Motivation

I've been having a lot of motivation problems of late. It's obviously shown itself in how neglected this weblog has become. I've got a number of unfinished drafts that I've attempted to tackle over the past several months, but I've given up on trying to finish them. January saw a change in my medications to coincide with a new diagnosis of Mania instead of Moderate Depression. My current mood stabilizer is doing a good job of helping me sleep, which was important. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be helping to stabilize my mood, so I'm going to have to try something different. I'm irritable, impatient, stressed, and my down spells are becoming longer and more frequent. When I try to be productive (especially at work), I get overwhelmed and mentally exhausted. If I'm not productive, I get anxious. While my visits to my counselor have also helped tremendously, it's not a full solution unto itself. Because of the time taken off of work, I made the mistake of setting my next appointment further out than I normally do. 

    Work has been a particularly large source of stress as there's been a change in our hierarchy and how things get done. It's put a lot of things in uncertain positions, and that's unsettling. It also doesn't help that I'm not at work right now and there's a lot I want to get done. I'm not at work because I'm at home, and I'm at home because just yesterday I tested positive for COVID-19. Over 2 years of hide-and-seek with this bastard strand of RNA and I finally lost. I suppose it was inevitable, and I'm beyond glad it's happened after I've been fully vaccinated and even boosted. My symptoms are persistent, but overall mild. Company policy requires me to isolate for 5 days, which means I'm off until Monday. 

    Discovery of my COVID status after a follow-up appointment over a small medical emergency I had at the start of the month. In the late evening, I began to experience unbearable lower back pain that did not go away. There was no position that alleviated the discomfort and eventually I realized I was going to have to go to the hospital. I was shaking so much I couldn't drive. Whether said shakes were from the pain or the fear that this may have been a sign of something worse, it was very hard to tell. A CT scan revealed a kidney stone measuring 2mm x 8mm had formed in my left kidney and was about 75% of the way down to my bladder. I was given painkillers and a medication meant to relax the ureter where the stone was lodged. This follow-up appointment was an attempt to see if I had passed the stone or not. Once a stone is in the bladder, there's not a lot that can be done for it. If one is still lodged in the ureter, this requires surgery. Fortunately, my X-Ray was clear. 

    This is the part where I say my medical scare was the kick in the pants I needed and started being more productive outside of work because my clean bill of health was a new lease on life and... No. There is nothing of the sort here. My vain hope is that by posting this, it will actually motivate me to write more so I can effectively bury this entry and I won't have to think about it anymore. It reminds of something YouTuber Wheezywaiter said about when he feels as if a video he's made is not up to snuff. His solution, he says, is to make more content, not less. I guess if you're worried about quality, shift your focus to quantity and see what happens. 

Goodnight, and good luck. 

Mask. Copy.

During a business trip with my family to Washington state, I remember sitting through this documentary about Mt. Saint Helens, which had erupted only a few years prior. One image that stuck with me is one of people walking through smoggy streets all wearing surgical masks. There was also this one image from a science book about cities of the future that burned itself into my brain. 

This is the Usborne Book of the Future. It’s sadly out of print, but has been scanned and archived at various locations. It’s a little bit dated on the science side of things, but still a fascinating look into our past visions of the future. http://calameo.download/00081642432fc0bfded26

Fast-forward to several years later when I started watching anime and generally learning what I could about Japanese culture, and I noticed a recurring theme of some people wearing surgical masks in public. I never quite put together what was going on, though there was this correlation between wearing the mask and being sick, not unlike wearing a scarf or muffler. It was later explained to me that the mask is worn by the sick person to keep them from spreading it to others, which probably took my brain more time to process than I'd prefer to admit to because you always see the surgical mask of keeping things OUT rather than IN, hence being worn by surgeons. Like almost everything in Japan, something as practical as a paper fiber mask became an entire aesthetic unto itself. While there may be some connotations with gang activity, these are very much the exception and not the rule. 

Fast forward again to a few years ago when I read a post about someone with a severe tree nut allergy suffering through the holidays, and "suffering" is not being melodramatic or hyperbolic. This is someone with a tree nut allergy so severe that the mere smell of nuts can trigger a reaction requiring an epi-pen. Most of the time, this isn't a problem for her. However, when the holidays roll around, grocery stores suddenly become mine fields dotted with bushels of walnuts, almonds, and macadamias. The solution to this problem is a simple enough one, a neoprene mask with a few filters to allow better ventilation while also trapping the offending particles. Unfortunately, this solution invites more than a few stares and even full-blown suspicions from others in the grocery store. Age plays a small role in this, one might assume; someone sees an elderly person wearing one, they won't think twice, or maybe they'll put it together that they're trying to keep the bad stuff out. If it's a youngster, suddenly it becomes an issue of morals and criminal justice... never mind that if someone is going to rob a grocery store, they're not going to wander around the produce section pushing a cart and asking staff where the stuffed mushrooms are, all while wearing a mask. 

A few years later, we had a really bad flu season. I had missed my flu shot because we were unseasonably warm and I had assumed (incorrectly I learned later) that it was all the more unlikely I'd get the flu and that if I did get the shot, it may not be effective because I may well have gotten it too early. Well, I did get sick, and I probably don't have to tell you how horrible it was. Fortunately, I was put on some antibiotics which helped, along with getting some of my aforementioned misconceptions cleared up by my doctor. Since then, it's become a small tradition every Labor Day to take advantage of the time off work to beat any lines and get my flu shot. Around the same time, when my roommate was sick, she hit upon the idea of getting a box of those surgical masks from the local Walgreens. It wasn’t uncommon to see people in masks, though usually it was older folks who were likely using it to keep OUT rather than IN. 

Today, we’re glad we still have some left. I’ve got some reusable ones, but these served well in the time before those arrived. 

It's rather surreal that seeing someone wearing a mask has become so rapidly normalized. People will likely still be wearing them long after lockdown orders are fully relaxed. I'll certainly be wearing them when flu season comes around, novel viruses notwithstanding. All of this talk about when we’ll have normalcy or what-have-you is ignoring a lot of history. Just think of how air travel has been affected by the 9/11 terror attacks. The very fact that your bathroom has an abundance of tile and similarly slick and washable surfaces is a result of previous pandemics, including the Spanish Flu, Cholera, Tuberculosis, and Polio. 

When we go to buffets or cafeterias, we don’t give a second thought to the sneeze guards over the salad bar. We all know why they’re there, and I don’t know of anyone who’s raised a fit over it. Maybe that wasn’t the case when they were new, but any outrage today invites more eye-rolls than affirming or polite nods. I think about that when I go to grocery shopping and see the sneeze guards in front of the cashiers. At first, these were pretty ramshackled affairs, painter’s tarps draped over scrap wood or some PVC pipe. Now, many of them are plexiglass with some strips of particle board or metal brackets for reinforcements. Sure, it’s one more surface to clean up at the end of the day, and obviously they’re going to have to be replaced as they get scuffed, scratched, and cracked from general wear-and-tear, but as far as a regular operating expense goes, what exactly would be the harm in leaving them up? It’s no different than some convenience stores in rough neighborhoods putting their cashiers behind glass boxes that make my bank’s entrance look like a screen door on rusty hinges. If that expense can be justified, what’s a little Lexan at Lowes? What’s wrong with these handfuls of extra precautions no more onerous or intrusive on our daily lives than motion sensors on restroom sinks and hand dryers or anything being advertised as Lead-free? 

It's an amusing thought that for X number of people who simply see the mask and don't give it a second thought, there's at least 1 person out of that group who is silently screaming because of some hang-up or pet peeve yet doesn't want to say anything because it's simply not worth the effort to let the world know a piece of fabric can send you on a tirade? 

It’s not a new thing, it’s doing far more good than harm, and it’s not going away. No one’s trying to control you, no one’s trying to infringe on your rights, and no one is trampling on your deeply-held beliefs. It’s a practical solution to a legitimate real-world problem. It transcends politics and ideologies. Having personal freedom means taking personal responsibility for what you do with those freedoms as well as fail to do in spite of them. We are individuals, but we are singular as much as we are plural. 

Never Gets Easier

Today was rather depressing, and it left me at my wit's end, and while there may be a happy ending for my mental state, it means someone else may not have one. A few weeks ago, we came to have a third cat, one that we rescued from a couple taking her to the shelter to be put down. We named her Angel and tried to introduce her slowly to the idea of living with two other cats. We kept her corralled in one of the bathrooms with her own food dish and litterbox. We'd let her out during the day, where one of us could watch her, keep her from fighting too badly with the cats or keep her from marking her territory, and then set her back in at night. Eventually, it worked out to where she was no longer being pent up at night and seemed to be getting along with the other cats.
This didn't last, and she fell back on old habits. We tried everything to help her get back in the habit of using a litterbox and also not overeating. She was painfully skinny when we got her (we even thought she was a kitten until a vet told us she was at least the same age as the other two cats) and while we gave her food, she was so unused to having that much food, she could barely keep it down. The biggest problem this created was that we couldn't get her spayed (which would have stopped her marking her territory, hopefully, and keep the other two cats, both neutered, from bothering her) which meant we couldn't really take her to my roommate's mom's place to be an outdoor cat.
Today was the worst of it. She'd squat down to pee on the rug or a piece of paper on the floor or her little cat cubicle, I'd pick her up to take her to one of the two litterboxes, and practically hold her in until she'd do her business. The fact that I didn't have to do this before is what makes it the most painful. I won't get into the politics of how the three cats have or haven't gotten along, and which of us they have or haven't taken to as a result, but when all is said and done, I just can't take care of three cats.
I went to my roommate, expecting a fight as this was meant to be her cat, and told her, "I can't do this anymore." She turned out to be very understanding, but insisted we try and see if her mom could take her early, keep her penned up in a spare room like we had until she could be let outdoors. There was also the possibility that they'd find someone to take her in. However, I was fed up with waiting, and with my patience gone, I didn't want to wait on promises of "maybe." So, I'm writing this after our talk, and the deal is that she'll talk to her brother and mother, and if they don't have a decision for me by the time I get home from work tomorrow (Monday), Angel will go to a shelter.
This pains me because I've had to do this before with another cat for similar reasons. It also just makes me feel guilty because it's as if I've given up, and there's others out there who wouldn't. I have to assure myself that I did everything I could and that, failing all else, I'm better than the people who had her before. I may not believe in fate, necessarily, but I'm a firm believer in the notion that God helps those who help themselves. Angel has spent countless hours in my lap since we got her (she even let me put her around my shoulders like a scarf, that's how trusting she is), and I've had her looked over by a vet to be given various immunizations and boosters. Now, though, it's as if there's been no change, and I've done all I can for her. I still feel guilty, but my roommate helped me, and I feel confident that I have done all I can for little Angel, but now it's time to move on.
October, and fall in general for that matter, always seem to be the most hectic of Hells for me, and this is just one more thing that's happened. Another reason I'm sending her on her way so early in this week is because toward the end of the week, I'm having ultrasound to find out the source of my abdominal pain, now that my doctor has ruled out absolutely everything the location of my pain indicates. Hopefully, it's nothing, at worst a little blockage, but it's still one more damn thing to deal with.

My Trust Was Betrayed

UPDATE: Confrontation is always awkward, but it's better than just venting to everyone/no one. Deleting entries always feels dishonest, and I'd rather fix the present than erase the past.

This is one of those situations where the matter itself seems pedestrian, even inconsequential, but its implications and preceding events give it a gravitas that does not turn the molehill into the mountain by exaggeration, but reveals it as one by way of perspective.


I have a chocolate stash. It's a "stash" because my roommate has a weight problem and virtually no self control (the result of depression, among a handful of other issues). About three years ago, she even asked me to put a lock on the pantry door at our old apartment. I told her flat out that I would do no such thing as I didn't feel like locks and keys had to factor into my eating habits. Since then, things have not changed that much, and I've just about given up on trying to help her despite her asking me sometimes. The pattern breaks down like this:


*) She asks me for help.
*) I tell her to hold back (and sometimes take actions to that end).
*) She gets angry and carries on. I tell her I'm trying to help, just like she asked.
*) She says that she knows, but can't help feeling angry, and carries on out of spite.
*) I point out the absurdity of that way of thinking.
*) She says that she knows, and breaks down crying.
*) I tell her I'm not going to help her just for her to project onto.
*) She says she'll try, and I believe her a little less every time.


Irrational behavior that turns willful when help is offered upon request. Turn that over in your mind for a moment.


As a result of this, something of a compromise has been reached. I don't hide or restrict all our food, but I do keep a few things out of sight for reasons that will become abundantly clear.


Above our sink is a cabinet where I keep some of the liquor. On one side is a small cardboard box with my shotglass collection in it. On top of this box, I often keep a few Hershey bars and a jar of peanut butter. It wasn't until a few months ago that I even told her about it. The deal ultimately is that I don't dictate her diet, just as long as what's above the sink stays off-limits (she can barely reach it, anyway). The fact is that I work and she doesn't, so there's an eight-plus hour window of temptation.


Two days earlier, I'd stocked it with a pair of Hershey bars. When I was getting them at the store, I also picked up some potato chips. I told her about the chips, but not the bars (again, out of sight, out of mind). I do not touch the chips out of respect (after all, I've got the two great tastes that taste great together).


Yesterday, I noticed one of the bars was gone. I thought it just fell behind the cardboard box and left it at that.


Today, I get this text message, which I read on my break at work:

"Can of air, candy - heath, twizzler, favred starburst"

My reply:

"Air is in the closet in the office, top shelf immediately on your left."

Her reply:

"I dont like to tear my comp appart." 

Not that I was telling her, "Do it yourself." but that's not the point, chalk it up to assumptions. She sends another message 2 hours later:

"Bread couple loaves, can go in freezer"

Admittedly rolling my eyes (planning ahead is not her strong suit), I reply:

"I'll pick them up tmw along w/ the candy since I already have to drive into Ellisville to get my tickets sorted out."

She says:

"Mk"

We live about a good 30 minutes from any grocery store. Needless to say, small trips are a little inconvenient. Also, I'd gone grocery shopping the previous day, which had me a little annoyed at her being so scatterbrained. So, with tomorrow's trip planned, I came home, made dinner, and, shortly thereafter, went to my stash. The last bar was gone, and I realized nothing had fallen behind the box.


I stormed into the office, seething. She asked what's wrong, and I said, "Hershey bar."
Her response is, "Well, that's why I was tellin' ya to get more candy." and I can't tell if she's jokingly apologizing or being defensive and willful. She told me to take some of her cash and go get some more, and I still can't tell if she's actually trying to make amends or acting tough to make me feel like the bad guy.
I'm too mad to say anything, as much as I wanted to say, "I had no intention of driving anywhere tonight, and I'm not going to renege on that because you've got no self-control."


I feel like I'm being manipulated. Things haven't been going well, and this is just one more matter.

Video Review At Last

And the winner is... Gamespot, for video hosting that isn't impractical, annoying, or run by howler monkeys with severe head traumas and at least three missing limbs. This is the fourth take and a really pitiful attempt to get below ten minutes. I ended with time to spare, and while I left out a lot of jokes, I also left out a lot of more critical elements, so I'll probably end up writing a supplemental text review to go along with the video.