Yesterday evening a very good friend brought it to my attention that my recently abnormal audio-visual experiences might in fact not be the result of demonic posession or evil sorcery, or even mundane craziness.

Apparently, according to her, all that and more can be attributed to lack of sleep.

Lack of sleep, or poor sleep, are of course ongoing themes in my existance. I take hours to fall asleep, wake up frequently, and I’ve got sleep apnea so even when I think I’m sleeping, I’m probably not.

She suggested that some supplements might help me get some decent sleep, and that in turn could help me with the depression, stress, et cetera.

So I took the suggestion and ran with it!

Pilz-E said he’d guard the pills for me. He’s good that way.

I got Melatonin to help with the sleeping because my sleeping seriously needs help and the bottle said it would help with that and I got 5-HTP because it’ll “Promote Healthy Mood Balance” and I don’t wanna have my mood balance be all unhealthy which I bet it is right now because I haven’t been taking 5-HTP before and then there’s a great big economy-size bottle of back-pain pills because my back hurts a lot because when I was eighteen I broke it skydiving but I got better but now it hurts and who’d have ever thought that breaking your back would have any kind of long term effects that’d haunt me 20 years later.

So hopefully in a week or so, I’ll be sleeping quietly, mentally stable, free of backpain, and will no longer have the insides of my eyeballs spelling out messages in Elder Futhark while I’m trying to drive.

Have you ever heard the saying, “You can’t buy happiness”, or “money can’t buy happiness”, or words to that effect?

Well it’s bullshit.

The lack of money can lead to a significant happiness deficit. And if your happiness level is in arrears because you’re stressed-out about being broke, or unable to pay the bills or the mortgage… and if having a [better] job and more money would allieviate that stress and therefore allow you to get out of a negative-happiness balance, then that just mathematically proves that yes you can in fact buy happiness.

I’m not saying that money and happiness are equivalent. There’s probably an exchange rate, and it probably varies from day to day and person to person. Maybe there’s limits too. Like if you’re already pretty happy, then money won’t buy you any more of it?

But damnit, I’m stressed about work, money, bills, work bills, work money, mortgages, and money, and it’s making me really fucking unhappy. It doesn’t help that I haven’t been in a particularily good place to begin with.

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I recently attended a get-together where I met a number of new people for the first time (or at least I assume it was the first time) and while it was overall an interesting and enjoyable evening, there was also a nagging fear about next time.

Next time, at the next get-together, when they’ll expect me to recognize them all.

Sooner or later I’ll have to explain about face-blindness to them, and trying to figure out how best to handle that, I got the idea to just put it on a t-shirt. Something that would catch their attention and perhaps get them to ask some questions.

I figure that might help break the ice and make it easier to bring up the subject. FaceBlind.org is the URL for some of the official researchers who have been studying Prosopagnosia, and it’s easy to read, pronounce and remember.

Overnight last night we finally had rain here. It’s been a long time coming – they kept forcasting rain and it kept not raining. Storms too, they’d say we’re in for a storm, and then nothing happened.

I’ve been under so much stress lately, I haven’t been sleeping. Haven’t been functioning well. Have barely been keeping it together.

Last night was the first night in ages where I was able to fall asleep easily, without excessive amounts of alcohol first.

Last night, although I did wake up frequently (as I always do) I was actually able to get back to sleep quickly and easily, without needing to stare at the ceiling or play solitaire for an hour or two each time.

This morning, I actually slept in.

It’s the rain, I think.

Every time I woke up last night and heard the rain pouring down, beating against the windows and the roof, rushing through the leaves in the trees, rattling off the shed and splashing into the pools forming in my backyard… I just felt like it was washing troubles away.

The air smelled clean and fresh.

I felt like it was washing away all the worries and stresses and problems off my shoulders. For the first time in weeks I felt happy.

I hope it keeps raining. I want it to rain all week. All month even.

I wouldn’t complain if we got a few storms too.

I’m grateful for the rain.

Canada Post sucks.

Vancouver Canucks failed.

Work was hectic and occasionally stressful.

The weather was ok.

That is all.

I had a dream last night about coming completely undone. I seem to be in an ever-increasing state of general befuddlement, punctuated by moments of extreme focus.

Like, when I’m on a task, I can really focus in on it and get at it, whether it’s work or fun or whatever. But in between tasks, half the time I’m clueless. I forget where I’m going, what I’m supposed to be doing, I can’t even remember for more than an hour things like what day is it, what month is it, what season is it? At times I have to concentrate to remember left and right. I make lists all the time, and then if I forget the list or I forget to look at the list then stuff doesn’t get done.

Like there’s so much going into my brain, it’s full, it’s on overload. To quote Homer Simpson, “Remember that time I took a home winemaking course, then forgot how to drive?” well ok it’s not quite like that.

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It’s a good word to describe how I feel, frequently. Fragile. I don’t mean physically fragile (although I do feel that way too at times.) I mean emotionally, mentally fragile. Like, easily-damaged, handle with care. Between the various stresses, the depression, the anti-depressants, feeling like I’m being pulled in a couple dozen different directions, and not often not having anyone I can talk to about everything. So I can talk here, right? Well, no, not always. See, anything posted in a blog or on a website is essentially published in a public forum. So there’s entire topics I can’t even touch upon here. I have to watch what I say.

These are difficult times. Between the economy and the ever-increasing pace of life, a lot of people are feeling the stress get to them. Knowing that, I will say that one of the dumbest ‘games’ people can get into is the Who’s Life Sucks More? game. Also known as the My Problems are Bigger Than Yours game, the My Hurt’s More Than Yours game, and the I’m the Most Depressed game. Any time you and your friend/family start playing these games (unintentionally or otherwise) there are no winners, only losers. Now, most people don’t play these games on purpose. Maybe the occasional person is compelled to one-up-manship. But typically if someone mentions to you how shitty their life is at the moment, they aren’t trying to win at anything, they might want some sympathy, but that’s about it. And if you tell someone how shitty your life is and they respond with how crappy their own life is, that probably isn’t a ‘challenge’ or ‘throwdown’. They could just be comiserating. As in “I know what you mean, my life sucks too.” — although if you’re already feeling like crap, it’s easy to misinterpret their response as them trying to belittle your pain by saying how much worse theirs is.

Ultimately, everyone’s personal pain is the worst pain there is. None of us can know what the other is going through.

I’m going to pop in the ‘read more’ button here and warn you, if you want to keep reading, it is going to get a tad dark as I allow myself to wallow around a bit in some self pity.

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