Tag Archives: health

General Posts

Monday Morning Ramblings

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It’s a new day.  Finals are over, papers are graded, and final grades are recorded.  Because of low enrollment, I don’t have a summer class this year, and I’m looking at that as a blessing.  The last two semesters have taken every ounce of energy I had to get through, and right now at this moment, I feel utterly exhausted.  I need time to recharge my inner batteries and refocus my efforts on the things that matter to me.  Book four takes top priority this summer, followed closely by the farm.  These two endeavors offer the best opportunity to leave education, and I will give them as much of my time and energy as I can muster.

I probably won’t have much of a social life four the next few months.  Other than getting my sons and attending the two conventions I’ve committed to, I don’t foresee venturing too far from the farm this summer.  If I’m going to regain some measure of mental health and peace of mind, I have to focus my energy on re-establishing momentum on the book and seeing progress on the farm.  Those two things will reinvigorate my spirit and heal me.  Right now, I need that more than anything else.

I’ll get the boys mid-June through mid-July, and I’m hoping to be in a much happier, healthier state of being by then.  The ordeals of the last two semesters have taken their toll, and I’m afraid today I wouldn’t be much good to them, so I’m going to use the next month to heal and prepare for them.  They deserve the best of me while they’re here, and I intend to give it to them.  They will be going to Fandom Fest with me at the end of June, and I’m excited to see their reactions to the festivities that are a con weekend.  They both have such active imaginations and curiosities that the costumes and toys they’ll see there will probably amaze and dazzle them.

That’s all for now.  Today, I intend on cleaning my place and tying up some loose ends on the semester, but I’m not putting any stress on myself in accomplishing either one.  They’ll get done when they’re done.  From this point forward, I’m making a conscious effort to stop worrying about the unimportant minutiae and not waste any more energy on trivialities.  Life is too short as it is, and I need to focus my life and energy on what matters to me.  It’s a small step forward but an important one, and hopefully, by making this change, I can move forward in the direction I want to go.

General Posts

Thursday Morning Ramblings

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Anyone who has suffered a severe head trauma can attest that sometimes, especially during high levels of stress, insomnia can be unrelenting.  For me, when it hits, all I can do is either take my prescription that knocks me out or simply endure the sleepless nights.  Starting Saturday night, because of the stresses of the last couple of weeks, my insomnia hit me with a vengeance, and from Saturday night until yesterday, I got about 20 hours sleep total.  Unfortunately, my prescription ran out, and I haven’t had the opportunity to go to my doctor for a refill.  All I could do was lay in bed, stare at the ceiling, and hope for sleep.

For me, when it occurs, my mind races out of control.  No matter how hard I try, I can’t slow the wave of thoughts surging through my brain.  Usually, these thoughts are about books four and five, imagining scenes and prewriting major plot points.  I tell myself the alarm will be sounding in six hours and I need to stop, but the scene keeps replaying, over and over.  I have to get up in five hours, but the story keeps gnawing at me.  Four hours, no relief.  Finally, sometime around 3:00 AM, I’ll drift off into a fitful doze, and when the alarm sounds at 6:00 AM, I feel as if I’ve not rested at all.

Some nights, like Sunday night/Monday morning, I give up, get out of bed, and attempt to be productive.  Monday, I got to the office before 4:00 AM and graded 20 essays before my 8:00 class.  By noon, I was so exhausted I could barely stand myself, so I went home and napped for about three hours before getting up and starting the whole maddening process over again.  It’s frustrating to be completely exhausted, hardly able to function, yet lay in the dark room with a racing mind unable to drift off to sleep.  During these episodes, a few times I’ve attempted to write, hoping that would ease the insomnia, but the quality of writing is pure rubbish, so much so that I often have to discard all of it and restart fresh.

I’ve lived with these bouts since 1989.  For the first few years, they happened quite often.  Then, I discovered that my natural sleep pattern post-accident is from about 4:00 AM to around noon.  Something about the trauma shifted my internal clock, so for many years, I taught mostly night classes and wrote from midnight to 3:00 or 4:00 AM.  While I was able to maintain this schedule I rarely suffered an episode and usually slept a regular 7-8 hours most nights.  Unfortunately, today, my work schedule doesn’t allow for this.  I have to be to work by 8:00 AM most days, so I have to be in bed and asleep by midnight to get at least 6 hours of sleep.  Most of the time, I can do it, but I’ve found over the last 3-4 years that I’ve had many more frequent bouts with insomnia, especially when stress levels get high.

To further complicate matters, when I don’t get enough sleep, my neurological symptoms flare up as well.  Since February, the worst of the issues have mostly subsided, but after a sleepless night, all of them come back.  On Tuesday and Wednesday, I shook, trembled, and stumbled around all day.  It was like reliving October, November, and December all over again.  Today, after a good night’s sleep, I feel much better, and most of the issues have eased off.  I’m hoping to get my prescription refilled next week and not have to suffer through another bout of this any time soon.  That’s all for now.  Hope everyone gets plenty of rest tonight.

For Collin and Finn

Tuesday Afternoon Ramblings

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Dear sons, this is a cautionary tale about abusing drugs and alcohol.  Right now, you are too young to comprehend this piece, but as you grow older, I hope you’ll read it and heed my warnings.

Drugs are tempting.  The temporary high can be exhilarating, and the escape from reality can seem like the answer to all of your problems.  But when it comes to drugs, both the high and the escape are lies.  Over time, your body will build up tolerance for the drug, and you will need more and more of it to achieve the high, until you reach a point when you need it simply to feel normal.  The escape is an even bigger lie because once you come down, all of your problems are still there, and more often than not those problems have become compounded by mistakes you made while high.

I have witnessed many lives destroyed by drugs, people with promise and potential who threw away their futures to temporarily feel good in the present.  I’ve seen firsthand entire families ripped apart by addictions because drugs don’t just affect the user.  Personally, I lost my relationships with my grandmother and grandfather because of the addictions of my aunt and cousins, and to this day I carry a lot of guilt for losing those relationships even though I wasn’t the one with the problem.  The addicts bankrupted and drained my grandparents dry, sending them both to their graves earlier than they should have gone and robbing them of joy during their final few years.

In short, sons, drugs suck.

Alcohol is no better.  In fact, because it is legal and considered socially acceptable, in many ways, it can be a worse addiction.  Again, I’ve personally witnessed talented, intelligent people destroy their lives trying to find the bottom of a bottle.  Well, there is no bottom, and once you cross the line from casual drinker to dependent, crossing back over becomes exceptionally difficult.  You both need to be wary of alcohol because the addiction is prevalent on both sides of your family, and you have close relatives who lost their lives because of it.

I can also tell you that when I was younger, I struggled with alcohol.  By the age of 22, I was very nearly a full-blown alcoholic, but fortunately, I was able to pull myself back from that abyss.  I believe that my abuse of alcohol in my teens and early twenties has contributed greatly to the delays in finding success because I derailed myself early on, and it took me many years to get myself back on track.  Today, by the grace granted to me, I can enjoy casual drinking, but every single day, I am wary of slipping back down that dark slope.

My hope for both of you is that you never have to face either of these issues firsthand, but the odds say you will, either with your own battles or through close friends and loved ones.  Just know, that if that day comes, whether you are facing it yourself or dealing with someone who is, I will be there for you as much as I can.  However, there will be a limit to what I can and will do for you because in the end you will be the ones who have to choose whether or not you allow drugs and alcohol to ruin your lives.  From my experiences, I already know that I will not allow them to ruin mine.