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

Recovery Part 2 (With Gratuitous Dinosaur Fact)

Hi blog! 

Again, a small hiatus. This time with no real reason other than I have not been feeling too great, so I subsequently didn’t feel up to writing anything. Don’t worry, I’m not sick or anything, but I have been suffering through a particularly brutal bout of rabid insomnia for nearly two weeks now. I am not entirely sure why it has cropped up, but I do know that I haven’t gotten more than four hours of sleep in a single night since it began. It’s also taken a long time to actually get tired enough to fall asleep, so I’ve been falling asleep no sooner than 3 or 4 am, sometimes after 6 am when it’s particularly bad. This is not exactly new for me, I've had trouble sleeping for several years, although a couple years ago it got extremely bad (similar to the level it is now, but over a period of over a year. I have no idea how I functioned during that time to be honest), but eventually calmed down a bit. Still, I can't remember the last time I consistently got more than 6 hours of sleep. Anyways, this recent round of insomnia makes it somewhat hard to think, so this blog post probably won’t be the sort of stellar work you’re used to seeing written upon thy blank ephemeral body...or something.

Well, let’s get to the more important part of the post: my health. I saw my doctor on Monday (part of the reason for the delayed post), and after an ever-increasing amount of work with my at-home physical therapy, he was incredibly pleased with my progress. When I last saw him, he explained that when I was fully healed I would probably be looking at a little over 90 degrees in my range of motion in a couple directions due to the condition of the muscles over the last six years (they have been “stuck” in a very narrow range for quite some time, so stretching them back out would be a difficult, if not impossible task for me to achieve). However, the last measurement I had of my range of motion was 104 degrees when I raise my arm straight up, almost 15 degrees better than I was expected to have in over a year, and that happened in less than a month! Already I’m exceeding expectations set for me a year from now, and I’m exactly one month out from surgery. This astounded my doctor and, needless to say, pleased him greatly to see me overachieving like this (I'm also overachieving in my insomnia apparently). I’m actually doing so well that my right shoulder is now better than it was prior to the surgery and is getting close to matching my left shoulder (which was slightly better than the right before I had the surgery), and looks like it will soon surpass it. I've also been allowed to start weening myself off of my sling, so when I'm resting or just getting up for a couple minutes, I usually leave my sling off and cradle my arm to me like a very short, unfeathered, pink T-rex.

I can’t really claim all that much is going on with me. I haven’t done a lot of writing, just a few paragraphs here and there. Anytime I go to sit down to write, I’m either too tired or not motivated enough to do all that much. After just a few minutes I hit a wall and find myself staring at a mocking page, laughing at me and doing a hateful writer’s block dance. I would love nothing more than to reach through my computer and strangle the everliving crap out of it. Alas, I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to strangle an anthropomorphic metaphor, but I’d have to ask a scientist to be sure about that. 

No writing excerpts today, Nick is currently in Spain doing some sort of demonic hell race, probably with bulls in it, so I haven’t seen him this week. But if I can manage to defeat, or at least stave off, my writer’s block, then I might have something for you next update. No promises though, I hate to make a promise and not keep it. Your word is important after all. Right blog? Hm, still no answer. I guess the blog isn’t self-aware yet.

Run Nick RUN! (Not actually Nick)

Ciao blog and readers of blog.

Your insomniac updater,

Andrew