It’s been a while since I last wrote on A Life of Mental Illness. I didn’t give up writing. I was writing on other forums, like Medium. It’s easy to pay wall my work on Medium. I guess after years of honing the craft, I thought it was time to see if I could make some money from my blogging.
Even though I haven’t written on WordPress the last several weeks, I was still getting pretty decent traffic. I had gotten discouraged with the fact I was actually losing money on WordPress. Even though I’m not getting rich, I turn a profit every month on Medium. I’ve made more money on Medium in the last eight months than I ever did with any of my writings on other forums. This includes the print on demand books I wrote and sold through local shops when I still lived in Nebraska.
I’m seriously considering republishing some of my old works. Found most of my old poetry writings from years ago. Poetry is how I learned how to write. The only real writings I haven’t found yet are the drafts for the three novels I wrote back in my twenties. Both were coming of age stories about friendships in college and young adulthood. I would describe them as 21st century versions of Jack Kerouac’s ‘On The Road’, but not as much drug abuse.
In addition to my novels about young adulthood in the early 2000s, I made notes for some other stories. One was a story about middle aged private investigator who was falsely accused of a crime and lost his job on the police force and was trying to clear his name. Another story was a science fiction story about settling other planets. I was big into playing Star Craft and watching Star Trek Enterprise reruns at the time.
I used to make up stories all the time while I paced around my large backyard as a child. The backyard was my Fortress of Solitude. It’s where I went when I needed an escape from reality and my bullies when I was a kid. I’m wishing I wrote some of those story ideas down. I made up stories ranging from Indiana Jones types, to war stories, to science fiction stories, to stories about world class athletes who were also academic geniuses, to trying to predict the future, to even my own made up in my mind fan fiction. But I never heard the term Fan Fiction when I was young. Hell, I grew up over an hour’s drive from the nearest bookstore and comic book shop.
Since I didn’t have easy access to bookstores, I did the next best thing. I spent much of my childhood at the village library. It was one of those old-fashioned Carnegie Era libraries from the early 1900s even though I don’t know if it was built using Carnegie Foundation grants or not. It had the aroma of old library. I’m talking the smell of bound leather, Lemon Pledge, and just enough mustiness to be pleasing to the nostrils and not overwhelming. As a kid if I wasn’t in my backyard, I was at the library.
I’m really kicking myself for not taking extensive notes and writing things down as a child. As an adult I use my blogs as my mental notes and storytelling. I also have copies of all my blog entries offline. Have some of them even in paper copy. I believe in being prepared for emergencies. I just have too much of the old Nebraska Farmer in my blood to do otherwise.
Here in Oklahoma, it’s feeling like spring again. Had our first thunderstorm a few days ago. Went out for ice cream with my elderly parents this afternoon. Did some people watching from my porch in my neighborhood today. Met my across the street neighbors. They are a younger married couple with three small children. It’s cool to be living in a place that young families actually want to come to. First time in my entire life I’m living in a place that isn’t stagnating or dying. I like it.
It’s also one of the reasons I want to get my own place again. I think it would be better if I in a complex that is handicap accessible. As much as I like the suburbs, I do want to get back out in my own place. I had been on my own for almost 18 years. I didn’t spend 18 years living alone to be under my family’s shadow again.
I already buy my own groceries, pay rent, and pretty much keep to myself for the most part. The first few months I was here I had some heated arguments with my family about different ways of doing things. So I make it a point to keep to myself and avoid my family except for maybe a couple times a day. Helps keep my sanity.
I think it would be easier to make IRL friends if I were back in an apartment complex as opposed to a stand-alone house in the burbs. Sure, I love the low crime rates of the burbs, but I do miss the diversity of living in an apartment complex. Hell, I even miss my old college dormitory.
I loved the fact that, in communal living, there was always something going on somewhere, often within walking distance or a short bus ride. It’s one of the reasons I would love to live in a handicap accessible apartment in a culturally diverse area of Oklahoma City.
That way I could have my freedom, my culture, and still be close to my family. I found I get along with my brother a lot better than my elderly parents. He’s far less judgemental and actually likes many of the geek things I do.
I miss having a social life outside of my home and online. Since the burbs aren’t conducive to wheelchairs, I pretty much stay home whether I want to or not. I’d definitely would love to live in an area that has street fairs, parades I could watch from either an apartment or from the sidewalks. I miss going to weekend concerts at the college town dive bars when I was in my twenties and early thirties.
I also think my parents and I get on each others’ nerves. I get annoyed that they spend most of their time watching tv in the living room and complaining about the world falling apart. Seems like the only real times they leave the house are for doctors’ appointments and church service. And they never leave me alone when I go to the living room even though I’m in my 40s and have on my own for many years.
Gets tiresome and irritating being that I can’t go to the backyard or even cook my own meals without my parents making some stupid comments about something. It is true, elderly people really don’t have filters. It’s annoying. I mean I had to filter myself all the time when I was growing up. My life is half over and I have to do it again? Irritating. And most of everything they talk about I’ve already heard or could hear just by listening to Tucker Carlson or ESPN.
I’ve been really looking for my own place for over a year. Thank God I have family. Otherwise I’d be on the damn street. But I really don’t want to spend the rest of my living in a place that isn’t handicap accessible. Even the front door and bathrooms aren’t handicap friendly. The only thing qualifying the place as handicap friendly is that there are no stairs. It’s gets so old having to settle in my life for things that don’t work well for me.
I’m in my 40s and am on disability pension due to a schizophrenia diagnosis and congestive heart failure that took most of my mobility. I guess you could say I was forced into early retirement.
I found the trick to staying happy for me was intentionally forcing myself to stay active. Even when I don’t want to be physically active, I force myself to be mentally active. It’s why I write almost every day.
It’s why I read books that challenge the world view I grew up with. Many of the classics of literature and philosophy and other religions outside my Christian upbringing? I read many of those just in the last 20 years.
Taught myself how the stock market and cryptos work. Wish Robinhood was a thing 15 years ago. Better late than never for sure. Still thinking about teaching myself Ancient Latin and Greek.
Yes, I am one of those history loving pricks who enjoys ancient history too much to be healthy. Yes, I think about Ancient Rome every day. But I sure wouldn’t want to build a time machine and move back to the First Century AD. Like I said, I read too much history to actually be nostalgic about everyday life back then.
I failed to teach myself calculus several years ago but will probably pick it back up in a few years. I probably spend 60 to 80 hours per week reading books, writing blogs and essays, watching educational channels on YouTube, corresponding with writer friends here on Medium, etc. Have been doing this every week without fail for over 12 years. Just because I’m on disability pension doesn’t mean I drink beer and watch porn every day.
Here in Oklahoma, it’s starting to look and feel like spring. Spring is probably my favorite season. Ironically, I usually hate summers. I never did well in the heat, at least when I can’t be under a fan or an AC. I’m more heat sensitive than most people. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t commit to move to Oklahoma until a year ago.
Mentally, I’m still very stable. I think it helps that I avoid stressful people and overstimulating as much as possible. I don’t even like driving or people knocking on my office door. I haven’t owned a car for almost five years now. And I feel far less stress because of it. To hell with being forced to own a car. Pity grocery delivery wasn’t a thing ten years sooner.
Physically I’m doing much better. The only times I have bad joint pain are if I sit for several hours, sleep too long, or the weather is really changing. I still take the turmeric for my joints. Take hemp oil too. Still slowly rebuilding my heart strength.
My writings here on Medium are doing alright. Good enough to keep me some good side hustle money. But not good enough to get me kicked off social security disability. It’s a pity that universal health care will probably never be a thing here in the US.
My water retention swelling has gone down a lot. Granted it took two months on lasix, but that did the trick. I retain fluids sometimes due to my congestive heart failure. So I have to limit how much water I drink every day.
I’m also eating less. The last two times I ordered a pizza, I was able to get three meals out of it. Usually get only two. I just don’t need to eat as much anymore. Overeating actually is painful to me now.
Don’t know if I’m losing weight, but I know my clothes fit a lot better than they did six months ago. I gained some weight in the first few months here in Oklahoma. After that, I changed my diet.
Found out I tend to eat more when I am cooking for myself. If someone else cooks, I almost never ask for seconds. It may seem odd for a man who’s been on his own for over 18 years as a bachelor to defer cooking duties to his parents. But I do eat less, and my clothes fit better since I changed my habits.
Now that winter is almost over, I’m finding I have strong desires to socialize more. I spent much of the winter indoors, writing, reading, researching, doing my hobbies, etc. Now I’m ready to reconnect in person.
My investment picks are doing well. I might have to sell some off soon so as to not draw the ire of social security disability. They get kind of mad when people on disability have any real kind of savings. Really sucks that I find something I’m good at and then can’t really make a living off it because, well, the cost of insurance and meds. And I refuse to get married, not that I ever was marriage material in the first damn place. Aye, so much hate.
Been following develops in AI and automation for over ten years. Been following it real close for the last two years from when I first heard of ChatGPT. I don’t think most people realize just how good AI and automation is getting. And almost no one has any real clue how good it’s going to get. This is even before Quantum Computing becomes readily available. I’m convinced Quantum Computing will be as big as AI is now within 10 years, probably sooner.
In spite of all the doom porn and sky is falling type bullshit flying around out there, I’m glad to be alive and relatively young at our current point in history. As rapid as things have changed in the last 25 years, the next 10 years will see even more change. I feel privileged to have survived congestive heart failure to see it.
I didn’t give up during heart failure even though for a while I was in so much pain I couldn’t even get out of a hospital bed on my own. They literally had to use a lift to get me from the bed to the wheelchair for the first two weeks of my treatment. But I survived.
I didn’t want to die that way. Had too much I wanted to see before I finally do shuffle off into the Great Unknown that is death. That was two years ago this May. I like what I’ve seen just in these two years. I guess it’s all material for writing at this point.
If I get to tell the young kids thirty years from now about how I spent the Pandemic and Great Reset, I’m so going all George Patton inspiration speech the day before D Day on this shit. I hope you find the humor in it.
I will be able to tell my hypothetical grandkids that, “Well, your grandpappy survived the pandemic and the Great Reset of the 2010s and 2020s without getting so much as a sniffle. I was also a part of a resistance to the rising tides of authoritarianism that was rampant among his family, neighbors, and friends in Red State America. I actually convinced a few of the insanity of their ways and got them freed of the MAGA cult.”
“Grandpa also ran errands for disabled shut in neighbors while making a small profit on Robin Hood with my stimulus money. I was a fan of Wall Street bets and a Diamond Hands crazy son of a bitch named Roaring Kitty. I was a small part of the Apes and Wall Street bets and Dumb Money who helped bring down a few shady hedge fund managers and made themselves a few bucks in the process. Nothing like using the free market itself to punish the worst abusers of said free market.”
“Grandpa also survived heart failure, lost over170 pounds, moved out of rural Nebraska (yes, Grandpa was part of the ‘rural flight’ migration to urban areas) to the greener pastures and red dirt of Oklahoma City. I had some really cool friends, and actually started turning a profit with his crazy son of a bitch mad man rants.”
I won’t have to say, “Well, your granddaddy pissed away a golden opportunity to reinvent himself during the covid pandemic and Great Reset.”
Obviously, it’s not as cool as surviving the Dust Bowl and bringing down fascists and tyrants in Nazi Germany and Imperialist Japan. But I guess it’ll have to do for us “middle children of history.”
This week has been more frustrating than usual. Physically I’m doing well enough that I don’t need as many otc pain pills anymore. I sleep in my bed most nights. I’m getting more mobile. My swelling is almost gone. I never thought I’d be thrilled to be able to comfortably wear pants all day again.
So, what’s the problem you may ask. With my newfound renewed health, continuing mental stability, etc., I’m also finding I’m having a healthier desire for my freedom and independence again. In short, I’m outgrowing living in my parents’ guest wing.
I guess it was only a matter of time before this happened. I outgrew the long-term care facility in Nebraska I checked myself into back in May 2022 after only eight months.
But in those eight months, I lost over 90 pounds, got my wheelchair, got my heart issues stabilized, graduated physical therapy, had a few nurses and staff members flirt with me, and lost most of my fear of death. Not many people in their early 40s can claim they no longer have much fear of death.
Now, I love my parents. I appreciate the fact they let me live with them here in the suburbs of Oklahoma City for the last year while I got my Medicaid transferred across state lines more than words can say.
But now that things have stabilized, my wheelchair is officially paid off, and my finances are back in order, I think I’m hearing the siren cry of desiring my independence again. I guess I’m like the wounded bird whose been nursed back to health desiring to fly again or the domestic wolf hearing the call of the wild and knowing deep down that’s where he truly belongs.
I’m still on the waiting list for low-income housing in Oklahoma City. I’ve been disqualified from slightly over half of their complexes because I’m not a senior citizen. One place would have taken me except they can’t accommodate my needs (wheelchair, handicap accessible, ideally ground floor, etc.).
I’m starting to feel the old frustrations again, like I felt in the final couple months in long term care and when I was fighting my heart failure alone back in Nebraska during the pandemic. It is a frustrating feeling to know I’m doing my job but I’m not making as much progress as I could because others keep dropping the ball.
As far as going to long term care, I probably would have never had to done that in the first place had I been able to buy a wheelchair back in 2019. That’s when my mobility issues begin. My doctors in Nebraska knew I had mobility problems; my apartment complex knew I had serious mobility issues. Hell, even my family knew I had serious issues.
No one offered to help. Since I made less than 1000 dollars a month from all sources, I couldn’t afford a wheelchair on my own. Hell, I thought you needed a prescription to even buy own with your own money a few years ago. Damn gate keepers.
All it would have taken was a wheelchair heavy duty enough to support me. I could have made many of my doctors’ appointments with a wheelchair as we had handicap accessible public transit buses in my old hometown. Yet, no one bothered to listen to my problems. Hell, I’ve even had friends tell me I’m lucky to be on disability and not have to work. With friends like that, who needs enemies?
During the pandemic, I looked at wheelchairs on Amazon. Probably could have afforded one with my stimulus money. But supply chain problems were a serious issue back in those days. Hell, sometimes I couldn’t even get sanitizing wipes, masks, or even ground beef.
2020 was only four years ago, yet it seems like most people purposely block 2020 and 2021 out. I think our entire world has a collective case of PTSD from the covid pandemic and still hasn’t come to terms with millions of people dying from covid and life in general being completely disrupted. Now that we got wars going on all over the world, add those to the mix.
After a few years of struggles, I’m mostly recovered. The only thing I need now is a handicap accessible apartment. That’s the last hurdle. Even though my parents’ house has no stairs, it’s not handicap accessible. All the doors and hallways are too narrow. And my parents absolutely love to have little Knick knacks all over the house as decorations. Personally, I think of them as clutter that looks grotesque. But, since my name is not on the house’s deed, I get no say in things like that.
If I sound frosty, it’s because I’ve been overcoming challenges for a few years now and not seeing any acknowledgement from anyone who could make the last mile of the journey possible. When I first moved down to Oklahoma in February 2023, I was assured I’d have my own place by the end of summer. Here it is one year later, I’m still waiting. Hell, I wasn’t told the process of moving my Medicaid to Oklahoma wouldn’t start until I moved down here until after Christmas 2022. I guess I’ve had to fight for every square inch of ground I’ve gained in the last few years.
It upsets me that I’ve lost over 170 pounds since February 2020, got my mobility issues solved via a wheelchair, got my heart failure treated, been more stable mentally the last four years than most years (haven’t been to a mental hospital since 2013), graduated physical therapy, survived a pandemic without getting sick even once, found out I have an insane talent for picking the stock market, found Medium, and am now getting paid every month for my writings, etc., and I still don’t get much for credit for my accomplishments. Certainly not from anyone who can make my final hurdle of getting my own place possible.
God bless Robinhood, Stash, Coinbase, Wall Street Bets, etc. I love all you crazy bastards. You guys made it possible for millions of not rich people like me to make a few bucks in this worldwide game we call globalized capitalism. By the way, Dumb Money is one of my favorite movies from last year. I liked only Barbie and Oppenheimer even more. Didn’t get in on Game Stop personally but made a couple hundred bucks off Dogecoin before it went sour.
While I am proud for all I’ve accomplished and discovered in the last four or five years, it is frustrating that the people I was forced to trust on these changes haven’t been much help. Throw in a pandemic and hateful politics on top, the last five years have been one hell of an odyssey. No matter, I suppose. All of it, and I mean all of it, is now fair game for my writing.
I can say this now, but I’m actually glad I was fought every inch of the way and still wound up victorious. The bastards may have wanted me to fail and fall through the cracks, but I didn’t. Makes the achievements and the victories all the sweeter in that the people who said they would help more often than not just made shit worse and were blocking the way. No matter. I overcame despite their ineptitude, interference, and general all-around cluelessness. What can I say, on a long enough time scale you can’t keep a good person down.
I have a lot of problems with paranoia and anxiety, especially around other people. I tend to read too much into people’s gestures, facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, choice of words, physical movements, etc. I can also sense the energy of an entire place, whether it’s positive vibes, negative vibes, indifferent, non threatening, etc.
I have vivid dreams, usually about my past and being lost. I also have dreams about conflict, war, the supernatural, and being in different bodies but with my mind.
I want to spend most of my time alone. Sounds are very overwhelming, especially chatter on tv, power tools, getting stuck in traffic.
Romance is impossible. I can’t read exactly what a woman is thinking. I have zero stomach for drama and conflict. I don’t believe that conflict makes relationships stronger. Never have. The few times I was intimate with my long-term girlfriend many years ago, I was just guessing at what she liked, didn’t like, etc. I read too much into unspoken cues to where I pick up several possibilities. It’s like picking up several different tv shows and static on the same channel all at once.
I was diagnosed at age 20 but started having serious problems at age 17. I decided at an early age I would never have children. I feared I would be too chaotic to be a good father and husband.
I also feel all emotions very deeply, including positive emotions. When I am happy, I’m playful and almost euphoric. When I am angry with someone, it is best I avoid them until the feeling is passed. When I get into arguments, I personalize my insults. Meaning, that I intentionally hit them in sensitive subjects and use their exact words against them, even if it was something they said several years ago.
In addition to schizophrenia, I have excellent long-term memory and am quite smart. I scored in the 130s on an IQ test as a kid. I was reading 11th grade level in 4th grade. It was easier making friends with older kids than kids my age. Even my only really good dating relationship was with a woman who was 2 years older than me.
Speaking of my ex-girlfriend, she said I shown her more passion and intensity in the eight months we were together than any other relationship she ever had, including her now failed marriage. I think she misses the passion and romance. I won’t get back with her because I don’t desire marriage and she lives hundreds of miles away.
I’ve found I tend to obsess about topics I take an interest in. I can spend months on end studying topics like investing, geopolitics, history, tech advances, science, astronomy, history of religion, philosophy, poetry, etc. This is too the point I even buy decorations for my house along with what I study. It’s why I own a pirate flag, a flag of Ancient Rome, the Knights Templar, silver coins featuring Aztec art, etc. I’ve also read many of the classics of literature, both Western and Eastern.
What exactly does schizophrenia mean? I experience everything mentally very deeply, both negative and positive. It’s why I live most of my life in my head. The outside world is often too overwhelming when coupled with what’s already going on in my very active mind.
One of my friends just got out of the hospital for seizure treatments.
A friend of mine just got back home from the hospital. She has epilepsy and her seizures are back with a vengeance. First time in several years she’s had seizures. She’s had to miss some work over the last week because of this. On top of that, her husband was recently laid off from his job because his employer lost several key contracts.
I myself am doing well. My swelling is going down. My rashes are all but gone. I’m still getting most of my sleep in the midafternoons. I’m up pretty late most nights. But late nights are good for writing and editing.
Been making a few extra bucks here and there. In addition to writing on Medium, I’m also filling out online surveys. I mean, if internet companies already have my information, I just as well get paid for some of it.
I’m losing weight again. Even though I love cooking for myself, I’ve found that I almost always eat less when someone else is doing my cooking. I’ve found out the hard way that food is my major addiction. I’m far less apt to go back for seconds when I’m not doing the cooking.
Mentally I’m still feeling well. Haven’t had any serious mental issue since last June. I’m even to where I haven’t had auditory hallucinations in several months.
My auditory hallucinations were usually of footsteps in the hallway, inaudible voices I couldn’t see, etc. Fortunately, never had any visual hallucinations. And my auditory hallucinations were always worse during times of great stress and anxiety.
I’ve also not suffering paranoia nearly as much. I used to have paranoia issues for many years. I was often paranoid about getting evicted from my apartment. I was paranoid about upsetting my neighbors. I was paranoid that strangers were watching me at all times. I had paranoias about people listening in on my phone conversations and going through my garbage. I even had paranoias about strangers reading my online bank statements.
Since I now live in the burbs with my elderly family, I really have no fear of being evicted now. First time in ages that I’m fearful of being one bad day away from the streets or prison. And my family is arraigning that, after my elderly parents die, the house will become mine.
Social Security Disability allows recipients of disability pension (like me) to own their own home. Yet, at the same time, they won’t allow recipients to have more the 2,000 dollars in bank savings at any given time. $2000 isn’t enough to cover car repairs, buy most new appliances, or even cover property taxes in some places. In short, Social Security Disability rules on assets for recipients are woefully outdated.
Me. February 2024
Other updates include that, after my parents die, my brother has said he will take over as my Medical Power of Attorney if that is my desire. My brother and I have made amends for the way we were growing up. I guess 23 years of marriage, a career, raising children, and becoming a pillar of the community will change anyone. In my brother’s case, it changed him for the better.
I’m losing weight again. My meals are usually quite simple. Even though I love to cook for myself, my mother usually volunteers to make our meals. I’ve found that if I let others do my cooking, I’m less apt to make massive portions or ask for seconds.
My edema is getting back under control. I’ve been having bad swelling from water retention, mostly in my groin and hips. The swelling was bad enough it made walking difficult. Shortly after I solve the problems of joint pains in my knees and ankles, the edema causes swelling to where I can barely walk. Just another problem to solve.
Been on Lasix for over five weeks to treat the swelling. It definitely works. Doctor has also put me on strict fluid restrictions. Which I would have probably done on my own as it was getting irritating having to go to the bathroom many times a day just from peeing off the existing fluid plus what I was putting in on a daily basis.
My blood work is good. I’m not diabetic. My blood pressure is good. My cholesterol and other readings are excellent. Right now, the big goal is to get rid of the edema and restrengthen my heart.
I quit sleeping in the recliner all night. I still nap in it, but my best sleep comes from sleeping in a traditional bed. My back pain is pretty much as solved as it’s going to get. If I can sit on the side of the bed for a few minutes before I have to get up, I have few problems. I have zero problems if I can get to my walker easily and use it to get down the hall to my “office.”
Me. December 2019
I currently live in a three bedroom, two bath, house in the suburbs of Oklahoma City. I live with my parents, both of whom are in their seventies. I now pay rent as my Social Security Disability Insurance payments have FINALLY settled into something predictable. It feels good to be able to make budgets again.
My financial situation wasn’t the most stable between May 2022 and September 2023. In May 2022, I went to a long-term care facility (at my request). I knew I had far more troubles with my physical health than I could manage on my own, especially since I was also paranoid about getting evicted from my apartment.
The years 2019 to mid 2022 were very stressful for me. And the pandemic made things far worse even though I never caught covid. I treated that time the same way I would have had I gotten sent to war.
Going back to the long term care facility, I had the very long term goal that I was eventually going to get my heart problems straightened out, get my mobility problems treated, and eventually move to Oklahoma City area with the rest of my family. Long story short, my brother came to Oklahoma for engineering school, loved OKC so much he not only never left, but talked the rest of our household to move down here with him, his wife, and their four children.
When I first moved to long term care, I thought it would take at least two years to get my heart and mobility straightened out. I wanted to eventually move to Oklahoma to be with the rest of my family. I remember one of the speakers at my high school graduation back in 1999 saying something like ‘be kind to your relatives. You’ll probably need them more than you can now realize when you get older.
Well, my two years of recovery turned out to need only eight months. It took a couple months to get the heart meds and mobility problems solved. Once the heart was solved, I started physical rehab to rebuild my heart.
I was officially scheduled to do physical therapy three times a week for four months. In addition to my regular therapy, I would go into the therapy room to lift weights and ride recumbent bikes on the weekends. The facility I lived in was a long-term care facility, hospital, physical therapy office, assisted living, all under one roof.
Me. January 2022. Last Day of Physical Therapy
It was also enough of a laid-back place that the nurses didn’t mind me wheeling myself outside to the flower gardens a few times per week as long as I told a nurse where I was going. I even had one of my neighbors in long term care, a 98-year-old retired farmer, who joked that I was ‘faster in a wheelchair than most people on two good feet.’ The staff always celebrated our gains in physical therapy, especially mine.
The food at the facility was good, but the portions were limited. Those limited portions allowed me to lose 90 pounds in those eight months. When I left that facility in February 2023, I was the lightest I had been in ten years. And I was eating homemade staples like turkey and dressing, potato soup, sausages, eggs and bacon, biscuits and gravy, etc. Heck, the staff even allowed me to use their vending machine so I could buy soda pops and Gatorade for myself (as long as I paid for it myself). Few things felt as good as an orange Gatorade after a long physical rehab session.
Obviously, I could have never had this kind of 180-degree recovery without being on Social Security Disability and not wound-up bankrupt. Some may think I abused the system to get healthier, but I wasn’t ready to give up just yet. Abused the system? Well, I certainly got more creative than most people in my position would have been.
I had to be crazy to think that going to long term care with the idea of getting well enough and moving to Oklahoma City with the rest of my family was a good idea. But, good ideas are often crazy until they are proven to actually work.
I realized that in the process of taking care of my mental health, I wrecked my physical health. Now that I have my mental health taken care of, I just was well going for getting the physical health back. I just couldn’t allow myself to die wondering ‘what if.’ Sure, the odds were against me, but I couldn’t honorably face my death without knowing that I tried even desperate measures to save my physical health. Turns out, my gamble is starting to pay off. I pulled off my master plan, and in less time than I thought it would take. Hell yes, I am proud of myself for pulling this off.
This essay is going to be about how tech advances can allow for art and literature to be inspired, created, and distributed. The seeds for this essay were planted in an article I read a few days ago that stated that NASA has plans to send humans back to the moon on the Artimes 3 mission in 2027.
Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, I heard stories about the space race between the USA and USSR back in the 1950s and 1960s from my elders and popular culture. While I was fortunate to see the space shuttle, the Hubble Telescope, and the International Space Station go up, it just didn’t quicken the pulse and ignite the imagination quite like the idea of putting humans on the Moon. In some ways it felt like we were barely moving ahead for decades.
Even though I didn’t come of age with my parents’ space race, I was privileged to come of age during an era of just as great advances. My best friend and I were the among the first families in our little farming village in Nebraska to get dial up internet. Back then, we were so remote, and internet was so new, it was actually a long-distance phone call (remember that b.s.), to get online.
I remember the dial up, the ‘you got mail’, getting emails from the various girls I met at speech meets all over the state as a speech geek in the late 90s, etc. My best friend tried to talk me into getting a Napster account. She also taught me how to find free porn online without picking up a computer virus. I still remember the old Yahoo chatrooms. I had a few false personalities online, because the whole ‘don’t use your real name online’ kind of thing. I still adhere to the whole ‘don’t feed the trolls’ mantra from back then. Pity that one that didn’t go viral once internet went mainstream.
When I was in college in the early 2000s, I remember hearing about the Human Genome Project. I had just enough of a biology background in my college classes to know that this was a big deal. Several years later, my psych doctor had me take a DNA screen to see what psych meds would work best for me. I’m still on the same psych meds ever since that test and haven’t been to a psych ward since 2013.
Same tech allowed me to take an Ancestry.org test, the one where you spit in a few vials and mailed them off to a lab and your ancestry report came back a few weeks later. Found out I’m mostly German, Irish, and British. Have some Spanish, Swedish, and Russian Jewish mixed in for good measure. So glad I got those results and was able to share them with my Grandma Foster shortly before she died in 2015.
Still remember the old Myspace account from the mid 2000s. Kept up with a few old friends, heard some obscure bands, shared some of my early poetry, and tried my hand at some early online games. Like many people of that era, I migrated over to Facebook around 2008 or so. This was before Facebook became social media for senior citizens. Oh, what am I saying? I’m probably a senior citizen now as far as anyone born after 9/11/01 is concerned.
I have a passion for writing and even that was influenced heavily by the tech advances of my era. Originally, I tried to get my writings published with traditional publishers and university presses. Of the first 100 snail mail submissions I did, I received exactly 3 approvals for publishing. To be sure, these weren’t paying publications. An old writer friend of mine told me that getting 3 approvals in the first 100 submissions was actually better than average. Granted this was 15 years ago.
So, I went with a print on demand service for my early poetry, mental illness essays, and my semi-autobiographical novel. The novel was a coming-of-age story loosely based on my college experiences in the late 90s and early 2000s. In short, it was kind of like Jack Kerouac except fewer drugs and less hitchhiking.
My poetry was mostly nature poetry and everyday working-class people type poetry, almost like a modern Carl Sandberg, Robert Frost, etc. Other poets who inspired me included Walt Whitman and Emily Dickenson. I also like some of the Old-World poetry, like Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Dante’s Divine Comedy, some of Rudyard Kipling’s work, etc.
As much as I loved writing poetry in my twenties, I found out that poetry doesn’t pay well. But it was good training for essays and articles, especially the idea of catching a reader’s attention quickly and telling a compelling story.
In my late 20s, I attended a poetry writing workshop hosted by my hometown’s state university where one of the lecturers said, to the effect, that poetry was kind of a ‘protest of death.’ Until then I looked at it as a celebration of life and being human. But I guess celebration of life and protest of death could be seen as opposite sides of the same coin.
Fast forward 15 years to the year 2024. I’m still writing at least some every day. Made some money off my writings. Now that I’m on Medium, I actually make a few bucks every month off my writing. I’m glad that sites like Medium exist. I’d love to find more sites like this. Get the whole ‘multiple streams of income’ thing going with my writing, I guess.
I took this stroll down Memory Lane as a means to illustrate how tech, inspiration, hopes of youth, and art meet. Today I am getting paid every month for writing for an audience on Medium. It’s hardly a fortune, but it’s a lot better than what I was getting all those years of living in low-income housing pounding out blog entries, poems, and ideas for stories when I was in my late 20s and early 30s.
I’m currently in the process of finding some of my old writings. I decided I want to get back into every type of writing I used to do 15 to 20 years ago. I did poetry, novels, essays, blogs, wise quips, etc. I imagine some of my wise sayings might even make some halfway decent memes now.
Hi there, thank you for checking out my blog page where I write about Bipolar, adhd,bpd and ptsd which I struggle with daily. This blog is to both educate and give others hope. I also write about my drug addiction in hopes of giving other people encouragment and hope for a brighter, annd better future.Thank you. sincerly, Emily Thorn.
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A Life Of Mental Illness 