Today has both been one of problem solving and another of new problems. Talk about real life whack-a-mole. One problem solved only to have another pop up. But at least I did get approved to drive through VGM which is good news. I have the orientation tomorrow.

I’m very tired of having two steps backward for every one forward. It’s disheartening and demoralizing. It’s making me angry, short tempered, and depressed all in one. I feel snappy despite taking a restful nap. I feel a butt load of resentment.

Oh well! This too shall pass as they say but I’m still waiting for it to pass. I’ll feel a good deal better if VGM works out because that could be a spring board to better opportunities. It could also be one giant fiasco. I cannot really predict and I won’t try. More information to come.

I’m also pissed because I lost out on overtime from the security job. My boss yanked a shift from me. The money would have been welcome. I’m reminded again how I must look out for myself and my family because my employer sure as shit don’t care about me. Well, my manager does care. It’s just the fuckers above him that don’t.

I think I’m just going to scream hash tags right now.

I should feel pretty good about it being spring and all but I don’t I feel very down and worthless. My nightmares last night were vivid reminders of the missed/lost opportunities of night. I feel so unbelievably sad that I cannot concentrate worth a damn. I just feel like sobbing. I missed lost love and family opportunities; just not a good person. I live in fear and self-pity.

Now I am going to lose my mom to Alzheimer’s and I need to go visit her in memory care but I am working every goddamned day just to stay afloat. I think I am going to see her after work on Monday or Tuesday. I feel tremendous guilt for not going. I’m fighting my own demons and seeing her continue to decline is going to make me feel worse. However, I do not want to live in regret so I will visit her this week.

I had a high school crush on girl named Alynn Capoferri. I had a dream about her that I was pining after her but could not see her. Oh well. My nightmare was like a black and white, infrared photograph with brief moments of color. I think that was the best way to describe it. The Nickelback song, Photograph, really sums it up.

I hate being autistic and suffering from major depressive disorder. It is an absolute curse – like living in a special kind of inescapable hell. I should be happy because I found a woman that I love to pieces and would never dream of cheating on her. But the reality on the ground is that I am suffering immensely. I feel used up and I feel like I will just continue to decline. Maybe that’s for the best. Maybe the Republican’s are right and if I cannot produce, the best place for me is the ground. That’s how I feel right now.

I have to work from 4p-11p today and I don’t really mind because the grand plan is to begin working on my book The Beginner’s Home Lab Book: Learning Linux & BSD By Building Real Systems. I’m going to follow the suggestion of my therapist to approach this as if I am writing a letter to a prospective learner. Despite being tired, I’m excited to get started. In preparation for writing today, I set up a PC to use for this purpose.

This morning I set up some routing so I can reach the PC remotely allowing me to write effectively. I’m actually really excited! The excitement is lessening the lack of desire to go into work today. I know time will pass quickly. My weekend worksite is at a building completely locked down so I will be able to use dictation without the appearance of being crazy.

I slept the day away and I still feel tired. I’m getting a huge resurgence of very intense nightmares that are effecting my sleep adversely. I’m even having nightmares while napping. It used to be that I could at least sleep during the day for a bit and it would be dream free. Not so much anymore.

Well maybe I will get some work on my book accomplished. Maybe a sense of satisfaction will lead to a night of better sleep. I feel mentally awful like it’s a 10 yard fight. But the fact that I am writing this while on the bus to work is sort of a win in of itself. I wanted to call out but that’s not in my nature.

This morning I had a really good therapy session. I am reminded of the importance of therapy in addition to medication when treating depression. My therapist, Nan, is nothing short of incredible. We talked at length about learning, passion, and education.

I told Nan about one of my goals which is to write a book about computers and networks. I shared with her my topic and intended audience but I was experiencing difficulty overcoming writer’s block. Since perfection in writing is impeding my progress, I had the insight that I would try speech to text. This may facilitate writing and lessen the tendency to seek perfection.

Then Nan gave me a truly brilliant idea. Since the intended audience is a beginner to the professional side of computers and networks, she recommended that I write it in the form of a letter to a potential student. I was blown away! The sheer simple elegance. Now I have a weekend project. I’m going to start writing and see where this goes.

Once I put words to paper so to speak, I’ll go back and edit my work. What if I could have the whole damn manuscript written and ready for publication!? That would be awesome. I’d love it if No Starch would take on publishing my book.

I truly left the session feeling much much better than before. I feel renewed and motivated. I dare say I feel positive.

I am not going to lie … last night was brutal for nightmares. They seemed to keep coming one after another so I am tired. Nightmares do not make for good sleep. Perhaps one day I will learn to control my dreams. I am honestly surprised because I had a decent day yesterday. Time to move on though.

I hope to hear from VGM today or Monday. I’d like to be earning more money and have more flexibility. First I have to try it and see how it goes. If all goes well, I will reduce the number of hours I am working as a security guard to 16 on the weekends. I am tired of worrying about money and $23 an hour is significant.

I don’t have any real grand plans for today other than going into work at 2:00PM instead of the usual time. This is okay with me and I don’t mind helping out the boss on occasion. I do have a therapy appointment at 11:00AM today which I am happy about because I need to talk to someone about some weighty issues. Perhaps I will find the concentration to work on my book, but if not, I won’t punish myself.

I know that tomorrow I will have some good opportunities to work on my book. Since I seem to have writer’s block, I am going to try dictation. I just sent out a quick post on Mastodon to ask what tools might be available. Perhaps writer’s block isn’t really writer’s block but perfection being the enemy of progress. This is one of my mantra’s but I still seek perfection. Seeking perfection is blocking progress.

Another day and another shift working and toiling to make someone else wealthier. There’s nothing quite like the United State’s definition of freedom: economic freedom only. Have you ever noticed that the same self-righteous MAGAts that advocate locking up as many criminals as possible in dragnets complain that their freedumb is being impinged if laws are passed to help them? I’m sick and tired of the hypocrisy.

Okay well enough whining on my part. I put Arch Linux – my favorite distro – back on my laptop. I don’t know why in the hell I was running Fedora. Clearly, I wasn’t thinking clearly. I’m happy to be back on the platform that I’ve grown to love. My desktop still uses Arch though. I had some dumb ass idea that Arch would not run that well on a laptop. I was very wrong. Arch is actually more battery efficient than Fedora.

Well, in any case, I feel good about kicking Fedora to the curb. They capitulated to the age verification movement and they’re allowing AI contributions. As one of my favorite cartoon characters would say, “Uh huh huh huh …. Nope nope nope.” Chicken Hawk was hilarious! I digress. AI writes very poor code. Who knows what security holes are going to open. A good distribution is going down the toilet.

I’m having fun being back on the fediverse via Mastodon. That’s the only social media that I feel is quality. If you’re already on it and want to follow me, just click on the link at the footer. Hope to see you there!

It’s going to be nice having some time off after today. I get off at 11am and I don’t have to be at work again until Thursday at 4pm. I will enjoy having the time off as I am really tired. I think I want to sleep late tomorrow. That sounds delightful. I did my last few things to complete migration to a dual stack IPv4/IPv6 setup. I noticed my Mastodon instance has been cruising since I gave it IPv6 access.

I am too tired to work on my business this morning. I’m thinking I’m just going to mess around on my laptop. Being productive just isn’t going to happen. I have a therapy appointment about the time I get home from work. After that I would like to have a nap and then watch a show or three with Denisse. A boring afternoon will be fine as well.

I hope I hear from VGM soon as I am tired of doing security work. VGM offers a driving contract position through the Uber platform. Unlike other opportunities, this one pays $23 per hour on a 1099 basis. I think if I hear back from VGM with an offer, I’m going to start doing that instead of security work. I’m really and truly tired of being a security guard.

VGM has quite a nice offering and if I need more time off one week, I can simply take that time because it has been ruled that 1099-basis workers cannot be forced into accepting a schedule. The courts ruled that 1099 is contractual basis and forcing a set schedule changes things into employment. I would rather not work so hard. Also driving a high end Lucid vehicle will be fun.

I am really dragging today as I had to come into work for 7a-11a after working last night from 3a-11p. This is definitely not an easy thing to do at my age. When I was 25 years younger, I could double back on shifts easily. Despite dragging hind tit, I managed to figure out why the Mastodon instance I setup last night wasn’t working. It turns out that I forgot to allow NGINX to be able to work properly on SELinux. With that resolved, I am back.

It’s good to be back on Mastodon and the Fediverse. Out of all of the social media, the Fediverse is solidly my favorite because of the sheer variety of content posted and created. I learn a lot from the postings and it is fun to do some content creation of my own. Anyhow, while at work I managed to do something stupid and power down the Mastodon server so I’ll have to wait until I get home.

When I finally get home, I am going straight to bed. I need to get some rest badly. Then I can do a little work on my Mastodon instance. I added ElasticSearch for some more powerful search options but it ain’t working the way it should. I am sure I will figure it out eventually.

I have to go to work again tomorrow from 7a-11a. Then I have one day off and I go back at it again. Fun times!

Today has been a really tough day mentally, no doubt on by the fact that I am so tired and I will only have 2 days off in the next 14. I’m at work and not motivated in the slightest. I have to find some things to do to keep me busy at work today or I will end up falling asleep. I don’t want to fall asleep as I really don’t like security guards that do it. So maybe I will have to get some caffeine of some sort.

I did not sleep so well because I had a particularly vexing computer problem to solve. I eventually solved it when I realized that I needed a network address translation rule put into place which did the trick. I realized that routing was not working correctly from the default gateway back to the virtual machine acting as the VPN endpoint at home. Now I can access my homelab from anywhere that does not filter out WireGuard traffic.

Okay, well I spoke too soon because I forgot to enable and start sshd on my desktop. This means I won’t be able to reach my desktop but I can reach other network services so I mostly solved the problem. I had some grand plans to get work done this afternoon and evening but that won’t happen. Instead, I am going to need to find an alternative way to work.

I’m lying in my hospital bed in Wilmington Hospital and now I see what that godawful gym teachers I had in middle and high school were driving at. They were telling us that our bodies are our most important possessions and to treat them right. But they were so mean to me that I could not hear this lesson. Even psychopaths have moments of good advice and concern I guess. It’s too bad the balance of their behavior obliterates the bad.

If you had asked me in high school if I would be a type 2 diabetic, I would’ve told you that whatever you were smoking would be powerful. I cannot change the past but I sure can look at what I have going for me. I have a healthy heart and my brain has no physical damage. I just never thought that I would really need my cane now.

Climbing stairs is difficult as my feet grow numb from the activity. This makes bringing up heavy objects difficult. Not from a cardiovascular perspective, but from not knowing where I am in space. I’ve already had trouble with visual spatial awareness. Having a physical problem has worsened that condition. So I will walk with a cane and get handicapped tags for easier parking when I can finally get a car.

In life, people learn to adapt and overcome. I’m nowhere near ready to quit. I’m just too damn stubborn. Also, I’ve done a lot of amazing and eye opening things. I’ve had a lot of life in my years. I’ve biked a couple of 100 milers, backpacked through Mt. Rainier and the Sierras, climbed Mt. Baker. That’s actually a lot of life in my years.

I know I can do better and make better choices. I haven’t because I’m still looking to food for comfort. If I’m going to use food for comfort, then I need to choose nourishment not garbage.