Viewing entries tagged with "hard times"   //
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Where Am I Now?

8

It’s been a par­tic­u­larly try­ing week. I’ve been feel­ing so jaded. Broken. Helpless. Undefined.

Both the cause and the con­se­quence is that I’ve been sleep­ing ter­ri­bly lately. Next week I’m going to try to have a more self-control and stay on a strict sched­ule. Bring some order into my life.

I tried to make an appoint­ment with my ther­a­pist, since I have $300 men­tal health cov­er­age with my work per cal­en­dar year (although this only amounts to two ses­sions). Unfortunately, I need a refer­ral from my fam­ily doc­tor to claim the cov­er­age, because refer­rals are only good for one year, and it’s been that long since I saw him.

I think of how judg­men­tal my dad was when I told him I was see­ing a psy­chol­o­gist. But then I real­ize that he’s prob­a­bly the only per­son I feel like I can really talk to right now (my ther­a­pist, not my dad). I wish I could talk to my friends, but my thoughts are either too embar­rass­ing to admit to them, or too com­pli­cated for them to understand.

I’ve been lis­ten­ing to some quiet, som­bre stuff lately. Trying to acquire a taste for Leonard Cohen’s mid­dle years, when he traded in his gui­tar for horns and vio­lins, even some Depeche Mode. Depeche Fucking Mode. It hasn’t been helping.

I just don’t know what to do with myself lately. But I’m pretty sure I really need to cry right now.

Date  August 21, 2009
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Categories  Daily Life

Holiday Hell

6

Nightmare. The word almost every­one has been using to describe this hot water sit­u­a­tion. From my friends and cowork­ers, to the plumb­ing tech­ni­cians, to the sales reps, to the contractors.

When the con­trac­tor came over to make holes in my ceil­ing, he brushed against a pipe that went to the hot water tank, and since it was almost rusted com­pletely through, it snapped and started leak­ing. Water shoots out of the hole any time I turn the water on, so I’ve had to shut off the main valve. Now I have no water. I can’t wash my hands, I can’t go to the bathroom.

The exhaust pipe that goes to my fur­nace isn’t up to code any­more either, so even if I get all this work done on the house, my ceil­ing would have to be ripped up again when the fur­nace goes. And since mine is 12-years-old and rated for 15 years, it could die on me as soon as three years (or sooner). So I’ll be get­ting the fur­nace pipe replaced too, which essen­tially dou­bles my pipe instal­la­tion costs.

In addi­tion to mov­ing as much fur­ni­ture out of my room as pos­si­ble into my guest room (thereby rob­bing me of my photo stu­dio, Tai Chi prac­tice area, bed­room, and main com­puter), I’ll have to cover the remain­ing things in sheets to pro­tect them from the dust. When the pip­ing is all replaced1, the con­trac­tor needs to come in and patch up the holes, scrape all the stip­ple off my ceil­ing, respray the stip­ple on, and repaint it. I don’t even have an esti­mate of how much that’s going to cost.

The house is my one area of sta­bil­ity. Where I retreat to when every­thing else is falling apart. The one place I need to be con­stant. I won’t feel set­tled until it’s all been resolved.

And to think that I was look­ing for­ward to the hol­i­days. I was pic­tur­ing myself enjoy­ing my well-earned time off, eat­ing bacon and eggs, play­ing a few games, and start­ing some new projects.

How far away the image seems now.

  1. And with luck, they won’t refuse to do the job because they don’t have enough clear­ance. [↑]
Date  December 25, 2008
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Categories  Daily Life

Life Is Pain

4

Hand spot

Sometimes, you stab your­self in the hand with a point, but it’s not sharp enough to break the skin.

Sometimes, the blood comes to the sur­face, and this is as much of your­self as you can show the world.

Sometimes, the pave­ment is cov­ered in snow out­side, and you can drive over 100kph in one spot before the trac­tion kicks in.

Sometimes, you scare your­self with your recklessness.

Sometimes, you real­ize that life is pain.

Sometimes, you have noth­ing left but numb­ness and resolve.

Date  December 23, 2008
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Categories  Photos Random

Someone To Take Care Of Me

15

It’s times like this I wish I had some­one to take care of me1, because I’m tired of tak­ing care of myself.

  1. Pat once told me there should be a per­son in every group who’s always con­trolled, calm, and together (in case of emer­gency, or oth­er­wise), and he tries to be this per­son. It must be true, because he’s my rock, the friend who has never let me down. I once asked him if this idea extended to his mar­riage, and he told me that it applied to 90% of the time. But for the other 10%, when he’s tired, unmo­ti­vated, and doesn’t care any­more, Jenny takes over, and he admit­ted to me that he’s become depen­dent on this. [↑]
Date  November 18, 2008
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Categories  Daily Life Random

Overflow

3

When a man is full, what can he do?

Burst.

—Zorba, the Greek

Or in my case, overflow.

I started cry­ing in class. Thankfully, no one noticed. People can get awk­ward around a crier. Unfortunately, sup­press­ing a good cry is as unsat­is­fy­ing as sti­fling a sneeze.

A lot of peo­ple hav­ing been say­ing the wrong things to me lately. On top of that, the abun­dance of inter­ac­tion I have with peo­ple — a side-effect of my projects — is leav­ing me drained and overstimulated.

Sometimes I won­der if it’s in my nature to be emo­tional. That try­ing to change this is like try­ing to teach a bird not to sing.

I don’t even have time to deal with this. I have to put it all aside, because there are more impor­tant things to think about right now.

At the bus stop, I real­ized that I have a ten­dency to brood. I don’t lis­ten to happy songs to get me out of the mood. It’s all minor keys and lemon peels, so I can help it run its course.

It’s been a rough week.

Sometimes, a part of myself spills out.

Date  January 18, 2008
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Categories  Daily Life

A Pat On The Back

4

It was one of those days at work. Things weren’t exactly going wrong per se, but it was stress­ful enough as it was. People were all over me, want­ing this or that, under­min­ing my deci­sions, inter­rupt­ing my con­ver­sa­tions, run­ning around like their heads were cut off.

I kept remind­ing myself to breathe deeply (from the feet, as the Taoist sages are often described as doing) and calmly, kept think­ing about the word tat­tooed on my wrist, and it worked for a while.

By 3:15, I had to get out of the build­ing. It was sup­posed to be a three-song walk, but it ended up being nine. I didn’t even bring my coat; I was burn­ing so much inside, that I didn’t need it. The win­ter slushed creeped up my jeans by six inches, but thank­fully no one noticed.

Tyler was leav­ing as I was step­ping back into the office. He invited me to an art show at Bablyon tomor­row1. I told him that I’d think about it, know­ing in my head that I wouldn’t go.

I had to stay late to work on the server. Fifteen min­utes later, Tyler walked into my office (he must have walked part way, then turned around) and asked if I was alright. Admittedly, I’ve never been able to hide my moods very well, but I thought I was doing a decent job of it2. He told me he could feel that my energy was low, so he asked if I wanted a hug. I politely declined, not because I didn’t appre­ci­ate the ges­ture, but because I didn’t think it would have helped. He gave me a firm pat on the back any­way and stepped out of my office.

And it helped more than I ever would have expected.

  1. Which is strange, because the last thing I went to see at Babylon was a Dwarves con­cert [↑]
  2. Something of an old habit of mine. Not being able to hide my moods is often a bless­ing in dis­guise for me, because it com­mu­ni­cates to peo­ple that some­thing is wrong. Otherwise, they’d never know, and it would never be fixed. [↑]
Date  January 11, 2008
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Categories  Daily Life

Where I Belong

5

Those who rule in accor­dance with Tao do not use force against the world
For that which is forced is likely to return

—Verse 30, Tao Te Ching

I may know bet­ter, I may under­stand what I’m sup­posed to accept, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

Sometimes the world is crash­ing down around you, and all you can do is watch.

Because you can’t yell at the sky to keep it from falling.

Date  December 2, 2007
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Categories  Random

killkillkill

1

My spirit is burnt and there’s blood on my hands
The more I’m down, the less I under­stand
Once so found, now so lost
I ask no ques­tions,
It’s just one more bridge to cross

—Black Label Society, Bridge To Cross

I feel like a com­plete wreck. Between the dead­lines at work are the con­stant fires I’m respon­si­ble for putting out that slow my progress to a halt. My office is a flurry of paper drafts, com­puter parts, mis­cel­la­neous boxes, and to-do reminders. Concentration is dif­fi­cult because I’m start­ing to get lethar­gic and weak. I haven’t eaten any­thing decent in a week, although I seem to be stom­ach­ing cer­tain foods bet­ter today. I left work early to see a doc­tor at the walk-in clinic, only to find out that the vol­ume of patients had already exceeded the avail­able busi­ness hours for the day. I feel so help­less when I’m sick. All I can do is put the right things in my body, keep the wrong things out, and wait for my immune sys­tem to catch up. It’s tor­tu­ously frustrating.

John changed his avail­abil­ity at the wed­ding after I already requested that Tom squeeze him in. This not only reflects very poorly on me when I have to ask Tom to change his plans again, but also means that one of the only peo­ple who could save me won’t be there. I’m going to this wed­ding as a spe­cial favour to Tom (the rea­son for which I’ve cho­sen not to dis­cuss until after­ward) because I respect him and want to sup­port him, and that’s more impor­tant than any­thing else. Even Aaron seems to be break­ing my balls today, but I’m try­ing to assume that it’s just me.

For the first time in my life, I snapped out­right. A com­pletely unex­pected, phys­i­cal, vio­lent outburst.

Thumbnail: Counterstrike massacre 

To calm myself down, I bought an M249 Para, a Fabrique Nationale Five-SeveN (20 rounds a mag­a­zine make this a per­sonal favourite), some kel­var, and perched atop a tac­ti­cal stair­case, guard­ing myself against an army of knife wield­ing ene­mies. I’d be lying if I said that it didn’t help, if only for a lit­tle bit. 6x anti-aliasing isn’t hard to look at either.

I’m try­ing to be stoic, but it’s dif­fi­cult when I’m not only men­tally, but phys­i­cally drained as well. All I need to do is make it through the month. One day at a time.

Date  August 8, 2005
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Categories  Daily Life
Viewing entries tagged with "hard times"   //
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