28. August 2010 by Frank.

I’ve been moving furniture and am in a great deal of pain.  Which is normally what happens when heavy lifting is involved.  The problem for me is slightly more complex because I don’t know what caused which pain.

I have been feeling like crap all week.  The symptoms vary from day to day.  Some days I feel like I have some kind of intestinal virus but nothing ever develops.  Other days my head gets all plugged up and headachy.  Some days my back hurts like I pulled a muscle, other days it feels like some of my initial stroke related pain.  Still other days it feels like my guts or my kidneys are inflamed but there are no other symptoms indicating such problems.  And then the next day it feels like something else entirely.

This is Year 12 of this sort of thing.

I can hurt myself mainly on my right side without any indication that I did so.  I think I may have pulled a muscle when I lifted my wife’s TV about ten days ago.  It’s old fashioned, huge, and weighs about 80 lbs., very awkward to pick up.  But if I did pull a muscle, I didn’t know it until a few days later when it started getting harder to move my arm and my back started hurting.

Or I could have some kind of infection.

I just don’t know and I can’t afford to go running to the ER every time I have some real or imagined pain.  I can’t tell the difference.

When I first had the stroke, the pain in my arm that has never relinquished began that first day.  I never had any chronic arm pain before.  I sure didn’t have the bizarre agony I live with now.  So after it became apparent it wasn’t going away any time soon, I had them run some tests on it, including x-rays.

In typical “give this guy crappy medical service” fashion, they announced that  I had a massively bad case of arthritis.  How does one develop massively bad arthritis instantly?  This is not arthritis.  It’s a painful variation of paralysis from the stroke which left me still able to move.

Uh oh, contradiction of terms. 

So be it.  I am a walking contradiction of terms.

I am in more pain than most people, I guarantee it’s bad enough it would incapacitate a great many of you without the use of heavy narcotics.  But despite what I feel, I have more energy, more joy, more passion for living than I ever did before.  I am far more determined than ever.

Which is all a very good thing.

But it is a nuisance when I do something that hurts me more and I can’t tell that I did it.  I don’t necessarily feel more pain, I just become aware that something isn’t moving as well or something gets weaker inexplicably.

Phantom pain is quite strange.  There isn’t anything physically wrong with my arm yet I could easily give it a “10” on the pain scale.  This is aggravating to say the least.  I could have a serious sprain or pulled muscle and not know it until I try to move in such a way as to cause the muscle to fail.

So until something else confirms what’s wrong, I’ll just muddle on through.  The worst of the moving is over.  Everything will be back to normal soon.

Which for me is anything but normal.

Posted in interpretation, humor, wild guesses, listen, emotion, stroke | Print | 2 Comments »

5. August 2010 by Frank.

After my incredible 12 cent raise I figured the financial screwing had reached a new low.  Naturally I was wrong.  Now comes a letter informing me that my insurance company wants to control what medicines we can take.  My wife’s anti-seizure med is a name brand but it is not on my insurance company’s preferred list.  So we were told quite bluntly that she can either switch to a generic or keep her name brand and pay more for it.  Tough titty if that doesn’t suit you.

Unbeknownst to them but “knownst” to me, we already tried that last year with disastrous results.  After a few weeks on the generic she started having seizures.  Quickly switching back to the name brand they stopped and have not come back.  For some reason the generic just doesn’t do the job.  Now I have a frigging insurance company telling me to use the generic or they won’t cover as much of it.

They have also changed to a mail order only plan that requires you order a 3 month supply in order to be covered or else they will only cover 50% of what you get any other way.  On top of that all the deductibles reset last month so there’s several hundreds of charges they won’t cover at all right now.  And they raised the premiums.

But this is the best coverage my company can find for its employees.

Meanwhile our fearless government is actually debating cutting Social Security.  We’re barely (and I mean that literally) surviving with my wife’s SSI disability check.  If that gets cut or goes away, we’ve had it.  We will be living on the street in our old age.

But wait, there’s more.  I just ordered my wife’s meds which will be well over two hundred dollars (with the deductibles and reduced coverage).  This destroys my budget at the same time I’ve run out of my meds (which are generics).  In order to pay for my wife’s meds I have to put off buying mine.  So up goes my blood pressure and Stroke2 City is just around the corner.

No matter what I do I’m screwed.

This five day respite has not worked out well.  There was no money and no relief from the heat and humidity.  I have to stay in my computer room (with my little AC) all day or sweat to death in a living room that gets up to a hundred.  I went out walking but that was it.

Maybe I’m just too tired and rundown.  Maybe the heat and humidity are just getting to me.  Maybe I’m just in my annual foul mood because Thursday is Stroke Anniversary Day.  Maybe living on the edge of disaster for so long has just worn me out.

I just feel like any decision I make is wrong.

I know that I’ve been griping about work for years.  I don’t know anyone who’s happy with their job.  A certain amount of complaining is normal and probably healthy.  But it has gone beyond that,

Several months ago they made what seemed like a minor management change, they switched the two assistant managers’ responsibilities.  The morale and operation of the store has gone downhill ever since.  It seems as if all three managers are working at cross purposes and are actively undermining each other.  Necessary work is not getting done, policies and procedures are not being followed, and employees are getting the blame and being dumped on.  Morale has never been this low even back in the days when they tried to scare us that the store was going to be closed.

The one hour I went in Sunday morning for the sales meeting put me in a near rage for the rest of the day.

It is now also officially Back To School season which is our busiest time of year.  It’s not likely that all the crap is going to get fixed now.  I dare say it will be getting much worse.

Immediately after that ends in the middle of September, two giant changes are going to happen.  The store will be remodeled into more of a tech-centric operation, quite extensive actually.  That part could be fun.  But the bad comes right afterward.  All assistant managers company wide are going to become hourly employees.  This has all the makings of a major disaster, especially for all the keyholders such as myself.  Since no one is allowed to work any overtime whatsoever, we will be stuck opening and closing far more often than we do now, which means even less time to do what we’re already responsible for.  It also means we have two more people that we’ll have to cover lunches for.  More time pissed away.  If just shifting the responsibilities of the two assistants we have caused the worst plummet in morale I’ve ever seen, I can imagine what this is going to cause.

Black Friday shows up immediately afterwards.  Oh, the humanity!

Plus we have the stress of my daughter and son-in-law moving back in with us next month because my daughter being out of work for a year ruined them financially as well.  Fortunately, we all get along great so it will be good.  But it will be a change.

No more sitting around in my underwear.

So why is this my latest blog entry?  Because it’s what’s on my mind and I just feel like bitching.

Posted in humor, sarcasm, technology, communication, emotion, wild guesses, stroke | Print | 1 Comment »

4. August 2010 by Frank.

Unbelievably, another anniversary is upon me.  It’s time for my annual “Life After Stroke” report.  Curiously enough, Pandora just played Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb, which I’ve mentioned before says a lot about me.  Obviously the song isn’t about my life but if I had any talent it might be something I would say.

(Songwriters: David Jon Gilmour & Roger Waters) “Relax

I’ll need some information first

Just the basic facts

Can you show me where it hurts?

There is no pain you are receding

A distant ship’s smoke on the horizon

You are only coming through in waves

Your lips move but I can’t hear what you’re saying

When I was a child I had a fever

My hands  felt just like two balloons

Now I’ve got that feeling once again

I can’t explain you would not understand

This is not how I am

I have become comfortably numb.”

I realize a song can mean different things to different people but something about this one really connects with my experience.  Comfortably numb truly describes how I am with my pain.  I have been suffering with this for 12 years now and it’s the only way I’ve been able to handle it.  I could ask my doctor for a prescription for some heavy duty narcotic pain pills and he would gladly oblige.  He did that back at the beginning which is when I discovered that being doped out of your mind is no way to live.

All I got from a neurologist was more prescriptions for even stronger narcotics and the knowledge that I have a “fluffy” brain.  Supposedly that meant my brain looked normal for someone 10 years older than I was at the time.  Which probably means that right now it’s most likely dead already and my body just doesn’t know it yet.

I have done everything I can over the last 12 years to keep my mind active.  I read everything under the sun (except novels I used to love) and constantly try to learn new things.  I keep up with technology.  I plow into things I have no experience with just to keep my mind actively engaged as much as possible.

And I have learned how to ignore pain most of the time.

Unfortunately, I was never able to afford the kind of care I actually needed to overcome the effects of brain damage.  My doctor had little or no experience with stroke survivors and the neurologist I had was of the drug them into a stupor and forget it variety.  I had two pastors at the time and neither of them had any counsel or wisdom beyond keep praying and god will fix you.  My wife told me she wasn’t going to support the family and my “friends” proved to be nonexistent.

So I did what any self reliant brain damaged survivor would do, I studied everything I could get my hands on that described anything remotely similar to what I was experiencing.  My doctor kept insisting that stroke didn’t cause the things that were happening to me but the more I studied the more convinced I became that it did.  When I made contact with other survivors I found out that my experiences were not that unusual and that my doctor wasn’t the only medical idiot out there who denied it.

I have a very dim view of the medical profession.  The most they ever offered me was stronger drugs.  Drugs that essentially made it impossible to function in normal everyday life. 

My religion failed me at the same time.  The love of god was a joke.  How can you be a member of two churches and have no one from either ever call, write, or visit after you suffer a life-altering stroke?  The healing power of Jesus?  Yeah.  Whatever it was that I thought I felt from god all those years was gone in an instant.  I searched diligently for it afterwards but I could not find it.

I did not know how to walk after the stroke, I had to be retrained.  Now it is my favorite thing to do.  I’ve lost at least 20 lbs just from walking the last few months.  I still have problems keeping my balance at times and my feet hate me.  I got in nearly 3 miles this morning before the heat, humidity, and rain ruined the day.

I feel miserable.  That’s my normal condition.  You would be curled up in a little ball, sucking your thumb, and whimpering for your mama if you felt like I do on one of my good days.  You would shoot yourself if you felt like I do on a bad day.  No brag, just fact.

I don’t get any sympathy and I really don’t want any.  Compassion might be nice but I seldom get any of that.  Most of the time I just prefer to be left alone.  I can deal with what I feel like but it takes to much energy to put on a show for people who want me to be happy, bright, and cheerful.  Actually, considering my normal pain level, I am the most cheerful man alive.  I can make other people happy and I can make them laugh.  I just wish someone would make an effort in my direction once in awhile.

And now I live my life just one disaster away from total disaster.

Like the song concludes:  “When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse

Out of the corner of my eye

I turned to look but it was gone

I cannot put my finger on it now

The child is grown the dream is gone

I have become comfortably numb.”

Posted in interpretation, humor, sarcasm, wild guesses, listen, emotion, hearing, stroke | Print | 2 Comments »

19. July 2010 by Frank.

As we enter our 4th week of 90 degree + very high humidity weather, a number of interesting events have taken place.

This weekend is/was the third big crowd event in town; the 4th of July fireworks, the art fair, and the Venetian Festival.  I have no interest in any of that but somehow or other I have managed to either be there or on the fringe of each of them.  I’ve seen all the crowds and walked amongst them unnoticed.  I’ve enjoyed some of the stuff while not actually doing any of the stuff.

Despite how uncomfortable it has been I have been outside walking more miles than I ever have in my life.  My feet are killing me but that hasn’t stopped me.  I’ve been sweating so much I should be only a pile of dust by now.  I really feel like I’m accomplishing something.  My weight has gone way down.  Except for my feet the rest of me feels pretty damn good.

My wife has friends visiting from Florida for the Venetian Festival.  Their original plans only included my wife and her girlfriend but the girlfriend got married last month and brought her new husband with her.  They only had three tickets to all the concerts and events so they have been off on their own and I have been left to fend for myself.  Which is OK by me, I have never heard of any of the entertainment they have down there and I will not eat outdoors in 90 degree heat.  That’s a real sure way to get deathly ill real fast.  I drove them down there and picked them up later and wound up walking around several miles two nights in a row.  I went and set up someone’s new high speed internet service in the meantime.

When we picked the friends up from the South Bend airport I couldn’t help noticing how much more empty it’s gotten since the last time I was there a couple of years ago.  Everything is now concentrated in one little area for boarding and exiting and they’ve moved all the security checkpoint stuff right up front.  The people manning this station looked absolutely bored out of their minds.  The airport is still functioning at threat level orange, a fact they keep repeating on the PA incessantly.  The staff all wear their little sanitary blue plastic gloves and the feigned disinterest which they scrutinize passengers seems rather artificial.  Air travel is pathetic.  Even if I had money, I would have no desire to fly anywhere.  If we give in the terrorists have won.  Guess what?  We gave in, the terrorists won.  I remember when this airport was a bustling, living enterprise; now, it’s just a shell.

Yesterday morning, my daughter and I went to see INCEPTION.  It was mind blowing as promised.  I’ll write up a review of it soon, maybe after I’ve seen it a second time.  I’m not entirely sure I saw what I thought I saw or that I interpreted what I thought I saw correctly.  You really have to pay attention, you can’t be texting or talking to your date.  The movie requires and demands all your attention.  And it insists your brain must be engaged and functional.  A trip to the concession counter would mean you should probably just go home because you’ll never catch back up if you miss just one scene.  If you want mindless, Summer, popcorn fare don’t even bother.  Highly recommended for serious, heavy duty, movie nuts.  I will say the special effects in this movie are absolutely awesome because they look real, so real that you’ll be wondering how in the world they did that.

Yesterday afternoon, however, was the real surprise of the weekend.

My friend, who goes on walks with me, got two tickets to some kind of event in South Bend and wanted me to go with him.  I didn’t know what it was supposed to be other than it involved a lot of walking so I went along.  He asked me to bring my camera.  It turns out it was a garden tour of an area they are trying to revitalize.  Strange but it was something to do.

Let me establish a few background details.  My friend is from Jamaica, he has a very strong accent, and he is very dark skinned.  He was wearing white shorts, white socks, white tennis shoes, white baseball cap, and a white muscle shirt.  And he is definitely into gardening.  I am pale white, silver haired, front toothless, wearing black tennis shoes, grey socks, black pants, a dark grey shirt (because all my light colored stuff was in the wash), and a white baseball cap.  No interest in gardens whatsoever.  So, essentially, a black man all in white and a white man almost all in black.  Felix and Oscar, if you will.

Bear with me, there’s a reason I mention this.

The garden tour took place in a rather rundown neighborhood that bordered on a somewhat ritzier neighborhood, a rather stark contrast.  There were many abandoned houses and old buildings, boarded up windows and many with shattered glass.  The sidewalks were frequently overgrown with weeds and littered with all sorts of trash.  Not the kind of place you would deliberately want to walk though.

The whole area screamed poverty.  My friend called it a ghetto.  In slang terms around here, it would be called “the ‘hood”.

Keeping in mind the appearance of my friend and I, we attracted a lot of attention as we walked around for three hours in the oppressive heat.  We’re both carrying our guide maps with the gardens marked on them and I’m taking pictures with my very noticeably expensive camera.  My friend thought the people were reacting to us like they thought we were undercover cops looking for drugs or something.  It was an odd journey.

But here’s where prior perceptions come in.

When you think of poverty or people living in slums or dying neighborhoods what do you expect those people to be like?  Do you think they’re all hostile or angry?  Do you expect violence or drunkenness?  Are you expecting drugs and prostitutes?  Would you be afraid of getting mugged or worse?

We did see some of that in evidence.

But what blew both our perceptions out of the water were the people who were part of the garden tour.  There were over two dozen gardens on the self guided tour, many of which were quite elaborate.  Most were manned by the gardeners themselves who were exceptionally friendly, very informative, quite happy, and upbeat.  Not a trace of fear or apprehension about having strangers coming up to their houses and walking around their yards.  We were even welcomed into secluded, fenced in back yards that were like islands of beauty in empty fields.  They were genuinely delighted to have folks showing interest in their work.  It was interesting just to watch the behavior.  Such a stark contrast to what you would expect in such an area.

We were both exhausted after walking several miles but we both had to admit that were totally wrong about our original perceptions of the neighborhood we were in.  We both decided we had blinders on and that we made assumptions based on fears and prejudices.  Our worldviews are skewed to the negative and assume the worst based on certain visual indicators.  But, because we’re so different to begin with, our fears and prejudices stem from different sources, the results, unfortunately, are the same; we fear what we don’t know and we project that onto people whether they deserve it or not.

It was quite the eye opener on many levels and food for thought for weeks to come.

One last thing:  there’s one of those internet sites that takes a sample of your blog and awards you some kind of rating.  Like NC-17 if you swear a lot or talk about sex.  This new one that only seems to have just shown up this week promises to tell you what “real” writer you’re the most like.  I noticed a couple of bloggers did it and were informed they were like Stephen King.  Yeah, right.  So I did it, too, submitting my last two posts here separately.  The first one also got me the Stephen King rating but the second one earned me the H.P. Lovecraft award.  Which obviously means the website just generates random nonsense like every other website that gives these ratings “awards”.  Since I’ve read both King and Lovecraft, I’m quite certain I write like neither of them nor is there any correlation in my style to theirs.

The only down note to all of this was that the memory card in my camera failed.  Although it appeared to be working at first there are no photos to go with the story.  In six years I have never had a memory card fail under any kind of weather conditions.  I have been out in higher temperatures and extreme humidity before for a longer period of time.  So far, I’ve found no way to salvage anything off the card and I have yet to disprove that it was the camera that failed.  I’m worried that it’s the camera, I can’t fix it or replace it.  My dreams live or die with that camera.

Wait a minute!  Part of the premise of the movie was that you never know how the dream begins, you always just start in the middle.  It tells you to ask, “How did I get here?” and “Whose dream is this anyway?”  Maybe I just dreamed the camera failed.  Maybe if I wake up soon enough it will still be working. 

That’s it!  I’m still laying on the floor having a stroke in the factory 12 years ago and nothing I think is currently happening is actually happening!

I mean, seriously, Sarah Palin almost became the vice president of the country, christians feel the need to carry guns to church, George Bush got elected president twice, Rush Limbaugh is the head of the Republican party, the FCC decides you can say dirty words on TV, the Supreme Court decides corporations can make all the political contributions they want, a liberal, black, Muslim, law professor from Kenya who has no birth certificate and who’s a communist, socialist, Nazi all at the same time is the current president, and I went from being super-christian to atheist blogger?  Oh, come on!  What kind of sick, warped mind dreamed that up?

See, I’m right!

It is all a dream.

Wow.  I’ll have to write this down when I wake up.  I hope I can remember all of it.

Posted in communication, interpretation, technology, humor, sarcasm, wild guesses, listen, emotion, religion, education, hearing, signs, stroke | Print | 4 Comments »

4. July 2010 by Frank.

So a $3 error in my checking account led to a $40 fine for being overdrawn which caused something else to be short which pretty much ruined my 4 2/3 day weekend financially speaking.

Nevertheless, I went out for photos and walking for about three hours in glorious humidity free, cloudless air with temps that barely made it to 70.  Something very refreshing about that.  A couple hours from now, in virtually the same conditions, I’m going to go take in an outdoor big band concert.

For free.

That’s a nice word; free.  Especially when you’re broke and tired of just sitting around unable to do anything that costs money.

The truth will set you free, says the bible.  But that’s not the case, actually.  What it really does is put you in bondage.  How exactly are you free if you’re a slave to Christ?  How are you free if you have to toe the religious line all the time?  Where’s your freedom if what you want to do is considered a sin?  How is carrying a burden of guilt in any way freedom?

How can you be free of sin and yet still be a sinner?

The bible gets very confusing on this subject.  If you’re in Christ, you’re dead to sin.  Simple statement of fact.  Yet you still sin all the time, you’re still controlled by your sin nature.  You’re never more than a work in progress even though you’ve been redeemed.  And don’t you dare claim you have no sin.

There are plenty of people who will set you straight on that one.

And yet believers won’t let go of the idea of spreading their version of freedom around at every opportunity.  They don’t seem to  realize all the things they put restrictions on do not add up to freedom.  You are not supposed to think on negative sinful things, only that which praises god or is uplifting in some way.  Thinking itself has religious restrictions on it!  While there may be plenty of evidence that an obscene amount of people don’t think anyway, it’s frightening that there are billions whose religion tells them not to think for themselves.

And they actually believe it.

Curious that atheists are frequently called “freethinkers.”  While the terms are not necessarily synonymous, it’s curious how free thinking can have the same negative connotation.   I passed a church sign this morning that said true freedom is only in Christ.  Free thought would disagree with that completely.  God is the source of freedom as long as you are constrained by his guidelines.  Unfortunately that really means someone’s interpretation of his guidelines because the bible is so vague about what it really means.

There can be no doubt the bible is pro-slavery.  It was perfectly acceptable for the Jews to have slaves.  It was the will of god to make slaves of conquered people (unless he ordered their annihilation).  If you’re a believer, you’re a slave of Christ.  Why would god use that imagery if he wasn’t still of the same mind?  Have you ever noticed that you’re either a slave to sin or a slave to Christ?  No other options.  Freedom from sin means slavery to righteousness.

And that produces guilt which keeps you in bondage to sin.

You never get free of it until you die.

Somehow that seems like a pretty lousy plan.  There’s all sorts of euphemisms applied but essentially the idea is to keep you bound to the church and its clergy.  Sin never really lets go of you or you never really let go of it so you need someone to lead you back to righteousness and someone to forgive all your transgressions even after you’ve been washed in the blood.  That isn’t freedom, it’s bondage.

I used to preach the freedom in Christ but I wasn’t truly free until I left the church.  It began when I realized I had stopped feeling guilty about all the little things I enjoyed but which the church said were sin.  Every church service I sat in on was a reminder that I was doing something wrong, that somehow I didn’t measure up to god’s standards.  No matter how hard you were trying to live a godly life, you weren’t trying hard enough.  You weren’t praying enough, you weren’t reading your bible enough, you weren’t putting enough money in the collection plate, you didn’t really love everyone with the love of Christ, you weren’t leading enough people to god, you weren’t a good enough witness, and on and on.  Get away from those constant reminders for a period of time and see if you start feeling some actual freedom.

The world of the bible is the exact opposite of what it is presented as being.

Since I started writing this post I have walked 6 more miles, 3 of which were with a christian fanatic.  He confessed that after several years of being a christian he has still not read all the way through the new testament.  This is not surprising but in its own way it is shocking.  I pointed out to him that atheists know more about the bible than he does.  I never could figure out how I knew more about the bible than christians who had been christians for 40 or 50 years back when I was a christian.  It never occurred to me that they had never read their own holy word.  This guy admitted he had never read it because he’s incapable of understanding it anyway.  Ignorance is bliss and freedom is bondage if you have no knowledge of the foundation of your faith.

I read the blasted thing all the way through about 85 times!

That isn’t a brag or an exaggeration.  It’s a simple statement of fact.  I do things to the extreme, it’s the way I am and always have been.  It seems perfectly normal to me, nothing special at all.  Even the stroke did not alter that.

But apparently since it’s the 4th of July, I’m not the only one thinking in terms of free or freedom (which aren’t necessarily the same thing.)  This fellow also brought up being free in Christ.  That only the truth in Jesus could set you free.  The problem with his philosophy is that he has no idea what his written word actually says.

I don’t believe there’s any freedom in ignorance.

True freedom comes from considering everything rationally.  Take the emotion of guilt out it entirely.  Deep down in your heart you know the bible is wrong or you know your church is wrong.  You know the universe doesn’t revolve around the earth.  You know there wasn’t night and day before the sun was created on the 4th day.  You know mules don’t talk and you know that every species of animal on earth could not possibly fit or survive on a man-made boat.  You know that women aren’t property and that slavery is wrong.  You know that a god who tells you to hate your family and yourself isn’t really a god of love.  You know that.

But you’ll never be free as long as you believe that.

Don’t let your faith blind you.

Be free of religion.

And walk 13 miles in 4 days, it’ll make you feel good.

Posted in interpretation, communication, humor, sarcasm, listen, signs, religion, emotion, education, hearing, stroke | Print | 2 Comments »

17. May 2010 by Frank.

I walked about 4 miles yesterday.

I enjoyed it immensely but my feet didn’t.  My feet don’t like to walk, they like to complain.  I have three different styles of shoes with very different soles but my feet hate them all.  I don’t care, I go for long walks anyway.

This is a very common feature of my life.

I have to force myself to do things.  It is not laziness.  It is far beyond apathy.  I have no interest in doing anything.  I could zone out so easily and never snap out of it.  It may not sound like anything to you but it is a huge problem to me.  I have to work very hard to keep my mind interested in anything.

That’s one reason I write, it forces me to think.

I was helping someone get some online materials for his job.  There were 3 pages just listing all the acronyms the system uses.  I’ve never seen such a mess, it’s a wonder he can get anything accomplished.  I could tell you all sorts of things about how his industry works but obviously I’m not supposed to know any of it.  The point is, as complicated and confusing as all of it was and as difficult as it was obtaining the required information, it was not mentally stimulating.  I can do that kind of research with my eyes closed.  He doesn’t know how and he’s willing to pay.  I’m willing to get paid.

I set up my computer to dual boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu on two separate hard drives not because they have features that I just have to have but because it forces me to learn to do things differently.  I need to keep from getting bored or complacent because I lose what little focus I have real fast.  I haven’t been a command line interface kind of guy since back in the days of Commodore 64 Basic.

I play first person shooters because that hand-eye coordination thing is real.  I used games to get control of my right arm and hand after the stroke.  I have to have something to do to keep my fingers moving, they get very tight if I don’t.  My brain turns to mush so I play role playing games to solve quests and puzzles.  And I toss in some Mahjong with Chinese symbols and some Sudoku just in case.

I read all my news online and about a dozen blogs.  And a whole mess of tech sites.  I’m constantly trying to find something new to keep my mind active.  I’m continually trying to learn new things and new ways of doing old things.

After having seen too many people succumb to the mental and physical destructiveness of stroke, I am determined to never let that happen to me.

So I’m going to go take another walk because it’s beautiful outside right now.  I’m so tired of religion and politics.  I’m tired of my dead end job.  I’m tired of being so broke I can’t even pay attention.  I have seriously bad problems when I get too tired.  The desire to just shut down gets overwhelming.

Some fresh air will do me good and maybe I’ll spot a church sign I can ridicule.

Posted in wild guesses, interpretation, signs, education, emotion, stroke | Print | 2 Comments »

23. April 2010 by Frank.

I am the only surviving member of a small group of stroke survivors.  True, the group continues with new members, but I am referring to the original five.  All dead, all because of more strokes.  This is often a rather sobering thought.

Back in the day I was very strongly motivated to help other survivors keep themselves motivated.  Depression, apathy, alienation, and hopelessness attack survivors with the intent to strangle what little life they have left.  The closest friends and family seem all too willing to help with the strangling.

I have been fighting the effects of the stroke for nearly 12 years now.  I still have symptoms just as intense as the day it happened back in 1998.  I have not recovered.  I have changed.

I used to have a passion for reading.  That passion died.  I have managed to read a few books the last few years but I had to do it by sheer willpower because I had no desire to do it because I still loved it.  I used to have a passion for god.  That passion died.  The why and how of that is what this blog is mainly about.

I developed a passion for writing which I had all along but never really devoted myself to it.  I also discovered I have a passion for photography that was stronger than my previous love of painting.  There is also my passion for helping people.  Particularly stroke survivors.

At first, I was quite the activist, determined to make a difference.  It seemed I was accomplishing just that for awhile.  Then people began drifting away and I grew frustrated.  Eventually, they began to die, one by one.  They were soon all gone and I wasn’t quite as important to the new people who came in.  They were travelling in a different direction and I soon turned away myself.

The big difference, the irreconcilable difference, was that they wanted their normal lives back, but I didn’t.

I was altered all the way down to the core of my being and I knew it.  I liked it.  I was given a chance to build an entirely new life so I pounced all over it.  I gave no thought to trying to be like I was before.  That was exciting for me but rather disruptive to those around me.

I even changed my name.

Essentially I am a pod person, a replacement, a reasonable facsimile, a near duplicate.  But at the same time so radically removed that the appearance is entirely deceptive.  I am not the same man.  I am alien.

I was born in1955 and I’m going to be 55 tomorrow.  I have no problem with my age, it is inconsequential to me.  There is the simple fact, however, that only seven years remain until I hit retirement age.  Since we were financially wiped out twice since the stroke and have no retirement money left, I won’t be retiring.  The biggest problem this presents is not a matter of continuing to work, it is a matter of who to work for.  I would much rather work for myself than to put in any more time working for the man.

I have a passion to start my own photography business but I have been running into one brick wall after another.  The universe seems to be conspiring against me.  The old me would have given up by now but the new me just shrugs his shoulders and keeps on trying.

Passion is important.  The physical and mental condition I’m in wants nothing more than to sit in a chair and drool on myself for the rest of my life.  You have no idea how tempting or how easy that would be to give in to.  The trouble is that I have to work at maintaining any passion to do otherwise, I have to work real hard.  Because I have no passion for living.

I don’t feel much of anything.  Oh, there’s some mild emotional responses but there isn’t anything intense except anger, and it is very fleeting at best.   I literally don’t care about anything.  So it sounds as if I’m contradicting myself frequently.

What I’m looking for is something that generates strong enough feelings to keep me motivated to keep on fighting.  I focus on atheism, politics, religion and other such hot topics because, well, they frequently piss me off.  And that’s usually when I feel most alive.

Believe me you don’t want to be the last surviving member of a group.  Especially of a survivors group.  You could really use their input to keep yourself on course.

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16. April 2010 by Frank.

If I hadn’t used up 17 years of my life trying to be a man of god, what would I have accomplished that was different? Would I have lived differently enough that I could have avoided the stroke? Instead of trying to beat my ridiculously high blood pressure by faith would I have done everything I could to beat it with medicines, diet, and exercise? Or would I still have made the same errors in judgment but for other reasons?

It’s not really a matter of playing “What If?”

I wonder just how big a part faith actually played in the whole sordid mess. I hated the side effects I was getting from the drugs. I can easily imagine that I would still have rejected taking them, they were causing some nasty problems. Did I use faith to justify a very bad decision? What would I have used if I had no faith? It seems a forgone conclusion that I would have rebelled against the medicines at some point.

Assuming the stroke was inevitable, what would my response to it have been? Since I had no faith, would the stroke be the thing that led me to turn to faith? Then all the god pleasing would have started much later. Or would the lack of anything spiritual to overcome have hindered my recovery?

It’s fruitless I know. I just wonder about things like this sometimes. I am what I am now because of all the things I went through. All those years trying to live by faith gave me tremendous contrast to judge religion and atheism. Would I still be susceptible to the gospel now if I had not been so completely inundated in it back then?

Somehow, I have the feeling that I would not be the better man I am now if I didn’t have all that religious baggage to leave behind.

Technorati : faith, perception, questions, stroke, useless pursuits

Posted in communication, sarcasm, interpretation, wild guesses, religion, emotion, stroke | Print | 2 Comments »

19. February 2010 by Frank.

My memory is full of gaping holes since the stroke.  Large parts of my pre-stroke life are completely gone.  My current short-term memories are rather limited, to say the least.  I generally have to rely on some random stimulus to get access to some forgotten memory.

I realize there’s nothing particularly unique about that, it works that way for pretty much everyone.

But what do you do when detailed events, including names, don’t elicit any response at all?  I believe I mentioned it back when it happened, but my father was reminiscing about my early teen years in the neighborhood.  He was rattling off names and describing how the whole neighborhood came over to our house to play football and other games because we had quite a bit of land out back complete with a pond full of fish.  I recognized a lot of the names because they were neighbors for many many years.  But I couldn’t come up with a single memory about doing anything with any of them.

Nothing.

My dad covered several years but I drew a blank for the entire period.  It was as if he was talking about the experiences of some other person.  It was an awkward conversation.  And it was weird.

Especially weird since I do think of myself as a different person than I used to be.  That guy I was as a teenager doesn’t exist anymore. (Big surprise.)  That guy I was up until the ripe old age of 43 doesn’t exist anymore.  (Here’s where the weird comes into play.)  I have some similarities to him but I’m not him.  Why should I expect to be able to access his memories?

That’s why I tend to use the same stories over and over, I’ve got limited material to work with.

It’s also why I tend to go in random directions with this blog.  Often I’ll read something which triggers memories which I tend to write down before I forget them again.  Kind of like LSD flashbacks to the 60’s and 70’s.  Of course, I try to encourage that by having random PINK FLOYD songs come up on Pandora while I’m trying to write.

Music is one of the few things that my memory gaps don’t seem to cover.  Although I have to admit I really don’t understand why I used to like URIAH HEAP so much.  Similarly, I’m not sure if it’s memory or maturity which makes me wonder how I could ever have thought BLAZING SADDLES was actually a funny movie.  I guess that’s not really abnormal.

I used to read a couple of hundred books a year but in the last 12 years I’ve only read a handful.  (I still read a lot but it’s almost all online.)  Music is still important but I used to buy two or three albums a week.  Now I might buy a disc every year or two whether I need it or not.  Movies have remained the most consistent from the old man to the new man.  I still prefer science fiction/fantasy/action/adventure to everything else although I indulge in quite a few musicals and (gasp) chick flicks.  My taste in TV shows is the same as movies but I don’t have a clue what night or network anything I like is on.  I don’t watch TV on my television, I watch a few shows on HULU.

The thousand pound gulley cat in the picture, however, is religion.

I was fully planning on becoming a full time preacher.  I was even convinced that in order to do that I might have to start my own church.  Gung ho doesn’t begin to describe my attitude.  I was a fanatic of the first degree.  Nothing could stop me including multiple setbacks thrown in my way by other preachers intimidated by my style and passion.  I was so into living by faith that I nearly killed myself by refusing to take essential medicines to control my blood pressure.  I was an all or nothing type.

I still am.

I don’t understand this wishy-washy, agnostic, I’m not quite sure, stuff.  You are either a believer or you’re not.  Hot or cold.  Lukewarm will get you spit out, read your bible.  You don’t actually think that you can believe just a little just in case and be able to fool god into thinking you’re the real deal?  You don’t actually think just saying the magic words without any real conviction will get you in and keep you in without requiring all the other obedience necessary?

Seriously, folks, according to the bible, god has shown up in undeniable ways before and people still didn’t believe in him.  Study out some old testament Hebrew history.  If god were to show up today all over the earth at once, billions of people still wouldn’t believe he was really god.  Because if any little preconceived notion about him proved wrong, you would reject him; you would not automatically accept any new evidence, no matter how powerful.

Quite a few atheist bloggers like to claim no real atheist isn’t willing to be persuaded by some real proof.

Nonsense.  Jesus was god’s best statement to mankind.  Here’s a guy wandering around for three years speaking a few words of wisdom and performing some relatively minor magic tricks.  Supposedly the religious leaders didn’t recognize him but the common people did.  Those same common people turned right around and called for his condemnation when stirred up by the priests.  Those same common people did not rise up and save him from the Romans. 

Do you really think if he appears again that all the atheists, Hindus, Muslims, etc., are going to rise up and proclaim him king?  Now that there are actual explanations for how things work and technology has reached a point that it would appear godlike to any primitive person, do you really think any of god’s simple tricks are going to be sufficient proof?

I look at religion now and all I see is superstition.  Primitive fear.  Ignorance.  How could I have devoted myself to it for so long?  I first accepted the message when I was at the absolute lowest point in my life.  I had no resistance to the appeal of someone who would forgive me, cleanse me, make me whole, and become my best friend.  Why do you think they use funerals to preach their salvation message?

How can so many people be so blind to the fairy tale aspect of their holy word?  God gets so disgusted with sin that he wipes out all life except an impossible collection on an ark which includes people who are still sinners.  It took no time at all for sin to reclaim the world.  Bad plan there, god.  But we are also told that Jesus was the lamb slain from the beginning, he was the eternal plan for salvation.  If that’s the case what purpose did the flood serve?

Or how about the tower of Babel?  Do you really think they could have built a skyscraper taller than anything that exists now back in those days?  God was so threatened that he came down and confused the languages of men to stop them.  We have probes going to other planets and my computer can operate in multiple languages.  You can carry a little device in your pocket that will let you translate languages.

That may have impressed some primitive goat herders but what’s the big deal now?  I’ve been on the moon Pandora which was cool as hell, but it was all technology.  Think about it, we have moving pictures (with sound!) that come right out of thin air and we think absolutely nothing of it.  It’s perfectly normal and no big deal.

God would have to pull off the biggest stunt ever to convince the whole world and even then it would not do it.  But read your bible.  God doesn’t work that way.  His miracles and his power keep getting smaller and smaller in his own book.  His followers keep getting more and more simple minded.  God makes appearances in grilled cheese.  That’s not exactly big time proof.

I look and I wonder.  Why didn’t these things jump out at me back in the day?  Why didn’t the absurdity strike me?  Why didn’t I question the things I was taught?  The man of god said that god’s word said that’s how things are and I believed it. 

If only I could remember why I was so gullible.

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8. February 2010 by Frank.

(This was supposed to post several days ago but I’ve been on a mini-vacation (a wonderfully refreshing mini-vacation) made possible by an insurance payout from my late father-in-law.)

My job is deteriorating at an alarming pace.  Some truly bizarre plans and programs are being instituted at higher levels which can’t possibly bode well for a peon like me.  My particular store is apparently on very shaky ground despite decent sales numbers overall.  It’s certain key stats, however, that aren’t good enough.  Yes, that’s right, it’s the annual store is going to close scare.

This is the seventh or eighth time in the last ten years that this hoary old chestnut has been reused.

As usual, I’ll believe it when I see it.  I spent 17 years trying to convince myself you have to believe it first then you get to see it.  That’s what faith is, the evidence of things unseen.  You have to believe god’s promise first, believe you have already received the answer before there is an answer.  Then it will come to pass because god’s promises never fail.  Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.  Got that?  Faith is substance and evidence of the invisible.  Word of faith bible teaching at its best.

If you refuse to believe something until you see the evidence of it, well, that’s not faith.  It’s just an observation.  But if you believe it just because god (or one of his minions) said so, then you have great faith.  If you believe without any evidence at all you can work miracles.  Just ask Jesus.

Except that it doesn’t work.

Even the people who teach this stuff know it doesn’t work.  Baptists and other mainstream denominations know it doesn’t work so they try to alter the meaning of the verses or add all sorts of conditions.  Pentecostal types tend to declare the verses in question are absolutely true but almost without exception the people are full of sin and prevent them from working.

God’s humble followers always have an excuse why god never does what he says he does.

The believer is always at fault or god has some mysterious purpose why they must suffer.  But there is always an excuse.  We always want the answer right now but it isn’t always god’s time, he operates on a different level at a different pace.  But rest assured that all the shit in your life is happening for a reason, a real good godly reason.

I tried to convince myself of that when I got sued, I tried to persuade myself when my wages were garnished, I knew god had a plan when he let my wife drive our new car into the side of a building, I tried real hard to believe all those times and more.  But guess what, I still can’t fathom any plan in any of those events even thirty years later.  None of them made me a better person or a better christian.  I didn’t learn any valuable life lesson.  I gained no understanding, I didn’t become wiser.  And my faith most certainly did not grow stronger.

So what divine purpose could there possibly have been?

Faith was my life despite all those failures, which shows how far gone I actually was back then.  My faith convinced me that I could beat my ridiculously high blood pressure without medication.  Surely god would honor my faith in his healing power instead of the chemicals of men.  I most certainly had more faith than a mustard seed.

God was busy elsewhere the morning the morning of my stroke.  My blood pressure was so far gone I should have been dead.  I had no symptoms, I felt absolutely normal, there was no warning.  I was full of faith, praising god.  I was completely convinced I was right.  But my heart couldn’t pump blood to this small part of my brain.  The  oxygen it carried couldn’t reach the brain cells that were dying by the millions.  And suddenly, I lost control of the right side of my body.  Some fundamental component of who I was died as the brain tissue died.

My old life was over.  There was a new man in his place.  This new man had no faith and didn’t care.  But that didn’t matter.  This new man was a better man than the old man.  He wasn’t deluded.

In August I will have been living with this for twelve years.  Twelve years of pain daily, continually.  Twelve years of being unable to concentrate long enough to read a book by an author I love.   Twelve years of not caring.  Twelve years of altered perceptions.  Twelve years of being unable to remember large chunks of my life.

But it’s also been twelve years of not trying to make all this crap fit into my belief structure.  That’s the big BIG difference.  In many ways life is much simpler than it used to be.  Back when I believed god was in control and he had a plan for my life, I had to work very hard to make all the random disasters that kept befalling me fit into that plan.  Which is very very difficult (if you think about it) because god never seems very willing to let you in on just what that plan actually is.  A wrecked car here, a financial disaster there, a horrible illness on the one hand, an untimely death on the other.  All of them have to fit some ill-defined plan that you’re only guessing about in the first place.  It’s a stress producer.

I always used to wonder why so many church people needed to be refreshed from daily life every Sunday.  How could they get so burdened down every week?  Why did they have to show up for mid-week service so they could get through to Friday?  At least for me what was happening was the exact opposite.  All the praise and worship and sermons and teaching were in reality just loading me down with more sin and guilt and more worry that secular life was going to corrupt me even more during the week.  So I rushed back to every service to get the strength I needed to cope with life.  But what I was really getting was reinforcement of what a wretched sinner I was and how desperately I had to cling to god.  And to church.

I’ll admit that “shit happens” isn’t always a very satisfying way to think but it is worlds above “I wonder what god’s plan (purpose) for this disaster was?”  It doesn’t require any great anguish or soul searching. No mental gymnastics required.  No trying to figure out a plan that doesn’t exist except in your own imagination.

Shit happens.  I’m screwed.  Let’s get on with it.

Simple.

I like it that way.

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