Tag Archives: losing friends

Nearing The End of 2021

Posted on by
Reply

2021 will be fading into 2022 in a few weeks. It’s been a year of changes and challenges for myself. I spent three weeks in the hospital for blood pressure and heart problems. Will be on meds for these for the rest of my life. I’m continuing to lose weight. Most of my clothes fit loose enough on me now that I may have to buy a whole new wardrobe if the weight loss continues. Several of my neighbors have moved away. I don’t even recognize many of the newer faces in my complex. I haven’t driven a car in over 2 years. I just don’t trust myself on the road anymore. I get sensory overload even in my own apartment now. I more or less quit socializing with my neighbors with a few exceptions. I just don’t have much in common with my neighbors. I guess I’m content to keep to myself with my books and hobbies. I no longer have a stomach for drama and pettiness. I’m just too tired for that anymore.

Been warmer and drier than normal the last few weeks. Seems like every day I hear firetrucks going out to range fires. We’re supposed to get some snow by the end of the week. We’ll see about that. We certainly need it.

My sleep patterns are returning to more normal. I usually go to bed around 10pm and wake up for good by 6am. I’m experiencing less severe aches and stiffness in the mornings. I still have odd dreams, but they aren’t scary. Just odd.

Using audiobooks a lot lately. Probably use those 2 to 3 hours per day. Still working the Ray Dalio one that came out last week. Have some Yuval Harrari and Parag Khana going right now too. I don’t know why, I just prefer non fiction to fiction. I always have. I never did get into science fiction even though I think I would have loved Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series had I discovered it in my youth as opposed to my late thirties. The science fiction I grew up on were stories like Terminator, Matrix, and Judge Dread. Basically really lousy futures that aren’t worth living in. I had enough drama and horror in my own personal life, I didn’t need horror and drama as an escape. Hell, I needed an escape from the horror and drama of real life. I have actually never bought a comic book.

Canceled my cable service several months ago. I don’t miss it one bit. I don’t even watch ballgames much anymore. Just seems pointless and I no longer enjoy it. And I haven’t watched cable news in over ten years. How is cable news still a thing? Most of what I watch anymore is youtube and Amazon Prime. I don’t even have Netflix anymore. I used to follow the Castlevania, Borgia, and Altered Carbon series. But I guess I just have a lot of reading I want to catch up on these days. I find learning fun. That makes me weird, I know. Maybe I just went to a good school in that they didn’t beat the love of learning out of me. I think it helped that I had parents who always kept books in our house and I was walking distance to the local library. When I was a kid, I wanted to buy that library, work in their full time, and just live in the basement. That was one of my aspirations as a kid. Another was to be rich enough that me and my friends could play Monopoly with real money. But isn’t being a real estate tycoon Monopoly in real life?

Advertisement

Having Schizophrenia During Covid

Posted on by
1

We’re having apartment inspections next week. These always make me anxious. It’s always been my experience that someone can always find something wrong. I once joked that maybe I should move everything out of my apartment (furniture, clothing, dishes, utensils, even food) just to see what they would find wrong with my place. I think it would be a good practical joke except that very few people have a sense of humor anymore. But I simply no longer have the health or the patience to pull it off.

Weather has been chilly and overcast. I’m enjoying it. I enjoy the chilly days and the long nights. I’ve come to appreciate fall more in my middle age. Spring has always been my favorite season but fall is definately working it’s way up.

I see that covid cases are starting to pick up again. My friend in Denver told me that hospitals there were resorting to deciding who to and who not to admit because they were having so many sicknesses. I’ve heard that Germany is getting slammed again. So much for covid being gone with a few weeks of lockdowns. Thank God this thing isn’t worse than it already is and that it didn’t hit back in the 1980s.

I very rarely leave my apartment anymore. Dealing with people, for the most part, is too stressful. Several tenants I knew have moved out lately. One died shortly after going to assisted living. I no longer know most of my neighbors. I still hear from a couple of my friends who used to live here. One is now at a homeless shelter. Even rural America has homeless people now.

My grocery bills are going up, like everyone else’s. I can keep the damage to a minimum because I had some stored up in case something like this happened. So glad I built up a small supply when things were cheaper. Have been needing some new shirts and pants. Those are tough to find even on Amazon.

Haven’t been sleeping well lately. I usually wake up in the middle of the night and take a couple hours to get back to sleep. My best sleep is now between 5 am and 9am. Don’t usually nap during the afternoon most days anymore. My knees still give me problems, especially in the mornings. I’m finding myself eating less most days. But I still have a lot of weight I want to lose anyway.

Mentally I’m feeling stable most of the time. I still have a couple flare ups of paranoia and anxiety every day. But they don’t last long. I usually do better when I don’t read the news or spend much time dwelling on my physical health. Sometimes it’s a struggle to get out of bed, mainly because of the knee pains. I’m finding myself more sensitive to cold now. I’ve been sensitive to heat for years.

I’m Lonely But I Fear People

Posted on by
Reply

I find myself wanting to avoid in person contact most of the time. Yet I still have a strong desire to socialize. I don’t socialize in person much partly because I know only two people in my entire apartment complex who share any of my interests. Sure my neighbor is cool and we help each other out a good deal, but we don’t have much in common interests. It is lonely not having anyone nearby to talk about things like history, philosophy, psychology, literature, tech, science, economics, etc. Social media used to be good for that before it became a toxic cesspool. Social media was fun until about ten years ago. It got real ugly in 2015 and 2016, a time when I was already having lots of personal problems. From October 2014 to October 2015, my three best friends in this complex died, my grandmother died, I had my car accident, and had falling outs with several friends and family members. In short I got tired of hearing negative crap about politics all the time. And I even agreed with some of these people, but they were still toxic about their beliefs. I confronted a few about their toxic behavior. Every one of them told me I could go away if I didn’t like it. I did go away. I have stayed away. I won’t even go to family functions and class reunions anymore. One of my college friends I haven’t talked to in almost seven years. It’s so sad and frustrating I don’t even want to talk about it. It’s sad that many people care more about politics than family, work, religion, and even life itself. I want no part of that.

Hermiting, Covid 19, and Schizophrenia

Posted on by
Reply

Been isolating and staying home for the last several days.  I do all my communication through social media and phone calls.  My cleaning lady had to have surgery so she’s out for probably a few months.  My neighbors come by and help out every few days.  Overall I’m burned out on dealing with people in person.  People actually scare me anymore.  The less I deal with them, at least in person, the better.

Currently working on audiobooks.  Recently listened to The Economic Singularity by Callum Chase.  Currently working on The Rise of The Robots by Martin Ford.  A friend of mine is trying to talk me into reading the Dune and Foundation series.  I read the first Foundation a year ago.  But I got soured on science fiction as a teenager when movies like The Terminator, Gattaca, and The Matrix were really big.  I have enough dystopia in my own life.  Why in the hell would I want to escape to that?  Recently read 21 Lessons for the 21st Century and Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harrahi.

I spend almost all of my time avoiding people.  These are real scary times for me, especially living in low income housing, being on disability, and dealing with mostly angry, irrational, and illogical people.  It seems like most people I personally know just want to fight all the time.  I’m through with that.  I’m ready to move past the anger phase.  Too bad almost no one I know is.  I am thankful I don’t live in a large city.  I am thankful I can hermit and stay home.  I am thankful I don’t have to deal with angry and stupid people anymore than I already have to.  I don’t see how most people can deal with this.  I know I couldn’t.

December 3 2019

Posted on by
Reply

Had my annual physical checkup this morning.  Sadly I haven’t lost any weight since last year, yet I didn’t gain any either.  The really strange thing is my clothing fits better than even last year.  I don’t know if it’s because I gained muscle or if I’m just delusional again.  I started on a blood pressure medication.  Not surprised as my dad has been taking blood pressure medications for over thirty years.  My lab results will be coming back in a day or two.  The big things I got taken care of was the new blood pressure medication, new prescription for a cpap machine, got the paperwork going to try to get some home health aide programs, and just getting everything up to speed again.

I had a physical back in summer 2018.  Shortly after I developed serious agrophobia.  I got to where I was fearful of driving.  I finally sold my car several weeks ago.  I heard it went to a good home.  I got to where I wouldn’t even leave my home most days.  I was just that fearful of being out in public.  And just spending time at home no doubt made my physical health worse and led to the paranoia and phobias just building on themselves.  When I was out in the parking lot waiting for my ride to the doctor’s office, I had two residents who thought I had moved out.  No I haven’t moved out.  I am just home bound most days.

Things have been going down hill for me for right on five years now.  I had three good friends die within six months of each other.  They all lived in my complex.  Then I had another friend die in 2016, also in my complex.  I had my car accident in 2015.  That was the beginning of the end of my road trips.  After that car accident, I went into a deep depression and gained well over 100 pounds in three years.  I had a few rounds of physical therapy.  But that car accident really took most of my confidence.  2016 and 2017 were even more depressing as I had falling outs with most of my family and friends, mostly over politics and religion.  I am still not on speaking terms with much of my family or some of my old college friends.  The whole thing has become a mess I am too overwhelmed to deal with.

I tried to talk to an old friend about toning it down some, but he wouldn’t have anything to do with it.  Told me it was my fault for being so sensitive and triggered.  Well, screw you!  If we as a civilization have gotten to where we no longer care about friends’ emotional health and generally don’t care about empathy, then I want no part of it.  I don’t understand people who care more about politics and religion than their oldest friends.  I never will.  Hell, I don’t want to understand people like that.  The only real positive that has come out of everything falling apart for me is that I got to find out what friends and family were genuine and which ones were frauds.  Sadly I lost most of my friends and don’t talk to most of my family besides my parents and a couple cousins.  Yes I said frauds.  If you care more about your precious damn politics than you do friends and family, you are a fraud.  End of discussion.  This is not open to debate.  You will not be responded to.  You were never a good person.  I’m glad you are out of my life.  Don’t ever come back.

Removing Myself From Social Media and Thoughts on Change

Posted on by
Reply

I decided I’m giving up social media.  I cancelled my twitter account and have put my facebook on inactive status.  I spend too much time on facebook and not enough time actually writing and researching.  I have only a couple close friends and a few cousins I really hear from anymore via facebook.  I would have given it up over a year ago if I wasn’t fearful I’d permanently lose contact with my friends and family.  I tired writing more emails several months ago, but got only one response from the dozen I sent out.  I suppose it feeds into my paranoia that my friends and family really don’t like me that much.  Every time I call my parents, the bulk of the conversation focuses on what I can do to improve myself and how to make my apartment more presentable.  I find this irritating.  I really do.  I can’t even just live anymore.  At this point in my life, I don’t care if I impress people or am popular.  I have never been popular, not even in college or high school.  But I had a good time in college because I got to spend time with people even more eccentric and academically oriented than myself on a daily basis.  I know many people condemn academic knowledge, scholarly pursuits, and intelligence.  I have endured this my entire life.  And I have given up on people ever changing their attitudes towards intelligence and wisdom.  I just want to live and be allowed to pursue my goals, which include learning as much as I possibly can about as many subjects as I can.  I don’t give a damn if I ever make a cent off my pursuits of knowledge and wisdom.  As long as I have enough money to make rent and keep my pantry stocked and myself clothed and my psych medications current, everything else is just add ons.  I don’t need a large house, a prestigious career, a trophy wife, lots of kids, a fancy car, designer clothes, or the respect of people I have nothing in common with.  I never have.  I was, like many ambitious teenagers, brainwashed into thinking I needed such nonsense to have a fulfilled life.  It took a serious mental illness and struggling for most of my twenties to realize that wasn’t what I wanted for myself.  And it took a few more years to where I got to the point when I no longer felt shame for not wanting a life I had no say in designing.

I don’t feel shame for not wanting to be rich or famous.  I don’t write blogs every few days with the idea I will get noticed and make a train load of money.  I write for a record of what it like to be a mentally ill man in early 21st century America.  I don’t write just for my current audience.  I write for future generations so there is at least one record as to what mental illness meant in the early stages of the Information Revolution.  And make no mistake, our species and our civilizations are going through a period of transition at very least as profound as the Agricultural Revolution thousands of years ago and the Industrial Revolution hundreds of years ago.  It should be no wonder so many people are afraid and angry.  Afraid of what’s happening and what is going to happen.  Angry that we found that much of what we learned in our youths and what worked well in previous generations is starting to no longer apply.

We are at a point in history when our science and tech is advancing faster than our institutions of government, religion, education, finance, industry, and social norms.  At this point in time (November 2019), the world is far different than the one I went to high school in during the 1990s.  I’ve recently rewatched some of the tv shows that were popular when I was a teenager, and it’s almost quaint looking at some of the tech that was considered cutting edge twenty five years ago.  Even in the Matrix series, there were no smart phones, social media, video sharing platforms, laptop computers, etc.  There were still phone booths in that series and that was made only twenty years ago.  I didn’t notice the subtle changes that were happening over the course of a year or two when things were happening.  But looking at it over the span of twenty years, I am as a 39 year old man living in a world that is foreign to the one I occupied at age 16.  I’m not even sure my niece and nephews have seen a VCR tape anywhere outside of a history show or museum.  I sometimes chuckle when I see older people who don’t research online as much as my cohorts do.  But my teenage nephews would chuckle that I have never run a 3D printer or used a VR headset.  One of my nephews recently bought a VR headset from money he raised working odd jobs for his parents and neighbors.  He set up a VR flying simulator for my father.  As for me, I’m waiting a couple of years for the prices to drop and the tech to get more user friendly.  As crazy as the changes I have seen in the last twenty years have been, I guarantee the next twenty will be even more so.  At this point I’m just content to buckle up and enjoy the ride from my apartment in small town Nebraska.

Aches, Winter, Losing Friends, and Stress

Posted on by
Reply

Been having bad knee pains the last few days.  My mobility is more limited than usual.  So I’ve been putting ice on my knee and taking it easy since this weekend.  Sometimes I’m glad I don’t have to work a regular job and not just because of my mental illness.

Getting ready for winter, at least I was until my knee started acting up.  Stocking up on canned food and peanut butter.  So glad I don’t have food allergies as peanut butter is good and cheap emergency food that can keep for quite awhile.  Bought a fleece blanket in addition to the blankets I already have.  Been spending most of my evenings under a blanket and reading.  I’m still lifting weights three times a week.  Been doing this since the spring.  I’m pretty sure I’ve lost weight but I don’t know how much.  I know I’m down one size in clothing all around since the spring and I recover from aches and pains faster.  The worst time for aches is right after I wake up in the mornings.  Fortunately hot baths usually cure those.

My sleep patterns have changed, again.  I usually go to bed around 11pm, wake up at 3 am and rattle around for a couple hours.  Then I go back to sleep around 5 am and sleep until about 8 am.  I don’t nap as much in the afternoons, usually only a couple times a week.  My sleep patterns change with how my illness affects me.  I usually sleep more when I’m distressed and having more frequent flare ups.

Fortunately haven’t had much for serious long lasting flare ups since this summer.  I still get some a few times a week.  Lots of caffeine can make these worse.  So can socializing with rude and irritable people.  Been avoiding people in person as much as possible lately.  It just seems like people are more irritable and on edge than usual lately.  I even avoid talking with some friends because it seems like they just want to do nothing but complain anymore.  I’m sorry, but I have enough problems of my own and I’m not always stable.  I avoid friends sometimes because I’m fearful of having flare ups and melt downs on them.  I fear jeopardizing the friendship because I can’t process stress and negative vibes very well anymore.  I’ve already lost a few friendships over the last few years because I can’t process negativity well.  I don’t want to lose anymore.

Being Ignored While Reaching Out

Posted on by
6

Saw my parents a couple times over the last few days.  It was good to have visitors for an extended time.  I hardly get any visitors anymore.  I guess I have hit the age where most of my friends are busy with their careers and families.  Other than a few friends who are divorcees, I have only one close friend right who has never been married.  Unfortunately he is quite busy with work and lives in another country.

I feel like I miss out on a great deal because I don’t have a family and can’t work.  Most of my friends conversations revolve around work, spouses, and children.  And sadly, many of my friends are also depressed and anxious.  I guess with most of my friends being in their late 30s and early 40s, I imagine many are experiencing mid life crisis type things.  That and pretty much everyone is more stressed now anyway.  There are times I am quite stressed too even though I have no job or wife or kids.  I spent most of this spring in a deep depression where I would go entire days without leaving my apartment.  Some days I slept twelve to fifteen hours a day because sleep was the only time I didn’t feel anxious or depressed or irritable.  I was isolating from neighbors and avoiding people because I was depressed and anxious and I was depressed and anxious because I was lonely all the time.  And on it went in a vicious cycle.

I miss my friends and family.  I miss having in depth and meandering conversations that cover many different topics.  About the only person I have those with anymore are my mother.  Everyone else seems to be hung up on work, debts, family, etc.  They have become too busy earning a living that they forgot why they stay alive.  Naturally I can’t talk to any of my friend about this.  Because they are too stressed living paycheck to paycheck to engage in anything besides work and sleep it seems.  And I have been having a great deal of paranoia lately that my friends really don’t like me that much.

This paranoia might spring from that most of my friends don’t reach out to me, at least not lately.  Anytime I try to reach out to friends, I usually get no response.  When I do get responses, they are usually short answers or complaints about how bad their lives are and how lucky I am.  It’s really discouraging and sad.  We tell people in distress to reach out for help all the time.  Yet, what is the point of reaching out when most of time we are ignored or made fun of?  And people wonder why, in spite of our prosperity and having all but conquered absolute poverty, we are unhappy and depressed.  We are unhappy and depressed precisely because we don’t make efforts to connect to people or answer those who are lonely.  We bought into the whole rugged individualism to where we believe we have to just bear it if we can’t solve our own problems.  This is really heartless and stupid.  In our age, we are far more interdependent than any of us as individuals or nations realize.  And until we acknowledge this and adapt accordingly on an individual, civilizational, and species level, we will only see our issues of anxiety, depression, and loneliness become far worse.  We are already seeing epidemic levels of stress related illnesses.  If mental health problems got even a fraction of the attention that physical illnesses like cancer got, we would be well on our way to alleviating these problems.  Yet, we as a society and individuals choose to make them worse in those around us and in ourselves.

There Really Is More to Life than Just Working and Money

Posted on by
Reply

Been feeling quite lonely for the last few days.  I’m actually craving attention from other people, especially from people with similar interests and in my age bracket.  Haven’t heard from any of my old high school or college friends in weeks.  Seems like many of my friends got busy with family and careers and forgot about their old friends.  As far as I can tell, I am one of the only single friends in my circle of friends.  Some of my friends have even gone through divorces by now.  I almost never hear from my brother.  But he has four kids and a serious career, so I guess we have nothing in common.  And to make things even worse, we weren’t close at all growing up.  We were just completely different people with nothing in common except that we had the same parents.  Not having a relationship with my brother is one of the few true regrets I have about my current life that I could have done different.

Having a serious mental illness taught me that there is more to life than having a career.  Unfortunately, too many people don’t realize this until they are retired and most of their life is behind them.  This is probably why so many people feel depressed and useless once their careers are over, especially older men.  Like most boys, I was constantly asked what I wanted to do when I grew up.  I usually answered something in the sciences.  But the mental illness came creeping in just right before I could cash in on my brains and use them in a career.  Thank God I found a small niche online as a mental health blogger/philosopher.  I don’t even want to think what would have happened had I been born in my grandparents’ generation and not had this outlet.  It also makes me wonder how many mentally ill geniuses were lost over the centuries because they had no outlets to use their smarts.

I wanted to be a scientist when I was a child.  As it turned out I became a writer with interests in science.  I developed lots of interests and hobbies over the years, but never became profecient enough to turn these interests into careers.  For awhile as a child I flew model airplanes with my dad.  I did quite a bit of fishing and survival training when I was in Boy Scouts.  I made model cars for awhile.  I collected coins and baseball cards for a few years.  Still have all of  my baseball cards from my youth.  I taught myself some basic computer coding.  That probably could have turned into a job, at least until computers can regularly code themselves.  Who knows, maybe in the future the majority of people won’t have regular jobs simply because machines and programs can do them better and make many things cheaper.

While I wouldn’t mind a future like this, I do understand why some people are apprehensive about what could be coming in the next couple decades.  For generations, people have identified with the work they did to live.  Everybody was interested in work and a person who didn’t need or want a regular job was an outcast.  I have been an outcast in this regard for the last several years in that I don’t have a regular job, and really don’t need one as I can live just on my disability pension.  I no longer feel the need for a lot of money.  What I want at this point is to do work that makes a difference to people, the kind of work that “puts a dent in the universe” as the late Steve Jobs used to say.

While I am not delusional enough to believe I’m sure to get famous just from blogging, I do want to make a positive difference in the lives of the people who happen to read these postings.  I suppose that since my basic needs are met by my disability pension, I can now move onto meaningful work and self actualization on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.  Self actualized and I make poverty level (for American standard) salary, only in the early 21st century.  The closet I can think that anyone else in history was to this while living at low wages is probably medieval monks and scholars.  No need to be entertained with lots of money when my own mind can keep me company.