Feb 15 2013

Tempus Frangit

One of the biggest problems I’ve had the last four years (OK, longer than that but I can’t remember when it started) is figuring out time. Time management, time projections, time allocation. Looking back, that began due to a combination of boredom with my former dayjob, undiagnosed ADD and increasing pain.

by Peter Whiddon via Compfight

Even though the combo of Cymbalta, Neurontin and Flexeril I now take every day keeps pain at a lower ebb, I can no longer work full time, or even out of the house for that matter (unless someone knows of a job I can do part-time in a recliner?). That lack of externally imposed structure makes it even harder for me to regulate my behavior according to my needs and commitments. Just having a pill schedule isn’t enough. Nor is the hard-won knowledge of how bad the pain will get if I don’t maintain regular sleep, hydration and activity. Word on the street is that Cymbalta can increase apathy and anxiety, while Neurontin and Flexeril have a sedating effect. I’ve found it’s possible to be stoned and sleepy, yet anxious at the same time, which I guess any paranoid pothead could have told me. And you’d think that apathetic is the opposite of anxious, but somehow I cycle though both those mental states to varying degrees most days, further confusing any vestigial memory of how to accomplish what I want to get done.

A time for everything and everything in its time would be nice. If there were a discrete organelle in my brain that handled the fourth dimension, it would be undifferentiated, hemorraging mush. So for now, time is broken. At least I’m still here to bitch about it.


Jan 1 2013

Here’s To New Beginnings

Courtesy of the beautiful and fabulous Deborah Blake, a blessing for New Beginnings:

Bless this new beginning
A gift from the gods
Which I accept with gratitude and appreciation
Let it be productive like the earth
And nurtured by the warmth of the sun
Let it flow smoothly like the water
And carry me in a positive direction
Like a seed blown on the winds
Bless this new beginning
That it may broaden my horizons
Strengthen and enlighten me
And help my spirit to grow and blossom
So mote it be


Apr 29 2012

The Sound Of Silence

Late last Summer I wrote this, and I couldn’t say anything further for a very long time:

I am holding my brother’s death in a very fragile bubble in my mind, or perhaps in my heart. If I come out of my hermitage and speak to anyone about it, then that bubble will pop and he’ll really be be dead. If I pop that bubble, then I really did see his body lying in a casket in the middle of an Illinois summertime, draped in an American flag and attended by not only the Patriot Guard but also so damned many other people come to pay their respects that we lost count after the first hour. He’s not just deployed somewhere without a decent phone or email connection. He’s not just having some life drama he doesn’t want to hear my opinion about. He’s no longer of this world. No longer with the living. An ex-parrot. He’s dead. Continue reading