Navigating in fog

(Dec 26 7:45 p.m.)

It’s been nearly ten months since I’ve had a place where I can relax, get sleep, do my thing, and be productive.  And it’s been so long since the process of moving began.  More people have asked me if I’m excited to move.  The answer has always been “no.”   Having a quiet space to relax and sleep was the motivation.  As to whether or not it was the right decision, well… it was for the short term since I’m getting sleep.  I have to care for myself.

There is still life here.  There always is.  Things are moving and catching up.  There have been nice days days and unexpected conversations.  A random person on the sidewalk I coincidentally passed by twice struck up a conversation about living in the town.  The positives and activity as of late, though, have been fewer.   I manage to take walks but can’t help various troubles.  So much still remains on hold due to disorganization, toxic stuff and noise.  The new place doesn’t quite help the circumstances.

No Stress Chess: stressful for actual players, with decks of cards telling you what kind of piece to move, which is often not possible. (Jan 19 12:01 p.m.)

I’m not officially moved, but the owner allowed me to sleep at the new place as a guest.  The noise at the old place is that much of an issue that I’ve been sleeping elsewhere for a couple months.

Life is messy, whilst modern man likes to think he’s basically clean … while not washing his hands, disturbing nature and polluting.

Icicles on everything. (Mar 23 11:04 p.m.)

The upper guest room was temporary and perhaps a spot to learn and document things before moving on, such as the March ice storm.  Lines audibly arced in the streets, and at least one collapsed branch or tree that required a chainsaw, at night, with emergency vehicles at side.  The storm knocked out power in some areas for over 10 hours, and forced the local Hannaford to dump all of its refrigerated and frozen food.  Insurance and refrigerated trucks can only go so far.  Some places had no power for 37 hours.

So much dependence on electricity or shelf stability.  So much food waste. (Mar 24 2:07 p.m.)

On another day, I thought there was thunder during a snowstorm (aka, “thunder snow”), but it may have just been power line arcs.

(Mar 24 1:52 p.m.)

So, so much ice. (Mar 24 1:55 p.m.)

Life, of course, is more than a photo op.   It is meant to be lived.

Road blocked and filled with a giant snow bank for WinterFest. (Feb 9 4:18 p.m.)

Life in nature will try to grow wherever it can.  Spring came late in Maine, but flies were active already.  Cold-blooded animals must wait out winter.  There may be a balance in gauging when it’s good to hatch, but many houses are warm, and so often insect eggs are laid in said houses.

(Apr 24 5:06 p.m.)

Trees have budded, and flowers have bloomed.

(Apr 22 2:21 p.m.)

A passerby suggested sniffing these flowers.

(Apr 22 2:21 p.m.)

The search for solid ground

Not often are sidewalks redone. (Nov 16 2:56 p.m.)

Every so often construction and repairs are needed, and often it’s a good and nice thing when it’s executed; damaged roads, sidewalks and structures are reformed to become once smooth or stable again, and workers get paid.

Workers pave while a house is repaired throughout the week. (Nov 14 2:18 p.m.)

Of course not all changes or additions are good.  I am pressed to start anew in a way by moving to another apartment.  The environment of the home I’ve lived in for two years has changed in such a way that it emphasizes the potential for injury or abuse.  It’s past time.  I’d already fallen down the stairs because of the low ceilings (and also not in the best state of mind at the time), and now I’m sleep deprived to no end by constant noise with few breaks.

All the leaves are gone, and the sky is…partly cloudy. (Nov 24 10:28 a.m.)

Nothing changes a person like sleep deprivation to the point it feels like torture.  You can never fully relax and process things during the day.  Enjoyment of small things becomes a luxury.  I shouldn’t have to go to the library for peace…

Books for sale cheap at Elements. (Nov 16 3:07 p.m.)

At the same time these recent challenges have been somewhat karmic the way bad habits, insecurities and damage have come to attention that I’m not blameless in all that has gone on now and over the years—that I have to take responsibility for my own.

Since recent changes and a need for me to help out elsewhere, I stepped up.

Everything is temporary

(Oct 8 9:00 a.m.)

So much has happened in the last five months, I don’t know where to begin.  (As if I ever know where to begin.)

It’s been good and bad.  The twice-broken arm healed, and some other things have improved.  Overall, not much growth in my corner though… more loss than growth perhaps given I couldn’t get my job back after the injury, and lost people in my life, but it seems I made a new friend via Reddit who lives in Romania?  I’m still learning—still learning nutrition and bits of history, and read a book here or there.  Much of what I research is still to figure out how to improve my health though.

(May 31 11:44 p.m.)

Maybe too much of what I research is based on fear.  Pain can be a big catalyst if I find myself again asking… “what can I eat?” or “what must I eat?” as the conditions of my teeth, gums and eyes get worse in ways.  Some of those little things I somewhat took as quirks ages ago have turned into places of concern, like some spaces in my mouth now hurt, or unusual things pop up in my vision, and I scramble to find a remedy.

Yes, I know staring at screens doesn’t help the eyes, nor insomnia, nor dry mouth for the teeth… And so I’ve lost a bunch of interest in YouTube, walk more—up to 3 times a day—to get my mitochondria in better shape, stare into the distance to try to help the nearsightedness, try to get sleep where I can, and bought XyliMelts.  Not that I’m always consistent, but I’ve changed habits a bit.

Rain necessitated having the cookout under a roof.  XyliMelts were used to eat all I could eat… (Jul 27 12:44 p.m.)

Struggles change people.  It’s kind of a good thing that I’m more open, and no longer interested in doing the same things every day.  But that isn’t to say I can get things going if things don’t cooperate with me.  Life goes on whether or solve my crap or not.

(Jun 24 10:17 p.m.)

Sometimes you don’t know how to help something, and nature can overgrow.   Living with other beings means it’s only a matter of time before another mess follows after you clean up.  And when the battle becomes constant and feels like your time is ultimately wasted with conditions that severely and needlessly limit you, a house can be like a prison.  Sometimes… there are no solutions but to reach for outside help or abandon ship.

Random apartment building; has seen better days. (Oct 8 4:53 p.m.)

Now, it’s not the first time things have gotten out of control or have become isolating.  I came from a place that was very rural and progressively ruined from water damage.  Thankfully, the water damage and mold in the current place is small and contained, but the people environment in recent months has become too counterproductive.  Clients on the autistic side of housing here moved in, and peace and quiet is harder to get.  Ideas on what to do to reach goals fall short as well as I’m still unemployed, run out of money easily, and the big 4-0 is just around the corner.

Productive, I must be nonetheless.  And hey, I can be grateful WordPress hasn’t nuked the Classic editor.

(May 15 1:26 p.m.)

It may not always feel like there is a lot of positive progress, but the trip to Colorado in May went fairly well.  It was just a taste of what’s to come since I’ll be going back today to really pitch in because her sister needs another break.

It’s not my first time flying, but it is a different airline company.  Hopefully, I’ll get there in one piece, and make it out alive when I get back. …And hopefully the apartment won’t be trashed as I’ve been the one cleaning the most these days, or dominated as if a spoiled tenant feels they own the place just because I was gone.  Etc., etc.

Broken, but making progress

(Sep 15 3:18 p.m.)

Change is inevitable.  Big changes are coming, whether I like it or not and whether prepared or not.  Sometimes change is with joy, and sometimes it is with pain and loss.

A rocky start. (Apr 10 3:29 p.m.)

Unfortunately, there isn’t good news, this time.  It’s been a while, and, well, I fractured my arm again, this time at the humerus.

In March, I was carrying laundry too quickly down a flight of awkward stairs (with some low ceilings), and in socks slipped halfway down onto my bottom… not too gracefully, “thumpily” gliding down the rest of the stairs.  Part of why it happened was I was coming off of anger with things and life, distracted in thought.

And the kitchen sink too. (Mar 18 3:07 p.m.)

An injury is not how I wanted to catch a “break.”  Thankfully, it was more of a crack and a chip, and bruises, that I didn’t need a cast or a brace.  Walking was still a literal pain in the ass for weeks.

I am Tired.

Healing has been slow, but life happens anyway.  The second round of physical therapy is put on hold for a week because I accepted to visit family in Colorado.

“Spring, at last!” (May 1 4:01 p.m.)

I will be flying for the first time tomorrow morning.

I’m still alive

(Aug 13 6:50 p.m.)

So it’s been a while again since I last posted, and a lot has happened since.  It’s almost fall now.

(Jan 12 3:37 p.m.)

Last time, there was still snow on the bay waters let alone the streets.

(Jan 14 4:08 p.m.)

…And a Beetle?

(Mar 6 4:20 p.m.)

That isn’t to say I haven’t tried to write.  I wrote a post months ago about learning lessons, but it was a bit much and too incomplete to publish.  If anything, I hadn’t learned my lessons, and pissed away too much time on YouTube.  Again.

And time goes on.  Things change even more, which can make it harder to get back to writing about what’s going on because the list of things to write about pile up.

And then another monkey wrench gets thrown in, so to speak.

(Feb 9 3:27 p.m.)

In January, I got a couple hairline fractures.

Derailed

Every now and then, something happens that knocks us down.  We lose our place, our standing, and we are forced to re-evaluate our whole situation, and accept humility.  You work harder and make sacrifices or go home.  And I don’t have a home in which to return.

There have been so many things that have happened in recent memory that get me thinking, “had I’d known more, I would have done things differently.”

Red lights. (Dec 31 3:23 p.m.)

One week into 2022, it was already a shit year for me.  From the last post you could tell I wanted to rise and shine, and venture forward with my life, but I was set back quickly.

Even the turn of the year wasn’t great.  I missed my date with my close friend in Kentucky at the turn of midnight because I wanted meet a deadline with the previous post.  I was turning something I’d previously written into an NYE entry against the clock; and yes, it does takes me a long time to write and rewrite; my editing often goes past midnight.  With my OCD, I should have known that was going to happen.

But missing a date was nothing compared to what happened Wednesday.

A look back

Well, it’s the last day of the year.  I’ve had plenty of time to look back, and reflect, and… mostly I can only think of the problems I’m facing today.  The whole year has gone by too fast.  Progress is slow, and I’ve been sick lately.  Thankfully, it’s not CovID.

Cole Road Café. (Oct 30 9:52 a.m.)

Things moved faster when aunt J visited.

(Oct 29 3:00 p.m.)

Decent restaurants were involved.

Surfer. (Oct 31 2:05 p.m.)

But that visit was only because things needed to be moved out of my mother’s storage unit.  (My mother and J. are okay by the way.)

Remember to wear a mask in the pool! (Oct 29 3:42 p.m.)

It’s harder to get a grip on things when it seems like everything is decaying too quickly, and you can’t catch up.  One of my teeth is really in bad shape, so I’m definitely going to have to move faster, and work harder next year.

And then I hear we all lost Betty White.  The legend.  Just 18 days shy of 100.  It takes the wind out of your sails, at least for a moment, when you see stars fall, lose role models, and hear about your friends losing loved ones.  There have been a lot of funerals this year.  My friend in Kentucky lost two… an awful year.

Addendum: It wasn’t just deaths either.  I all but lost my mother to mental illness and/or mold-dementia earlier in the year.  She’s alive but not at all the same person she was months prior—fragile, skin and bones, and can barely function or recall events.  She may have lost her sense of taste or smell from CovID but doesn’t remember.

(Dec 18 2:55 p.m.)

This pandemic isn’t endemic yet.

Dizzy Birds Rotisserie. (Oct 21 6:34 p.m.)

But to do nothing isn’t an option.  Living in denial is not living at all.  You must exercise or you start losing function.

How’s it going? It’s going.

Random house. (Nov 1, 2021 2:37 p.m.)

I’ve been away from posting here longer than ever this time.  A whole season has passed.  There are reasons… or some would call excuses.  Not much progress has been made since, and I can’t get enough sleep these days.  And most of the things that have happened are mundane or “this life is a lockdown” boring, or redundant from last year’s content, or low grade chaos like whenever the other client is childishly pissy… and I don’t just mean mad, but eliminating yellow where he shouldn’t… who wants to journal that?  Sometimes life is shitty or uncomfortable, and can put you in a state of shock without much of a break.

That isn’t to say I don’t talk about my days.  I do spend time with a close friend who lives in Kentucky.  But I’m just so tired of the irresponsible behaviors of others that make it harder to sleep.

The leaves have left the trees.  (They’re barren today.) (Nov 4 2:15 p.m.)

Of course, if I sat down and forced myself to write, even privately, I wouldn’t be taking up much of my alone time on YouTube.  Learning and having fun isn’t bad, but balance is needed.

I have been writing down dreams I’ve had in sleep.  And I’ve been updating software sometimes.  Sometimes I’m updating a spreadsheet.

(Oct 29 12:15 p.m.)

One of the events this year was when aunt J. came to visit… for the purpose of sorting through belongings from the old house— what goes to whom, and what’s salvageable.  I noticed new mushrooms on the dirt lawn there.  (Or maybe they were already there and I didn’t notice?)

(Oct 29 10:17 a.m.)

What’s left of that house.  So much time has passed that it has already been stripped and sold.  Gone.  There was so much water damage that it will be gutted if it already hasn’t been.  That place is still the most familiar to me, at least in layout and furniture.  Unfortunately, over time it became a “death trap” of mold, cold, and rotting wood— issues that became overwhelming to us, especially to my mother who lived in denial of accepting help, became anorexic, and had to be hospitalized.  People thought 2020 was bad… it’s been an emotional ride this year, and not a good one.  There was a lot of stuff to go through, just as there’s a lot of stuff to go through here in beginning to update the blog.

Fresh air

(Jun 12 3:36 p.m.)

Sometimes you don’t quite realize how much you needed to breathe and walk in the clean air somewhere else on Earth.  In my case, I didn’t have to travel far.  I felt like I’d needed to breathe that unadulterated air.

(May 15 2:37 p.m.)

It’s not hard to wonder, with our A/Cs and plastic fans during summer (or near-summer) why the air quality index was so high one day this month that “unhealthy for sensitive groups” was displayed on the Weather Channel mobile app.  Air filtering is needed for certain times, and— what else, high voltage air filters produce ozone, making it worse?

(May 15 2:36 p.m.)

And the area that connects Biddeford and Saco is called Factory Island.  Yes, Factory Island.  At least the smoke stack isn’t being used.  (At least I don’t think it is.)

(Apr 9 2:55 p.m.)

Now, some of you may be wondering: “Why Saco?  Biddeford?  Why not Portland?  Isn’t that where you live?”  No, not anymore.  I moved.  In fact, I was forced to move because I the company that supplemented the rent gave up on Portland altogether with all the wage changes… wage changes it made unilaterally.  I don’t have the money to pay the rent — something close to $1,900 a month for a good three bedroom apartment, and I can only manage about a third of that.  And that’s why I lived with another person, and once again that’s why I am living with yet another person, just now a different guy… unfortunately with his own set of childish and unsanitary habits.  It’s a different kind of stress and sleep schedule.

Private pools opening.  (Not opening to the public.) (May 23 5:17 p.m.)

2021 has been with major change whether I or you like it or not, and again it’s been hard to find the peace of mind to write.

Some awful things have happened as a result of years of negligence.  And I’m not just talking what happened in DC.  My mother was hospitalized after pretty much starving herself since I left the old home, and worse after falling on the ice, where she ate even less.  Years of denial turned into straight up mental illness.  And now her moldy house is stripped of its walls and its contents, and the place may be sold soon.  The house I grew up in is gone.

So it has been an emotionally rough year.

Holding on and letting go

(Nov 25 4:05 p.m.)

Last time, I described 2020 as a rough year.  But ‘rough’ is… just too nice of a word to describe what people went through.  No, 2020 was painful.

First, the impeachment of the president fell through.  It may not seem like much today and was not surprising to many, but it revealed things of what was to come.  The Senate majority party basically cemented alternative policies that aren’t our national policy in dependence of a man who literally leaves his own supporters in the freezing cold.  They told all Americans again and again that they’re not going to check the executive powers as Donnie and his associates broke federal operations all the way to the postal service just to cheat in an election.  He knows that this government is very lenient on presidential authority, that charges would not be filed against him while he’s President.

Yeah… it’s not over.

(Jan 10 1:59 p.m.)

Then, a novel virus transformed the way we lived.  We all have either gotten it or know someone who was affected by it, from intubation to amputation, to outright death.  I got a strain of the virus recently (fully recovered), but 0.1% of the national population didn’t stand a chance.  Over 340,000 fatalities.  To give you perspective, the flu kills only about 20-62,000 a year nationally.  Death from complications of the virus made a new statistic as the third leading cause of death, under cancer and heart disease.  And that’s not counting the number of individuals who are still alive but have organ damage; there’s no statistic on that because it’s way too contagious.  The people who still attempt to call it a hoax or compare it to the flu don’t get that the coronavirus is extremely inflammatory but at the same time about as contagious as the cold.  They can complain as much as they want, but the use of masks in public is completely necessary.

Thankfully, vaccines are now being administered.

Et tu, Bob? (Dec 22 2:14 p.m.)

There wouldn’t be a pandemic with closures without permanent closures.  The Great Wall buffet, a Chinese restaurant with a great variety of food and good quality, closed for good.

(Jan 7 3:48 p.m.)