Because Tim Is Encouraging Me to Write More (and Post More), I Jotted This on the Night of 28 December

(Not totally sure where this is heading, but -like most of my posts- it's pretty steeped in the wicked and twisted stream-of-conscious thought that takes over my brain when I get an idea in my head and set about putting it down on paper...)
Last night, Junior Trosclair invited me back to his (what I consider - by my Broadmoor born-and-bred standards of living and breathing and making monthly payments) palatial three bedroom house in the Haven to watch Paranormal Activity 2. I'd seen the first one on my laptop either last spring, or maybe over the summer, and I remember feeling generally unsettled for several days following the viewing. The feeling was comparable to three other media-based, monumentally life-altering experiences I had in my youth: watching the nuclear holocaust television event The Day After, a Geraldo Rivera hosted special on famous mass murderers in America's history that included an interview with Charles Manson, and another Rivera special that detailed the prevalence of satanism in the zeitgeist of the 1980's and included his admonition to all viewers to "please, do not let your children watch this." This triad of factual horror would have a permanent impact on my psyche, but few fictional films would later have comparable ramifications on my impressionable (fragile?) brain; however, Paranormal Activity (and now, its sequel) is an outlier to this otherwise consistent factotum.
Of course, being something of a horror film aficionado, I could (and have) easily list hundreds of movies that provided significant impact on my desire to create. The original Halloween is, in its way, on par with Citizen Kane. Black Christmas (and its progenitor Psycho) with Birth of a Nation. Dario Argento's magnum opus Suspiria is as close to cinematic perfection  as terror films go. Scream. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Let's Scare Jessica to Death. Dementia-13.The list may actually be infinite, but few of these films (Tobe Hooper's exploitative cringe-fest being an obligatory exception) truly possess(ed) the power to really frighten me despite the true genius that resides in the depths of their celluloid. Perhaps it was real world horror, and my early exposure to the nightly world news, that did something to desensitize me to the suspension of disbelief and my ability to truly immerse myself in the idea of being well frightened by fiction. From a very early age, the media, in particular, early evening and prime time television, did more to scare the crap out of me. Impressions were made and correlations developed via post-toddler misinterpretation of the real world beyond my living room which was depicted on 20/20 and Peter Jennings's broadcasts.
I felt lingering effects from watching footage of the mysterious illness that medical experts had yet to name and the horrendous physical effects it had on the stricken. The connection I vividly remember making in my brain was between what appeared to be bruises all over the patients' arms and legs and the fact that, despite their otherwise gray understanding of the disease, scientists were certain that it was transmitted through sex and needles, which meant the blood. At one time, the news described the possibility that the infection (sometime between its diagnostic title as "GRID" and its eventual encasement as the more accurate and less homophobic "AIDS") could potentially be passed via mosquito bites. I remember hearing the news in the dead heat of summer, and I remember coming home every night after spending my days riding bikes and building forts and rolling around in the freshly mowed yards of every house in the neighborhood to the mandatory nightly baths that would sting my arms and my legs from their consistent exposure to chigger bites and whatever HYPER-allergenic toxins were present in the grassy hills of Broadmoor that brought such feverish itching and scratching and stinging to my shins and elbows, to my thighs and knees. I remember trembling in the wake of the warm and soapy water, the pale pink earplugs that I kept on the side of the tub and had to place every time I bathed or dove in a swimming pool to prevent any water from getting into my ears and causing further infection after the many rounds of tonsillitis (excised in my infancy, the surgeons had left just enough tissue for them to regenerate) and strep throat and PE tubes that effected my hearing and left me with a speech impediment that prevented me from the proper annunciation of several phonetics. I remember clenching my teeth and grinding my jaws as the sting on my skin slowly dissolved in the water, and I remember staring down at the bright red bug bites behind my knees and in the crooks of my hips where my legs connected to my torso and on the insides of my thighs and the terribly inflamed and purplish welps that screamed in the scratch fest on my scrotum (any male who has ever had the pleasure of alleviating such an itch in that very spot knows exactly what I mean) from the litany of outdoor interlopers that found their way inside my shorts and had made a smorgasbord of my obviously tasty flesh. Finally, I remember my horror when I noticed the colorful array of green and blue and gray bruises from my days of hard play in the wonderland of summer: I would count them, noticing which were fresh and which had been there for days, and I exhaustively tried to recount the exact causes of each and every one because these bruises terrified me in their simultaneous presence with the bug bites (although I now know that many were actually from the parasitic red bugs that littered the mounds of dirt we were always so fond of rolling around in, I assumed that every bug bite was a mosquito bite). There were always more the next night than there had been the night before, and hadn't I just seen something about this on the news at dinner? Was that new spot below my right knee really from my foot skidding off its driving perch on my bike and banging my shin on the still-revolving hard rubber of the pedal? Or were these bruises not from any of the daily forgotten injuries a little kid constantly inflicts on himself during games of tag and tug-of-war? Could it be that these bruises were like those that I'd seen on the pale, emaciated limbs of the dying, ravaged souls on ABC's World News Tonight at five-thirty every Monday through Friday? Had one of the mosquitoes that had bitten me earlier bitten one of those men or women? Or some man or woman like them? Did I have AIDS? Or GRID? Or whatever it was that the reporters were calling in that week? Was I going to die?

I was far too scared to tell anyone (especially my medically phobic mother who had just enough bedside knowledge of the medical field from her home versions of the MERCK Manual and a variety of other source books from which she could readily diagnose any and all maladies from the conglomeration of past and present symptom-ologies that befell us) because I knew that if I did have the same thing that was blasted all over the news shows, I would definitely have to go to the doctor. And going to the doctor ALWAYS meant one thing: shots. That was certainly one thing that I was even more terrified of than any plausible or probable or imagined illness: the many shots that one would definitely have to receive if he or she were laid up, crumpled and frail and covered in bruises like the men and women on the news. There would absolutely, positively be many, many shots to make it go away. Instead, I kept the bruises and the mosquito bites and the probability of my coming demise from anyone and everyone -especially my mother. Like many of the other things that would come to scare me in my youth, I bottled the fear up inside and did my best to hide it from the world.

As if the news weren't bad enough, though, the major networks of the early eighties also brought me the twin terror of movies-of-the-week (every one of them based on a true story) and the sensational path to fame wrought by the camera-loving Geraldo Rivera. These two forces, true stories and Geraldo, introduced me to my three other biggest and most (ir)rational fears (the infectious mosquitoes being promptly forgotten when the imagery of this trilogy of terror eclipsed bruise-laden limbs of patients on tv), fears that were born in my childhood and remain somewhat in existence for me today in comparable varieties: nuclear war, Charles Manson, and satanic cults that thrived on kidnapping and sacrificing blond-haired, blue-eyed pretty boys such as myself. Interestingly enough, all of these would (and still do) consistently come full circle into my life countless times throughout adolescence and my formative early, mid, and late-twenties - the ideology within the latter of the trifecta re-appearing once again last night, during and following my viewing of Paranormal Activity 2 with Junior Trosclair.

(...to be continued...I have more to re-write before I make any more edits as I type through another post...)

Making Up for Lost Time Spent Away

Moon Over Gulf Shores

Tonya

Psych Testing: Color Identification

It's My Turn

Cthulu: the Bloop (In Progress)

(In Progress)

...and We Meet Again...

A canvas from November...

Another view...

Trailer for Tonight's Pick....

68 Days Till Halloween

If I hadn't gone the countdown to Halloween/horror retrospective route for this new period of People Are Afraid To Merge in LA, I was planning on a generalized discussion of DVD favorites, both past and present. Every so often I go on kicks of watching previously popular and subsequently off-the-air television shows with a special emphasis on the prime time soaps of the late seventies and eighties, and recent weeks have been no exception as I've been requesting entire collections of several of my favorites to have on as background noise while I worked to re-copy notes for my new position as Office Manager at Family Dentistry and took steps to organize and prepare myself for the newly arrived fall semester. I made it through the first two seasons of Knots Landing, a tv show that I found during its original syndication the summer following my freshman year in high school, fell in love with sometime during its re-airing of the third season, and then proceeded to watch in its entirety, setting my VCR to record the daily episodes that continued for the duration of my sophomore year at Caddo Parish Magnet High School.

I'd never known the joy of the nighttime soaps when they originally aired, but my love for the medium helped cement my friendship with Bijal Patel and the two of us fell in love with the nineties counterparts that seemed to center around the denizens of 1601 Melrose Place and pretty much everything that starred Heather Locklear and/or Tori Spelling. Unfortunately, it seems that the releasing of other seasons of Knots Landing beyond Sid Fairgate's fateful drive through the cliffside canyons of the Los Angeles suburb and his sister, Abby's, sudden discover that her ex-husband has kidnapped her two children are uncertain. Although I enjoy having the lives and loves of the Carrington clan on as background noise, it's just not as great as listening to the somewhat more realistic goings-on with those crazy LA-ers such as the pill-popping do-gooder Karen, the ever-victimized Valene, constantly relapsing Gary, and the Shakespearean-inspired Greg Sumner. I'm hoping to start re-amassing a worthy collection at some point, but I find that when I watch such programming, said programming and its format seems to run my taste in everything else; therefore, I'm only too pleased to let the Dynasty, Dallas, Falcon Crest, and Knots Landing boxed sets gather a little dust while I settle in for a long, comfortable ride with my one great joy, the world of horror fandom.

Tonight, I've decided to begin with a favorite that only fell into my sights and interests in late 2004 when Bravo originally aired its 100 Scariest Movie Moments and I saw a documentary on the master of Italian horror, Mario Bava. Prior to 2004, I'd never heard of the man nor any of his films, but I have yet to feel let down by any of his offerings.

I'm popping Blood and Black Lace into my laptop's DVD-R drive now and I'm hoping that its swanky opening theme moves me to keep going on the attainment of the goals I've set for achievement tonight...

69 Days and Nights Dedicated to the Greatest Holiday on the Calendar and the Most Captivating Time of the Year...

I'm hoping that the latest topic that is now taking over my blog is one that will really hold my interest and keep me posting. After all, anything and everything that has something to do with the month of October and the thrillingly perfect day with which it ends is right up my alley and johnny-on-the-spot for the new direction I want to take this one last creative outlet that I have and never take full and proper advantage of - I always vow to have some new trend, but I never have the follow-through in the same gusto with which I start; however, I really think that this can be something positively worthy of the treasure trove of imagination that fills my mind in my spare time.

If you know me personally, you know that I love movies and music and literature and art, and I gulp down pretty much every branch of those mediums, but my most favored genre of those from which I might choose is horror. H.P. Lovecraft once wrote that "the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." The master of the mythos of Cthulhu was right. I don't know why I was initially drawn to this subsection of creativity, but I suppose it has something to do with some combination of the men and women who had their hands on the origins of my being, and I'm lucky to have a plethora of anecdotes that'll fit right in with the myriad ideas I have for the next sixty-eight days of my blogging life. Combine those interludes with my knowledge of the history of the horror story, my genuine adoration for horror cinema, and my ever-evolving and unquenchable thirst for seeing and doing and learning as much as I can about this one great category, and I can already see that the possibilities for the future of my blog between this time tonight and its future twin time on All Hallow's Eve are pretty much endless.

I was toying with the pursuit of a few other subjects and forays once the 101 Days and Nights of non-redeeming paths to redemption was complete, but I kept coming back to this one. When I first read the syllabus and reading list for this semester's English course, the last English I will take as an undergraduate, I felt as if some sort of strange destiny was smiling down on me and nodding an affirmation that I am, in fact, headed in the right direction. This research and reading-based course is focusing on the history of the horror story and the many tendrils of subsidiary subjects it influenced and gave birth to... this is going to be a great semester, and I want to enjoy every possible breath-taking moment to the best of my ability.

Like most of my former preliminary posts before beginning new treks in my blogging life, this one is short, incoherent, more than slightly disjointed and kind of wrecklessly streamed-of-subconscious, so I already know that I'm right where I'm supposed to be right now. I imagine that tomorrow's will begin to bring about the cohesion and stride I'm hoping I'll find right when the first tropical storms set their sights on the Gulf of Mexico and the seasonal cold fronts bring down their initiating glimpses into fall. I hope that those readers I have out there who remain slightly interested in seeing just where the hell I'm headed (if I actually get my irresponsible brain working toward some wordy work for others to read) will continue to stop by and check things out. And I hope that the coming days and nights and weekends bring you a few chuckles and nods and maybe one or two really engrossing ten-or-fifteen-minute-spans of genuinely enthralled interest. Keep following me. My promise is to make this next stretch of highway along the highway on which people are afraid to merge as much fun as possible.

Enjoy.

101 of 101

Glad that's over. Now, onto the next big blog idea...

98 of 101

I start senior semester 1 of 2 tomorrow. Maybe having classes to tend to will keep me a little more likely to post regularly.

The Meteorologist Predicted Rain on Day 90 of 101 - Once Again, the Meteorologist(s) Got It Wrong: It's As If These Huge Splotches of Green Are Avoiding the Shreveport Area Intentionally

Today is the 112th anniversary of the birth of genius in the form of Alfred Hitchcock. To honor the man I consider one of the greatest minds and creators in cinema, I created a playlist featuring several of my favorites in his film collection. Already, I've gone from Shadow of a Doubt and Suspicion to Rebecca. Of course, the big titles for which he is best known are still to come.

Rhonda's Book Pick Rounds Out Book Club 2011...

"Matterhorn is a marvel--a living, breathing book with Lieutenant Waino Mellas and the men of Bravo Company at its raw and battered heart. Karl Marlantes doesn't introduce you to Vietnam in his brilliant war epic--he unceremoniously drops you into the jungle, disoriented and dripping with leeches, with only the newbie lieutenant as your guide. Mellas is a bundle of anxiety and ambition, a college kid who never imagined being part of a "war that none of his friends thought was worth fighting," who realized too late that "because of his desire to look good coming home from a war, he might never come home at all." A highly decorated Vietnam veteran himself, Marlantes brings the horrors and heroism of war to life with the finesse of a seasoned writer, exposing not just the things they carry, but the fears they bury, the friends they lose, and the men they follow. Matterhorn is as much about the development of Mellas from boy to man, from the kind of man you fight beside to the man you fight for, as it is about the war itself. Through his untrained eyes, readers gain a new perspective on the ravages of war, the politics and bureaucracy of the military, and the peculiar beauty of brotherhood." --Daphne Durham

"It's All Happening" On Day 86 of 101

I can always tell when I'm in a really good place. Emotionally. Physically. Spiritually. Psychologically. I can tell because I find it just a little harder than usual to wind down, to find a stopping point for the day, a place in my work when I finally say, "Okay, it's time to go wash my face and brush my teeth and get ready for bed. You don't have to go right to sleep, but you at least need to get somewhere between the sheets or you'll not get any sleep tonight."

I'm in a great place. In fact, I can't remember the last time I felt like I was really going long and strong and at the fullest speed possible, the last time I felt a certain sense of ease and fulfillment during every waking hour. I attribute it all to this fantastic new job that I've gotten, this place where I know I'll never stop moving, never stop learning, and always have incentive to succeed. For the first time in my entire professional life, I really feel as if I'm a member of a team whose sum is only equal to the strength of each and every valuable member of its parts.

At the close of operations today, despite the fact that I felt intermittently flustered and overwhelmed, I once again realized that my reactions have been far less substantial than in the past. I don't necessarily mean outwardly, and I definitely ought to use a better word than "reaction" to describe the inner sense of stress and imbalance that I've felt in the past when expectation outsourced exertion and I allowed myself to feel a combination of guilt, uncertainty, and inner failure. Now, I just see things for what they are. I'm learning that I can't do it all at once, and that's okay. I'm seeing that it can't all be done today, but that doesn't mean that I haven't accomplished a great amount. And I finally know that one of my greatest assets is the fact that I am a flawed man, capable of mistakes only to utilize them as tools toward a greater measure of future success. I'm calmer than normal, more aware and self-actualized than I may ever have been in the past. It's as if I'm constantly cognizant of everything I am and need to be at any given time, and most of the time, I'm just myself, just a regular guy who just so happens to be quite capable of greatness on a daily basis.

In the morning, I'll once again be rising at what is becoming my standard time: 0400 hours; however, instead of spending the morning downing coffee and playing games on Facebook while I wait for it to fully kick in, I'll be joining the doctors at my practice for some early morning cardio at the gym they hit every morning of the week. At first, I was uncertain as to whether or not I ought to accept the invitation. After all, I really feel that I learned a very valuable lesson in mixing any sort of professionalism with a personal life, but this feels different. More... well, professional. It's been quite a while (not since meeting Rhonda and Stephen and Stacy [and becoming close to each of them in that very order] and embarking on what I'm sure will be a lifelong friendship with each of them) since I was invited to be a part of something that wasn't based on what I could give but rather what I can bring.

Finally, after 86 days of on-again/off-again physical stimulus in an effort to really begin that final phase of this pursuit of redemption, I'll really have the opportunity to spend the final fifteen twenty-fours in this period working to meet that all-powerful body goal I've set for myself.

Frankly, I can't think of any better way to rise and shine than with a cup of coffee and a few laps up and down an indoor pool. This should be fun, and my guess is that it will be a phenomenal start to the middle day in the week.

It's all really coming together. Patience. Persistance. Pride. And Perseverence. They're the P's that have always worked in the past. No reason they might possibly fail me now. I would be the only obstacle.

Book Club Pick for November at Steph's....

Book Club Pick for October with Miles...

Book Club Pick for September at Vicky's....

Day 84 of 101

The problem I have isn't setting goals, but actually finding the time to attain them. One of the things I always write that I'm going to do daily is "blog." But then again, I also write that I want to find the time to exercise, write something creative, get in a little leisure reading, work in my journal, and those are only the routine headings. None of that encompasses any of the other things that I have to do to achieve a full twenty-four hours: waking up, getting ready for work, working, then cooling down and relaxing when I'm home, which is when all the secondary stuff can start to be crossed off. That's how it works in theory at least.

Book club was last night, and I enjoyed it. I was pleased that I wasn't the only one who'd not had the time to finish the book. We're planning to discuss it more fully and openly at the September meeting, which is Vicky's pick, Cane River. October is me, War and Remembrance. Because it's one of my summer reads that I've started and stopped and probably won't finish for another ten years if I don't sign up to do it for a book club. November will be Stephanie's book, Room, and Rhonda and Heather have yet to pick their next books.

We need some new blood in Book club. I have a few to whom I'm considering extending membership invitations.

It's 11:30 or thereabouts and I'm not nearly as tired as I ought to be and I have to be up and gulping some coffee in less than five hours to make it to the office by sometime around six. I should probably sign out.

Day Four of the Hellish Heat on Day 81 of 101

"....there's no earthly way of knowing
      ...which direction we are going
             ...there's no knowing where we're rowing
                    ...or which way the river's flowing (Willy Wonka, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory)"
                            ...but one thing's for certain:
                                   it's really freakin' hot. I can't even concentrate tonight. About to hit the sack super early to get up super early and work on more after-work work then. Short day tomorrow. I get to end things right at noon.

Day Three of the Hellish Heat on Day 80 of 101

Tonight's post is just to have one out there because I'm trying to remain as diligent as possible (of course, if you've followed me for a while, you know that this diligence and integrity kinda comes in spells when it comes to holding course with Disappearing Here).

I have to be up no later that 0430 to beat my fellow staff members to the office before 0630. While learning the rules and regulations of the operation, I'm trying to adhere to the normal office schedule, taking full advantage of the vast knowledge and expertise of each and every one of my teammates: they each have something special that they can bring to the table, and I need to glean as much as possible while I have the ability to do it.

Once I'm comfortable and ready to roll, I'll transition to my normal hours of Monday through Thursday, 0800 to 1700, and Fridays from 0800 to noon. I found my first real moment of stress today, but I sat back, took a deep breath and decided that -unlike my mindset in every previous position I've had- everything here does not absolutely have to be completed at once. I was comfortable just finishing what I could and allowing myself to leave what I could for tomorrow. More importantly, tomorrow, I plan to begin delegating some responsibility. I'm not totally comfortable doing that just no because I am still in the process of learning, but I have so much more information for which I need to gain further insight that I feel I am doing myself an injustice by sticking to any one procedure that I've already learned.

I need not pitter patter hither and yon at the mergence of State and Main. I need to get ready for sleep so that I can get up and look at everything with fresh eyes.

Deuces, peeps.

...by the way...

In spite of the two or three (...let's be honest, six or seven) other books that I've started and have every intention of completing before classes resume on 22 August, this is Heather's selection for this month's meeting of the Shreveport/Bossier Book Club. She's serving Mexican chow at her place, so I have to read the copy if I'm going to be able to say anything worthwhile (especially considering that Book Club hasn't met in several months due to the unforeseen revisions and editing that took place). Rhonda's totally absorbed in it, and I've only read the first twenty or thirty pages. I'll have to get pretty busy and really start cramming some heavy duty reading in between now and Saturday night, but I have no doubt I can finish it in time. Anybody else read it? Anyone have any comments or thoughts? Please hold any spoilers down because I at least want to be shocked and intrigued as I hear it's something of a page-turner.

Answers to the Questions of Those Interested Parties I Promised I'd Post

Several people have sent emails and Facebook messages asking me where I've gone and what I'm now doing, especially since so many people were in the dark as to my thoughts towards transitioning from the B-wood. In the simplest terms, all I can tell everyone is that I went back to the hospital night shift with the highest hopes for the best possible outcome. My PRN status was up toward the end of 2009, and I had felt a pull to get back to a full time position there for quite some time. At some points, I even believed that I never should have left in the first place... in some ways, I even believed that I was never going to do anything any better than that. You can become so accustomed to certain trains of thought that you allow things to occupy your mind and prevent upward and momentous thinking, overshadowing possibilities with thinking that is only minimally linear.

I really believed that my career was taking off in the best possible direction, and I hoped to plug all my energies into being the best MHT that the B-wood had ever seen, hoping to surpass the exemplary standard that I begin to set for myself and everyone else beginning in the summer of 2006. The new five-year plan included me completing my BS while working the night shift, graduating in May of 2012 (which I will still be doing -AND- which has me completing my degree in the perfectly historically allotted four years), getting a position with the Intake department and enrolling in a Master's program in Psych. Despite the fact that the questions still lingered ("Is this really what I want to do with the rest of my life?" et al.), I felt that I was taking a step in the right direction.

No matter what, I could always find the time to write and write and write and find a means to justify the maximus perfectus goal of finding an end as a published and publishing writer. Despite my inconsistent posts here, even when I promise outwardly that I'm to be forthcoming with more, I've been really adhering to tons of other self-imposed ideas for this transitory period of redemption in my life, and the one thing that I'm most proud of myself for sticking with has been finding some period, no matter how long, to write creatively each and every day. Most of my blogs are incoherent and stream-of-conscious crap. My journal entries are likely even worse, but I rarely go back to re-read them. But my stories.... I'm really starting to think that some of this stuff is actually better than pretty good, and hopefully - no matter anything else - I'll soon be in a position to edit, re-write, type, and post a few examples for any and all of my friendly followers here. There I go again: an entire paragraph of digressive thoughts on paper.

I've been pouring through The Writers' Market and The Novel and Short Story Writers' Market books from the most recent years to start getting some ideas for where I might look to begin publishing. I've also begun to really look at things on a little more local scale... don't you think it's about time that Shreveport got with the times and allowed a Maupin-esque serialization to treat readers of any of its multiple dull and dreary regular publications? I don't think that anything would be better to really increase circulation and cause a little controversy than SB or The Times or The Forum to allow a young and energetic and observant citizen of the SBC world to circumnavigate direct appeal to a literary agent by publishing an engrossing thrill ride filled with sin and sex and secrets against the backdrops with which everyone reading is familiar.... more digression, but a little more of a hint of where I'm headed with some of the stuff I'm working toward.

Anyway....

Immediately upon resuming my calibration at the B-wood, I begin to get a dose of the sights and sounds and smells of alarm. It was as if there were a million little things that were slightly different, just to the other side of askew, and they were all adding up to tell me that I was/am (technically, I'm still PRN, and I'd gladly accept a call/request that I pick up a non-weeknight shift or one over one of my upcoming long weekends) in the wrong place at the wrong time. For those who follow my blog regularly, I'm certain that many of you remember some weeks ago when I published a series of posts about the issues that I was having and the conflicts that seemed to be unnecessarily arising... and the disdain I felt at missing the opportunities toward which I supplicated. Something was rotten in the state of Caddo, and it had nothing to do with that pervading smell of foul sewage that permeates the early morning air in the Broadmoor area these days.

I'd applied for a spot that I'd seen posted through a career website some time ago, so long ago that I'd really forgotten that I'd sent in my resume and a rocking cover letter. In fact, my pursuit of the spot was almost passive, definitely not filled with any sense of urgency at the time, but my interest was genuinely piqued when I saw the ad because I thought of alterations to my five-year plan that could possibly work in my favor to an even more sublime degree. My other notion of simply completing my BS (because, these days, a BS really is just BS, something to get you from point A to point B to prove to the world at large that yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and I can show you a piece of paper that not only proves that, but also proves that I'm capable of working for your firm/company/facility/institution for greater than ten to twelve dollars per hour; in other words, the BS [or BA as it were] is merely a stepping stone toward the really productive and elusive and increasingly rare find: the Master's degree) before enrolling in an online (probably just stick with my alma mater, NSU [why not? they've got the great Isabelle ghost story legacy... and our mascot's the freakin' DEMONS! what could be better than that for an up-and-coming-writer of the post post-modern horror tale???] for the duration) accredited Master's program to attain an MBA or to somehow specialize in health care administration. The one thing that I know I've been told I'm good at, great at, something in which I excel is administration and organization, working just a bit inside the scope of the fair haired, blue sky-ed world where customer service meets critical thinking and blends with a level of management where a benevolent despot can really shine. Why not put my money where my mouth is (make my money where my mouth is?) and go for the gold in an area that I probably shoulda just stuck with in the first place? I'll still have a four-year degree in the specialty field of addictionology, and I know that I can always find a job in psych if need be, but if I really want to eventually form or find a company with which to grow and formulate a true career... well... Yahoo! Hot Jobs and all the other career websites tell me that this is the way to do it.

What's funny is that I applied for an upper level spot at the B-wood, and I was passed over for the position. Despite the fact that I was told I was the better candidate, that I was more experienced, that I have a sparkling resume (that, to be honest, really doesn't contain everything that I've accomplished in the past six years alone because I run out of room when I try to include it all), that I'm an asset to the team, that I deserve the spot... I was passed over. Even the one for whom I was passed over believed that I was the one who really ought to have gotten the position (I disagree on multiple points, but that's because the other happens to be a friend of mine for whom I have great respect and admiration and who I know, in a way, needed the spot much more than I did at the time). I was passed over. Ya know, that's the first time in my life that I was ever told that I couldn't do something now that I think about it. Don't get me wrong, that's not the reason that I wanted to leave my full time position there, and I had my other fingers in the fire long before this event. No, it wasn't the reason, but it was a definite catalyst... a little kindling for that fire, I guess.

Then one thing led to another, and...well... most of you guys know the rest.

That's when the call came in...while I was still recovering from the (miserably failed) lower lumbar disc-fuc*tomy and wondering how the hell I was going to safely return to a world of code greens and heavy patient care when I wasn't even beginning to feel like my whole self again. The call requested my presence for an interview. I obliged despite my pain and the limitations on my physical parameters (which have obviously improved, but are still NOWHERE near the spot at which I was prepared to accept), and I instantly fell in love with the practice and the people and the idea. It was as if the cosmos had suddenly aligned and knew what I was thinking and wanting and needing but hadn't really found the right way to put into the right words to seek out and find for myself. Kismet. Fate. Destiny. A complete and perfect cohesion of intergalactic star-crossing serendipity. Very nice.

What followed was a call for a working interview, which is the new deal where you go in and you kind of observe and you kind of work and you get to ask questions and everybody meets you and judges you silently and sizes you up while you silently, slyly do exactly the same. It's a two hour deal, and I thankfully did it right when I was about to go back to my full fledged, pre-surgical work schedule. The funny thing was, I had already lost any passion and verve and drive that I once felt toward the hospital. Don't ask me why, but I knew the day of that very first interview, a meeting which couldn't have been longer than fifteen minutes, that I was about to begin a new chapter in my life. I knew that I was coming to a crossroads and that my Higher Power (whom I choose to call "My Higher Power") was putting something in my lap with a big red bow and saying: "Okay, you want happy.... I'll give you happy... unwrap this, Miles... it's not often that I get to give you an actual, tangible, obvious gift like this because most everything else I give you, you take for granted in one way or another.... so, here you go... I've even wrapped it up and made it look like something you can fish out from underneath the tree on Christmas morning {does anybody ever think it's ironic that it's the big man's birthday and we get presents instead of the other way around? i dunno... just occurred to me}... so, I'm not gonna twist your arm and tell you what to do, but you've worked hard and you've earned this, and I'm gonna leave the ball in your court and let you make up your mind... but if you want it, it's yours... open the box, the keys are inside..."

Following the working interview, I sent a quick thank-you card, knowing that this duo who were (likely, at the time) to be my future superiors, were preparing to embark on a vacation that would keep them out of pocket for a while. It wasn't a bribe, but a little genuine gratuity for their time (incidentally, there's an incredibly ironic and incredibly meaningful aside that accompanies this story and relates specifically to the end of my working interview, but until I gain permission from the other party to which the story pertains, I likely ought not to post it for public consumption... in time, though, I promise to get it out to everyone; it's one of those that will give you goose bumps and maybe splash a little mist in your eye because it's one of those things that just seems to happen sometimes to people like me, and when it does, you feel God; there's no other way to describe it for those of you who've never had it happen - for those of you that have, I'm sure you can read between the lines) and appreciation for their consideration; however, I went right back to the B-wood nights with the understanding that something was about to happen, but I wasn't going to hold my breath or wait or bounce in bladder-full anticipation. I was just gonna play it as it laid and take the steps as they presented themselves before me.

Last Wednesday, I had a missed call from the good doctor, and he asked me if I needed to give a notice. I promised him that I'd let him know first thing the next morning, and I spent the next sixteen or so hours debating on just what I was going to do. Although I'd been feeling it since before my surgery, the feeling of general disgust and utter contempt for my immediate supervisor at the B-wood was suddenly more solidly cemented than ever. I realized so many things last Wednesday night, and I grew tremendously through it all.

I realized that I am one of the hardest working people that I know. I realized that I am an asset no matter where I am and what I'm doing. I'm not only a good friend, but I'm a great companion in any and every way. I realized that I'm really freakin' smart, incredibly smart... probably one of the smartest people I know (lucky for me, I'm a member of the Special People Club). I realized that I have more potential than I have or will ever realize under the roof of the hospital. I realized that I was unfairly overlooked for the position for which I applied. I realized that I had spoken out against the opposite of justice and professionalism prior to my surgery and I may as well have been slapped in the face with the lack of response on the matter(s). I realized that I have a big, bright, shining future ahead of me, and that I need not burn any bridges, but I also need not suffer unnecessarily because plenty of others have already done that for me. In other words: when the pain of remaining the same becomes greater than your fear of change, you surely will let it go (my all-time favorite AA/NA/recovery in general quote).

I am now the office manager of an expanding and thriving dental practice where I'm not just a warm body filling a scheduling gap, but an actual face and member of a team. With the title comes a plethora of responsibility with which I would never have been benevolently challenged had I remained full time where I was. I decided to change my status to PRN and to allow my name to go in the hopper for suddenly opened shifts as they arose, but I know that I am - for the first time in my life - in a place from where I can actually take it or leave it.

You see, these people, this couple who interviewed me and made such an awesome impression on me (as -they assure me- I did the same on them), saw that I was the best candidate. They saw that I am and that I will continue to be an asset. They saw my energy, my talent, my intelligence, my capacity to learn and to grow and to build and to be the member (and the leader) of a team of other stand-out individuals. Despite only knowing me personally for a total of no more than two hours and fifteen minutes and otherwise only from a piece of paper that shows some things I've done, not who I am, they saw everything that I am and always forget to recognize when I look in the mirror (probably because so many of the others that I once admired and respected and hoped to emulate individually and deceptively showed me that I needed to question and second-guess and be uncertain of my drive, my passion, my zest, and my ability to whithold, to withstand, and to win each and every battle I might possibly face).

It may seem silly to write that I feel that I've learned all these ideas simply from being selected for a job, but this job is finally something that I can look at as a career and really mean it. I finally know my worth, and -for the first time- I can really see that it has no finite dollar sign attached to it.

The way I see things is that, from here, the only way is up. Not that I can't fall any lower, it's just that now there really isn't any point.

I've written way longer than I planned. I need to get busy on the remainders of my to-do list, get my face washed and my teeth brushed, and get into bed. It's half past midnight, and six o'clock will come early tomorrow.

Thanks for letting me ramble.

Day 2 of the Hellish Heat of August on Day 79 of 101

I'm not totally certain that I have my day count correct. Is today really day 79, or is today actually day 77 or 78? Or is it actually day 80 or 82? Not certain. I lost motivation to keep everything johnny-on-the-spot and accurate at some point this summer, and I'm okay with that. One of the features of personal redemption is realizing that you can't be 100% perfect 100% of the time, and that's totally fine. Recognizing my assets and remaining cognizant of my liabilities is one of those things that I learned I must do long, long ago - it's only recently that I've really begun to practice that principle in all of my affairs...not consistently, but as often as I can when I realize that I'm really only stressing myself out and there's no great reason to do so.

Thus far, the summer has been a tremendous growing experience, and I find August arriving and the heat settling into its most oppressive state at a wonderfully transitive period that I really never saw coming. I've lost so many battles along the way to today that I think I forgot how to be happy...and how to accept life's biggest gifts without question or uncertainty. I guess that's what comes with self-awareness: just learning to enjoy the moment. The spotlight and the accolades are hard for me to accept and/or bask in because I'm incredibly hard on myself at any given time. For now, though, I'm just letting things be where they are, and I'm loving every minute of every day (despite the exterior conditions which have become anything other than pleasant). When you're rocking and rolling, it can be a little difficult to let the trees block your view of the forest. That's a good thing.

The Hellish Heat of August 1st on Day 78 of 101

I've sucked at keeping this blog, and I'm admitting that. I just hope that August fares better than July as far as me making posts and updating a little more passionately than I have for the past month.

The problem is that by the time I sign in to formulate anything worthwhile, I lose my zest and sparks, and I never seem to be able to compile anything that I really care to post; however, one of my goals for the month is to be a little more religious about this (and a few other things: meditation, journaling, exercise, and focus - all the things that I keep promising myself to get a handle on in my path toward personal redemption).

I have tons to be happy about, lots for which to be grateful.

More to come (Stacy).

This Makes 14 Posts for the Month of July (Day 70 of 101)

Entering the last week of July, the hottest I can remember (but I probably say/write/think that every year), and I was really hoping to look back at this point in my summer from scholastic responsibility with a broader sense of accomplishment than what I've got to feel pride toward. What's more, my blog is filled with regret and lament. I read some of this stuff and really think that I sound like a tragically morose individual.

I'm not. Not really. Well, not especially. I mean, I've not kept up with my blog like I promised myself I would before the weather got really hot. I've not been penning entries in my journal. I've not been going to meetings or working steps with Juli. I've accumulated more titles on my list of "to-read"s than I have in my stacks of "completed"s. I haven't written much, and everything that I've written I've second guessed or put to the side. I have more outlines and pages filled with streams-of-consciousness than actual, cohesive work. I haven't lost that last twenty-seven pounds that I was hoping to remove before sweater weather arrives. I've lost a little bit more faith in the idea of love and romance (seems that's the one area I really ought not to put any focus into... it only serves to see you let down in the long run). I planned to end the summer free from complaining of lower lumbar, flank, and posterior leg-to-knee pain (but all the surgery really did was take every possible adjective I could use to describe the hurt on the left side and placed it firmly on the equal-opposite side). A lot of plans that haven't exactly planned out.

But I have the course work prepped and registered for the upcoming fall semester (the final fall semester I'll ever have to take), and it's a schedule filled with psych and addiction studies and a few other core classes that I need to be sure I'll be graduating on time this coming May. Of course, I've yet to complete the imperative financial aid paperwork that NSU sent me months ago when I was chosen for verification (an unfortunate process that's randomly selected and can unnecessarily hold things up for dispersal of funds) - I really need to get on top of that.

I have also completed compiling my final issue as editor of the LASN paper, Horizons, a task to which I stuck despite no longer being a member of the nursing program at a school in the state of Louisiana; however, I still have the full expose to complete that I'm hoping to finely tune and perhaps publish at some point in the next several months. Have I mentioned that? My desire to write a narrative of what happened with my application and scrutiny by the board (with absolute antithesis of bending-over-backwards of any of those wonderful professionals at the NSU CON who were only too ready to accept my help with anything and everything I was asked).

I finished Tess for book club. I formed enduring relationships with the men and women who accompanied me to Gulf Shores. I discovered my worth in applying for and being more selectively scrutinized (this time, I'm using the word with a hopefully positive connotation) to accept a postion that, if I get it, will reward me for my actual worth and potential. In making changes and plans and looking more maturely at my future, I've figured out what I definitely don't want...even if I'm still not entirely sure about where I'm specifically headed.

I guess I have as many pros as I might list cons for things I can cross off my lists. I only wish there was more... that there were more.

I need to finish The Swarm and War and Remembrance and The Funhouse. I need to get my sneakers back on my feet and the soles of my shoes back on the pavement to get the physique to where I want it. I need to be sure I'm updating this, my baby, regularly instead of weekly (if not daily), and I need to put a little (no, a lot) more energy into calibrating the meat of these stories for which I've only so far gotten outlines and ideas.

It's nearly 0430, and I have to stay up for a few more hours if I'm going to sleep for most of the day and be alert and oriented and ready to roll in time for work at 2230. Maybe I can get some of this stuff knocked out... the financial aid paperwork at least.

S/P Lower Lumbar (L-4/L-5) Microdiscectomy Left Side V/S Bilateral (Part 1: Monday, 20 June, 2011)

"You just had surgery, Mr. Oliver! You need to lay back down!" The voice was masculine, firm, authoritative, and I was wondering if it was the CRNA that gave me the good shit a second before, which was really more like an hour before, but when you're coming to from a surgical procedure, time -and your perspective on its passage- becomes oddly skewed and basically unintelligible. One minute, you're flat on your back, bouncing your foot criss-crossed over your knee as an extremely friendly surgical nurse in a skull cap wheels you down a weird set of twists to an ice cold room filled with all the sounds of machines that keep you alive and monitor just how alive you are. The nurse (who reminds me of a slightly older [but equally sweet natured and gifted with the ability to instantly put someone at ease with her innate charm] Erin Spurlock) has probably gotten the job for the combined genius brain that one needs to properly assimilate nursing information to succeed and excel and this awesome bedside manner that some people can spend their entire professional lives striving to dispense and never make it: people such as this woman who led me into the sea of tranquil sensory deprivation (and Erin Spurlock) just have that natural bedside manner already. There's nothing you can teach them, and there's nothing more they need to know. That's an amazing thing. And thank Good Orderly Direction it's not something that was handed out the day I was passing through the additional personality characteristics line before making my way down the birth canal. Had I received it, then I may be forced to use it and subsequently be stuck with nursing in lieu of merely having had it as a temporary, but very necessary experience on my path toward true fulfillment.

...at some point, this post was tremendously lengthier. I somehow deleted its bulk at one of the points that it was saved. It was a pretty decent ramble about the days immediately following my surgery. I kept coming back to it intermittently to add updates.

I'm back to work tomorrow, and I hurt. And I'm off any and all narcotizing opiates, back on an opiod, which is not the same thing. And I hurt. I hurt like I never even had the surgery.

This isn't post-surgical recovery pain. This is pre-surgical pain, the same pain I had prior to the grand event that was supposed to have taken place on Monday, 20 June.

I'm back to work tomorrow, well - tonight, and I am already waiting for the next MRI (June 29th, with and without contrast -reminds me, they left me a message today, I need to call them back) and the reading of its results the following Tuesday to see what my next step will be. Do I really want to go through another surgery? Can I?

I have classes to consider. My advisor emailed me today to tell me that I'm right on track to graduate in a little more than ten months. Hard to believe.

I have too many other fish to fry rather than worry over some ridiculous back pain. I do see how people can become overly distracted by this, though. And depressed.

Maybe more later.

64/101

...nothing.

Just Finished...

Not that it is either a terribly long or terribly slow read. In fact, I'd now like to research the Ted Kennedy Chappaquiddik fiasco.

On 63 of 101

Every day I've opened my dashboard to post.

Day 60. Day 61. Day 62.

Every day I've had the intention of sitting to post something, but I haven't found the energy or the wherewithal to sit here to write anything that I could sit back and deem it either worthwhile or not worthwhile to post.

Instead, I've been reading and generally feeling frustrated and sorry for myself, debating levels of disability and the idea of living the rest of my life, from age 32 to 40 or 50 or 62 or beyond, with some degree of pain.

Do people really deal with such situations as this on a daily basis?

For the rest of their lives?

Seriously?

I wonder how we could ever be expected to cure the big-lettered diseases and disorders, the capital ("big") C or AIDS (or HIV) or COPD or some other XYZLMNOP that has yet to take on life through any combined mnemonic or acronym, when the doctors and professionals can't even cure something as simple and basic as pain.

I mean, yeah, they can give you a pill to reduce inflammation and block the actions of the prostaglandins or something that you have to show your license to fill because it doesn't really work to get rid of the pain, it just makes it so that you don't notice it so much, but they can't give you something that you could really call a "painkiller."

I'm not despondent, not by any means, but I can't help thinking that the idea of "chronic pain," and the idea of living by a label like that one, is really ridiculous.

So, I've been filling my journal, especially yesterday when I celebrated entering the year six (I haven't found it worthwhile to imbibe a mind-altering or mood-altering chemical since the night of Friday, July 15, 2005) without attending a meeting or picking up a new medallion to commemorate an event that is tantamount to a wedding or a graduation in the recovery community. Not that I don't plan to do so, and not that I probably don't really need to hit a meeting sometime in the next forty-eight hours, if for no other reason than that I've not been to one in two weeks now, I just felt some semblance of content with merely staying home, watching episode five ("Of Love and War") of The Winds of War (still refreshing my memory of having read the book many years ago, during the long, hot summer of 1999), using a heavily exfoliating scrub on my dry and calloused toes and heels, slathering on a cucumber-melon-combo across my cheeks, forehead, nose, and chin (the "T-zone" area prone to all the crap that you think you're done acquiring once you enter college, but quickly find you're never too old to accept whether willingly or combatting-ly), filing my fingernails, and reading Joyce Carol Oates's Black Water after having finished Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'urbervilles yesterday afternoon.

I need to get back to work, and the doctor's left the ball in my court to decide for myself ("...well, you know what you do and you know whether or not you can do it, so I think that I'm gonna leave this open, and when you're ready..."). My plan is to call tomorrow, throw caution to the wind, and request a release that will allow me to return as the week concludes (to the shock and chagrin of several I'm sure as I'm strongly contemplating an offer from my DON to return to a different shift, possibly one not even during the week at all as I wonder if I wouldn't be happier, more helpful, and better equipped to work the back-to-back sixteen-hour weekend doubles) so that I can see whether or not my body and my back can hold out and handle a return to real life.

In theory, having a medical leave sounds like a dream, but you can only watch so much coverage of the Casey Anthony debacle or the budget reconciliation arguments or re-runs of any one of the million versions of Law and Order that are on at any given hour on any given channel on every possible day of the week.

Besides, it's not as if I'm being overly productive with my writing and posting here.

An Admission of Breaking Promises of Day 58 on Day 59 of 101

...and I was really so well...

When I was a little kid, the biggest threat that my mother could ever waylay in my direction (and, come to think of it, she'd normally have a screwdriver in her hand when she'd say it) was that if I didn't stop whatever it was that I was doing, she would unscrew my belly button and all my arms and legs would fall off. It wasn't until sometime during my fall 2009 semester at the NSU College of Nursing and Allied Health, Angela Miller's Human Anatomy class, that I realized that I'd never really thought about the fact that the threat was actually physiologically impossible. I was fairly gullible growing up. Plus, I had a big imagination. Couple those factors with the fact that I have a rather colorful past when it comes to medical ailments, and you'll see why I was only too ready to believe pretty much any threat that an adult could wield toward me.

More on my status as a veritable medical anomaly later...

Promises on Day 58 of 101

I haven't allowed this much time to lapse between posts since beginning this redemptive endeavor. Although I've not the time (or the will) to create an extended post at the moment, my promise is to have something a little more in-depth a little later today (more likely tonight).

On the Post I've Just Written for Day 52 of 101, Which Was Reviewed on Day 53 of 101, Here's the Follow-Up

I'm pretty wiped out, and I'm gonna have to let a solid (hopefully, cross your fingers and I'll cross mine) night's sleep come between me and the long post I just typed out. I want to wait to review it in the morning to be sure it's fit for possible public consumption. After having lunch with someone I admire and respect today, I realize that, in backing away from actually publishing something that I've not had an opportunity to review (and, in all fairness, possibly edit), I am, once again, totally censoring myself and leaving out the best bits (and proving true his idea that I'm deliberately keeping any readers at a very comfortable arm's length from any of the real truths I could be including).

I'm okay with that for now.

I see the outcome of this decision as going in one of two ways. Either I'll get up in the morning, review my post over my first or second (probably second) cup of coffee and hurriedly hit "publish post" while I wonder why I was such a chicken shit and didn't just go ahead and post my circumstantial, tangential river-of-rambling; or, in the second scenario, I'll lean forward and squint my eyes while I re-read my own words, hit the "edit posts" button and shake my head the whole time I'm wondering why the hell I'd write shit like that while I'm so googly-moogly and tired and really have no business still being up let alone compiling some


...and upon today's review, I'm not at all concerned, so I'll likely go ahead and publish this as well. The problem is that I tend to have a very colorful vocabulary, riddled with a ton of four-letter combos, and I always try to go through my stuff and excise any of that once I've got something typed out. I was too tired to follow through on all that last night, so I waited to look things over today.

I'll likely have very good news to note when I return to compile something more this evening.

Ho-Hums and Doldrums 52 Days Into 101 - Reviewed for Posting on Day 53 of 101

I came to my desk to create an update much earlier this evening and the title was all that I could muster to type out initially. Ho-hum and down-in-the-dumps was the generalized feeling that I had persuant to something of a sticky ending to what had otherwise been a fairly remarkable day. There! I said it: today was a good day. The notion has been something of a rarity lately so I feel it's best that I comment correctly and let the readership know that not every moment of my most recent days and nights has been bleak and bored and basking in a resonating self-deprecation. As has become my custom lately, I rose early, downed my coffee while I checked emails and Facebook statuses, reviewed my daily list of necessaries and must-do's, visualized a fairly clear plan of attack, then broke out my Just for Today and Twenty-Four Hours a Day to read what my forefathers had in store for me decades ago when the words were first written in anticipation that one day, some day, early in the overheated July of 2011, a still-pretty-idealistic guy with just shy of six years sober would open his eyes and require a little wisdom that could be pushed in his direction.

I managed to spend almost the entire day away from the stifled and compressed interior of my house, something that may seem like nothing to most, but is actually something of an accomplished feat for someone who is still obviously in the midst of recovery -finally, neither on the upper or lower side of the halfway mark, but still somewhere in that general area- and is unable to withstand any significant period of time in a seated position behind the wheel of a car or snuggled into the booth of a restaurant or merely sitting in what is otherwise a comfortable and familiar postion propped at a well-worn desk with a second-hand laptop feeling a writer's fingers dancing across his or her keys.

For the first time in several weeks, I enjoyed a lunch that wasn't microwaved from a pouch or re-heated on Pyrex or scarfed down from a paper towel while standing at the granite kitchen countertops in the fully homo-erect-ed position while it hasn't lost any novelty or given way to pain necessitating a change of venue. At lunch, I had the pleasure of company -as well as treatment to the meal- from someone who actually took the time to hear me out and let me talk a little and didn't manage to turn my responses to his questions into the perfect opportunity to about-face and re-invade the conversation with the perception of a world that revolves entirely around him. In other words, someone who is interesting and interested in getting to know anything and everything that makes me interesting and interested in being interested in by him. Did you follow that? Nah! Me neither. My eyes are drooping and I'm pretty thoroughly exhausted, and I really haven't made it very far through the description of my day that I had planned to load into today's post if, for no other reason than that I've been sparse and lazy in content for the past two days.

Maybe a quick cigarette break'll help organize my thoughts and point me in the direction toward which I ought to be thinking and typing tonight.

I didn't go smoke. Instead, I pulled out my print journal, which is, as I pointed out to my lunch companion today, the place where my writing always begins or ends. Unexpectedly and remarkably, my lunch date offered insight into his perceptions of the ebb and flow of energy and ideas in my blog, and while he described the way the one gets a sense of pattern and rhythm present in my endeavors, the words he opted and the gestures he used made perfect sense. For the first time in a long time, I saw, literally visually saw, exactly what he was meaning through the well received constructive criticisms he was offering: just when I'm arriving at an important plot point or detail or conclusion to one of my more richly conceived and copiously constructed stream-of-consciousness conglomerations, I stop. David told me that it seems as if I am hiding some of the best bits, keeping some of the better details at bay, or at least away from the eyes of babes. Perhaps that is the case. Maybe I do deliberately excise some of the juicier pieces of fat because they contain some of the most revealing DNA of my work. As I mentioned, nearly every blog post either begins or ends in my journal. Believe me, that's for the best for now.

After leaving lunch, I was in an intensely contemplative mood for much of the remaining afternoon. I briefly came back home to collect some essentials and to head up to the library to work there for a while. I found a more controlled and less conspicuos locale where I could pop in my ear buds and open my notebooks and click open my pens to fill in forms and complete the most crucial bits and pieces that made up the torso of my to-do list for the day. Productive. I was productive. Of course, I started feeling the pain seeping back into my right hip and nestle an unpleasant wedge somewhere deep down in the joint, sort of hinged and hurried into that little nook just beyond my groin where my thigh meets my hip which meets the underside of my ass which connects to the lower portions of my torso, but not at the surface: down deep. Standing or moving my leg or althering my position in any way doesn't seem to matter or make any difference at all. Once the pain, which only departs for some period (either for as little as an hour or extended into three to four [or not departing at all but merely slowing down to a faint trickle that pulsates manageably, but is never truly gone] hours) of time, begins to make its way back to fully alert and well-oriented to let its presence be known, I can usually throw in the towel on anything getting anywhere near the way I may have previously intended. Once the pain has walked into my party, it's best to turn the music off and start giving signals that it's time for everyone to go: I'm probably going to spend the remainder of my day dealing with getting it under control. Sometimes it works and I can come back to my desk to resume for a while. Sometimes, nothing works and I'm forced to close off and remit myself to a quiet and comfortable and off-the-beaten-path place where I can get lost in my thoughts and try to mentally wil myself back to where I was earlier when I initially found that happy place from which I could work.

I left the library and came home and began to develop an ache in my belly that was somewhere between depressed and frustration and any one of either of their angry and irritating cousins. I kept reviewing my to-do list and looked over my blog and played around here and/or there online, thinking and worrying and wondering and never really finding any one thing to totally focus on...oh, no! To find only one thing on which I could focus my attention may make that one detail all the more important and force me to find some means to eliminate it to the point that it's no longer a detail with which I ought to concern myself. I started feeling better, just before sitting down to compile this blog (and well after originally creating the title to describe my mood at the time) when I pushed my list of everything that absolutely requires immediate and satisfactory solution to the side. There's really no way I'll be able to knock all the rest of it out right here and right now: tonight; therefore, I'm gonna sit back and allow my posture to collapse and look unhealthy and lazy so that I can relax. And just let things be.

And I'm gonna contemplate lunch a little more. Along with that ebbing and flowing and rhythm that I feel certain is totally lacking from this post (seeing as I've been up since six-thirty this morning, and that was after only two-and-a-half to three hours of REM-style sleep), I'm gonna think a little more on being a little more personal and allowing some of those juicier fat bits in instead of putting them in spots where no one can see or read or judge. And I'm gonna see about incorporating a little more honesty and straigh-forward frankness rather than editing my language to the point of it possibly receiving a PG-13 rating from the MPAA.

Just gonna save this tonight. I am gonna have to review in the morning. My guess is that nothing I've written makes any damn sense at all because nothing I'm thinking does. That's an effect of taking medication at night when you're already tired.

Day 51 of 101

Another cop-out. Not publishing anything today because nothing's ready to be posted. Instead, here's what I'm currently watching. Getting my memory of the book refreshed via Herman Wouk's teleplay (an ABC novel-for-television) before I read the sequel.



Lately, This Is What I Do Every Night - Early Morning Hours on Day 50 of 101

You'll never order seafood the same way again...

Late Night Post on Day 49 of 101

I detest reading back through my posts and seeing any that are void of any true content or length, but I really don't have anything worthwhile to post tonight. What's more, the lengthier and more substantial stuff that I'm working to compile and edit and have ready to post are nowhere near ready. At present, the main thing that I'm hoping to have finished is the one thing that seems to be taking me the longest to really get to the spot where I think it will be ready to hit "Publish Post" and get out there into the wonderful world of my readership: it's all about chronic pain, my surgery, the days and nights that followed. Most of it is filled with thoughts and feelings and questions that I was having as I had them, and my intent was to have it all pop up on a daily basis as everything occured. Unfortunately, I'm a bit of a perfectionist and I'm not always pleased with some of my stream-of-consciousness stuff once I go back through and read the lines that I swiftly stamped out and sent up to be read by who-knows-who.

If I have the energy and the wherewithall tomorrow, I think that I'll just go through it all and probably send it through. Earlier, when I took a bit of a break from the extremely uncomfortable (no, it's painful; the position is painful) spot sitting in the black leather executive-style chair that I bought a few years ago and put together myself from the box branded with the words "some assembly required," I wrote a bit in my journal, something that I've also been doing much more of lately (along with reading a bit more religiously in my underlined and highlighted and notated fourth edition of Alcoholics Anonymous, my Just For Today NA daily meditation and the Twenty-Four Hours a Day copy that my aunt gave me for my birthday a few numbers ago [it belonged to my great uncle Felton, Mimi's brother, and it still holds his name and address as it did when he flipped through the pages during his own time of one day at a time a long, long time ago, before I ever thought of putting the first mind- or mood-altering substance past my lips]), about how non-productive I feel while playing this game of waiting for the geniuses to clear me to return to work. I have no doubt that I'd never make it past the first hour of the first shift right now, but that doesn't lower my level of frustration any.

My plan for tomorrow, other than coming to my desk and making the requisite entries on paper and laptop, of cours, is to try to find a happy and pleasant place to just curl up in and relax to read and maybe watch the second and third discs from The Winds of War miniseries that Netflix sent me just before the long weekend. I'm sure that I've got a solid five or six hours of televised entertainment to get through, and that should keep me busy. Not only that, but I still have close to six hundred pages left in The Swarm, and I'm hoping to be totally finished with it at the same time that I'm finished watching this series from Netflix so that I can begin reading Herman Wouk's sequel, War and Remembrance (and the Thomas Tryon, Joyce Carol Oates, and -oh, shit... for the Special People Club: Tess of the D'urbervilles: I probably need to get S squared (if I knew how to make a superscript here, I would, but S squared knows who she is, or if the reference is kind of different, then they know who they are) to light a fire under my feet - no reason that I'm not done with a lot more other than the fact that I'm so easily and regularly distracted by the fact that I just can't seem to get a handle on my pain).

Here I am, only hours short of exactly two weeks since the Swiss-trained geniuses cut into my back to relieve me of the bondage of this condition, and I really don't feel like it's gotten me anywhere. Shouldn't I be better by now? Shouldn't I be able to sleep all the way through the night without getting up to take a Flexaril or narcotic pain relievers so that I can get back to sleep? I keep reminding myself (and hearing Patti Akins's voice from Friday mornings of last fall discussing the difference between most pain and the pain of surgical healing [and when I hear her voice, I remember her tenet that "Sister Margaret says that pain is what the patient says it is,"] and I try to make myself okay with just being where I'm at right now) that everyone recovers differently and that when the geniuses mentioned a recovery that could possibly last only ten days, I must've just latched onto that and didn't hear when (well, really: "if") any of them said that it could last two weeks or three weeks or longer. I can't afford to be out of work for very much longer. If this were one of the trashy rags-to-riches novels that Bijal and Whitney and I passed aroudn in high school, this is where a previously unknown rich relative would make his or her entrance to the life of the protagonist and suddenly lay a magical finger on the situation and take away that one, very significant stressor: the great money worry.

On the other hand, I do have to remember that I did intentionally make the decision to have this done when I did because this is the best and most logical and least financially draining part of the year. As angry as I was when the procedure was cancelled Thanksgiving week, thank Good Orderly Direction that it was because I'd never have been able to return for a final week of lecture and the multiple, consecutive nights of two to three hours of barely sleep between days and nights and agonizing minutes laden with the memorization of body systems and disease processes and stressing to figure out which of the two answers are right and then which of those two answers are the best answer of the two (all otherwise known as "finals week").

Once this is all over, I will have to start worrying about school once again, but only from August until December, and then again from January until May, the month when I will finally receive that very important piece of paper that tells the world that everything I have on my resume and everything I state in an interview is actually true, and they really can hire me for a spot at more than just slightly above the nationwide minimum (which, incidentally, no human being can possibly survive on in 2011).

I'm rambling. No wonder I can't get anywhere with all these private posts that I have saved and go into to edit and then walk away from having made little progress. I get in to make an alteration and I just start running off at the mouth. Stacy and Stephen are always pushing me to read David Sedaris. Although I've read excerpts and bits, I suppose I really ought to pull his stuff out: Stacy tells me that I write along the same lines. Maybe I ought to look at putting everything down into a memoir instead of writing my short stories that pay homage to Poe and O'Henry and Madame Flannery and Shirley (Miss Jackson if you're scary). Some of those suckers that I write are really, really good. But some are bad. More are bad, in fact, because they're fiction, and many times, I'm merely speculating, guessing, trying to create a fictional world that I'm not sure I have a great understanding of. Writers are always encouraged to write what they know, and it seems that when I really write what I know, when I share the funny little anecdotes about life in the days and nights in my garden of nocturnal delights, I get a lot of feedback from some of you who read this stuff even though I really had no idea that anyone read anything I wrote at all.

Although I address a lot of this stuff to an assumed audience, I don't know that I'd continue doing it if I really assumed some composition of an audience. I just think that a couple of people who already know how crazy I am are the ones reading it, so it's fine. I started to put my blog address as my personal webpage when I was creating a resume the other day, and I had to think twice and quickly eliminate that from the page as I realized that a perspective employer might not be so keen on hiring someone who talks a bit frankly about previous drug and alcohol use and random hookups when I was auditioning for Diane Keaton's role in Looking for Mr. Goodbar....or maybe an employer who would read it and still hire me is exactly who I need to be working for... hmmm.

...nah... incredibly doubtful, but it's still a pleasant and appealing idea.

A List from My Mom for Day 48 on Day 49 of 101

1. I think part of a best friend's job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.

2. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong.

3. I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.

4. There is great need for a sarcasm font.

5. How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?

6. Was learning cursive really necessary?

7. Map Quest really needs to start their directions on # 5. I'm pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.

8. Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.

9. I can't remember the last time I wasn't at least kind of tired.

10. Bad decisions make good stories.

11. You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you know that you just aren't going to do anything productive for the rest of the day.

12. Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after Blue Ray? I don't want to have to restart my collection...again.

13. I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten-page technical report that I swear I did not make any changes to.

14. I keep some people's phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.

15. I think the freezer deserves a light as well.

16. I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I would bet on any given Friday or Saturday night more kisses begin with Miller Lite than Kay.

17. I wish Google Maps had an "Avoid Ghetto" routing option.

18. I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.

19. How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear or understand a word they said?

20. I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars team up to prevent a jerk from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers and sisters!

21. Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.

22. Sometimes I'll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.

23. Even under ideal conditions, people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, finding their cell phone, and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey - but I'd bet everyone can find and push the snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time, every time.

24. The first testicular guard, the "Cup," was used in Hockey in 1874 and the first helmet was used in 1974. That means it only took 100 years for men to realize that their brain is also important.

The Final Minutes of Day 47 of 101 - There Are Other, Bigger Posts in the Works

...but here's a little something to whet whatever appetites are out there for their daily dose of Miles to the Jay.

I've been working on a lot, probably because I'm still lacking the necessary painlessness, or been unable to find a manageable level for tolerating pain, and unable to do much other than read and write and journal. When it really starts to kick in, then I kick myself for doing whatever it was that I was doing earlier, which probably wasn't much of anything, and then I have to find a happy spot from which to close my eyes and breathe and wait for my medication to kick in. I'm more than somewhat disgusted with the results -or lack thereof- I've experienced so far, and I'm fairly certain that the professionals at The Spine Institute are beyond frustrated with the frequency of my calls requesting a response on whether or not this or that is normal or okay. In fact, the major endeavor I'm batting around is all about that so I'll just save my thoughts and ideas and fears for that little nugget that I'm hoping to complete and have up and ready to be read in the next few days.

Something I've learned (and can share without running the risk of spoiling too many plot points in my upcoming, recovery-related post) from the spinal surgery recovery process is that a commonly touted adage about people like me is unquestionably true. The saying goes that doctors and nurses make the worst possible patients. Why? Because they know too much. I have no doubt that the words are the truth, but I have to take things a step or two beyond: nursing (or any other student seeking professional licensure in a medically-related field) students are a nightmare. Why? Because we think we know too much and really only know just enough to be really dangerous. What's more, our heads are filled with the myriad facts and figures and statistics and worst-case scenarios that have been drilled into our heads to teach us to practice safely and think quickly; therefore, we're only too eager to wonder about every little stab of pain and drop of unexpected blood. When it's our pain or our drop, we require instant clarification to ease our troubled brains. Without the clarification toward easement, if the subject is a regimented Type A personality who lives his life by a daily to-do list and needs a place for everything and everything in his or her place, then we're going to dwell, stress, consult Google and then really start to freak out when we realize that every slightly abnormal new development could lead to hemiparalysis, massive infection, MRSA, neuropathy, or be possible early indications of a stroke (I'm really pleased to be looking at other, more satisfying and challenging career futures, but I'll never be able to unlearn everything that I've learned in the past three years... le sigh).

In other words, my brain is constantly ticking, which I'm sure is no great surprise to anyone who may be reading this. At any given time, whether I'm reading or watching a movie or totally engrossed in an old episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, I have at least four other directions in which my thoughts are floating, none of them has anything to do with the other; therefore, my notebooks are filling with lists and ideas and questions. My journal is filling with the same. And I have several privately saved entries on this end of blogspot on which I'm working at any given time, whether I have my laptop in front of me or not. Kind of a blessing. More of a curse.

I'm still reading the Schatzing book, The Swarm, and I'm finding several passages particularly disgusting, especially now that I'm getting into however whatever the hell is going on in Earth's oceans is beginning to affect the citizens of the world in the darnedest little ways (although I've had the meat, I've never actually sat down to order a lobster in a restaurant and after reading this book, I almost certainly never will). Once I have this gargantuan undertaking completed, I have Tess of the D'urbervilles to tackle followed by Black Water from Joyce Carol Oates, Thomas Tryon's The Night of the Moonbow (I read The Other not long ago, and really enjoyed it), a re-reading of some childhood favorites that I can't totally remember (The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin, and two from Roald Dahl: The Witches and The BFG), Herman Wouk's War and Remembrance (I read The Winds of War a little more than ten years ago, and I'm currently watching the miniseries [which I had to get on Netflix because I loaned out my boxed set of the piece and I've never gotten it back] to re-familiarize myself with the novel's events so I won't be totally lost with this SUBSTANTIAL addition, and Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, a book that Rhonda talks about all the time, and I feel I'd be remiss if I didn't gobble it up so that I can express my thoughts on the work during one of the next opportunities I have to sit at her kitchen table with her and the rest of the brain gang.

...I just glanced back through that last paragraph and I can see what a huge load of reading I have to do. I guess I better hurry up and get this posted so I can get in bed and see what's going on with the jellyfish and crustaceans and layers of methane-devouring worms on Norway's continental shelf. I'll probably write for a while longer, but I really need to get back to Schatzing and find out what he's got next for his version of the end days.