A Lousy Friday the 13th

I have to confess that yesterday, Friday the 13^th, was a portent for some really bad luck. I took Ella to the vet to get her checked out. There’s a newly forming bump on her nose that I initially just passed off as a silly wart or something. However, the way and rate it has been forming made it too hard for me to believe that any longer, plus it has begun to make her noticeably uncomfortable. After a rudimentary biopsy, the vet told me that she has cancer. This unsightly, rapidly growing tumour on her muzzle started appearing around Christmas. It needs to be removed immediately, or else if it continues to grow at its current rate for much longer, she won’t have enough remaining skin tissue left on her muzzle after the excision to permit her to properly heal without some facial deformity. Such a thing might in turn cause some future impairment of her eating, drinking, or even breathing. This was news that I wasn’t prepared for at all. I booked the date for the surgery for this coming Monday. It was the soonest time that was available for her.  She will need a general anaesthetic, always a risky thing for smaller dogs. It will be costly. Also, her having this proceedure doesn’t necessarily guarantee that it will completely cure her of this either if it has already started to get malignant and metastasize. I’m hoping the blood tests she had will prove something contrary to that. It’s a subject that has really been depressing me.

I may have to sacrifice my vacation funds, my remaining savings, or maybe eat beans and rice for a year, if that’s what it will take to help her. I don’t really care about that right now. What I know I can’t do is to watch her suffer. If she survives this surgery and it works out well, I’ll be grateful for at least that. If it turns out to be an exercise in futility, either by some complication in surgery, or the cancer re-occurring or spreading, I may have to brace myself for the unavoidable heartache of doing what’s ultimately best to not make her suffer anymore. I’m hoping so badly that I won’t have to deal with making the call for euthanasia.

Five Questions, Five Answers: Awoken by Paper Dragons

1.       Q: This has been the fifth night in a row of poor sleep for you. Why?

A: I’ve had some really taxing days of facing a new form of psychological challenge that I really don’t feel at all well-equipped to deal with. Despite the fact that I’ve been congratulated on the “good work” I’ve done, it has been prompting me even harder to think about where to go to next in terms of career building and education. What has followed is that I’ve become stressed and stricken with insomnia as I’m building castles in the air, and finding dragons in every room. Generally, the dragons to slay are the issues of where to find the time to study, and funding. It falls within the course correction motive I mentioned in an entry some while ago. It’s time to stop giving lip service to the idea, and start acting on it.

2.       Q: What kind of armour and weapons do you feel you need to slay these dragons?

A: Coalescence, a means with which to pool all my ‘special powers’ into one driving force to spearhead myself into a new spot. Forging, aiming, and propelling the spear is the big challenge. Another part of my weakness that’s been getting me so down and slowing me up is that any talents that I do have are so diffuse and varied that they leave no lasting impact on anything. Burnout, having no extra money, or time in the day, and depriving myself of opportunities to improve on any of them is making me worse. It’s like I’m now forced to use a Swiss Army knife to build a super-computer from scratch. One other major flaw I recognize in myself is that I seem to have no filter for processing massive onslaughts of information; it all just remains in my head as useless trivia. I have to find some systemized form of ‘armour’ for dealing with that.  

3.       Q: How is the great purge project going?

A: It is about 67% complete. I think I made about ten bushels worth of rats’ nest filler, and pretty much burned out my paper shredder.  The last third of this project will involve finishing rummaging and sorting through the remaining stuff in my filing cabinet drawers, scanning essentials, hardcopy destruction, copying digital backups, and systemizing things for future upkeep. The next big deal after that will be sorting and archiving my photos, which could last until the end of this coming spring . . . if I remain so ambitious. 

4.       Q: You have a three day weekend, what is going to happen?

A: The routine things would be: jogging, strength training, coffee with my friend, tidying up the place, reading some novels, writing, and cooking/stocking the fridge. The non-routine things will be finding the ways and means of attacking the problems I just mentioned above. Spending Friday afternoon in the SPL (Saskatoon Public Library) will happen for certain; avoiding dragging home any trivial and irrelevant materials of transitional interest from there that will just clutter up my brain will be a challenge as always.

5.       Q: Will you need more time off?

A: I’m sure I will, but when I’ll need it is still as of yet an uncertainty. It depends on some news I hear after two weeks from now. I could explain more, but I don’t want to jinx things.

Things I Need To Know How To Do Better

Twelve things to improve on for the New Year. Generally making it such that there is one focused challenge per month:

1. Attracting More Wealth and Managing It
2. Being More Social and Finding New Friends with My Interests
3. Making Time To Be a Disciplined Lifelong Learner
4. Discovering My Passions
5. Getting the Most Out of My Relaxation Time (Learning to Sit Still, and Accept Serenity)
6. Improving My Health with Fitness and Preventative Actions
7. Attracting My Ideal Significant Other
8. Confronting Conflicts and Handling Problems Mindfully, Confidently, Tactfully, Practically, and Effectively
9. Communicating with Kindness, Assertiveness, and with Good Intent
10. Getting Out More
11. Adding More Fun In My Life, Taking a Real Interest in the Lives of the People I Am Genuinely Fond of
12. Being More Spontaneous . . . TAKING MORE RISKS!

Five Questions, Five Answers: New Year’s Day of 2012

1.       Q: How did the last waking hour of 2011 end for you?

 

A: With a remote online chat with a friend, the finishing of Chapter Four of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a couple of muscle relaxants/pain relievers, and a belly scratch for my doggy, instead of a New Year’s kiss for someone else. That’s all. No parties, no booze, no games, no other social entertainment. It seems to be a disturbing trend: with past few years ending for me with some kind of sickness or pain. For the end of 2009, an eye infection; the end of 2010 was acute abdominal pain; now it’s seized up back muscles for the end of the year 2011.

2.       Q: How is the book?

 

A: It’s an eerie coincidence that I chose to start reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo now, since the setting is in phase with this actual time of the year, in the gloomy darkness around the winter solstice. With southern Sweden (the book’s setting) and my location being generally on the same latitude, I can really get a vivid feel for the atmosphere. I don’t usually or intentionally read stuff with this degree of political/legal intrigue, so I’m surprised that I’m getting so wrapped up in this story. The focal male character in the story, Mikael Blomkvist, a guy close to my own age, is ending his year off being quite down on his luck; perhaps I can just empathize and relate with him all too well. I’m resisting the urge to run out and see the movie before I finish the book.

 

3.       Q: How was the first waking hour of 2012 for you?

A: Thankfully, less painful. I got mindful to start the year with a good long look in the mirror, and to read and meditate on something inspirational. At least when I looked in the mirror, I saw a thinner fitter person than the one I saw staring back at me at the beginning of 2011. To opt to open myself to inspiration will hopefully help to drive me forward and keep a momentum for the ways I want to use this year to make some changes. 

4.       Q: Changes?  . . . What kind?

A: Course corrections . . . on a lot of levels, most being too personal to mention here. I do know that the whiteboard in my office will be my best friend throughout this day. I mentioned deploying a scorched earth policy a while back; that was rash to say.  More accurately, I have to do some selective burning, to clear away what is bad and useless, and to keep and further enhance that which is good and functional. There still has to be a plan as to where one has to light the fires. I only know for certain that 2012 will be the year of language(s) and finances, and forcing myself to learn stuff even more abstract than those things, as well as maintaining my health and fitness.

5.       Q: Besides planning stuff, what else are you going to actually do for today?

A: In keeping with accordance to a resolution to implement more measures of frugality and having fun doing it, I believe I shall be making some beer today, or at least get myself set up for it (converting my kitchen space into a lab), depending on what kind of time I have before work. I know I can’t stand having another day of being idle and reclined most of the day like yesterday. It would also be a good time to inspect my pantry, and make use of what I have; creating abundance with my essentials instead of absent-mindedly running out and shopping for food impulsively.

The 2011 Year's End

It’s time to put another year behind me. I thought about using these last couple days of it to process paperwork and tidy up spaces, but then I thought to hell with it. I’m pretty useless for doing too much of anything physical right now anyway, as I’m stricken with a screwed-up back for this last bit of the year. Instead of sitting around and having my senses accosted with a stupid series of mono-show marathons playing on TV at this time of the year on all channels, I chose to do something a little more cerebral and reflective instead.

My overall state of sentiment for the year of 2011 is a blend of gratitude and sorrow respectively about both successes and failures that are either new or continuing. The simplest way I can think of to describe this year overall is to view things within a matrix of good versus bad, and gain versus loss. Here then is the outlined breakdown of the year using those criteria:

Good Gains

·         Health-wise, I have more muscle tone, stamina, stronger heart and lungs, and regained at least six years worth of physical health

·         Achieving greater than half-marathon endurance during the fall

·         Beautiful weather throughout the summer, fall, and early winter for me to be outside more

·         Being able to run outside shirtless in summer without giving anyone some compulsion to call the cops. The bonus was a nice tan.

·         Better able to express myself in writing

·         Wii system: it’s allowing me to actually express my anger in a more harmless and cathartic manner

·         World-wide protests: against capitalism gone out of control on Wall Street, and by the pro-democracy public, especially in North Africa/the  Middle East (Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Syria), to rise up against their own iron-fisted despots

·         Finding the will to enter the dating scene again

Good Losses

·         Excess weight and inches of waistline

·         The deaths of Osama bin Laden, Mohamar Qaddafi, and Kim Jong Il. Hopefully this world can become a little better place now that we’re rid of a few less fanatical, antagonistic, tyrannical shit-disturbers

Bad Losses

·         Deaths of Steve Jobs, Jack Layton, essayist Christopher Hitchens, and my Grandmother

·         Most of the NDP and Green Party candidates from the last provincial election; thus a less balanced voice in the provincial legislature

·         Earthquake in Japan, The Slave Lake fires, floods in the Philippines, any other natural disasters that occurred on a massive scale that I failed to list

·         My chance to go on a trip to Costa Rica (or anywhere else for that matter)

·         Failure to negotiate a more substantial wage increase for my co-workers and peers

·         Investments are performing in a most shitty manner

Bad Gains

·         Debt

·         Grey hair now migrating to eyebrows

·         Extra pounds since mid-November

·         Back pain for this last week of the year

·         More mass mob stupidity on the globe, I especially refer to this year’s riots in Vancouver and London

Continual Bad

·          Realizing this year, more than ever, just how badly my work schedule deprives me of quality social, personal, and self-development time

·         Overall more loneliness (few people around or available when I have free time to share, or during the few times that I need help with something)

·         I’m still treated as just a “friend”, or “like a brother” to most women I date (it’s not a friggin’ compliment!). The testosterone I have left in me makes me want to puke every time I hear or see some reaction akin to that.

Continual Good

·         My ever-strengthening bond with my one best friend

·         Continuing my commitment to life-long learning

·         Urge to remain health conscious

·         Feeling more centred spiritually

After all this reflecting, I’ve given thought about the things I’ll need to take better steps ahead for the next year coming that’s only a few hours away. I’m happy to say that I have most of them around me now; it’s just a matter of getting organized, and enhancing and using things differently. Rather than processing stuff in the same old manner, with the same old bad habits, it would probably be a better thing to deploy a scorched earth policy on some areas of my life, and start on fresh new ground.

Boxing Day

Christmas passed by fine enough. On top of what we already do as a family for the holiday, I also got re-acquainted with the gentlemanly pastime of playing darts along with my nephews; that plus dominoes. I knew I had some as a kid, but didn’t take interest in them then, and there was no one around who really knew how to play them. I encountered them again as an adult while in South America, where they were a popular game amongst the young and old alike. They seemed to be a ubiquitous feature on the tables in the outdoor taverns and cafes during late afternoon as friends and patrons played and chatted, and unwound with some beer or pop in the heat of the day. They are a reminder of the pleasantness of what the true essence of what a game, as I feel, is supposed to be: something essentially simple yet challenging; yet fun and social. I find chess to be OK, but chess is more complicated, seems to only attract introverts, and it only seems to make introverted people withdraw even more into themselves as they sit there calculating strategies. I can’t stand it when people make simple games or sports (which are just more glorified forms of time-wasting) less fun and more serious and intellectual than they need to be. I can’t be troubled into memorizing, and then being led to argue about, a few decades worth of sports statistics like it’s somehow going to change the world. It’s bad enough that I know the crazy amount of trivia that I do never mind adding sports plays to my synapses. If I were stranded on a desert island with ten other “professional” people, and if I were the one responsible to pick the five most useful and practical of them to aid in survival and then let the rest perish, if there was a sportscaster among them, he would be the most likely one to be chopped into fish bait first.
 

It’s the evening of Boxing Day and I’m supposed to be working my bloody night shift tonight. As always, I’m not at all up for the challenge. I didn’t go through anything as intensely insane and exhausting as Boxing Day shopping, but I did travel, did some laundry, picked through a shitload of unread email, replied to some, deleted others, tried to enhance my Mom’s computer’s performance (with much futility), plus attended to lots of other things that kept my from getting the sleep that I seem to desperately need.

There seems to be just too much free floating fuzzy thoughts in my mind right now to even allow me to sleep anyway, even if I didn’t have all this other stuff to do.  Writing to collect and examine them is like trying to snatch a single drifting dandelion seed out of the air: the focused effort to swiftly catch one only makes some wild turbulence that pushes it further away from your grasp. This is exactly the kind of bewilderment I have to learn to work past if I’m ever to get into the momentum of committing to the missions of the New Year. Sadly, it seems like the only remedy for it is to press myself into writing even more, no matter how nonsensical. Stab and swish long enough into the air and perhaps eventually something might get captured.

The New Year’s missions themselves haven’t got true forms or names yet, or at least any that I would be comfortable to admit publically yet. Words and qualities like: simple, efficient, balanced, creative, profitable, measurable, dynamic, portable, alternative, transferable, inexpensive all appeal and have value for me, but to square them up with a vision, or the time I’ll be given, and to make them congruent to the wildly varied skills, knowledge and interests I already have seems to be a huge undertaking.

Five Questions, Five Answers: Winter Solstice

1.       Q: Why is the winter solstice significant to you?

 A: The date with longest night of the year, at this latitude where the time between sunset and sunrise is close to 17 hours long, occurring just nine or ten days before year’s end seems it should warrant something very meaningful. In the depth of this profound darkness, it’s like I become instinctually attuned into trying to crawl out of it and think of the future more, and I look at this last week and a half as that prime time of planning for what I want to see coming ahead for myself in the New Year. This month, it seems that the extra darkness at this time of year has been really making me screwy. I have a lot of mixed split shifts falling on early morning/late evening throughout this week; add to that the fact that there has been hardly any snow around to reflect more light outside, and solstice falls right at the time when the lunar cycle waning into new moon phase, it seems like the past few nights have been freakishly darker and longer than I’ve ever experienced. Perhaps that will just make me feel more pressured and desperate to change things once 2012 rolls in. It’s getting to be evermore exhausting in battling the depressive torpor that comes along during this season that I think I could just easily collapse into. I’m all the more thankful that I have Christmas off this year.

2.       Q: Are you affecting any positive changes now?

 A:  I’m dating again. I’m not going to say too much, because I feel like I’ll jinx myself if I do. Let me just say that it’s definitely not happening like the last few times in the past. It actually feels like something a hell of a lot different than a miserable job interview or a trip to the dentist*. I’ve been actually having a good time, and I feel like I’m actually connecting with a wonderful like-minded person (first time in a long time). I’m just taking it all day by day, moment by moment, avoiding analyzing things too much; thus thereby doing us both a favour by avoiding putting any ridiculous and unrealistic expectations and speculations on the table. 

3.       Q: Were you getting really bitter and angry about rejection?

 A: More accurately, what I’ve gotten frustrated and angry about is not so much “rejection”; but about “failure of fair and sensible acceptance”. It probably stems from my days working through the Justice department at the sexual assault centre. That experience undoubtedly had a huge impact in regards to my manner of approaching women. There was a need back then for me to consciously suppress appearances of looking too threatening or “virile” while working in that environment. In my private life, I really wanted to avoid the smelly shit pile of drama and suffering that could be created if any overt romantic interest I had in someone became poorly communicated, or misunderstood**. I hence didn’t do anything publically or privately that could have been misconstrued as unwanted provocation, or flirting no matter how innocent, neutral, practical, or natural the circumstances were. One would think that helping victims out would be something noble or heroic to do, but once I mentioned my occupation in casual conversation to others, people often avoided me like the plague, finding some excuse to leave the room and my presence . . . especially women. Because the work demanded a high degree of confidentiality, I couldn’t talk about it for fear of inadvertently disclosing details, and I had nothing else to talk about outside the topic of work. I was trying to do this very challenging thing for others, working on their behalf for some ideal of justice and righteousness, and yet I was the one being treated like an outcast. I felt very lonely and alienated, and even did some stupid things to compensate for it***. Meanwhile, the asshole psycho predators that we were trying to get off the street, more often than not, had wives and girlfriends, who were still stupidly faithful and loyal to these men, even while these guys were abusing them along with others. When these bastards were caught, they were penned up with murderers and violent offenders, some of whom were getting love letters and marriage proposals in jail. Life seemed so unfair for me that way: these monsters were getting others to tolerate, accept, and even love them; at the same time, I was struggling just to have people acknowledge me. I think noting these ironies made me very disillusioned about even bothering to give much thought or effort into pursuing some kind of relationship. I’ve witnessed and could cite more examples of this kind of dynamic involving people I know in recent history, but mentioning them here and now would be pointless, upsetting to them, and exhausting; it would only spur on more revulsion than I already have about this detestable facet of the human condition. I suppose that’s my way of feeling bitter and jaded about the topic.             

4.       Q: Any other big ideas in the coming New Year?

 A: I’m going to be taking more interest in re-inventing a new career path for myself, and continue my journey of life-long learning. Too complicated to explain for now; how I wish it were easier. I think I have consciously and purposely given myself harder challenges ahead in the spot I’m in, to help give me more incentive to escape the rut I think I’m in now.

5.       Q:  Last question . . . any maxims from this year that you could take into next year?

 A: Never underestimate the power of kaizen.

*- A trip to the dentist, or a bad job interview might actually have been better in a couple of cases.

**- After spending countless hours of researching, processing, and reviewing all sorts of scenarios of the legal ramifications and trouble one can face with even the slightest of actions being misinterpreted: bouncing around on a pogo stick through a minefield looked a hell of a lot safer than trying to ask someone out on a date.

***- Stupid things . . . like succumbing to the foolish notion that joining and going to a church was somehow going to help me solve my problems, or make me a better person.