Besides, I don't have 1.9 billion dollars to spare

Are you an earthling?

If not, will you PLEASE

PLEASE

PPPLLLLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAASSE

come get me and get me the fuck out of here?

And if you are, well... you're probably safe. I can't afford 8.01 billion bullets, or even a gun for that matter. Plus I have no taste for killing. Not even mercy-killings. Not even myself. Not even a mouse.

A mouse has been living in my room for a while now. On Friday I trapped him in my waste basket and promptly fucked up and let him get away. Being not too bright he almost immediately returned to the waste basket (where I'd recently discarded something peanut buttery) and I immediately trapped him again and then immediately fucked up and let him go again and then he returned again and I trapped him again and this time boxed him securely and with my walker I delivered him one block away and dumped him "into" the storm drain BUT he managed to land on the grate and took off back up the street like a fart in a wind storm.

I tootled back home and he was already back in my bedroom waiting for me. No mistake. It was definitely HIM. I recognize his physical... blemishes. He's no magazine model. 

At least I know how to trap him now and so I will again very shortly and this time flush him down the toilet and he can ride the sewer system down town. I don't think he'll get back from there.

I've been through the two worst crises of my life in the last year and I have gained some pretty deep and unexpected insights into the matter of suicide. It still makes no sense in most cases but I understand places the mind can go which make it seem very convincingly the only option. 

Other then being physically trapped and tortured or entering the dire late stages of a terminal illness... there is a last resort; something I've pondered since decades ago and something consolidated by Augusten Burroughs in his book This is How: Surviving What You Think You Can't, which I read a long while back because I was such a Burroughs fan as well as being very compelled at the time by the tragic phenomenon of teen suicide; especially gay teen suicide. The last resort being some combination of escape and starting over. I won't venture into the details at this time. They're not particularly new; likely not even to you.

I'm close to recovery from the critical injuries I endured eleven months ago. I'm roughly five months in to a campaign launched by key members of my family to destroy my fucking heart. 

They've not expressed specific complaints about me. They apparently claim to have nothing against me. But they're afraid of bed bugs at all cost.

ALL COST.

Imagine not letting someone into your home because you're afraid of bed bugs and associated potential costs in having them exterminated. Imagine believing that such a visitor is incapable of measures to ensure they are currently uncontaminated before visiting.

Easy to imagine perhaps? Now keep in mind that the spread of bed bugs in this manner is incredibly rare. I'll give you two reasons why. They don't choose to hang out on a human body. Their instinct is to feed and then run back into hiding. Bedbugs DO NOT normally transfer like a parasite or virus. They spread because a nest gets relocated because it's in luggage or some other relocated possession. Sometimes a bedbug might get caught up in clothing from an ill-timed feed (normally done in the middle of the night) when the host leaves the dining area and goes on the move. But not only does the critter need to remain on the host for the duration of the trip (in my case a combination of lengthy bus rides just for starters) but the critter can't be solo. You need a combination of bugs capable of breeding when they get to their new home. And BTW there are AT LEAST three compelling reasons why a successfully relocated solo critter is extremely unlikely to be a pregnant female.

Already the scenario being feared here is extremely unlikely but now... lets start heading down the rabbit hole: 

Imagine that the person you are sacrificing because of this fear of a very unlikely bad time is your brother or your son, who has always loved you and he is going through this very hard time and is particularly lonely and being with his family has been his ONE JOY in life for the last year and he is now kept from his young niece and nephew who had meant the world to him and imagine your son/brother also carries the life long scar from being closeted at a time when straight society were frankly maniacally evil towards gays and the scar of fear of being de-grouped from his friends; a common, if not universal gay man's PTSD, and now here he is being de-grouped from his family: You've uninvited him from Thanksgiving, passed him over for his dad's and brother's birthdays and from Christmas and his own birthday. And now Easter approaches and it's becoming evident that you're passing on him again while he fucking hurts like hell.

Still with me? Imagining this are you? Well hold on to your fucking hat because things are about to get holy fuck surreal. Are you sitting down?

Imagine now that the human being you've sacrificed who is a brother you might profess to love if you were capable of saying the word despite whatever emotional disability you might likely have inherited from your completely emotionally-dysfunctional father who is such a sad broken emotional automaton he can't even hug his own sons, or a son you would never profess to love because you are that automaton; imagine... that this dear relative of yours that you will not allow to visit...

is not even a host of bed bugs. Imagine that he doesn't have bed bugs and never has.

Imagine that you are afraid because he has a neighbor three doors down who.... has...? bedbugs...?

No no. Wait. There's more. Imagine that this son/brother you've so easily crushed in fact does not have such a neighbor. Imagine that he had such a neighbor up until two months ago when that neighbor threw out his possessions and received the second of three sprayings and no bedbugs have been present in the building for two months.

Are you doing the math? Does this seam utterly fucking nuts to you?

If so, that's only because it is. It's nuts beyond my ability to grasp. It's inhumanly cruel beyond my ability to grasp and I am done with it now. When I think of my family it hurts too much and I AM NOT going on with this any more. I cannot survive this pain.

I can only survive by not thinking about them; by forgetting they exist.

Even if they suddenly invited me to Easter, it's almost certainly too late. I know that at my best I can be capable of forgiveness; forgiveness for the stupidity, forgiveness for the insult and even forgiveness for the cruelty.

But could I ever respect them again or find a fondness for them again? I don't know about that. I doubt it. I do know that I'll never be able to trust them again.

But that's me in my BEST moments, on my best days. Keep in mind that this nut fuckery is only the bulk of the iceberg.  All my closest allies have devolved into pixelated zoom and skype characters. I am the loneliest fucker on the planet and the zooming and skyping have become a torture. They just mock me; remind my of my loneliness while the so-called "conversations" on these platforms are logistically dysfunctional. I feel no closeness looking at the fuzzy pictograms of people I once sensed I loved. I'm very dead inside. Love has crept into hiding.

What I foresee happening; as per the second of three modes I seem to inhabit now, emotionally, is not suicide but escape and starting over. Escape. Disappear; especially from the internet, change my name and begin a new life which is not filtered through a computer, befriended to anyone who wants to see me live in person. I'll give my address to the world around me. I'll be open for business. Visitors welcome 24-7. I do feel like that's where this is all going. I have felt it for months now.

As for my worst moments; my worst days; like times I think of the people who were once my family; those times... I find myself honesty wishing that every earthling would be gone and I was the last man on Earth. Seems strange eh? For someone afflicted with crippling loneliness... but that's how I often feel.

Maybe because if I was truly alone, then no one could disgust me. No one could disappoint me. No one could hurt me.

But don't worry. That's not a scenario I'm capable of manifesting.

Attempt #2

 ... at describing my morning! Not at taking my life! Ha ha ha ha ha! Did I scare you there! Well, don't be such a chicken shit next time!

Lucky (or unlucky?) for me, I am definitely a chicken shit once again so... Nothing news-worthy is going to happen around here.

Let me try to recall that morning: I washed some of the last few dishes from Turkey Fest. Most were done the night before. Took my meds. Went for my walk. Had a coffee which is VERY important!

Now that love is out of my life (had to put it on injury reserve) and I cannot afford a proper addiction to take it's place, I have had to promote coffee from the practice squad to first string. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I gave a generous portion of fishy niblets to Ginger (Kevin) Ferraro and a large milkbone to Moose. He had the Mama translator in tow that morning; not the Papa, and he gave her no choice. Just pulled her to me and drooled all over my coat while I fished out a biscuit. Then he wanted to eat the garlic bread with cheese that I was eating for breakfast but I did not relent. Mama finally dragged him away.

I thought about my family who are boycotting me, trying to force me to do what they think I should. Their ideas are incorrect. My fear is not that they won't relent. My fear is that I won't forgive them. I have dear friends and uncles and aunts who are too medically unstable and either that's why they don't see me anymore or that's the excuse. Maybe I'm just intolerable and don't know it! And then there's Aqualad who is just too busy for me and the Eloquent Potter who lives far off in the Big Smoke and has no car.

All the people I love are not available to me except online and I would rather die than go on pretend-living online. Fuck online. Fuck it.

[he says on his blog.] 

I am empty empty empty empty inside. I now understand why people have addictions I think. Everyone needs to need something. The delusion of identity I suppose. And when it's not people, it has to be things. I can't afford drugs or alcohol or gambling which all sound great. Sex is certainly out of the question.

Empty empty empty empty empty.

Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do.

The facts of life

Fact #1: Everybody poops.

Fact #2: Everybody dies.

Fact #3: Everybody poops when they die.

Fact #4: Fact #3 might not be a fact. It's actually just something I've heard.

I mean - I understand the physiology. But what if someone pooped, like normally, and wiped and everything, and then seventeen seconds later they died. Would they still poop again? Would they poop just a tiny tiny tiny bit? I suppose we could arrange an experiment around this but really, I'm not that eager to solve this riddle. Fuck it. Let's not give it another thought.

Fact #5: I have a hole in my heart the size of Tokyo and I cannot imagine still being alive when Christmas rolls around. I would very very very very very very very very much like to please cancel Christmas this year.

Okay. That's not likely to happen. Fine. Well... just know that if it kills me, the turd that I leave behind was not intended a holiday gift to you all and in no way reflects my feelings toward your character or your performance as a supposedly human being - or bona fide human being if you're one of the special few! And hey, if you're reading this blog, you probably are!

 

The Art of Being Human

Once upon a time I went to school

and did what I was told

and I learned a lot

I learned about teachers

I learned about students

I learned about schools

And I heard about a whole lot of other things

Some even seemed interesting

Some might even have been true

Outside we played sports

Inside we played boring games with numbers

Year after year I remained a prisoner

played sports

played boring games with numbers

learned about teachers and

students and schools

and did what I was told

and accepted the friendship

of all those who decided to be my friend

Going along with everything as it came to me

With all my childhood curiosity driven out

of me by my wardens

I waited waited waited

for adulthood to come along and take me away

But then Disaster Number One

or rather the Great Disaster as it was then known

We didn't know there'd be a number two

I fell

in love

And the whole world became cruel

and none of it made sense any more

I said enough is enough

I'm getting the hell

outa here

I seized adulthood

and was dragged away with it

As an adult drag-along

I did what I was told

I took the friends and lovers and jobs and promotions

which were offered me

I played the sports

But no more boring god damned games with numbers

I made a commitment

I bought a house

I found I was respected, sometimes even admired

For my ability

to go though the motions

And then Disaster Number Two

Or so I thought

I was doubly rejected.

Paid handsomely to go away

So I did the very best thing

any 31 year old could ever do

I started life all over again

Thanks to being forced into it

A bread and butter friend said to me, But Rich, 

You need to have faith in something!

So I wrote my first poem called

But I have faith

A poem about my family, friends, myself

and the expectation that the sun

will rise again tomorrow; the promise

of a new day

Thus I had discovered the blank page

and so I wrote some more

and better still, I stared at the blank page

and curiosity was born in me again

I wrote and I stared and I asked questions

and courage was born in me for the first time

I asked the biggest questions

I asked the most dangerous questions

And the horror, the horror

I discovered the possibilities

were dire, and that I

knew nothing

Except:

That thanks to some thousand or more hours

of boring games with numbers

I did know how to leave a tip

without asking my phone

So there's that

Life became an experiment

I researched, I explored, I adventured, I said YES!

I reflected, I contemplated, I searched the blank page

And truth began, ever so slowly to accrete

Distilled in my laboratory of the mind

My lab tools were the page

and the guitar and keyboard

creative models worked just like

scientific models; they isolated reality

My discoveries were solid:

The omnipotence of causality

the matrix of illusions

human duality

Illusions were dispersing

and with them superstitions

and with them fears

In came perspective, freedom

pathways to enlightenment

and the natural inevitable joy

of being human, no longer shielded from me

by the unnatural machinations of society

I seemed strange to my bread and butter friends

They warned me of liabilities, blind as they were

to opportunity

But I was choosing new friends. I spied the finest people

and I made myself the friend

I was confident and grabbing life, not waiting for it to happen

And I discovered the purpose in life: it is to design your own purpose

My own was easy and obvious: To champion harmony, over chaos

My friend Dr Lock summed up his own spiritual life in two sentences:

I was created

I create

A woman of mixed ethnicity who wore it on her face was asked

What are you?

She said I am a New Day Rising

I knew at once: Me too! That's exactly what we ALL are; we humans

We're the Cosmos' greatest potential! Most of us seem not to know it

But she knows it, and I know it, and I say: 

New Day Rising; that is my name now!

Now,

as I physically decline, perhaps only temporarily

I cannot do so much so fast

But I am well prepared to bear the siege

Some days I remember my lessons

Some days I remember my purpose

Some days I remember that I am a new day rising

I am learning how to accept help from others:

other champions of harmony

But to quote the eloquent composers Cummerford,

de la Rocha, Morello and Wilk:

Fuck you I won't do what you tell me.

Boring update. Do not read!

Well aren't you the curious one!

Okay. What's new:

1. I'm at the pub where I go on the first Friday of each month in order to write, work on the Dungeons & Dragons hosting business and snort a couple 18 ounce glasses of Friday-Special domestic draft beer for only four dollars a glass! Other than this I'm pretty much in bed every day.

2. I'm still getting my wound dressing changed by a visiting nurse every day. I've had this thing about seven months now and they keep telling me it's getting better and better. So yeah. This item is not actually new at all.

What's new/current (to be more precise):

3. Getting PSW assistance three times a week for hygiene purposes.

4. Getting outside every morning for a wee walk and some rehab exercises, kitty-cat feeding and work on the crossword puzzle creation. I kick out four or five new (newspaper quality) puzzles per week just from my brief daily sidewalk sojourns. I really should publish a collection soon.

5. Some of the crosswords are being diverted to another publishing project. A sort of daily almanac I'm throwing together largely because it's a no-brainer; the content is all stuff that I naturally assemble on a daily basis because of my own keen interests as a researcher and archivist. Here's the material: daily holiday/special observances notes; This day in history; tip, quote, word and song of the day; poem, film and vegetable (not exactly what you're imagining probably!) of the week; daily, weekly and monthly challenges; a daily puzzle (usually crosswords) and a weekly monologue. I may end up cutting a thing or two. We'll see. It's largely all tied together thematically. The thrust of it all is... here's a bunch of nudges as to how you can live life a little better perhaps! I will be releasing a 2024 first-quarter volume (Jan-March) this December! It's too much material to stuff a whole year into one book.

6. I've been writing short stories of late and between that and the "almanac" or maybe "lolmanac" I realized yesterday, on the second day of National Novel Writing Month that I might as well participate. It just won't be a novel.

Well... I think that's enough for now. I'm on my fourth four-dollar swill (more than I intended) and being so out of practice, drinking-wise, I'm feeling a little buzzy!

Later, 'gators.

Part 3 Return of the king

Well.. if you wanted a story: you got one.

I returned for the next try-out on Thursday; two nights later. Interviewed some players, made an official commitment to shoot and edit a mountain of video. Got them shopping for a proper video camera.

Got home and looked at my legs. Swollen and red and puss oozing in places. I desperately need to be elevating my feet more. I go ahead and commit to the Reservation trip Saturday morning for a pre-season tourney. Three short games. Golden opportunity for interviews. I'll find a place to put my feet up and summon players to me.

Coach offers me a ride. I agree to meet him at the edge-of-town Tim Hortons for 6:45. But that's a bit early for the first buses of the day on a Saturday. Instead I take the last buses Friday night and plan to spend the night at Tims with my feet up, getting work done, snacking, drinking coffee. Perfect.

I get there and they're closed. Now only the the drive-through is open 24 hours. Their website is wrong. I make the hard journey to nearby MacDonalds and then Taco Bell. Again, drive-thru only. I am diabetic and my blood sugar is failing. I need food. I'm cold, hungry and dehydrated.

I spend hours painfully wandering. I have no phone and I've lost my bank card. I have a little cash. Not enough for a cab ride home.

I'm sad that I have been passed by hundreds of people while struggling along with a walker so late at night and no one has asked if I need help. What's up with you Tiger Town? You disappoint me.

Finally I flag down a Taco Bell customer and beg him to take my cash and buy me a meal. But Taco Bell has just closed. He persists, gets their attention and tells them I need help.

They give me water and fucking cinnamon puffs, which basically melt on your tongue.

I enter an ATM vestibule for warmth and sit on the floor in order to elevate my legs. At 4AM security responds and he's friendly and tells me that Tims has opened at 4 (a lie). He doesn't want to help me up because its extra paper work if he touches someone. What a fucking world...

I can't get up, end up lying flat on the floor in failed attempts to raise myself. I drag out my computer and send a facebook distress call.

Paramedics eventually rescue me, take me back to Tims, sit with me until 5:30 and leave me sitting in my walker with a big warm blanket.

6AM I get in, get a coffee and sandwich, meet coach at 6:45 and we're off.

Now things get weird. I'm not taking stock of how much physical and emotional trauma I've experienced. I do some interviews. I get very light headed. Time stops functioning. This day would take weeks to pass. After the second game the prez drives me home. The drive takes us a week it seems. I lose consciousness constantly and feel like I'm waking up the nxt day yet we've only gone a block.

At home the roommates look at me funny and propose calling an ambulance. I ward them off.

In my room I am utterly fixated on fluids. I want Mountain Dew and energy drinks and Gatorade by the gallons. All I want is to place a rush grocery order for as much of this as I have money for.

Somehow I never even got my computer turned on.

The fire department tore my door off and tore the door frames off the walls in order to carry me out of my room, naked in my comfy chair, covered in feces. They think I had a stroke.

I acquired a nasty infection. My kidneys shut down. I had no feeling from the waste down. I had trouble breathing and needed oxygen. I had dialysis lines installed in my neck three times because things kept going wrong.

I spent a week in Intensive Care; a week of torment, anxiety, extreme discomfort, depression. The world became meaningless. I wanted out.

The last week I have been in ICU-Lite. My kidneys are functioning again. I'm breathing on my own. I'm just barely able to stand but only by using my arms to hold me up. They're still fighting the infection.

My interest in living has returned. I'm looking at life in the simplest terms. The goal of standing upright The joy in a glass of milk. Friends have poured in to visit. I may land in a rehab facility. I try to sleep, try not to be anxious or depressed. Baby steps.

Avitable Scramble

Twelve thoughts in twelve minutes. Kind of stream of consciousness sort of, except I'll be thinking about what's new? No preparation but I know what the first thing will be. Ready. Go.

1. I have moved. It was ugly as shit. Took me a month to do it. Spent about $1200 of other people's money. Totally mismanaged it. Never came close to coming to terms with my own limitations. Had to deal with the ugly consequence of the hoarding trap that I fell into being largely immobile and sleepless the last couple years, and my basically giving up on life for a while.

2. I have graduated from welfare to disability basically, which means that instead of choosing between the streets and a homeless shelter I got to choose between a homeless shelter and a weird apartment-sharing arrangement I can almost afford. Actually I can't afford it but... there are food banks.

3. I had to let a number of friends in on my little hoarding secret because I desperately needed help. Not that I accepted help at first. I was dead set against it and not out of humiliation. I am very good at suppressing pride and ego when I want to. Just out of guilt. I didn't want anyone to suffer the experience of seeing my environment and dealing with it. The Healer made it happen. She just showed up with her companion and bulled her way into my room and kicked me out and they started cleaning and purging.

4. My unpacking project, so far, consists of lugging boxes of books out to my little hallway outside my room. I do four or five boxes before feeling hurt and overwhelmed and that's it for the day. Once they're all out of the way I'll have room to sort everything else onto my bookshelves. Then it's fine-tuning the furniture placement, and putting everything in place, last being the books. It will honestly take a month I bet.

5. I'm committed to getting my home business launched ASAP. It's a lot of work. Trying to put in 8-hour days which includes breaks. I'll tell you about the business some time. It's Dungeons & Dragons hosting of the finest calibre hopefully. I can earn up to $1000 per month without a disability benefit penalty; after that my benefits decline 75 cents per dollar I earn. I think that's fair. That would be net earnings. So I should say income; not earnings perhaps.

6. Wow I'm only at six. This writing is a mess. I will fix spelling errors etc. after the clock stops and before publishing.

7. I had a sushi lunch with my old bread and butter friends. Earlier I thought I'd been kicked out of sushi club. I thought they'd been carrying on without me. Well... I guess I was wrong. I enjoyed their company immensely. No, the conversation was not the material I'd prefer and no, I wouldn't have agreed with much of it but they were wonderfully sweet and I loved them and I felt the love returned and it was wonderful. It was really wonderful.

8. Monty Python. They are damn funny. No matter how many times I watch their stuff it just stays damn funny. So there.

9. Neil Peart, Guy Lafleur and Norm MacDonald have all died in this last brief disability/covid shut-in era. My favourite musician, hockey player and male comedian of all time. It feels like a blow.

10. Time makes me sad sometimes. It's so fucking cruel. All the people it takes away. All the opportunities lost. I wasted the potential glory days of my young adulthood in a relationship I thought was monogamous, with a deranged psychopath who was very good and not perfect, at the time, of hiding that he was a deranged psychopath. And I was never as deeply in love as I could have been with someone else. Twelve and a half wasted years. We had some fun though.

11. Time's up.

12. I failed I guess!

Everyday Heroes

I was 17 when I met two particular cousins for the first time. Their mom had rescued them from a not-great dad and my uncle took them in as his own, gave them solid love and shelter, this during a 12-year period when I was separated from the whole family at large. All four made me feel extremely welcome (as did the whole excellent family) at a time when unfavorable high school dynamics had turned me socially inward. The cousins, being my age, took that opportunity during our somewhat-brief association, to respond to my demeanor effectively; with a slightly puzzled respect. They marveled at my "mellow" manner and interpreted it, whether mistakenly or strategically, as something rare to be applauded. When introducing me to their friends it was often revealed that the reputation they conceived of me had preceded the introduction, and not that of a "loner", as some kids mistook me as, but as more of a confident outsider, like a tame Clint Eastwood perhaps, minus all the guns and bravado! And though this interpretation was also off the mark, it no-doubt drove my social turnaround, at least initially. They were the first to coax me out of my shell, whether by fluke or by design. I never did ask; never got to speak my loving gratitude.

Meanwhile Aunt K, who I was only just meeting, accepted me at once like family. I remember her saying "You are welcome in our house ANY time!" I've never been specifically told that before or since.

The boy, who struck me as an extremely pleasant and friendly dude, had a tragic knack for trouble of the wrong-friends variety, and gradually dissolved into some underworld apart from my understanding. In hindsight I would gladly go back in time, and decline that gift he gave me, if only I could trade it for the privilege of supporting him instead, and boosting whatever strength he needed so that he did not need the support of his unworthier allies. If only I could have helped tip that equation. Maybe we'd still be friends. I don't even know if he's alive.

"I hope he stays out of trouble now," said his sister to me one summer day in our youth.

'He will!" I said, like it was obvious.

She laughed. "You're so confident!" But I was a fool. I also later assumed she would defeat her breast cancer. She did not.

I was told there was no funeral and not told of a memorial celebration that happened later. I was very disappointed. If it was too late to praise her for her kindness, I wished at least to tell her loved ones.

Years went by, never getting to see Aunt K. I wanted to. I wondered if she was upset with me (and other family) for not supporting her daughter enough. K's absences from small family gatherings were always attributed to the great physical suffering she'd been enduring.

The other day, as I pushed my walker up the ramp to the little handicap bus, I sensed another guest on board. Sometimes we share.

"Hi Rich," she said. I looked up, but already knowing that lovely gritty voice. I was completely disarmed, as if caught in a long long exhale.

"It's so good to see you," I managed to say. Such an understatement. It was so good to see her I could barely form the words.

She did not seem upset with me at all. We caught up in a hurry. I was teary. There was a hug of sorts, as much as possible given the logistics. I got the chance to praise her daughter. It didn't surprise her. She knows her daughter. The pain of losing her... I can't imagine.

But she continues to put one foot in front of the other, as hard as that must be at times, or maybe all the time.

 

Thankful part 2

 

Thankful

Yesterday

I accept a meeting request with the VP of the Tigers, along with the new fundraising specialist and the new game-day specialist who has worked with the local pro football team and the local pro lacrosse team. Their resumes are superb and their appearance should be a load off my mind. I can concentrate on writing articles, producing videos and running the web site. Our social media guru is still on board.

But this is the first time in three years I have made a commitment to a volunteer organization. I've been on hiatus. There's a dull shadow of nervousness back in some recess of the mind.

Coincidentally I have graduated from the wait list and will go on the bariatric medical diet within two weeks. This day I attend my first virtual class. The other participants seem very reserved, many too shy to undarken their cameras. This will be a weekly commitment for about 24 weeks.

I also attend a phone appointment with another doctor. I have the hardest time with his accent. I gather though, that I will have to take blood sugar readings every other day and go to my doctor's for a weigh-in every other week.

All this just after committing to my dearest writing pals that I will join them for live November write-ins. The commitments are piling up all of a sudden. Over-commitment has proved a very dangerous threat to my health in the past. It leads to neglect. I know I have to be careful. It weighs on me. The doctor is full of bravado and talks about changing the doses to all my medications. I'm thinking he can go to hell, this stranger, and no one is changing my meds except my family doc who I trust with my life.

I sense all this weight but it's not demanding; just lurking. And ah, the miracle of facebook and it's glorious insights. This day I gain the insight that my regular sushi friends are celebrating an outing at our fave sushi joint and I wasn't invited. Well, I can't complain. If they didn't choose me then that's on me, not them. I have not been the kind of person they want to sushi with currently. So be it. Oh well. I do not suffer the illusion that when I am de-grouped it is someone else's fault. 

But it's a little haunting, and the feeling brings back that from a couple weeks prior, on Thanksgiving day. Me sitting on my walker on the driveway, getting my daily dose of outdoors, planning cheese sandwiches for dinner because I have not received my October assistance payment due to some problem; a problem which adds more weight.

And through the open window of my next door nighbours I hear the celebration going on. A bunch of folks I thought were my friends, who I have thanksgivinged with several times before, are dining without me. It's a little shocking but I'm okay. Maybe they'll send a plate home with my housemate who is there. But they didn't.

At darkfall I call Mom and we skype. She loves me like a rock. And the faint little pit of hurt is diminished.

Today

I hear from my caseworker finally. She releases my October payment. I'll have it in a day and a half and then my November payment right on it's heels. And she tells me there is a $150 benefit languishing on my profile and though it is not properly triggered she's sending it to me anyway. She tells me to treat myself to whatever I want before graduating to Disability benefits within a month, and by the way, Disability will have a nice retro sum waiting for me as well. Just in time for my new diet launch with a very pricey bill attached at the outset.

Today I shower, go for a walk, do laundry, make a healthy meal, dog-sit, read a chapter, work on projects. I'm feeling better and it's a banner day. The shower is barely painful at all. I am physically improving and it's not fully understandable why. I've hit no real milestones yet, only improved some habits.

So I'm thankful this thanksgiving season.

For being alive. For the biosphere hanging on still. For being human and not a cockroach or a lobster.

And for knowing more clearly who my friends are. Or aren't.

And even for those who are not but who used to be. My failures have not diminished special memories.

The champ

Six hours into this day I have:

• slept in magnificently
• brushed my teeth
• made a coffee
• took my pills
• went for a walk
• solved a crossword puzzle
• created a crossword puzzle for my collection
• read a chapter of Dark Tower book 8
• met a new dog named Tonks and told her pet human Tabatha the Tale of the Squirrel Invasion
• took in recycle and trash bins
• made pork chops, tomatoes and tator salad for dinner
• checked email and messenger, charged phone and updated calendar
• watched a documentary about the America's Cup
• won a game of chess
• may or may not have lost a few games as well. Shut up.
• listened to two Lemon Jelly albums

How's that for a list of accomplishments? I'm probably the champion of the world now.

Levelling up

 Here's a neat tool I've been using for a couple months, rarely missing a day: lvluplife.com

At first glance it's a cute way to turn life into a Dungeons & Dragons styled role-playing game and a motivation tool with regards to your goals, whether it's getting out of bed in the morning, acquiring your MBA degree or everything in between. But you'll see it's more than that.

A selection of fairly simple goals are available, sorted into categories such as Creativity, Social, Health etcetera, and each goal has an experience point (XP) value plus one or more ability points in one or more of the six categories above. You'll find three of those ability categories familiar but with Culture, Environment and Talent in place of Wisdom, Dexterity and Constitution. With each level increase, more goals are unlocked and at increasingly higher values.

But you can create custom goals any time, at a maximum value commensurate to your level at the time. 

Collecting XP moves you up levels. But your ability scores are not really numerical and move on a floating scale. Your most-exercised ability is automatically 100% and the rest are at the appropriate ratio. So volume of achievements moves you up levels but only life balance improves your ability meters, which is very wise!

Balance is also encouraged as follows: The higher the goal's point value, the less frequent it can earn points. The minimum goals are each once per day. Some of mine now are once per week. This stops you from loading up on "Play Grand Theft Auto for one hour" and scoring it eight times a day!

So it serves as a daily planner. You can mark which goals are "current" (intended) and filter on those as a to-do list. Any goals that are not point-scorable are greyed out. So the goals available for points are the goals that are "due."

It's so much more useful than it looks at first glance.

Thursday Thoughts: Planets

I've chosen to start this whole pre-draft exercise with the cosmic stuff which creates a slant on things. I am not a space creature but a very terrestrial one, so, although it is appropriate to have an idea of what is going on out there, it is hard to glean from personal experience. And the whole nature of what I'm doing leans heavily on the solidity of personal experience; personal experience which is well observed and well reflected upon (more on all that later) so as to form the most solid dogma for use in logical extensions in cases like these. So the hitch here is that the cosmic stuff depends so heavily on logic. For that reason, the cosmic stuff was maybe a bad place to start. I did have at least one other option but it would have been less tidy.

The job of turning 90 segments that interrelate in a very busy web of connection, into a linear path so as to treat them one at a time, was achieved by separating them into 11 separate chains of related material and capturing a hierarchy of the most vital prerequisites. The Cosmos chain (actually titled "The World" in my plan) is the only chain in which no pre-requisites exist outside of its own chain. The chains were ordered in such a way that they can be completed from start to end without jumping to other chains and back again. By allowing "inter-jumps" I could have started in the "Dialogue" chain (Part 3) with the "Testimony" segment which, like the "Cosmology" segment, has no prerequisites. Well... no official pre-requisites. Every time I've said "more on that later" it reveals subtler prerequisites which I must let slide. 

Why am I explaining all this? Oh yeah - because the tidiness of starting with the world-stuff means starting with the heaviest of logic-not-experience-based stuff which sets a poor impression.

In terms of the actual journey which began in my 30's, it basically started with segment 3.2 "truth and honesty" which doesn't work well as a start point here because it heavily depends on prerequisite 2.1 as well as 3.1.

Has this been a horrible long-winded explanation? I don't know if anyone should be reading this! But it helps me get my thoughts together. At some point I want a book that is readable, useful and publishable!

Okay, planets...

Given the earned reputation of scientists, and photographs and logic - and I must say that much of the logic around scientific testimony involves the inconceivable length that parties would have to go to to sell lies in the matters of science, and the inconceivable numbers of parties which would have to be involved, when you fully consider the amount of evidence available to us which support mainstream claims. Generally the plausibility for such conspiracy hovers around the tiniest fraction of a per cent mark. No honest flat-earther (in other words, discounting all the trolls and folks who are in it for the comedy) has ever processed enough logic to even just get by the implausibility of the conspiracy factor. Absolutely guaranteed they have not. You would literally need millions of people in on the conspiracy in order to sell it to the modest remainder of the population. In the final draft I might even quantify all that with as much of the math as I can muster. On top of all that I have said in this paragraph is the supporting evidence that we can glean from personal living experience such as gravity and the pattern of star "movement" available to our eye and telescope.

And on that note we can understand why planets and most cosmic features are round, oval or spheres. Planets accrete closer to spherically than any other shape because that is by far the most likely in a 3d random environment, with components coming from all directions. This is simple math within our living experience. Other components are shaped similarly for similar reasons.

Science explains why planets have a life cycle; how they are born, evolve and die in conjunction with star systems which themselves are born, evolve and die, as fuels burn low, densities intensify, etcetera. Our ongoing big bang explosion is old enough to have manifested composite little bangs along the way.

The universe is a consistent system of matter accreting, intensifying, exploding and accreting (or orbiting) again; of gravity trying to negate the bang by drawing everything together and finding success only in separate realms and tiers. On one hand you can look at this simple, almost homogenous structure of the cosmos but on the other, one tier at a time, thus the interpretation of cluster systems, galaxies, star systems, planets, moons... But it's all the same thing, flavoured by tier and by the variation of molecular structure (and is even that just another tier of gravitational bonding in a sense?)

So I think we understand why the Earth is round, how it was created and how life forming (or at least existing) here is rare as it's a matter of rare factors in terms of molecular variety and of special proximity of orbit; most prominently the presence of "land" and of water in both gaseous and (pooling) solid states per goldilocks distance from the sun.

But in concert with that proximity is the death sentence of the planet, or at least its biosphere and population. When our sun eventually blows - we're screwed, but quickly and fairly mercifully at least. Earth will be made a barren rock right quick.

Which strongly suggests a ceiling on organic life; certainly mammalian life, without migration to a safer planet; Mars being a rather convenient next stop. Peculiarly convenient, one might say. Almost suspiciously convenient! And with Elon Musk and his ilk now dabbling in the Martian endeavor, I must explore, no matter how distasteful I find it, the argument (in my mind if nowhere else) that the ungodly inhumane corrupt distribution of wealth we have perpetrated, and the atrocities committed against our biosphere, may be necessary in order to make Mars rockets possible and thus potentially remove the ceiling on human duration, albeit at the expense of tremendous human misery on those left behind (almost everyone) and drastically crunching the mortality of Earth humankind. Yes, all this requires finer explanations.

Much more on organic life, and intelligent life, to follow.

Is anyone actually reading this long-winded prattle?

Am I using the word prattle corrently?

These are the questions.

Now I must get to bed for a direly needed nap. Tonight is D&D night and we may have to go to battle with a flock of killer bunnies!

zzZZZzzzzzZZZZZzzzzzZZZzzzzzzzz

Addendum: nature of the universe

So this Thursday Thoughts deal is meant to be a preliminary brainstorm exercise; a way to start assembling first-draft material for the book I have tried several times to begin writing before becoming a little overwhelmed by the bloody expanse of the thing. The term first draft almost feels over-reaching. I almost want to say pre-draft! After all, these pieces, per Wikipedia-speak, are really just stems.

I'm putting them into the blog for several reasons: It's the right material for the ultimate purpose I want this blog to take on, as well as for those readers I would ultimately regard the target market. Also this blog needs more material frankly. I'd like to hit the point where people know I'm posting daily and it's safe to drop in, and maybe even get to know the themes for certain days of the week and therefor know which days to personally visit or on the other hand, to skip!

I'd also like the possibility of comments being generated as I begin percolating this stuff. I'm certainly open to help!

I do hesitate though, to post these pieces because for now they can seem like little but introductions to topics. The purpose of these earliest chapters is generally to assemble basic presumptions for later use in drawing conclusions. On their own they can seem rather pointless maybe?

Right now I am finding the discipline to do this particular work as part of a greater structure where I have some accountability and this operates on a specific timetable. As a result, I ran out of time last week and so I must add a few words now on the topic of the nature of the universe: The matter of life versus death.

The only life we know of for sure is here on Earth. It's looking fairly evident we're not going to find it on the other planets of this system, and the lack of interaction with intelligent extra-terrestrials also supports the view that life is critically rare in the universe. The incredibly short duration of life for every living organism on Earth also supports its rarity in a universe billions of years old. And saying its billions of years old is a fairly safe assumption (a useful idea and not certain truth technically) because the science community; a reliable community by any human standard, are consolidated in their support for this observation, whether astronomers or paleontologists etcetera.

Claims of UFO sightings, abductions, Area 51 artifacts etcetera, in their current volume and level of evidentiary support, seem logically right where they should be in a world where none of them are valid, given the volume of misunderstandings, delusions, dreams, mental illness and outright scams that a seven-billion population of human beings are capable of producing and concocting.

If the outer space community was nearly as busy as this accumulation of stories would suggest, would the evidence not be overwhelming? And if only a fraction of the stories are true, suggesting that alien interaction is a rare commodity, then this also supports my understanding of life in the universe: that it is rare. So intensely rare it can be thought of as miraculous. Sort of like winning the lottery is miraculous; it being so unlikely. So I propose that the natural state of the universe... is dead. And life is an exception.

So there. Have I made a point, and given this little piece justification? I'm gonna hit the Publish button! 

Becoming a Person: January update

Dear Diary:

Recent milestones on the the road to Getting A Life Back:

An ability to often sleep six hours in a row.

Often eating small meals or snacks, sometimes four or even five times in a day.

Welfare funding including fairly full medical coverage.

Tax refunds and rebates coming in which do not affect welfare coverage.

Medical tests and diet counselling proceeding through Bariatric Program.

Thorough bloodwork reveals no worries but vitamin D and B12 deficiencies. By taking supplements I can expect greater energy levels.

Started the process to get a new and proper walker.

Minecraft down to a few hours per week.

Starting to read again, sometimes without falling immediately to sleep.

Very close, I think, to regularly writing again.

Next goals:

Get the walker and then more regular exercise.

Finish room reorg within ten days.

Continue to improve diet.

Write.

Catch up on correspondence. Some of my friends have been waiting over a year to hear from me. Writing about myself usually feels exhausting but I have to do it. I know I can. I'm doing it now.

Cheers.

Stranger

Please petition in support of the vital Canadian Polar Bear Habitat at Cochrane, Ontario and its most important member.

Attended my first Minecraft wedding

Smothering Instinct

I'm extremely forgetful. Perhaps because of my tendency to look below the surface of things and not to stay on top of things? Whatever the reasons, I depend on careful organizational skills and when I find myself under the thumb of the pandemic and not going anywhere there's a tendency to forget about my daily planner which contains (or is supposed to) all my project intentions, chores, appointments and recurring events: everything from teeth-brushing to garbage day to NFL Opening Day.

I sometimes forget to take my meds; both for blood-pressure and the miracle sleep-enabling drug.

Sometimes I forget a couple days in a row and things get sketchy. Recently I went three days in a row without the miracle pill due to a combination of sleep irregularity, lack of organization and terrible service hours/closures of the pharmacy from Friday through Sunday.

The result was the same as the last time I went on a three-day bender. My emotions went right into hyer-drive. While I am always missing a few very dear loved ones and have so since March, a kind of panic sets in in the above circumstance. I feel like something is going to go wrong and I'll never see them again; never hug them; or perhaps that my absence will lead them to forget about me or perhaps to not need me? I don't really understand it. There is no logical interpretation of what I feel; just an extraordinary yearning for certain people.

Certain best friends who I have had in life slipped away from me and lost interest in me despite my continued interest in them. That's probably part of it.

And also being a person who had to fight his way out of the closet in a much earlier day there remains a life-long liability which few straight people could fully comprehend. It lies, normally unwoken, in the pit of every such person who has suffered this adolescent trauma in a less-kind age; as the Eloquent Potter puts it: the fear of being de-grouped. If you know a gay person and you want to utterly kill them just make them feel unwelcome in their established peer group. For us there is nothing crueler.

Now that the internet has given us all a soapbox for preaching our advice any old time at all there's a great tendency to indulge (like yours truly, especially!). But sometimes there's a resentment if we feel that the advice to embrace sacrifice is coming from those who have less to sacrifice. We feel like the call to sacrifice is much stronger when it comes from those who must sacrifice more. This does not reflect on the accuracy or wisdom of the message though!

For instance I am full of parenting advice which I believe in confidently but I rarely ever breathe a word of it because I've never suffered the things which parents must suffer. So my voice is a weaker one. That doesn't mean I'm wrong. It means I'm less trust-worthy.

That's actually a poor example. Here's the point. When my excellent brother and other folks tell me here is the sacrifice we must make in order to ensure our parents health, there is a part of me that knows damn well they are right. But there is another part of me that says "Okay but by the way, go to hell because you have a wife and kids for you to love in your household! I have no one!"

I have a housemate who sleeps two floors above me and a there's her dog too, but these relationships are tricky ones and the love there is not of the sort that seems to keep me alive; not like my family and such dear souls as the Eloquent Potter or Aqualad or Neo for instance.

As much as I adore them, by the way, no one comes close to my Mom. She is number one; our relationship is sacred. But luckily I see her about every five weeks and we either call or skype at least three times a week.  

I found out with certainty after near-thirteen years with Long-Time Companion that the standard relationship model in our society is largely nonsensical to me and that I suck at it either way and since then I cherish close friendships with whom I can share anything (and even the odd one which has edged into sexual behavior though my interest in sex is well into its final hour) and multiple best-friendish companions have in essence replaced the idea of a spouse.

Phone calls and video chats with great friends are great!  But as a person who is starved for physical contact at the best of times these events are simultaneously a reminder of what I am missing.

In my drug-starved despair I hit the facebook status alarm bell, worried or perhaps offended some dear people and an hour later tried to trust my logic and issued a retraction. But the damage was done. Friends of a masculine-problem-solving nature be they men or women; those who rush to fix things as quickly as possible rather than pause to understand them, tried to give me advice; advice I already knew and knew could not satisfy my instinctive perception of my clobbered needs, but bless their kind souls for trying.

Telling a starving man that you have no food, that he'll have to be happy with cigarettes or chewing gum or a harmonica, solves no problems.

I'm a few days back on the pill regular now, and I still miss these people (and some others) quite terribly. But I feel again that this hell-born Covid disaster will surely pass at some point and I will just have to hang on, one way or another, and take my damn pill every day, and pray a vaccine comes to the rescue.

And when this is over I'm coming for you with a giant hug so brace yourself, and just like the childless female penguin who competes so desperately for an available orphan, I'll try not to crush you to death.

The Promise

Tax the Canadian super-rich.

Building the Map Room

This finally

Uh. Hi. Anyone still coming around here?

Lets try to make this quick. Here's what I've been up to in 2020:

- Had to give up my security gig at the War Lab because of increasing pain/mobility issues.

- Ceased working at the welfare office when it closed mid March due to Covid. That same day my Poseidon Security-provided cell phone went tits up. With no home phone I went into complete isolation.

- The War Lab brought me back to work in their small Toronto location where they didn't particularly care if I did patrols or not. Their camera coverage is excellent.

- Developed a subconscious anxiety around my breathing which has been chronically hampered by sinus issues but which had never posed much of a problem before. The CPAP machine is absolutely critical, treating my severe sleep apnea by forcing me to breathe only through my nose. After several virtually problem-free years suddenly I could rarely remain asleep more than a second. I would immediately wake up in a brief panic attack thinking I was suffocating. This became the norm night after night. It was absolute torture. I began avoiding sleep as much as possible to avoid this torture but that became a torture of a different sort. My physical issues and my brain suffered in extreme sleep deprivation. I seemed to know with certainty that I would be dead soon and I welcomed it. I never considered suicide, only a certainty that I could not survive this way and that I did not want to. Working in Toronto paid very well but I was a terrible danger to myself and others by driving in a sleep-deprived state. I had several tricks to manage this without disaster. I was desperate for the income. But it was wrong of me.

- A friend - we'll call her... Julie, was certainly of clearer mind than I and gave me a cell phone so I could get back in touch with my doctor, dietitian and Cat Man, my counselor. I begged them to get me into an institution full time. It was the only way I would survive.

- The doc insisted I give up the Toronto gig if I wanted to keep my license. I did not argue for a moment. 

- An institution was probably not going to happen but the doc put me on a miracle drug. Miraculously: I seem to be breathing a little better. The suffocation anxiety has almost entirely vanished. I sleep plenty now, albeit in erratic short stints day and night; an imperfect but utterly joyful improvement. And my monstrous appetite has been cut in half. And this drug is not even expensive.

- I have a walker now. It's the only way I can get around for more than a few steps. Hopefully I will not need it for long. Physiotherapy is available to me when I am ready.

- I began enrollment in a bariatric program at a clinic which will closely monitor my diet and exercise for a year and a half followed by surgery which will dramatically reduce the size of my stomach.

- I am still on the books for two security companies but inactive and juggling disability, EI and welfare balls trying to get some kind of income.

- I have a shitload of work to do to get my life back. And the false starts are over. I am one hundred per cent committed to this. I did not think I'd ever see November. I will do the work. Covid did not infect me but it pushed me to the bottom of the barrel finally. And finally I'm on the way back up.

Hey blog.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EG6ZlCpfVvU

This again

Are we bored yet of me coming on here once in a while to speak of new momentum? New signs that things are going to improve? Inevitably they never do for long eh?

If (miraculously) we are not:

I saw my whole family yesterday at the family farm. I guess this is irrelevant to the subject but it sure felt nice. It's been months of course. I'm getting my very own cell phone shortly which is a little gross but it's the only way I can participate in society because - in case you haven't noticed - we now live in a dedicated cell phone society. It's no longer an option. God help us.

Had a great talk with the housemate last night and discovered a lot of opportunity to help each other overcome common problems.

Today I have left the cozy prison that is my bedroom, ascended Mount Staircase all the way to the second floor and am working (working?) at the dining room table while the ceiling fan blows cool air on me and whips my ridiculously long hair into my eyes. Need a headband or haircut apparently.

I just typed "Hope you're all still alive out there" and then realized that of course not all of you are.

Love FWG

Sleep Wars

I have been hugely sleep deprived for at least two years with very rare inexplicable hibernation periods of a day or two at a time. This has made me permanently groggy, stupid, lazy, unwise, petty, intolerant, impatient, unloving, unproductive, crippled with pain, financially handicapped and fatter than the average oliphant. Why some of my friends have stuck by me through this I do not know. They must be fools.

The challenges to sleep are: sleep aopnea (a CPAP machine), lack of financial commitment to service it properly, compromised lung capacity, breathing issues from dust and allergies, erratic shift work, daylight infringement, hip, shoulder, back and ear pain, an uncontrollable noisy dog and other house noise, other discomfort issues and subsequent secondary issues deriving from this list.

The specific battles which manifest from the above, and combinations of the above (negative feedback loops galore), make for an even longer list and the specific tasks I must achieve in order to fight all these battles and make good sleep possible or even probable is so long you would not believe me if I told you. Usually, to this compromised brain, it feels impossible to even make an attempt.

I realize with more and more certainty that sleep is the central battle of my “life” (or rude facsimile thereof).

I basically cannot walk anymore but awkward painful specialist appointments all fail to explain precisely why. I feel like a crash test dummy on the verge of hitting the wall, and frankly I don’t know what happens after that. To be honest, I wish I could be institutionalized and forced to submit to some horrible therapy of diet and exercise.

However! I have made inroads of late that feel to be of a different nature. I have summoned some real commitment two days in a row and made some real progress against the hoarding barrier. I have also tinkered with strategies around pillow arrangements, CPAP machine therapy settings, and more effectively managing my (thoroughly standard) caffeine addiction and nutritional balance so as to more optimize my pitiful energy levels, which is key to the prospects of interrupting this giant vicious circle. There have been other small inroads around preventative stretching and exercise.

It feels certain to me that this is my last chance. If I fail now… life as I know it will be finished. I don’t say this with dread, but with real optimism.

If you know me in person, please do not be kind at this time. Kick me in the ass as hard as you can and tell me to get my shit together. Thank you.

Q is for Quest

From my late teens until the current decade I was strongly motivated by instinctive desires. Overlapping that in the new millennium I was strongly motivated by very noble desires.

And now, for the first time, basically, in memory, there are no strong motivations in me. And I strongly feel that vacancy. How do I take less compelling goals and make them feel urgent enough to motivate me?

One such goal is to become travel-ready. That means weight loss. The Eloquent Potter is off now to Cambodia and Vietnam on his own five-month quest. We both need to find ourselves in various manners of speaking. I fully expect he will move there permanently before long. I will want to visit him there. The idea of a more natural environment and a language gap are so very appealing these days. And I will want to visit India. I may require a long break from this society as a last-ditch effort to maybe learn to love it again. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. I have a lot of contempt to get over.