My updates are giving me a bit of a challenge running a full day behind…I don’t always remember what it was I was thinking of as my “change” items some 18h later. So I’m going to do Friday and Saturday together.
Friday
Item 3.1 was simple, just running Andrea over for a massage. Her back has been bothering her a LOT this week, way more than would be usual, and home massage and biofreeze isn’t getting the job done. So she went for a massage, and I drove her over. We’ve been doing pretty well of late to make sure we do regular chiro and massage for Andrea and I, and massage for Jacob too. We’re not as active as we were pre-Covid, so anything we can do helps.
Item 3.2 was follow-up on my website. I have been actively trying NOT to go down a rabbithole trying to obsess about the recovery. It did make it up, and was mostly visible, but there were still some niggling details to test. I made the quick update, and then left it.
Item 3.3 is more of a look-ahead item. Jacob needs some new masks for his return to school, and maybe some that are simpler, solid colours, rather than the space theme ones he has now. So I did a small rabbithole dive on the internet last night and ordered a bunch. A small upgrade to his setup as he goes back to school.
Saturday
Item 4.1 was a surprise of sorts, and not really by me per se. Andrea’s back was still hurting, and she now had a significant-looking rash on her side. So she needed to go to a doctor to get checked today. We planned on it being a simple Appletree, but then they all seemed to be appointment-only, or telemedicine. By happenstance, I remembered a clinic near us that opened awhile ago, drop-in plus appointments, but when I asked if they were taking new patients some time ago, they weren’t. I hadn’t tried them for drop-in yet, but Andrea needed somewhere, and we gave it a go. It doesn’t sound like much, but it may be the first step in removing me from my current family doctor that I’m not too thrilled with at times. I’d love a new one. On the downside, Andrea’s problem was not a simple rash, so now she’s dealing with a viral thing, meds, pain, etc. Should be right as rain in a week, but well, still a week.
Item 4.2 was an outing as a family. The digital Van Gogh exhibit was still on at Lansdowne Park and we had bought tickets some time ago. We pushed the date past our holidays and before school, hoping there was less risk of shutdown or lockdown, and as it turned out, we were overly cautious. People have been going in Ottawa since early August. The basic premise is a digital tribute to Van Gogh with lots of big signage on the way in and then a big digital presentation in a giant hall, where the various prints are overlaid and projected on the ceiling, walls, posts, floor, etc. It’s like you are INSIDE the painting. The show wasn’t quite what we were expecting, and I wouldn’t call it a roaring success. Jacob found the display a bit nauseating and boring. I was expecting to walk through multiple smaller rooms, not stand around in one big one, and I also managed to pop a rib out when I decided to sit down on the floor. I’m not sure if it’s a rib out, or I just pulled something, but it ain’t fun, kind of painful. And of course Andrea was also in pain, as well as likely dealing with the disappointment of having two gloomy Guses as her travelling companions for the afternoon.
Item 4.3 is, regrettably, another foray into the website world. I really really really didn’t want to spend anytime trouble-shooting my website, but there was something that was a bit off with my PolyWogg.ca site. Almost everything worked, except for two little pages/links. I spent a bit more time on it today than I would have liked, and it is resolved, although I’m not entirely sure how. I’ll take the win, the site is back up, and I didn’t turn myself into a squirrel with it.
My journey of 30d of change started September 1, a Wednesday, and I’m blogging about the three things per day for 30 days that I’m doing for the month. My intent is to blog the day afterwards, so here is the short update for Thursday September 2nd.
Item 2.1 was a bit larger — we went to Jacob’s new school for a tour. This is a good example of the type of thing I want to do more of in my life.
We didn’t really need to do the tour, Jacob is 12yo, all good. But he does have anxiety issues, and it’s a good idea for him to see things in advance, know what to expect, even if he doesn’t absolutely need it. A simple safety valve that ensures a good start to his new school, particularly after 18m of virtual school from home. It’s going to be a big deal for him to be around other people all day again, AND to have to wear a mask, AND to be at a new school, AND in a portable, AND taking city buses to / from the school. It’s a lot of change for a single day.
When we talked to him about it, I offered him a ride for the first day, and he was like, “Nah, I’ve got it.” Mom and he had already done a dry run. Great. Except he doesn’t have his Presto card yet for the bus. And it isn’t clear where he’s going when he gets to the school. So we did a quick one-on-one visit to ensure he’s all good, met a learning support teacher, saw the likely portable he’ll be in. Just a little quick “look ahead”, and we found out too that even on the morning of the first day, parents are generally not welcome because they don’t want us taking up important social distancing space.
The reason I say that I want to do more of this type of thing is not related to Jacob. What I mean is that I want to do more of these simple top-ups, activities that aren’t necessarily required, but which can make everyone’s life a little easier, and ensures we have success for J on his big first day. J’s decided he would like a ride on Day 1, since he doesn’t yet have the bus pass from the school.
Would he be fine without a ride? Sure. Without having had the tour? Sure. But now we all know what he’s doing, where he’s going, and we’ve already dealt with a couple of minor stress points for him so he won’t have to figure it out while he’s dealing with all the other stuff going by him on Day 1. I’ll call that a win.
Item 2.2 was follow-up to yesterday’s item on my website. The host is doing the recovery and repair, I only had to upload some files, and redirect some links. The good news is they seem to have found a backup of a backup of a backup that is reasonably intact, so they may just restore the original server. In the interim, they’re trying to get my new lifeboat account going. I’ve done all my stuff, just waiting for them to fix the last bit. A little annoying, but not stressful. I haven’t lost anything.
Item 2.3 is related to the first one about Jacob, at least sort of, I guess. As I mentioned, he has had some anxiety about a couple of issues, and because of some likely upcoming surgery, we set him up with a social worker through CHEO that talks to him about some of the issues as well as coping mechanisms, calming techniques, etc. Stuff he can talk to us about, but a different voice helps. Oddly enough, while it was primarily for him, Andrea and I usually talk to her for 20-30m too, tell her what’s going on, what we’re doing, things we’ve seen, etc. I love the fact that Jacob is able to do this, in part because it reinforces to him that talking about emotions and mental health issues is normal. It’s not hidden, or secret, or scary. It also reinforces his own sense of empathy. He’s better at explaining his thoughts to us, and to others. He talked to the support teacher at the school, rather than shutting down, he asked questions of her, etc. He’s still shy, and he’ll always be an introvert, but he knows how to self-advocate better than he used to do. And so, again, it’s not 100% required but it makes his life better. I like those kind of top-ups.
I feel like I’ve been drifting for the last little while. Some of it seems almost like depression, particularly where I have little energy as well as little interest in some things that normally give me pleasure. My sleep has been messed up for the last month, I’ve got some projects to get to around the house, and I’m just, “meh”. Sure, some of it is Covid, some of it is the dead cat bounce dropoff after a post-vaccine high. I still enjoy listening to Razamanazz by Nazareth, but it’s less compelling to get my juices flowing.
I’ve been reading various blogs and books about change, motivation, and more specifically, articles around jump-starts to your lagging energy. Many of them talk about the little things to get you going, kind of the typical philosophy that a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, regardless of the evidence out there that much of that visualization on step one doesn’t work for certain personality types, including analytical introverts (i.e., me). We know it’s still only 1 step, and we can’t “trick” ourselves into thinking otherwise.
But, I still want to do SOMETHING in September, maybe harness some of the age-old “back to school” excitement in some way. Which has led me to the “3×30” idea. Basically, three things that I choose to do in a given day that is a bit out of the normal, something I am doing just because it makes some part of my life easier or moves me ahead on some project. Three items a day, thirty days in the month, ergo –> 3×30.
Yesterday was my first day, and I deliberately chose NOT to put anything big in the day. I didn’t want it to seem to myself that I had held off on something big, or that I was going to trick myself into thinking I was doing 90 big things for the month. Some of them are going to be quite small.
Item 1.1 is pretty small — I cleaned my work desk and installed a new work surface. I bought a vinyl deskpad a few weeks ago, saw some benefits to it including for example that I can use it as my mousepad. My existing mouse pad was a bit bigger than I wanted, and it didn’t work well to sit partly on one surface and partly on the desk beside. By contrast, the vinyl goes up and over the “lip”, and it’s flush with the desk. Everything fits well, all slides around nicely. Not “big”, but it is a bit different.
Item 1.2 was even smaller — I charged my Kindle. I have been actively trying to read more in the last four months, and while I did some of that on my phone, I really want to do most of it on my Kindle. After I uncovered its hidden location back in June (it was in a backpack I had checked several times expecting it to be there but it was tucked down in the bottom under two books I had never lifted fully all the way out to reveal the treasure!), I ploughed through some 50 books in June and July. I’m down a bit for August, not quite getting the re-energy boost that I normally do from reading, even though it is CLEARLY in the simple interest / mystery world. In August, I did some personal writing and have been reading some classic writers on writing (Lawrence Block, Stephen King, Syd Field, Blake Snyder, etc.). But my Kindle was getting low again, and I don’t have a great charging setup for mini-USB hubs at the moment. But I dug out a cable, hooked it to my desktop, back in business.
Item 1.3 is a bit of a cheat as it is more redoing previous steps than taking new ones. My host, WHC.CA, was the subject of some vandalism last weekend, and they have suffered fairly significant loss as a result. One result of the internal attack was that a bunch of website servers, including one that hosts three of my accounts, were reimaged and their backups wiped. For some people, it’s catastrophic. Everything they had is lost. If it had been last January, it would have been a pretty significant loss for me, and I’d be pulling out my hair. But I had that meltdown last February, my website situation is part of a more nuanced perspective now of my life, and, well, it’s easy to say all of that because I have a full offsite backup.
While my website is down, I was going to leave it a day or two more to see if the recovery process might produce better results, but in the end, I thought I would give it a small “go” myself. It’s not complicated — upload your backup, click a few buttons, good to go. Or at least it should have been. There’s a small niggling issue that the host has created what they call “lifeboat” accounts, which my backups don’t want to connect to, preferring instead to connect to the regular old account. As a result, I have to upload it manually and reconnect the database manually. Which I can do, but it’s a small pain in the patootie. And, well, I don’t have to. The hoster had the problem, not me, so if I upload to a specific directory, they’ll put it back together for me.
Which I decided to do. I turned it all over to them to fix and get going. If it doesn’t work, I can engage, but honestly, it’s more hassle than I need to take on. That’s what they’re paid to do. It might be faster for me to do it, it might be more satisfying for me to do it, but well, why take on work I don’t need to take on? I uploaded the files, stored them on the server, and said “Go to it”. They fixed it last night or this morning (I got confirmation early afternoon it is “up”) and I can see it, even if it isn’t fully public yet. That’s not on them, I had to change the internet DNS (domain name server) addresses to match the lifeboat over the regular accounts, and it usually takes about 24h for the internet to share those addresses with everyone. But fingers crossed. It seems to have worked so far. As such, I’ve given them the other two ZIP files and now I just wait for them to do the recoveries.
Three small “incremental” things to improve my life, although one is recovery more than progress I guess. Not big, just some small steps I’m taking to move the needle a bit. The big or important stuff often crowds out some of the smaller things, but some of those smaller things make a difference. Or at least I hope they do.
As I’ve blogged about a few weeks ago, I’m really hitting a wall these days. The lack of social release has been messing up my brain, as has my continued impersonation of a rabbit living in a subterranean burrow. The physical health stuff for my leg wound is behind me, thankfully. We have no financial pressures. Nothing looming on the horizon, at least nothing we aren’t prepared for already mostly.
Yet I’m struggling.
I have always prided myself on my ability to carry a fairly high degree of stress. No matter what, I can get most jobs done if I’m physically, emotionally and mentally capable of doing them. Build a house? No. Rewire the basement? No. Write a guide to astronomy? Sure. And most of the time I am pretty clear about my limitations. I don’t usually take on something that I can’t handle. Occasionally, I overcommit on some stuff, scheduling things as an introvert that I really shouldn’t, but that’s not really what I’m talking about. I’m thinking more like a taking on a project.
Like biweekly trivia, for example. I started running a game back in the late winter / early spring, and it was an opportunity for 10-12 people to play online trivia against each other, mainly for my wife and son plus friends and family. I expected the crew to grow, and it has slightly, but also waxed and waned. I like trivia, it seemed like a good social connector, and I was happy to do it. Until I wasn’t. It’s actual “work” for me to organize the questions, and as much fun as the initial part can be in some ways, the actual running of the game was producing very little payoff for me. The people playing would go off to their breakout rooms, joke, guess, compare answers, submit answers and come back to the main room, while I sat in the main room by myself and waited. It’s not fun doing that part as I’m not interacting with anyone much, unlike previous iterations I’ve done as trivia master. I didn’t expect that, I confess.
And it was getting to feel like a chore. One that I couldn’t emotionally or mentally commit to consistently. I found myself realizing on Tuesday night that I hadn’t prepared the questions, and trivia was set for Wednesday. Or I would go to host the game on Wed and suddenly realize I hadn’t created the draft answer sheets yet (it’s only a few minutes work, but it IS work that I had to do at the last minute before the game started). I found myself regretting running it or more pointedly, regretting having committed to it.
So I did something I almost never do. I backed out of my commitment. I announced no more trivia until at least September. That was REALLY hard for me to do. Yet it was also self-care. Letting myself off the hook with the same advice I would give a friend if they were in the same boat. “Heal thyself first, everyone will understand, and it isn’t a ‘must do’, it’s a ‘nice to do’ at most”. I feel like I let Jacob and Andrea down, but I couldn’t carry the load.
Dropping another major ball
Today I dropped another major ball. I am part of a local astronomy group, and an idea came up for a project. It is something I had considered doing in part for some time, potentially on my own, potentially as PolyWogg or with the astronomy group, or even another astronomy org. It came up, I volunteered to do it with someone else, and I even signed out some materials from one of our partners to do it. That was February.
Since then, I’ve worked on it piecemeal here and there. Writing, testing, researching. I tried some setup previously, worked okay, I thought I was good to go. Timing was an issue, as was the weather, but I thought, “No problem, by the end of March”. Then April. May.
I’ve been getting super stressed. Stuff I tried wasn’t working the way it should have. The editing wasn’t coming together. But I stuck with it, I’m stubborn.
But then I hit another wall yesterday. I tried to assemble the telescope to get the last bit down, and two of the things I needed to do, I couldn’t remember how to do them or figure it out. It was like I’d never seen a telescope before. Yet I need the steps to work to complete the filming. It was a no-go. And in the current COVID world, it’s not like I can have someone simply pop over and help me over whatever mental block is happening.
It has been feeling like a weight around my neck pulling me down. No longer a project I was excited about but one I’ve been dreading. And as I said, some of the pieces were done, but when I went to assemble them as a draft, the video quality is not up to standards. It looks terrible. Almost like image stabilization wasn’t on (comes standard) or my quality settings were at the minimum (they weren’t).
In a different world, I would blast through. I might even take time off work to just “get ‘er done”.
Except I don’t actually feel right now like I CAN get ‘er done. I have no gas in the tank, emotionally, physically or mentally.
As unprofessional as I feel having to tell the organization I can’t do what I started to do, and that most of what I created so far is unusable, it would be even more unprofessional of me to continue trying to make it work when I have no confidence it will.
So I returned all the materials today and wrote my organizers to say “Sorry, I’m out.” I feel more ashamed than relieved. Maybe relief will come later. For now, I feel like I let myself down, as much as them. Sure, they’ll say “We understand”, and say all the right things about mental health, etc. But it doesn’t change the reality for me which is I committed to something that I feel I should normally be able to deliver. And instead? I’m flaking out. More like tapping out, but it feels like flaking out.
Feeling lost as I turn 53
On a larger scale, I’m feeling lost. Confused. Languishing as they say in the New York Times and elsewhere. Overall, mentally, I like the newer metaphor that we have a preset limit for our mental bandwidth. We can put through only so much, and as the noise of COVID and isolation grows, it reduces the usable bandwidth further.
Mine feels like I’m operating at 50%. I’ve had some recent social outings, one to some friends for an afternoon by the water, one on the weekend with Jacob and Andrea to Pinhey’s Point and then eating on a local patio. But it’s not replenishing me, not filling up my bucket as rapidly as previously, nor diminishing the noise that reduces mental bandwidth. It’s refreshing, but it doesn’t feel sustaining.
As an analytical introvert, I get an energy boost from reading, and I am binging like crazy this month. I read about 20 books a year over the last few years, plus or minus 10 or so, mostly fiction. Since June 1st? I’ve finished 21 already and half-way through my 22nd. It’s keeping me going, but it ain’t replenishing things either.
I have huge projects outstanding, and I have a way forward, to rebuild what I have lost, to find myself so to speak, but that is a post for another day. What has been interesting to me is a combination of three feelings.
First and foremost, I’ve been wondering about the nature of being lost. If you think of being “physically lost”, say in the woods, when exactly do you reach the stage of “lost”? Most people think of metaphorical “lost” as being without a destination or more aptly a plan to get there, while physical “lost” as being more about not knowing where you are or how to get anywhere necessarily. For me, I think it is a combination of not knowing where you are, not having a plan to get you somewhere else, and not necessarily having a “somewhere else” in mind as your destination.
But at what stage, as you lose your location, your route or your destination, do you become officially lost? I have always had a pretty good idea of my current location, the “id” as my sense of self and my capabilities. As my mental bandwidth takes a beating, I don’t know that I know my current capabilities exactly. I don’t know that my destination has changed much, I feel relatively confident on that, but I have no confidence that my previous “route” so to speak would get me there. I have doubts.
Secondly, one of the series’ I’ve been binging is the Jane Whitefield series. The premise is simple…she’s a one-person Witness Relocation Service to help someone disappear when people are trying to kill or hurt them. While I don’t want to disappear, the series does bring up lots of questions about the relationship between “self” and “identity”, “habit” and “character”. For example, her primary advice to her clients in the stories is that everything is about simple incrementalism. If people know you like to read, don’t go to the local library in your new life. You can read, but altering your habits slightly will make it harder for them to find you. Small steps that move you from your “old life” to your “new life”. Equally, there is a lot of discussion of how much of “you” is from your “nature” side and how much is learned from your “nurture” side over the course of your life. What can you easily change, what can’t you change?
Finally, I’m also binging the Robert B. Parker series called Spenser for Hire (or at least on TV, that is what it was called). In it, Spenser is the intrepid private detective. He has a best friend, Hawk, who is a top-level thug, a mercenary free-lancer doing whatever he is paid to do and not worrying about the metaphysical nature of it all. Spenser, by contrast, thinks all the time. It is not uncommon in the books for other characters to treat him a bit like he’s some wannabe throwback to the Knights of the Roundtable, rescuing fair maidens and young men in distress, including his brilliant psychologist girlfriend. He lives by a code, he does what he says he’ll do and never quits even if it hurts him; he’s quite thoughtful in general, neighbouring on philosophical; thuggish in his physical behaviour; and the renaissance man who likes to cook good meals, drink good spirits, and read voraciously. While he sounds impossible, he’s also rather down to earth in his wants and desires, eschewing dress up clothes, etc.
Yet what entices me to the series of late is the sense of “completeness” that he has created. Like most characters, you can see the “self-reliance”, that’s inherit in most protagonists I think. But what sets Spenser apart to a great deal is much of his life is also relatively “autonomous”. He knows what “completes” him. And in the early days of the series, what completes him is simply him. I’ll come back to this in a later post, as it seems misleading and disingenuous to try and discuss it in detail here.
But between the feeling of being lost, wondering about identity, and the ideas of autonomy vs. self-reliance, I feel somewhere in there is a nugget of wisdom I need to find.
Each year, on New Year’s and my birthday in June, I take stock of where I’m at, where I’m going, and how I’m doing at getting there. This birthday seems more like a crapfest, not feeling like I’m in control at the moment. I’ve got some ideas of how to get back on track, but I’m not there yet.
Tune in tomorrow for another episode of the weird mind of PolyWogg…
My blog is often my creative outlet, a way of making sense of the world. Taking an issue, wrestling with the details, framing it a certain way, putting a personal stamp on it. It is also stress relief. I talk through some of the things that are bothering me, a monologue with myself that I share publicly. Sometimes they provoke reactions, likes on FB or a comment or two. Many times they don’t. While I would love to have thousands of people hanging on my every written word, I write most of the time for me. A diary of sorts. Maybe a legacy that my son will some day read, wondering, “What did Dad think about that?”.
Yet because I write for me, sometimes as potentially the only one who will read the post, I also cannot hide in sophistry or metaphor. I believe strongly in as much transparency in relationships as they can handle, sometimes more than is comfortable, and that transparency has to apply to my relationship with myself. But even though it is sometimes hard, I know that my writing is good for me. An outlet of release.
Which is why I am posting something when I really don’t feel like posting or doing anything. I want to curl up in a ball and shut out the world. If it wasn’t for COVID, I’d probably want to go somewhere for a week, turn off my phone, and just shut down. To simply “be”, find my centre, and let my body and mind recharge. A form of CTRL-ALT-DELETE for my internal software and external hardware.
Except life doesn’t work like that, of course. You can’t run away from problems, and if they’re mental noise, they end up going anywhere you go too. I’ve often wondered if I’d be better off having an interest in alcohol occasionally. Something to just overwhelm the brain and shut it off for awhile. I tend to mute it through distraction instead, binge-watching something or a project. But I’m having trouble filtering the noise right now.
A good portion of it is COVID, of course. I feel like I want to go to a mall and just walk around. No shopping, no interactions with anyone, just go and walk around. Do something somewhat normal. I won’t, we are still a high-risk household, after all.
Some of it is the winter. I do tend to get squirrelly in February, although I’m barely noticing other than having to clear snow off the car. I barely even know it is winter or anything outside of the pod.
But my issues with my leg are getting to me. I can wrap my head around the compression socks, maybe not well, maybe not right away, but it’s noise. I did my fitting today for some custom socks, yay, and it’s not a big deal in the long run. Same shit, different day. Whatever.
I was able to wrap my head around the trips to wound care, constant wrapping, the extra hassles with showering, etc. Mostly because I could see a light at the end of the tunnel. My leg was improving, the wound was healing, the compression was helping.
And then last week blew that to hell in a handbasket.
My wound started to get angry and red again, I had multiple appointments by phone with my doctor to go back on the antibiotic horse pills for another 14d. I also had multiple “rush” appointments with the wound care people after I had to rip the compression off on Saturday and again today because the wound was starting to hurt like the Dickens. I think the bandage is somehow slipping under the compression over time, and it is “pulling” at the wound. My nurse thinks it is because I’m not keeping my legs elevated during the day, which while working at a desk for 8h isn’t a great combo.
So where does that leave me? Basically with a wound that is almost back to square one and the likelihood that my next stop is going to be an ER sometime. Who the f*** knows what they’ll actually do for me if I go, since I’m already receiving wound care and antibiotics. I suppose IV antibiotics is a possibility.
Yet when I look at that list, you know what I see?
Whining.
It’s not that serious in the end. There are people out there with real serious health problems and I’m not talking about simply COVID. I’m talking about chronic pain conditions. Things they deal with and live with, and I can’t help but wonder.
If I’m this much of a basket case with a simple leg wound, what will I be like when I get to a point with REAL problems to live with?
That is what is frying my mental bacon. The weakness, the face of the future, my comfort and ability to handle mental stress and emotional turmoil but which seems to fail me completely when dealing with physical discomfort.
With a slightly serious segue, it is made me think about the MAID legislation that is going through. Medical Assistance In Dying. And it makes me wonder. Is that me in the future? Am I going to be THAT guy? The one who is in some discomfort, isn’t dying anytime soon, is relatively mentally competent (or at least as I ever was) but simply cannot endure the day to day that is misery?
I already live in fear of mental decline. For someone who has always lived in his mind, has always used his mind to separate himself apart from others in school or work, who defines himself by his mind, the thought of that mind not being “there” to continue to define myself is relatively terrifying. If my fear of snakes was put in comparison with fear of dementia, snakes would be about a 2 compared to a 12 for dementia. Even while knowing that ironically, I won’t know if it does decline.
Anyway.
On the other hand, I’m not in distress, I’m not in crisis. It’s a setback, I’ll bounce back. I’ll write, I’ll do Lego, I’ll do some stuff on my website design. But first I’m going to take a mental health day on Wednesday, as I didn’t feel like I’d really accomplish anything at work anyway.
Oh, and I’ll take out the garbage and recycling. I’ve already cleared snow twice today (Tuesday) so I’m hoping I won’t need to do that on Wednesday too, if I can help it. More coming on Thursday. Yay.
At least I was outside for awhile, right?
In the meantime, I blog late at night, throwing my words out into the abyss. A week ago I reached 1500 posts, and I didn’t even notice. I probably need to celebrate that milestone somehow, just not sure what it is yet.
