Category: Mental Health

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.

On Tuesday I was admitted to the hospital. Thankfully I did not have a stroke like the doctors suspected. I am however dizzy and tired all the time. I don’t know what the cause of this is and it is concerning. I was just too tired and foggy to blog yesterday.

At any rate, I’m going to need a cane all of the time now for safety reasons. Aging can be difficult. But I must learn to accept this instead of feeling remorse for missed opportunities and connections. I actually have a good future ahead of my doctors can figure out what’s going on.

It looks like business plans will need to be put on hold for a bit while I figure things out. I’ve been in a brain fog for the past two days. I hope I’ll be ready to go today. I miss my love and my bed. Maybe all this happening this week is changing my priorities. Maybe it’s okay to simply live basically.

I feel strangely without much emotion right now. I feel like I’m existing but quietly. It’s difficult to explain. I miss my computers and my home lab. It’s so much fun to experiment with Linux and BSD. I miss that kind of fun right now. It’s fulfilling fun. 🤓

Nobody really knows what the future holds but I hope things will get better than they are now. This year has started out difficult. It hasn’t been easy psychologically or medically for that matter. I guess I’m fine using a cane all or most of the time. Acceptance can be a good thing.

I have just started my new gig working on Monday and every other Tuesday mornings at my favorite site. I will enjoy the easy extra money. I am tired from working last night from 3-11 but it’s not like the shifts are even that stressful ordinarily. I might need to take a nap when I get home but that’s fine. At least this dock shift is only a 4 hour deal so it makes things easy.

Tonight is date night with Denisse and boy am I looking forward to it. I love the simple pleasures in life like spending time with the love of my life. I will make certain that my phone is in a completely different room so that I have no distractions. We will have pizza, canned pre-mixed margaritas, and maybe one or two other little goodies. I plan on being a space case tomorrow and that is okay. I’m giving myself permission to relax.

On Wednesday, I will have to be some sort of productive and I am okay with that. I’ll spend time working on my website and a few other matters. I got invited by VGM to drive for them on a contractual basis. Uber is testing out an all electric fleet of Lucid high-end vehicles. The nice thing is that it is hourly compensation with all tips going to the driver. If that comes through and it makes financial sense, I’ll resign from OPS. I’ve had it with security and struggling.

My brother’s birthday is on Friday of this week and I want to get him a birthday gift for all the things he has done for me. I’ll probably get him a $100 gift card to Amazon. This should help him out considering he and his wife use Amazon a lot.

I’m definitely ready for the next step in life which includes turning off the TV, reading, and educating. It’s time to go back to what I love which is learning. For me, learning is fulfilling so I want to go back to those activities. I want to do so much in life.

I am doing a lot better today than I was last night. Last night was rough because of the situation with my mother. I got a good long cry in and I feel better. I just wish I wasn’t so exhausted. I am going to have to stand up regularly so that I don’t fall to sleep at work. I feel like I am nodding off. A security guard that falls asleep is no good to anybody and does the profession a real disservice.

I got back on Mastodon after a hiatus from it. I found myself really missing the interactions. Of course, I will need to rebuild an audience from scratch but that is very doable and I’m in no particular hurry to do so. I like the decentralized nature of the Fediverse (Mastodon) and that, to a certain extent, I have a little more control over my data. The only way to have almost complete control is to run my own Mastodon server and I am not going to do that this time around. It’s just too much work and I don’t have the time.

The coming week is going to be a fairly long one. I have to work an extra 4 hour shift tomorrow so I will really be only off for 2.5 days. Next week, I will only have a day and a half off. It looks like, for the foreseeable future, every other week 2.5 days off. It’s going to be its own form of hell but I’ll take it. I need the money as Denisse will need more help in the coming months. I don’t mind because I love her and once she gets on her feet, I know that she will be able to reciprocate more. I am excited for her phlebotomy schooling.

Denisse and I are going to make the trip to see mom at Lodge Lane, her memory care facility. She doesn’t know that we are coming and that is for the best. Sometimes, I think mom tells me to stay away because she doesn’t want to inconvenience me and might experience some shame and remorse about her condition. Ethan, my brother, helped me to realize that mom really needs family now more than ever.

I hope that my relief is on time and won’t lolly gag around. I’ve got to be back at the worksite at 7am tomorrow morning. I hope that the supervisor won’t be in a foul ass mood and stick me on the x-ray machine. If he does, I will most likely tell him politely but firmly that I won’t be doing this. If he gets an attitude about that, I’ll tell him to speak with the manager, Chris. Chris told me the shift would be a dock shift and I get to sit down and raise and lower the dock entry door. Those are my expectations/boundaries and I will stick to them.

Tomorrow evening will be a date night for Denisse and I. I am absolutely looking forward to it. We are going to watch the latest episode of The Pitt and catch the franchise finale of the Halloween movies. The finale is called (with an utter lack of imagination) Halloween Ends. Still it should be entertaining. I like the cheesy horror genre. The shows don’t frighten or scare me anymore but I still enjoy the story lines.

Well that’s about all I have to write for the time being. Stay tuned for another exciting entry tomorrow – LMAO.