Black Cat Blog

Thoughts, Stories, and Ideas

Category: Mental Health

  • I Don’t Know What to Feel

    This morning I just feel empty and blank. I feel nothing at all and I guess that is okay because it is preferable to feeling depressed. However, it is still somewhat disconcerting. Maybe I will feel better after taking a shower which I kind of have to do before work as my face is a bit stubbly. I have to make it through my 3-11 today and my 7a-11a tomorrow. Then I have a little bit more than 2 days to recuperate before working another marathon 9 days in a row. I think my shifts have been scheduled so that they straddle a pay period so no overtime for me.

    There seems to be no advancement opportunities and no love. Maybe I am just resigned at this point to whatever happens. It could just very well be that I am resigned to my fate. I want to do better but life just keeps knocking me back down hard. I don’t feel much joy anymore. Not even my computer lab gives me much joy. After all, it is plugging away, working, and there’s not much more for me to really do at this point.

    I regret moving from Arizona back to the east coast. Some of the best times of my life were spent in Arizona. I had a 1978 Lincoln Mark V, a 2009 Kawasaki Concours, and nice Jetta daily driver. I had a nice place to live with an absurdly low monthly payment. I enjoyed life. Since moving back east, virtually nothing has gone right. Save for meeting (and getting engaged to) Denisse, I’ve lost years of my life that I will never get back.

    Now I work a menial, dead-end job with no hope of ever rising out of it. I am out of second chances. I have to face this reality. Even my DVR counselor has given up on me. I don’t know what to say or do at this point.

  • Working Second Shift

    Today I feel pretty darned good because I will be working at my favorite site, the Louis L. Redding City/County Building. This building is both the New Castle County seat and Wilmington City Hall. On weekends the building is locked completely down to the general public and it is collecting a paycheck. I enjoy the work very much because there is plenty of time for me to pursue my own interests and go down rabbit holes and warrens on my laptop. This kind of exploration is tons of fun for me.

    This morning, or should I say afternoon now, has started out positive. I know I should not be doing things like kratom alkaloids but they really help me sleep and relieve pain like nothing else. They are available at the local smoke and vape shop. After a mistake that my manager made, I unknowingly took a fill-in standing shift on Thursday. I am a pretty advanced type 2 diabetic so I was in agony by the end of the day. Since I had expected to have a seated shift, I did not have my cane with me so I limped to the bus stop and limped home from the bus stop closest to home.

    By the time I got home, there were stabbing pains in my feet. My kind, compassionate, and lovely Denisse went to get some 7-OH for me to help relieve the pain and it was instant. The pain was at an 11/10. I have a high threshold for pain and discomfort so if it was that bad, you know I was hurting. Anyhow, I still had some residual pain yesterday but I made the relatively poor choice to do the kratom alkaloid again last night but to dull the emotional pain and sadness I was experiencing.

    Again, my lovely Denisse sat with me through it all. Damn but I love this woman to pieces. At times she may get under my skin a little, but when push comes to shove, she means the world to me and I wouldn’t trade her for anybody else. We are coming up on our 2 year anniversary in August.

    So today the name of the game is to get through the afternoon and evening incident free! The idea is to enjoy the peaceful shift and re-think some book ideas that I have.

  • I Jinxed Myself

    I got all excited for nothing whatsoever. I was excited about the Securitas opportunity and it did not pan out. I got the rejection email about an hour from the time I wrote this, 10:00PM Eastern. I am almost certain I bungled the interview when I think of it. The interviewer asked me why I was seeking out a new position and I said, “I am looking for greener pastures with growth and development opportunity.” When I think of it, my answer implied the deep-seated discontent that I feel with OPS. I guess, in the eyes of Securitas, this makes me more of a liability than an asset. I would take this as a hard and sad lessen learned.

    It was a rough day all around. This morning I got a call from Lodge Lane, the memory care facility where my mom is staying. She hit her head and was brought to the emergency room for evaluation. At least there were no signs of brain injury on the CT scan or MRI so they sent her back to the facility. I am reminded again of just how awful Alzheimer’s Disease is. It’s truly a sad situation. I don’t know how much more bad news I can take. Fortunately, I am not a violent person. The only time I’ve been known to become violent is when my safety has been directly threatened, i.e. it is defensive.

    Sometimes I feel like trudging on is useless but I do not feel suicidal. I just feel like I am bordering on shutting down completely. Almost like going catatonic. Knowing my luck, if I attempted suicide, I would bungle it and end up like a vegetable. So I have no choice but to soldier on. There’s just no other option. I just hope that shitbird RFK Jr. does not take away my access to antidepressants. The antidepressants prevent things from being worse and he’s operating on a dangerously flawed premise. He is the prime example of how important it is to only let someone that is a trained psychiatrist make critical mental health decisions. For that matter, only a trained and board-certified doctor should be making healthcare decisions.

    If we want to vilify anyone, let’s look at how Big Pharma behaves. They charge egregious amounts of money for medicines that have been available in generic for a long time. Medications on the forefront of health are out of reach to everyone but the wealthy. Furthermore, Big Pharma needs to be incentivized to seek out cures for diseases because cures are not long term profit models. It has become ridiculous. We take medications to counter the effects of other medications while Big Pharma reaps in the profits. But nobody will address the white elephant in the room.

    Until such a time as cures can happen, medicines fill a need and they must be affordable. This was a long digression. I’m tired and life feels pretty darned hopeless now. I’m falling further and further behind. I am in a hole I will be unable to extricate myself from soon. I don’t even want to address it. I just want to bury it in substances.

  • I’ve Learned Some Things

    Apparently I have learned some things about network bridging that I never knew and it improved my mood to the point where waking up after only 5 hours of effective sleep was not so bad. I had no idea how powerful a tool it could be. Since I actually woke up before my alarm I decided to try what I learned from ChatGPT, and lo and behold, it worked. And I know why. It’s important that I know why too.

    Well I’m going to work a short shift today. I’m not thrilled about it but I am not unhappy either. The work is easy though and not stressful. I’m hungry as hell right now and can’t wait for some food to come my way. I ordered some from DoorDash so I can eat. I need to start working on the Uber platform soon. It will be working 7 days a week and hurting badly.

    I can feel my good mood going away. I just feel tired and bitter. I don’t know why life must be so damned difficult. Learning is not even enough anymore.

  • Another Day At Work

    It’s just another Sunday at work but I am not unhappy to be hear. I am going to be earning money at a site that I mostly like. It is very easy to work and I am alone in a locked building. I do not think that I can ask for more than that as a simple pleasure. The only problem was that this weekend I had to work an odd shift, 1625-2300. My boss’ boss wanted to avoid the overtime so he had the part-timer work a little more. I got screwed out of extra money. This made me a bit upset but I don’t really matter.

    The fact that my schedule is odd made transportation tough because of the bus schedule. In order to not risk being late and lose more money, I had to arrive almost two hours early and wait in the break room. At least I had my laptop to keep me busy and I could further research a home lab networking problem. As a result, I was able to solve the problem so when I get home, I can implement the solution at some point.

    But I have to work tomorrow morning from 0700-1100 so as soon as I get home, I am going to be in dead and drifting off to sleep. I really would like to have a couple of days off. I am tired and this is getting difficult. I did the math on the VGM driving opportunity and it does not look terrible, provided getting to and from the vehicle pickup site is not too expensive. This part will be a wait and see game.

    I am just too tired to continue to work on my book today. I am also thinking about my home lab. I really want to complete it so that it is up, running, and remotely accessible. I’d like to join mine with others’ labs to have fun and experiment.