Procrastination

It's a good thing. Really. Procrastination gives you one thing over those advocating quick decisions, which is always based on seriously inadequate, incorrect or inaccurate information, and that is time. Time is a good gift with many issues, events, situations, decisions, etc. in life and sometimes work. Time gives you that edge to focus more on the issue or question, to gather more information, listen to more people, and so on.

But mostly it gvies you the space to understand. It gives you time for experience and knowledge to outweigh any rashness to decide based on emotios or feelings, which all to often leads to regret about the decision, the purchase and maybe even the object itself. Procrastination can overcome what quickness can't, time to realize how stupid you were when you made the quick decision.

You can't undo that decision, you can learn to make a better one next time, but if you always make those quick decisions, how will you learn to make better ones? That's where procrastination helps. I rarely buy or decide anything the first time. And more often, not even the second time. Usually the third time I realize if I'm still thinking about it, and done my homework, I'm usually comfortable with the idea or object, so there will be little if any regret.

A moment of my own Mortality

We all have them, a brief moment when the thought invades our consciousness to say, "What if you suddenly died." Sometimes in our dreams we have imaginary events about it. Sometimes when seeing, reading or listening to a story about the death of someone. And sometimes for no reason than just happening.

I get these moments just before I doze off in a nap, wondering if death is just a nap you don't wake up from. This morning, however, it occurred in a dream just before I woke up. I was sitting in a cafe watching the world inside the cafe and outside the window and then wondered what would be different if I wasn't there. Not there just for the time being there, but not there in life.

Nothing really followed, I woke up and got on with the morning. But, as these moments do, I wondered for a moment of my, and really each of our own, mortality on this earth and in life. There one moment, gone the next. Someone else sitting in that chair at that table in that cafe. Not me. Never again.

It's no different a moment than we all experience, the question is what we think and do about them. Some people don't even ponder them beyond the rare times they occur, if they occur at all, while some people never seem to go very long without a moment. I'm one of those where it's never very far from the front of my mind, only needing a reason to invade my consciousness.

When life gets away

When life gets away from you. You know when you wake and realize time, not just days, but weeks and even months, disappeared, and you can't think of what you did during that time. It simply happened and you simply went through life and time, to be where you sit there looking back and wondering what happened.

Or that you know and can't figure why you didn't do more. I get these periods, have all my life, and even for months when I just went through the motions of life and work, and not feeling good about much, if anything, and usually feeling like crap. All you know is that for brief periods one day you began to feel better, even good. And you see and think clearly, or so it seems compared to the recent past.

Some Days

Some days aloneness and lonliness aren't far apart and aren't far away, from me. It's Christmas Day and from some medical tests earlier in the week and some food which left me tired and sick, or sick and tired, it varied between the two. And it left me mentally tired when and where my innate comfort for aloneness was invaded by lonliness, slowly overlapping into where they were one and I didn't know which I felt. I just felt overwhelmed with being.

It Doesn't Get Better

After reading the news of the Rutger's student who committed suicide, I was insulted and outraged at all the blogs, videos, public service announcements, etc., essentially shit saying, "It Gets Better." Well, it doesn't and all the hype, and worse the words, are bullshit. It doesn't get better, it gets different. And now today I'm reading a number of video and on-line bloggers say as much too.

The truth is that if anyone had intervened to prevent or dissuade that student for his act at that moment, his reality doesn't change. Everything still happened, and everyone still knows. And he would still be here to see and hear it every moment of every day. That doesn't get better, or even different, it just stays there, like the unspoken truth.

When you decide not to commit suicide but decide to either put it off for awhile, remember the thought of it never goes away and the feelings of the moment to decide never leaves, and why so many try again and some keep trying, you still are faced with your own reality. That changes, not for the better, it just changes, and you get on with your life around the changes, carrying it with you every moment.

Those that argue it gets better don't get the point, let alone the idea about what better would be. They espouse a better person, mentally happier and wanting to live a better life. How insanely naive that is and they are to think it and then say it. They like to argue life, any life, is better than death, especially at your own hand. But how little and how naive they are to know let alone understand the person at that moment first to decide and then the moments before the act.

There is no better. There is only everything else which is different than death, but not really better. I won't argue in those moments the person experienced mental myopia as the darkness hides all the choices other than death and all the ways to be more than dead. But none of those will seem better, and being alive doesn't offer better choices let alone a better life.

Because the events which created the moment and space where suicide is front and center won't change. The past is done, and argue all you want you can change how you see, think and feel about those events, it doesn't change them. It doesn't make them better. They still just are.

What can change though is simply accepting the choices people made and the events that happen, and getting on with life, albeit as it is and will become. That's about all that is really possible, putting them in a mental shoebox and in the back of the memory closet. They won't go away and the box will spill out and open now and then to remind you of the words, the pictures and the events, and you will go back to the moments of your thoughts and feelings then.

And that doesn't get better. It just become what happened and what will happen. Don't paint a rosy picture when it's not there and show how ignorant and insensitive you are about people. Get and be real. And if you want to do anything, just be there for them and listen. Nothing else. It's their world, not yours or your view of things, that's matters. That's everything, and nothing else matters.

Love Inside, Still looking

I don't really know what this means beyond just what I originally thought, somewhere deep inside me is someone I've been looking to love. Not the person I hate I am. I haven't found that person, and I keep looking. In the end that's all we can do, try. And everything else is what happens in life.

Mind and Body

It's what people like to talk about, the mind-body connections. And while much is personal view, commercial hype or whatever cow pasture material the person is saying, some of it is true because it's the whole of ourself. We are thoroughly connected between our mind and body, and when one is the major controlling drive, the other just tags along trying to cope and get through life.

And obviously I'm no different. In my case, the body rules the mind. It's always been no matter how hard I try to think over, around or through some physical issue or condition. When the body isn't feeling good or feeling like crap, I don't think right or well, and if things get worse or last a long time, I begin to hate my body and myself. It's what's been happening for 8-plus months now.

And the rigors of the medical system isn't always about actually helping the patient but simply treating the symptoms, the conditions, and on occasion, the actual cause. This what some physicians write about with the stories about months of trying to heal a patients to often find it's a simple one with a simple cure. And all the while the patient feels like crap.

Well, mine isn't serious, just problematic enough to feel like crap most days with a few hours of some days feeling decent and maybe good. When basic functions go awry, the body has little else to do but react with pain and hurt and you react with anger and depression. You just want to get better and that won't happen.

And what worse is that you have to eat to stay alive, and especially healthy. Except when you find yourself wanting to eat but fearing food and eating. You know food is your enemy. Food everyone eats, and doesn't have one issue or problem except how good it tastes. But your body doesn't. Your mind loves the food, the tastes, the flavors, the textures, and everything else. And then the food attacks your body and your body attacks your mind.

And all the doctors can say after all the tests is, "Well, we can't find anything physically wrong." There is a myriad of other tests left open to try, but all they want to do is eliminate each one in succession, to be safe and cautious and slowly remove all the possible obvious causes. But nothing changes except the hate your body has for food. And the anger your mind has with your body.

And on it goes. Long after hope disappeared. Only the acceptance the mind-body is at war with itself.

Dysthymia and Taoism

I posted an essay on my Taoism blog about Taoism and Dysthymia talking about the interconnection and intertwining of both throughout my life. I won't repeat it here, you can simply read it there. It deserves to be in both places as it covers both issues of my life. Not much more need be said from me about it, for now anyway. Give me time and I'll think of more to say, or what my mind tells me.

Chronic Depressive Disorder

It seems I won't have Dysthymia in May 2013 when the new DSM-V is released. In their everlasting effort to pathologize almost everyone in this country, the APA is drafting a new DSM, and facing a lot of criticism from outside the APA and within the APA about the changes and the additions to the DSM, pretty much putting a blanket disorder classification over seemingly normal human thoughts, feeling, expressions or behavior.

But that aside, the APA is proposing to change Dysthymia to Chronic Depressive Disorder. They simplify some of the criteria, but mostly the basic diagnosis is unchanged. So why change the name? Beats me, but mostly it seems they're lumping moderate chronic depression with low chromic depression into one catagory.

In the past it's been the distinction which separates Dysthymia from other and more significant, moderate and even major, depression. I think this worked as many people suffer from longterm, some like me, lifelong, low chronic depression, with occasional period of moderate to severe depression, and only short periods of some level of low level satisfaction or comfort from depression.

I think this distinction is important because it identifies people who have longterm or lifelong low depression and can function reasonably well just outside the criteria for people with moderate to major depression. We don't find life so overwhelming most of the time the depression interfers with getting through life, just for enjoying, or not enjoying, life.

And that's not being addressed in the proposed standards. I don't want to be labelled depressed and with people who are seriously depressed. I won't argue my Dysthymia is persistent and consistent, but it's liveable without intervention (therapy) or without drugs.

Some do need one or both, but I've manged well enough without either except on rare occasions during my life. But the last thing I need or want is another label of some disorder which can easily be misunderstood or misinterpreted to be worse than it really is. I'm lucky my Dysthymia is relatively easily managed, and I've function well in my life and work.

But it's not something I want people to see me as sick because they don't know or understand because some label says I have a disorder. Dysthymia is explainable. Chronic Depressive Disorder isn't. That's not right or fair.

Selling optimism

I was reading an article in the Washington Post, "Researchers ask why optimism is associated with health, pessimism with disease", and it was interesting for what the researchers are trying to prove. They've always tried to link optimism to good health, a good attitude and prosperity. And the opposite, link pessimism to disease, illness, depression, and everything bad physical and mental health.

And they tried to link better social attitude and prosperity to the whole mess of optimism, meaning pessimism is linked to being alone, social phobias, and everything else they can dump on the evidence. Except it's never been fully proven true, only interpretations of the data to what they set out to prove anyway.

Overstated, maybe a little. But when other researchers looked at the data and their interpretations, they discovered they didn't include other factors effecting a person's health, such as economic and financial standing, social networks, education, experience, and so on down the list, but more importantly the invdividual's genetics and characteristics.

They simply made connections which don't ring true when examined under the whole suite of data. They selective choose which factors they wanted and denied the rest had merit or value. And if nothing else, I am an example. I have excellent health, barring the genetic conditions provided by my ancestors. I exercise (walking, running, hiking, etc.) and am active (photographer).

Due to issues and problems with my digestive system I eat healthy, all natural and organic foods, minus the occasional prepared soups and meals I can't fix. I eat a variety of foods, that my body will allow. In short, I am the very model of the optimistic persons based on individual health and fitness in their interpretations.

Except I have genetic, meaning lifelong, Dysthymia and optimism isn't in my mindset. I am predisposed to pessimistic thinking, feeling and emotion from mild to moderate and on occasions in the my life, severe depression. It's who I am, and that flies in the face of their statements about pessimistic people.

And it's what Barbara Ehrenreich points out in her new book on Optimism. The data has been misinterpreted and misused and the widespread acceptance of optimism by people is at the foundation of many of this country's problems.

We have hyped optimism into a hole we can't see out of, let alone find answers. Just look at the news, especially the interviews of people, and especially politicians. They espouse confidence, hope, and so on with the words saying it will get better, forgetting that same "get better" is what got us where we are today. Our hype of optimism is part and parcel key in the whole suite of problems we're facing.

And still we hype optimism. Like the blind being lost with no companion or tools to know where they are, let alone how to get out. We're blind to our own hype. And we keep paying the price.

The glass of water

Why do they always ask you about the glass of water half filled with water, "Is the glass half empty or half full?" What not just say, "It's a glass of water." Why is the water seen as optimism and the air as pessimism? Or better yet ask, "Gee, I'm thirsty, do you mind if I drink it?" Or ask, "What type of water?", meaning where did come from, to know it's origin more than the faucet.

Why can't an optimist say, "It needs to be filled up."? Or, a pessimist say, "Maybe someone is thirsty."? Why do they want to assign some qualitative value to a clear glass of water? Relative to its content of water and air? Why can't they give you the option to say it's both, half full and half empty, an equal amount of each?

Well, I don't know but psychologist love to make things an either-or judgement to see which side of the fence you mentally live. Like it matters? For what? It doesn't change you, and certainly not the glass of water. Only them making some judgement of you, not that it's important or critical, just personal to them.

Which means, to me, it's simply cow pasture material. A Taoist would look at the glass and say, "It's a glass of water." Nothing more than the simple observation. A realist would say, "Well, is anyone going to do anything with the glass of water?" Nothing more than thinking out loud.

But it's at the heart of many psychologist's, or therapist's, questions, the either-or idea to discover something good or bad about you or your thoughts, emotions, or feelings. And if you can't or don't want to make a choice, then they'll push until you make it, meaning your reaction is now part of their judgement.

Like, "So why are you afraid to say if the glass is half full or half empty?" Like it matters? And if you, "The glass is both half full and half empty.", they will ask you why you thinks it's both. Like it's the reality of the glass and the air and water inside it? Why are we driven to either-or choices?

Taoism teaches you it's both as both are necessary to the balance of the world. And Dysthymia teaches you to see it's both, like there isn't any other reality, let alone a choice between two, if not more, choices. It's always, "All of the above." when it comes to life and the world.

I would ask, "Why a clear glass?" Why not an opague one you can't quite see the line between the water and air? Why not a black one where you have to imagine the air and water? Would they ask to imagine and decide, make a choice? Why? What does it say about you? What does it tell the psychologist? They all don't interpret the answer the same, so then why answer?

The whole world of your mind, all in a glass of water. And now I'm thirsty.

Being pushed

Update.--I wrote this six weeks into the dosage and six weeks ago. Nothing much has changed, the wind is still there against my back, pushing me forward, and I still expend a lot of mental energy to stay sitted on the edge and not fall off and over into the abyss. But for now it's on a plateau where the wind hasn't increased and the energy lessed, only I've become adjusted to it and have adapted to the times I don't have to think about it.

It's the old adage, nothing changes and everything changes. And I'm still sitting on the edge with the wind against my back.

Orginal Post.--I wrote about livng on the edge of life. Well, I'm still there and still here. It doesn't go away and never will beyond just a slight improvement. I've always reckoned it to sitting on the edge of the Grand Canyon. The giant abyss, easy to fall into and never worry again.

But I haven't, or at least stopped myself just this side of life. But that is also changing, not just with age but with my medication. I describe as if a wind is pushing from behind and it takes most my energy to stay seated on the edge and not pushed over the edge. The pressure against the back is just too much some days I just sit. Wasted and gone.

But it's also a choice. The medication is absolutely necessary for what I'm doing. And the dosage is adjustable. I can take less and feel better, but it won't work as well and as fast, and often even barely works at all. I can take more and risk the potential mental hazards with the physical changes, some not so good. I've tested varying dosages and found the limit.

And that's the conumdrum. More works for what I want but the push becomes more and the risk greater to falling off the edge. Less takes far longer, keeps me sane and normal, but doesn't work more than a minimum. And with the physician we adjust it accordingly.

I increase it and note the changes. At about two weeks the pressure begins, so I've always lowered it and within a week I'm back to normal. I do that 2-3 times a year, always with the same results. This time, I'm on six weeks because I wanted to see what happened past the two weeks. Now I know. And that doesn't change, and even slowly gets worse.

And it's the constant pressure pushing and the constant energy to stay seated and upright. It's not that I want to fall over the edge. I don't. I've found the best place to stay sane and still function as well as do what I want, except the one thing the medication helps. And that's the price and costs. And always the question.

So, I sit. Against the wind at my back and the abyss in front of me.