Journal Archives from theDreamworld ... May 2013

May 2013

May 31, 2013

I've been a realist my whole life, and while at many points when I was younger it seemed I was somewhat optimistic more than realistic, in old age it seems I am more pessimistic than realistic. It's not just age or becoming jaded that have done it either, it's the reality formed by experience, expectation, and everything I've seen over a lifetime. Does that mean that the better you know life and the world around you the more you see how bad things are or does it mean that I, personally have just had a shitty life? The latter is definitely true, but is the former as well?

Posted at 6:47 AM

May 30, 2013

Screw Godot, I'm waiting for a job offer.

Posted at 8:55 AM

May 29, 2013

In our continuing story about local weather <snore> ...

... Sorry folks, but this is as interesting as my life gets these days ...

So yesterday, forecast to be a day of constant rain, rained through the early morning and was done for the day, so while I had planned to mow the lawn the next day (today) I went ahead and mowed it yesterday afternoon, assuming (I should think with justified exectations) thatMother Nature would fuck with me again if I tried once again to hold to my scheduled plans.

Now today, which was supposed to be clear skies, is predicted to have scattered showers - no idea where or when or for how long, but after screwing up the past two days of forecasts I guess this broad, unspecific forecast covers their asses and keeps them from being completely wrong for three days in a row. That's not remotely helpful, as it turns out, but what do they care? They're only paid to forecast the weather.

Posted at 8:51 AM

May 28, 2013

Sooo ...

It ended up raining all day yesterday, sometimes sprinkling and sometimes more. I ended up going out and washing the car anyway, scrubbing in the rain and then drying it and cleaning the insides under the carport. Fun - and cold - times.

Today it is raining again, constantly - no sprinkles - and where tomorrow was supposed to have seen the storm front pass, it's now calling for rain as well ... which figures because I need to mow the lawn tomorrow.

Posted at 8:54 AM

May 27, 2013

The forecasts for today - for the past week - have shown moderate temperatures with clear skies, rain tomorrow. Now we're here and they had the temperature part right, but it's overcast with a forecast of scattered showers, and the rain tomorrow is still on. I have been planning to wash the car inside and out today, and I can't understand why I'm surprised that the weather has turned. I should know better by now.

Posted at 9:48 AM

May 26, 2013

Why try?

Posted at 8:54 AM

May 25, 2013

Life would be so much easier if I didn't care about anything or anyone.

Posted at 8:01 AM

May 24, 2013

So much to do.

Posted at 9:25 AM

May 23, 2013

I had an interview yesterday at Check 'n Go, only the third interview I've had from hundreds of applications and resumes sent over the past eleven months. It went quite well - to the point that the manager said she would hire me on the spot if she could - but I have to wait to hear from her regional manager for any job offer ... so we'll see. Still, it's more than I've had from anybody so far ...

Posted at 8:40 AM

May 22, 2013

Lost.

Posted at 7:36 AM

May 21, 2013

Hot in Cleveland.

(Sandusky, too.)

Posted at 8:59 AM

May 20, 2013

I'm old and have nothing to show for it. Wheeeee!!!!!

Posted at 9:19 AM

May 19, 2013

Moffat must go. He is simply ruining Doctor Who.

Posted at 9:14 AM

May 18, 2013

My persistent headache has today changed to being an uncomfortably painful fuzzy sort of feeling across my head with a point here and a point there of focused pain. On the plus side, this is at least something new and different, not the same old kind of pain.

Posted at 9:03 AM

May 17, 2013

Doom. Doom. Doom.

Posted at 9:20 AM

May 16, 2013

I hate it when I've allowed myself to not think about how shitty life really is and then find myself surprised and horrified when life simply reveals how shitty it truly is in a way you can't ignore.

Posted at 10:07 AM

May 15, 2013

It's now been a year since my grandma died, and yet the feeling of loss is nearly as strong as it was then. I've been thinking about her even more than normal the past week, and I miss her but also feel, I think, even worse about her quality of life during her last couple months. It was a horrible closing chapter for such a noble woman. She deserved far better.

A single red rose on her grave is - I feel - the most appropriate tribute. A joyous bouquet of flowers would be so very wrong, as if celebrating her death, but doing nothing would be equally bad. I do wish there was more I could do to pay her tribute, but I am at a loss and feeling simply the aching longing of wanting her back.

She was the best of us, and she is gone, and we may never see her equal again on this earth. Be at peace, my dear. You will never be forgotten.

Posted at 9:18 AM

May 14, 2013

Sad.

Posted at 9:45 AM

May 13, 2013

No.

Posted at 10:02 AM

May 12, 2013

Who loves ya, baby?

Posted at 10:05 AM

May 11, 2013

This persistent headache won't go away or diminish, and the on-and-off nausea is unpleasant as well (and something I haven't had before). It's been a crappy past few days.

Posted at 10:10 AM

May 10, 2013

I should be doing more but it's like trying to push a boulder off of my back so that I can try to start climbing out of the teflon-coated hole I'm in. Exaggerated imagery? Yes. Exaggerated description of what I feel? Far from it.

Posted at 9:56 AM

May 9, 2013

Amazing headache. Slightly queasy. Lots to do today. : (

Posted at 8:30 AM

May 8, 2013

My friend John showed up this afternoon in a surprise visit to take me out for an early dinner. I haven't seen John for a while even though he lives here in town - and in fact John although John has been a good friend and regularly tried to stop by or call to get us together the timing was always wrong one time after another; John would show up and I would be just about to take my grandm a to a doctor's appointment or John would stop by and I would just be getting back with my grandma from daycare and need to get her into the bathroom or some other function. John has been patient through all of that, and he's been a better friend than me to not give up on me considering everything.

So it was a surprise and a treat to have John stop by, and we shared a very nice dinner at Ruby Tuesday's. And we talked before during and after dinner for probably about four hours. Sadly John may never look me up again because I spent most of those four hours bemoaning my lack of a job and the frustrations I've felt with various people in my life or different missed chances or unfulfilled dreams during my life. In retrospect I don't know what I was thinking to go so "Woe is me" - sure, I do it here often, but it's another thing to subject someone to that face to face and where they can't just click their mouse and get away. John's a good friend to have put up with my whining, and in a way it may have been good for me to just get some of that out of me. Still, I feel bad that John didn't have a more amusing or upbeat dinner conversation.

I've been reminded lately - in a recent reading of a book, a recent TV show episode, and even from parts of the dinner conversation I had with John - that I'm really no better now than I was as a kid in regards to being able to make friends or know how to act around them. I've always been awkward about this kind of thing, and I still have no idea how to make new friends outside of random chance kicking in. I don't mind solitude (I'm like my grandma in that way), but I do like friends (also like my grandma), but I am simply lost with how to make friends (unlike my grandma). I've had some great friends in my life, but some of them have died and some have drifted off despite my best attempts to keep contact, and while I still have friends with whom I keep close contact, it's not the same as it once was. I've learned to be alone, but I do love it when I do have contact with one friend or another. I'm sometimes lonely, but that's rarely loneliness for human contact but more the loneliness of missing somebody really close - a soul mate or regular boyfriend, that sort of thing - and as much as I do love my friends, none of them can fill that kind of a need. And my depression (where's it's more about specific things and not just a chemical imbalance in my brain) finds a source in that desire for a spouse and sense of absence than in drawing fuel from just being on my own.

I'm babbling now - much as I was last night to John, I suppose - so I'll close this. I need to get back to looking for a job. That at least in theory is something I can resolve,

Posted at 9:43 AM

May 7, 2013

This post is so true. I'm glad, really, that my friends and family don't know what it feels like to truly suffer from depression because I don't want anyone to have to feel this way -- but - I can't deny that it makes me feel only lower, more worthless, and less loved when my depression is simply dismissed or treated like having a bad day. If only.

If this isn’t for you, it’s for someone you know

Since last September I have been serving on the Board of Directors for the Utah division of the nonprofit organization NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. It’s the nation’s largest grassroots mental health organization dedicated to building better lives for the millions of Americans affected by mental illness. They provide support groups for peers, support groups for families, education classes, helplines and mentors while actively advocating for better mental health legislation. These people are dedicated and passionate and work tirelessly to save lives.

Yes. Save lives. In 2009, suicide was the third leading cause of death for young people ages 15 to 24. The third leading cause.

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and during our last board meeting we talked about ways to bring awareness to this issue that devastates the lives of so many. All of the board members are either family or friends of someone who suffers from a mental health condition. I happen to be the only member with firsthand experience of what it’s like to struggle with depression and anxiety and the traumatizing sense of hopelessness that turns any obstacle into a reason to stop living.

My story has been told here over the years. It’s scattered throughout my archives and will continue to weave its way into future paragraphs. I’ve written about the continual fight I wage against my condition so that there is a face associated with this disease, so that anyone who is ashamed or made to feel ashamed about the way they feel, about how impossible it is to explain that they don’t want to feel this way, that they have no choice, that they’d like to wake up in the morning and feel something different, something other than I cannot do this anymore, they can see me and know that I understand. I, too, have lived and ached with that hopelessness. I encounter it again from time to time, but I’m here and I’ve lived through it. No, it hasn’t been easy. But here I am.

But my story isn’t just for them. It’s for the father who doesn’t understand why his daughter is so miserable. Why won’t she just snap out of it? Her kids are healthy, she’s got a roof over her head, she’s got friends. What reason does she have for being so sad? She’s being ridiculous.

It’s for the son who gets together with his friends and tells stories about his crazy mother. She’s never happy and sleeps all day. She hasn’t showered in a week. He’s tired of her bullshit. Doesn’t she know how embarrassing she is? Pull it together already.

It’s for the husband who comes home from work and finds his wife curled up on the couch unable to speak, unable to unwind her body from the fetal position. All she has to do is look after the kids all day. It’s not like she has to meet a deadline at the office. If she had to sit through his commute then maybe he could understand. What is it with her?

It’s for those who think we can just get over it. I’ve written about my struggle so that maybe you will understand that your daughter, your mother, your wife… they aren’t being ridiculous. They are suffering. They are in pain. They are struggling with a sense of doom so overwhelming that they cannot see anything beyond it. It is real and it is awful. And they need help.

I’ve already told my story, again and again, and I was hoping maybe you’d like to share yours here to help bring awareness to this, to help those who suffer and those who live with those who suffer. How have you been affected by mental illness? What has helped you?

Posted at 8:49 AM

May 6, 2013

I feel dead but I can't have the peace from the real thing. Typical.

Posted at 11:32 AM

May 5, 2013

Same ol', same ol'.

Posted at 10:23 AM

May 4, 2013

I'm a loser baby, so why don't ya kill me?

Posted at 9:32 AM

May 3, 2013

Cinco de trio.

Posted at 9:45 AM

May 2, 2013

Will I ever sleep through the night again?

Posted at 10:20 AM

May 1, 2013

Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

Posted at 10:18 AM