Never: At no time; on no occasion; in no circumstance; not previously.
Forever: For all time, for all eternity; for a lifetime; for an infinite amount of time.
Pain: The condition or fact of suffering or anguish, especially mental; torment; anguish.
Pain motivates the individual to withdraw from damaging situations, to protect a damaged body part while it heals, and to avoid similar experiences in the future. Most pain resolves once the noxious stimulus is removed and the body has healed, but it may persist despite removal of the stimulus and apparent healing of the body. Sometimes pain arises in the absence of any detectable stimulus, damage or disease.
"Why do I hate pain so much?" I asked SuperK, right out of the chute, first thing in the morning. Might as well get the focus on me ASAP.
"Well, nobody likes pain," she said, quite reasonably. "But you have a tendency to get into your Never and Forever mode. And that's your mother. You think it's always going to be like this and it's never going to change."
Mom!!
Then I have to think about the counterpoint offered by dear Kenner who had only three responses and three responses only to anything I said: This, too, shall pass; Principles before Personalities; and I forget the third thing. I talked to this man over the course of 25 years and everything that I brought up fit in one of these slots. Talk about keeping it simple. It's remarkable that one of the slots - This, too, shall pass - has never really entered in my consciousness in any long-lasting and meaningful way. It has been an burr under my saddle now and forevermore. Maybe that's why he kept repeating it.
I can only hope that I'm learning something. My wife will frequently say to me: "Why do I try to tell you anything? You're going to do whatever you want to do anyway."
Well, guilty as charged, unfortunately.
Stubborn: Refusing to move or change one's opinion; obstinate; firmly resisting; persistent in doing something.
I know that I'm somewhat compulsive in my exercising. I know I have a lot of nervous energy that I exacerbate with caffeine and sugar, and that it feels good to burn off this mental dross. I'm also vaguely aware that I'm no kid and that some of this activity is starting to boomerang on me, causing me discomfort that is a little more severe and a little longer lasting. When the thing that is supposed to be good for you is causing more trouble than it's solving . . . .
"Why do you have to go out and take four hour hikes in the mountains, anyway?" she said, getting exasperated and, frankly, a little worked up. "Why do you have to swim four times a week?"
I don't know.
Compulsion: An irrational need or irresistible urge to perform some action, often despite negative consequences.
Sunday, April 15, 2018
Saturday, April 14, 2018
Mental Things That Are Centered in My Mind
Patient: Willing to wait if necessary; constant in pursuit or exertion; persevering; calmly diligent.
Yesterday I figured that the smart thing to do would be to give my knee another couple of days to heal before going to visit a doctor. I say this sheepishly because I'm virtually certain that I'm making a mountain out of a molehill, a specialty of mine. There's nothing of so little insignificance that I can't expand into something of great significance. Then I decided that I would make the appointment for the end of the week - if my joint improved then I could cancel giving a fair amount of warning - in the hope that taking a little action - any action - would improve my peace of mind. With me it's rarely the physical pain - it's the mental anguish of worrying.
Little Westside Jonny and I had a lively debate once - while we were floating in a canoe on a shallow, murky lake in the Amazon Basin - over the size of compensation that we would each require to spend one night on any of the little vegetation-choked islets that were scattered around. I think I ended up as low as $50,000 as I detailed how I would clear the brush from the base of a tree, climb up as high as I could go, then sing at the top of my lungs all night, hoping to scare away most predators and lizards and insects and such. It was sort of a white board, brain-storm about how to survive with a sound mind for a night in the jungle. LWSJ refused to even consider a sum.
"You couldn't handle the misery for one night?" I asked, incredulously. "For a million dollars?"
"Oh, I could handle the physical part," he said. "But I'd have no mind left when the sun came up."
I get that. My mind is not my friend. When I think of LWSJ I think of the man who coined my motto: "Prone to Anxiety."
Vis-a-vis the doctor I realized that I was dicking around, delaying the inevitable for vague, fear-based reasons, so I slid into a same day opening and went to see him. My guy is what I would call a curmudgeon. He doesn't tell me what to do, preferring to lay out possible options, starting with a less invasive, less traumatic treatment plan, and migrating step by step through to the end game, usually something like having my head lopped off and fed to pit vipers. He doesn't encourage tests and drugs and MRIs and X-Rays unless they're clearly indicated and - because he does a lot of reading - he believes that the research generally shows that these things aren't all that helpful for most minor illnesses or injuries. I can almost see him rolling his eyes skeptically when he's talking.
He spent a very fair chunk of time manipulating my knee and asking me to do some simple exercises. An MRI would diagnose a soft-tissue injury which he was 99% certain I didn't have. An X-Ray finds bone problems which he was also 99% certain I didn't have. There's a test for arthritis you can undergo and he guaranteed me that I'd have some arthritis, adding there's not that much you can do about arthritis, anyway, that aspirin or ibuprofen, OTC medications, wouldn't address. He brought up the phrase "a 61 year old male" a few times, in the context that things don't work so good as you age. Not that they don't work at all or that they're never going to get better but that things start to wear down and become more problematic, more balky.
I read once that in biological terms nature is done with you by the time you're 30. Eat, breed, and die, basically, that's nature's game plan. Nature doesn't care about a rich and fulfilling old age where you take up oil painting, reading poetry, traveling, and volunteering at the senior citizen center.
I had done the inevitable internet research, hoping for some reassurance that would keep me out of a doctor's office, and read over and over "one to two weeks" as an appropriate time frame for a normal soft tissue sprain or strain. The less commercially oriented sites - the ones not as concerned at driving page views and selling products - bump this up to "two to three weeks." I stumbled on the website for The UK National Health Service which counseled seeking an expert's opinion if things hadn't improved after six weeks. The Brits are less panicky than us Yanks. My doctor repeated this: "One to six weeks," he said, inserting the phrase, a tad disdainfully to my ear, into some point he's making"as it has only been five days," the implication being that five days is somewhat less than the forty-two days that exist in six weeks.
"I don't really like that six weeks figure," I quipped dryly.
This guy is not real big on dry quips during a medical examination. He's busy and this isn't a comedy hour. So his response, one I've heard before . . .
"Well, be that as it may. . . . ." He's also says "as we age our bodies don't respond the way they used to. One time I replied: "That's really not fair." He didn't laugh then, either, and not because he was being unkind. He's trying to reassure me while helping me get better, not lie to me and tell me what I want to hear. Give me good news or leave me alone.
It's kind of like The Program, I guess. I go to meetings to hear general solutions to general problems. I have friends and cohorts from whom I will take specific advice to specific problems.
Did you know that there is an organization called The American Chronic Pain Association and they have a pain awareness month, that they have activities and an official color. Christ on a stick, I hope I'm never in that organization. That's just what I need - an organization that I can belong to that focuses on pain. I should be president. There's probably a banner there with my mother's picture on it. I wonder if the activities are meant to increase the pain or mitigate its effects?
I mentioned the knee tweak to one of my older friends this morning. He said:"Yeah, I got something going on with my knee, too. I'm just working through the discomfort." I remember a discussion I had with a doc friend many years ago, explaining that I had some kind of injury or another and had taken three days off from exercising: "Three days," he said, exasperated. "Why don't you try three weeks." This is a message that didn't sink in, apparently.
Jesus, these people with some perspective are my heroes.
Yesterday I figured that the smart thing to do would be to give my knee another couple of days to heal before going to visit a doctor. I say this sheepishly because I'm virtually certain that I'm making a mountain out of a molehill, a specialty of mine. There's nothing of so little insignificance that I can't expand into something of great significance. Then I decided that I would make the appointment for the end of the week - if my joint improved then I could cancel giving a fair amount of warning - in the hope that taking a little action - any action - would improve my peace of mind. With me it's rarely the physical pain - it's the mental anguish of worrying.
Little Westside Jonny and I had a lively debate once - while we were floating in a canoe on a shallow, murky lake in the Amazon Basin - over the size of compensation that we would each require to spend one night on any of the little vegetation-choked islets that were scattered around. I think I ended up as low as $50,000 as I detailed how I would clear the brush from the base of a tree, climb up as high as I could go, then sing at the top of my lungs all night, hoping to scare away most predators and lizards and insects and such. It was sort of a white board, brain-storm about how to survive with a sound mind for a night in the jungle. LWSJ refused to even consider a sum.
"You couldn't handle the misery for one night?" I asked, incredulously. "For a million dollars?"
"Oh, I could handle the physical part," he said. "But I'd have no mind left when the sun came up."
I get that. My mind is not my friend. When I think of LWSJ I think of the man who coined my motto: "Prone to Anxiety."
Vis-a-vis the doctor I realized that I was dicking around, delaying the inevitable for vague, fear-based reasons, so I slid into a same day opening and went to see him. My guy is what I would call a curmudgeon. He doesn't tell me what to do, preferring to lay out possible options, starting with a less invasive, less traumatic treatment plan, and migrating step by step through to the end game, usually something like having my head lopped off and fed to pit vipers. He doesn't encourage tests and drugs and MRIs and X-Rays unless they're clearly indicated and - because he does a lot of reading - he believes that the research generally shows that these things aren't all that helpful for most minor illnesses or injuries. I can almost see him rolling his eyes skeptically when he's talking.
He spent a very fair chunk of time manipulating my knee and asking me to do some simple exercises. An MRI would diagnose a soft-tissue injury which he was 99% certain I didn't have. An X-Ray finds bone problems which he was also 99% certain I didn't have. There's a test for arthritis you can undergo and he guaranteed me that I'd have some arthritis, adding there's not that much you can do about arthritis, anyway, that aspirin or ibuprofen, OTC medications, wouldn't address. He brought up the phrase "a 61 year old male" a few times, in the context that things don't work so good as you age. Not that they don't work at all or that they're never going to get better but that things start to wear down and become more problematic, more balky.
I read once that in biological terms nature is done with you by the time you're 30. Eat, breed, and die, basically, that's nature's game plan. Nature doesn't care about a rich and fulfilling old age where you take up oil painting, reading poetry, traveling, and volunteering at the senior citizen center.
I had done the inevitable internet research, hoping for some reassurance that would keep me out of a doctor's office, and read over and over "one to two weeks" as an appropriate time frame for a normal soft tissue sprain or strain. The less commercially oriented sites - the ones not as concerned at driving page views and selling products - bump this up to "two to three weeks." I stumbled on the website for The UK National Health Service which counseled seeking an expert's opinion if things hadn't improved after six weeks. The Brits are less panicky than us Yanks. My doctor repeated this: "One to six weeks," he said, inserting the phrase, a tad disdainfully to my ear, into some point he's making"as it has only been five days," the implication being that five days is somewhat less than the forty-two days that exist in six weeks.
"I don't really like that six weeks figure," I quipped dryly.
This guy is not real big on dry quips during a medical examination. He's busy and this isn't a comedy hour. So his response, one I've heard before . . .
"Well, be that as it may. . . . ." He's also says "as we age our bodies don't respond the way they used to. One time I replied: "That's really not fair." He didn't laugh then, either, and not because he was being unkind. He's trying to reassure me while helping me get better, not lie to me and tell me what I want to hear. Give me good news or leave me alone.
It's kind of like The Program, I guess. I go to meetings to hear general solutions to general problems. I have friends and cohorts from whom I will take specific advice to specific problems.
Did you know that there is an organization called The American Chronic Pain Association and they have a pain awareness month, that they have activities and an official color. Christ on a stick, I hope I'm never in that organization. That's just what I need - an organization that I can belong to that focuses on pain. I should be president. There's probably a banner there with my mother's picture on it. I wonder if the activities are meant to increase the pain or mitigate its effects?
I mentioned the knee tweak to one of my older friends this morning. He said:"Yeah, I got something going on with my knee, too. I'm just working through the discomfort." I remember a discussion I had with a doc friend many years ago, explaining that I had some kind of injury or another and had taken three days off from exercising: "Three days," he said, exasperated. "Why don't you try three weeks." This is a message that didn't sink in, apparently.
Jesus, these people with some perspective are my heroes.
Friday, April 13, 2018
Cut-And-Pasting Seaweed
God grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change.
Serene: Calmness; peacefulness; a lack of agitation or disturbance.
Accept: To receive, especially with a consent, with favor, or with approval.
I like how acceptance implies that we're receiving something willingly, because we want to. I always took this part of the prayer to imply that when there's something I don't like it gets jammed down my throat and I just gotta be OK with that. This is saying: "Thank you, sir. May I have another?"
Courage to change the things that I can.
Courage: The quality of a confident character not to be afraid or intimidated easily but without being incautious or inconsiderate.
Change: To become something different; to make something into something else.
I like how courage implies that stupidity need not apply for a job requiring bravery. The guy running right at the machine gun nest isn't necessarily brave. More like incautiously inconsiderate.
And wisdom to know the difference.
Wisdom: The ability to make a decision based on the combination of knowledge, experience, and intuitive understanding.
Different: Distinct; separate.
Solution: An act, plan or other means, used or proposed, to solve a problem.
Problem: A difficulty that has to be resolved or dealt with.
I am a problem finder. I must enjoy problems or I wouldn't spend so much time wallowing in them.
I'll continue with my lazy post today by printing the text of the full Serenity Prayer as it was written by Reinhold Niebuhr sometime in the 1930s. Really, all I've done is look up some definitions. Be that as it may I do like the second verse, much less widely circulated, but still chock full of popular slogans found in the recovery world. It starts out with One Day at a Time - reminding me that all I got is right now. It does get a little religious for my taste before diving into Let Go and Let God - reminding me that I'm not the one tasked with modifying the world so that it's pleasing to me but the one who needs to be taking the best out of whatever situation I find myself in. There are some good reminders that I'm not going to escape pain, nor should I want to, and that the best outcome I can hope for is reasonable happiness, a real bummer for a euphoria junkie like me.
God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.
Stress: the condition that results when the mind overrides the body's desire to choke the shit out of some asshole who desperately needs it.
Serene: Calmness; peacefulness; a lack of agitation or disturbance.
Accept: To receive, especially with a consent, with favor, or with approval.
I like how acceptance implies that we're receiving something willingly, because we want to. I always took this part of the prayer to imply that when there's something I don't like it gets jammed down my throat and I just gotta be OK with that. This is saying: "Thank you, sir. May I have another?"
Courage to change the things that I can.
Courage: The quality of a confident character not to be afraid or intimidated easily but without being incautious or inconsiderate.
Change: To become something different; to make something into something else.
I like how courage implies that stupidity need not apply for a job requiring bravery. The guy running right at the machine gun nest isn't necessarily brave. More like incautiously inconsiderate.
And wisdom to know the difference.
Wisdom: The ability to make a decision based on the combination of knowledge, experience, and intuitive understanding.
Different: Distinct; separate.
Solution: An act, plan or other means, used or proposed, to solve a problem.
Problem: A difficulty that has to be resolved or dealt with.
I am a problem finder. I must enjoy problems or I wouldn't spend so much time wallowing in them.
I'll continue with my lazy post today by printing the text of the full Serenity Prayer as it was written by Reinhold Niebuhr sometime in the 1930s. Really, all I've done is look up some definitions. Be that as it may I do like the second verse, much less widely circulated, but still chock full of popular slogans found in the recovery world. It starts out with One Day at a Time - reminding me that all I got is right now. It does get a little religious for my taste before diving into Let Go and Let God - reminding me that I'm not the one tasked with modifying the world so that it's pleasing to me but the one who needs to be taking the best out of whatever situation I find myself in. There are some good reminders that I'm not going to escape pain, nor should I want to, and that the best outcome I can hope for is reasonable happiness, a real bummer for a euphoria junkie like me.
God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.
Stress: the condition that results when the mind overrides the body's desire to choke the shit out of some asshole who desperately needs it.
Thursday, April 12, 2018
Prevailing Winds
Prevail: To be superior in strength, dominance, influence, or frequency; to have or gain the advantage over others; to have the upper hand; to outnumber others.
Significantly though, this new research confirms the possible existence of what could be called eldest child syndrome in some families. It seems that there could be a tendency for parents to invest more time and energy in their eldest child, in part because parents tend to see more of themselves in their first child and therefore project their own aspirations on to them. Evidence shows this can have beneficial effects on intelligence levels but the downside of this extra attention is that they may not develop the happy-go-lucky attitude that their younger siblings - who may be raised in a more relaxed way - often enjoy.
Significantly though, this new research confirms the possible existence of what could be called eldest child syndrome in some families. It seems that there could be a tendency for parents to invest more time and energy in their eldest child, in part because parents tend to see more of themselves in their first child and therefore project their own aspirations on to them. Evidence shows this can have beneficial effects on intelligence levels but the downside of this extra attention is that they may not develop the happy-go-lucky attitude that their younger siblings - who may be raised in a more relaxed way - often enjoy.
Birth order refers to the order a child is born in their family; first-born and second-born are examples. Birth order is often believed to have a profound and lasting effect on psychological development. This assertion has been repeatedly challenged. Recent research has consistently found that earlier born children score slightly higher on average on measures of intelligence, but has found zero, or almost zero, robust effect of birth order on personality. Nevertheless, the notion that birth-order significantly influences personality continues to have a strong presence in pop psychology and popular culture.
Because I'm always looking for reasons to explain my behavior here's a little research I did on whether or not being the first born child is a marker for particular pathologies . . . er, behavior patterns . . . in said child. Once again, if I concentrate on the more measured, less hysterical data I find that it's hard to prove that birth order makes much of a difference at all. My wife - the youngest girl in a patriarchal family - was indisputably the most successful of all the children. The prevailing theories wouldn't have predicted this. The prevailing theories don't predict a lot of things. They prevail because they tell people what they want to hear, not what is.
It's very convenient for me to take complex situations and smash them into small, square boxes. One size fits all. There - that explains it.
Because I'm always looking for reasons to explain my behavior here's a little research I did on whether or not being the first born child is a marker for particular pathologies . . . er, behavior patterns . . . in said child. Once again, if I concentrate on the more measured, less hysterical data I find that it's hard to prove that birth order makes much of a difference at all. My wife - the youngest girl in a patriarchal family - was indisputably the most successful of all the children. The prevailing theories wouldn't have predicted this. The prevailing theories don't predict a lot of things. They prevail because they tell people what they want to hear, not what is.
It's very convenient for me to take complex situations and smash them into small, square boxes. One size fits all. There - that explains it.
In The Trenches
I had a long talk today with my sister about our family. My lovely wife has been a consistent sounding board on these matters but she's on my side, a little more willing to pile on and find additional familial blemishes to prod. My sponsor was helpful, too, but he was mostly good for general child-parent advice, lacking the intimacy that comes with actually being a family member. My sister, however, was in the trenches with me.
She takes a much more nuanced view of all the happenings, believing that most people our age have some similar set of problems with people our parents' age. Men were more restrained and distant, less involved with child-rearing, not of a mind to share emotions, while women took on the lion's share of the upbringing tasks, especially so because many of them didn't work outside the home. This was a good reminder and a comforting one - it takes some of my specific Seaweed family bitches and makes them more global, more normal, mainstream. My parents may be psychos to me but probably not to other adults from their generation. I know that I sit back, amazed, at how involved parents are in their children's lives today - when I was growing your parents were your enemies, not your friends. It's not right or wrong - it's how it is. I'm sure there will be another quantum shift in the parent-child dynamic in another generation or two.
My sister was also astounded at some of the anecdotes about mom's fear-mongering. Mom apparently either didn't treat my sister this way or - more likely - she had a constitution that was more easily able to brush off this behavior. All of us have our bedevilments, things that bother us unduly while barely causing the needle to flicker on someone else's emotional pressure gauge. I always laugh when people express alarm about the safety of some of the places I visit, pointing out that there were 5,500,000 automobile accidents in the US in 2017, killing over 33,000 people. I remind them that the most dangerous part of my trip is always the drive to the airport but most of them wouldn't bat an eye at talking on a cell phone while driving 75 MPH on the freeway. Still, they avoid these kinds of vacations while I don't pause for a moment.
I confirmed with her that she never heard dad or any of my grandparents ever complain about sickness or injury, and dad wasn't particularly healthy, suffering with arthritis and enduring a detached retina, all on top of taking an errant baseball bat in the mouth during a softball game. The bat knocked out half of his teeth and broke his cheek, his eye socket, and the roof of his mouth.
Never a peep. About injury or sickness both. Amazing. Maybe mom did enough moaning for all of them. We speculated as to whether my grandmama passed on some of the worry gene to my mother just as we wonder if my alcoholic grandfather poured some alcoholic poison on my dad's upbringing. And I have to play the organized religion card again - all of us heard a lot of dire warnings thundering down from a lot of raised pulpits.
Why did I absorb all this? My folks had other shortcomings that I avoided. My sister is of the opinion that, if you're the oldest child then you're built to walk around with the weight of the world on your shoulders. And, you know, mom lived with an active alcoholic so it's not unreasonable to assume that this behavior may have caused her to fear a loss of income or stability in home life.
And I know that hypochondria can be a compelling character defect - lllness is a great way to get attention. It's like crying. People perk up and look your way if they think you're dying from toenail cancer.
I'm under the impression that a lot of people my age grew up with a distant father and an overprotective mother. I bet this was pretty common.
I'm going to start running out of things to say here. I'm getting tired blaming someone else for my defects.
She takes a much more nuanced view of all the happenings, believing that most people our age have some similar set of problems with people our parents' age. Men were more restrained and distant, less involved with child-rearing, not of a mind to share emotions, while women took on the lion's share of the upbringing tasks, especially so because many of them didn't work outside the home. This was a good reminder and a comforting one - it takes some of my specific Seaweed family bitches and makes them more global, more normal, mainstream. My parents may be psychos to me but probably not to other adults from their generation. I know that I sit back, amazed, at how involved parents are in their children's lives today - when I was growing your parents were your enemies, not your friends. It's not right or wrong - it's how it is. I'm sure there will be another quantum shift in the parent-child dynamic in another generation or two.
My sister was also astounded at some of the anecdotes about mom's fear-mongering. Mom apparently either didn't treat my sister this way or - more likely - she had a constitution that was more easily able to brush off this behavior. All of us have our bedevilments, things that bother us unduly while barely causing the needle to flicker on someone else's emotional pressure gauge. I always laugh when people express alarm about the safety of some of the places I visit, pointing out that there were 5,500,000 automobile accidents in the US in 2017, killing over 33,000 people. I remind them that the most dangerous part of my trip is always the drive to the airport but most of them wouldn't bat an eye at talking on a cell phone while driving 75 MPH on the freeway. Still, they avoid these kinds of vacations while I don't pause for a moment.
I confirmed with her that she never heard dad or any of my grandparents ever complain about sickness or injury, and dad wasn't particularly healthy, suffering with arthritis and enduring a detached retina, all on top of taking an errant baseball bat in the mouth during a softball game. The bat knocked out half of his teeth and broke his cheek, his eye socket, and the roof of his mouth.
Never a peep. About injury or sickness both. Amazing. Maybe mom did enough moaning for all of them. We speculated as to whether my grandmama passed on some of the worry gene to my mother just as we wonder if my alcoholic grandfather poured some alcoholic poison on my dad's upbringing. And I have to play the organized religion card again - all of us heard a lot of dire warnings thundering down from a lot of raised pulpits.
Why did I absorb all this? My folks had other shortcomings that I avoided. My sister is of the opinion that, if you're the oldest child then you're built to walk around with the weight of the world on your shoulders. And, you know, mom lived with an active alcoholic so it's not unreasonable to assume that this behavior may have caused her to fear a loss of income or stability in home life.
And I know that hypochondria can be a compelling character defect - lllness is a great way to get attention. It's like crying. People perk up and look your way if they think you're dying from toenail cancer.
I'm under the impression that a lot of people my age grew up with a distant father and an overprotective mother. I bet this was pretty common.
I'm going to start running out of things to say here. I'm getting tired blaming someone else for my defects.
It's All Upstairs
Obsess: To be preoccupied with a single topic or emotion; to dominate the thoughts of someone.
The sinus problem is in the rear view mirror - aided and abetted by five days of antibiotics which knocked that sucker down right quick. I'm proud that I waited for five weeks before deciding my body was not going to defeat the infection any time soon.
The back problems are at a dull roar.
Now I have the knee tweak, an injury that occurred when I bent over to pick up an orange. For chrissake. It's not like I was straining to boot a fifty yard field goal in my pick-up touch football league.
I wonder - once more and forevermore - about all of the exercising. I clearly don't need to work out as much as I do. I'm still afraid of free time.
Hypochondria: A psychological disorder characterized by excessive preoccupation or worry about having a serious illness.
So much writing and I still don't feel like I've gotten to the bottom of the health obsession. I can indeed blame mom but shouldn't that be getting stale?
I know I'm jumping with excess energy which it feels good to release.
I also know that I consume caffeine and sugar at levels that fuel the jumpiness.
I haven't exercised for three days and it feels like forever. It seems like most of my exercise injuries are due to overuse. I'm having trouble imagining what my life would be like without the time spent exercising. I wonder if it would be better? I've had this list of things I'd like to do that I've had a hard time cracking. Maybe with a bunch of time I'd be able to dip into these activities more than I do.
That's sorta sad.
Maybe I'm supposed to get a feel for what life is like without exercise as a main pivot in my day. I sure got a ton of good, productive, quality writing done the last couple of days.
I release my anxiety into the universe. I give my anxiety to my higher power. It isn't the anxiety - it's my anxiety. It isn't trying to hurt me or kill me - it just has a message that it wants me to hear. It's all inside your head, dude. That's where everything is. You are just electrical impulses in a big meat sack.
I give my body and my health over to my higher power. I'm grateful that in the big picture I'm a remarkably healthy man: no disease or injuries, longevity in my family highlighted by a lack of cancers of any kind, maintaining a healthy diet with good sleep and exercise habits, all contributing to this good health.
Where does this obsessive shit come from? My dad was not a particularly healthy guy but I never heard him complain once - ever - about his health. Ditto for my grandparents, all four of them. Never a peep, never a bitch, never a sigh, can't remember any of them ever taking a nap. I've done more complaining than the five of them put together.
Then there's mom. I learned at the feet of the master.
The sinus problem is in the rear view mirror - aided and abetted by five days of antibiotics which knocked that sucker down right quick. I'm proud that I waited for five weeks before deciding my body was not going to defeat the infection any time soon.
The back problems are at a dull roar.
Now I have the knee tweak, an injury that occurred when I bent over to pick up an orange. For chrissake. It's not like I was straining to boot a fifty yard field goal in my pick-up touch football league.
I wonder - once more and forevermore - about all of the exercising. I clearly don't need to work out as much as I do. I'm still afraid of free time.
Hypochondria: A psychological disorder characterized by excessive preoccupation or worry about having a serious illness.
So much writing and I still don't feel like I've gotten to the bottom of the health obsession. I can indeed blame mom but shouldn't that be getting stale?
I know I'm jumping with excess energy which it feels good to release.
I also know that I consume caffeine and sugar at levels that fuel the jumpiness.
I haven't exercised for three days and it feels like forever. It seems like most of my exercise injuries are due to overuse. I'm having trouble imagining what my life would be like without the time spent exercising. I wonder if it would be better? I've had this list of things I'd like to do that I've had a hard time cracking. Maybe with a bunch of time I'd be able to dip into these activities more than I do.
That's sorta sad.
Maybe I'm supposed to get a feel for what life is like without exercise as a main pivot in my day. I sure got a ton of good, productive, quality writing done the last couple of days.
I release my anxiety into the universe. I give my anxiety to my higher power. It isn't the anxiety - it's my anxiety. It isn't trying to hurt me or kill me - it just has a message that it wants me to hear. It's all inside your head, dude. That's where everything is. You are just electrical impulses in a big meat sack.
I give my body and my health over to my higher power. I'm grateful that in the big picture I'm a remarkably healthy man: no disease or injuries, longevity in my family highlighted by a lack of cancers of any kind, maintaining a healthy diet with good sleep and exercise habits, all contributing to this good health.
Where does this obsessive shit come from? My dad was not a particularly healthy guy but I never heard him complain once - ever - about his health. Ditto for my grandparents, all four of them. Never a peep, never a bitch, never a sigh, can't remember any of them ever taking a nap. I've done more complaining than the five of them put together.
Then there's mom. I learned at the feet of the master.
Wednesday, April 11, 2018
It Really Is Me. Dammit.
Love: A feeling of strong affection. (Ed. Note: Really? That's it? I need to try another dictionary site . . . )
OK, Webster has it as "strong affection for another rising out of kinship or personal ties." Pretty consistent.
My mother spent a lot of time - just about all of the time she had that didn't involve religion - doing nice things for me, loving things. I was definitely the center of attention. For dad, on the other hand, alcohol was the center of attention. It was the fulcrum around which everything pivoted. It was the Jesus Nut of dad's life, the wheel stud fixing the tire to the axle. You do everything you can to protect those small pieces of hardware. You can fly a helicopter with a disabled engine ("the only thing you can't do is go up," a pilot told me once) but if the Jesus Nut comes off it's sayonara.
So be it. That actually makes more sense to me than the mom thing. Maybe I learned more about love from my father's relationship with alcohol than I did from my mother's love of her kids. That's a scary thought but I bet there's a grain of truth in it. I'd rather get between a mama bear and her cubs than between a drunk and his alcohol. Dad was a miserable SOB when he wasn't drinking.
So I must assume that everything my mother did for me came from a deep-seated love. How can I be bitching about that? My wife didn't grow up in that kind of environment, that's for sure. With my mother everything was done with my welfare foremost in her mind, even the warnings against danger and pestilence and plagues that have burrowed so deeply into my consciousness and caused me so much trouble over the years. She simply didn't want me to get hurt, to suffer at all, as unreasonable an expectation as there can be. I would hypothesize that the best parenting technique is to point your kid in the right direction and hope that they don't screw up too badly. You can't protect someone from all harm and if you try all you're doing is pointing how much harm is out there.
Wear the world like a loose garment.
“A skillful traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving,” says the Tao te Ching.
"Be on the lookout for mountain lions," she told me as I hit the road for my first SoCal hike. I spent the next four hours with the hair on the back of my neck at full attention, bracing for the impact of a leaping mountain lion. Needless to say, it wasn't a relaxing hike. I finally broke down and did some research on mountain lion attacks in my neck of the woods and found that the last one was sometime just after the Dark Ages. I'm more likely to die of The Plague than from a mountain lion bite.
I think I slipped right back into bitching! Man. My mother would be mortified if she knew I was reminiscing like this which is why I prefer to believe that souls in heaven can't see what we're up to. Either that or the souls have an infinite amount of patience and understanding.
My dad came to most of my high school basketball games, often driving a long way on country roads in the dead of winter to find the small schools with which we competed. This is the extent of his involvement in my high school life. I think he took me to one college basketball game and one at the pro level, and one major league baseball game. Never a football game. And this from a guy who worshiped sports. The money thing again, I suppose.
Mom fed me well and took care of the laundry and fussed over me on fuss-able holidays. I never really got any direction on money and sex and relationships. I could have figured out the washing machine.
I'm really becoming aware of the fact that I was a fearful, anxious human being right out of the womb and that there is nothing anyone could have done about it. This is why alcohol was such a godsend - it took this angst and made it vanish. Unfortunately for me this technique is equivalent to sending a wide receiver with a shredded knee back onto the field after injecting a big syringe full of Novocaine into the joint.
Does the knee hurt? Not anymore, it doesn't. Will it hurt tomorrow? You better believe it will.
OK, Webster has it as "strong affection for another rising out of kinship or personal ties." Pretty consistent.
My mother spent a lot of time - just about all of the time she had that didn't involve religion - doing nice things for me, loving things. I was definitely the center of attention. For dad, on the other hand, alcohol was the center of attention. It was the fulcrum around which everything pivoted. It was the Jesus Nut of dad's life, the wheel stud fixing the tire to the axle. You do everything you can to protect those small pieces of hardware. You can fly a helicopter with a disabled engine ("the only thing you can't do is go up," a pilot told me once) but if the Jesus Nut comes off it's sayonara.
So be it. That actually makes more sense to me than the mom thing. Maybe I learned more about love from my father's relationship with alcohol than I did from my mother's love of her kids. That's a scary thought but I bet there's a grain of truth in it. I'd rather get between a mama bear and her cubs than between a drunk and his alcohol. Dad was a miserable SOB when he wasn't drinking.
So I must assume that everything my mother did for me came from a deep-seated love. How can I be bitching about that? My wife didn't grow up in that kind of environment, that's for sure. With my mother everything was done with my welfare foremost in her mind, even the warnings against danger and pestilence and plagues that have burrowed so deeply into my consciousness and caused me so much trouble over the years. She simply didn't want me to get hurt, to suffer at all, as unreasonable an expectation as there can be. I would hypothesize that the best parenting technique is to point your kid in the right direction and hope that they don't screw up too badly. You can't protect someone from all harm and if you try all you're doing is pointing how much harm is out there.
Wear the world like a loose garment.
“A skillful traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving,” says the Tao te Ching.
"Be on the lookout for mountain lions," she told me as I hit the road for my first SoCal hike. I spent the next four hours with the hair on the back of my neck at full attention, bracing for the impact of a leaping mountain lion. Needless to say, it wasn't a relaxing hike. I finally broke down and did some research on mountain lion attacks in my neck of the woods and found that the last one was sometime just after the Dark Ages. I'm more likely to die of The Plague than from a mountain lion bite.
I think I slipped right back into bitching! Man. My mother would be mortified if she knew I was reminiscing like this which is why I prefer to believe that souls in heaven can't see what we're up to. Either that or the souls have an infinite amount of patience and understanding.
My dad came to most of my high school basketball games, often driving a long way on country roads in the dead of winter to find the small schools with which we competed. This is the extent of his involvement in my high school life. I think he took me to one college basketball game and one at the pro level, and one major league baseball game. Never a football game. And this from a guy who worshiped sports. The money thing again, I suppose.
Mom fed me well and took care of the laundry and fussed over me on fuss-able holidays. I never really got any direction on money and sex and relationships. I could have figured out the washing machine.
I'm really becoming aware of the fact that I was a fearful, anxious human being right out of the womb and that there is nothing anyone could have done about it. This is why alcohol was such a godsend - it took this angst and made it vanish. Unfortunately for me this technique is equivalent to sending a wide receiver with a shredded knee back onto the field after injecting a big syringe full of Novocaine into the joint.
Does the knee hurt? Not anymore, it doesn't. Will it hurt tomorrow? You better believe it will.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)