Category Archives: Life With A Mental Illnes

Adjusting My Habits After A Med Change

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I am now three weeks into a medications change.  I have been completely cycled off one of my old medications and onto another.  And of course different medications have different side effects and issues.  One issue with my new meds set up is that I don’t fall asleep as quickly.  My old set up used to make me sleepy quite fast.  Not so with this new set up.  So it’s no longer like I can drink caffeine in the evenings and still fall asleep at a reasonable time.  So I am adjusting to no caffeine after about five p.m. or I’ll be awake all night.

Another change to my habits is that I now actually get frustrated by the lack of opportunities to socialize in my apartment complex.  I used to just exercise in the late mornings and then spend the rest of the day often not socializing at all.  I found a lot of socializing in the past boring because many people just aren’t that interesting.  How much can you seriously discuss the weather or the problems with your neighbors and job before you’ve said it all before?  I miss the older and interesting friends I had who were able to talk about things I was interested in.  Now many people in my complex are just old, irritable, and uninteresting.  I would love to socialize more but where am I going to get the social interaction humans need?  I can’t really work anymore because of the mental illness.  I really can’t volunteer because who really takes on single men in their thirties as volunteers?  Seems to me most volunteers are retirees in their seventies and housewives.  People already look at me like I’m a freak.  I simply won’t go back to church.  The churches I’ve been involved in don’t take kindly to singles over twenty five.  Besides I do not believe that God (if there is one) is interested in human affairs or at all concerned about human suffering.  I can’t take part in anything I don’t believe in just to make friends and look good.  Really, what are good options for single men to socialize outside of work?  Does anyone even care?

Not being able to fall asleep quickly and the frustrations I face because I want to socialize now are the two biggest drawbacks to my having switched medications.  I imagine others may crop up eventually.  But so far most things are looking alright.

 

Adjusting to New Medications

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It’s now been two weeks since I started the process of medication changes.  I will go off one med entirely starting tomorrow.  I’ve already noticed positive changes in my moods and mental states.  I don’t get as easily irritated and I seem to deal slightly better with stressors.  I have a stronger want to get out of my apartment and do things other than blog and mess with computers.  I even found myself looking through the job postings of my local newspaper just to see what was out there.  While I don’t believe I’m stable enough to hold employment, I have found myself kind of bored with the life I had carved out for myself over the last two to three years.

I find myself wanting to socialize now outside of close friends and family members now.  To this end I talk more to tenants in my complex and participate more in online discussion forms.  I didn’t realize until the last few days just how bad I had let my socializing fall apart over the last year or so.  I actually feel bad now that I haven’t been socializing.  Yes I have gone from being irritated and annoyed by most people to now actually wanting to be around people more often.  I doubt I’ll ever become Mr. Social Hour as I have been an introvert my entire life.  But I do enjoy people watching at the park and the mall.

I haven’t been as active as I would have liked.  But I hope that’s mainly because of chillier weather the last several days.  I don’t think I eat any more than I did previously with exception to the first few days of the change over.  I don’t crave sugar all the time now.  Hopefully that was a passing thing as I was adapting to different medications.  But I haven’t had much for auditory hallucinations nor have I had much for paranoia the last few days.  I’m not even that bothered by driving any more, at least not as much.  I don’t get overly irritated if someone is driving too slow or not following standard road etiquette.

And there are some things that haven’t changed that much.  I still don’t watch that much traditional tv, especially not the news.  The news I usually get from online sources.  In fact, most of my tv watching besides live sports is online.  I will watch some baseball most days or at least have it on in the background while I’m doing something else.  And I’m involved in the same fantasy baseball league I’ve been with for the last several years.  It’s a free online league of myself, a few college friends, and several friends of friends.  But just because it’s a free league doesn’t mean it’s not competitive.  It makes me watch games almost everyday and pay attention at least ten minutes a day to my team.

I see my psych doctor tomorrow to discuss the next phase of my treatments.  We could be going anywhere from here.  But I know we won’t keep doing what we have been for the last several months.  I can hardly wait to see where we go from here.

Changes

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It’s been one week since I started the medications change.  I’m noticing big differences already.  For one, I make it a point to leave my apartment multiple times a day whereas I may have left only once or twice a day if at all.  Not only am I getting out more, I actually want to get out more.  Driving doesn’t cause me as much agitation now, so it’s easier to get across town.  Been to the park most days this last week.

I am more motivated and less lazy too it seems.  Finally shaved my winter beard.  I looked more like a mad prophet than a mountaineer with my growth.  I never looked good with beards.  I rearranged my apartment.  I even find myself watching baseball every night, especially since the season started a few days ago.  I used to go weeks without watching regular tv as I thought it was mind numbing and soul killing.  I still think most tv is mind numbingly stupid but I no longer swear off it entirely.

The only real negative I have seen is that I do get hungry more frequently.  Used to be I could eat a large breakfast, a small afternoon snack, and a decent dinner and that is all I would need for the day.  Now I have eat smaller meals every five hours it seems.  I’ve also developed a bad craving for sugary food.  This may make my weight loss tougher but then I have always been a naturally very large person.  I was one of these heavy kids in high school and college who had a lot of muscle in addition to being a little fat, so I looked a lot better than my measurements would have indicated.  I have had female friends for years tell me I was handsome despite how big I am.  I never put much stock in it until I hit my thirties because, really, how many teenagers and twenty somethings are satisfied with their looks even on a good day?  I guess my sugar cravings have replaced my cravings for caffeine.  I have drank maybe three cups of coffee in the last week.  I used to drink that many before noon most days.  I don’t have problems with blood pressure or cholesterol, at least not enough to be on medications.  But maybe my decreased want of caffeine will lower my blood pressure and reduce my anxiety level.

It has been an eye opening first week of a medication change.  I normally don’t experience this many changes this soon when switching medications.  But I hope the positive changes keep coming and the negative ones can be compensated for.

Changing Meds and Other Changes

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I started the process of changing to new medications a few days ago.  And I’m noticing some changes already.  I have found I actually need a little less sleep now.  Used to be I got 8 hours a night like clock work, now I need only 6 to 7 hours.  I have even been making a point to get out of my complex more.  Went to the park for an hour and chatted with a bunch of neighbors on Saturday.  Found out three tenants are moving out within a month. One of those tenants was the grumpiest and angriest man I ever met in my entire life.  I mentioned him in a previous blog.  He’s one of these old guys who doesn’t believe in mental illness.  He believed that people like me were just making these problems up because we “are lazy and don’t want to do any real work.”  I hate people like that.  Guys like that are petty people and just have to make everyone else miserable.  Needless to say I won’t miss this ornery old man.  His impending departure was the happiest news I have heard in weeks.

Got out quite a bit today.  It was quite warm here today, more like late spring than early spring.  Currently have a baseball game on in the back ground.  I enjoy watching baseball.  It is more relaxing than football, that’s why I enjoy it more.  I’ve been out more the last few days than the previous two weeks.  In addition to wanting to get out and about more I’ve been wanting to socialize more.  I actually felt lonely today for the first time in months.  I previously haven’t minded the solitude and have actually wanted it.  But now I’m starting to actually want to socialize.

I’ve been listening to more music too.  Found out I like some of the newer dance, techno, and dubstep music.  Normally an older guy like myself would like only music they grew up with.  But I have never cared about when music was made.  Good music is good music, I don’t care if it’s Mozart, Louis Armstrong, old Delta Blues, John Lennon, hard rock, hip hop, or techno.  I never did like these old guys who always complained about the “lousy kids.”  So I vowed at age thirteen that when I became an old guy myself, I’d go easier on the kids than my elders did.  Been watching a little more tv too.  I’ve been watching ‘Marco Polo’ on Netflix.  If you are turned off by violent shows, I don’t recommend it.  But it is a cool show about how different cultures interact with each other.  Another series with similar themes I’ve been rematching is ‘Hell on Wheels’, which is about the building of the first transcontinental railroad in America immediately after the Civil War.  I still watch ‘Star Trek’ every so often.  But with wanting to socialize outside my apartment more, I may be finding myself with less down time.  And that would definitely be a change.

Changing Medications

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Saw my psych doctor a few days ago.  We agreed that a change in medications is in order.  Neither one of us think the meds I was on for the last two years are as effective as they once were.  He had me do a DNA cheek swab to be tested to see what medications would be effective given my DNA. The results will be in probably by the time I see him again in two weeks.  The tests may not be perfect but they should give us a better idea of what will and won’t work.  But these tests weren’t even around when I was diagnosed fifteen years ago.  For most of my illness we were merely throwing darts in the dark hoping to hit on something that would work.  We were just guessing, especially in the first year. For now I am starting the process of switching back to one of my previous medications.  I was on that med for several years but wanted to switch because it was known to promote weight gain.  But it sure was effective.  It’s too bad I let the side effects sabotage my previous attempts at weight loss.  Looking back, I think I used the side effect as an excuse not to be serious about my health.

In spite my recent mental health problems I managed to lose over twelve pounds in the first month of tracking my eating and exercising.  I’m seeing now that keeping track of what I eat is the difference between losing weight and gaining weight.  I was simply unaware of how much I really ate when I wasn’t tracking.  I am one of these people who would sometime eat just out of boredom.  But that has changed.  For my diet I cook almost all of my meals and I severely limit carbs.  I don’t even keep bread in the apartment anymore, haven’t for almost six months.  The weight loss has been the bright spot of this last month.  And I haven’t been crazy about my exercising.  I usually just walk twenty minutes a day probably five or six days a week.  I intend to keep this up even while changing medications.

Random Ramblings on Hollywood Movies

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I’m going to go off tangent for this post and write on some random thoughts I have had over the last few years.  I’ll try to keep this more light hearted than some of my previous posts.

Why are space aliens in the movies usually such jerks?  The aliens from ‘Independence Day’, the foes of Sigourney Weaver from ‘Alien’, the large bugs from those campy ‘Starship Troopers’ movies (I actually liked that movie as I had a thing for Denise Richards in high school), the ‘Predator’ series, and the Empire from Star Wars are key examples.  Even Star Trek got in on less than pleasant aliens with the war loving Klingons and anal retentive Vulcans (though I absolutely loved Mr. Spock as the perfect compliment to Captain Kirk).  Only occasionally are there cool aliens featured in Hollywood like Superman, E.T., Yoda, and the Avatar aliens. And that’s about it, besides the trippy aliens from ‘2001.’ You would think any species that is advanced enough to master deep space travel would have abandoned their violent and animalist natures centuries before they set out to ‘boldly go where no one has gone before.’

Why are most movies about the future dystopic?  Most movies about the future are like the Terminator series, the Matrix trilogy, Equilibrium, Gattaca, Brave New World, etc.  Even H.G. Wells presented a real lousy future in ‘The Time Machine’ clear back in the late 1800s.  Can anyone show me any movies about the future where the future isn’t hellish?  I can think only of Star Trek and it’s various spinoffs and Futurama.  But even Futurama features immoral crackpot scientists and alcoholic robots who want to “kill all humans.” Seriously Hollywood, come up with some futuristic movies where the future doesn’t suck.

Why is it rich people or large corporations are always villains in Hollywood movies?  Who decided that having money makes you evil and being poor is virtuous?  Yeah I get that the Bible said “It is easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than a rich man to get into heaven.”  But the Bible, like many ancient works, is full of metaphors.  That’s how people get ideas across.  I use raging torrents of metaphors all the time.  If there were no metaphors there would be no music, no poetry, no religion, no philosophy, no literature, and no culture.  But I have known enough poor people, enough rich people, and enough middle class people to know that having money, or not, does not make or break your character.  All social economic classes have their share of jerks, saints, sinners, humanitarians, cranks, heroes, and losers.  Why are companies dumping toxic waste into rivers and supposedly holding back future technologies getting award winning documentaries made about their evils and the companies that develops life saving medicines and better yielding crops get maybe a thirty minute snippet on the Discovery Channel?  Seriously, where is the good news from big business version of Michael Moore?

Why does Hollywood feel compelled to roll out remakes of movies from the 1980s that usually weren’t that good to begin with? How many sequels do we really need?  I’m just waiting for the suits at the studios to roll out remakes of ‘The Princess Bride’, ‘The Breakfast Club’, and ‘Platoon.’ I heard a few days ago they are doing another Indiana Jones’ movie.  Harrison Ford has got to be in his seventies by now.  How much treasure can his tired old bones carry? Once again Hollywood, you’re running out of good ideas.  Maybe you should just let movie goers submit suggestions at the theaters or your Facebook pages.  Really, how many remakes of campy 1980s movies are we going to get subjected to before movie goers revolt in mass and just subscribe to Netflix or Hulu?

I have to admit I haven’t been to the movies in almost two years.  Most of the movie watching I do is on my computer with Netflix or Youtube.  I haven’t gone back because it just seems too much hassle to fight traffic, pay for a ticket, buy overpriced sodas and treats only to watch the same worn out story line over and over while the kid sitting behind me kicks the back of my chair as someone’s cell phone rings every five minutes.  Maybe I’m getting picky in my old age and not being hip or keeping up with the young people.  But I wasn’t hip even as a young person.  I love watching movies, don’t get me wrong.  I just love watching them at home.  In movie theaters they get kind of picky about people eating pizza and hot wings while having a beer during the show.  But I love the freedom of being able to watch movies at home.  Long live the Internet.

 

New Normal verses Old Normal

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When I was growing up as a precocious child in the rural corn belt of Nebraska, I was frequently asked “Why can’t you be normal”.  My classmates, the adults in my life, and even my own family asked me this frequently. I didn’t have the foresight or the courage then to ask “What defines normal” or even “Who defines normal”.

Looking back on it years later I know I never would have gotten any kind of direct answer simply because what qualifies as normal keeps changing.  In 1750 it was normal for two out of three children born in London, England to die before their fifth birthday.  Now in the developed world (and increasingly so in the developing nations) infant mortality is rare.  It is so rare now that if most of us were to look back five or six generations in our family tree, we would find that our most of our ancestors had more dead children than most of us have children or siblings.  That’s what breakthroughs in medical science can do.  As recently as my parent’s generation, most people were married in their early to mid twenties and had children within a few years.  Now it is quite common for people of my generation to not marry until their thirties or even not marry at all.  Back when my parents were in their twenties, if you weren’t married before thirty you were thought insane or gay.  Now the stigmas on both homosexuality and lifelong bachelorhood are in retreat.  Instances like these create new normals out of old normals that no longer worked.

There are things that go on now most people take for granted that may be looked out in horror by future generations.  Even though wars haven’t really been fought between developed nations since World War II, I can imagine a future where people will look back at their ancestors and wonder how we justified ourselves in fighting wars and proxy wars that went on for years.  Perhaps committing any kind of violence against other people will someday be viewed with the same horror we in 2016 view slavery, inquisitions, and wars of territory expansion.  I can hope, can’t I?  Perhaps in future years it will seem absurd for people to hate others based on their political views.  I can only hope so, otherwise I am forever condemned having to listen to people bicker back on forth about political beliefs on Facebook and Youtube when all I really want to do is chat with a few friends and watch a few videos.  I hope our obsession and splitting hairs over political beliefs will someday seem as absurd as Catholics and Protestants fighting during the Renaissance is to our 21st century sensibilities.  Besides it’s not like politicians ever invented any labor saving devices, cured any deadly diseases, did any serious scientific research, or thought up better and less cruel ways of living.  At most, they provided some funding and got out of the scientists and engineers ways.  Many of the most influential and beneficial people who made a difference in history never held a public office, won a battle, or sat on a throne.  Remember that the next time you take your political beliefs seriously.

Less dogmatic and hateful attitudes about political beliefs would be nice.  What would be even nicer is less stigma and discrimination against those with mental health issues.  Seems to me that having mental illness is one of those few things many people don’t feel bad at all about stigmatizing.  It is essentially stigma’s final frontier.  Every week it seems there are crime drama shows where the accused perpetrator is mentally ill or an introverted loner who doesn’t fit in.  It also seems too common someone with a mental illness committing a violent crime gets far more attention than homeless mentally ill people being beaten by cops or gangs of ‘concerned citizens.’  Funding for mental hospitals has been dramatically cut over the years, often leaving the most afflicted to either the street, prison, or dead.  It seems that prisons have become de facto mental health hospitals for a sizable portion of the mentally ill population.  I know that the stats are a few years old in the link.  But I have little reason to believe that the situation for mentally ill individuals in prisons has gotten much better in recent years.  The treatment of seriously mentally ill individuals, at least in my country, is barbaric and insane.  What did you think was going to happen when funding for mental hospitals was cut?  Did you think the problems of the mentally ill would magically vanish once the hospitals were no longer well funded?  Or did you think mentally ill people like myself are making our illnesses up and don’t need help?  There should be no wonder why I was so quick to self commit myself on two separate occasions.  There should be no wonder why I want to change my medications even after a few mini breakdowns.  I don’t want to wind up in prison or dead for the crime of having a psychotic breakdown in front of the wrong person.  You won’t prosecute the handfuls of crooked bankers who triggered the Great Recession but you will throw thousands of mentally ill people in jail because you don’t know what else to do with them?  Way to stay classy. This is certainly one old normal that is in dire need of a quick death and being replaced by a new normal of more understanding, compassion, and better treatments.  And yes, we can find the funding to do this transition if we care enough to do so.

Speaking of practices some currently on the fringes of normal society abhor, maybe even the age old practice of killing animals for food will seem barbaric to future generations.  If lab grown meat gains traction in future years it could.  Don’t be so quick to scoff.  In 1900, who would have thought Henry Ford and his insane motorized carriage would put the draft horse out of business within several years?  Or who would have thought in 1850 that John Rockefeller would find great and numerous uses for a scummy and sludgy nuisance called petroleum?  These two by themselves got rid of old normals and created a new normal.  The internet is a key example of a new normal.  If I was born even fifteen years earlier I would have never been doing this blog.  Who knows what new normals are on their way?  Stay tuned my friends.  Things are going to be getting more interesting than they already are.

Relapses and Lonely Friday Nights

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The last several months haven’t been the most stable for my mental illness.  I had a “small” psychotic relapse yesterday afternoon.  Unfortunately this was at least my fifth breakdown since last summer and the second just in the last six weeks.  Things haven’t been stable and what I’m doing to minimize these relapses is no longer working.  I called my psych doctor and I’m now on the waiting list for an open appointment session.  I think I’m going to probably go back to my old medications.  They worked much better than what I’m on right now.  On the old medications I was on for at least six years I probably had only one or two relapses in an entire year, usually in late August or early September.  And even then the relapses weren’t as vicious as they are now.

I am afraid that changing medications could sink my attempts to lose weight.  I’ve lost over forty pounds in the last two years with these newer medications.  But these relapses are getting too frequent.  And even when I’m not relapsing I am more paranoid, more easily irritated, and more delusional than I have been in previous years.  One of my delusions now is that most people are stupid and malicious.  I’ve even gotten to where I don’t socialize in person unless it’s absolutely necessary.  But there’s only so much youtube, online articles, and computer games even a mentally ill man can do before such things become detrimental and unhealthy.

I can tell other aspects of my life are suffering.  I haven’t shaved in weeks and I don’t grow good beards.  I also haven’t showered every day like I normally do.  I haven’t been doing laundry as often as I should.  Things like my personal habits have been slowly deteriorating for the last few months.  I haven’t even gone to the park for over a week.  I normally go to the park three to four times per week.  Driving has become an irritable chore.  I drive so little now I usually go three weeks between refuels.  It’s been this way since mid October.  Besides a few snowstorms and one major blizzard, we didn’t have a bad winter.  Another delusion I have developed lately is an irrational fear that I’m going to get into another car wreck.  My social life and entertainment activities have been completely curtailed for months now because of the irrational fears that I’ll get into a wreck and that people are stupid and violent.  This is no way to live.  Changes are needed.

Breaking Out of My Normal

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Anyone who knows about living with a mental illness is aware that what is normal for us is beyond the grasp of the unaffected.  Excessive anxiety, unshakeable fears, crippling depression, and bouts of unreasonable anger are scary for anyone without a diagnosis when they see us acting this way.  For us, it’s just another day at the office.  Yet there are times when things are going better than normal for us.  Mental illness isn’t just day after tormenting day of bleakness and horror.  There are times when we are doing alright, in fact almost indistinguishable from the normal who don’t have such problems.

These last several weeks have been such times when things have gone well.  I’ve gotten out and socialized more the last two weeks than the previous four months.  I have been avoiding my neighbors in my low income apartment complex by in large for the last several months.  Seems like my neighbors (everybody in our 50 unit complex is my neighbor as there seems to be little privacy) had been in more foul moods than normal.  It didn’t help that my three closest friends in here died in late 2014 to early 2015.  These were good, witty men who were pleasant to chat with.  After those three died, it seemed that we got a bunch of new tenants who were just in lousy moods all the time.  And as we live in tight quarters already, that kind of poison infects other people who in turn put other people in foul moods.  We have also had a rash of thefts in our complex the last several months.  Unfortunately, living in low income housing, who we get for new tenants can be hit or miss.  Lately we have gotten some cranks, jerks, gossips, and other assorted nonsense.  Finally I decided to quit hiding out in my apartment and just made it a point to avoid the losers and mingle with the sane and cool tenants we still have.  I didn’t even go to last year’s Christmas party because I didn’t want to have my holidays spoiled by toxic people.  But I just had to get out of my apartment more.  It gets too easy to hide out in winter when there’s too much snow and ice to really do anything.  I no longer want mean and stupid people dictating the terms of my life. I refuse to feel like a prisoner in my own home.

I got to see my niece and nephews last week.  They had a few days off from school and came up to see the grandparents.  We cooked hot dogs over an open fire and I played magnetic darts with the kids.  Found out the oldest, who’s going into middle school this fall, is joining the school band and taking classes in robotics.  I am thrilled about both, especially about the robotics classes.  My brother’s kids are always taking apart electronics and seeing how they work and how to put them back together again.  When I went to school in the 1990s, computers classes weren’t even required after sixth grade.  We had maybe a couple computers classes offered as electives but nothing like ‘one hour a day of coding’ that some places do now.  Pretty much everything I learned about computers I either learned on my own or from some of my more adventurous friends.  I would have loved to been able to take things apart and tried to put them back together or just trial and error computers as a kid.  I’m glad my brother’s kids are being encouraged to do these new things and learn from their mistakes.  All three of the kids in school are also in advanced classes and gifted programs.  My brother and I would have been in such programs but my school didn’t offer those programs years ago.  So I got to see my nephews and niece and got to hear about the projects they have going.  I hope they continue to do well.

I have also been tracking my eating and exercise for three weeks now.  I’ve lost almost ten pounds in those three weeks.  Besides keeping track of everything I eat and shutting myself off for the day once I come close to a preset calorie limit, I am not doing anything crazy or fadish.  I don’t even restrict anything, just how much I eat.  If I want pizza, I go to the neighborhood pizzeria and buy a couple slices and that itch is scratched for a few days. If I want a cheeseburger, I hoof it over to the McDonalds and buy a cheeseburger or two.  But I also keep track of what I eat throughout the day.  Yes it means updating a few times a day.  Yes it means being anal retentive about keeping records and watching calories.  But, it works for me.  The previous several months when I wasn’t tracking and gaining weight despite my exercising, I was no doubt eating more than I thought.  I don’t do that now.  I have lost close to ten pounds in three weeks and I didn’t even have to strain myself exercise wise.  I usually do only fifteen to twenty minutes a day but I do it everyday.  I suppose I could try to push harder on exercise but why burn yourself out one day and be forced to take the next day off?  That makes no sense.  What I am currently doing is starting to work again.  And it will continue to work as long as I keep following the setup I have figured out after years of trial and error.

 

It’s a Sane, Sane World

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Over the years of trying to learn what makes average people act the ways they do, the only absolute I have come to is this; the biggest difference between being diagnosed as insane or sane is the number of people involved. It is considered insane to have crippling paranoia or depression. It is considered sane to complain about your shortcomings but do nothing to address said shortcomings. Over the course of the almost three years I have done this alifeofmentalillness blog I have stated on several occasions I would do just about anything to be sane and normal again.  I should be more specific and revise this.  I would give anything to not suffer delusions of persecution, hallucinations, crippling bouts of anger and depression, and the general isolation that comes along with it.  But I do not want to become what most people would consider normal.  By that I mean I do not want to lose my ability for empathy.  From what I have seen out of normals over the years, they seem to have a general lack of empathy or ability to see things from others people’s viewpoints.  I do not want to be uncaring.  It causes a great deal of pain that I sometimes have to be mean and even borderline abusive to people just to get a point across.  I hate being angry and mean to people.  I’m not a natural jerk.  Never have been and never will be.  I don’t know how much of that is the illness and how much of that is my natural personality.  But I absolutely hate being mean and combative to people. If I can’t be pleasant with someone and have them be pleasant to me, I try to avoid that person. To paraphrase Lee Marvin from the classic ‘Paint Your Wagon’ “you don’t have to love thy neighbor if you just leave the poor fool alone.”  But too seldom have I seen anyone, mentally ill or not, just leave other people alone.

Another aspect of sanity I never want to possess is the tendency for group think.  I love having a mind and using it. I hate celebrity gossip.  I hate reality tv.  I hate tabloid journalism.  I’ve even come to hate watching sports on tv because of the base nature of what is modern sports journalism.  It doesn’t bother me that a pro athlete makes more than any worker that isn’t executive management or an entrepreneur.  If I had 50,000 people pay $50 for tickets to read my blogs  or ten million subscribers like some popular youtube personalities, I’d be wealthy too.  Besides, well over half of pro athletes wind up bankrupt within five years of their retirement.  Watch the ESPN documentary ‘Broke‘ to see how true this really is. I am however bothered with how people will build up someone with talent only to knock them down later.  That is why I hope and pray I never become famous or wealthy.  “More money, more problems” as the late Biggie Smalls said.

I love learning new things, which is a skill which will become more valuable than it is now in the coming years and decades as technological and scientific advances get even faster than they are now.  For years I have listened to normals complain about their jobs.  I heard the “Oh God It’s Monday” and “Thank God It’s Friday” memes long before I had even dial up internet.  And I’ve seen and read articles on both domestic and foreign news sites about how potentially we could see job losses to automation with future unemployment rates that would make the 1930s look like a bull market on steroids.  NPR had an interactive article I’m linking to about chances of different types of jobs being taken over by machines and computers.  For example many jobs in customer service will likely be taken over, but many traditional medical and STEM jobs probably won’t be automated anytime soon.  And I bring this up because now many people are fretting over their jobs being taken over by machines.  Seriously?  First you complain about how bad you hate your job.  Now you complain that you may lose said job that you were cursing not even a couple months ago?  Make up your minds, people.  Do you think your current job sucks or do you want to do that lousy job?  Personally I don’t care if the robotics take the jobs I’ve had, providing there is some restructuring to tax laws and social safety nets.  The robots are coming, make no mistake.  They will take a lot of jobs.  Advances can be temporarily delayed but will win out.  Robots and computers will take many, if not most jobs.  How will we address a significant portion of people who identified with their work for their entire lives being unemployed and behind on their payments?  I normally don’t talk politics on this site, but regardless of your political philosophy these are issues that we need to demand our lawmakers discuss, ideally sooner rather than later.

Believe it or not I have worked before, even after I was diagnosed with a mental illness.  I have been a retail clerk, fast food cook, waiter, factory worker, teacher’s aide/graduate assistant, dish washer, janitor, construction worker, farm hand, lawn mower, and newspaper delivery boy (when I was 10 years old).  And everyone of those jobs (with the exception of teacher’s aide) was repetitive, mind numbingly boring, required no creative imagination, and didn’t really make a difference to even my small hometown.  Most of those jobs stand a good chance of being automated within the next twenty years anyway.  So those jobs were drudgery, not stimulating, and I worked mostly with people who were not very creative or intelligent. But those were the only jobs available to me, at least in my small town and rural area.  I can foresee a mass migration out of rural areas and small towns all over the world (more so than now) once automation really gets rolling.  Even I may be going to a big city if enough of my hometown dries up and or stagnates.

Creative jobs will likely become in demand soon.  I liked the teacher’s aide job because I got to interact with above average intelligence people everyday, got to use computers, got to teach a few college courses as a substitute teacher, and was actually encouraged to use my creativity.  Unfortunately that job was contingent on me being a graduate student in the Masters in Business program.  I loved the job but didn’t do well enough in the classes to keep my job.  I could have seen being a computers instructor and research rat for the next fifty  years.  But I can’t because I don’t have that piece of paper that states I am qualified for a job like that.

So here I am living on the fringes of society because of my disability.  Wasn’t my first choice but that is the current system we live under.  I don’t make the rules, I just live by them.  I never wanted to just waist my mind on disability.  But the aspects of the illness that make figuring out office politics and dealing with vicious bosses and coworkers will not allow me to function in our toxic modern work environment.  I don’t see how normals function under such systems.  Perhaps normals do it only by copious doses of reality tv, alcohol, anti depressants, tabloid news channels that don’t report anything that really makes a difference (I watch foreign news casts even more than U.S. news because I don’t care at all about celebrity gossip or what steroid pumped football god beat up his girlfriend this week).  I didn’t like the work environments I was in.  Not because I couldn’t physically or mentally do the work.  Far from it.  I just couldn’t adjust to the environment of toxic coworkers and borderline abusive bosses.

As far as people who think I am lazy and just being a leech off the good tax payers of my nation, I wish to leave you with the following thoughts.

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I am definitely not one of the one in ten thousand who can make the breakthrough, perhaps maybe among the one in ten who truly try to appreciate the men and women who make breakthroughs possible.  If it weren’t for brilliant scientists working on psych meds I would be in a padded room in an insane asylum as would some of the coolest people I ever met.  If it wasn’t for medical science my dear mother might be dead because of heart and thyroid problems.  If it wasn’t for scientists and engineers we wouldn’t have the internet, anti biotic drugs, sanitation, etc.  I am grateful every day for the ‘one in ten thousand.’  Everyone should be.