Bork Slowly Borking

 Slightly better physically today - which may or may not be something to do with the fact I took 2 aspirin at bed time, but mentally it has been a disaster. Today my mental health has been atrocious. Anxiety. Sadness. Mood swings. Anxiety so bad I didn't want to leave the house. But I did. I threw out the old food bins I had used for the dogs - plastic bins that I kept their dried food in to keep it fresh. With my mental health being all over the show, just throwing those out was appalling. It hurt. A lot. Just another one of those reminders that it's over. I picked up my meds today. Tried to be normal. It's hilarious. I sit there in the pharmacy doing my best to mask. All the while the creeping horror and disassociation kicks in hard. The real world is dreamlike. It doesn't feel real. I am floating around. Nothing matters. It doesn't matter what the time is or day is. It all blends into one bit of suffering. It is surreal. And awful. I can mask so well. I can have ...

 Good god today was very bad. One of my worst. With a minor funny turn in the early evening. I only started to feel a little better around 9pm. By 10.30 pm was a bit better, fragile, tired, and ready for bed to repeat the cycle. I don't know. I scraped the bottom of the barrel hard today. Going up and down stairs was bad. Standing in the kitchen was bad. Sigh. I can't believe I am anywhere but standing right on that edge at my low points. Even staying in bed is not good. Any attempt to rouse myself - I tried - I have a spurt for literally a minute and then fall back worse. I have to tell myself it's ok. Don't worry. What's the worst that could happen. You die ? That's ok. I could do without the lingering and anxiety and awfulness.  Tough titties. I hope tomorrow is better. Please. Let tomorrow be better. I can't keep doing this.

 Stomach issues. Nausea. Dizzy. Everything is flaring hardcore. It is very not good. Despite all that I am fighting tooth and nail to be "normal". And dragging myself out. But. I think it's probably doing more harm to be honest and just wiping out any dribble of energy I have. Yesterday was doc day. I went out feeling not terribly bad - I think my sleep was slightly better - and got to the docs for my blood draw. As I sat waiting I started to feel worse. If I had a pound for the number of times I have declined whilst sitting in a GPs office, I would be well off. Did the blood draw. Are you ok with taking blood ? Yes I said. And I am. But I was starting to feel ill. Maybe she saw it. Who knows. Bloods over, journey home I was worse. Way worse. I made it home ok but it was not good. And I immediately went back to bed. Supposed to be a work day yesterday, but I felt so ill that I slept. Mid afternoon off to see the GP. I had recovered a little in my sleep. And had a chat wit...

 Can't sleep. Dipping in and out of feeling unwell and feeling ok - whilst just lying in bed. Not great. I feel unwell so often now. Just. Doing nothing. Standing up is worse. I don't know. On a whim I have decided to get myself some rehydration salts. It has floated across my path a few times about the importance of them. And in the past on the rare occasion Hazel has offered me a drink with them in, I've noted they don't taste salty at all. Which. Apparently. According to Hazel. Is a sure sign I am deficient in them - they don't taste salty when you are deficient, and salty when you've had enough. I am not sure how water tight science that is, but a cursory glance through anecdotal evidence and even some more sciencey approaches seems to back it up. So maybe I am salt deficient. It's definitely true that there are times I have little salt in my diet. I never salt food after cooking. But I am not shy of salting things either - particular starchy carbs. So I...

 Slept a lot. I have continued to noodle very slowly moving things around. Throwing things out. And inbetween slept. Rested. Ghosted in and out. I am back to sleeping a minimum of 12 hours in one hit. And then sleeping again throughout the day. I would guess I am seeing at most 8 hours a day of being up and about. And that's being generous. I am aware that overall it's not good for me. Not that there's a super alternative here. I can't spring energy from my ass and decide to go on a cross country hike. I am losing condition. I really felt this after 2020/2021 where I had been basically hardcore bedridden for 6 months, and just going out for a walk was... interesting. And there have been a couple of other times where I have had an extended downtime. And you lose condition. Your strength goes. Your capability to walk short distances goes. You rot. It's the familiar spot for me, aware of it, aware it's not good, and you should do something, whilst simultaneously no...

 Fits and starts. Yesterday I had a bit more energy for a while. Today I have struggled to have much at all. I have pathetically taken 5 or 10 minute bite sized chunks out of tasks - mostly cleaning stuff and throwing it out. But it's slow going. And I just leave it in place and come back to it a few hours later when my energy resets a little. As I go, of course, I pull through some items and things of the mutts. Each one has a long attachment of memories to it. For me. As a nutcase. Two of their favourite sticks. Now long long discarded. Their teeth marks still in them. One half gnawed to death. The last two big sticks they tackled. The original dog bed Athena had. Her first. And one of a pair that sat then forevermore under the kitchen table, a den of sorts, where they would go to chill out at times. Ares first puppy blanket. Tiny. Covered with paws. What. Do you do with it all. I threw the dog beds out. Old. Buggered. But so many memories. And part of my life. Part of the DNA of...

 Thought about going into the city today. To pick up a new mac. Not that I want to. I dislike macs at the best of times. And these days. I absolutely loathe them. Overpriced hipster pieces of arch capitalist crap. The fact that Apple has taken to soldering in both memory and hard drives is just infuriating. There is no good reason for this. None. Nada. Zip. It makes no difference to performance. It makes no difference to manufacturing. But with them soldered in, once the bit goes, so the machine goes. Given that some SSDs can blow out within a few years, this is diabolical. How Apple still gets away with this bullshit is anyones guess. Albeit they have recently lost their case versus right to repair ( targeting exactly this kind of predatory bullshit ). Time will tell how or even if they bother to follow the ruling. As it stands. If I want a mac. I need one of the shitty welded in overpriced pieces of shit. I have no choice if I want to start working on iOS apps again. Because. Ap...

 This blog. My random almost bare to the metal thought spew onto page is a strength to me. It is without doubt helpful to me. I could not tell you 100% why, other than recycling the same things that shrinks say, about writing things down, getting it out there, different bit of mind, whatever. But it does something. It gives me a tiny bit of strength. A tiny bit of support. It is perhaps, the smallest scream out in the void - and, it helps. It feels like a place where I can be as close to myself as possible. I don't have to second guess how my comment lands. Or the feelings of someone else. Or whether I come across nuts. Or anything. Even though, those things do at times kick in a little here. It is a freedom to be.. just me. Which in my life is beyond refreshing, it is a weary shaky sigh of relief. Like putting down a heavy weight for just a while and taking a rest. Anyway. It's useful. The shrinks are not wrong. I struggled yesterday and today again. Yesterday I had a slightly...

 Things are getting slowly worse.  I have tried very hard to "just live". Make plans. Get out there. And I can sustain for a short while before I slump back. So I did go out on Friday to the asian supermarket. On a whim at the last minute I decided to ask Hazel if she wanted anything in the city. She tagged along with me. The start was ok, went around a couple of places, but by the end I was flagging somewhat. Decided to have lunch out. I had some pasta and some garlic bread. Hazel had similar. 5 minutes after I had finished everything slowed down. Sluggish. Ill. Hazel ate the same amount as me, no large amount, just a regular sized portion at a chain Italian. After the late lunch we slowly made our way back to the car, I was struggling badly. Took her home. Got home myself. Collapsed. The weekend has played out with me basically in bed all the time, with a spurt of being out of bed - pulled out if it by a friend to play games on the computer. It's so bad, that even that....

 Work was ok this week. Don't get me wrong. It was the usual round of bullshit - this time supplied in abundance by one of our better clients - who seems to have gone off the rails at the same time as the former director has retired. But. It was ok. On the plus side, the new senior guy we took on, what, a month ago now, continues to show he is on the ball. I spotted some absolute bullshit put into one of our systems by our "senior" dev - abso-fucking-lutley NOT senior - and after some sidetracking to find out what the fuck he had done, I left it with our new guy. Who had already spotted the issue, talked to the dev, and was in the process of removing it all. So. Yay. Someone, finally, competent in the house. So far everything he has done work wise has been on point. What I would expect from a senior dude. Old school competency. Unlike the rest of the shitshow that rotates through our office. Today has been a very shit day. I spent most of it asleep, feeling rough. But the...

 So many things I do and touch now send a shiver of memories floating by - there is little that doesn't have something connected to it. My memory is good enough that it can recall all the details. What this song was connected to. What was happening when this video played. Snapshots of life and people and things. All of them fucking sad at the very least, a recall of a time that has now gone and left me empty. Some of my friends marvel at my "amazing" memory. I do not have an amazing memory, at least, not like they think. I cannot recall everything about everything. I do not have a photographic memory. Not even slightly. But. I do have an unusual ability to pull things out, word for word conversations 10 years past. I can recall the exact lines of a thousand different films. Punchlines. Vistas. I suppose I have a vivid internal landscape. I always used to be able to imagine worlds in my head to such a degree that I could write down what they smelled like, the feeling on y...

 Exhaustion has kicked my ass over the last several days. I tempted the devil at each step by keeping up a low effort task of cleaning bits of the car over those days. But I paced myself better. And did not reduce myself to the sorry state I initially had. Yesterday, out of the blue, I felt much better. Much, much better. Functional. I picked up a very limited set of grocery supplies, and went to the effort of cooking slow cooked creamy tarragon chicken with mash and green beans. I didn't flake. I didn't feel it. It was. Like I used to be. And dinner was super yum. And then today. We are back in the swamp once more. And additionally, out of nowhere, my anxiety has ramped up to a nasty degree, making me jumpy and in a permanent state of impending doom all day. Very not nice. But. You get on with it. Grit your teeth. And try to keep a clamp on your state of mind which is, you can feel, very sketchy, and has more than a little of that "mad itch" to it, where you are sta...

 If there was ever any doubt that my health is seriously fucked, today would be a great - and worrying - demonstration of just how fucked it is. Today was slow. Exhausted. Tired. I wanted to give the car a wash today. But it took me until nearly 4pm to summon the energy to do that. Napping in and out. At 4pm I felt like I had just a tiny bit of energy, so I got everything together and started - with a very clear idea that I would take it easy. No rushing. No overdoing it. Slow and steady. Within the first half of just the rear of the car I was alarmingly exhausted. I sat on the floor. And cleaned the bottom of the car. Sitting was easier. By the time I had done a back third of the car my exhaustion was hardcore. Shaking. Slow. No strength. I pushed on. Because. Fuck it. And maybe I am just being a drama queen. And just fucking do it. A mistake. Halfway through I started to hardcore fade out of paying any attention to my surroundings. My vision narrowed down. Dizzy. Slightly nauseou...

 1.23AM Just like the other nights of late. My mood drops. Down, and down. More and more sad. My insides turn to knives. Lying awake in the dark. Not sleeping. Athena runs around my head. Bouncy. Happy. Gone. I am suffering again. Awesome. I have given up lying in the dark miserable and woken up to instead come write this rather than bump along the bottom of my own personal hell. My eyes are a mess. Spent half of today squinting. Sore eyes. Bruised. Stinging. Worst of all, close them for a while, and on opening, they don't quite work right. Focus that wont come in. Blurred. Not the first time this has happened. Great. I tried giving them an old school eye bath with some stuff I got from the pharmacy on my last trip. No difference. Not to worry. A series of GPs say it is indicative of nothing. That's ok then. Today was hard on the work front. Exhausted. And by early afternoon a migraine threatened to take hold. A grumbling headache above the right eye that soon tickled my nausea...

 The cold has shifted. The dregs of it stuttered out over the last couple of days mostly in the form of a voice dropped by an octave and the occasional cough and sniffle. As the cold has dropped away, the other symptoms have come out for a whizz around the playground. Joy. Nausea is back on the menu. Pains. Dizzies. Bad eyes. And of course the exhaustion never went away, but has been biting particularly hard of late. Also as it has faded, my mood has bounced around, the sense of loss and all that bullshit has moved back into primary focus. And at times made me very unhappy again. To which. I still see no end at this point. Of late it has been worse at night. Over night my mood goes very far down. I get very sad. I miss Athena so hard it is, I don't know. Very physical. It's interesting in a way. From that scientific, poke me like a lab rat kind of way. From the other way it's awful. That I miss her so much. And that in order opens me up to being so very vulnerable about t...