I am at the doctor offices and frustrated. This turned into more of a rant and more wide spread than I expected. For the record I love Kaiser. I really like most of the doctors I see here with a few exceptions. The problem is the abilities of the profession and the oddness of my issues.

I get so frustrated going to drs because there is so little they can to. I don’t bother until I have reached the end of what I can do. Turns out there is very little they can do past that. The cost of going to the doctor is the effort to set up an appointment, making time for the appt, getting there in time, finding parking, waiting in the waiting room, the co-pay, and then talking to the doctor. I am fine with the talking with the doctor (even though it feels like a waste of time and rushed) and I don’t mind the co-pay (I am very aware it is much less than what it could cost). I resent the time and effort it takes to set the time, make room for it, travel to get there and wait for the appt. Actually I don’t mind the waiting, it is only annoying because of the sacrifice necessary to make the time to wait available.

I am grateful that I can email my doctors with my little questions now. I am grateful for the internet where I can collect information than what I have on my own. I can go a little bit farther than I would on my own and I don’t need to deal with the ordeal of the doctor.

The RN I met today thanking me for the entertainment, answered some of my I am curious questions, complemented me on still having my fascination with things at this age rather than just as a kid, and gave me the URL for where she looks up information. Sadly she wasn’t able to suggest anything for my itchy scalp and was less informed about possible options than I was.

It is getting to a point where doctors are there to catch the life threatening issues and as patients we don’t know what is minor and what is a symptom of something major. I have this idea that nothing major ever happens to me. The closest I have come is a dermoid cyst in an ovary which was not the cause of the pain that led them to discover the cyst. I probably would have been fine with the cyst and I think I have worked out that the pain is actually a severe gas pain caught in a pocket in my intestines. This is something that you just live with.

(ok, I just remembered my two broken bone instances and the car accident I was in before I could remember. These are the reasons I maintain my health insurance and at those times I needed the doctors and they were very useful.)

Every other thing wrong with me impacts my life but doesn’t threaten my life and the doctors either dismiss it because it is common for many people and something you need to learn to live with or they have no idea what it is and I have to learn how to live with it on my own. Sadly, for even the common stuff (once I found out what to look for) I have the lesser know problem and I have great difficulty sorting between the problem and solution to what most people have issues with to get info on what I have issues with.

An example of this is my bunion (yes this has been a primary focus for the last couple of months for me). It isn’t bad. My big toe is only a little bit angled inward and I have no calluses on the outside and the bone does not rub against the shoe. This is the main problem with bunions. BUT… the interior of the joint has sharp shooting pain now an again. People talk about living with the pain caused by their bunions and not finding shoes that help. I can’t imagine continuing to walk if the pain I experience was present most of the time. I would immobilize the joint and learn to walk without bending my toes before I would get to the state they seem to be living in. This makes me wonder if my pain is more than theirs or if it is just that I am more sensitive to the pain which leads to me being more “wimpy” about it. I have stopped dancing and wearing any of my shoes except for one pair of sneakers (which I got after I broke my foot and swear by and have worn most days since then and really need to get a new pair), one pair of sensible dress shoes (which I avoid wearing except when I have to for business reasons because they still cause the pain) and two pair of flats (that I use for short trips outside and accept the probability that I am setting myself up for my feet to hurt). I don’t walk much any more mostly due to not having a job. Even when I am working and appreciating the exercise I am getting by walking to bart and the office, I take into consideration the amount I am using my feet and limit that when I can. This relates to where to eat lunch and things like going to the labyrinth.

I haven’t been able to find information on my inner joint issue other than as an aside to the bone sticking out and rubbing issue. I don’t know what solutions are for my problem and what is for part of the problem I have zero issue with. The doctors have nothing to offer either. I am told I need arch support but it seems to hurt more than help. Until I moved it forward under the joint. Then like a miracle, it helped stop the hurt. But it is a bump directly under the joint and I wonder if I am doing more damage in the long run by doing this. It could be possible that I need the arch support farther up than most people so that the joint doesn’t get compressed (the bulge under the joint opens it up too) but that isn’t part of the solution for bunions. I am not having the primary pain the doctors expect but severe pain where it is supposed to be mild and come after the other pain. There doesn’t seem to be anything for just what I am experiencing. I can’t confirm this via the internet because I can’t sort out the predominate problem from the lesser problem. There is info about joint pain but no description on what exactly the joint pain is. It could be pain on the outside of the foot rather than on the inside where mine is. Bah.

I am tired of having problems I should be able to get help with and fitting into the cracks where people don’t normally go. No wonder I learned to take pride in being Unique as a survival mechanism. It is either embrace it or suffer for being not normal.

I realized I asked for help and then hid my head in a hole. Please be patient with me. I do appreciate it, I am very glad for it, I am just working on the middle ground between chase after and run away.

managed to screw up the sleep schedule by laying about until 3pm. I did spend some of that time visualizing how I would like my apartment to be. Sadly, when I did get around to moving, I was rather grumpy, probably because my apartment is a long way from where I want it. I didn’t feel up to going to a networking class. Talked to my mom for her birthday. Did some catching up on fb and playing some games. I did managed to get my bills paid, finally. I have two more dr appointments scheduled. I still need to work out my unemployment stuff and get it sent off.

As dawn approached, I finally got started on the offsite project I have. I just sent it off.

I want to get some business cards created, print out some envelopes for my rent checks, and work on this logo idea I have. It is too bad my laptop has to be plugged in, otherwise I might just move out into the courtyard to work. That way I would at least get some external air.

There is this weirdness in my apartment. Where I put my head on the couch to sleep, I can smell whatever is going on in the bathroom. The sent is not as strong as I move towards the bathroom or anywhere else in the room. I first noticed this when the foster kittens decided they couldn’t stand the new litter in their litter box and was choosing different places on the floor. I could tell the exact moment something was happening by the change in the smell. Right now I have the toxic smell of Raid used to kill the ants that decided my toilet was a good place to stream across. That is NOT a place for ants.

I am retaking the Kaiser Managing Depression class in hopes that it will do some good.

The booklet thingy has instructions for Friends and Family on How to Help a Person with Depression.

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Provide emotional support:
Be understanding, patient,affectionate, and encouraging.
Engage the person in conversation and listen carefully.
Remarks about death or suicide should always be taken seriously and reported to the doctor.

Encourage activity and interaction:
Invite your friend or loved one for walks, outings, to the movies, and other activities. Choose activities that he or she once enjoyed and be gently insistent.

At the same time, do not push him/her to do too much too soon. Your friend or relative wit depression needs diversion and company, but too many demands can increase feelings of failure.

Take care of yourself, too:
Find balance. Five time to your friend or loved one, but remember that you need time for your other duties and relationships as well.

Remember, you can give the best support when you are feeling strong and supported yourself.
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I have tried to reach out and set up social interactions with friends but it seems like I need more than what can be provided. I also lack practice in being the one invited instead of doing the setting up of activities. I am not always the most graceful or cooperative when others invite me. I am trying to learn to be better at that.

Part of collecting to busy, somewhat unavailable people is that I end up setting up stuff that I really want to do and pulling others in. I also get to dictate how many people I deal with and how often. If I need time off, I just stop reaching out. This has worked in the past but does not work with the way I am restructuring my life now. I want to learn other ways of doing things.

I am aware that I currently don’t seem able to attend group gatherings where there are people I know and would like to see but I am not going with anyone. Especially if they are far away. If I am specifically needed for something, that seems to help. I will think I will go and I really want to go but when the time comes, I don’t move. I will be completely ready, dressed, have everything I wanted to take and then will sit down and find I don’t move towards the door. I acknowledge that it is a choice I am making even if it feels out of my control. Instead of beating myself up over it, I allow it to be something I am not able to do at this time for some unknown reason and just accept it. There is something in there that is making the choice not to go, I just don’t know what it is.

Getting together one-on-one or in small groups with friends doesn’t seem to trigger the same response. It is the general gathering of people where my not showing up doesn’t change anything.

Don’t know why but I didn’t post this when I wrote it. It is many hours later.

Just finished with a business call going over the work I have done. It feels nice. It is hard to remember how much I actually like being productive and making things people want. This is my Maker part of me resides. I don’t Make things for the sake of making things. I only Make things that are wanted, either I want them or I am doing it for someone else. A lot of times I Make things for a class or something and then later it is important to me because it reminds me that I have that ability.

Before the business call (I still haven’t eaten lunch yet and it is sitting next to me) I had an appointment with my shrink. The last few weeks have been very hard. So hard in fact that one of my therapists sent me to the emergency room after session to get my meds adjusted. That did nothing so I sicced her on my shrink to talk about how to make things work for me. He did what she said but he is still a waste of space as far as I am concerned. He went from letting me dictate everything to instructing me how to do things like he is reading off a list. If A then B else C. I do not fit standard molds. Or actually, I do fit standard molds in some places, in others I only look like I fit but I really don’t and in others I don’t even come close to fitting. It is important to work with me and think outside the box. The outside the box thinking has been something I have had to do since I was a kid so it being a business cliche now is sort of funny. He retires in Nov which made it much easier to talk to him this time.

We have upped my meds and I have to take them twice a day. Once a day I have managed to make work, the second time is much more hit and miss due to my days having no real structure to attached the second dose to.

Also, I am suppose to have more social contact. My response to that was “well duh.” I have been trying to make that happen for over a year now. Since most of my friends are busy people, or unavailable or far away, I have not been very successful. I am tired of and I think others are tired of me continuing to play the “I am in need, please help me” card over and over.

A couple of days ago I hit a bad spot where my head started to try to convince me that no body liked me and that no one cared. I know that isn’t true, intellectually but emotionally I could find “proof” all over the place. I have avoided facebook because there is just loads of “proof” there of people not paying any attention to me or the only ones that do comment are ones that don’t know me well. The later feeds into my complex that as people get to know me better they stop being as interested in me and go away. I know this isn’t true. I know why it seems to look that way and am aware of my part of setting up that particular situation but when you are emotionally hurting, reason and rational thought don’t matter. Only what is perceived by what is already a loaded deck is what matters. So I opted out of giving myself the opportunity to make a case for the negative side of things.

I am better understanding the mechanics behind the concept of your thoughts dictate your attitude and you have control over your thoughts. Yes, this is true. But when you are depressed or having some big negatives pressing on you, it gets tiring watching what you are thinking and continuing to constantly pull your thoughts back from the dark side. And you can’t think deeply either. Putting real thought into something means wandering inside the dark areas and it is so easy to get caught and you lose all the traction you have built keeping your thoughts in the light areas. So my life the last couple of days have been full of light happy things that skitter on the surface and I can’t talk about the dark because it takes my legs out from under me.

I have found than when I do start talking about the dark and how hard things are going, I can start to sweat. I was telling a friend how things were really going and the room got a lot hotter and I went from being perfectly ok (San Jose at 1am) to needing to keep wiping my face and having drips down my back. I didn’t think it was that big of a deal and then I realized that I must be working hard to overcome whatever mental stuff I have going on. I think this is the same reason I overheat and sweat walking three blocks to the library to start work on stuff and it takes me half an hour to stop feeling horrible and another 15 minutes before I can stop using my hand fan. Walking back many many hours later seemed fine. Just a physical symptom of whatever I am fighting with inside my noggin.

I know my life is mostly good, in some ways it is great, in other ways not so much. But I hate it. My attitude has always been if you don’t like your life, change it. We all have the power to change our lives to work better for ourselves. But I have no idea what could be changed to make things better. I believe that it is me that needs to change. I am still working on fixing myself and it is still a long road ahead.

I did managed to make it out of the house this weekend. I visited some surface level friends I really like and a relatively good friend I can trust on Sat. On Sunday I met a guy I had met on OKcupid and that was interesting. I think I found another variation of a 5. Imagine that. He seems to focus on not so much the intellectual head knowledge/learning but on practical things, like fixing walls when you break them, driving forklifts, building things. Lots of knowledge, just in a different way of learning it than I am used to. I am used to school learning and thinking on theory. He is more of a does type of guy. No idea how it went. I didn’t get a feeling that he was all that interested other than we had a good time talking. But if I am right and he is a 5, then he will need to review his recordings of the experience before he knows how he felt about it. I dislike not having the immediate feedback but this is how some people work. Having yet another 5 in my life to end up overwhelming and having them run away is not that great of a thing, but I am not going to shut down possibilities for that reason. It is a risk, a higher one than I am used to taking, but I could be wrong and I could learn something. There are always lessons to be learned.

I think I still feel somewhat crappy if I lift up the edge of the carpet where I swept everything but on the surface I seem to be doing ok. I am trying to keep it there until the lump under the carpet deflates somewhat and it is safer to prod those areas again. The extremists need to leave the building.

I wanted to post something to facebook saying I was staying away but that would require logging into facebook and seeing how many comments/messages there were or weren’t for me. Livejournal can be done and walked away from without needing to be exposed to other people living their lives without me. I can still be reached through normal channels but I am not tuned into the broadcast channels. Sadly, there are some people I would like to be aware of this info that don’t read LJ. I honestly don’t know if anyone cares that I am not on facebook right now other than in a general concept. One side of me says nobody cares at all (which I know is too far one direction) and the other side says that it would be in good form to let people know that I am not following standard patterns (which could be too far the other direction). I don’t know if it would be a good idea or not for someone who reads my lj and overlaps with friend of mine on fb to post something or if that is just a waste of time/effort and might even be more “proof” that it doesn’t matter if/when I go back to it and there are crickets about me being gone. Can’t ask for it, even worried about putting the idea out there. But hey, I thought of it so there it is.

I am making a point of telling someone things that have the label/reaction of “I don’t wanna tell”

I have three things I plan to focus working on:

Learning/creating a near boundary so that I can deal with having people closer to me. I want to get away from always being drawn to really busy people, people with too many friends, and people that are emotionally unavailable. I want to be able to appreciate people that come to me instead of running away scared of not being in control of the interactions.

Learning to be ok with being uncomfortable. Right now, if I don’t feel good or if I am uncomfortable, I do whatever I can to change that situation for the better. It doesn’t feel safe to stay uncomfortable. I need to be able to be all right with being uncomfortable or feeling poorly because there are things I need to learn that require going through that process. I believe I need to practice being uncomfortable in a safe setting to get used to it.

I need baby steps for adding movement into my life. There is the typical “I don’t want to exercise and I have to force myself to do it” with added ingredients of “I hate being in my body normally, exercise is much worse,” and “I have trouble with heat to the point of panic and when I exercise, I over heat,” and (there is a third one that came up but I can’t remember it now). It has created a wall that makes it especially hard to face adding exercise to my life. I have all the rational reasons why it is good for me and will make me feel better but I think my emotional self (which can’t communicate in words) thinks I am trying to do damage to myself when I push to get some exercise in. So I need baby steps to add at least something and feel ok about it.

This is the current stage of my Work that I am at. I feel like I need it all done now. I have already been in this funk for 2 years, when will it ever be worth the work going into it? I feel like I am a pre-IPO. There is all this development where resources are being used up and not replaced in the hopes that a point will be reached when the outgoing resources will be balanced by the incoming resources and the system will be self sustaining. And then there is the potential for the incoming to be much more than any outgoing. I would like to get to the self sustaining part.

I am seeing a lot of posts about this cross posting. I have two identities on FB and I don’t want them linked. I don’t care if my LJ gets posted to Ship O’ Fools but in no way to I want it linked to my born name.

I would like to get my FB posts into my LJ. LJ is where I keep track of things and there is stuff I post to FB that would be good to have later on. I know Twitter has a post thing but I haven’t seen anything for bringing FB posts into LJ. I would probably mark them just for me to see since it is a duplicate.

Anyone know how to get FB into LJ?

Thank goodness I have work. I just found out it was 92 in Berkeley yesterday. I wore on long sleeve shirt because my current office is set rather cold. When I got ready for bed around 9 it was 85 degrees so I knew it had been hot. It didn’t feel too bad. I figured it was because I was cool all day and my core wasn’t already overheated.

The work is good for my stability and financially but most important, it is good for me physically to just be away from the heat.

I am not as good at problem solving as I used to be. I have changed the way I approach life. One of the things that changes is I no longer take in every bit of information I can and map out all possible paths. This supposedly has released a lot of energy to be used elsewhere.

One result of this change is that I used to be really good in emergencies and problem solving. I already had a lot of the answers because I had pre-loaded the options. Now I find that I keep going down dead ends and need to turn back and repeat steps. It drives me nuts. I am so used to knowing what I am doing that I start to do it and then find out I didn’t take everything into account. I guess I need to learn not to trust my automatic instincts because they are based on a different paradigm.

I don’t like it. I feel stupid and slow. People have thought I was really smart and think super fast. My reply to that is that I look smarter than I am because of how I process information. Now I am finding out how true that is.

I doubt if anyone who knows me has noticed yet. If I make the right choice and go down paths with no obstacles, then I look as smart as I ever did. If I make a poor choice and go down a path that I have to work my way back out of, then I look like I really am.

It isn’t much fun to get used to a new paradigm that makes things harder than before.