Under a Black Rainbow

No earth-shattering page counts this month, but appointments with the neuro-psychologist are complete. I should be hearing definitive results on the super extensive battery of tests around March 7th.  Focus is returning bit by bit, thankfully. We're still not 100%, but we're getting there. I'm sure the winter greys didn't help (they never do). Definitely looking forward to more thunderstorm weather.  REALLY anxious to get this back deck built on the house and have a swim spa/endless pool installed (one of the new decisions based on the pseudo hydrotherapy I attempted at the hotel earlier this month). Got some great writing done, finished a couple books, got my head and body right for a few days. Would love to keep that streak going.  It's my birthday month and it's looking busy (as is April). We'll see what kind of book numbers I'm able to put up; currently doing a metric fuckton of research on some fatter books, so...progress will almost certainly be sl...

Yeah, it's a lot of graphic novels, but I'm reading again. It still requires a great deal of focus to do so, but it's getting easier.  Next week, I have my appointment with the neuropsychologist, so we'll see what that battery of tests drudges up from within me.  After that, I spend the week at a supposedly haunted hotel where I'll be taking a stack of books with me. In between reading, there will be swimming and hot tubbing and working on a couple different writing projects.  *     *     *     *     * January (26 Books | 4,758 pgs) 01.) Critical Role: Vox Machina Origins I & II Collection (Graphic Novel, 320pgs) 02.) Critical Role: Vox Machina Origins III (Graphic Novel, 152 pgs) 03.) The Nice House on the Lake, Vol. 1 (Graphic Novel, 200 pgs) 04.) Something is Killing the Children, Vol. 1 (Graphic Novel, 128 pgs) 05.) Something is Killing the Children, Vol. 2 (Graphic Novel, 144 pgs) 06.) Something is Killing the Children, Vol...

Tough year. Tough several of them, honestly. Feels like I've been put through nearly all of the different emotional ringers, pinballing from one to another to another with barely a moment to stop and breathe. But every hurdle gets cleared eventually.  My dear friend (and birthday twin) Mel has a thing she does every year. A kind of "lessons I've learned this year," and it's an idea I've always enjoyed copying from her as it really forces me to take stock of the past so I can move differently (where needed) into the future. These are in absolutely no order whatsoever.  *     *     * 1. Grief is relentless and doesn't give two shits about your feelings. It never goes away, but it does change; it does evolve. And you'll get dragged through that evolution whether you like it or not, but do all the things you possibly can to get yourself to a steady place. Your boat will constantly continue to fill with water until you learn your best methods of addressing...

I'm sure I've talked about the milestones one experiences in life that end up changing an individual's trajectory. I can point to a number of them in my own life. And while many of them cause a fair amount of regret on my part (mostly due to my behavior rather than someone else's), none have affected me quite as much as the job I worked in San Francisco. It was the only one and, because no one else would even give me the luxury of an interview for different, better work...I left the city.   However, my time there was a perfect example of how far I'm willing to go to get what I want when I find it attainable (this often does not work in relation to other people; no means no). I took on a physically exhausting job during the day and attacked the mentally exhausting grad school work at night. My first three years out there were tough, but REALLY good. Solid friend group, solid writers to lean on and drink with, great living situation. The job was whatever, but it paid ...

Perhaps this is my pinnacle; maybe this is where I top out.  I sincerely hope not, but everything feels very uphill from here. I am so much better now at processing and evaluating the inner workings of my brain and the motivations for what I do and who I talk to and how I move forward in all things. I am regularly scraping out the skeletal bowl that is my skull in search of answers or guidance for these new versions of me that are populating in the moment so that I can pivot accordingly in the hopes that I retain some version of the self I knew.  My doc and I assumed a bump up in dosage of my Welbutrin would help return some of my long-missing focus, but that hasn't seemed to have made much of a difference. It remains incredibly difficult to read; it takes several minutes to read a single page, but then I need to read that page multiple times to read it all. And even then, it's about a 25% chance that I've comprehended what I just worked my ass off reading. As someone who u...

'Tis the season for spooky shit and gory stuff and mangled realities. And after all the years consuming all the movies and all the books...the best and most efficient of the horrors is that of the self (should you choose to reflect upon it fully and appropriately). I've spent much of my last 15 years dissecting, trimming, and flat out destroying old bad habits and toxic personality traits. Doing so has made me feel more solitary than not.  I can look back and see the bad behavior and the unintended douchery if I peel back the veil on my own hazy memories to gaze upon the truth. While it's completely ridiculous and illogical, I worry that this phase of my life is experiencing a level of karmic retribution for the things I did as a younger man.  I have an exceptional group of friends who all enjoy many of the same things. And, I've been fortunate in later years to find romantic partners that fit my particular likes and dislikes in lovers, though nearly every instance was ...

  I currently stand upon the precipice of some good changes. The start of the year had me wound up and anxious - one of the many reasons I also chose to drastically cut down my drinking from "nightly" to "once every couple of weeks or so." My grief was starting to seep back in and take hold of things and my personal constitution couldn't seem to fight it alone. I'm good in tough moments; I thrive in chaos, as my coworkers know. I keep my shit together and I rarely break, but I knew I was close to a very bad breaking point.  So, after chatting with my doctor and a couple therapists, I went on a month-long leave from work and started a daily regiment of Zoloft. The problem with these types of drugs (SSRIs) is that they come with a number of physical and physiological downsides: lack of sexual interest, weight gain, a loss of purpose or sense of spatial ambiguity, and a pretty clear dissociation of your real self (all of which I hated immensely).  And so we add...