Monthly Archives: February 2018

End of Winter and Desires for Travel

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Today was the first day in weeks we had warm weather.  I had to get outside to enjoy it.  This has been a tougher than usual winter.  I spent a lot of time indoors and hibernating because of the bad cold spells and snow storms.  Now that it’s almost March I can see the beginning of the end of winter.  And I am not sorry at all to see winter on it’s way out.

Been spending too much time indoors and isolating.  There were times I would go entire days without leaving my apartment.  With as bad as the weather was, it seemed pointless to just wander the halls.  There were days I would sleep sometimes as much as twelve hours a day just out of boredom.  Unfortunately I didn’t get as much reading done as I would have liked this winter.  And I was lazy about writing for the last few weeks.  While I have been stable mentally this winter, this was probably because I wasn’t doing much to invite troubles.  I lost some of my social contacts from isolating and staying home so much this winter.  Hopefully I can get those reestablished soon.

I still hear from old friends and family a couple times a week.  Not as often as I would like, but I get that most people don’t have as much free time as I do.  Mental illness essentially sent me into early retirement right about when my friends’ careers were taking off.  Most of my friends now are married and have kids.  I have as much freedom as anyone I know and yet I don’t get to share it very often.  It’s a shame that most of my best friends from the past live out of state.  I do have online friends from my discussion groups, but many of them live in other countries.  I’ll probably never get to meet them in person even though I have far more in common with these friends than I do most people in my own hometown.

I would love to travel more but I absolutely can’t stand driving anymore.  And flying airlines anymore is about as enjoyable as going to the dentist for root canal work.  I have friends scattered to the four winds I haven’t seen since college graduation that I would give almost anything to see even for a few days.  Since some of the old friends live in foreign countries I’d have to get a passport.  I don’t know what Social Security’s rules are for disabled people traveling overseas and collecting disability pension.  But I guess those dreams of travel and seeing old friends will stay in the realm of pipe dreams probably forever.  I’ll just have to do the next best thing and socialize online I suppose.

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Feb 20, 2018

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Still staying close to home these last few days.  My part of the country is supposed to get some snow in a couple days.  So I won’t get to go anywhere for awhile it seems.  Not that it really bothers me.  I have made a routine of staying closer to home than in previous years.  It is something I have gotten used to.

I guess the days tend to seem longer than normal this winter because I do much of my sleep in the mornings and sometimes nap in the afternoon.  It’s dark out the majority of the time I’m awake.  But I haven’t had any flare ups lately.  I socialize mainly online and that is going well.  I think I’ve adapted well enough I can avoid much of the negativity that is social media.  Fortunately most of my friends aren’t negative people by nature.

It has been a long drawn out winter for me.  But it doesn’t really bother me oddly.  I haven’t wanted to go anywhere for awhile.  With the weather being lousy most of this winter, I have had the perfect excuse to stay home.

Thoughts on Isolation

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Been isolating a lot lately.  I sometimes have entire days when I don’t even leave my apartment anymore.  I’m just burned out on people in general.  Even though I sleep at night I find myself wanting to sleep almost all the time anymore.  Seems like the only time I don’t feel anxious or depressed is when I’m asleep.  I have gotten to where I am anxious every time I even hear people talking out in my hallway or even when I hear footsteps in my hall.  My neighbors had an argument this morning I could hear through my wall.  Made me definitely not want to leave my apartment today.

I know that eventually I’ll just have to gather my courage and force myself to leave my apartment just to do laundry and check my mail.  But I really have gotten to where I no longer trust anyone it seems.  I’m afraid of people more or less.  Seems that everyone I meet is in a foul mood all the time.  Of course going online to look my friends up doesn’t help any as foul moods and arguments are the rule online anymore.  A friend of mine once suggested I start a youtube channel and just do voice over videos.  Not a chance.  YouTube comment sections are even nastier than twitter or facebook.  We have near god like capabilities with our current state of tech yet we act completely uncivilized online.  If I acted a fraction that rude in public, I’d expect to get a beating or a jail cell.  Though knowing my countrymen’s attitudes about guns, I’d probably get shot rather quickly.

At this point I don’t feel sorry for isolating or having all my groceries delivered to my apartment.  I don’t regret that it’s been two months since I had guests in my apartment. I don’t regret rarely leaving my apartment.  I don’t regret being lonely.  I’d much rather be lonely than made miserable by other miserable people.  In some ways I am glad I am an outcast and an outsider on mainstream civilization. I’m burned out on all the fighting and negativity I see every hour of every day.  I’m tired of people being ugly and evil to each other all the time.  I’ll interact with some people via phone or online chat.  The rest of humanity is welcome to keep it’s distance until they come back to their senses and act like civilized people again.

Mid Winter Doldrums

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It’s been a while since I last wrote.  I couldn’t do much online after my computer crashed over a week ago.  I managed to recover my mac and I now have a new PC too.  Being offline more or less for over a week made me realize just how much I use my computer.  I managed to recover my mac by watching several how to vids on youtube.  I’m glad I found some advice that worked for my problems.  It saved me from going to the shop.  Now that I have both my mac and PC back, I feel like I can move on.

During my forced hiatus from my online activity, I did some reading and more sleeping than was probably healthy.  Sometimes I just slept out of boredom.  I still had my phone so I kept in contact with family and friends.  But it was kind of lonely at times as many of my friends I keep in contact with via social media sites.  And of course I couldn’t post blogs without a keyboard.  I tried to post via my smart phone, but my fat fingers make typing on the phone almost impossible.  I’ll never complain about people using shortcuts in their text messages anymore after that.

Overall I’ve felt good.  It’s been quite cold with snow for the last couple weeks.  Haven’t gotten out as much as I should because of that.  I just can’t endure cold weather as well as I could even a few years ago.  Been stable overall even if a little lonely and kind of unmotivated.  It doesn’t really bother me anymore that I don’t want to go out much.  I know, that should bother me.  But I have been an introvert my entire life.  And sometimes I don’t mind going entire days without talking to anyone anymore.  I couldn’t make it a permanent thing, but I can isolate for a few days and be content if needed.

I don’t have any plans for any major changes or shakeups for the next few weeks.  Right now I’m just taking it one day at a time as we go through winter.  I really don’t like driving on ice and snow anymore.  And we’ve had continuous snow cover since before Christmas.  But we have another four to six weeks of this left.  I should feel guilty for isolating and not socializing this winter but I really don’t this winter.  And I’m not exactly sure why I isolate so much.  Maybe the depression is creeping back in.  Or maybe I’m more selective about whom I spend my finite time with as I age.

Discouragement

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I spent several days at my parents’ place last week.  I was needing the peace and quiet and a little encouragement.  Unfortunately the encouragement left as soon as I got home. I have been convinced for years that the environment a person lives in and the type of people they are forced to associate with on a day to day business can greatly effect a person’s happiness and overall well being.  Most people have thought I was full of it for believing this as the majority of people I know believe you can will yourself out of depression, mental illness, and a bad situation.  You can’t will yourself out of mental illness anymore than an amputee can will his leg back.  In this day and age of advanced medicine and science, the people that think such things think them mainly because they choose to remain ignorant about science, technology, and illness.

I don’t get encouragement from being around my neighbors.  Haven’t for a long time.  I certainly don’t find encouragement when I try to contact even close friends and family online anymore.  Even family and close friends too often act like barbarians online, and don’t even get me started on random strangers and friends of friends.  About the only real intelligent and rational conversation and interactions I have anymore on my tech enthusiasts groups and my parents.  And my parents are both advanced in age and not in great health, so they will probably be dying within twenty years.  When they go, I’ll lose the vast majority of my social outlets and supports.  Tell me again why I want to live to old age?

I’m not sorry for being discouraged and sounding off about it.  Why should I?  Everybody else feels free to gripe and complain and generally drag anyone within ear shot into the cesspool that is socializing.  Even Superman has his kryptonite.  And lately I have been exposed to near lethal doses of it.  I’m tired from fighting and not seeing any results.  I’m tired of trying to encourage people with good news that doesn’t make the press only to be told I am a liar and that I’m a peddler of fake news.  I’m tired of always having to keep my head down in the dirt when we as a species were meant to reach for the stars.  Normal people are discouraging, you really are.

Mid Winter Recharge and Reset

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I’m currently at my parents’ house.  Been here for a few days.  I’m using this time away from city and apartment life to reset and recharge.  I haven’t been anywhere outside of my current home city since Thanksgiving.  I had gotten stale and stuck in my routines.  I imagine this happens to a lot of people in their mid thirties with careers and families where it sometimes becomes month after month of nothing but job and family responsibility.  It happened to me and I don’t even have a family or a traditional job.  I spent so long doing the responsible adult routines that I forgot why I was doing them or what I was living for.  I have found that it sneaks up on all too easily.  I haven’t even been fishing for over two years and I used to go fishing almost every weekend during the summers as far back as high school.  I want to do more of that once the weather warms again.

While I haven’t been subject to nasty psych breakdowns for months, I have been having problems with anxiety, paranoia, and depression.  Because of these issues, I had been not leaving my apartment except when absolutely necessary for several weeks.  I finally had enough of this and came to the conclusion that changes were needed.  To help this change along, I left my apartment and came to my parents’ house in the small village I grew up in.  In my younger years, I used to travel some at least once a week.  Sometimes I would come to my parents’ place for a day or two or I would just go places with friends.  Once I got serious about the blog and started having issues with chronic pain, those travels became almost nonexistent.  I haven’t seriously road tripped since before my car accident in October 2015.  I think as a result of not seeing anything different and just seeing the same neighbors day after day made me stale and more closed minded than I would have liked.  I even ran into the rut of only eating in the same three or four restaurants when I did dine out, did that for two years.  Routine can be settling for mentally ill people, yet too much for too long can be mentally and physically unhealthy.  It was even starting to make me a jaded and bitter old man far before my time.  So glad I was able to break out and see something different for a few days, even if it is just my childhood home.