonfiction alike, but that just means that I can learn a great deal from them in the meantime.  In fact, a writer/reader’s marginal rate of return is probably greatest long before he or she begins to be in the same league as the one who wrote what he or she is reading.  So, I can heartily recommend that writers read books by those who are far better writers than themselves, and as often as possible.

But, also, do read some of my books in between.  I’ll do my best to keep raising my standards.

TTFN

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Walk Like A Caveman

There are many levels of irony about living in our modern, Western civilization.  One of the most striking, to me, is the fact that we find ourselves thinking that we have to “make time” for exercise.

Our ancestors–almost all of them–were never faced with this kind of problem, any more than are the millions of other species of animals living in the world.  Exercise is not a special task or chore for most creatures, it is part of the process of staying alive and being healthy.  Really, that’s what it should be for us as well.  We know that our bodies want to be used, they thrive with that use and become stronger and healthier, in general, the more active we are.  Yet, the progress of our civilization has, curiously, led us to alienate ourselves more and more from our natural, active natures.

Many of our modern conveniences were created to spare us from the “horrors” of physical labor.  Automobiles, escalators, elevators, tractors…these things are all, of course, truly remarkable and incredibly useful, but because we have them, we’ve gotten into the habit of relying solely upon them.  After only a little bit of time doing this, we realized that our sedentary, machine-driven lifestyles were often leading us to be terribly unhealthy.  Its not so much that our lives have been shortened…modern infection control, including vaccines, antisepsis, antibiotics and health codes have led us all to survive and even become unaware of the simple ailments that killed most of our forebears.  Our lives have instead been diminished, not in quantity but in quality.  It is wonderful to be able to drive hundreds of miles to see a distant relative at a moment’s notice.  It is NOT wonderful to have to drive to the corner store because we’re too out of shape to walk there.

In recent years we’ve learned that astronauts who spend very much time in space, without the need to fight gravity, rapidly lose bone density and muscle mass, and their hearts weaken as well.  To combat this tendency they have to use very clever means to engage their bodies and to keep those organs fit.  Yet we here on the ground, deep within Earth’s gravity well and not going through free-fall, often might as well be floating in orbit, for all the work we give our bodies.

Awareness of this issue has led to a huge industry of gyms, exercise equipment, supplements and how-to books about exercise.  We strive to fit time to go to the gym into our busy, modern schedules.  There’s nothing wrong with that, of course…I’m all for the gym.  But you don’t have to have a membership at the expensive local health club, nor even any special equipment, to keep your body as healthy as you can.  All you have to do is live just a little bit more like your ancestors did.

So, if you have to go to the store, and it’s not that far away…walk there instead of driving.  Obviously this won’t work if you have to buy a great many groceries at one time…but maybe multiple trips with smaller hauls spread throughout your week would be a better idea for your health, anyway.

If your local store isn’t QUITE local enough to walk to, well, then drive there.  Then, instead of jockeying around for the very closest spot you can find, park at the far end of the parking lot, and walk to the store from there.  It may not seem like very much, but if that’s so, then it also shouldn’t be very much trouble.

When you’re going into a building and need to go somewhere other than the first floor, why not take the stairs?  Walking up stairs is terrific, low-impact aerobic exercise and it keeps your quads nice and strong!  Okay, if you live in New York City and need to get to the 50th floor, walking ALL the way might be impractical unless you’re a marathoner with a lot of time on your hands.  Yet, even so, you can take the elevator up to two or three floors shy of your destination and walk the rest of the way.  Then you can do the same thing on the way down, which will, after all, be quite a bit easier than going up.

Also, if you live in a good enough climate, at least part of the year…ride a bike to work sometimes instead of driving.  This won’t be great if you have a sixty mile commute each way (again, unless you’re a distance athlete and have a rather flexible schedule), but if your commute is more reasonable, then biking is a great alternative.  It saves you gas money (a big deal in our current economic climate), and it produces less carbon dioxide than does an internal combustion engine…though it DOES produce some, since that’s one waste product our bodies produce just as our machines do.

All these simple measures can keep your body healthier and keep you feeling stronger.  They will probably also make you a bit thinner and shapelier, which is nice.  Still, feeling and being healthy is far more important than being thin…as any famine victim would gladly tell you if they had the chance.

In closing, the key to being physically fit and active in the modern world–and to feeling more alive and vigorous and strong–doesn’t have to involve expensive gym memberships, aerobic classes, treadmills and weight machines.  All those things are great, and I have nothing but praise for those who discipline themselves to make their bodies as healthy as possible.  Yet, even for those without the money and/or the time for the more advanced techniques, sometimes just letting go of a few modern conveniences can make you a little more like your robust ancestors…without the worrisome threat of infection and dangerous predators with which they had to contend!

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The Treatment Trap

In America today, we rely far too much on pills and on procedures–on would-be “cures” for our problems–than we really should.

It may seem strange for a medical doctor like me to be saying this, but I have insight into the issue from multiple perspectives.  I’ve been one of the doctors who falls into the trap of trying to “treat” every issue rather than prevent or solve it, and I’ve been a patient who approaches things the same way.

The irony is that a great many of the health problems we face in the modern world–especially the most rampant and devastating ones, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and their related problems and consequences–are governable simply by modifying our lifestyles.  Indeed, for many of us, these health concerns’ very existence AS problems is only CAUSED by our modern lifestyles.  I’ve already discussed in some earlier entries the mechanisms and effects of type 2 diabetes, a disorder which is becoming more and more endemic in our nation, and at younger and younger ages.  It’s absolutely clear why this is happening:  We are more sedentary and more overweight and we eat more rapidly absorbed carbohydrates than humans have ever done before in our existence.  What’s more, thanks to public health interventions and control of infectious diseases, we live long enough for these habits to matter more than they could have in the past.  We also know, quite well, many of the things that we can do to counter diabetes and its close relatives, hypertension and heart disease. Yet, instead, we allow our health to deteriorate and then rush to modern medicine to seek “cures” or at least treatments for the outcomes of our bad habits.

I suspect that this trap of habits was set for us, to some degree, by the brilliant innovation and success of antibiotics.  These are the quintessential medical cures:  When used against an infection caused by a sensitive bacteria, antibiotics actually CURE the problem (with the help of our own immune system).  To some degree anti-virals do the same, though they are more recent, and anti-parasitic agents are also analogous.

Unfortunately, most other kinds of medicines–unless you count the occasional Tylenol or Motrin to treat a tension headache or muscle soreness–don’t actually cure anything.  They simply “treat” it, governing the symptoms and consequences to some degree or other, but not addressing whatever underlying processes might be contributing to the issues.  In addition, they give the patient the illusion that the problem is now under real control.

There are, of course, times, when health problems are not soluble or easily controllable, and managing the symptoms and consequences is the very best we can do, at least for now.  So PLEASE do not think that I am advocating the elimination of Western medicine or that those being treated for chronic health conditions should just give up their pills and let nature take its course.  Yet with so many health problems, even if we have to resort to medication, we can also make lifestyle and behavioral changes that will mitigate our problems and decrease, though not always eliminate, the need for medications (and surgery, when applicable).

We all know, or should know, that taking medicine can be a double-edged sword.  Medications sometimes create new issues of their own.  The human body is an incredibly complex system–arguably the most complicated thing in the known universe, especially when you count the human brain–and when you manipulate such a  system in one way or location, unexpected consequences almost never fail to arise.  This leads to the horrible spectacle of patients receiving medication for one problem, but developing side-effects, which then need to be treated by other medications, and which cause toxicities and interactions that later have to be addressed.  The whole affair can become a vicious cycle of increasing biological chaos, like a metabolic Rube Goldberg machine.  In the elderly especially, it can sometimes be all but impossible to be certain whether new health problems are intrinsic or are caused by earlier treatments.

We try, of course, to mitigate and avoid this conundrum by studying medications as carefully as possible and learning what their possible side-effects are…but every human body is different, and that’s going to continue to be the case, since the number of possible genetically unique humans is vastly greater than the number of human beings who have ever lived.  So we can be guaranteed that the one expectation we can reliably entertain is the UNEXPECTED.

It is better by far to avoid developing problems whenever possible rather than trying to treat them.  This is true because it is simpler and more predictable, and also because it makes life better.  Rather than being a person who identifies themselves by their litany of ailments, for which they build their house-of-cards treatment regimens, we can work to maintain lifestyles that are GOOD for our health, that work with our natures, and that help us to think of ourselves as–and to feel like–healthy, vital and thriving human beings.

Medicines are indeed wonderful products of modern science and technology, and I strongly suspect that they have saved and improved many more lives than they have harmed, even despite what I’ve said above.  If I didn’t think that, I wouldn’t have gone into medicine.  Yet, it would be even better if we could avoid having the need for medications as often as possible in the first place.

I’m going to discussing more of this in future entries.  I’ll go into some fairly obvious lifestyle issues such as exercise and diet, but I’m also going to explore philosophical and psychological aspects of health that can make a great difference in not only how long you live, but also in how much you enjoy the time you have.

A life of a hundred years can be a tragedy and a life of a single day can be a triumph.  It all depends on what kind of life it is.