Whacky Gramma

I just woke up to a call I figured I would get two days ago.   But like everything else in her life, Virginia “Piff” Dodd wasn’t going out the easy way.   We got the news a few days ago that she wasn’t going to make it and they were going to take her off everything except Morphine and she was going to sail the goodship ‘peace out earthlings’ into the night.  That’s not how gramma rolls though.   She stuck around for a few days for no good reason at all.   She also passed when her eldest son, my father, happened to be visiting.  It all makes sense.

The thing that sticks out in my memories of my grandmother is how odd she was.   She was always happy, or atleast when i was around.   This in itself is about as weird of a behavior that I’ve ever seen a human exhibit.  She was also hysterical.  Blaming farts on the floor boards, writing my name in G I A N T  letters across her chalkboard when I was born.   She was a teacher, I believe something like second grade.    I still think at some point i’m going to meet someone and say my name is “Pete Dodd” and that person is going to be like “HOLY SHIT YOUR WEIRD ASS GRANDMOTHER WROTE YOUR NAME ON MY CHALKBOARD!”    I look forward to that exchange, actually.

Near the beginning of this decade I was living in Vermont living with a free spirit named Jess and we were getting paid  CASH MONEY YA’LL to take care of a 12 year old girl named Alison.  Alison was awesome and quite funny and creative when she wasn’t trying to kill us.   We traveled, as a family, to my parents house for each holiday and Alison and my grandmother got along famously.   They both were filled with energy, weird, funny.    Before Christmas one year she asked “Is whacky gramma going to be there?”  A nickname was born.

To be honest Whacky Gramma hasn’t been here for a long time now.   Her body outlived her brain by over half a decade.   She slowly forgot who we all were, where she was,  and the events that turned her into whacky gramma.    But even with all of the forgetting she was still funny and weird.   She still smiled the same way.    She even had a sense of humor about the fact that she couldn’t remember anything and didn’t know who the fuck any of us were.

I’m not sad today now that she has passed.   My grandfather, her husband, died fifteen years ago.    My belief system includes a rather quaint version of the afterlife that’s pretty much heaven as presented by Sunday School.    I like to think that my grandfather is getting to spend time with his wife again.   And that she is her again and not a shell that looks like her and vaguely acts like her.   I like to think they are both happy right now, with each other, like they were when I was a kid visiting each summer for baseball camp.   I like to think she is being rewarded for living a long life as a good person that was almost cruel with its final act.   I like to think whacky gramma is in heaven farting and blaming it on the creaky floorboards.

Turkey Morning

It seems like every time I stay at my parents house that it makes me reflective enough to add something new to this blog.   I’m not sure if that’s the whole story this time though.   Over the last few weeks my anxiety has been through the fucking roof.   Like… the worst it’s been since the Vermont Incident©. I havent left my apartment much during this time, I even took last weekend off from work.

My anxiety manifests itself in physical pain usually.   This time it was in my chest.   Yeah, that’s about as fun as it sounds.   For the last two weeks I’ve felt like I’ve been having a long, drawn out heart attack.   It really fucking sucked.

Anyway, yesterday, I decided to not have any caffeine.   I didn’t have a single panic attack.   Then about 4pm-ish I was in a rotten mood because of not having caffeine so I got some…  panic attacks came back.   Now, I know what you’re thinking -  OF COURSE ITS THE CAFFEINE YOU FUCKING RETARD.  And I can’t argue with you.  I just really, really didn’t want it to be that to the point that I stuck my head in sand and was like  LA LA LA LA  CAFFEINE IS FINE KTHX  LA LA LA LA.   I mean, I quit smoking, I quit drinking…  don’t I fucking get anything?!?!  It’s so frustrating.   I just want a vice, a simple vice, that doesn’t put my impending marriage in jeopardy or make me think my heart is exploding.  Evidently I don’t get those things.

But I am thankful that I finally pulled my head out of my ass and decided to cut back on the caffeine.  Hopefully my panic attacks will stay away and I’ll be a functional person again.   A functional person whose only vice is videogames, evidently.

Happy thanksgiving, friends.

Dreams are all you have. Dreams have held you back. Dreamers never live, they only dream of it

I’ve always been a bit of an idealist.  Well, I guess my ideals are probably a bit skewed, but that doesn’t disqualify me from being one, does it?  But it emanates throughout my life, from my liberal political leanings to my daydreams as to what my life should be like.  There is, of course, the reality though and it never quite turns out how I would like.   The president I voted for is in office and the party I think is the lesser of two evils is comfortably in power, yet they are so fucking inept that I miss the days of Bill Clinton and a republican congress.  I also spend a lot of time thinking everything is wrong and writing about things that are right.

I was thinking about this last night at work.  This being this blog, my thoughts about my life, all of this shit that makes it to this little free website I created as a creative and therapeutic outlet.  But I fear it all comes across as “everything has been shitty, but now it’s awesome!”   Which is a fine sentiment every once in a while, but in repetition it’s like watching a Seinfeld marathon.  Yeah, your takes on everyday life are great, Jerry, but after a few hours can’t you change up the fucking format for me!?!?

It got me thinking though.   I’ve had some up and downs over the last two years, but for the most part they have been ups.   It’s not that Im going from shitty to great month after month, it’s that im going from great to a bump in the road to even greater.   In July I was on cloud 9 because I proposed to Arnee.  Now as November is about to open I’m on cloud 19 because I love her about 9000x more than i did even on that day.   Things just keep getting better.

My sobriety so far has been remarkably positive.   I’ve been what the AA folks call “floating.”  I’ve been saying a bunch “right now it’s easy but at some point i’m sure it’s going to get difficult.”   There was one guy who I said that to that responded with “WHY?”  I thought about it for a second…  well, because this is hard for people, things are usually hard for me, so it has to be right?   “Maybe you are just ready to be happy now” he added as all those thoughts went through my head.   Fuck, maybe I am.

And maybe I have been.  I’ve had some missteps over the last few years…  getting back into drinking, issues with my meds including gaining back a large chunk of the weight I lost (30+ pounds in two months because of seroquel.  FUCK SEROQUEL!), the end of a relationship mostly brought on by my anxiety and drinking.

That may seem like a substantial list but it’s been completely fucking dwarfed by the list of things that have been positive.  I lose sight of that sometimes.

When I was younger I always had this daydream about having a significant other that wanted to sit down and listen to my music as I explained to her why these songs were so awesome and she would be all like “whooooaaaa, pete, you’re so smart and so deep and so awesome in bed” and I would be all “awwww yeah.”

Well yesterday on our way back to connecticut we started going back and forth between our iphones playing songs that meant a lot to us and songs that made us think about each other and songs we’ve thought about for our wedding.   This little idealization in my head of what I wanted was nothing compared to what this hour of my life was like yesterday.  Dreams are good, I’m glad I have them…  but my life lately is so much better.   And Arnee even gushed about how good I was in bed the night before.

Score.

I’m filled with fictions and fucking addictions and I miss my mother

So it’s been a month since I typed anything up on this motherfucker.  It’s usually safe to assume that if Im not updating this atleast once every week and a half that Im either really fucking busy (not very likely) or things aren’t going very well(ding ding ding).   Because, as much as I use this blog as a springboard to unload my problem on any friends or random internet surfers that happen to stop by, I typically only do so if I have some sort of plan to make things better.   I mean, seriously, who wants to read something that says “wah my life sucks and there’s nothing I can do.”   So most of my posts are more of the “this thing right here sucks shit but here’s what I’m doing about it.”   It’s self loathing, yes, but im self aware enough to not want to bore people with it.

So for the last two months i’ve been on seroquel to help me feel sane and help me sleep.   It did both pretty well but one of the side effects of it was “rapid weight gain.”   Two months and 35 pounds later, I agree with that.   This weight does not make me happy.  I worked really hard to drop the weight that I did, and then I stopped the diet and I had a bit of a rebound (I was 225 at my lowest, i rebounded to between 245-250) but I stayed there for a few months even though I was eating all sorts of delicious brooklyn food, so I was psyched.   But now that I’m pushing 290, i’m fucking pissed.   Im fat again.

The good news is that I have a plan (see!!!!!!).   Arnee’s birthday is today so I bought her a Nintendo Wii, with a Wii-fit and EA Active (which is like a hardcore personal trainer program).   I fully intend to use these “gifts.”   I figure if I can’t exercise with a videogame that it probably means exercise is just over for my lifetime.   Also, just from stopping taking the pills I’ve dropped 4 pounds.   And, of course, I’m going to start up my diet again.   I’d like to be under 240 for my wedding in June.  Preferably 215-225.

The other end of the end of the seroquel era is that I’ve started the Abilify era.   Abilify is a drug that doesn’t really do anything on its own, but it interacts with whatever SSRI you are on (for me: prozac) and kicks it up a notch.   So far I’d say it does that pretty well.   I have quite a bit of energy again.   I have been in very good moods.   I haven’t been anxious at all.   Shit, tonight I was with Arnee’s family and evidently according to reports from the frontlines, I actually talked quite a bit.   We are waiting on official verification on that though.

 

All of this is small potatoes compared to the main course though.   The main course being that my trying to stop drinking was failing.   I mean most of the time I did good…  i was drinking once maybe twice a week…  but when I did I was getting hammered and being a pain in Arnee’s asshole.   And she has a really nice ass.  Totally sweet and round and perfect.  Take a look at it next time you see her.  I’m telling you, it’s a legendary ass.  I don’t want to hurt it.   And she doesn’t want me to either.   She was about to take her ass and go home.  I recognized it happening.  I’ve been in enough relationships that have ended this way.   Girls get sick of my shit and move on.   What I never admitted to myself is that a lot of the time my shit was my drinking.   I finally admitted it and I went to AA.

AA has been a really amazing experience.   It’s not perfect, I have some issues with it…  like the fact that it wants me to give credit for everything good in my life to a god that I don’t believe exists and if he does exist I don’t think he is making decisions for me.  I think I am.   But that a fairly small part of what AA is, and the other parts are great.   At some point, soon, I will write up a big ol post about all the weird and funny shit i’ve seen and why I like it and why it works for my brain.   For now though I’ll just leave it at “Hi, I’m Pete and I’m an alcoholic and I’m pretty fucking happy and sober.   For once.”

 

Fuck you I quit

I’m sitting here with the shower running.  Being on the top floor of a semi-old building means that getting hot water all the way up here to take a reasonably enjoyable shower can take anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes.  I’m not sure why the gap is so large.  Like 5 to 7 minutes would make sense.   But why does it sometimes take three times as long?   These are the mysteries of southern Brooklyn.

I feel quite strange today.  I can’t exactly put my finger on it, but it’s a lot like withdrawal.   But the problem is that I have no idea what it could be withdrawal of.   It’s been 15 days since I’ve had a drink and 12 days since i’ve had a cigarette.   It’s safe to say I’m over the physical withdrawal from either (actually, there wasn’t any physical withdrawal from alcohol…  but there certainly was from the nicotine).

During the past couple weeks I’ve been trying to purge all sorts of old behaviors.   It’s not just that I drank or that I smoked, it was that I didn’t care about the effects of the things I did.   I got drunk…  so what!   I was a weirdo dickhead when I was drunk.  So what!  I was drunk!   Your cigarettes smell like shit.  You are going to get cancer.   Who gives a fuck?  I like smoking!

It was a complete world view and it was embodied the most in those two things.   It was a physical manifestation of my selfishness.   It was actual proof that someone (and many girlfriends did) could point to and say “look, you’re a fucking asshole.”   And really, there was no retort.  I was.   Not that I’m an asshole as a person, Im not.  I’m a pretty nice guy.   But in those instances I was an asshole.  I cared about me and only me.   Being 32, engaged, thinking about marriage and kids and all that shit had me realize that I can’t continue to go through life like that.   And like I said, it’s not like I was a bad person, if I lived the rest of my life like that I would still probably end up in the upper half of the “am I a fucking good person scale.”   But not as high as I would have liked.

I think my shower is hot now, I’ll brb in 10 minutes.

That was a pretty good shower.  I feel refreshed.   So where was I?  Oh, yeah, so today I’m feeling withdrawal and I’m not sure from what.   I’ve ruled out nicotine/alcohol but I guess it’s not completely impossible for it to randomly spring up two weeks later.   Im guessing it is either Klonopin or Caffeine though.    I’ve been on Klonopin for over a year now.   I take two a day.  1mg total.   It’s a very low dose.   But it is addictive, and I’ve been trying to take it less, and I didn’t take it all yesterday (and I think just one the day before) so that makes the most sense.  I figured that’s what it was after I was awake for a few hours this morning so I took one…  and I fell asleep about 20 minutes later and slept for three hours.  So that was cool.   But I woke up feeling exactly the same.

Caffeine is my new drug of choice.  After not drinking it (other than occasional redbull/vodka in my mid 20s) since I was a teenager, I decided it was time to get back into it.   Why?  I’m not really sure.  I think I just like having something.   And as far as somethings go, caffeine is pretty ok.   It’s above cocaine, killing homeless people and watching Glenn Beck but it’s below being addicted to working out or planting trees all over the place.   It’s a happy middle though and it’s nice actually getting hyper without feeling anxious.   Hooray.

I’ve been drinking diet sodas all day though, so I doubt it’s that either.   I don’t get it.  Why do I feel this in my brains!?!?  It’s not overwhelming or anything, I just hate shit that doesn’t have an apparent explanation.   Oh well, file this fucker on Unsolved Mysteries.

Also… to the people who know me and live in the connecticut area, I am heading back to that nutmeg state for a week starting on monday.   Arnee wants to visit family and I like visiting family and friends so its win-win.   On thursday night, OCT 1, I believe, I am going to have a get together, and Jon Hoadley of Reno, Nevada should be there.  So come to that.

Dispatch from my childhood bedroom

I didn’t really plan it this way, but about 30 minutes ago I remembered that Sub Pop recently remastered and rereleased Sunny Day Real Estate’s first two albums.   So being the no morals having pirate that I am, I hopped on zee intranetz and downloaded those shits.   I then loaded them onto my iphone and decided to write a blog post about my adventures in trading addictions.

The past week I have been staying in Connecticut, with my parents.   It’s been enjoyable.  Well, as enjoyable as staying with your parents while quitting smoking can possibly be.   I’m staying in my old room, which is now a guest room and doesn’t really feel like my old room in any way.  It’s much nicer than how I ever had it.   Antique furniture, a nice oriental rug, a high shelf with various nick-nacs that look to be anywhere from 20 to 100 years old.   It’s not my room anymore, and that’s fine.   Unlike a lot of people I’ve run into, I have absolutely no yearning to go back in time.   I hate the teenage version of Pete Dodd.   I was a douchebag.   I was also confused, upset, retarded.   I think I would have felt quite uncomfortable this last week if this room was shrine to my most terrible years.

But the fact that I am currently sitting in my old room listening to Sunny Day Real Estate was almost lost on me.   It wasn’t until I started writing the first sentence in this post that I realized that only a few things are different between right now and 1994.  First off, the remastered Sunny Day album sounds much better, secondly I’m typing this on a 19″ widescreen beast of a laptop instead of scribbling this into a notebook and lastly I’m alot nicer of a person.   But the fact does remain, I am sitting in my old bedroom listening to Sunny Day…  and that kinda cracks me up.

So anyone that follows me on any of the various internet social networking hubs already knows the basic jist of what this last week has been about.   Quitting smoking.    And it’s going well.   I smoked my last cigarette sunday night/monday morning  and it’s now friday, a bit before lunch, and I feel pretty good.   The constant want is gone, it’s been replaced with the occasional want, which I must say is kinda a bitch because it sorta sneaks up on ya.   Like yesterday I was sitting out near my parent’s pool reading Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris and I finished a chapter and I was like “I should smoke a cigarette before I read the next.”   No.   NO!   So yeah, i’m now trying to unlearn all of the habits.   This is where the real work comes in, I guess.   Not that the first few days of going cold turkey are easy, but they are predictable.  You constantly want to smoke and you constantly hate everything.   Where I’m at now is much more subtle and tricky.  But it also means that the majority of my day I am not feeling want or anger, and that’s pretty nice.

Along side quitting smoking, I haven’t been drinking.   I’m on day 8 of that.   But that isn’t nearly as big of a deal, because I didn’t drink as much as I smoked and drinking has never been a physical thing for me.   Even when I was a fairly hardcore alcoholic years ago, I quit cold turkey and didn’t even get the shakes let alone going into the DTs.    Drinking is a very mental thing for me.   It is my medication of choice when it comes to my anxiety and depression.  So, if Im not feeling anxious or depressed, it’s easy to walk away from.   Not so much with cigarettes, I enjoy them mad/sad/psyched/tired/teabagging/doing the robot.   But I guess it is worth noting I haven’t drank in over a week.   It will be a few more weeks before I do again.

All of this was brought on by my recent med change.    I had to stop drinking to let them do their thing, and then when I quit drinking I figured it was a good time to quit smoking.    Being in CT helped, because I hate smoking at my parents house because I feel like I have to hide it and at 32 years old it’s kinda demeaning to hide a behavior.   I took that as proof positive that I wasn’t proud of the behavior.

In place of smoking and drinking I have moved onto caffeine and spending money I shouldn’t on videogames.   I’ll cut back on the videogame purchases with the help of a gamefly subscription (think Netflix, for videogames).   I’m happy with the caffeine though.   I like being alert without feeling panic.   It’s a very new and exciting feeling.   Kinda like being 16 again, minus the bad hair and anger.

But your decisions of late are, on all accounts, pretty fucked up. And not in a good way.

Up and down and up and down.   My up makes me clean.  My down makes me sleep.  This is where I am at.

The blood that flows through me is not my own. The blood is from the past, it’s not my own.

Things accomplished today:

1.  Was able to come back to NYC while on a new med, which usually causes its own anxiety.

2.  Cleaned the kitchen top to bottom.

3.  Read the first two chapters of Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris.

4.  Straightened up our bedroom.  I won’t use the word cleaned, because I have yet to hit it with a duster, but Arnee and I are both kinda lazy with our clothes and it was a big ol pile of cotton.   I changed that.

5.  Went food shopping.

6.  Played videogames.

Doesn’t sound like a huge day.   But most days for me is number 6 and one of the other numbers.   I had fun keeping myself busy.  This post is stupid, amirite?  Well, here is something that is probably only interesting to like 3 people but here is a list of all the song lyrics I ripped off for post titles, from newest to oldest (with the post date after the band name).*

*I often get lyrics wrong, I never actually read a lyric sheet, so if I got it wrong and you want to correct me, the comment section is down below.

“The blood that flows through me is not my own.   The blood is from the past, it’s not my own.”  -  Neurosis  8/29

“I couldn’t love you anymore” – Cursive 8/23

“These hazards of love will never more trouble us.” – The Decemberists  7/18

“The marker snapped and I yelled “quiet on the set” and then called “action!” And I kissed you in a style Clark Gable would have admired (I thought it classic.)” – The Postal Service 6/13

“I have seven faces but I knew which one to wear.” – Interpol 5/27

“Not me, I backpedal and backpedal just as surefooted as I can.”  -Cursive 5/13

“I can cry if I want to.” – Lesley Gore (with minor changes) 5/11

“Note to self: no one cares, your blog is average.”  – Jets to Brazil (change blog with voice for the actual lyric) 4/26

“I’m going to take it by storm.”  – Cursive 4/23

“From the broken hips.”  -  Cursive (take broken out for the lyric/song title) 4/18

There was a new cursive album in April, and yeah they are my favorite band, but I’m actually impressed with myself for sorta spreading it out.   I’m sorry if this ruins some of the magic, the good post titles aren’t mine.   Good writers steal.

And looking this up brings me back to my first post; how prophetic.

http://peteinalargeapple.wordpress.com/2009/04/02/im-moving-to-brooklyn/

An exercise in exercising

Hi.  Hi there.  Hi.  Hello!  Hi.

It’s Saturday, about 12:30pm.  I just ate a hot dog with my father.   It was good.   I know I just wrote on this blog yesterday (and often go weeks between posts) but I felt like I wanted to write, but I wasn’t sure what, I just needed an exercise.   I’m too much of a narcissist to just do something that isn’t shared with the world, so I figured I would just start writing crap on here and then decide whether it’s worth posting or not.   And being that this is a personal blog where I have recorded videos of myself drunk, talked about shitting in the woods of New Hampshire, discussed in depth the medications I take just to be a semi-functional member of society…  well, chances are this will be posted.

I’m not really sure where to go with it.   There isn’t much new in my life since yesterday.   I mean, I’m on day 3 of the new med, I feel good.  I’m still calm.  I slept for 10ish hours last night (11 the night before) which is a huge increase from my usual 5-6 hours per night.   I also survived the last two side effects I was afraid of happening.   One is that this pill, much like E.D. (penis) meds, has the chance to give me a sustained boner that hurts, which I need to go to the doctor to get rid of (and not in the fun female doctor/bad porno kind of way).   Well, I woke up with my morning friend and he went back to sleep as I got up and walked around.  Win.

The other is constipation.  I hadn’t pooped since Thursday morning, but that was probably because I took some anti-pooping medication on my drive home because me and rest stops don’t mix.   Anyway, I made some brown this morning.

I’m not completely out of the dark yet, obviously.  Side effects can pop up at any time, and right now I’m only at 1/4 of the dose that I will be on by the end of the month.   But, it’s good for my paranoid brain to know that during round one my heart didn’t explode, my limbs didn’t start moving involuntarily, I didn’t become suicidal, my penis didn’t explode and I can still make a good ol poop.   I’m probably going to be fine.

And that’s good.  From here I need to figure out where to go to next.   I need to “feed my brain” (as much as I fucking hate that term) much better than I have in the past.   The two easiest things I can think of in that regard are reading and writing.   Both give me a sort of high…  well, maybe not high, but when i finish reading a few chapters of a book or I write a few thousand words here or about videogames at my other site, well, I feel good about myself.  It’s a natural good mood.  It’s not a high like, say, shooting PCP into my eyeball, but I feel good.   And as someone who rarely feels good without a few drinks in him, feeling good is a good feeling.  Ha.

So reading and writing.  Check.   I wish I had another focus for my writing.   I have been trying to come up with an idea for a short story for a few months now and nothing has grabbed me.  I know, I know, I just need to write for the sake of writing.   But it’s been so long since I’ve written fiction that I feel like I need the perfect idea before I jump back in.   I’ve written rambling stories in the past where I had no concept of what the story was going to be and I always finished them completely unsatisfied.   I guess I’m just afraid of that happening.   When I write I want to be satisfied by the process.   If not it’s work…  and it’s work I don’t get paid for.   But I guess it’s time to admit to myself that art is work and that I need to struggle to succeed.   Christ, how many cliches can I shit out in this post?

I also want to exercise more, though I already am….  I’ve walked more in my 3 months in NYC than I did in 7 years in New Haven.   And that’s not even hyperbole, that is motherfucking literal!  Add to the fact that we live on the fourth floor of a building with no elevator and its hard to dispute that I’m not getting way more exercise than I have since I stopped playing sports.   But it’s probably not enough.  My doctor is all about me getting cardio.   She said “you need to break a sweat” to which I said “I can break a sweat sitting still.”   I thought it was funny.   She didn’t laugh.

I’m totally fucking poor right now, which isn’t unusual, I’ve never exactly been rich…  but with Arnee’s work being on and off all summer we have hit the point where it’s caught up to us and we aren’t exactly sure how September rent is going to get paid.   Things will be fine again by the end of september, when she gets paid for the movie she is working on now…  but im poor enough that running to barnes and noble and picking up a novel to read isn’t really an option.   My meals this coming week will be Bologna, mustard and bread.   Maybe one night I’ll splurge on ramen.

So I need books.  I kinda want to read more about the human brain.  The last book I read, which was probably almost a year ago now (fuck me) was “The power of fear” and I was totally captivated by it because it really got down into the nuts and bolts of why humans feel fear, and how people and entities minipulate it.   I also could use a good novel.   I know Nick Hornby (High Fidelity, How to be Good) has a new novel coming out in sept or oct…  i will hopefully have money by then for that.   There is also a book of his (well 2, but one is for teens) that I haven’t read called A Long Way Down about 3 people who want to kill themselves randomly meeting…  which sounds totally up my alley.  Shit, I should just read How to be Good again, it’s been like 7 years since I read it and I remember it blowing my mind, though most people hated it.

I think I’m just excited that I want to get engaged in these types of activities again.   Alot of this, I’m sure, is placebo…  it’s not like this drug worked such a miracle that two days into it my anxiety and depression are gone forever.   But just the act of going out to see my doctor and then coming up with a plan to make me better is enough of a catalyst to actually make me feel better.  Weird, huh?   I need to keep rolling with it though.   I could easily go home from work tomorrow and put shit off and be all “well, Arnee is working on this movie for another 3 weeks atleast, I’ll get my shit together next week” which will then turn into the week after and then the week after that, etc.  I mean, it’s not like I want to totally uproot my life either.  I still like videogames.   I’m quite excited to get back to NYC to play them.   Even though I don’t really want to drink right now, I know in the back of my mind that I still enjoy it, and at some point I will have a night where I drink and the following day where I am anxious.   But these are things that I do too much of.   If I write for an hour a day and read for 2 hours a day there are still 15 or so hours left in my day to do the things I usually do.   I have a fuckton of time.   I’m going to start small, but changing some of that time around really should not be painful at all.

Next up is work.  I really need a new job.  It’s not just the drive that is killing me…  well, it’s the combo.   I drive in traffic for 5 hours to then talk about pancakes over and over and over and over and over.   I always felt mean saying this, like it was a judgement on the people I take care of, but I am just really fucking bored at my job.   There are no two ways around it.   They aren’t lesser people for making me bored…. I mean, shit, I’m bored of myself and I think I’m pretty cool.   So I really don’t want to get another group home job in NYC.  But what do I do then?   Writing would be great, but is improbable.   From there what else is there?  I dropped out of college.  All of my experience is either in human services, freelance writing or retail (from many, many moons ago).   I’m just not sure what I’m qualified to do.   I’m not sure what I want to do.   I figure most everything i can think of that I would want to do I wouldn’t have nearly enough credentials for, even if the brain power is there.   What I need is to know someone.   Someone introduce me to someone.  Thanks.

Zombietowne

As intrepid readers probably noticed in my last post I haven’t been doing that great lately.  It’s weird because my life is good.  Really good.  I mean I need to be doing more with it, but there isn’t anything wrong with it per se.   I have an awesome fiance, I live in the coolest city in the world, I can sorta afford my bills.  Stuff is fine.

But my anxiety has been through the roof lately and the usual things to make it go away haven’t been working.   It used to be that I really only felt anxious for long periods of time if I was hungover.   But I would go 3-4 days straight without drinking and still wake up like I had that typical full body hangover anxiety.

So I setup a date with my psychiatrist yesterday to talk about it and figure out what to do next.   It was a really amazing session.  It always is with her, she talks to me like I’m a med student, instead of dumbing everything down or not explaining to me at all why she is making the changes she is making.  There are big life changes that I need to make, and I’ll get to that in a minute, but I find the medication aspect pretty interesting because it’s maybe a little heavy handed but it has very tangible goals.

One of the major issues she sees with how I live my life is that I stay up all night.   Anyone who has known me for decades have known i’ve done this since I was a kid…  I can remember staying up late in my GI Joe bedtent with this little pink radio (that was handed down from my sister) and listening to KC 101 as late as I possibly could.   Anyway, this needs to change, so that’s a component of this med change.

I have been on 40mg of Prozac and two .5 mg pills of klonopin a day for a while now.   Yesterday we added Seroquel into the mix.   Seroquel is by far the most powerful drug I’ve ever been prescribed.  It is in the anti-psychotic family of drugs.   It’s typically used to sedate the most manic of manic depressives.   Now, I’m not particularly manic, so why give it to me?   Well basically, it does two things…  it acts as an amplifier for the prozac I am already on, and it knocks my fucking ass out.   So the plan is that i take it at a reasonable hour to go to sleep (I’m still sorta pushing it, I just can’t imagine going to bed before midnight or 1am…) and then that’s that.  I go to bed.   Also, mixing alcohol with this drug just isn’t possible.   I’ve known all along that if I didn’t feel anxious that I wouldn’t want to drink nearly as much, but I’m certainly not sad that it also gives me another reason to not drink…  I just can’t.   So that’s that.   I mean, if I am going out for the night and want to drink socially, I can, I just can’t take the drug that night.   Which is cool.  But no more sitting home and drinking just because I’m bored.   Which is also cool.  I know Arnee is pretty thrilled with this aspect of it.

So I took it last night for the first time and didn’t feel much of anything for about an hour…  and then it hit me fairly hard.  I was pretty loopy.  I was really hungry so I walked to my parent’s kitchen (I’m in town early this week for a training at work) and totally clipped a doorjam.  Whoops.  I then slept like a fucking log for about 11 hours.  I could have slept longer, but I forced myself to get up.   I immediately had a diet coke…  I don’t drink caffeine often but I knew I needed it.   For the last few hours I’ve been sorta bumming around my parents house, mostly sitting on my laptop and playing Farkle.  But man, I feel fucking calm.   I mean, I am seriously zombiefied right now, and this is not how I would like to live my life forever, but after a month+ of pretty intense anxiety it’s fucking nice to feel this calm without being drunk.

So the plan for me is as follows.   I am going to take this drug for close to two months and then switch over to abilify.  Abilify is pretty much the same thing minus the zombifying aspect…  the hope is that by that point I will be used to going to bed earlier and won’t need it…  and after a couple months of feeling this mellow that Ill be ready to deal with my anxiety again.

My doctor and I talked fairly indepth about the general concept of what it is to be a person with an anxious brain.   She was trying to get through to me, and I think she did, that being anxious isn’t a bad thing.   I just don’t take advantage of what my brain is good at.   People with brains like mine need to be stimulated.  We need jobs where we are constantly problem solving.   We need relaxing activities that still keep our brains moving.   I have, for years, been afraid of stimulation.   I’ve figured that since Im anxious that I want to stay away from stimulating activities as much as possible.   I figured that my mellow job (well, most of the time) was good for my brain, it let it relax.   But the problem is that my brain doesn’t want to relax.  I haven’t been feeding my brain with what it needs to feel fulfilled.  So i am going to make a concerted effort to challenge myself more often.  My current life of easy job + long stretch of time off where I don’t do much + going to bed at 4am is about as wrong of a lifestyle for someone with my brain type as is possible, according to my doctor.  And I believe her, because most things in the past that have made me anxious have always become triumphs once i do them, and not just because I’m beating my anxiety, but because I’m using my brain how it wants to be used.

So…  going to bed earlier, far less drinking, gonna try to exercise more, gonna try to “feed” my brain more…  gonna try to find a new job that challenges me.   It’s a pretty long list of shit I need to do…  and they aren’t all going to happen this week, or this month.  But i’m on step one, which is mellow the fuck out and sleep more.  Hopefully I will have the follow through to keep it going to the next steps when the time comes.   But for now I am completely in fucking Zombietowne because of this drug.  Which is kinda cool.  I like not freaking out.   It’s a good start.