Don’t.
Scarred with ridges,
Shreds, tatters.
Scraps in the dust,
Never.
Cold echo,
Chasm-deep throttled,
Resigned to emptiness,
Banished.
Curled in the dark,
Blanketless solitude,
Go away–
Already gone.
I guess the title refers to my own introspective process rather than something external. My thoughts have gone back to the past many times, especially to reflect on how I could have been a better listener and communicator. I had a lot to learn, but I think I’m significantly more skilled in this area then I ever have been. I have put my mind to being a better person, and it’s headed in the right direction.
The cleansing is one of my own scrutiny. I feel now that I have begun to absolve myself of guilt from my past. I have worn it like a burden for a long time, but now it is time to proceed ahead without the extra luggage.
Saying and doing are starkly different things. I have momentum on my side though as I scale back my indulgences/vices. Learning control is discipline, which helps build meta mind. I’m already pretty insightful but practice is essential to success. I intend to take positive steps and try to go up even when brought down.
I don’t know what’s coming, but all the pieces of a happy life are starting to congeal. I hope things continue to improve, and hopefully, sponsor more vital energy to fuel the me machine.
Snap the sharp crisp,
Brilliant bang blastings,
Crunkle crunch the twig twang
Burning bright, boastfully.
Roiling horde of yellow demons–
Shrivel, crack snapping twist
Puffing poof of failed dirt,
Cold, cluttery, carbonofied–
Powdered to filthy soot.
I have really let myself fall into a rut lately. With all my forward pushing, I’m still neglecting some of the basic things that will help keep me operational. I have been overeating and smoking pretty excessively, both of which need to be brought under the umbrella of discipline. I believe that both of these things require moderation to be of use, and when abused, can lead to downspiraling symptoms.
Fortunately, I have been nudged and am now nudging myself as well. I need to regain control of my physical self and become more responsible about my body.
You guys have heard me struggle with this type of thing before. Though, the marked difference this time is my lifestyle and professional choices lend themselves to a healthier way of living, to better represent myself as someone who has the skills and functionality to manage their own life. I have thus far failed to grasp that discipline fully, but I do feel closer than before. As my walking, exercise and activity increase, so to will my health improve. I wish I had back that exuberance I used to be so well known for, and perhaps its out there waiting for me as I emerge from the mire.
Today I go to work as a volunteer for mental health. This is the place I have longed to finally be at, and a reality I have helped to make for myself. I remain confident in my direction and purpose, but still feel the need for deep introspection during this time of escalating transition.
Through the last 6 years this blog has seen me transition through countless ups and downs. My illness has meteored my life with my assistance, and I have rebuilt it over and over again. The last time I got stable, I was proud of myself for being able to hold down a job for 40 hours a week and then rise to excellence while in it. They promoted me and increased my salary by more than 30% so I wasn’t wasting anyone’s time. I earned those accolades. Even in that most recent crumble to nothing there was hope, and a very obvious silver lining. I hadn’t given up on them, they had given up on me for being disabled and not worth their time to accommodate. I walked away from that knowing I could have given them so much more, if only they hadn’t been so fucking stupid and weren’t able to figure it out. In the end, a victory over idiocy and unfairness. I have created a new path for myself, one that I am abundantly proud to walk.
Here we go writing a new chapter.
Last night was great! I helped sell raffle tickets at our booth outside the Punch Line Comedy Club, as part of the NAMI fundraiser. They had some great comedy acts, but I could not stay until the end. You know you’re an old person when you’re scared to drive after 9:00 pm because “it’s dark,” “it’s past my bedtime” and “mischievous kids come out to hooligate.”
The real exciting shit is that I got a FULL WEEK of work now, with activities from M – F. My 10 hours are totally going to be done this week, and that final PSS certification will have been met. Speaking of classes, there is another one I’d like to take that NAMI Sacramento offers called Peer-to-Peer. They don’t have one scheduled yet, but they will and from what I hear, this sounds a lot like WRAP (which I could use a refresher in, for sure).
But did you hear that blog?
Monday: Going to NAMI Sac to man the warmline and help out around the office
Tuesday – Wednesday: Going to Sacramento River City College and meeting with reps and participating in an awareness fair
Thursday – Friday: NAMIWalks 2018 setup and event
Oh yeah, that looks like productivity, for sure. Feels like it too. I am very proud of myself blog for helping out and getting involved in my community, just like I said I would. Sometimes I can stress about things not happening as intended or as expected, but this moment of realization of fulfilled potential is worth the anxiety tax it took from me to get here.
I hope your week starts off as well as mine has! Oh, and Emelia contacted me though I fear there may be nothing there. I still feel very fondly towards her, but it doesn’t appear the same is true in her mind. I just hope for some form of friendship. I don’t have many people in my life who tried to get to know me well, but she was one of them. Even though she became infuriated with me, which is not totally surprising, I still wish she was in my life rather than out of it. She was wonderful for a time many years ago and I hope we can resurrect some of that connection again now. My hopes are dim, but I will always try for the brighter future if there is still light coming through the crack in the door.
Shaft of radiant dawn,
A deep and abiding calm–
Before the swell returns.
Balanced like a precarious stone,
The force of decay–
A grasping, clutching hand,
Ceaselessly restraining,
In vain, escape inevitable.
Propelled with promise,
Burning like a sunbeam–
Etching the new day.
A flood gate of sorts has opened this afternoon, leading me to contemplate my whole approach to companionship. I have, up until this point, held a train of thought that bound me to solitude. I guess this was the case because I feel myself a penitent. I have carelessly relationshipped, and now, I have only rubble in my wake. Not all of that is my fault, but I was certainly no help in saving anything. You who have been here know I have always embraced my failures in my relationships while partners simply avoid the duty. Jax straight up said I was the problem and Amanda won’t really talk about why I broke up with her. I like being able to discuss things reasonably, but none of the people I have dated have come even close to being able to do so consistently. I have settled, time and time again, or been simply misled, but I have always tried to set a proper course and effusively give my love to those I choose to let into the inner circle.
Something was always missing though. It always started out with the spark of interest, but it quickly faded and the two went their own independent directions. What I truly need is someone who has enough in common with me to share a great deal of passion, while being independent enough to have time alone with separate activities unique to differing personalities.
Right now I just stopped this whole thought. Who the fuck am I to be setting the standard for any sort of companionship? I have squandered every chance I’ve gotten, and yet that entitles me to set the terms of the next possible engagement at significantly higher levels than before? It’s this sort of presumptuous bullshit that gets me into trouble. I haven’t even met anyone yet, and I’ve already got a fucking prenuptial written up. I truly piss myself off sometimes.
What is needed is an approach that focuses on the true supplicant, me. I have so much work to do to earn a place of meaning in the world, and tonight is indeed a good place to start. However, I should have no terms, no preconditions. All the planning and formulating I have done to this point has all been for nothing. None of it ever amounted to success or anything at all. Time to start counting on the spark of instinct, impulse and chemistry. There needs to be a poof, a bam bam… something to ignite the engine of interest. We have to wonder why. We need the desire to unpack the mystery of another, and to do so, one needs to be worth unpacking. The activity requires a great deal of time, and consistency. The whole thing right now seems so surrealistically out of this dimension that it is not even possible to contemplate the thought of grasping it.
Why?
I doubt anyone I am going to meet anytime soon has any desire to unpack me. I’m going to go out there and be proud as fuck like I always am, but inside I know that the core that is good and wonderful in me is buried under a fetid, rotten rind that may be too repulsive to endure for so little a reward. What, are you going to voluntarily subject yourself to a lifelong sexually transmitted disease? Are you going to affiliate yourself with someone who can become psychotic during elevated emotional moments? Are you really going to watch the meds wreak havoc on his acne-scarred, mutilated body?
The two things I have left to give are my time and my attention. I will give that attention to those who need it the most, who yearn for someone to care about them, much the way I pine for someone to do the same for me. I know how good it felt to have someone so passionately interested in me that it lit up my world as though the sun had doubled in size. Even if I don’t love anyone else that way again, I can still care about my clients. One-on-one, I can be effective as a caregiver and I will continue to pursue that path towards meaning. I have served myself my whole life. My passions, lusts, at whoever’s expense. I’ve ruined worlds, and walked away from brightly burning bridges. I know now that I have a fate tied to pride, and a soul that aches to be redeemed.
I may be at this journey by myself for the rest of my life, and I need to be prepared for that to be the highest probability outcome. I don’t honestly think that despite my curious brilliance, I have too many detrimental flaws to ever keep anyone gravitationally bound who flew into my solar orbit. I do think the human being that I am is a pretty cool human being, but what I think doesn’t count for much and is also biased. Getting someone else to believe how fucking rad I am is the heart of the challenge I face.
Well blog, digging up those old pictures has really brought a lot of stuff flooding back, and caused me to be introspective about the prospect of ever loving a woman again. I have so much love inside me, just stored up like 10,000 barrels of wildfire, waiting for a flame to ignite their explosive potential. I want to incinerate you in the blinding, unstoppable inferno of my love. Too much?
My nonprofit is hosting an event at a comedy club tonight and I was invited to go. I’m getting all spiffed up and shinycated. Everything is looking good for this opportunity to sell my story and influence new people. I have been out of practice in the department of selling my show, but now is the perfect time to shmooze and do just that. I have been given no details on the specifics of the evening but I’m going to be prepared for whatever happens.
Today has been somewhat reflective, and also good in my setting of a new and beneficial trend. I intend to walk every day, and start logging my 10,000 steps a day. I was just telling Moo this morning that the scenery has significantly improved from the last place we had to go walking in. Instead of empty milk carton, sleeping homeless guy and pile of decomposing sludge to trees, squirrels and tweety birds. Stark contrast, I’d say… and one so stark even that it inspires a significant increase in physical activity. I went from less than 5,000 steps a day to now close to 10,000 a day. The good thing about walking is that endurance builds up quickly. and distance becomes less of an issue. Round trip to the fishing spot is .30 under 2 miles so it’s a bit of a walk (and there is 40 feet of elevation change).
The fishing spot though is pretty much the best possible spot for a shore angler. deep drop off, no shrubs or trees nearby, open water at a junction point forming a trough. Boom. I though that, in my mind, this would be the place a big lunker would hang out… but finding out what these very particular bass will hit on is still a mystery. I have tried something new every day, and had a few helpful tips from a local. It’s an interesting challenge, but one I am confident persistence will overcome.
I really do like my new life and my direction that I am headed. I wish I had someone to share this enthusiasm with. Someone who adored me for the work I’m driven to do and the person I am. I realize now that this desire will be forever suspended in the land of want, and not the land of the real. It is something I struggle with, since I greatly desire to be loved. Intimately, closely, and truly. However, I am also really unappealing, like a mostly decayed onion. There might be something of use deep down inside it, but most of that shit is just fucking rotten, and it needs to be cut off and thrown away.
I found these pictures today of Em and I back when we dated. On the occasion that my life in Sacramento imploded about 6 years ago, we ventured south and I lost all contact with her. My sentimentality and generousness for forgiveness lends me to want to build bridges rather than seek to burn them down (if they happened to still exist).
I would like to find her again, and see how the road has been treating her. I certainly have meteored-out at least once between then and now. Seeing her face reminds me of how passionately I loved her, and I can still feel the ache in the place that is now empty because she has gone. There will never be anyone else like her, and no one that could replace what she brought to my life, for a time. I learned many things because of Em, and seeing her bright face only reminds me further of the memories we made together. Those years were some of the happiest times in all my life; when I lived in that granny flat in Fair Oaks with Em. We had two wild chickens whose names I still remember: Jack (black) and Houdini (brown) that hung around the house. That summer when we first moved in and the hot water wasn’t working… We took baths in the tub out on the lawn and had sex under the stars at night. Passionate moments both good and bad were all a part of my span with her. Many beautiful memories though, a lot like this picture of the two of us. I will never forget those moments and all of the things I have gained having lived through them.
What an odd thing to find at random in a notebook, just a few weeks into my return to Northern California. To Em: wherever you are, peace be with you.
Back when we were together
As I have made you aware in the past, I have an ongoing legal dispute with my workplace over the way they handled responding to my disability. They refused to offer sufficient accommodation, so, I sued for lost wages and damages incurred. A law firm who represents labor issues took my case and built an extensive history on me, my work environment, and the events that led up to my psychotic breakdown. The event itself took place October 12, 2017… the last day I worked for Mood Media. I was planning on working for them until July of 2018, which was when my family had originally planned to move to northern California, so my claim reflected appropriate compensation for the fact that I should have been allowed to earn wages during that period.
The legal back and forth went on for some time, but I must say that my law firm did a great job keeping me informed, and advocating for me where it was logically possible to do so. They really explained things to me clearly and guided me through the various interactions, offers and eventual settlement. Today I found out we had a final offer, and we were going to take it. I am glad that the process is finally nearing a full and reasonable conclusion. I’ll be glad to get something of financial worth out of all of this, my poor old truck is at 183,000 miles and I fear its days are numbered. This money should help put a down payment on a new car when the time comes. Something is better than the nothing at all I would have ended up with if I had done nothing and lett the corporate steamroller flatten me. I refused, I resisted, I was not respected until the law got behind me and said I needed to be listened to. I am grateful to them for that.
So I say to all of you, if you are honestly, truly a victim of workplace discrimination based on a disability, there is hope. I got fair representation, good treatment and I do believe you can too if you have a case. My story is just one of many, and of those, few are truly told. People fall through the cracks and are ruined by the machine of society. I refuse to let that happen to myself, and anyone else if I can help it. This is a big part of why I decided to get into Mental Health advocacy and awareness as a career. I don’t want people who suffer like I do (or, have) to go on feeling misunderstood and unacknowledged. I can do a lot to guide people to finding their strength through the example of success.
I’m going to take a W for justice on this one. The Mentally Ill were redeemed, represented and appropriately compensated in this proceeding. I am thankful to have learned what I have from going through it, now coming out the other side. Resolution drawing near… future is wide open.
My volunteer career with NAMI Sacramento has begun, and I am already participating in the expansion of my organization’s goals. I represented a living success story when I manned our NAMI Sacramento booth at the Disability Fair on the campus of Sacramento City College last Thursday. It felt great to be working, or more accurately, sponsoring awareness and proactively engaging the community. As time goes on, my hours will steadily increase, and I believe I have made it clear to my Executive Director that I have a lot to offer. The future looks bright.
There is this part of me that keeps going back to the past to poke around in the ashes for an ember of some form. I don’t know why I indulge this activity, as my last encounter with this resulted in me being cursed and berated. Chances are, the same fate ultimately awaits me in the past. The past is a place I have utterly ruined, and I should not expect anything to grow there ever again. Looking forward, this seems to be a good incentive for isolation and an avoidance of the path that led to all that mess. The whole sector is now an irradiated wasteland with an unfriendly fence around it.
I don’t know what new things I will discover in this career direction, but the work is bound to be more rewarding, more meaningful. It is having a purpose and making a difference that are of concern to me. I don’t want to be forgotten or useless. We have a cat: there’s already someone in this house who’s primary occupation is being useless. No room for two of us, it would seem. So here I am living my life, being proactive and helping a nonprofit spread the word about erasing the stigma of mental illness.
I hate feeling like a freeloader. I do mooch, but I also contribute so that the burden of guilt is lessened. Nevertheless I find myself I satisfied and wanting. Scheduled relevance is most definitely needed in my life right now.
I want to get to helping, contributing or doing something relevant, but it’s not quite time.
At the current moment, I’m suffering my first cold in a few years. I forgot just how terrible it is to be sick. Paralyzing, irritating and uncomfortable. I’m doing my part to fight it off with the medicines and vitamins. I will persevere.
My parents are being more effectively communicative. I heard them sort out a thing that might have led to a fight. They’re getting it. It’s much more fun to resolve conflict than enlarge it. I find.
Have a good night blog. I’m going to bed.
An Abstract Prose Narrative
—
Back in the days full of sun, dreams merged like clouds blowing in the wind. Dancing light and fingers touching the tall grass the days were by. Holding breath in the kiss of tangerine love.
Opening up a bounteous bloom of cosmic preponderance and entrenched in unique beauty. Hinges, wings and cryptic messages sparked a deep fascination. Could such a world blend with my own? Maybe a merging of these twisted dimensions may yield a beautiful offspring? The investigation within the cave of the eye began. Tumbling down the hole seemed a drunken escapade so delightful, wanted, yearned for. Always.
So to do sunsets yield to night, a time and a time went by. Stale air and old closets were hiding. Shriveled up socks and neglected piles of things.
Threads cobwebbery enmeshed and ensnared. Thorns dug in deep. Hatred like raging lava buried the what had been in incendiary death.
What then at this brink? Her last words were of a lost piece of the personal past. Her bloom, in a book, in text where her secrets had been hidden. The unfurling of her thought, ripped to pieces by division, scattering her from her anchor. The fissure had grown vast and deep. Her words echoed into the chasm, unreconciled.
Long since the sun shown so, my hands found her dreams once more. Symbols, language and such an imagination. It was all here again, unearthed by the expansion of time. Scrawled in her adorable ink, all that she was missed was remembered. Kiss, laugh and dream.
Now, to feel her dust on my fingers, such a sigh. This one sad little ember of it is all that remains. Kicked me into the ditch and left me to blame, while peasant heart still aches. All little sounds and sniffs forgotten.
Such is the death of things, and the rocket propelled moments when fireworks are right there and everything is back. Over and done, but never forgotten. The book returns to oblivion from whence it had come.
Driven into stinging rain,
Stale hopes like tears–
Falling to wonderment.
Puzzling arrangement of doors,
Hastened urges and shortcomings,
Skeptical glance–
Lamentably collapsing within.
I have my volunteer placement interview with NAMI Sacramento on Saturday, and I’m just so excited! I can’t wait to have a job again, and to have a place to go where I make a difference. I’m telling you, from my heart, that having a job is a great way to kick start functionality. If you can convince yourself that pride is important to you, than anything is possible. Wouldn’t you rather be proud than ashamed all the time? Seems like a no-brainer to me… but then again, my brain isn’t the best judge of anything.
So I have already submitted my name as a NAMI Walk volunteer here coming up at the beginning of next month! I have my hours, seemingly, locked in. It will be the doing of the work that I am most looking forward to. I have even offered my skills in getting things down from high places, or lifting heavy things and carrying them a short distance.
I will be happy once my hours are done and I am settling in to a role as a PSS or some such. I think I have a lot to offer with my experiences and my language. I have such an interesting way of spinning the world. Typically, I have something smart assed to say about whatever it is that you have brought to me today. It is my scientific speciality, the poking of you in the eye.
In a nice way though. My humor is always so well-meaning, and usually exploiting a straw man of some kind. My typical humorous paper-cut-out targets are Bears (seriously, fuck Bears), Newt Gingrich, Earthquakes and Russia. If one of them isn’t to blame for whatever is happening, it truly is the end of days, and also, I have no joke to offer you either.
Thanks for reading, see you later!
It’s hard to maintain healthy communication skills when you live with people who refuse to practice them. My parents are frustratingly ingrained in their resentment and biases, which makes bridging their disconnects with good communication skills totally impossible. They refuse to shed the cognitive distortions that haunt nearly all of their interactions: My dad the mind reading projector and my mom the all-or-nothing emotional free radical. Together, they hardly communicate about anything that isn’t inherently positive or reflective. Conflicts just keep getting brushed under the rug in their partially dissimilated states; abandoned to frustration and time.
I do hope that as I expand professionally, I can build up more of a tolerance to being consistently rebuffed in my attempts to establish good communications between my parents (or clients) and still help them improve their ragged partnership. In such a dynamic, the more clear and concise the better, but in my reality, speculation and projection run amok like easy candy out of a cheap vending machine. No one views my way as a superior way to communicate, or are otherwise unmotivated to change for the (what I believe to be the) better. This is frustrating for me, naturally. The people I love the most are the ones I am least able to help.
So, I have to endure a dysfunctional environment with no real hope of improvement for as long as I am living here. In truth, I had suspected that I would not be with them in the same house until the end of their lives, because eventually, I would need a healthier environment to thrive in as the person I intend to be. That man, Westin we will call him, is intending to be a ripple of good in the still, murky pond of life. I know I can impact people’s lives and show them a way towards finding a kind of happiness that makes sense for who they are.
In the meantime, I at least have my own room and place to retreat to in the event I do not want to be a part of the ongoing discourse. Things are moving forward in my path towards re-establishment into relevance… this is more of a personal relevance if anything. I need to achieve, to try for something of worth, and succeed so that the roots of my pride and personality are nourished. It’s a good recipe for avoiding deep depressive cycles, I have found.
Have a good day.
Hello Blog, I am in a great mood! Over the past 11 days I have moved myself and my family 525 miles north to Sacramento, CA. This is the actual physical reset button being pushed on the whole dynamic and directive. Moving is always one of the most stressful things to endure. It taxes our bodies, and fills our minds with stress. I had many bad days during this run towards transition, however, I did not falter in my responsibility to my family. The only real negative thing that happened the whole trip was that Moo had a can of paint explode on her feet and got all paintafied. She was mad because her shoes died. All in all, that’s pretty damn good considering the potential losses we could have suffered in such an undertaking.
I have a new living space with ample room, of which I am grateful. It will be nice to live here while I get myself independentacated again. It’s only a matter of time before I’m working somewhere self-sustaining. Even then though, I still believe it is a big part of my life now to look after my parents. My dad needs help every day, and to toss that burden casually to my mom for the sake of my independence seems unjust, and not something a family member would do to another. Even if I am making the big bucks, and I could be living somewhere by myself, I will probably stay with them.
This is the most content I have been in some time. Sitting here in my new abode amidst the twinge of box smell and fresh paint. I am pleased to be here, as I believe I forecasted I would be some time ago, looking down the scope at this day off in the future. It is great to be here, and the cascading erosion of time has left me dusty, smudged and bruised all over.
I’m going to focus on getting the apartment 100% unpacked and situated, then call my peeps and start the lifes.
I struggled and endured a huge ordeal, and this can be evidence for you that huge undertakings of epic scale are possible, if worked at, if crushed with persistence and if pursued until completed at all cost. There is no giving up, even when you can’t move your legs. Eat a pop tart, and give yourself a few minutes before getting the fuck back to work.
One day soon, we will be at done. When there, a new kind of ice cream like happy should prevail.
Neurochemically Challenged 
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