Lost in fantasy worlds
09/02/22, I received this e-mail from hard-right Congressman Steve Scalise.
Monthly Archives: February 2023
In the forecast: Pain
(Originally posted 2016-01-16.)
A toothache can distract you completely.
For the past two months, I have now and then, with increasing frequency and duration, had mild toothaches in (I thought) one upper left tooth and one lower left tooth. They always went away; and that’s all I thought of it.
Then last Thursday night there was such severe pain for such a long time, that I lost several hours’ sleep and resolved to get those two teeth filled the next day. But that didn’t happen. The dentist said four teeth must be extracted; and the appointments the clinic scheduled for me are two weeks and four weeks away.
This means: for the coming month, I am going to be in pain of varying severity for varying lengths of time.
It may not be much, now and then; it may be a lot, now and then, and for quite a while now and then. But it’s unavoidable. It’s coming.
How will I choose to feel about it?
Will I accept it, or react continually against it?
Will I hate myself for being in pain? or possibly hate others? Hate God?
Will I be crying out, “Why me?”
Or may there be other options?
Related: A short route to agony
From my diary:
#AffordableHousing …
… may be one of the toughest of all nuts to crack.
‘This is war’: Protester arrested as KC approves change to housing affordability rate (yahoo.com)
Self-comfort
I have suffered with obsessive-compulsive disorder and genetically-based clinical depression all my life. I first became medicated for these conditions, with SSRIs, in 1991, and the improvement was so drastic I never wanted to be without those medications again.
On or about December 6, 2015, however, it seemed as if they abruptly became ineffective. I was not in a position to find a medical doctor competent to change them. So, on the one hand, I’ve lived with clinical depression from then till now and continuing. On the other hand, a positive is that in this state I’ve obtained certain insights that I never could have “seen” any other way.
One insight in particular would have changed my entire course in life, had I only learned it as a child.
It occurred in four steps. The blue block quotes below are excerpts from my diary. However, I recall that C.S. Lewis referred to diary-keeping as a “time-wasting and foolish practice;” that a diary is, “even for autobiographical purposes,” far less useful than one might suppose. As to the first two steps below, I lost a good deal of time and effort searching for diary passages that didn’t exist.
In mid-December 2015 …
Controversies and the Zeitgeist
“All our dreams were becoming nightmares.”
Salon headlines
The entry below for December 30, 2015 was the last straw, moving me to “out” this information as a post.
For some months, I have made a good faith effort to note every headline my Yahoo! News feed captured from Salon.com that touched on religion.
Salon.com holds itself forth as, in effect, the voice of progressivism.
The headlines themselves display a pronounced bias on the topic of religion. Not all, but almost all, are hostile.
Not skeptical. Not indifferent. Not equanimous.
Hostile.
I am struck that this posture cannot possibly be intellectually honest.
Podcast — Rodney
Many problems, one solution
Rodney
Related:
- The woman who vanished | The Homeless Blogger
- Blinded by the light | The Homeless Blogger
- Inexplicable
- Podcast – Brightening the sparks | The Homeless Blogger
Music: Laura Branigan, “Gloria”
The alphabet people
If something disturbs me, I have a right to say so.
Live and let live: Ishmael
Wednesday 2016-01-06
“Live and let live” is a Recovery principle. In recent weeks, it has been “in my face” from many different directions:
- Recent challenges I’ve faced in managing my own feelings, have made me less judgmental of others who seem to me not to manage their feelings well.
- Pastor and I are not on the same page concerning the concept of justice. He is thus prone to say certain things in sermons that I don’t necessarily want to hear. But I am in no position to demand that he abandon what is, for him, an honest and impassioned point of view.
- Something in Jamilah King’s 12-16-15 .mic article hurt my feelings. I have not yet re-read it to determine what specifically it was. But if the mere expression of an opinion about social conditions can evoke that response from me, it does not bode well for what I hope to accomplish as William Tell the talk show host. William Tell must be able to “Live and let live.”
Ishmael showed up at the shelter for the first time last night. When he joined us in the crowd across the street waiting admission, his face said he’d already had a hard day. Something told me he might be a screwball.
The Homeless Blogger 