Monthly Archives: July 2016

Routines, Reflections, Dollars, and Desires

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This summer has been anything but routine for me.  I hurt my back in late May and I was out of commission for six weeks.  I rarely spent any time outside and didn’t travel.  I went to the park maybe three or four times in the six weeks my back was mending.  Normally I go to the park three or four times per week during the summer.  I haven’t done any traveling as I haven’t been outside my hometown since late May.  I haven’t driven much and have actually developed a slight phobia of driving.  I guess I never gained my confidence back from my accident last October.  While I got my car fixed I still haven’t heard anything back from if I can get any kind of settlement.  Progress is insanely slow in some cases.

I haven’t been outside around the complex much this summer.  It seems that most of my neighbors have been more short tempered and irritable the last several months.  I don’t know what to make of that.  I still have the one neighbor who always in a foul mood and never has anything nice to say about anyone.  Apparently he won’t be moving out any time soon.  It’s kind of tough living in here anymore.  Three of my most interesting friends in here died in 2014 and 2015.  Since I live in low income housing, who we get as neighbors is luck of the draw.  There are days when I’m depressed I would love to move out and start over.  But I don’t think any where else in my hometown would be any better.  With my mental illness and disability pension I can’t afford to move to a larger city.  I don’t want to move back in with my parents as their hometown has far less to offer than my current town.  I really don’t know if I can move to my brother’s hometown because of my disability pension and transferring to a different state.  If I were to move to another city, I’d love for it to be to a place with reasonable public transit.  I hate driving anymore.  I’d never drive again if I had the choice.

I don’t suppose schizophrenics do well in large cities.  I hear horror stories about people with mental illness ending up homeless or in jail in large cities. My schizophrenia being what it is, it’s not like I can start over with a job that pays enough to give me a decent living if I were to leave disability.  I was anxious working as retail store clerk and factory worker. I used to have panic attacks so bad I’d vomit from the anxiety before I went to work.  I fear the idea of working with the public.  I have been verbally abused enough by customers and coworkers in my previous life as a customer service worker that I never want to experience that again.  And blogging about mental illness will never pay the bills even if I am providing a good service for others.

It’s not the money I care about, it’s what the money can buy that I’m concerned about.  I don’t need the status of a high paying job to satisfy my ego.  I don’t need the large house in the suburbs or the high end penthouse in a skyscraper.  I don’t need the large pickup truck or high end foreign car.  I can get around just fine in a twelve year old four door sedan that is as good on gas mileage as anything besides the really small Japanese cars.  If I need to move something with a pickup truck, that’s why I have friends and family members with pickup trucks.  It’s amazing what one can accomplish with a phone call, a little elbow grease, and offering to buy lunch or a tank of gas.

I really have my basic material needs but I can get by with almost no splurging.  I have learned to live inexpensively on my disability pension without a job.  I am happy wearing t-shirts, sneakers, and pants from K-mart and Wal-Mart. I can get all the music I want for free via youtube or pandora radio. I don’t even have music CDs anymore.  I haven’t even downloaded music from iTunes in over a year. I would rather watch Netflix at home, sit on my own couch, and eat a delivery pizza than go to the movie theatre. I would rather go for a walk in the park or shovel snow in the winter than spend heaven knows how much on a gym membership.

Splurging for me is grilling bratwursts and spending cool and overcast autumn Saturday afternoons watching Nebraska Husker college football games on my flat screen tv.  Splurging for me is buying a bucket of KFC and a couple side dishes instead of eating off the dollar menu.  When I need new furniture I talk to friends and family who are moving or having estate sales.  I got my couch, lamps, and recliner after my grandfather died.  I got my bed and dresser after my grandmother died.  I got my house plants from helping my mother.  All I had to do was help my family clean out their places for a weekend.  The most I gave for a piece of furniture was $50 for my all purpose heavy duty table I eat from and use my computer on.  So a person can live quite inexpensively if you use your family and friends’ connections and help people out once in awhile.  The only time I go to restaurants that aren’t fast food is when I’m entertaining out of town family and friends. I have stayed out of debt for two years even without a job.  I managed to save up some emergency money that could fund my life for a couple months even without a disability pension.

So I’m not concerned about getting rich.  For the first few years I was serious about writing, I was hoping to make some money as a writer, travel on the speaking circuit, and donate a bunch of money to my college as some of my happiest memories are from my four and a half years at York College in York, Nebraska.  Now that I know how to live on less than I thought I could and I see how much stress my brother is under with his job, I know it’s not the high paying job or successful business that I need or even want.  The big thing that I want now is for my experiences and writings to make a positive difference for whomever happens to read these entires.  I have no delusions I’ll make much money writing a mental illness blog.  Schizophrenia my involve delusions but that’s not one of my delusions.  I don’t care if I make money off  my writings and blogging.  I really don’t even care if I make above poverty level wages.  I just want to make a positive difference in the lives of whomever reads my blogs, whether you be a mental health patient, support person, or just someone who cares about the problems of the mentally ill.  I don’t desire riches.  I desire to make a positive difference in at least a few lives.

First Day Back Exercising

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Today was the first day I did any real exercise since I threw out my back six weeks ago.  I can tell I have gotten real rusty and out of shape in the six weeks I spent mending my back.  I walked for only ten minutes, enough to get the blood moving but that’s about all.  I’m not sore from walking but I can tell I am out of practice.  It is quite hot in my hometown as late July and August are always the hottest times of the year.  I’m still not quite adjusted to the heat as I haven’t been outside much while my back was mending.  And it was quite a cool and wet spring this year, so I was used to exercising indoors this spring.

I’m going to start lifting arm weights again.  I’ll start that tonight.  It has been kind of an odd tradition for me to lift arm weights and do stretching while watching Star Trek reruns. A friend of mine got me started on that last summer.  I’m most of the way through Season 3 of Star Trek: Enterprise.  But when my back was healing I didn’t lift any arm weights or do much for stretching.  I’m sure I’m going to be just as rusty with the weights as I was the walking.  I’ll have to use the light weights for a couple weeks until I’m back to normal.

I also starting tracking what I eat again.  I got discouraged for the last few months and was lazy about tracking.  I was especially lazy when I couldn’t exercise outdoors and then after I hurt my back.  Before I hurt my back I had some unexplained foot pain that limited my walking for over two weeks.  So I haven’t been able to exercise hardly at all since the weather warmed up.  And I had to exercise indoors this spring because it was chilly and rainy almost every day.

When I was at my psych doctor last time, I had gained twenty pounds since the start of the year.  That was one month ago.  I’m sure I’ve gain some more as I was not exercising because of my back.  But my back is good again.  I can sleep in a regular bed again after weeks in a recliner.  I get more sleep in a regular bed but I fall asleep faster in my recliner.  I can’t figure that one out.

Because of my back pain and lack of activity I’ve been more depressed and irritable than usual.  I’m sorry I don’t make a very good patient.  But in the handful of times I’ve been in a hospital I make it a point to never get irritable with the nurses and doctors.  I force myself to be on good behavior I suppose.  When I’m healing on my own I can be more short tempered and depressed than usual.  I got angry with two of my best friends over a week ago.  I’m still embarrassed about that.  One of these friends I got mad at I hadn’t ever had an argument with and we’ve been friends for fifteen years.  Another was my best friend from high school and we have raised our voices to each other only a handful of times, mostly when I was in the grip of a mental breakdown.  I’m embarrassed I let those things happen.  I grew up in a family where we rarely yelled at each other and never had instances where we stopped talking to people.  We may not talk to each other every day but we will drop everyone for one of our own in crisis.  Even my extended family is like this to each other.

I’ve mended from my back issues, finally.  It was one of the longest six week stretches I was ever part of.  I’m beginning to exercise again.  I’m starting to socialize again.  I’m beginning to track what I eat again.  I haven’t yet got my blinds fixed but that is coming.  I might even get new carpet by summer’s end.  After months when almost nothing seemed to go right I think I’m starting to turn the corner.  Maybe things will start to get better.

 

 

How I Gave Up Watching The News And Became A Blogger

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My parents are 24 hour news junkies.  Have been ever since we got our first cable tv subscription back in the late 1980s.  Memories of my pre teen years involve seeing the Berlin Wall come down, the First Gulf War updates every evening, and the fall of the Soviet Union.  It didn’t become apparent how ridiculous the idea of paying attention to every little thing that came across CNN (or Constantly Negative News as I think of it now) until the O.J. Simpson trial and the President Clinton impeachment hearings during my teen years.  I saw grown adults give up their lunch hours and heard teachers spend entire class periods rehashing everything that was covered in these news programs.  I paid more attention to the Columbine shootings in April 1999 because the killers were my age and I had friends who were as much outcasts as those guys.  But even that was depressing as it wasn’t like my elders already thought kids and young adults were worthless and bad news.

I finally started to free myself of the drug of 24 hour news in the months after 9/11.  I just got tired of seeing the death and devastation replayed all the time.  I was only starting my mental illness treatment at the time, so I was still mentally fragile in the first place.  To replace my usual news watching, I started reading.  I read many of the classics of literature, some philosophy, much history, quite a bit of economics, and many of the greats of poetry.  I didn’t believe in reading summaries or commentaries because I figured I could understand the masters just fine by myself.  I came to believe that some of the ‘experts’ of academia and culture were often way off when I saw a speaker on C-Span and I could have refuted many of his arguments.  I thought to myself ‘I know as much as this guy speaking and he has an audience.’  Shortly afterward I started putting my thoughts into writing.  This was in 2003 to 2004, so right before blogging and youtube really took off.

After a couple years of writing poems and journals, I sat out to write a novel.  It was loosely based on my experiences at a Christian college and some of the people I knew during those years.  I wrote a novel (and thus crossed off one of the items on my ‘bucket list’).  It was during this time I wrote a letter to the editor of the local newspaper about how many of the myths of mental illness are not true.  I was published as a guest columnist and got some positive response to that essay.  After that I wrote a series of essays concerning my life with a mental illness.  I decided to self publish these and actually sold a few dozen copies.  I self published my novel and some poetry too.  My novel wasn’t very good and neither was the second novel I wrote.  Now I know I can’t do good fiction.  Which is reasonable as I really don’t like reading fiction.  That’s why I concentrate on blogging now.

With the fact I spend much of my time online researching for this blog (and to satisfy my mental curiosity), I do pick up on a lot of what goes on in the world.  Needless to say I pick up on lots of negative news as a byproduct of researching.  But, unlike my parents and most of my friends, I do not agonize over the news.  Case in point, the upcoming elections here in the United States.  There isn’t anything I can’t learn about any of the candidates or major issues I couldn’t learn in a few hours of intense internet research.  I do not need to hear everything said at every speech and rally for a year and a half.  All of that is window dressing and background noise.  I do not need to know every detail about every mass shooting and terrorist attack.  If all I did was listen to bad news, I would have given up hope a long time ago.  Your odds of dying from the flu, or a workplace accident, or heart disease are much higher than dying in a terrorist attack or a plane crash.

I know humans are naturally drawn to bad news because it was a good survival strategy when we were still living in caves during the Ice Ages.  If you missed bad news then, you wound up eaten by a saber tooth cat and you were out of the gene pool. Those old habits are tough to break.  Our species grew up when most of what effecting us was within a day’s walk.  If there was an earthquake or volcanic eruption on the other side of the world, you never knew it.  Now we know every calamity that happens anywhere within moments.  And we respond to it like our caveman ancestors responding to an immediate threat.  That is probably the major source of our present day anxiety.

I try to explain to people the good things going on and I don’t get much of a response.  I also tell them that agonizing and worrying about murder and mayhem not in their hometowns are making them miserable and they can’t do anything about it.  Most people look at me like I’m an idiot for telling them to stop agonizing over the news. I used to love 24 hour news and doom as much as anyone.  But when I stopped to see why most of these dire predictions never came true or were more manageable than previously thought, that’s when I came to realize that most of what we hear in our media is heavily distorted.  It may all be true, but it isn’t the entire truth.  Yes there are mass shootings.  But there are also space probes exploring strange worlds in our solar system.  Yes there is political corruption.  But there is also lots of good works being done by common people everyday.  To quote the classic movie ‘Network’ , “Television is the illusion.  You people are the real thing.”  Once I began to see the illusion for only part of the story, I changed my focus on what was going on bad news wise and started focusing on what was going right.  The best changes in history have always started with small groups of committed individuals who had visions and acted on those visions.  I am trying to debunk many of the myths of mental illness and stir in people more empathy and compassion for the problems of the mentally ill with this blog.  It probably won’t change the world or even make me a dollar of revenue.  But I am just one of many.  I will speak to whomever I can get to listen.  And I will not wallow in sorrow because the news told me there was another mass shooting or my political leaders are corrupt lawbreakers.

Dealing With Depression

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It’s been a rough last several days for me.  Spent most of the weekend at home and dealing with bouts of intense depression.  Finally had a break down on Sunday night.  Got into serious arguments with two of my best friends.  Sent one of them a really nasty message over Facebook and another I yelled at over the phone and hung up before he could say anything.  Summers are traditionally a tough time for me.  And I think the bad seasonal aspects of my mental illness are beginning again.

It also doesn’t help that most people I know are in foul moods already.  A week’s worth of nothing but news of shootings and violence would put anyone who pays attention in a pessimist view point.  I have spent the last several months trying to get people to be happy about the good things that are going on in the world and in their own lives.  But I don’t think I’m making any difference.  If anything I think telling people the good news going on in science and technology advances and humanitarian endeavors only make people irritable.  I don’t get any encouragement for trying to encourage people.  That’s probably what led to my last meltdown.  I wish I could just shut up from trying to encourage people. But that is not my personality.  Never has been.  Seeking and sharing knowledge is what I do.  It has also gotten me in lots of trouble over the years.

The reason I spend so much time trying to tell people good news is because I heard nothing but bad news the entire time I was growing up.  My teachers told me that acid rain was going to kill all the forests and poison the oceans.  But that never materialized because as some adults were weeping and gnashing teeth over problems, other adults (namely scientists) were actually doing something to solve those problems.  We developed better pollution controls.  The ozone layer depletion was a big deal in the late 1980s.  We got rid of chemicals that were causing said depletion and now the hole in the ozone layer is starting to heal.

The problems that people project into the future too often assume that people aren’t going to adapt.  In the 1960s it was overpopulation and famines that would end civilization.  Now the birth rates in most developed countries are not even replacement rate. I also saw a report that said there are now 2.1 billion people in the world who are overweight.  That’s almost one out of three people who are eating too much. The United States isn’t even the most obese country in the world anymore (at least not by percentage). Then there were the concerns of nuclear war and communist scares.  The first movie I remember watching from start to finish was ‘Red Dawn’ as a five year old.  I was expecting the Russians to invade any day for weeks afterward.  The scare the whole world was going to go communist was at the forefront of my childhood in the 1980s.  Didn’t happen.  People are now worried about terrorist groups abusing their religion and that the world will be completely radicalized in term of religion.  If anything, as the internet continues to spread, people will become less dogmatic about religion.  It happened in Europe, North America, and is happening in East Asia.  I certainly became less dogmatic in my religious, political, and spiritual views since I got easy access to the internet.  And I am not the only one.  This is a trend that isn’t likely to reverse.  The internet is one of those game changers, like the printing press or gunpowder.  We still have only scratched the surface of what this easy access to information can do.  It is one of the reasons I stay optimistic even with schizophrenia.  In fact, except for the flare ups, I am hopeful overall.  It’s that one percent of the time that causes me probably ninety five percent of my problems.  And last night for a few hours was one of those times.  I’m sorry I took out my psychotic break on my friends.  I would prefer if I could just break down and sob uncontrollably.  But that’s not how I’m wired.  I lash out when I’m in pain, sadly at those that care about me the most.

Fear and Mental Illness

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I have dealt with a mental illness since my late teens.  But even after so many years with schizophrenia I still find there are things I fear greatly.  I have had a severe fear of heights since this illness became full blown.  I haven’t ridden in an airplane since my early twenties and I don’t foresee ever doing so again.  I know that flying is statistically much safer than driving but it’s the heights that still cause that tingling feeling of fear to corkscrew down my spine.  I can’t even climb ladders or get on roofs.  I am sure my bosses were very unhappy with me that I didn’t work well on ladders.  But a fear of heights has developed since I became mentally ill.  I have tried to conquer my fears of heights by forcing myself to be in high places but this almost triggered a full fledged psychotic breakdown more than once.

In addition to heights, I have a severe fear of confrontations and arguments.  I have gotten to where I hate logging onto social media because of the stupid and immature arguments and things even my family and friends get into.  With this being an election year people in my family and friends circles are especially on edge and combative.  I have unfollowed dozens of people because I don’t want to hear the arguments anymore.  I have unfollowed people I even agree with.  I especially hate when I post something on a friend’s page and someone has to post some negative and angry comment on my thread.  I have experienced enough to know that most people are not mean and malicious by nature.  But even some of the most mild mannered people I ever knew can turn vicious online.  Have you forgotten you are talking to a real person on the other end?  And I know you wouldn’t be that mean if you were having a conversation in person.  Some of things I have read on many people’s sites would get them arrested or ostracized if they said those things in public.  I would love to see the day that we have the same civility online that we have with the people in real life.  I would also love to be cured of schizophrenia and not have to deal with these fears anymore.  A man can dream, can’t he?  I’m just thankful that this maliciousness doesn’t spill over into everyday life very often.  We just hear about the few times it does, thanks to always being connected.

I have always had a fear of driving, especially in large cities and express ways.  I literally haven’t driven on the Interstate in almost ten years.  Too fast traffic, too much going on, and too many people not paying attention.  I was almost in another car accident yesterday when a driver ran a red light when I was driving through an intersection.  This isn’t the only close call I’ve had lately.  I am getting to where I’m scared just to drive to the neighborhood gas station.  Some days, between the fears of driving and fears of my argumentative neighbors, I just don’t want to leave my apartment.  Being out among angry and sullen people just isn’t my idea of a good time.  It’s like some of these people want to argue and even fight.  I have grown tired of it.  I am weary.  I am ready for winter again when I am not expected to be out of my apartment.  Besides I do better mentally in winters than summers anyway.  I just don’t want to deal with these fears.

Why I Don’t Trust Authority Figures

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Had a good chat with my landlady and the head maintenance man today.  I’ll probably get new blinds and new carpet in my apartment within a few weeks.  After looking over my carpet and blinds she acted quite astonished that I hadn’t been complaining about these problems for years.  The carpet in my apartment is well over twenty years old and I haven’t had good blinds on my windows since I moved in ten years ago.  The carpet has been getting worn and even tearing at the seams for five years.  Yet I never complained to her or any of my previous land lords about maintenance issues.  I never complained about any issues in my apartment because it has been my experience ever since early childhood that no one was going to take my complaints seriously.  Nothing ever changed when I voiced displeasure.  Not only did almost no one take my problems seriously, some people flat out stated I brought my problems on myself or they weren’t even problems at all.  I am used to my elders and leaders not helping me, especially when I have legitimate complaints.  That is why I don’t talk about my problems until they become major crises.

My entire life no one took me or my problems seriously.  No one cared when I was getting bullied at school, not my teachers, not my family, not my classmates, and sometimes not even my friends.  No one cared when I was fired from my McDonald’s job at age seventeen for overcooking maybe $10 worth of hamburgers on a grill.  No one cared for the first three years of my mental illness that I was having problems that wasn’t normal teenage angst.  No one cared when I couldn’t find a decent job immediately after college, let alone acknowledged the fact that many college graduates weren’t finding the decent jobs we were told a college degree would lead to. So forgive me for not voicing my complaints and trusting authority sooner.

Not only were my problems not taking seriously by my elders, my teachers, my bosses, and my landlords, most of the problems of people in my age bracket and younger weren’t taken seriously either.  The elder generations apparently don’t care that their kids have greater college debts than what most of them ever owed on their houses.  Most of my elders complain about their kids not being responsible for not marrying at age twenty two or not having a fifty grand a year job right out of college.  Yet my elders’ parents were complaining about how immature they were during the 1960s when they were doing drugs, burning draft cards,starting riots on college campuses, and doing free love. You may have forgotten your history but I, and millions of people in my age bracket and younger, have not. And I guarantee the “greatest generation” had their detractors in their parents’ generation.  Tragically, people in my generation are already complaining about their kids.  So it goes…….

It’s like once you hit a certain age, maybe late 30s or early 40s, get a few gray hairs, a little authority, a little hard of hearing, and a bit of a pot belly, you magically forget the problems you went through in your teens and twenties trying to get established and how your elders were usually critics and detractors.  Most of the encouragement I ever got was from people in my age bracket, not my elders.  I can count on less than two hands the teachers I had in thirteen years of public school who were encouraging and not indifferent.  My elders have the guts to think my generation and our children’s generation should be happy to fund their social security without doing any kind of overhaul to the system to make it more feasible and sustainable.  Social Security, as it’s run now, is a giant pyramid scheme.  It works well as long as enough tax revenue is coming in to keep the system running.  But with fewer people working to keep the system going, problems will come unless we do some restructuring.  We might have to increase corporate taxes to fund social security.  We may have to legalize street drugs and prostitution and tax those to fund the system.  We may have to raise the minimum age for social security.  We may have to do all of these and more.  What we are doing now is starting to no longer work.  And no one seems interested in seriously changing anything.

People wonder why I don’t complain.  I do complain, just not to anyone in any kind of authority.  I don’t complain to anyone in authority because until very recently no one took my problems seriously.  So do forgive me if I have an unhealthy distrust of my elders and anyone with any kind of authority.

High Expectations and High Standards

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I readily admit that I am often hard on normal people who don’t understand mental illness.  I also confess to being really tough on people who don’t think before they speak or write something on Facebook or twitter.  But please do understand people were really hard on me for years and always held me to high standards.  My parents were quite demanding perfectionists because they knew their sons were really sharp and talented. Neither my brother or I remember a time when we didn’t know how to read.  And we essentially taught ourselves.  Because they new we had a lot to offer even at a very young age, they never tolerated us not making the honor roll, causing problems for the other kids at school, talking back to anyone, not being involved in school activities, not being involved in church activities, not having a summer job, and being in trouble with school officials and definitely not the law.  I couldn’t stand it when I was growing up, seeing my friends who weren’t pushed hard in school, who weren’t pushed into school activities, who were allowed to voice dissenting opinions from their parents, who weren’t punished for causing problems in school, or who weren’t encouraged to study hard subjects. My brother and I may not have been raised like warriors, but we were raised like scholars.

And that really didn’t make us very popular with our classmates or town elders when we were growing up.  Our classmates didn’t understand why my brother and I worked so hard in class and not so much in sports.  Our classmates thought us odd that we didn’t attend their beer parties or try to get laid.  Some of the town elders didn’t like us because my brother and I had aspirations of moving out of our village and seeking our fortunes in greener pastures.  I don’t have any animosity toward my hometown as I made a few cool friends I still hear from and became a much better rounded man than had I lived in a large suburb.  I just don’t back there very often because most of my friends (and all of my brother’s friends) no longer live there.  My parents didn’t care if I made the varsity in football as long as I didn’t give the coaches and my teammates any problems.  My parents didn’t care that my brother was the slowest runner in his class because he was doing well in his classes and had aspirations of going on to do something good with his life.  And he did.  He’s an engineer making excellent money, married to a brilliant woman who also is an engineer, and they have four extremely smart kids.  My brother and his wife are making sure those kids are held accountable and have high standards too.  And I can tell it’s starting to pay off for those kids and they aren’t even teenagers yet.

Expectations and accountability can make all the difference in the world.  For the first few years of my mental illness diagnosis, I was a little bitter at times that I was held to such high standards, did everything right, and still wound up with a severe mental illness that destroyed my ability to hold a career or raise a family.  For the first few years I was tormented by stories of people like John Nash, Abraham Lincoln, Helen Keller, etc. that achieved great deals in spite of their problems and handicaps.  I used to think if they can do it, why can’t I?  But I now acknowledge that I don’t have to be a Nobel Prize winning scientist, or a great teacher, or a great difference maker who completely changed history to live a decent life as a man with schizophrenia.  From statistics I’ve seen, anywhere from 20 to 40 percent of people with schizophrenia attempt suicide at least once.  I haven’t gotten to that point even after having problems since age seventeen.  A significant percentage of homeless people are mentally ill people, so I’m probably doing something right because I have my own apartment and have  never missed a rent payment. Some of the normals I’m tough with on occasion can’t claim even that.  I held employment for several years, if for no other reason just to prove I could even with schizophrenia.  Many schizophrenics can’t claim that.

I am convinced the reason I am doing alright with my schizophrenia is that I was held accountable and held to a high standard even as a little child.  I have to think that carried over into adulthood even with a mental illness.  Perhaps that is why I am so active with this blog, because I have expectations that won’t allow me to not communicate to others when I obviously can tell people about my experiences with schizophrenia.  I have the expectation that I won’t allow my mind go to rot, mental illness or no.  I have the expectation that I won’t allow my mental illness, as tragic as it is, to be pointless and meaningless.  That’s the joy and glory of having expectations and standards.  And I confess it is sometimes a little annoying when others don’t hold themselves to similar standards.  But I was held to standards and I am grateful every day because of it.  It might have even saved my life without me ever knowing it.

Independence Day, Veterans, and Loud Fireworks

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Today as I write this is Independence Day in the US (or the colonies’ celebration of treason and insurrection for my British readers).  Many people will be going to the beach, hosting barbecues, going to parades, watching fireworks shows, and attending programs honoring living and deceased veterans.  My celebration will probably involve staying home, grilling a couple bratwursts, watching Ken Burns’ documentary about Thomas Jefferson, and avoiding loud fireworks.  I don’t mind the bright colored ones after dark.  But it’s the ones that sound like cannons and gunfire I can do without.  And many war veterans feel the same way even if they may not publicly say so.

I have lived in my current apartment complex for ten years.  During that time most of the residents would watch Independence Day fireworks from lawn chairs in the back yard or from their windows.  I would usually go outside to watch.  I also noticed that few of the veterans would be out watching fireworks.  One veteran of Korea who has now died said that he didn’t really like fire crackers because they sounded too much like gun fire.  Two other friends of mine, both Vietnam vets in their late 60s, have said the same thing.  So they make it a point to avoid being outside during the celebrations.  My dad has felt the same way for years, which would explain why my mom was very upset with me when me and a few friends lit off a whole roll of firecrackers in a metal trash can in the alley behind our house when I was in junior high.  I probably would have gotten it worse if dad wasn’t at work at the time.  Even though my dad loved bright colored fireworks that didn’t make a lot of noise, he never bought fire crackers or cherry bombs.  It wasn’t until a few years ago I realized the extent of some of his experiences during Vietnam and why he doesn’t like fire crackers that sound like cannons or gunshots.  I had a few friends from my teenage years who are veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq and they are avoiding fireworks too.

I’m not advocating against lighting off fireworks to celebrate Independence Day.  But I do advocate being more considerate of those who have bad memories of being at war.  And it’s not just war veterans who are spooked by loud fireworks.  Victims of gun crimes and most household pets can be too.  When I was a kid some of the neighborhood bullies threw some firecrackers at one of our dogs and that dog spent the rest of her life wound up and spooked every early July and even during our frequent summer lightning storms.  But I can’t really claim to be Holy Joe about my fireworks and me and my friends used to blow up apples and ant hills.  Once we even blew up a baseball.  But we are lucky we didn’t blow ourselves up. Even an immature little snot like I was at age thirteen will learn eventually.   And I think as more veterans talk about their experiences in war and how Independence Day can cause them unneeded anxiety, we will become more considerate of those who were in the military.

Normal People From A Mentally Ill Perspective

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Been reading a lot of Facebook posts from mentally normal people for several years now.  Read one this evening that really took the cake when it comes to normal thinking.  An old friend of mine and I were talking about the lunacy of modern politics and I expressed the sentiment that ‘politics are the new religion’ and that I was fearful that someday liberals and conservatives would force their version of a modern crusade.  To which one of her friends said to the effect ‘I hope so.  We conservatives have all the guns.  We need to clear out some of these tree hugging freaks.’  Well, go to hell!  Is this what normal behavior is?  Do normal people advocate murder against people they don’t agree with?  Yet the idiot who spouts such stupidity has probably never seen a war or even a gang fight.  My father spent over three years in Vietnam as a C-141 pilot.  He flew hundreds of war wounded out of Vietnam on medical missions.  He saw what war does to soldiers, some of whom weren’t old enough to buy a beer in a bar yet old enough to take napalm for Uncle Sam.  My father was at a base that came under rocket and mortar attack.  He said it completely changed his perspective once it became obvious it was him personally that his enemy wanted to kill.  He also brought home American Prisoners Of War only to see idiot protesters on the base chanting such intellectually stimulating ideas like ‘Baby Killer’ and ‘They should have killed you too.’  My father has been to war.  He has seen what it can do.  He is also not a violent man.  He may have voted for President Bush in 2000 but he also saw the whole War  on Terror as an endless fool’s errand before it even began, let alone before it became popular.

I see lots of idiots and fools spouting off on Facebook things they hopefully wouldn’t say to a person in real life.  I have grown to hate social media.  I really have.  The only reason I haven’t cancelled my personal Facebook account is because it is literally the only way I can keep in contact with the few calm and happy college and high school friends I have. And even these people were mostly social outasts when we were in college and high school.  The rest of it is pure garbage.  I see social media as a necessary evil that I have to tolerate, much like fighting traffic or enduring back pain.  I see lots if idiotic trash from people I have known all my life, especially when it comes to politics and religion.  Thank God that scientists and engineers who don’t agree with each other don’t insult and troll each other like a bunch of  normals.  You normals really are a bunch of school yard weaklings trying to cover up the fact you would soil yourselves if you ever were challenged to a fight.  You are also morally and intellectually bankrupt.  There has never been an original thought that came from a normal person.  It was normal people who supported Hitler in Germany, Lenin and Stalin in Russia, and Mao in China.  These alone should show you that normal sucks.

From what I have seen out of normal people, I don’t want the snake oil you are selling.  I don’t want to be normal.  I don’t want to obsess over politics, sex, CNN, money, possessions, Game of Thrones, or whatever horse feces is trending this week.  I don’t want to be a short sighted, unthinking, materialistic sheep.  I am amazed even after thirty six years of living as a human how short sighted and panicky most normal people are.  Normal people are really stupid.  Not even twenty years of easy access to information via the internet and search engines has cured your stupidity.  Smart people never have and never will be able to out vote stupid normal people.  We simply don’t have the numbers.  But we don’t have to.  Smart people keep science and technology advancing.  I know most of you normals are scared senseless of robots and possible AI becoming hostile.  I would laugh and cry both if AI machines and programs had more empathy and caring than humans.  We humans have had thousands of years of civilizing, religion, and moral codes and yet there are still some chumps who think theft, murder, and adultery are good ideas.  Some of you normals seem to think that the basic rules of civilization don’t apply to you.  You think that somehow you are special and are allow to steal, kill, fornicate, and generally be a zit on the face of humanity.  That is more delusional than any thought I ever had as a schizophrenic.  You normals are delusional.  You normals are out of touch with reality.  I never want to be in your stupid social club.  Screw you.   I am sick of normal people.  I never want to be normal.