It’s been a few months since I last posted. Updates are in order. I spent my winter at home trying to regain my strength and mobility. I can easily transfer from the bed to the recliner and back.
I have been feeling kind of depressed. My health progress is going slow. I’m still losing weight, but my mobility is coming along slowly. My knee and ankle pains are more manageable. I still have to take Tylenol a couple times a day.
I sleep a great deal. Most nights I’m asleep by 11:30 pm and don’t wake until 8 am. And I will usually sleep two hours in the afternoon. I just feel my happiest when I sleep. I can still easily walk in my dreams.
My dreams aren’t very scary anymore. Most of my dreams are about my childhood hometown and I have the same looks and build I had in my early 20s. I guess I dream about my physical prime. Most of my dreams aren’t scary, but they don’t make much sense. And I can affect the outcome of these dreams and the dialog sometimes. Most of my dreams I play the role of the hero rather than the victim anymore. Far cry from 20 years ago.
I still have my investment and collecting hobby. I buy mostly old silver coins and bitcoin. Bitcoin is volatile enough that I don’t want to add to it, but I don’t want to cash out either.
My blood is under control. Some days it’s quite low. So the doctor is talking about reducing some of the doses. I recently took a cheek swab test to see how I was metabolizing my medications and to see which types of other meds would work well in the future. It’ll be weeks before I get the results of that test back.
I’m having a good Christmas season so far. Got to talk with some old friends over the phone for over an hour today. She found a new job a few weeks ago that pays more than any job she ever had. Her husband (also a friend of mine) is still working 60+ hours a week as a delivery driver. They think he will try to find something in academics soon now that they aren’t living paycheck to paycheck anymore.
Our conversation covered mostly history and geopolitics. I don’t have many friends I can talk about those things with anymore. Most of my friends are having tough times with mid life crisis kind of things. I miss those conversations about history and current events. It was like being back in college, if just for only one hour.
I sleep most of the daylight hours anymore. I think part of it is depression and part of it is anemia. I’m not looking forward to probably having to go back to a long term care facility. But my mobility isn’t coming back and my house isn’t handicap accessible. My parents aren’t in good health and probably have only a few years, at best, left. Part of me all three of us won’t make it to see 2030.
It really breaks my heart to be in decline just right as things are really changing science and tech wise. I am convinced that we as a society will make more scientific progress in the next 20 years than we made in the previous 300. That is, if the politicians and voters quit screwing up.
Here in Oklahoma, it’s starting to look and feel like spring. Spring is probably my favorite season. Ironically, I usually hate summers. I never did well in the heat, at least when I can’t be under a fan or an AC. I’m more heat sensitive than most people. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t commit to move to Oklahoma until a year ago.
Mentally, I’m still very stable. I think it helps that I avoid stressful people and overstimulating as much as possible. I don’t even like driving or people knocking on my office door. I haven’t owned a car for almost five years now. And I feel far less stress because of it. To hell with being forced to own a car. Pity grocery delivery wasn’t a thing ten years sooner.
Physically I’m doing much better. The only times I have bad joint pain are if I sit for several hours, sleep too long, or the weather is really changing. I still take the turmeric for my joints. Take hemp oil too. Still slowly rebuilding my heart strength.
My writings here on Medium are doing alright. Good enough to keep me some good side hustle money. But not good enough to get me kicked off social security disability. It’s a pity that universal health care will probably never be a thing here in the US.
My water retention swelling has gone down a lot. Granted it took two months on lasix, but that did the trick. I retain fluids sometimes due to my congestive heart failure. So I have to limit how much water I drink every day.
I’m also eating less. The last two times I ordered a pizza, I was able to get three meals out of it. Usually get only two. I just don’t need to eat as much anymore. Overeating actually is painful to me now.
Don’t know if I’m losing weight, but I know my clothes fit a lot better than they did six months ago. I gained some weight in the first few months here in Oklahoma. After that, I changed my diet.
Found out I tend to eat more when I am cooking for myself. If someone else cooks, I almost never ask for seconds. It may seem odd for a man who’s been on his own for over 18 years as a bachelor to defer cooking duties to his parents. But I do eat less, and my clothes fit better since I changed my habits.
Now that winter is almost over, I’m finding I have strong desires to socialize more. I spent much of the winter indoors, writing, reading, researching, doing my hobbies, etc. Now I’m ready to reconnect in person.
My investment picks are doing well. I might have to sell some off soon so as to not draw the ire of social security disability. They get kind of mad when people on disability have any real kind of savings. Really sucks that I find something I’m good at and then can’t really make a living off it because, well, the cost of insurance and meds. And I refuse to get married, not that I ever was marriage material in the first damn place. Aye, so much hate.
Been following develops in AI and automation for over ten years. Been following it real close for the last two years from when I first heard of ChatGPT. I don’t think most people realize just how good AI and automation is getting. And almost no one has any real clue how good it’s going to get. This is even before Quantum Computing becomes readily available. I’m convinced Quantum Computing will be as big as AI is now within 10 years, probably sooner.
In spite of all the doom porn and sky is falling type bullshit flying around out there, I’m glad to be alive and relatively young at our current point in history. As rapid as things have changed in the last 25 years, the next 10 years will see even more change. I feel privileged to have survived congestive heart failure to see it.
I didn’t give up during heart failure even though for a while I was in so much pain I couldn’t even get out of a hospital bed on my own. They literally had to use a lift to get me from the bed to the wheelchair for the first two weeks of my treatment. But I survived.
I didn’t want to die that way. Had too much I wanted to see before I finally do shuffle off into the Great Unknown that is death. That was two years ago this May. I like what I’ve seen just in these two years. I guess it’s all material for writing at this point.
Been putting a lot of my writings on Medium for the last couple months. Just got this email notice from them today. In short, I made a few bucks from my blogging on Medium.
Hello Zach Foster!
From November 1 – December 1, 2023, your members only stories on Medium earned a total of $6.96 (USD). Your payment was sent to your connected Stripe account on December 8, 2023, and will automatically transfer to your bank account or debit card on file. This may take up to 5-7 business days.
This is a thank you from Medium and its paying members to you. We greatly appreciate your willingness to share your stories, wisdom, and knowledge with us.
I’ve had lots of hobbies over the years. I liked fishing when I was in high school and college. I did intramural softball when I was in college. Did speech and school plays when I was a teenager. Did football and track in high school. Started writing in college. Wrote poetry for several years. I started this blog after a series of essays I wrote about living with mental illness. Wrote rough drafts for two novels when I was in my twenties. I found a love for computer games in my thirties. The Civilization series, Railroad Tycoon series, Total War series, Stellaris, and Sim City are probably my favorite PC games. My favorite games on PlayStation 5 are Skyrim, Cyberpunk 2077, God of War, FIFA Soccer, Madden NFL, and Call of Duty. I also collect books. I love to read, mostly nonfiction. My favorite genres are nonfiction science, biographies, philosophy, economics, personal finance, and history.
Hobbies helped me find new meaning in my life once it became painfully obvious, I couldn’t hold a regular job anymore. I haven’t worked a regular job since 2012. Yet, that’s when I got serious about writing. Over the years I’ve written in this blog regularly. It’s part memoir and part journal. I’ve gotten readers from most countries all over the world. Haven’t made much money off my writings.
For the first few years of my writing journey, I self-published several books. There was the forementioned mental illness essays book, several poetry books, an advice book, and a novel. I went through the print on demand route. Ended up selling several dozen copies. I’m kicking myself for not saving some of those Word files. I’m thinking eventually of putting some of my blog entries into book form. Just a matter of copying and editing. I have hundreds of entries on this blog. There certainly has to be at least one book in there.
In short, writing is one of those hobbies that has taken on a life of its own. I’m thinking of eventually taking the next logical step and trying to get some of these writings publicized. I’m probably going to monetize my blog too once I get the funding. I almost have enough to make this a professional blog. I have found more meaning in writing than I ever found in any job. It’s the best job, but worst paying, I ever had. I hope to change that starting real soon.
I’ve spent most of my life alone. I haven’t had a roommate since 2004 and haven’t been on a date since 2006. It’s not that I don’t like having conversations or in person interaction. I have very rarely met people who share the same interests I do. I grew up in a small farming village of less than 500 people in rural Nebraska. The nearest Wal Mart was over an hour drive away as was the nearest four year college and book store. Most people I knew growing up thought I was odd in preferring to read science and nature books in grade school over playing sports. I never could run fast and was never coordinated enough to do well in sports like baseball or basketball. I didn’t have quick enough reflexes to be very good at most video games. My brother was a master at those. I always lost to him and I gave up trying to compete against him when I was ten years old.
Instead, I spent most of my free time either in the local library or wandering my back yard. While in my back yard, I made up stories and fantasy worlds. It came natural to me. Granted the neighbor kids thought it was funny and used to spy on me. Got me real paranoid after awhile. I didn’t have many friends growing up. I guess no one liked the smart kid who wasn’t afraid of being well read and smart. Even the adults thought I was strange for preferring to read to going to ballgames or county fairs.
It wasn’t until I was eleven that I met a friend who had many of the same interests and was just as much as an outsider as I was. His family moved in from a mountain town in Colorado. We hit it off right away. He and I were discussing politics and economics when most of our classmates were discussing school yard gossip, the latest video games, or the results of the college football games the previous weekend. He and I would sometimes spend our recess time discussing the presidental debates with our sixth grade teacher in 1992. Naturally our classmates thought we were weirdos.
I met my current best friend when I was thirteen. She and her sisters were homeschooled. First time in my entire life I met a kid who loved reading even more than I did. We hit it off immediately. Of course I got a lot of grief from classmates because my best friend was a girl. Half of the school thought I was gay and the other half thought we were all but married by freshman year of high school. Neither was true, she and I just shared similar interests. Most people don’t realize how few options I had for socializing for most of my life. Hell, I didn’t realize how limited my options were until facebook came out. Sadly, facebook turned into a toxic waste dump shortly after being opened to the public at large and big money got involved. Sad to see something so beautiful get so distorted.
Because my best friend in high school was a girl, that killed my chances for dating. Some people have the issues of not being able to get a second date or end up dating losers and jerks. My problem has always been getting anyone to say yes even once. I never did figure out what I was doing wrong. I flat out asked people what I was doing wrong. I never got any answer beyond ‘just be yourself’ and ‘there is someone for everyone.’ Right.
Even going off to college and being the only person from my school on campus didn’t improve my dating prospects. I asked one girl out and she laughed in my face. I had another girl in one class get all angry because she thought I was starring at her when I was really just starring at the clock. I did have a steady dating relationship my second year in college. Like most young romances, it didn’t last. We didn’t have enough similar interests. My last three years of college, I spent whatever time I wasn’t studying for classes in the library reading the classics of philosophy, history, literature, poetry, etc. Those books that serious literature students consider classics but never read, I read dozens of those in my spare time in college. Sure it killed any chance at dating, but I figured out that I wasn’t what most people were looking for anyway. It was no loss.
One I got out on my own, I struggled for a few years bouncing from job to job because of my worsening mental illness. I eventually wound up on disability. Worked a few years just to say I could. In 2012, I took early retirement from traditional work to devote my life to study and writing. At age 40, I’m far happier with this arrangement than with any I’ve ever had. I don’t get spied on by my neighbors like the kids in my hometown did. No one gives me a hard time for not wanting to date anymore. No one insults me because I love to learn. Sure it gets lonely at times, but that is what happens when someone has rare interests and lives in an environment where aren’t many people. Could I have done better socially if I grew up in a suburban setting? I don’t know. I’ll never know at this point. But it does get lonely. Some days I feel like a medieval monk with a great book collection but no one to share that knowledge with.
I’m enjoying the cooler weather. I spend most of my time either under the blankets in my bed or with a blanket over my legs while I sit in my recliner. I think I’ve gotten more sensitive to cold over the last few years. Cold didn’t bother me at all until my mid 30s. I am glad that cool weather is here. I usually do my best writing and reading in the fall and winter.
I’m currently between major reading projects right now. Been reading some old poetry books, writers like Emily Dickenson, Edgar Allan Poe, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Starting to read science articles again. Spent much of my summer reading geopolitics and history articles and blogs. Been reading more wikipedia lately.
I’ve been lazier about writing the last few weeks. I guess even I thought my blog entries were getting stale and uninspired. I’m now seven months into my self imposed quarantine. It goes get to me sometimes. Many people I know still won’t wear face masks in public even with cases of covid on the increase in my town.
Many people I personally know are struggling. Two of my friends in Omaha had to apply for rent assistance and regularly use food pantries. A friend of mine in Denver is worried that layoffs at her job may be coming as her company is losing business. I don’t leave my apartment much except to visit my neighbors and pick up the mail. I pass most of my days with lots of reading and phone calls. I call my parents every couple days to check in on them. I talk to my friend in South Dakota every weekend. I don’t watch much live tv outside of football on Saturday afternoons. I do watch a lot of science lectures, philosophy lectures, interviews, podcasts, and audiobooks on youtube. I don’t use facebook much except to keep in contact with close friends and a few cousins.
Weather is supposed to get real cold this weekend. My friend in South Dakota said they have had a few snows already. My friend in Denver specifically owns an all wheel drive car for their winter snows. I am restocked on supplies and should be able to stay home for awhile if needed. My cleaning lady arrives on Thursday afternoons. She does good work and is good conversation.
If there is one thing I don’t like about being an adult is that it isn’t as easy to have good conversations as it was when I was in college and just starting out in my adult life. Most people I know are busy with family and careers. Most are stressed about money issues, relationship problems, problems at work, etc. that I really can’t relate to. I don’t know if I’m stuck in a perpetual early adulthood or if I just skipped most of my career and right into retirement. I have given up on making new friends via social media. Just to divided and nasty anymore. It didn’t start out that way. It’s sad to see what it has become.
In other news, cement work is being done around the complex, namely in the parking lot. Doesn’t effect me much as I no longer have a car. But at least maintenance is still getting done during a recession and pandemic.
I’ve been enjoying the cooler fall weather and the changing leaves. Been having bouts of depression the last few days. They clear up after some good conversation with old friends and family. I think the loneliness of the pandemic is starting to get the best of me. I’m too paranoid to socialize in person much as most people I know won’t wear face masks. And with flu season starting in only a few weeks, this could be a really rough winter. I’m prepared to hunker down and stay home for a real long time if needed, at least in terms of supplies. I’m not so sure about the mental part of it.
I’ve been having more time to think during this pandemic. Been reflecting on my past and growing up. When I was a kid, some of my happiest memories were being alone and exploring our large back yard and letting my mind wander. I’d often make up stories and keep these story lines going for months at a time. I never did write any of them down and have forgotten most over the years. I kept a journal one summer while in junior high, at least until my brother stole it and mocked me for some of my writings. He and some of the neighborhood kids used to spy on me when I paced the backyard too. Hurt really bad to have my privacy violated like that. I didn’t realize I was good at writing and story telling until I was almost done with college.
I graduated college with a business degree. I originally started as a pre medicine major with the idea I would get a job in a research lab eventually. While I was really interested in biology, palentology, and chemistry as a kid, I was also really interested in history and literature. I didn’t consider studying history or english in college because I heard the horror stories about arts and humanities students finding only minimum wage jobs after graduation. I only studied business because I got a D in organic chemistry, which destroyed my chances for graduate school. I also didn’t know much about business or money besides how to balance a checkbook. And since money involves everything, I thought business might lead to a career once I finished college. I really enjoyed the economics, finance, and investing classes. I didn’t enjoy the accounting classes. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business and no idea what I was going to do with it.
After graduation I worked a couple retail sales jobs as that was all that I had available to me. Even while working those jobs, I used to get anxiety real bad about working. I used to vomit before work most days because of the anxiety. I later got a job as a graduate assistant while I was working on my masters’ in economics. That job, while really enjoyable, lasted only a few months because I couldn’t make grades. I also don’t think my bosses or coworkers liked me.
After I qualified for disability insurance a few years later, I finally had a safety net. I worked part time for a few years as a janitor at the county courthouse. After a few years of that, I decided to take “early retirement” and finally do what I wanted for the first time in my life. I devoted my life to studying, reading, writing, etc. And I have never been happier. I may not make much money and I probably never will. But I’m good with that. I never had the kind of ego that needed lots of money, a prestigious job, a big house, a wife and kids, etc. I guess I just wanted to be an independent scholar. It wasn’t until I was in my thirties I got to realize this dream that I was too scared to admit to anyone, even myself.
I love learning. I always have. Even being the odd kid in my school who loved learning and was too stubborn to hide it, it was never beaten out of me. I guess I was fortunate that, even though I got lots of garbage from classmates for being too smart, most of my teachers didn’t discourage my thirst for knowledge and wisdom. I even had a few who encouraged me and loved me for being eccentric. And I found even more teachers like that in college. I also met kids who loved learning even more than I did. It was amazing. It’s tragic that most kids have that God given love of learning beaten out of them at such an early age. I don’t know why I never lost that love. I’m just grateful that I never did.
I was a sophomore in college when I was first diagnosed with schizophrenia. That was in the fall of 2000. I had been struggling with depression, paranoia, and anxiety for a few years before I had my diagnosis. At first I thought it was mainly just teenage angst and moodiness. I was still doing well in school and was able to at least appear like I had everything together. I was still on the football and speech teams, I was still making honor roll most of the time, I still had some friends, etc. But inwardly I was a wreck. I was fearful of going to the school guidance counselor as I attended a really small high school of less than 90 students. Back then, almost no one talked about mental illness or depression issues. It had far more stigma back in the 1990s than it does now. The internet was still in it’s infancy, there was no youtube, and blogging was still a few years away. So I suffered in silence and in solitude.
I didn’t talk about my internal problems until they became unbearable because, first, I was certain no one would believe me. Two, I still had images of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest in my head as to what mental problems meant. Three, I was often told to “suck it up” and “others have it worse than you” even while in grade school. Four, I feared appearing weak. So I just suffered in silence for a few years.
As far as I know, no one knew about what was going on in my mind. If people did, they never asked. And I was too paranoid to tell anyone. For the first years I had problems, I was still going to school full time and working on the weekends and during the summers. I was so anxious and paranoid about going to work, I would vomit before my shifts several times a week. Since I had spent my entire life listening to people complain about how much they hated their jobs (like they were proud of how much their jobs sucked), I was scared to tell anyone. I just suffered in silence.
Finally in fall 2000, I was diagnosed with schizophrenia and major depression. It was actually a kind of relief for me in that I wasn’t the only one having these problems. I didn’t realize that mental illnesses were more common than diabetes until after I was diagnosed. No one ever talked about mental illnesses in our family or my town.
For the next few years, I took full time classes and worked during the summers. When I wasn’t in classes or spending time with friends, I was in the college library reading the philosophy and classical literature books that everyone talked about but very few actually read. I’m glad I got to do that. I doubt I could have done that had I not went to college first, at least not until the internet really got going. But spending all those evenings in the campus library instilled a love for learning in me that still burns to this day all these years later. Sure I wasn’t graded on what I studied and I didn’t get a diploma that stated I had learned such material. But I knew that I did. That’s all that mattered to me.
After I graduated from college and worked for a few years before qualifying for disability, I still read a lot of books. I still do lots of reading, granted it’s mostly online articles, e-books, and audiobooks. And, no, I don’t have any certificate that says I learned this material. But it doesn’t matter. The most fun I ever had at a “work” task is doing what I’m doing right now, writing blogs about navigating my life while working with a mental illness. I don’t consider it “work” or “a job” because it doesn’t have the stress of any of my traditional jobs. I love writing about my experiences and trying to be of assistance to others even though it doesn’t pay at all. I don’t care that it doesn’t pay. Sometimes, I’m glad it doesn’t. For I fear if I ever were to accept a writing job or get pay for writing, I would be at the whims and mercy of those paying me. Screw that. I want to tell the truth, the good, bad, and mundane of living in the modern day with schizophrenia. I know what living with schizophrenia is like. I’ve done it since at least my late teens. I doubt any book editor or manager at a blog service has that kind of first hand experience.
I fear I couldn’t be completely truthful if I did accept pay. I fear some boss would want me to “Hollywood up” my writings by exaggerating or being more dark just so I could get more readers. I don’t want that. I want this blog to be an educational tool and a means to communicate to others what it’s like to be mentally ill without it being threatening or divisive. I do have good days with mental illness. I have bad days with mental illness. Some days getting out of bed and calling my parents is the best I can do. Others, it’s writing a blog entry that resonates with some of my readers and getting a lot done. Some days I just want to stay home and keep to only my thoughts. Others I would road trip for several hours to visit friends out of state or go to baseball games, concerts, etc. Some days I can talk for hours on end with almost anyone. Some days I don’t want to even hear the sound of another human voice. It’s ebb and flow, high tide and low tide.
I’m going to take a detour with this post and have a little more fun than usual. I’m going to post on oddities about myself. I’ll try to keep this fun. So here goes.
 I have the same best friend at age 39 that I had at age 17.
My best friend is a woman. When we were in high school we came to an unspoken agreement that we wouldn’t make our friendship a romance. While it hurt in high school, in the long run it payed off.
 I started college as a pre med student. I shifted to business after two years. I mean, who wants to trust a medical scientist who got a D in Organic Chemistry?
Even though I really had little interest in business and economics until I went to college, I’m glad I studied business. I am really more interested in history and literature.
 I spent as much time reading literature, history, and philosophy in college as I did studying business my last three years of college. I spent a few hours every day reading at the campus library. I’m glad I did this ‘dual study program’.
 I haven’t been on a date since my late 20s. I’m not anti romance or anti marriage. I know myself well enough that, with my psych illness and personality type, I would make a lousy husband and father. Now I love having friends and family. But, I don’t do well with romance.
I have several email accounts, most of which are dummy accounts so I can cut down on spam in my real accounts.
 I don’t give my nephews and niece career advice or ask them what they want to be when they grow up. The workplace is changing fast enough that even I had several different types of jobs. I imagine this trend is only going to speed up in the coming years.
 I enjoy reading non fiction books more than fiction. Real life is quite interesting to me because, well, some real crazy things happen in non fiction. And it’s non fiction because it actually happened in real life.
 I wrote drafts for two novels in my late 20s and early 30s.
 I find writing in first person easier than writing in third person. My writer friends think I’m crazy for saying this. But it’s true for me.
 I like the comedy of Bill Hicks and George Carlin.
 My likes in music have changed over the years. In high school I was big into grunge and heavy metal. In college I really got into country and blues. In my late 20s I really got back into metal and added some hip hop. In my 30s I got into techno. I do like some of most genres of music. I don’t have just one particular style.
 Even though I did well in school in high school and college, I still wasn’t very confident in my abilities until I hit my 30s. And it was in my 30s I found out that most of my classmates in high school and college were less confidant than even I was.
 While I no longer work a regular job, I’m glad I had the variety of jobs I did. Some of the jobs I’ve worked included retail sales, waiter, factory worker, teachers’ aide, janitor, and farm laborer.
 Even though I don’t make money from my blog writing, it gives me more joy than any job I’ve ever done.
 I never understood the trope about people not liking their in laws because my parents always had good relationships with their in laws.
 Both of my parents worked full time jobs, but they had different shifts. My mother worked the night shift as a nurse at a hospital. Even with these different shifts, we always had at least one meal a day as a family. And since I had a set of grandparents that lived in town, mom and dad would send us there if they needed a break from us. I guess I had the best of all worlds as a kid.
 I don’t socialize much in person anymore. Yet I don’t feel lonely because I socialize via the internet and phone daily.
 I don’t like fast food anymore. I prefer my own cooking in most cases. The closest thing to fast food I eat anymore is delivery pizza and Chinese.
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A Life Of Mental Illness 