Hello, I must be going
I've been thinking about getting back to doing this for a few weeks now, but only just got around to it.
An incredibly amount of things have changed in the years since my last post and it'd be ridiculous to try and catch up, like there's an audience for this, this is just for me. And you, if you find it. Welcome to my thoughts.
I've had a new job for a few weeks now and after many many years of over work, underpay, and a just horribly abusive relationship with my work, now I'm working fewer hours, getting more money and starting to have some idea of my life back. I'm still not really sure what to do with it, I've spent so many years just about surviving, just barely scraping enough money, enough sleep to keep myself going for one more day, suddenly not having to go bed at half eight to get up at four is a shock. It's nice, I'm not complaining, but it's so new I still don't really know what to do with all this free time. Still, I'm sure I'll find plenty of ways to waste it, given time.
Okay, not an earth shattering first post, but hopefully this will become a regular thing (so easy to do with modern technology, I'm blogging on my phone whilst lying on my bed) and it will be worthwhile.
Perspectives
Today hasn't been the best day health-wise, but I think I understood something in a different way today. I know my illness doesn't just effect me, it effects the people around me, but my reaction to that knowledge has always been to feel guilt that I am ruining things for others, and get kinda mopey. That's my instinctive reaction to most things I think, to feel bad for doing them, but today I saw it from a different perspective. Those around me know about my illness, and accept it as part of me. My being down on myself does nobody any favours, so I owe it to those who stick around to do what I can. That's it, just do what I can. Not focus on what I can't do, but what I can.
It's such a simple lesson it makes you wonder why I've never got it before, doesn't it?
Stage Five: Acceptance
I never did get back to work in this short week, and I've had my ups and downs, as you would expect. I've spent the past few years in the belief that my condition was going to get better, that I would need less medication, that the bouts would become rarer and less severe with time, and that eventually they would go away all together, and I would for all intents and purposes be "normal". However the research and conversation of the past few weeks is leading me down another, darker path, and that is that this will never go away. It may even get worse as I age. And I'll have to learn how to live with it. People live with far, far worse, I know that, but I haven't, I have lead, for want of a better phrase, a pretty charmed life. Sure things have gone wrong, but rarely anything that can't be fixed, and even more rarely anything all that dreadful. I guess it's character building time, eh?
Everything else is a bit of a mixture. Yesterday was the (or perhaps a) royal wedding, and apart from most people getting a day off work, I hadn't given it a minutes thought. Yesterday when I woke up, not that late at all I might add, Peterborough seemed a ghost town, and I assume this is because everybody was inside watching the event on TV. I was not one of those people, and I was amazed that so many people were apparently swept up in the whole thing. My anti-monarchy feelings are no secret to anyone who has read my words before, but I harbour no personal ill will to the royal couple, I just strongly feel that their wedding is in essence none of my fucking business. Still, nice of them to give everyone a day off I suppose.
And now we're off work for just over a week for Becky's birthday. We were supposed to be going away, but what with the inconsistent hours I've had at work since the New Year and then my being ill we've decided to cancel that, which is completely rubbish, but not as rubbish as either going away and having to scrimp and save and watch the pennies, or worse going away and have me suffer a major attack so we don't leave the hotel room.
Also Firefox 4 is here. And disabling a few of my favourite add ons. Bugger
I Found Low
I don't really know where this is going to go, but I think I need to say something, so I'll say it here.
For just over a week now I've been suffering a pretty major dizzy period. I've had them off and on, but not this severe or long lasting for a good few years now, and it's getting to me.
I know in my head that nobody blames me for this, or thinks less of me, and I also know that stressing myself isn't going to help but I've been feeling low, really low. I don't know what to do when I am alone, there isn't much I can do if I'm honest, and just sitting, being, isn't the easiest thing. Apparently the extra paranoia comes from the disease itself, or maybe comes with the disease is a better way to put it. I know I am neither alone nor unusual in this regard, I've been having a good look online recently, but still it's hard not to feel isolated.
I've always thought that this was going to get better, that periods of decompensation would become fewer and further between, but my research over the past week hasn't been so optimistic. For a start, all the various "dizzy" syndromes seem confused, poorly delineated and I think poorly understood. I certainly suffer symptoms that cross several boundaries, and don't conform clearly to any particular group, although the Meniere's diagnosis I got from the specialist those many years ago does seem the best match for me, although my attacks are both longer lived and also less severe (I've never been so dizzy that I throw up, at least not for years and years for instance). If it IS Meniere's, then there is an inevitable degeneration to look forward to, during which the symptoms will spread to both ears, my hearing will be damaged but on the plus side during this period the dizzy spells will fade and eventually stop. It strikes me that maybe it's something else, something that isn't really known about. Not that I am suggesting that I am special, a patient zero for whatever this is, just that with all due respect to GPs, they just don't have the time or inclination to look too deeply into cases that are managed by the received wisdom. And I pretty much am managed by the received wisdom.
I would normally think that I could stay inside indefinitely, and never get bored, but after a week an a bit I am already going a bit crackers. It's not that I have a lack of entertainments or diversions, more a limit on how long I can enjoy these things before I start to feel altered or other and have to stop. On top of that I am really having a hard time sleeping. Not that I don't feel tired, cos I do, oh so very tired, but I can't sleep for more than a few minutes at a time and when I do I am plagued with dreams which are strange and disturbing even by my standards.
When I write it all out like this it all seems so trivial, so petty, but when it's stuck in my head it seems insurmountable.
World Of (Slight) Hurt
Oh I ache today.
We had a long weekend this week, mainly for the sake of a trip to the doctors to get my medicine reviewed, which took all of about ten minutes and then the rest of the day was ours to do with as we would! So naturally we went to Lincoln.
That's not why I ache though, why I ache is cos I was back at work today and my proper van still hasn't been fixed and I am stuck in that bloody stupid transit, and I find it massively uncomfortable. My lower back is incredibly painful, and I apparently have some tendinitis in my right wrist. This is less than I ideal given that my job essentially involves sitting down and carrying things. Ah well, I am sure I will recover in time.
As I think I mentioned last time I am suddenly very "into" Games Workshop stuff, and seem to have conversion and painting ideas running around in my head almost constantly, but they are all shockingly ephemeral. I have just started reading Dan Abnett's rather awesome Gaunt's Ghosts novels and they have got me massively excited about the Imperial Guard for the first time in my entire gaming career, and for a good week or so there I was reading Guard stuff, having thoughts and ideas, making plans and then today I picked up a White Dwarf from a couple of months ago with the new Space Wolf stuff in (some of which I already have cos me and the Sons of Russ go back a LONG way) and of course I am all excited about them again now. Oh and the new Skaven. It seems to me I can't settle on anything unless it has the word new in it's description and then I only love it for a month (or at least I can only concentrate on it for a month, and then there's another new thing along to replace it in my fickle affections)!
In a follow up to a previous blog I feel I have to comment on the terrifying number of dead badgers I saw by the roadside today. Three. Three may not seem like a particularly terrifying number in and of itself but as has been previously recorded I have never so much as seen a living badger, so the number of (apparently) freshly dead ones is both a source of some mystery (where do they all come from?) and also some not insignificant sadness.
Other things that happened in the blog hiatus (because hiatus sounds so much better than time-when-I-just-couldn't-be-bothered-with-the-whole-thing, although they are pretty much synonymous)? Most significantly, or at least most significantly that comes to mind, is that I turned forty. To celebrate Becky baked me a fabulous Ork cake and I bought Star Wars LEGO. Seems I'm all grown up now.
2010: The Year We Make Contact
Here I am again, with another in my very occasional series of blog entries.
Since last I wrote I have done almost nothing but work, my usual long weeks of long days, leaving me very little time or energy for anything beyond that. Just recently however, work has been going pretty well and whilst I am still out of the house for ridiculous fourteen plus hour days I do have pretty decent breaks in the middle of the day and I am finally starting to catch up on my reading. Reading is something I have enjoyed almost my entire life but in the past eighteen months or so I've just not been able to find the time or energy to do it, and starting to read again, even if it is essentially pulp nonsense (I am reading quite a lot of Warhammer related Black Library stuff, which varies from barely competent to actually pretty damn good, and is of course nerdy as all hell), is a nice and curiously fulfilling feeling. On top of that I've actually been inspired to find the time, or I suppose more accurately make the time, to actually pick up a paint brush and start to paint again, even if only a little. One thing that's surprised me about that is how much my painting style has changed since I last held a brush; I am much less anal. Before I would paint pretty much everything with a fine detail brush, and would really fuss over the perfection (or, if we're honest, otherwise) of the paint job, whereas just recently I seem to feel much happier using other brushes and achieving paint effects with much more relaxed and casual brush strokes. I've even started painting the Forge World Eldar Avatar I was given for my birthday a couple of years ago, and although I've had a pretty strong and clear idea of what I wanted to do I've not had the confidence to put paint on this very expensive model for fear of ruining it!
As part of our post Christmas (Christmas was excellent btw) we discussed moving house in the course of the year because frankly where we live now is over priced, under maintained and for Becky at least, massively inconvenient. So we had a look at what was available, found a place we liked the look of, had a viewing, and before you know it we've applied for the tenancy and could be moving in the next couple of weeks (or at least starting to move!) The property we're looking at saves a pretty substantial amount of money per month in rent, has double glazing throughout (something that we could really have used in the past month, with our crazy winter) and a garden that should prove significantly more manageable (for us, we're terrible gardeners). On top of that it has a couple of things which to me make it seem like an incredibly grown up house; the kitchen room has room for a dining table, and there is a hallway with stairs in, rather than them just going off the living room as they do here! I'd be lying if I said I was looking forward to the process of moving, cos I'm really not, but I am very excited about living in a (to us) new place! I worry about the animals though. I think Rocket will be fine, he took the move here with great aplomb and carried on like this was all perfectly normal, but the kittens, well they're both daft as brushes and Panda particularly is a little scaredy cat. I expect once the initial trauma is over they'll settle down though, and have fun exploring a new place. Also Panda isn't little, we gave them one of their periodic weighings this morning and whilst Boo is still pretty petite at seven pounds, Panda now weighs a rather epic eleven pounds! He's not a fat cat either, just a big strong boy! Who is scared of pretty much everything, including from time to time, us. Silly big Panda! I expect there will be more on kittens in a future blog, assuming I manage to keep this up!
Lots of other things have been going on, I had a birthday and got old, there was Christmas as previously alluded to, and weight loss has continued apace to the point where I have now lost a pretty massive six stone! Crazy to think that this time last year I was too heavy to be weighed on most household scales, topping out at over tweny one and a half stone! Now I am can pretty much pass for normal! And James Cameron's Avatar came out and... I can't be bothered to go and see it. I don't understand that reaction at all. Well, I understand a part of it; I am worried about how the 3D will affect my dizzy, but other than that I haven't got a clue. Hopefully I'll get round to it while it's still at the cinema and I can experience it in 3D as was originally intended.
Right, I think that's quite enough for one day, time to stop.
The Evil That Men Do
It's been a long week, over seventy hours, and it's late on Saturday night.
While I was out driving today I think I ran over and killed a ferret or something similar. It wasn't intentional, and I felt awful about it but there was little I could do when this tiny little thing ran out in front of me on a busy road, and then dithered about in the middle, presumably frightened by all the rapidly moving objects surrounding it. It was right to be afraid. I don't know if it survived our encounter and was just buffeted by my passage or if, as I suspect, the tiny body I saw bouncing and rolling in my rear view mirror was dead. That got me thinking about all the other things I've seen dead by the side of the road over the years, and I see far too many things, and sadly run over one or two myself (the fox particularly still makes me feel sick to my stomach). There's just carnage along the side of roads in the countryside, particularly early in the morning when I'm often about. And you know I have never seen a live badger, ever, in my forty years on this planet, but I've seen far too many dead ones. Hell I even saw a dead deer the other day and wondered if the person who hit it did so deliberately, or if they just didn't care, or whether it was all just some horrible accident and the deer almost left them no choice. I feel sorry for the animals that have to live in this world we've made, a world so far beyond their comprehension or anything that evolution has equipped them for.
Which is all very bleak and depressing, which is odd because all things considered it's been a good week; the weather has been nice, work has been okay, money is coming in again and a debt is finally paid off. And kittens are getting so big! Well, Panda is, he's really starting to look like a boy cat, Boo is still very tiny and delicate. We have excellent kittens.
