Tag Archives: normal

I’ve Lost Interest In Politics but Gained Interest In Science

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I must be the only man in America who won’t be watching the Presidential Debates tonight.  I’ve had my fill of politics months ago.  I am so tired and frustrated how hateful and divided politics has become.  I can’t even talk about politics with close friends and family any more without feeling frustration.  But politics and sports are all many people I know want to talk about anymore.  There is a lot more going on in the real world than politics and sports.  But it’s the abnormal that gets the most attention.  Few people can throw a football 80 yards or charm thousands of people in a speech.

I readily admit I do not understand neurotypical thinking.  I have spent years trying to figure the average people out and have even point blank asked people why they think the way that they do.  Alas, I haven’t gotten any concrete answers or come to any real conclusions.  I definitely believe the Tommy Lee Jones line from ‘Men In Black’ when he said, “The individual is smart but people are dumb and panicky animals.”  I see this everyday.  I do much better dealing with only one or two people at a time rather than trying to deal with crowds.  I don’t understand why for the last year and a half about all I see on my newsfeed and friends’ Facebook comments have to do with politics.  Some pretty cool stuff has happened in other fields just in that time, namely in science and technology.  But no one likes to discuss any of that.  About the only people I can discuss science with are my parents who had extensive science backgrounds because of working in the medical fields.  Even then I am convinced they don’t like discussing science that much and do it just to humor me.

I have always been interested in science and technology.  I pursued a career in medical research until it became painfully obvious that my mental illness wouldn’t allow me to continue this path.  It helped that I had some good science teachers in school that were willing to put up with my endless questions.  But after spending over a dozen years in the adult world, I painfully realized that most people didn’t have that luxury.  Most people do not see the beauty and wonder of science and the natural world.  I think that if people like this were to take a few evenings to watch some presentations by the late Carl Sagan and Michio Kaku on youtube instead of whatever sports ball game or political news is trending this week, we’d have a much more informed and enthusiastic populace.  We’d also have more interesting people too.  And isn’t being interesting a worthy goal?

Since the fall of communism and the rise of information tech in the early 1990s, we have lived in some really interesting times.  It seems hardly a week goes by anymore that some breakthrough is happening.  Sadly, most people I associate with on a daily basis are blind to these wonders.  And it seems that the few that are paying attention are worried about some dystopian future.  Personally I am very angry with Hollywood and popular culture for selling people these horrible visions of the future.  Visions like that are intellectually lazy and probably dishonest. And it’s not like there isn’t a market for good science fiction that shows a possibly cool future.  Star Trek has been around for fifty years and is going as strong as ever.  People are worried about machines that have no empathy or compassion?  Please, most people I know lack empathy and compassion and our world still works.

I guess in my ranting frustration I have to take heart in the fact that the entire world doesn’t have to be inventors or scientists or artists or humanitarians.  The politicians, freaks, cranks, and creeps may get the lion’s share of the attention from the media.  But it’s the scientists, engineers, health care workers, artists, humanitarians, and incurable dreamers that make living better and more meaningful.  I end this article with a few thoughts from the late Buckminster Fuller about how it often doesn’t take a great multitude or following the crowd to make a positive difference. buckminster-fuller-earn-living-technological-breakthrough

Midnight Rants Against Stupidity

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It’s the middle of the night as I write this. I’m going off the regular path and just going to rant for this entry. I just got back home from a midnight deli run so my stomach is full and I am wide awake.  Been seeing a lot of people online and in real life complain lately.  Some people complain about how much their jobs suck.  Some people complain about their marriages or relationships.  Many people complain about politics, especially during this election year.  People are just complaining about the dumbest nonsense but not doing anything to change their situations.

I know people who have so much “stuff” in their houses they accumulated over the years they can barely move or find anything.  They acknowledge they need to get rid of some things.  But they never do.  People complain about how dumb their coworkers are, how unreasonable their customers are, and how corporate policies hinder productivity and suck the life out of them.  But do they ever consider quitting their lousy job and starting their own business?  Of course not.  People complain about their significant others but do they ever consider fixing the relationship or opting out of relationships at least temporarily.  No, not at all.  Some people are even longing for the “good old days” of yesteryear.

For those who long for the past, what parts of the past are to be yearned for?  Do you want to bring back Jim Crow laws and children working in mines and factories to go along with gas costing only ten cents a gallon and most people spending Sundays in church?  Do you think modern medicine is a mess when people die from cancer or heart disease in their sixties or seventies while ignoring that many people died from infectious diseases at much younger ages just a few generations ago?  Most marriages did last for a lifetime in the old days, but most lifetimes didn’t last that long to begin with. They never had the time to grow apart and get divorced.  Many families were mixed in the old days, not from divorce, but from parents dying at young ages.  One of my favorites is modern medications make people sick and are ineffective.  People are living longer than ever in spite higher rates of obesity, largely because of medical advances.  Good old days my foot!  The good old days sucked, especially if you were a woman, racial minority, religious minority, or a child.

As a mentally ill man who has spent many years observing nuerotypical people and the things they do much like a zoologist studying a pack of apes, I’ve come to the conclusion that normal people often act in incredibly stupid ways. What’s even more amazing is that some of these people know these are stupid actions yet keep on doing them anyway. You hate your job, then quit and try something different.  You can’t stand your significant other, drop them and maybe be single for a while.  There’s no law saying you can’t be single.  We’re not taxing bachelors or throwing them in jail.

As far as politics go, if you think your politicians are morons and sell outs to big money interests, then vote for third party unknowns who aren’t taking money from lobbyists.  Or better yet, realize that a politician isn’t going to do anything to enrich your life.  They are just along for the ride. Slavery and serfdom would have never gotten abolished if there wasn’t first grass roots sentiments that thought these needed to go.  Same goes for civil rights. They don’t act unless there is sentiment among the citizens that change is needed.  All politicians can do are pass laws and spend tax money.  Even Hitler and Stalin would have never gotten away with what they did if there weren’t those kinds of sentiments among the populace of their countries to begin with.

Simply put, politicians can’t engineer better computers or design structures that won’t fall apart in earthquakes.  Politicians can’t bring clean drinking water to rural Africa or even inner city America.  Politicians can’t build better infrastructure.  If things are to improve, it’s going to be scientists and engineers who develop better and cheaper ways of doing things.  I would love to live in a world where scientists, engineers, architects, doctors, teachers, etc. are better known than politicians and athletes.  Uber just started putting out self driving taxis this week. The Gaia satellite has identified one billion more stars in our galaxy.  We recently found a possible Earth like planet just a few light years away.  Virtual Reality tech is set to take off big any time now.   Yet all that anyone wants to talk about are athletes who won’t stand up for ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ or whatever unfulfillable campaign promises a politician made when speaking at a union hall this week.  Seriously, normal people priorities suck.  I am glad I am not normal.  After studying normal people for most of my life, I see that they are obsessed with the stupid and mundane and they are really out of touch with what is really going on in the world around them.  I never want to be normal.

Optimism, Delusional Thinking, and Schizophrenia

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Optimism and schizophrenia are two things that normally wouldn’t go together.  Few who suffer from this mental illness would tell anyone that their hallucinations and delusional thoughts are conducive to optimism.  Most of my personal hallucinations are voices telling me all the things I’m doing wrong or how I’m angering the people in my life.  Fortunately for me my hallucinations aren’t usually loud or overbearing.  They are often whispers or low volume, much like the play by play commentary of a ballgame on television.  My hallucinations have never told me to hurt anyone or myself.  So for that alone I can be optimistic that my schizophrenia is manageable.  It does cause me irritation and anxiety that the voices are almost always there.  But, in my case, the paranoia has to be the worst.

I have had issues with paranoia even before I was diagnosed with schizophrenia.  I didn’t keep journals or do any writing on my own when I was growing up because I saw my brother reading the journal I kept one summer while in junior high.  I was afraid to record my thoughts as I didn’t have a lock on my bedroom door and my parents often entered my bedroom when I wasn’t there.  Once when I was in junior high I lost over $60 in birthday money.  For years I was convinced my brother stole it.  I never confronted him about it because I was paranoid the problems it would cause would be even worse than suffering in silence.  I was paranoid enough to believe my parents wouldn’t take my side in the argument and I still wouldn’t get my money back.  To this day I never found that money nor have I ever confronted my brother to see if he took that money.  I don’t know if he did or not and probably doesn’t remember it anyway.  My paranoias involve fearing people are going through my trash, people are listening in on my phone conversations, that I’m being watched every time I step out in public, etc.

I could have worse delusions.  I met some schizophrenic when I was a guest speaker at the state mental hospital that was convinced people were trying to poison his food.  I met another mentally ill man one time when I was in hospital that was convinced he was going to prison for a minor offense and wanted to hang himself.  He was on suicide watch and that was scary seeing someone that distressed.  I have met people who had great careers and families and lost them both once their mental illness took full effect later in life than mine started.  In my case my problems started in my late teens and for years I was under the delusion that I would overcome my illness and still go on to have the career and family I had dreamed about since I was five years old.

I realized I was having problems that weren’t going away on their own when I was a junior in high school.  I didn’t think much of my problems at first because most teenagers I knew were often moody and mean. It was when it was constant and interfering with my school work and activities that I decided to self medicate.  I didn’t turn to marijuana or alcohol, I turned to herbal remedies.  A friend of mine who had a rather unhealthy distrust of modern medicine recommend I try things like St. John’s Wort, Ginseng, multivitamins, and fish oil pills.  I try numerous combinations of these for two years with no noticeable effect.  Non modern medicines may work for some cases but my case wasn’t one of those.  I may have been delusional enough to believe I could treat my mysterious problems on my own.  But I have to be optimistic that I wasn’t delusional enough to believe that modern medicine was ineffective and some elaborate conspiracy.  Some people I know are delusional enough to believe that even without schizophrenia.

Some people I met were religious people who believed that I needed to pray more and be more faithful to God.  I was already the most knowledgeable student in my Sunday school classes since I was four years old.  I read the Bible almost daily to where I had read the entire book at least a few times.  I was more faithful to the teachings of the Bible than most people three to five times my age as a teenager.  For a short while in junior high I even thought about the ministry as a career.  But none of the prayers eased my anguish or calmed my delusions and fears.  Even though I went to a Christian college I was attending church maybe only two to three times a month.  I got to where I was aggravated watching people I knew who didn’t take religion as seriously as I did just seemingly coast through college and life.  I was thinking, ‘Alright God, what are they doing that I’m not.’

Finally a couple years after college I stopped going to church entirely.  It wasn’t because I was mad at any one person, but because it no longer made sense to invest that much into something that had no results.  None of the prayers or Bible studies did anything to alleviate my delusions or allow me to cope with my paranoias.  It just got to where it seemed senseless, unproductive, and even delusional.  I don’t know if God exits or not.  But I do know if the only thing keeping someone from hurting and abusing others is fearing God, than that person is indeed a sorry excuse for a human being.  I do find it just lucky that of all the thousands of beliefs that existed all over the world and throughout history that I happened to be born into the one that was most approved by God.  If I was born in India I would have been a devout Hindu.  If I was born in ancient Egypt, I would have been all for Osiris and Horus and regarded the Pharaoh as a god.  So it just gradually came to me the idea of burning in hell for all eternity just for the crime of being born into the wrong religion, wrong time, and wrong culture was delusional.  Most of my friends won’t agree with me but let them.  I won’t convince them that if there is a God that God is indifferent (that’s what the evidence I’ve seen so far convinces me).  And they won’t convince me that God will send someone to hell for losing the guessing game of picking the right religion.

As far as delusional thought goes, I am open to the possibility I could be wrong on anything.  I never got the memo that said I had to form my philosophy on life by my early twenties.  I am also not delusional enough to defend an idea I have that is being proven wrong.  Even though I am schizophrenic I have to be thankful that I don’t have the delusions of defending an idea I know to be off base.

 

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.

 

Why Can’t You Just Be Normal?

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I admit I have never been what most people would consider normal.  I have been much bigger and physically stronger than most people I know most of my life.  I have usually been one of the smartest people in every group I’ve been part of.  Smarts and strength do not ‘normally’ go together, at least not according to popular stereotype.  I have also always been one of those rare kids who never stopped asking ‘why’ to everything.  I just turned thirty six years old and I still ask ‘why’ to everything just like I did when I was eight years old.

I’m sure most of you who are parents and have dealt with grade school children get asked ‘why’ to everything.  Why is the sky blue?  Why is the grass green?  Why did my dog die?  Why do people fight wars? Why do people dump toxic sludge into the ocean?  And on it goes.  Tragically most people quit asking why entirely about the time they hit puberty and become interested in sex, sports, and popular culture.  I never developed a strong appetite for any of these three aspects of life.  My friends and I were discussing economics, science, and foreign policy when we were thirteen years old, right about the time most of our peers and elders outcasted us.  I think we were outcasted because we didn’t care about the latest episode of ‘Friends’ or ‘The Simpsons’ or how bad the football team lost on Friday night.

My close friends and I were never popular or considered normal, especially in high school.  While most of my rural school was listening to Garth Brooks, Faith Hill, and Alan Jackson, my friends and I were listening to Metallica, AC/DC, Green Day, Marilyn Manson, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and other hard rock groups that were big in the late 1990s.  People thought it was odd that my best friend was a girl.  Most people figured we were having sex (which we never did) just to wrap their minds around the foreign concept that platonic friendships can exist between teenage boys and teenage girls.

I am not what most people would consider normal, mental illness or not. I never have been normal and I certainly don’t care to start being normal now.  I never want to engage in normal behavior, especially with what I have seen out of normal people just from my previous jobs and some of my normal friends’ Facebook postings.  I care about the plight of the poor.  I also do not envy the wealthy.  I believe climate change is real and we  are contributing to it.  But I also believe we will adapt to climate change, manage it, and even solve it.  Our species has survived small pox epidemics, bubonic plagues, malaria, famines, hundreds of wars, the Dark Ages, and several ice ages with only a pittance of the science and knowledge we have even today.  And our knowledge is only continuing to grow with each passing day.  Science and knowledge are not static, don’t fool yourself.  We have knocked problems down for thousands of years.  We are knocking down problems even as you read these passages.  We will continue to knock problems down.  It is what our species does.  Birds can fly, lions can hunt, fish can breathe underwater, we humans see problems and solve them.  One of the most encouraging things I tell myself everyday is “many people much smarter than me are thinking things up.”

I support renewable energy. I don’t buy the whole “drill baby drill” nonsense, climate change or not. I believe we are and will keep advancing and find far better ways of powering civilization and doing things.  If Henry Ford just listened to public opinion, he’d just sold faster and stronger horses.  If Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla would have just listened to public opinion, we would not have gotten electricity when we did. I also believe we would have never gotten to where we could use renewable energy without using fossil fuels first.  But like the use of whale oil and wax candles, we will move beyond oil to even better energy sources.  I believe we will leave the oil age long before we run out of oil, just like we left the bronze age three thousand years ago and yet we still use copper and tin.

I am not afraid of foreigners and immigrants.  Ninety five percent of planet Earth does not come from America already.  I guarantee you my ancestors from Germany weren’t fluent in English (nor were they doctors or engineers) when they first set foot on Ellis Island.  If anthropologists are correct, we’re all immigrants one way or another.  I don’t watch regular news casts because I am convinced the regular news reports only bad news and only a fraction of what could be reported.  But bad news is reported on so much only because that is what we humans are predisposed to notice.  It’s in our genes.  Our minds can only take in so much information and survival is priority number one of all species.

I believe that decades from now, future generations will be amazed that people used to work in manufacturing, farming, and customer service instead of letting machines and computer programs do most of this repetitive work.  It’s an election year in my country and all sides are talking about bringing back jobs to America.  Most low to mid level manufacturing jobs are never coming back to America.  Many manufacturers in China and other countries where we outsourced our manufacturing are replacing their human workers with machines even as we speak.   And this is before 3D printing becomes mainstream, which it will within ten years. The days of people going straight from high school to a manufacturing job for the next forty five years with a pension, union protection, and insurance are just as dead as the days of the blacksmith and wagon maker.  So also are gone the days of a family with eight kids being able to make a living on 40 acres of farmland.  We simply no longer need ninety percent of our population working in farming or manufacturing like we did during the Industrial Revolution.  And these people had really low standard of living by modern standards anyway.  Hans Rosling gives some pretty good TED talks about how standards of living are rising all over the world, not just in North America and Western Europe.

Change is the only real constant.  Trying to hold onto the old tried and true may be normal but it merely delays the inevitable. The US banned stem cell research several years ago only to see that research go to countries like South Korea and China.  Now that stem cell research can be done without aborted fetuses, the US welcomed it back but will be playing catch up in this field for years to come.  Normal people talk about building walls, closing off the national borders, and isolating.  Yeah, that worked miracles during the Cold War and ancient China.  If normal people would have had all the say, we’d have never gotten rid of slavery, we’d be systematically discriminating against women, religious, and racial minorities far more than we are now, children working in mines and mills would be considered ‘character building’,  we’d still have the divine right of kings and emperors, and we would have never entered the Industrial Revolution, let alone our current Information Revolution.  These same people who fear change and machines taking their jobs don’t seem to be rushing to join Amish communities or throw away their smart phones.  But it’s normal to be selective, have cognitive biases, and to overestimate how great the past was while underestimating the possibility for the future.  Normal is common.  Normal does not change the world, especially not for the better.  Normal is boring.  And dare I say normal sucks.

 

Days of Calm and Keeping Busy

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My back is essentially healed up by now.  I can walk normal speed again and do my normal errands.  I’m spending more time out of the apartment.  Been to the park a couple times in the last week, chatted with a few neighbors, called a couple old friends, and gotten some sunshine.  This was a far cry from where I was just three weeks ago.  When I first hurt my back I didn’t leave my apartment for three days just from the pain.  Fortunately I managed to keep myself occupied with computer games, reading, youtube videos, phone calls to friends and family, and watching soccer and basketball on tv.

I was following the Copa America tournament over the last several days. Been watching a little of the Euro 2016 tournament too.  I saw all of USA’s games.  I haven’t traditionally made it a point to watch much soccer except when USA is playing.  I may be changing that as  the US put up a decent showing until when they ran into Argentina.  It helps that I have a nine year old nephew and a seven year old niece who are big soccer players.  My brother encourages his four kids to do numerous activities.  He won’t let them play football but I don’t blame him, especially with all the injuries.  I hurt my back in a football game when I was fifteen and I couldn’t sit without pain for months afterward.  Yet I didn’t tell the coaches or even my parents.  I suppose it went with the whole macho mentality that pain is just a part of football.  Plus playing football was the only thing I did in high school that most people considered normal.  The older I get the more I feel guilty about watching football.  It’s essentially people maiming themselves for my amusement.  But I guess it’s not as bad as ancient Romans cheering while lions eat Christians.  It’s just not as entertaining as it was ten to twenty years ago.

I still like baseball though.  Don’t watch it every night like I used to.  Even then I usually had it on in the background while I was doing chores, writing, reading, or doing something on my computer.  I still participate in a fantasy baseball league with some old college friends and friends of friends.  I met most of those guys when I was at Matt’s wedding in the Black Hills last July.  So I finally got to meet some of the guys I’ve only known by their screen names.  It is a competitive league but no money changes hands.  And my Rockies are doing a little better than normal, just slightly below fifty-fifty.

I may have been limited for the last few weeks but I still managed to keep busy.  And now that the back is cleared up I’ll be able to do even more.  Fortunately I haven’t had any flare ups of the mental illness in the last month.  I haven’t had any true flare ups since late March actually.  The one main medication I am on was shown by the DNA test I took to be more effective than most for me.  It certainly has proven that.  I’m reading more again.  I had been lazy about reading for a couple weeks when my back hurt real bad.  I was watching educational videos on youtube and reading blogs instead.  But it does feel good to see things falling back into place after weeks of hard work and rehabilitation.

 

 

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.

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.

 

Stability With A Mental Illness

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Had my last chiropractic session a couple days ago.  I’m now released from regular treatments.  And my back feels even better than before my car accident in October.  Had a chronic ache in my tail bone from an injury in high school I never got treated.  Thought it was something I would just have to live with.  But with the regular chiropractic treatments out of the way for good, I now have a little more stability in my life with mental illness.

It’s been a month since the end of the holidays.  Things have settled down into a stable routine for me.  I enjoy the winter months because this is usually when I get a lot of reading and writing done.  I’m also far more sensitive to heat than cold.  And I don’t have to feel like I need to be doing something or going somewhere in winter, especially if the weather isn’t good.  It’s just easier for me to stay in for a couple days in winter if I feel like it.

In this routine I’ve actually gotten quite a bit done.  Been blogging more than usual.  Been reading a lot again.  And I’ve felt quite stable mentally.  Haven’t felt any real mental stability for any true length of time since probably last June.  I’m glad to have the stability back.  Almost forgot how good stability and the mundane can feel.

 

 

 

 

A Sense of Calm During the Holidays

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It’s been a long time since I’ve had a sense of calm and normal.  But things are finally starting to settle and slow down.  I’m progressing enough in my chiropractic therapy I go in only twice a week.  My EoE is being treated and I’ve altered my diet to account for many possible food allergies.  So my stomach feels better and I’m not as easily irritable as I was earlier this fall.

After a couple hectic and stressful days last week, things started calming down yesterday.  I made no attempt to fight the mobs on Black Friday.  Instead I stayed home, watched football, listened to audiobooks on youtube, and drank a few cups of black tea.  Found that black tea is easier on my stomach and gives me just enough caffeine to keep sharp for those late night research sessions.  I’ll probably switch over entirely this winter.

My back isn’t hurting anymore.  Even the tail bone injury I had years ago in high school has cleared up.  I always thought it was one of those things I was doomed to live with.  Too bad I didn’t get it worked on shortly after it happened.  But chiropractic treatments were even less mainstream then now.

Now I have my car back and it looks as if the accident never happened.  I have also more or less begun my winter routines.  We’ve already had a couple light snows.  Found my car handles well on ice.  That was one of my concerns going into the first winter with a different car.  But this car is low enough miles it should last me at least ten to twelve years.

I’ve now come to the acceptance part of my grandmother’s death.  I was more easily irritated and depressed for probably three months, which I think was part of my grieving process.  But she was a positive influence on my life for years.  And I was talking to her right until she had a major stroke about ten days before she died.  She was mentally sharp at her birthday party in June but she wasn’t very mobile because of physical health problems.  It has to be tough being mentally sharp but feeling your body fall apart.  It was bad enough for myself knowing my ability to process stress and social situations because of my schizophrenia while my cognitive ability remained relatively changed.  Being in a car accident didn’t help with the irritability and short temperedness.

I’ve also come to the acceptance that, barring some miracle of future science and medicine, I’m not going to ever be able to handle any kind of job where I can use my natural intellect.  Coming to this acceptance has only happened recently and it was by far the toughest aspect of my life I had to accept.  I grew up believing that if one found their niche and developed that niche, then good things would happen.  Found out at a very early age I had some unusual intelligence.  I also learned I had almost no bodily coordination and hated athletics.  So I never had any dreams of playing pro football.  I wasn’t very good with my hands but was excellent with ideas and scientific concepts.  I decided I wanted to be a scientist even before I started kindergarten.  Unfortunately that dream didn’t come true.  After gutting through almost two years of biology and chemistry classes while fighting a mental illness, it became painfully obvious that I wouldn’t get to pursue the dream any more.

The worst part of coming to this acceptance was knowing that I did everything right in life and I still would never use my ability.  I didn’t drink, I didn’t do drugs, I didn’t have sex, let alone date much, etc.  I spent most of my weekends and evenings studying for my classes while many of my classmates were out partying and screwing around.  And I was well on my way of making something positive out of myself.  But it never happened because of schizophrenia.  It took pretty much everything from me.  And it even messes with your mind, unlike most physical diseases.  Well schizophrenia is the result of brain issues.  It was rough seeing everything I worked for gradually destroyed piece meal.  For a long time I tried to figure out what I did wrong.  Once I came to the conclusion I did nothing wrong, I blamed others for the illness happening.  Once I got past that and accepted it was what it was, I have settled in for the long haul.  Now I’m trying to keep even keel and make the best of a lousy situation.