Sometimes It Crashes Around You

Hi blog,

Apologies for the abnormally long pause in post, I'd been meaning to do post more frequently and instead the exact opposite happened. It's something to work on.

Part of the reason for not posting when I normally do is because there really isn't all that much going on. It's been relatively low-key over the last couple weeks and finding anything interesting is a bit of a challenge. That applies to positive things though, there's been a slew of neutral and negative things piling up, which accounts for the other reason I didn't post at the normal time: I'm feeling overwhelmed.

Looking at nudibranchs...great stress reliever

My version of overwhelmed seemed oddly calm compared to some people's, but it's less about the workload and more about the mental taxation it puts on me in terms of anxiety and stress. I've been scrambling to get a number of school-related issues cleared up and have been running into nonsense after nonsense that pushes me back two steps for every one I put forward. Coming across all this bureaucratic BS that has been making it difficult to get anything done, I've become more and more stressed as these tasks are added to even more things I need to do, creating a backlog of different chores and assignments that doesn't ever seem to get any smaller. Mixed in with the schoolwork that I'm not quite used to just yet and it leads to me feeling anxious. I've managed to whittle away at some of these projects but then something else will come up that needs to get done and the neverending march does its own whittling on my heavy mind.

But why is my mind heavy? Surely it may be frustrating to deal with all these assignments, but it's not impossible to deal with them given the time and the mental stamina. Within the latter lies my other major problem. I'm worn out mentally and emotionally exhausted. You might think the upcoming surgery is weighing heavily on my mind, but really it isn't. In my last post I discussed how it actually was somewhat of a relief to get it out of the way. Instead, my taxing problem is with my knee. For almost nine months now I've been experiencing some new form of new pain within my right knee. I had that one replaced with an allograft almost two years ago to deal with the same degeneration that has plagued the rest of my body. This new pain started off minor, so I didn't think much of it, just some pain because I was doing a lot more walking after a semester of on campus classes for the first time. However, it recently kicked up to a much sharper level last month and my mind invariably goes to the worst-case scenario of severe damage, either due to further degeneration or a failure of the allograft. I didn't do anything about it for a few weeks, in part because I was almost overwhelmed from all the other work, but mostly because I didn't want to find out what it was and learn I might need to have yet another surgery. "But Andrew, don't you like surgery? You just said-" Bugger what I just said. This is different, this wasn't expected. It's forced to light a problem and possibility I've been trying to ignore for a while now: that the rest of my life could be spent fixing one problem or another, that the surgeries will end up being continuous as one problem emerges. I hoped to avoid further surgeries and have all my replacements hold up for at least ten years, and now I'm facing (what I think) is a real possibility that something very bad is wrong with my knee. Of course, I could be wrong, but this kind of deep, sharp pain is eerily reminiscent of my pre-surgery knee pain. I had x-rays done of it a couple days ago, but couldn't get in to see my knee specialist until October 9th since he's out of the office for almost all of September. Instead I'll be going to my general practitioner, who luckily is a sports doctor so at least he knows damaged bones when he sees them. I can get a preliminary idea of what's wrong from him I hope and then see the knee specialist to be absolutely sure.

All in all, I'm tired. I haven't been sleeping because if I bend my knee to a certain angle the pain kicks in (and because I'm a rabid insomniac to start with). Actually it only hurts within a certain angle and otherwise is fine. It could be because there's something grinding against something else or a spur of some kind. Now I have to wait for over a month wondering what's wrong with my knee and try to live as normal a life I can, getting things done and continuing to rehab my shoulder. Maybe I'm just blowing this all wildly out of proportion, but my mind already has had the idea and now, in its tenacious desire to freak me out, it won't let me abandon it. It feels like everything is happening all at once, raging and howling at me like some vindictive hellstorm that whips up a frenzied tsunami as I stand helplessly in the middle of my 10' by 10' walled fortress plopped squarely in a vast ocean of problems. I'm just waiting for the waves and the wind to sweep me away as I watch the churning water crash around me, slowly but surely eroding the not-so-very solid rock beneath my feet and knocking bricks from my flimsy walls. All I can do is watch and occasionally stick a brick back in place, feeling like an exercise in futility.

Andrew stared unseeingly at his computer screen for a couple minutes, the imagery all too real in his head as yet more concerns about his knee taunted him. Then he blinked and took in a deep breath, which escaped in a slow, steady sigh ending with more finger movement across the keyboard.

...annnnyyyyways...

I'm supposed to be working on my memoir but that got kicked aside as soon as school started abruptly. Maybe since I'm not sleeping I can work on the outline I keep promising Nick I'll do. I really need to get that done. My writing has not totally suffered though! Positive note time, because I hate ending on less than positive news. I've been working on a revamped version of a short story I wrote four years ago and finally finished the rough draft and posted it online a few days ago on a few different websites. Officially, it's a Harry Potter "fanfic," but if you've read this blog even just a couple times you should know better than to expect something normal. In fact, you should be downright suspicious because I'm not the kind of person to write nice, fluffy pieces (as evidenced by the brutality of The Eagle and the Milk or the pure oddity of Fruity Pebble Tea), although I have been known to indulge in them from time to time. Most of my short stories are more along the lines of the two examples given above though, so if you do read the Harry Potter "fanfic" (there's a reason for the quotation marks) just be aware of what you're getting yourself into. Links to the various sites for the story will be posted below. PS: I wrote a poem as well, you probably guess it is weird and odd and quirkly. You're right.


Message for Mr. Potter - FanFiction
Message for Mr. Potter - Archive of Our Own
Message for Mr. Potter - Wattpad
Message for Mr. Potter - Goodreads

I think that's about enough for today. I might update on Monday if I have anything worth mentioning. Feel free to share the Harry Potter "fanfic" if you want, or don't, that's fine too.

Blog, you might have to deal with more erratic posting habits for a bit while I work to get my life under some semblance of control, but I shall not forget you! (Probably)

Your tired tyrant,
Andrew

Nickronicity

Hi blog,

Today Nick and I met and discussed some topics for out books. Since our stories intertwine at certain points, our main goal today was to work on finding ways of connecting our books, showing points where we either were together or nearby, or finding similar emotions or events that we both experienced but weren't necessarily in the same place when they happened. In essence, we're attempting to synchronize our books. Since I'm trying to synchronize with Nick, it has henceforth been dubbed: Nickronicity. I called them explicit and implicit events. The explicit events took place when we were together: high school, middle school, when he was doing his 3000 For the Cure project, and more recently after he came back from college. Implicit events were things like: how we felt at certain points in our lives, major historical events, important life events, and how his timeline and my own seem to either mirror each other or have opposite amplitudes (his life being great vs. me going through the worst stuff in my life).

But before we got into that, we decided to do a couple writing exercises. Nick was working on some of his stuff yesterday and had worked himself into a very good writing mood. He decided he wanted to take advantage of that and set for us a very strange writing task. As he was sipping his tea (which he had made a couple minutes before) he commented on the fact that it tasted like Fruity Pebbles. That gave him the idea for our writing exercise. "We'll write a short story on one page of paper that has to start with 'This tea tastes like Fruity Pebbles!'" His story, once he finished it, was a lot more cohesive and normal than mine. Mine...well...here it is...

This tea tastes like Fruity Pebbles!” the priest spat as he chucked the cup at the nun. The woman glowered at him before staring at the muddy-colored stain splattered across the wall behind her.

“I hope you don’t think I’ll be the one to clean that up,” she huffed irritably. “Honestly Jim, you’re such a fluffing child.”

The 436-year old priest WAS a child though. Although his aged mind was sharp as ever, his body had never grown past five years old. “And whose garnet-dwelling fault is that?” he whined.

The vampire nun rolled her sharp, crystal-blue eyes and started to pick up the mess. “Honestly Jim, thou art a boil. You should be thankful the Creator has gifted us so.”

“Easy for you to say Bev, you’ve got the body of a 16-year old maiden with the brain of Sun Tzu.” Jim walked over and helped her pick up the sharp pieces of glass. “One day we’ll fi this.”

“The cup?”

“Not the ever-preaching cup! Our curse you mutting horse. Now, where did you leave our guest?”

“Basement, same as always. Let me know when you’re hungry. I picked some fresh leeks. Go get the water boiling. We’ll have crème de screaming tortured gooseman tonight.”

“My favorite!” exclaimed Jim.

Yea...anyways. You can probably tell that I didn't have a clue what the hell I was doing. Insanity is a good bet though, for me at least. This is what happens when I don't get to write fiction for several months, the scaly weasel that lives in my head and helps me write starts to do really odd things.

Apparently there's a pangolin in my head

I'm still trying to get this blog to reach a wider audience. As much as shameless self-promotion bugs me a bit, I think it's more important that people start reading this blog in greater numbers (not at ALL biased on that). If for no other reason than to highlight some of the important tips given out during Awareness Week. So if you could share this blog with other people, post links up on your Facebook or Twitter or whatever, comment below, subscribe by email (look right), the whole works, I would be vastly grateful. I've already given you a present in the form of a short story: Relax. A preemptive gift so to speak. Thank you.

Blog, I hope you and I can reach more people, I know that's what both of us want. You like having people read you, you exhibitionist sneak, but I actually feel like sharing useful things with people (...sometimes. Other times I like talking about vampire nuns apparently) and helping them out whenever possible.

Sincerely, your caring dictator for life, Andrew