Tag Archives: anxiety

anxiety, brain injury, depression, DNR, moe

DNR

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moe and i met online in approximately 1994-95 or thereabouts; we met IRL on new years/saint fred’s birthday, 1996-1997 (sleeping together by the middle of january); and we got married on june 21st, 1998.

in 2003, when i was 43 years old, i experienced a brain injury — a burst cerebral arteriovenous malformation — which kills 50% of the people who have it. if i had had a DNR on file, at the time, they would have allowed me to die. because they did not, moe rushed me to the hospital, and i experienced 11 hours of brain surgery two days later. when i regained consciousness, eight days after that, the nurses told me that i had a brain injury and i was going to have to spend THE REST OF MY LIFE recovering from it. the FIRST THING I SAID was “why didn’t you let me die?”

EVEN THEN i wasn’t completely sold on the idea of being alive! 😒

when i got home from OCF this year, i figured it was time to make sure that, if something awful happens in the future (being 66 years old gets me thinking about these things, you know?), if i had a DNR on file, everybody would be a lot more secure. so, with moe’s blessing, i made an appointment with my doctor to get the papers in order.

961206 propellerheads poster
961206 propellerheads poster — moe was supposed to come to this party, but she wasn’t able to, so i invited her to new years/saint fred’s birthday instead

at the end of july, this year (2026), moe told me that she is now a lesbian, and no longer wants to have sex with me. this was (and continues to be) quite a large shock, and my mood and anxiety have not been the best the past few weeks. however, when the time came for me to fill out the intake papers for my doctor’s appointment (remember that?), two of the forms were questionnaires about my mood and anxiety, and i filled them out honestly, with information from the past couple of weeks… which, apparently, alarmed enough of the right people that they emailed me, asking if i was okay, and offering me resources if i was really going to kill myself — something which i have said, repeatedly, over the past couple of weeks, but it was all hyperbole, because i was (and am) in such shock… I AM NOT GOING TO KILL MYSELF, regardless of how much i feel like it. i said it, that is true, but no one should believe that it is true, because IT IS NOT!!

i went to my doctor’s appointment, yesterday, and was questioned up and down about my mood and anxiety, the reasons why i am in such “bad shape” — the doctor repeatedly said that she was “alarmed” and “concerned” — and my reasoning for wanting a DNR at this time. she said it was “suspicious”, and refused to sign the papers until i had seen ANOTHER doctor, and gotten him to sign off on it. then she would think about it…

so, i’ve got another appointment, with ANOTHER doctor — WHO I HAVE NEVER MET!! — in A MONTH, and if i can get him to sign off on it, my doctor will THINK ABOUT giving me a DNR… 😒

i mentioned this to the coach of my neuro-support circus class, who said that she has a friend who is a death doula, and a notary, and she should be able to help me bypass this whole shenanigan… it would be really funny if i went to this new doctor’s appointment, in a month, with a signed and notarized copy of a DNR, and laughed in his face.

anhedonia, anxiety, brain injury, depression, diverticulitis, frustration, host services, malfunctioning computers, technology, wuaaaagghh!!!

wup

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last wednesday, 260729, i had a therapy appointment at 15:00, and a cannabis permit renewal appointment at 19:00. then, at 20:00, after 26 years of happily married bliss, monique informed me that she is a lesbian, and doesn’t want to have sex with me any longer.

she wants to stay married, wants to continue supporting me financially, and in whatever other way she can. she says marriage is sex PLUS “partnership, support, friendship, time, and security”. she’s just taking out the “sex” part of it, essentially “opening the relationship” so that i can seek out other sexual partners, and so can she… which sounds ideal until you’re a 66-year-old brain-injury survivor (like me) who doesn’t have the time or energy to seek out another girlfriend, and, even if i did have the time and energy, nobody in their right mind will want to hang out with a grumpy old man.

i was, and still am, completely devastated by this development. if i was unsure about wanting to die before, i am completely convinced, now. i’m not sure, at this very moment, that i even want to continue in a relationship with her that doesn’t include sex. i’m only marginally confident that i will EVER want that kind of relationship with her… and yet, if i completely refuse her offer, then i would have to start paying my own rent, buying my own food, remembering to go to doctor and dentist appointments on my own… figuring out how to prevent diverticulitis flare-ups, which — surprise, surprise — have been hinting about showing up again during the past few days… i would have to move out, move my incense business out, move my nursery out, move my workshop out, figure out my SSDI payments and where they go… PLUS somehow find the time and energy to round up a new girlfriend…

if this had happened prior to my injury, i would have been able to take it or leave it. seriously, i was totally prepared to live the life of a celibate monk, prior to meeting monique — perhaps i should have taken the fact that her previous partner was a woman a little bit more seriously — but after my injury, taking sex away from me is one step away from taking MY LIFE away from me, and, quite honestly, i wish somebody would take my life. it would make things a lot easier for everyone.

then, i believe it was sunday 260802 (might have been sunday night, monday morning), my host provider was attacked by ransomware, and all my web sites, monique’s web sites, ezra’s web sites, and everybody else’s web sites on serversdepot.com, INCLUDING serversdepot.com, went down and stayed down for three days — email quit working, of course, which meant that all of monique’s brand new clients, who had signed up on her brand new web site, suddenly were faced with bounce notifications and “server not found” messages, which meant that monique had to get me to track down login credentials for the teachinganimals.com registrar, so that she could go in and change the DNS settings so that her clients had somewhere to sent their emails…

at this point, everything APPEARS to be up and running, again.

life is good. 😒

anxiety, blog birthday, crazy people, depression, malfunctioning people, moe, moe's mom, VEWPRF

here come the hell-idays… 😒

okay, so we’re having “friends-giving” at our house. in attendance will be the burkes, scott and nancy, my mother-in-law, also nancy, whose presence at a holiday gathering at our house a few years ago resulted in an extreme disagreement between myself and my racist bitch M-I-L which resulted in my isolating myself in my office, and ending the “salamandir taxi service” that she had enjoyed up until that time, and leanna aker, whose husband (ross) is in california with his father, who has cancer… and it is my recollection that, a few years ago, there was another “incident” at “friends-giving” at the aker’s residence, involving monique and her mother, which resulted in leanna getting REALLY pissed off at them — it’s also possible that the racist bitch part of my M-I-L was involved, but i have a notoriously faulty memory, especially for really unpleasant social situations, so i’m not 100% certain… apparently, monique and leanna have “talked it out” and, allegedly, nobody is pissed off at anyone, any longer, but…

basically, we’re having my mother-in-law AND a person who has been really pissed off at monique, at our house FOR A HOLIDAY MEAL… 🤯😖

this whole thing is happening thursday. 😒 and both my circus class AND my unicycle class are cancelled, this week, because of the holiday, and, because of the fact that the panto performances (remember them?), i only have one more unicycle class before the first of the year, and i HAVE TO remember to tell john that! HAVE TO!!

oh, also the birthday of this blog is this sunday, the 30th… it’s some random years old, now… i’m not inspired enough to check what it is. 😒

post native-american-day update: there was no blatant arguing or pissed-off-ness from anyone, although i WAS drafted into giving my M-I-L a ride home, which is the first time she has been in my car in four years.

i’m still not totally comfortable with her being in my car, because, while she was “perfectly nice and normal” on the way home, she was also “perfectly nice and normal” the last time, right up until the point where she said some things that were EXTREMELY thoughtless and racist, and, while she shut the fuck up when i called her out on her racism and thoughtlessness, she wasn’t certain WHY i was calling her out, and, apart from offering me a shallow apology for pissing me off, i don’t think she was totally aware of WHY what she said was so offensive, nor is she CURRENTLY aware of why what she said was so offensive, and she certainly hasn’t actually CHANGED the way she thinks. it was blatantly obvious to me that the only reason she was being so nice to me was because she didn’t want me to get pissed off at her again, and not because what she thinks is objectionable.

WHICH IS FINE WITH ME: let her think what she wants to think! it’s not up to me to decide what is ignorant, racist, or objectionable, for her!

BUT IT IS ALSO not “necessary” for ME to provide her with an easy means of getting to and/or from my home… or an easy means of picking up junk from a church that she thinks she’s going to be able to re-sell, and delivering it to her… and that sort of thing… which has become more and more common, recently.

the ONLY reason i have been doing those things is because i don’t want to raise a fuss WITH MONIQUE! and i will be CERTAIN to discuss these things with her, BEFORE the next time i will be expected to do them again! 😒

anxiety, depression, frustration, noose, pictures, the beach

noose

250902 - copalis beach paraidolia
250902 – copalis beach paraidolia
the news has not been good for so long. 😢 the country is getting more and more fascist, there is nothing i, as an individual, can do about it, and there is, essentially, nothing that i, as a part of a group, can do about it that will make a significant difference, in what is left of my lifetime.

which has NOT been good for my mental health. 😒

i have, once again, “given up” on the news. i’ve taken all of my news-related RSS feeds (what passes for the newspaper, these days), and put them in a folder called “noose”.

actually, i did this earlier in the year, because when i went to OCF, and had NO RSS feeds, i came home and the “noose” folder didn’t even get opened for a couple weeks.

moe and i went to the beach, recently. our friends ross and leanna have an air-bnb house south of moclips, at copalis beach, and we spent two and a half days there: i flew my kite, moe flew her kite, we ran dogs until they were so worn out that TODAY — a day later — they STILL have their speed-knobs turned down by AT LEAST 50%, and, significantly, there was NO “noose”.

it wasn’t long enough to get me into the same head-space that i was in after OCF, but it was enough to make me realise that “noose” is going to be the death of me, in a very real sense, if i don’t do something to change it.

so, i have, once again, “given up” on the “noose”.

250904 - yellow-legged meadowhawk Sympetrum vicinum
250904 – yellow-legged meadowhawk Sympetrum vicinum
anhedonia, anxiety, corruption, depression, drumpf, frustration, i am a terrorist, political, politicians, quotes, rants, stupid people, the very big stupid

15748

it keeps getting worse… i stopped reading the news, because all the news does, these days, is make me dispair for humanity, and feel like ALL the changes i have fought for, and ALL the actions that i have taken part in throughout my life have been for nothing. at this point, in my opinion, the direction this country is going, at this point, is backwards, and that at an ALARMING rate. i get the very distinct feeling that we are facing another situation like martin niemöller wrote his confession about, in 1946:

Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten,
     habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Kommunist.

Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten, habe ich geschwiegen;
     ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter.

Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten, habe ich geschwiegen;
     ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat.

Als sie die Juden einsperrten, habe ich geschwiegen;
     ich war ja kein Jude.

Als sie mich holten, gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte.

except that instead of people who call themselves “nazis”, we have people who act JUST LIKE nazis, who call themselves republicans, and instead of communists, trade unionists, social democrats, and jews, we have LGBTQ+ people, autistic people, students, scientists and social workers, and immigrants.

and they’re going after so much stuff at once, with such vigor and determination, that, after #drumpf and his crew are out of office, it will take LITERALLY DECADES before we’re back to where we were in the late ’60s and early ’70s…

and I DON’T HAVE DECADES! i’ve got two, maybe three decades AT MOST, and who knows if we’re even going to be STARTED fixing things by then.

i REALLY DO NOT want to live in a world that is worse off than it was when i entered it. 😠

When they took the fourth amendment,
     I was quiet because I didn’t deal drugs.

When they took the sixth amendment,
     I was quiet because I was innocent.

When they took the second amendment,
     I was quiet because I didn’t own a gun.

Now they’ve taken the first amendment,
     and I can say nothing about it.

anhedonia, anxiety, depression, malfunctioning computers, moisture festival

things

things are beginning to settle down, a bit… there’s still some undefined (and undefinable) weirdness with moe’s and my email, which has been compounded by some apparent SUPER weirdness with either moe’s or my ability to send text messages, which SHOULDN’T be connected in any way… and the whole thing is made even weirder because we recently received a new router, which is supposed to replace our old router… and the new router, for some reason (i strongly suspect demons, or their ilk) decided that it was going to try to connect to my old mac, which has been quite happy NOT connecting to internet for quite some time… like before we moved into our current dwelling… and i keep thinking that there should be some immanent fiasco brewing with my VPN, which, if i recall correctly, acted in a way that it shouldn’t the last time i changed my IP address… but i changed my IP address two weeks ago, and, so far, there has been no indication that the VPN has even taken notice. 🤨

but, strangely enough, the “starting to settle down a bit” scenario has done absolutely nothing to my anxiety and depression… but getting kicked off mastodon, apparently, has had a MINOR effect on my depression: instead of worrying about concrete things that i read about, i worry about more amorphous things that i imagine COULD BE happening. 🫤

which is the perfect mood to start moisture festival next week. 😟 wednesday at 17:00 we load in and sound check, and then there’s one show thursday, two shows friday, the last of which gets out after midnight, three shows saturday, and two shows sunday… it’s gonna be a LONG and BUSY week. 🥵

anxiety, depression, frustration, host services, the battle of the computer, web design

and others…

last weekend was REALLY difficult… on top of the “normal” massive political and social dumpster-fire-in-a-flood situation that is going on, moe was in chicago, i had two dogs, a cat, a bird, and a snake to look after, AND my web sites were switching host providers, which, by itself, is one of the most difficult transitions under the BEST of circumstances…

and it’s not over yet, although it’s about 95% finished, at this point: our email still hasn’t settled down, yet. with mine, there seems to be some difference between IMAP and SMTP, which SHOULD display the same, but it doesn’t, and i no longer know enough about it to even come close to telling why, or even accurately describe what is happening… and pretty much all of moe’s mail that is more than a couple months old has mysteriously vanished, and she doesn’t even use a SMTP client, preferring IMAP, which, in itself, is somewhat disturbing. 🤨

ETA 250322 the NEW host provider is re-downloading her email, because, apparently, the first (really difficult) download was MISSING EIGHT GIGABYTES of data. 😒

and, on top of that, there’s continuing unresolved chaos and discord between the (new) host provider and the (old) web designer, which, once again, put me into a profoundly deep “chuck it all in the dumpster and go live alone in a remote cabin in the woods with no connection to the outside world for the rest of my life” mood, which is still in the slow process of dissipating. 😒

anxiety, circus, depression, health, stress, TIMMAH!

sigh…

i think things are going fairly well… but i’m feeling REALLY tired and cranky, and i’m having a really difficult time not letting it spill over into my interactions with other people.

i THINK things are going fairly well: i’ve reached a satisfactory plateau in my office reorg, which is to say, basically, it is the same as it was last week, but i’ve fixed the wireless charging pad in my new sit/stand desk, so i can get rid of one more cable. i located a box of “questionable” albums (the albums, themselves, are questionable. the content on them is the only reason i have been hoarding them all these years), including quite a few albums that i have had on my “wish list” at discogs for a number of years, because i thought the copies that i had disappeared… they didn’t disappear, they’ve been in that box in the garage for four years because i haven’t had the appropriate space to set up my turntable… i am on the verge of writing out an arrangement of Galizianer Tans for the philharmonic… the only reason i haven’t started yet is because of laziness, and a vague fear of being successful at it… and, despite the fact that i did a 100% FACE PLANT at my cicrus class last week (the first one i have ever done), i THINK that i have finally figured out how to free-mount my unicycle — it has only taken me FOUR YEARS…

TIMMAH!
TIMMAH!

but for the past few days i have been really cranky, and kestrel bit my hand last night (which she has never done before), and my arms and legs are COVERED in bites and scratches from TIMMAH! who has developed this habit of purring and rubbing up against my legs, and acting all “soft-cuddly-kitty” in order to get me to pick him up, at which point he instantly transforms into a velociraptor. and, because of the fact that he’s still got all his primary teeth and hasn’t developed his “adult” brain, yet, he’s a SHARP velociraptor. 😒

also, i have to get my flu shot, and at least one COVID booster, and i really SHOULD get a shongles shit, which, in fact, is two shots, which cost around $400 a piece, and are NOT covered by medicare… and, if you really want to get technical about it, i really should sign up for a “yearly” healthcare check, which i haven’t done since before covid… 😒

anxiety, depression, frustration, moving, pictures

aowefu

240915 moving into the new office
240915 moving into the new office

this is the new office configuration. the “closet” is now a sitting desk, which (eventually) will have mostly things like the stereo amp, tape recorder, turntable, and mixer on it, with the first shelf for things like the printer. the sit/stand desk is in the standing configuration, now, but it won’t accept the old monitor riser that i used to use (it’s too thick, plus the glass surface wouldn’t hold up to the heavy duty clamp that secures it to the desk), and i’m not sure how to raise the monitor, because PHONE BOOKS DON’T EXIST ANY LONGER 😒 i’m thinking of re-purposing the two smaller shelves that are currently on the main part of the desk, putting them on the, wider, first shelf, and adding stuff that used to be on top of the bookcase (which is out of the shot, behind me)…

because, well, i read “Earth to Moon” recently, which is Moon Unit Zappa’s reminiscences of growing up with Frank Zappa as a father, and what i read gave me a whole new outlook on Frank: i still like his music, and i still think he was a musical genius, and he said a lot of things that i will still quote at the end of my emails, but (and i’m definitely going to sound like my parents, here) — DAMN!! — he was an AWFUL parent!! 🤬 and a questionable role model, at best… which means that the bookcase covers up a lot of space where my frank zappa posters were, and i’m not sure how (or if) i want to replace them.

but everything is not moved back in, yet, and i still don’t have a functioning stereo, and, in spite of the newly created shelf space, and newly created shelves in a couple of different places in the office, i’m STILL wondering where i’m going to put stuff.

i feel a lot better than i did a week ago, but it’s still not over, yet, and i’m getting really tired of it.

anxiety, ocf

immediately pre-ocf

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i’ve checked 99% of the things off the list, and loaded the car, but i’m still remembering stuff i should take, but aren’t on the list — like my bathrobe, and my aqua-sox, which means partially unloading to add stuff to already packed boxes, and then reloading the car. 😒

the remaining 1% are things that need refrigeration, which means *REMEMBERING TO GET SOME FREEZER PACKS AND PACK THE STUFF IN THE REFRIGERATOR*, tomorrow morning (unlike what i did last year. 😒); and things like soap and weed stuff and glasses, which i’m actually going to USE before i leave, tomorrow morning…

i did all the available laundry, washed all the dishes i could wash (there are a few that get hand washed, which i’m saving for later), mowed the lawn… this morning, before it got so FUCKING hot — seriously! it’s literally 100°F in the shade! 😠 which NEVER used to happen around here!

but i’m still anxious… which is why i’m taking microdoses with me… i’m anxious because oregon is EVEN HOTTER than here, and predicted to get into the 120°F range by sunday. i’m anxious because i was recently hospitalised for a condition that EXPERTS have told me “may or may not recur”, pretty much regardless of what i eat, or don’t eat, i’m pretty sure that the folks at “White Bird” (what passes for medical staff at OCF) are NOT prepared to deal with diverticulitis, and i REALLY don’t want to end up having to go to urgent care, or the hospital, in a place where i don’t know where anything is, and is far away from home… i’m anxious because i keep thinking that there are things that i should have put on the list last year, but didn’t, and i will get to portland, tomorrow, before i remember what they were… 😖

tomorrow, i expect to leave no later than 10:00, which means that i’ll get there around 13:00 or so… whereupon i will stand in line for a couple of hours to get my wristband, argue with the hippies about driving my car in to morningwood odditorium, unload my car (which i am allowed to drive in to morningwood, because i have a “full load teddy”… which happens EVERY YEAR… 😒) amid sweltering heat and massive mosquitos who don’t know the meaning of picardin or DDT (much less eucalyptus, which is ENDEMIC at the fair), unpack and set up my tent in one of two places (one i want, and the other one is probably what i’ll get), schlep all the rest of my gear into the tent, amid the aforementioned oppressive heat and mosquitos, and then drive my car to where it will be parked for the weekend, which, again, will be one of two places, depending on whether or not the hippies decide my expired handicapped placard is still worth something: either they’ll let the fact that it’s expired slide, and i’ll park in the SCOFlot, which is about a mile from where i’m going to be camped, or, if they WON’T let it slide, it means that i’ll likely have to park in “Outta Site”. which is about TWO miles from where i’m going to be camped. my guess is that things will start to “chill out” (figuratively, if not literally) by 20:00 or so, at which point i’ll probably eat something and wander until it cools off enough to go to bed.

it’s going to be okay…

but i’m anxious. 😒