Tag Archives: writing

Overcoming Mobility Challenges: My Journey to Independence

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STILL haven’t heard anything from my possible new place. I’m giving up on that. I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that I’m going to be living with my parents for the rest of my life. I’m tired of pretending that things are going to change in that regards.

There are worse things than living in the suburbs. It’s a safe neighborhood. I can get any restaurant within reason Door Dashed to my house. I get two day delivery on almost anything on Amazon. There isn’t much for homelessness near my house. And I live only a fifteen minute drive from my brother and his wife.

As I’m getting used to the fact that there won’t be a place coming open for me, I have decided to make the best of it. Mobility is slowly coming back. I can easily transfer from recliner to bed to wheelchair with only a little pain in my ankles. My knee pain has been completely solved. They don’t even pop and crack anymore. I’m so thankful for Turmeric.

Now that I can freely get back into a wheel chair, I’m on to my next project. That is moving about the house. The only real hang up in this house is the narrow doors. The hallways are wide enough for wheelchairs but not the doors. If anything happens to my parents where they have to move to a home and I get left behind, I’m so going to have to move my hospital bed and recliner into the living room. That’s been my plan all along. I just didn’t think that I would have to utilize it.

Finally got out under the overpayments I was paying back to social security. Looks like the timing was good. Sounds like the whole system has become a dumpster fire. While I’m all in favor of cutting government waste, I totally accept that the transition to a more efficient system is going to be tough and take years perhaps. I do have some money out of the system just in case of things like this. In social security’s case, it sounds like a modern day run on the bank.

My next goal as for my mobility is to stand up long enough to fold up my wheelchair and get it through a door. That will open up the entire house and the back yard to me. If I keep getting the run around from social services, I’m going to need to make myself as mobile as I can.

The only reason I was needing a place was because of the wheelchair, not because I am senile. I remember to take my pills daily. I can clean myself, at least with sponge baths and dry shampoo. Maybe that is why I can’t get a place. Because I’m still quite mentally sharp I’m not a high priority.

In some ways I’m glad I keep getting rejected for these places. Five months ago my ankles and knees were so bad I couldn’t even stand up on my own. I needed an ambulance crew to set me up in my own house. Spent from early October to early January learning to stand up again.

I can stand up again. Now I can walk real short distances. I’m working on cutting down the pain in my ankles. In the five plus months I have spent teaching myself how to stand and walk again, I haven’t fallen even once. And I have done it all without any help from anyone.

I had physical therapy come in back in October. But they gave up on me after 30 days because I wasn’t making “adequate progress.” As it is now, I don’t think I really need physical therapy. What I do need is wheelchair accessible doors and bathrooms. Not sure I can get that done in this house. I’m pretty sure my family could afford it if I really put the screws to my parents. Sometimes playing hardball and being a hard ass has to be done to get a point across. I swear some people are so oblivious.

In spite of my hurdles and set backs, I’m making decent progress in learning how to walk again. And I am doing it in spite of the roadblocks and hijinks and run around of social services. If anything, I enjoy the hardships.

I enjoy being told what I can and cannot do. That way I can rub it in people’s arrogant faces when I end up proving them wrong. People didn’t think I could graduate college with schizophrenia. I proved them wrong. People didn’t think I could hold a job with mental illness. I held a janitorial job for over four years. People didn’t think I could live on my own with schizophrenia. Proved them wrong for seventeen years without being even late on a rent payment. People didn’t think I could survive and recover from congestive heart failure. Definitely proved them wrong on that. People now think I’ll never walk again. That’s my next mission to prove people wrong.

More Mobile, Losing Weight, Spring Storms, and New Books by Zach Foster

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Updates are in order. I can now transfer from my recliner to the bed to the wheelchair on a daily basis. I no longer have knee pain, but I do have some ankle pain. I have to stand up and sit down a few times over the span of several minutes before I can easily get rolling, especially if I have been laying down all night in bed.

In short, the knee pain that has been the bane of my existence for the past seven years is gone. Now I have to work on my ankle strength. To this end I’m starting an exercise routine I learned from a physical therapist to rebuild my ankles.

I haven’t weighed myself for a few months, but I think I’ve lost weight. I’m carrying less fat, especially around my stomach and thighs. My arms no longer jiggle. My shirts fit a lot better. The swelling in my crotch has gone down considerably. I know my apatite is smaller than it used to be.

One of the reasons for the fat loss in spite of the little physical activity, is for the strict diet I have. I limit when I eat and how much I eat. I still occasionally eat pizza, burgers, and friend fish. But I have cut back on portions. I large pizza can make at minimum two meals for me, more often three. I do like Long John Silver’s for their fish and corn balls. But it’s only a once-a-month tradition when my dad brings it home after he visits his doctor at the VA.

The weather is warming up and definitely feels like spring. We are having wildfires here in Oklahoma. Won’t be too long before we have thunderstorms and tornadoes every few days. The storms down here are really bad, especially the spring storms. Winter storms are more bearable even if they bring more ice than what I’m used to growing up in Nebraska. Whatever snow and ice we get in Oklahoma is gone within a couple of days. But 500 miles north in Nebraska, the snow can stay around all winter and it’s usually too cold for just rain turning to ice most of the times. Snowstorms dumping over a foot of snow are an annual occurrence back in Nebraska.

I recently uploaded an e-book to Amazon in addition to the Hillbilly Scholar one I already have. It’s called Blasting Mental Illness Myths by Zach Foster. It’s not up just yet as I loaded it only a few days ago.

This is the link to the Hillbilly Scholar e-book

https://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Hillbilly-Scholar-Zach-Foster-ebook/dp/B005ESFWNI/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3BR1YVX065QOH&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.uACjiqLKg7iYywHEerIRWw.oEkfijpANSjGwxPnP5W80vUEWYv8vkD3FHYTL6VTGsg&dib_tag=se&keywords=wisdom+of+a+hillbilly+scholar&qid=1742162715&sprefix=%2Caps%2C94&sr=8-1

March 11 2025

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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.

The Impact of Change: Christmas Musings on Life and Health

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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.

Updates, March 1, 2024

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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.

Making Money Blogging

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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.

Hobbies and Mental Illness

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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.

Being Alone vs Being Lonely

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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.

Routines and Change Of Seasons During Pandemic and Economic Crisis

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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.

Too Bad I Don’t Get Paid To Learn or My Path To Becoming An Independent Scholar

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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.