Energy, Part III: Big Foot Energy

(written early to mid March, 2020)

Picking back up from where we left off...

My testosterone, upon being checked at that doctor's appointment, is 470.

This is now statistically average/slightly below average for someone of my age. The ideal is 500-520 or so, roughly, but 470 is in the normal range.

I feel no differently whatsoever. And, for the record, my blood results for my thyroid were normal -- which will, as planned, make me personally request a full thyroid-specific work-up over the spring/summer, especially if nothing else changes. I respectfully disagree that there's nothing going on there.

However, there were trace amounts of blood in my urine, as I told the doctor there might be. She didn't see it as a huge cause of concern at the moment and said to come back in over the summer to do another pee-in-a-cup test.

A few nights later at work, I noticed a lot more of a pink tinge to my urine than before, and upon a phone call back to the office in the morning, I was set up with an appointment for a urologist three weeks in advance -- it was the soonest I could be seen. Could be something, could be nothing, but they were going to see one way or another.

"I'm scared," I told the wife.

And I am, but I'm also sort of...excited? I don't know if that's the right word to use. I'd like to have an excuse, more than anything else. That's probably the best way to put it.

"Brandon missed work tonight?"
"Yeah, he's got bladder cancer, I guess it was a rough day for him."

Etc.

I don't want pity, but I do want something that can be pointed to as a scapegoat so that people will leave me alone, so to speak. If that makes any sense. A crutch. Something I can point to that other people will say isn't my fault so that I can get a free pass on shit I would otherwise be forced to expend physical and emotional energy on because it would be expected of me.

"Can't work today, I have cancer. I'm salaried anyway, so I'm still getting the same paycheck. Will be back tomorrow or the day after once this particular flare-up dies down some."

Some of you are probably appalled by this. Did you just say you'd rather have some form of cancer than be a fully functional human being who contributes to society?

Yes, yes I did. I'm so beaten down and weary that I kind of just want to retire and not have to deal with it anymore. I did what I wanted to do with my life -- I worked some interesting jobs, met some interesting people, got married, and bought a house. Check, please. Stop the ride, I want to get off. I envy those born into privilege, people who can just up and decide exactly what they want to do with the rest of their lives and when, and if that decision is "I want to watch Netflix and play video games and read comic books all day," then that's what they do.

I've contributed enough to society. I'm burnt out now. This world sucks and I'd like to withdraw from it as much as possible.

In saying this, I would later come to find out I spoke too soon, for multiple reasons -- Coronavirus being one of them, of course, but surprisingly not the most pressing.

Last week, I woke up on Thursday to my foot hurting.

Meh, I thought, must've pulled a muscle in my sleep.

It ached somewhat, and felt a little stiff, but I didn't think much of it. I'm old, my body aches, and I have been known to pull muscles in my sleep. This isn't incredibly out of the ordinary.

I lived with it, woke up on Friday for an interview (I'll discuss this later) to said foot hurting even more, took some ibuprofen for it, which helped somewhat, and went on with my day. By the time the interview was over and I was back home, my foot was hurting so bad that it felt like it was screaming at me.

"What does it feel like?" Daisy asked.

"Sort of like a stress fracture, almost, but I didn't do anything to it."

The pain was primarily the top of my foot, radiating down the inner side, under the arch, and looping around the toe (but not affecting the toe, oddly enough).

"Sounds like gout," Daisy said, showing me an article on her phone.

"I don't think it's gout," I said. "It's the same sprain I get in my foot from time to time that just really hurts for a few days and then goes away after I take enough ibuprofen for a while."

It's shocking that I think like this, but it's true. It has happened before, and usually lasts three or four days at the most before it just, well, vanishes -- and then I go back to normal. It happens in my arms once in a while too, which I have always classified as tendonitis and then treat it the same way. 

"Besides," I added, "how the fuck would a vegetarian get gout? It's caused by eating a lot of red meat, organ meats and stuff like that, seafood, and drinking a lot of beer. I do precisely none of those things."

I have had maybe two beers in the past six months and have been vegetarian for a year and a half, going on two this summer. I'm not gonna say I'm the healthiest person on the planet, but I have taken great strides in cleaning up my diet. Indeed, aside from the occasional real cheese or food containing milk or eggs, I am almost 100% plant-based and vegan. I am careful about this. I am meticulous about this. Anyone who knew how I used to eat before versus how I eat now would be shocked and amazed.

But I mean, still, this shit happens.

Anyway.

By Saturday my foot was really swollen and I could barely stand or walk. It was hard to sleep. I couldn't put my foot in a position where it didn't hurt -- elevated, angled, resting, etc. It was maddening. The pain was so uncomfortable it made me sweat. I forced myself to walk on it to to go the grocery store, where I used the cart as a walker, and I'm not sure I've had physical pain so strong in some time. When I went to bed I took 800mg of ibuprofen (which, again, seemed to take off the edge a bit and make it functional to walk around, even with pain).

When I woke up six hours later on Sunday morning, out of a dead sleep because the pills had worn off, I finally agreed that I should probably go to the doctor, because this shit wasn't getting any better at all, and was actually slowly getting worse. 

"What's your schedule like tomorrow?" I asked the wife. 

"Why?"

"Because I probably should go to the doctor to get this looked at," I said. "It's not getting better. It's awful. My foot is really swollen, red, and hot to the touch, and nothing really seems to be helping."

"Why don't we just go now?" she asked.

It was Sunday afternoon, around 3PM. I was planning to work that night, though the chances of me being able to successfully do so were rapidly dwindling. 

"Dr. [Name] isn't in on Sundays."

"Then we'll go to the primary care clinic place, it's open until 8."

I hemmed and hawwed for a few minutes, during which I reached out to my team onsite at work to let them know what was going on. Regardless I'd have to miss work as I didn't think I could even sit at my desk for the entire night. 

"Fine," I said. "Let's go."

So I hobbled my ass downstairs to the car, carefully, while my wife gave me the new nickname of "Hobbles," and we went to the clinic.

Going to a primary care clinic on a Sunday night is bizarre. For one, there's nobody there -- I was the only patient in the building, and there was one on-call nurse there and a blood-draw nurse along with the receptionist. The rest of the building was spookily empty.

I filled out the paperwork, did our copay thing, and then waited in the patient sitting room for about 20 minutes for the on-call nurse/doctor/lady to come in and look at me.

"Take off your shoes and socks so I can compare," she said. 

I did, and she stared at my foot for a good twenty seconds, then looked at my other foot, then back up at me, then back to the painful foot.

"...what? What is it?" I asked.

"I, well, I don't think this is gout," she finally mused. "I'm leaning more towards a diagnosis of cellulitis based on the redness and swelling. Look at how your foot is swollen and red up past the ankle, and spreading, and compare it to your other foot."

I did.

"Do you appreciate the difference?" she asked.

Note: I don't really remember her asking this, but the wife's reaction to that question, when she told me later, was priceless and I wish I would've seen her face. 

"Yes," I said. "It's swollen and red." No shit, doc. That's why I'm here.

"It could be gout and I may be wrong, but I'd like to treat you for cellulitis, prescribe you some Bactrim to quell it, and draw blood to test for both. Worst case is that if it's gout, the blood test will tell me from the uric acid levels. If it's cellulitis, the Bactrim will knock it out."

"Sure," I said.

I mean, sound enough logic, right? I just wanted the shit to be gone so I could go back to feeling normal again. 

She had the blood draw lady take two vials of blood, almost completely painlessly for once, and sent me off to the pharmacy for the Bactrim, which we picked up on the way home. As soon as I was inside I popped off the cap and took the first dose.

And...nothing happened.

I had taken the night off, and I tried to just...rest. It had been a really long, bad weekend of pain and I just wanted to not hurt for a while. I slept off and on in the overnight hours, and when I went to bed for good I made sure to take the next dose of Bactrim first. When I awoke, late-morning on Monday, I was still in pain and nothing had really changed. I took the next dose of Bactrim.

The doctor lady called me shortly thereafter. 

"How are you feeling?" she asked. 

"Well, it hurts," I said. "It's basically exactly the same as it was last night."

"No progress at all?" 

"Nope." 

"Okay," she said, "then stop the Bactrim. I have your blood test results here and they do show elevated uric acid levels in your blood, so it is probably gout then. I'm going to prescribe you a steroid anti-inflammatory, prednisone, and I want you to make a follow-up appointment with your normal doctor within the next three days, even sooner if you don't start feeling better once you're taking that, okay?"

"Completely stop the antibiotic?"

"Yes," she replied. "I don't see any infections in your blood so it's probably just the uric acid and gout."

Allllllrighty then, doc. 

I have always been told that you do not just stop an antibiotic once you start taking it, you have to take the entire dosage over the metered, allotted time. But, she's more qualified than I am, so whatever.

Daisy picked up the prednisone from the pharmacy on the way home from work, and I took the first dose of it as soon as she walked in the door. I decided I could work, that the pain wasn't so severe that I couldn't sit at my desk (and I didn't want to burn another night of PTO). 

Here's what they don't tell you about prednisone -- while it will rapidly drain any swelling and get you feeling almost immediately better, that fluid it drains off you all has to go...somewhere.

In my case, once I got to work, I could feel my swelling in my foot go down by at least half within a few hours...and I had to pee seventeen times that night.

Okay, that might be an exaggeration, but not by much.

The other place the fluid felt like it went was to my lungs, which was a little strange.

I don't know if you've ever been drunk, but you know that feeling when you're drunk where your lips feel a bit numb and your lungs feel gummy and, well, liquidy, and it's a little harder than usual to breathe? Yeah, it was that. 

By the end of the night at work, "Hobbles" was walking almost normally and the vast majority of my foot pain was gone.

By the next night, the swelling was completely gone, with maybe 5% of the pain left, and I was walking normally again.

By Wednesday and Thursday that week I was back to normal, with no changes but a little aching in my leg similar to when you get a knotted calf muscle in your sleep.

Here's the other thing they don't tell you about prednisone -- some of the side effects are weird.

For the days I was on it, I was constantly hot and sweaty. That is a known side effect -- I mean, it's an anti-inflammatory that is pulling fluid out of you, and sweat is another way for it to come out of you to be sure. The larger part of it is that you're told to drink a lot of fluids as it helps break down any further uric acid buildup. 

While I try to stay adequately hydrated, this isn't always completely possible. I work overnights, and that pretty much requires coffee and energy drinks in order to stay awake. Both of those, apparently, are not great for you if it's all you're drinking most of the time, which for me was sort of the case -- I would drink two to five cups of coffee and two or three tallboys of Monster or what-have-you every day, and not much else, just to keep going. 

Well, when you go from drinking that to cutting energy drinks out almost entirely (which I have done) and drinking close to a gallon of water every day instead...things happen to your body. I now sweat a lot more, for example. I almost never sweat before, except in the summer when it was super-hot. Now, if I fall asleep in my chair in my bathrobe, and the room is too hot, I'll wake up drenched. This is new.

The prednisone was given to me on a five-day cycle. In addition to it making me sweat more, it sometimes made me a bit foggy or slow as well. Not tired, not like, drunk or anything...but slower. Enough to where I noticed it. Enough to where some people at work noticed it, and I had to tell my fellow leadership peers that it was making me a little spacey but fine, just give me a little more leeway on some things until it wore off, etc. 

There IS more, of course, but I'll be covering that in subsequent posts...

Energy, Part II: Pocket Full of Feelings

(written February 11-17, 2020)

Something that I didn't mention much in my first installment of this series is how deeply I actually feel emotions most of the time now. I don't know if I can explain it more than that, and it's only some emotions, but it's very much more pronounced than it ever was before.

For example, as a compare and contrast -- when I found out about my former coworker's death last week, I wasn't incredibly upset. I wasn't anything more than mildly surprised, really. The void comes for us all, and all of that...and sometimes it comes for us in grisly, nasty ways. That's life, that's death, it happens.

Yet, upon watching Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, which I preordered the Blu-ray of, I cried at least three times. Ugly crying, too, with snot and blurred vision and the need to pause the movie. And I was crying at scenes that weren't supposed to be tug-at-your-heartstrings sad or depressing, yet there I was.

I cried at those scenes too, mind you, but you get my point.

I cried twice when Daisy and I went to see Little Women in the theater last weekend, and was so moved by it that I immediately bought the book off Amazon and began reading it.

Sometimes I cry in frustration. I used to cry in anger, a lot, but for some reason that switch turned off and now I just get very quiet (or, at times, very loud).

I am full of wishes. I am full of things I would like to do, successes I'd like to achieve, places I'd like to go, material things I'd like to own.

I want a Tesla. Have any of you ever been to a Tesla dealership to look at the showroom cars? They look magical. They look like the future. Hell, the Model X (the SUV) has gullwing back doors like a DeLorean. 

I want a DeLorean too, but I'll never have one of those either. Plus, I hate driving stick shift, and most of the surviving ones are stick.

I mean, I can do it, but I haven't done it in literally twenty years and was never a fan of it when I did do it -- Driver's Ed in high school, by the way. The car was a 1986 baby-shit-brown Cavalier. Not sure I'd even really remember how now, as it was so long ago.

As the weather is slowly getting better in the slow march towards Spring, I've been itching to get behind the wheel of a vehicle again, something I can call mine. Daisy's car is fine, and it's reliable, but I really don't like driving it that much and I am somewhat paranoid when I do -- if I get into an accident, we would then have zero vehicles. When I had the Monte Carlo I would drive it anywhere, anytime, in any weather. Not only did I have to, but I was incredibly comfortable doing so as I knew that car was like an extension of myself. I like Daisy's car, but it's not the same -- and it's not mine.

But, we don't have the money. Our jobs pay the bills and the mortgage and get us food and necessities, and there's not a lot left afterward for a lot of extras. Occasionally the wife or I will get some new clothing, or I'll use some of my (little) disposable income to replace an old or dying vape mod or subscribe to a few more comic books to add to my reading list -- but there's not enough extra, so to speak, to afford a car payment every month.

I have been following the Democratic primaries closely, because I believe that the only way that a lot of things in our lives will get better is if we get our current president the fuck out of office (and possibly into a prison cell, whatever works). Anyone who knows me well knows already that I am and have been a Bernie Sanders supporter for many years, and it looks like this time around he might actually have a shot at the nomination. Nebraska's primary happens late in the season, on May 12 (just two months before the DNC picks the nominee in July).

The wife and I have had serious discussions about relocating to Canada if Trump is re-elected.

This is not a joke; Daisy has dual citizenship, which means it is much easier for us to emigrate to Canada (and for me to be able to get in there as a permanent resident, as her husband) if we have to. I-29 straight up into Manitoba, folks. Eight hours, 570 miles.

I have serious doubts my psyche could withstand another four years of Trump. What I've seen already sickens and depresses me (along with my job as the first cause, I'd say the Trump presidency is the secondary-and-almost-as-major cause of my depression). I never thought I'd live in a country run this badly, where the rule of law no longer really exists, where it feels more and more every day like we're sinking into a dictatorship.

And to think, I used to think George W. Bush was the worst president we could've ever had. Boy, was I wrong. I almost feel as if I should write the man a letter of apology for all the nasty shit I said about him in the early 2000s. I was young and naive, and didn't think things would ever get this bad.

But that's just it -- I feel deeply, and when I am saddened or disgusted or ashamed, I feel those things deeply as well, and begin to spiral downward into those feelings.

I talked about a little of this at my doctor's visit this week.

No, not a therapist, though that may still eventually be in the cards -- my actual doctor. Daisy and I had our routine checkups/physicals this week (another reason why I took Wednesday off -- I needed a bit of time to prepare emotionally for that as well).

Let me expand on this a bit -- the wife and I do yearly physical checkups once a year with our doctor. We book them together and we go through them together, the doc sees both of us in the same room at the same time, and we just, well, knock 'em out, so to speak. Both of us have several relatively minor health issues that require these visits, but we do them to make sure nothing major is going wrong -- if that makes any sense.

"Are you still doing your testosterone therapy?" our doctor asked me.

"I am," I replied.

"And how are you feeling?"

"I mean, mostly okay, I guess."

"Mood swings, depression, shifts in demeanor?"

"Yes," I answered truthfully. "A lot, actually. I've been depressed quite a bit as of late, anxious, lack of any real energy or motivation, etc."

"But," I quickly added, "nothing debilitating or life threatening. Just very stressed and struggling. I think part of it is my job, and I think part of it is the actual hormones."

"It's probably all of that," she replied. "Do you ever feel hopeless, like each day is worse than the last, like it will never get better and you won't be able to face the next day?"

"No," I said. Which is, mostly, true. "It's not terrible, but it's not fun."

"Do you have sleep loss or insomnia -- or do you feel that you sleep too much? Lack of appetite, any sleep apnea symptoms/snoring? Any family history of sleep apnea?"

"No," I said. Again, mostly true. "Not that I know of, anyway. I do snore sometimes, [Daisy] has said that I do, but that's about it."

"He does not snore constantly," Daisy said. "Most of the time he sleeps very quietly."

"And it doesn't sound like he's stopping breathing or anything when he does snore?"

"No," Daisy replied.

"Yeah, then my guess is that most of it is caused by your job, buddy," the doctor said, with a slight smirk.

As an aside, as part of the exam, as soon as I mentioned the word "depression" I had to fill out a questionnaire -- consisting mostly of the questions my doctor asked me anyway. I did answer it truthfully. I'm not a threat of harm to myself or others, nor does it feel crushing (at least not on an emotional level, anyway) to get up out of bed every day and face the world. I do have sleeping and energy problems, and it feels like I can never get enough quality rest or have enough energy to do what I want or need to do (that's literally the point of this series of posts), but, I mean, I work overnights, I'm on testosterone replacement therapy, and I'm in my late thirties now. So it's a toss up.

"So, since we're talking about it anyway," the doctor continued, "let's discuss the testosterone treatment. I believe that your base levels when you started were something like 140?"

"That sounds accurate," I said.

As a visual aid, I'm going to provide this helpful chart that I found on Google:

So, as you can see, if this is accurate, when I began treatment I had the testosterone levels of an 80-year-old man. Or older. This explains a lot.

I was 34 when I began the treatment in 2017.

In the almost three years of treatment I have still never breached 200. After my first year they doubled my dose, which is what I'm currently on now and have been since early 2019 -- my blood work results will tell me (soon) where I'm at currently. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

"And you said you're noticing some mood and emotional effects of the treatment? Yeah, that's fairly normal. We actually have you on a very low dose of the gels, considerably lower than what you'd be on if you were to go to one of those NuMale clinic places -- they shoot their patients up to like 900, 1000."

"What's the point of that?" I asked. 

She shrugged. "Well, let me tell you...it changes who you are, changes everything about you."

"So I'm just going to come out and say this," I said, "because it's a concern I've had for the past few months and I want to know if it's possible that it's happening or if I'm just imagining it, but...it feels and looks as if my penis and testicles are shrinking."

"Penis, no," the doctor said, unfazed. "Testicles, maybe. That can happen on testosterone therapy."

I briefly fought the urge to be like you haven't seen my dick, look at it, LOOK AT ITTTTT.

Obviously I decided against this course of action, but even in serious situations I still have a sense of humor, of course.

Some of you are probably wondering why I'm talking about this stuff so candidly here in my blog. Truthfully, I'm not ashamed of any of it -- it is what it is, and it's something I'll talk openly about with anyone who asks about it or asks for advice on whether they should seek said therapy. Life throws us curveballs sometimes, ahem, pardon the pun.

"Stay on the therapy," the doctor continued. "What it is doing is supplementing your body's natural testosterone, and supplanting it as necessary. Your body won't produce as much of it when you're on the therapy. If it comes to a time where you need to get off of it, we'd wean you off over a two month cycle -- just don't stop using the gel all at once or anything, because that will seriously mess up your hormones and mental state."

Great.

"So my other question is that if I did want to get off it, eventually, what would that entail?"

She repeated her statement about being weaned off of it slowly. I don't think she understood what was implied by that question, which was: if I want to get off of it, what will get my testosterone back to normal levels without me needing to be on it for the rest of my fucking life?

"That gel is a pain in the ass," I stated bluntly. "I guess I'd like to know what my options are if my blood results aren't that different this time around either."

"We'll see when it comes to that," the doctor replied.

As another short aside, in the car later I told the wife "and her answer had better not be something like 'rub in four packets of the gel every day instead of two' or I legit might scream. It is 2020, you can't legit tell me there's not a fucking pill I could take every day instead."

"I wouldn't want to take a pill every day," she replied.

Anyway. Back to the story.

"There is something else I wanted to pick your brain on," I said. "Every once in a while -- not all the time, not even most of the time, but once every, oh, 4-5 months or so...I will see blood in my urine or in my feces. Medically speaking, um, how 'normal' is this?"

This is true. There are times where I shit a not-insignificant amount of blood. It's not from coloring in food, and if it's from a hemorrhoid, it's not one I can feel -- but the toilet will be full of red. It'll happen for 2-4 bowel movements and then go away.  Same goes for my pee as well -- every once in a while my urine will be tinged with blood, making it look an orangey-red and that is goddamn troubling. That actually happened last week or the week before, making me paranoid that I had a UTI or something along those lines.

"It's fairly common," the doctor responded. "If it's a lot of blood, or it's dark red or brown looking then that could be a problem, but if it's bright red in your stool it's generally a hemorrhoid or something like that, and isn't a huge cause for concern. As for your urine it's probably not coming from the bladder or from the kidneys but from the sperm, blood in that isn't incredibly uncommon either."

None of this really eased my anxiety.

"If you think you could pee for me, though, we can do a urinalysis today just to check for any irregularities. You wanna do that?"

"Sure," I said.

So I went into the bathroom and peed in a cup, as if I were doing a drug screening. Thankfully I don't have anything to hide there.

The rest of the doctor's visit was relatively routine. I asked for an MMR booster, as I haven't had one since I was like, 12 -- and was told that they don't generally give them out unless the patient was in imminent danger of becoming infected....so I didn't get one of those. My request for a tetanus booster was granted, though, as I haven't had one of those since the mid-to-late 2000s. I got my flu shot back in December, so I didn't have to worry about that, and they (mostly) painlessly took a big vial of my blood for normal standard blood work.

I have perfect 120/80 blood pressure (lower than the wife's, actually). I believe last year I was 118/78 or something like that -- I haven't had higher blood pressures since I became vegetarian/mostly plant-based in my diet.

As for the rest of my blood test results, well, those remain to be seen. I believe (before seeing those results, of course) that I will be healthier than I was last year, as I have made a very strong effort to eat more cleanly and have still kept the weight off I kept off before, but we shall see.

On the way home, I mentioned to Daisy that I completely forgot to ask the doc about hypothyroidism.

"They check for that in the bloodwork anyhow," Daisy replied.

"I know, but I'd like them to do an in-depth screen for it and I completely forgot to ask."

I match up with the symptoms above:

- Poor memory and concentration/difficulty thinking/focusing/depression
- Low energy (of course)
- (occasional) muscle weakness
- Muscle and joint pain (nearly constantly)
- (occasional) swollen legs, ankles, or feet
- Poor hearing
- Slow pulse rate
- Coldness in extremities
- Fatigue
- Generally feeling cold
- (occasional) weight gain with poor appetite
- Definite hair loss
- (occasional) constipation
- very dry skin
- ...and, of course, the reproductive problems.

My hearing has always been bad -- it was tested and I had something like 20% hearing loss in my teens, attributed at the time to all of the ear infections I had as a child giving me some permanent loss, but maybe it's more than that.

My legs, ankles, and feet swell a lot.

I have a very low pulse rate a lot of the time -- I average around 75bpm but I've watched the monitor on my Apple Watch tell me I've had rates in the high 40s through low 60s pretty sustained for long chunks of time.

My fingers and toes are almost always cold. And if my body is cold it's really hard sometimes to warm up.

I am indeed losing my hair, almost by the handful, in the shower every day.

I have low energy, muscle fatigue/pain/joint pain almost constantly.

My skin is really dry, worse in winter, but still dry in the other seasons too -- no matter how much I hydrate myself.

Some of this can be attributed to getting old, some of it can be attributed to the testosterone therapy, and some of it can be attributed to stress and depression and the like...but not all of it. Not when I match up with so many of these symptoms.

I've been tested for hypothyroidism before, about ten years ago. At that time I was fine. But I don't know how in-depth any of the testing that's been done on me for it has been. And if anything in my blood work points toward any sort of abnormal thyroid reading, I will be going back for a super-in-depth test for it at my own request.

It also turns out that almost everything I eat is horrible for me if I have hypothyroidism:

- Coffee
- Broccoli and cauliflower
- Fried foods
- Bread and gluten
- Fiber from beans and other legumes
- Anything with soy
- Anything frozen/processed meals
- Butter, meat (well, I don't have to worry about that one) and alcohol (no worries here either)

Fuck me, man. The above is like 80% of my diet. What the fuck could I actually eat? Bananas, apples, and water? I already eat a ton of that and while it helps, it ain't satisfying.

Anyway, so that's what's going on right now. More to come eventually...when I have the energy.

Energy, Part I

(written late January through mid-February 2020)


Welcome to 2020, my friends, relatives, family, colleagues, and dear readers.

Still no flying cars. But then again, I covered that previously.

So far, 2020 is what it is. I'm mostly unfazed by it.

In the past several weeks, we've come to the brink of war a few times, there's a new pandemic (the coronavirus, if you haven't been paying attention), our impeached president had his impeachment overturned because apparently rule of law doesn't matter anymore, I'm still working in my soul-sucking job on the same overnight schedule, and I still only have one tattoo.

I've been in the creative spirit the past few weeks, but...I just haven't had the energy for much of it, sadly. My weekends fly by and disappear -- they seem like they take forever to arrive, and then once they're here they just vanish. This weekend in particular was gone in the blink of an eye with nothing to show for it; oh sure, a few bills got paid and we got some groceries and watched some Netflix, but everything else...just gone. I want to be able to have time and energy to write, to get out of the house here and there, to go to the gym and to be a little social at least without feeling sick and exhausted. And for the most part, that's exactly how I feel all the time -- sick and exhausted.

"What are your New Year's Resolutions?" Daisy asked me shortly after the new year.

"I don't really have any," I said.

A day or two later I would revise this to "I finally want to sit down and watch all the stuff I added to my list on Netflix."

Because, really, that's all I want -- downtime.

No, I have not gotten the flu or whatever it was Daisy and most of the family had over the holidays -- but I don't feel great because I can never get enough rest and always have something else to do to where I can't get any real peace. Since the beginning of the year, this has been wearing on me more and more, to the point where I am now almost constantly burnt out and tired and have low-level anxiety about everything. 

I told Daisy last week that for the time being, I'm giving up on the gym; it was not giving me any of the results I wanted, and it would just end up making me sore more than anything else, despite how frequently or infrequently I went. Our gym also replaced all of their machines with "new and improved" machines shortly before the Christmas season, and, well, I hate most of the new machines. They are not comfortable to use (some of them are downright uncomfortable or painful) and the machine I loved the most, one of their ab machines, they redesigned to where I cannot fit into it anymore with my wide shoulders/back.

When I went, I was not building any muscle or burning off any body fat -- I was just making myself more exhausted and pain-filled. After a while, I began to dread it, and began to dread the routine. After a few weeks of that, I started wanting to go less and less, because I knew the pain it would cause me for several days after. After that, I lost all will and energy to actually do it. I tried so hard for so many months and it just didn't do anything for me, and I made the decision that I couldn't keep sinking my valuable time and energy into something that left me in pain and unfulfilled -- I do that enough at my job; I refuse to do it in my off hours too.

Daisy, of course, was discouraged by this and still goes to the gym 3-4 times a week, generally after work before coming home. This means that she and I have less time together in the evenings before I have to go in to work myself.

I've started to withdraw into myself more and more over the winter months -- I don't adapt well to the cold, and the more time I spend around people, the less I like said people. My home office is my sanctuary, as I spend most of my waking (and a good chunk of my sleeping) hours there; I have my computer, access to my money, my phone, vape materials, TV/Roku, and my Switch there. I am depressed. I am frequently angry. And more than anything else, I am so, so tired.

Sunday nights I dread the most, as I know I have to return to work. I hate my job so much that using the word "hate" doesn't seem like strong enough of a term. I loathe it; I loathe what it has become and the person it has turned me into. I hate that I am constantly on edge and filled with anxiety because of it, I hate that I constantly have to keep my email open somewhere in the event that someone wants to yell at me, and I hate that for the first hour or two I'm home every morning I have to leave my phone's ringer on and within earshot for the same reason -- and if it happens it's generally over something that's not my fault anyway.

Make no mistake, I have received several well-deserved chewings-out in my almost six years working that job...and probably 20-30 over shit that was not my fault or I had nothing at all to do with. I'm averaging two or three a month at this point over simply stupid shit.

In all of the time I've worked there I've gotten maybe ten genuine "thank you" calls, emails, or verbalizations -- most of the time from people not even on my team, for doing the job someone on someone else's team should have done right in the first place but didn't give a shit about. The overnight team, myself included, is sorely overworked and underappreciated most of the time and tends to be the scapegoat for anything that goes wrong in our program. As the manager of that team, that burden/stress falls on me more often than not, and I become the whipping boy for everything our program does wrong -- and again, get very little (or zero) thanks for everything that, because of me, goes right.

And all I want to do is go to work, do my job, and go home peacefully at the scheduled end of my shift.

So yes, I'm depressed. But it's not just work doing it. It's the cold, it's a lack of truly restful sleep, it's the constant boredom and monotony of my life, the gray of winter, my hormones being all out of whack, and the inability for, it seems, much to actually change or get better.

I don't know if any picture has better summed up how I've felt for literal years now.

It would be different if that "gradual change through daily habits" was something that, y'know, happened. I've tried that where I can. It doesn't work. I've been told "if you can't change your situation, change your perspective" so many times that I might punch the next person who says it. Why? Because you can change your perspective all you want, but it doesn't change or fix the problem.

Against my better judgments, as I have a very hard time trusting anyone anymore, I let one of my friends at work know that I'm going through some depression and some other (purposely vague) personal issues right now. This friend has fought mental health issues his entire life, and is someone I reasonably feel that I can trust when it comes to this sort of thing. He gave me a referral to a therapist (his own therapist, actually) as well as to a nurse practitioner who works with said therapist for prescriptions for mental health medications.

Both are in the health insurance network I share with the wife, but going down this road is not cheap -- it's a $60 copay for each therapy visit.

Add to this that I do not want to be on any medications.

I am not anti-med or anything like that, in case you're wondering -- I am simply anti-med for me. I know what those pills do to me. I was on them for a brief time in college. I refuse to be turned into a zombie again, or to lose what small part of my original self that I feel I have left.

I told Daisy we'd table the discussion on therapy unless it gets really bad, as I am not going to quickly deplete our medical coverage FSA over the course of a few months without a damn good reason.

Throughout all of this I'm seeing another coworker go through the same thing, needing to take a leave of absence through FMLA to get treated for her own issues, and I silently wonder how long it will be before my demons overtake me, and/or what I will lose along the way if everything keeps spiraling downward. It's a horrific thought. I'm not suicidal -- far from it, in fact -- I want to see everything actually get better. You could say that means I have hope, I guess. But that doesn't mean I'm not in a dark place, because I am. I just have to fight it every day in order to stay alive and stay prepared. That "fight" is sometimes more exhausting than others.

To those ends, I have done what I can to stave it off; I have, for example, continued to apply for more jobs. While I've been rejected for many of these jobs outright with a terse email, this past week alone I had three different phone interviews and had a follow-up, in-person interview on Thursday morning for one of said jobs. I took Wednesday night in order to be able to rest up and be at my best and brightest for it, instead of just getting off work and being forced to run headlong into an interview when I'm tired and burnt out. This worked out well, even if it meant I sacrificed a night of PTO.

I'm also trying to see the positive things in daily life -- I mean, the Chiefs did win the Super Bowl, Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg are doing really well in the primaries, and the new Picard series is very interesting so far. Not everything is bad, and I have to teach myself to see silver linings in stuff like that.

But, I mean, there's a lot of bad going on too -- including some deaths.

One of my former bosses, back at WVU, had his wife die suddenly about three weeks ago; we didn't find out about it until the memorial service and the like was announced. My parents went; I did not get details. He has now outlived two wives, with his first having died of cancer close to twenty years ago now. I can't imagine how he feels -- Daisy is my world, and if I were to lose her I would be completely lost in life. It's an unbearable thought.

The second death happened at work the other night.

Well, okay, it didn't happen at work, but we found out about it at work.

One of our evening shift employees took a bunch of time off before the holidays -- and by that I mean "before the holidays began," meaning before Thanksgiving. He was out of office a lot and called in on our voicemail line several times to let us know he wouldn't be in, etc. I didn't think much of it; he didn't report up to me, and his own manager (one of my colleagues) was taking care of the PTO and the like for it. On one of his calls, he'd let us know that he'd been in the hospital but would return to work the following Monday...and he never showed up.

This was early-to-mid December; again, I didn't think much of it as he wasn't one of my own employees, but I did see the dude and work with him every day, so it was at the very least an ancillary cause for concern. Calls from management asking where he was went unreturned, as did (apparently) calls from HR. The holidays came and went, and around the New Year, when nobody had heard from him and he hadn't come back, the company processed his termination in absentia.

Note: this is not out of the ordinary -- I did the same with one of my employees about three months ago when she stopped showing up and did not turn in her requested FMLA paperwork (she was pregnant and had missed a lot of time due to complications), and she'd stopped responding to calls/emails/texts from any and all of us. The company simply processes the term, wipes the records, and moves on -- you'd be surprised how many employees just stop showing up, effectively ghosting the workplace, for one reason or another. It is extremely common, and we (as management) generally have to give them a few weeks of leeway before the company drops the hammer.

Yet, if I didn't show up for a few days without telling anyone, you bet your ass I'd be fired by the end of the week...

Anyway, I'm getting off-topic.

So, said employee was finally termed out around the beginning of the year, and everyone moved on with their lives. I asked his manager, my colleague, if he'd ever heard anything back from him either before or after the term, and the answer was no -- dude had just up and disappeared.

Our response to that was, sort of, "Oh well, can't really understand some people, I guess" and we let it go.

Until one night last week when my colleague got a very disturbing phone call...from said employee's sister...who let him know that our missing-in-action, now-former-employee had been found dead in his apartment that night -- only after they'd forced the landlord to break in to see if he was holed up in there. He was, all right -- and apparently had been in there for, ahem, some time.

"Like, the entire time since we last heard from him?" I asked my colleague, after he got off the phone.

"They don't know yet," he replied. "But by the way it sounded from her, that's possible."

He was termed at least six weeks ago.

I searched my records in my inbox and the last email from him that I'd been personally tagged on was on November 27. That was the night before Thanksgiving. The last we'd personally heard from him via phone, to my knowledge, was about a week and a half or so after that.

He was nine years older than me, and to my knowledge was not married and had no children. And while I write this, his body is about 200 yards from where I'm sitting, at the mortuary/crematorium literally across the street from my house.

Or what's left of his body, anyway. I shudder to think. They've probably processed him by now anyway.

After the call, we let a few coworkers and other management know, mainly because they were all sitting around us in our section of the office when my colleague got the phone call -- but apparently nobody bothered to tell our executive director, who called me at 9am the next morning to ask for any details about it that I had. Over the next few days several more people would reach out to me asking what I knew, as if I was the oracle on the subject -- I, of course, only knew what I'd been told after the call took place, I wasn't actually on the phone of course.

Arrangements are apparently pending, if anything will be done at all. The date of death listed in the obituary in the newspaper was the day he was found. Word spread throughout our program (especially us After Hours folks) over the next few days, but no official announcements were made at the management level, or anything like that. I mean, after all, the guy wasn't a current employee anymore. I wouldn't expect people to make grandiose announcements about my own passing if I kicked the bucket after I no longer worked there.

"Is it possible that he didn't return to work because he was dead?" A friend and former coworker who knew him had asked me.

"I mean, I guess," I replied via text. "I only know what you know at this point."

Apparently the team got some more details on Thursday or Friday about what had happened, but as I don't work those days I haven't yet gotten that information. It is what it is and doesn't change anything; dude is still dead. While some part of me is curious, a larger part of me so doesn't need to know any grisly details about it.

So I continually plod along, waiting for things to change or get better, sleeping when I can and feeling that I'm constantly under stress or pressure during my waking hours. It's a continual cycle.

I probably should talk some about the interview I had on Thursday morning, because it bears discussion. As all of you know, and I've not made it a secret here, I've been trying to move on from my current job for the better part of three years or so at this point. I don't have anything against most of the people I work with -- in fact, it could be said that those people are the primary reason I've stayed in my position as long as I have. Most of them are helpful, thoughtful people who are suffering through the same thing I am for the same reasons I am -- primarily because we get paid decent (not great, but decent) wages for what we do, despite the bullshit and stress involved. No, it's the company I want to leave. It's the overnight shift I want to leave. It's the job itself.

The secondary reason I've stayed at that job for as long as I have should be rather obvious at this point -- it's because no matter how many interviews I give via phone or in person, and no matter how well I believe those interviews go, everyone rejects me. Over the past year I've probably had over twenty phone interviews and at least ten, maybe more, in-person interviews for various positions at various companies. A few of them, at times, admittedly felt touch and go, but most of them went exceedingly well...and I still was not selected.

So I sat down on Thursday morning with the HR representative at a company I interviewed at before about six months ago (for a higher-level position at that time), for an entry-level position that pays as much as my current management position does at my current company, and we had a nice little chat.

While I try to remain optimistic in scenarios like this, I'm not sure I'll get the job this time around either. I've learned not to hold my breath in these situations at this point.

"I've never interviewed for a job I didn't get," I remember one of Daisy's coworkers telling me at the company holiday dinner a few months ago.

That's great, lady, I thought. Check your privilege please. Because for most real people in the real world, this does not happen.

The interview went fine -- at this point I've been through enough of them to where I believe I am good at them, and believe that I can tell employers what they want to hear while still being honest and forthright with them about my thoughts and expectations as well as my experience. However, this means almost nothing when it comes to actually getting hired, I've found.

The interview took about an hour, and when I was done I shook hands with the HR lady and she said she'd be in touch soon -- the next training class starts on March 2, which means in order for everyone they're hiring to be able to give a customary two-weeks' notice to their current jobs (read: something I'd need to do), they have to give the yesses or nos by, well, within the next 48 hours. I brought this up with her, and she was well aware of this fact.

It also means that if I'm offered this position and I accept it, there's none of that customary "downtime" between one job and the next -- I give my notice, I work up until my last day, and then the following Monday I'm in training at the new place. I was hoping that with any position I moved to, I'd be able to pad it out a little and get at least a week or so off in order to somewhat reset my sleeping schedule and to get a little breathing space, but this job won't allow that if I get it.

Best case scenario is that I get a yes within the next 48 hours, I accept, I announce to my leadership that day, and then I announce to my team in a meeting that night. Second-best-case: I do the same but only have enough time to give one week's notice. Worst case is that I don't get an offer and life continues as it has been with nobody having been the wiser.

I have another in-person interview on the books for another job sometime this next week; I'm currently waiting on the HR staff for that job to get back with me to schedule a time and day, after providing them with my available days/hours. I also applied for a third job this morning that I am sure to get an interview for (at least via phone) sometime soon. So I mean, there are options.

Any of these jobs will have to give me a bit of leeway on some time off as a condition of hire; I will be visiting my family back home in West Virginia this fall for about a week or so, and there's also an entire family trip to South Dakota tentatively scheduled for July or August, depending on everyone being able to get their schedules aligned. Both of those trips will require time and money. Plus, I mean, I'd like to get out to Colorado again soon as well. Some companies give more time off than others.

And so life goes on...

Christmas 2019, Part IV

(written piecemeal between December 28 - January 12, all in the aftermath)

Hi all.

The past few days have been very tiring and I wanted to be able to sit down here and tell the story of Christmas once I had time to do so. Even in the downtime after the holiday, however, it's been difficult to do that since we've still been running around quite a bit. So, for the sake of brevity, I'm going to tell the story from where I left off, in as much or as little detail as I deem necessary.  So let's begin.

Daisy woke up around 7:30 on Christmas morning, and after getting a little coffee in my system, we got dressed and drove over to the parents' house, where we were informed by our oldest nephew that they'd already started opening presents. This, despite the fact that everyone was supposed to wait until we were there and all of the presents were there (we were bringing everything for the kids and the family with us, as we hadn't done that the night before).

What followed was close to two hours of present-opening. Here's what we got for the family:

• For the parents: two wood plaques I'd woodburned designs on, stained, and coated/sealed in polyurethane to protect them, nuts, candies, a display-hood-ornament looking thing for Mom, and some other odds and ends that Daisy picked up. This is the first time in years that aside from the plaques, I was not involved in what Daisy got for the parents -- she generally has much better taste than I do for them, and I know there's some stuff I'm missing here.
• For the sister and brother-in-law: a wood plaque done in much the same way as the others, but from olive wood and not burned or stained, but drawn with their family name and also coated in polyurethane, a candle, Cocomels, and some other odds and ends that Daisy found.
• For the boys: a drone (for the middle kid), close to 50 foam glider airplanes (for all of the kids), a robot hand building kit (for the oldest kid), and a toy dump truck with a little man inside (for the youngest kid that's not the infant) -- plus stocking stuffer things like bouncing putty, sticker books, crayon sets, etc etc, whatever Daisy was able to find for them that was stocking-stuffery.
• BONUS: for my brother-in-law as well as the boys, I got them a plug and play HDMI dongle Centipede game, which had 20 old Atari games already installed on it. I'd won a prize in the gift drawing at work, and I used said prize voucher to get this for them.

I was particularly proud of the wood plaques, as I'd planned to make them for several months in advance, had to get the tools and materials myself, and spent several weeks making all of them. They took time and energy to create and weren't something that was just picked off a shelf. The gifts we spend time creating are the ones we're most proud of, I think. I made one for Daisy as well, but as we had not opened our own gifts at home yet, she had this one ruined for her when I gave the same things to everyone else. This is fine, though; she had an inkling that's what I was doing anyway, as I'm sure the smell of burning wood and wood stain coming from my room about a month ago all but gave it away anyhow.

Anyway, here's what we got:

• From the parents: a brand new, very large and intricate quilt for our bed in a bee/honeycomb/flower motif -- this is the big gift that both Daisy and I knew about, and is the first quilt Mom has made for us since our wedding quilt five years ago. The sister and brother-in-law got one as well, and Mom also made me a smaller, rainbow quilt with rainbow animals on it since I'd worn out Daisy's other rainbow animal quilt since we've been together. Mom also got Daisy a new nightgown, which she loves, amongst some other little odds and ends.
• From the family: a gift box full of three different kinds of popcorn kernels, two mugs, a popcorn bowl/holder thing, and a $25 gift card to the AMC theaters (which is where we go). 
• From the grandparents in Nova Scotia: a beautiful hand-knitted/quilted holiday placemat set -- with a note apologizing that there were no wool socks ready yet (this is hilarious because, several years back, Daisy's grandmother sent us a pair of wool socks that I love and wear all the time, and she knows it). 

After all of the presents were finished and the living room was at least partially cleaned up, we had breakfast -- Daisy had made several batches of blueberry mini-muffins, which were quite good, and I ate probably ten of them, washing them down with the last of the coffee in the coffee pot. We had a video call with Daisy's other sister (who lives in Alberta, so she didn't make it to town for the holidays) and got to talk to a few of her kids as well, briefly.

The weather was, as mentioned before, gorgeous on Christmas Day -- it was over 40 when we left the house in the morning, and by the afternoon it had reached nearly 60 -- which is good, since the drone I'd gotten the kids needed to be played with outside, and we did so, two different times, for as long as the battery would last each time. I'd worn shorts and a hoodie, but was even getting too warm for comfort in the hoodie at times (plus, having the long sleeves made it hard to keep my tattoo moisturized and made it itch).

For a large chunk of the day, while the other adults took care of the older kids as well as getting dinner prepared, I spent my time on "baby duty" with my almost five-month old nephew. I held, talked to, and kept that adorable baby boy occupied for hours, and truthfully it was my favorite part of the Christmas experience. I also did what I could to help keep an eye on the other boys to keep them settled down and out of trouble as much as possible, because I could tell that their parents as well as Daisy's parents were becoming more frazzled by the hour. It was a lot for me as well; I was getting overwhelmed with all the noise and rambunctiousness of those children, and holding the baby and lavishing attention on him kept me centered. To help calm them down and keep them occupied while the food was being cooked, the boys watched the new Grinch movie on Netflix, during which I, yes, held the baby and talked to him and generally acted as a nanny, even when he farted on me twice. Hard. And loudly. 

In the late afternoon hours, we had dinner. I don't exactly remember when, but I know it was starting to get dark, so....around that time. The temperature was dropping as the sun went down almost so quickly that you could watch and gauge it in realtime. Dinner was very good, though a rather minimalist affair for a ten-person Christmas dinner -- the parents made a turkey (which obviously Daisy and I ate none of) and Daisy made corn, stuffing, green beans, her famous mashed potatoes, etc. We didn't have bread or rolls, and Mom had made pickles and cranberry sauce (not together, because that would be weird). 

I should also mention at this point that Mom had become sick between the 23rd or so and Christmas Day, and was continually getting worse. On Christmas Day she was fighting through it for the sake of all of us and the kids, and we were all trying to help her as much as possible. Sometimes, however, that is easier said than done, and when you're miserable, you're miserable. She has spent the time since Christmas more or less confined to her bed because she's felt so awful. Daisy herself has begun to get sick as well, and has been fighting it off as much as possible since Christmas night. Me? So far, I'm fine. Apparently my flu shot kicked in just in time for the kids and family to arrive in town, and I've been kept immune thus far. That doesn't mean that I won't eventually start feeling bad, but three days out I think I'm okay.

[EDIT: Daisy is not okay, and got dreadfully sick for a week and change.]

Anyway, as the night wound down and the parents retreated upstairs, we had homemade pie with the sister and brother-in-law and I tried very hard to decompress in the now mostly quiet house...when our oldest nephew tripped over the base of Mom's swing chair in the living room and nearly broke his toe. I didn't know this; I was sitting in the chair in the corner downstairs, enjoying a bit of relative (pardon the pun) silence.

"[Nephew] may have dislocated or broken his toe," Daisy texted me from upstairs. "He may need to go to the hospital and if so we will need to watch the boys."

"Okay," I texted in reply.

No arguments, I wasn't frustrated or upset, nothing like that -- family comes first. Duty in the face of exhaustion, every man stays at his post, etc. 

This is a big step for me. The old Brandon, even though he still had the family first mentality, would've been pissed off and angry at the kid after having spent twelve hours outside of the house on Christmas Day, and having not even had his own Christmas yet. The older, wiser, more mature Brandon has more patience and understanding of such things, and just wants to help out where he can. Again, as I mentioned in my previous post, Christmas is for the kids, and I am now the older generation -- while I'm not a parent myself, I am a hell of a good uncle. I also have the foresight to realize that I still had three more days off work after Christmas and therefore had far more time than usual to decompress and enjoy the holidays in my own way.

About half an hour later, the kid came downstairs, morose and in some pain, but okay. Once we were sure he was fine, Daisy and I began to pack up the stuff for the night, and then shortly thereafter left the house.

I will say that I was indeed sort of frazzled and tired, and I had a headache -- it was after 8PM and we'd spent a full twelve hours being inundated with children and Christmas. Daisy put on Christmas music in the car on the way home, on purpose, and it took all of my willpower not to punch the stereo simply out of reflex. I was Christmas'd out. 

But, we still had our own Christmas to have, since we'd rolled out of bed and practically ran out the door that morning. All of our own presents for one another were yet to be opened. So, once we'd brought everything in and I was able to feed the cats and change out of the kid-germ-covered clothing I'd been wearing all day, Daisy and I collapsed on the couch with our respective piles of presents.

Here's what I got Daisy, which is the most important list anyhow:

• A case of Cocomels
• Two water guns for the cats
• The aforementioned wood plaque
• A case of 60 white washcloths
• A giant, two-plus-pound bag of Blue Diamond almonds
• A raised cake stand (her request)
• Chelsea Clinton's She Persisted book (also her request)
• A six-pack of her favorite pine tar soap
• A 250-gram box of nag champa incense

And the kicker, the big gift...

• Two custom-made, sherpa-lined fleece blankets with two different pictures of us from our wedding printed on them.

The blankets were one of the first things I'd done for her, actually -- I knew they would take some time to process, create, and ship, so I ordered them up in early November. They arrived shortly before Thanksgiving, and I had them printed by Shutterfly -- the company who I have make our custom Christmas cards every year. Because of the size I'd ordered and the custom printing involved, they were not cheap by any means, and more than a third of my gift budget went to them.

Also of note: in the days after Christmas, Daisy would return the cake stand (she thought the one she'd put on her wish list was glass; it was not, it was plastic) and the washcloths -- which I'd specifically gotten so we could get rid of the old ratty ones we had around the house (she didn't like the new ones), so I actually spent less on Daisy this year overall than I have in most previous years. 

The blankets almost immediately went on the bed (after a wash, of course) where they currently remain, even after another wash, today. 

Here's what Daisy got for me -- trying to remember the best I can now over two weeks later:

• Two straightening/detangling hairbrushes
• Good Omens in paperback
• The latest Uncle John's Bathroom Reader
• Vegan sausage sticks
• Louisville Vegan Jerky "Buffalo Dill"
• A six-pack of my favorite thermal socks

And the big gift...

• A Nintendo Switch Lite, in turquoise, with Pokemon: Let's Go Eevee and Pokemon Sword.

I'm sure there are other small things I'm forgetting too, as it's been some time, but the Switch and those games have dominated most of my free time ever since.

"Good," I told her -- "...now I can put the silicone case for the Switch on it. The case that I ordered and that arrived last week."

So sure was I that she'd gotten me the Switch that I had already ordered the case for it. Even if she'd not actually gotten me one, I would've saved the case as I was planning on purchasing a Switch within the next several weeks/months anyhow once we got our tax refunds. I have not skipped over or "missed" a new generation of Pokemon games in almost twenty years, and I'm not about to start now. 

After we put everything away, she came upstairs to shower and I sat down in my chair (after plugging in the Switch to charge, of course). I was passed out in my chair before she even got out of the shower; I woke up five hours later to her in bed and me wide-awake -- she had to work the 26th, while I did not. 

***

In the days since, both of us have gone back to work as per the usual, as the holidays are done, and we have rejoined the cycle of the daily grind. For the New Year, I had taken New Year's Eve off in advance, but volunteered to work New Year's Day (the overnight shift as per the usual). We normally do a big New Year's Eve with the parents, but Mama was dreadfully sick and wanted to cancel, and Daisy was getting rather sick at that point as well -- she didn't really shake it until this past week -- so we stayed home, watched the ball drop at 11 (remember, we're central time) and then shortly after actual midnight went to bed.

So there you have it, that was Christmas in a nutshell (and a few posts).

Onward into 2020, helmets on.

No Flying Cars

Imagine, if you will, if you had the opportunity to go back in time (in a realistic fashion, of course) to the year 2000 -- twenty years ago now -- to talk to your younger self for one, and only one, conversation. What would you say? What would your younger self ask you about the future? Would you give your younger self hope, or would they be extremely frightened of and/or disappointed in you as a person? How would they react to stories about today's society, technology, pop culture, or anything else?

In the truly hypothetical conversation below -- no, I don't actually have a time machine -- you're about to see how I would imagine a conversation with 17-year-old me would go.

***

Me: Hi. I'm you from twenty years in the future, from the super-technologically-advanced world of...2020.

2000: Holy shit, they have time machines in the future? Is that how you got here?

Me: No. Stay with me here, kid, don't break the fourth wall.

2000: Then how did you get here?

Me: I said knock it off, it's not important.

2000: Also, I'm not a kid, I'm seventeen. I'll be eighteen this year. Like the Alice Cooper song.

Me: Trust me, you are 100% still a kid, and I would know. Act like you have some sense, this is important. I'm here to tell you about the future.

2000: Are there flying cars?

Me: ...no.

2000: Shitty future then if you ask me.

Me: I'm inclined to agree with you there.

2000: Are they at least close to flying cars? I mean it's 2020 where you're from, what the fuck, America?

Me: Also no. But a large chunk of the population does own little helicopters that they can fly pretty much anywhere and do anything they want with.

2000: Like, inside them?

Me: No. Like remote controlled. They're called "drones."

2000: Can you like, shoot and bomb people with them and stuff?

Me: ...no. Well, wait, yes, the military does that with much bigger ones that aren't helicopters, but--

2000: So no flying cars, but a bunch of little remote control helicopters. We have remote control helicopters now, you know...

Me: It's a bit more complicated than that in 2020. Amazon wants to use them to deliver packages eventually, and some of them are so complex and large that you have to get licenses to fly them--

2000: Licenses to fly remote control helicopters?

Me: I feel like we're spending too much time on this subject.

2000: What's Amazon?

Me: Oh hell. Well, um, think of a massive internet store that you can buy anything from, run by the richest man in the world--

2000: Bill Gates?

Me: No. Anyway, it's that. You want something, you can get it there, and it gets to your house in like, a day or two.

2000: Giant online Walmart. Gotcha.

Me: You can also watch movies and TV shows on their website or on your TV through their company.

2000: Porn?

Me: What?

2000: Can you watch porn on it?

Me: Surprisingly, no.

2000: Meh, it won't last then.

Me: You'd be surprised.

2000: Okay, so no flying cars. Are there at least cool things like blasters? Lightsabers? Phasers? Oh oh, what about teleporters? Rocket packs? Proton Packs?

Me: Also no. You're gonna be really disappointed in the actual future if that's the stuff you're focusing on, man. Technologically speaking, 2020 isn't that much more advanced than it is in 2000...it's more of a...slow natural progression of things, really. Some things, anyway.

2000: So there are none of those things?

Me: No. Well, sort of. There are a couple of guys with rocket packs, but they're not like the ones in The Rocketeer or anything like that. And the military was trying to develop a ray gun weapon a few years back, but I never heard anything else about it after I was out of college.

2000: College? No, nevermind, we'll come back to that. Are we at least going to the moon on a regular basis, is there a base on Mars or Venus or something like that?

Me: Actually, we pretty much shut down the space program a few years back when they retired the remaining shuttles--

2000: Remaining shuttles?

Me: Yeah. Wait, it's 2000, you don't know this yet -- okay, so another one blows up in a few years, it's tragic. After that, they cut back the space program a lot and eventually mothball the shuttle fleet. They're in museums now. But there is an international space station in orbit around the planet, and there is a new branch of the military called the Space Force--

2000: SPACE FORCE!

Me: Yeah, it's not as cool as you think. And it's just getting started. No kid, we're stuck on this rock for a while yet. My advice is to make the best of it. The 2000s are gonna be weird.

2000: But you--I--do go to college?

Me: You do. For two different degrees, from two different schools. For seven years total.

2000: To do what?

Me: I'm not telling you that for fear that it'll irrevocably alter the timeline and create some sort of Flashpoint-like scenario.

2000: What?

Me: Nevermind; you'll figure it out in a few years.

2000: So after two degrees and seven years that must mean I get super rich and powerful you are clearly coming back in time to tell me how to get there, right?

Me: ...

2000: Well?

Me: Not exactly, but I will say that you're mostly okay with your life choices.

2000: I feel that you're being purposely vague.

Me: I am.

2000: Okay, so you're twenty years older and you're mostly doing what you want to do with your life, so--

Me: Not even remotely, kid.

2000: ...well...what do you do?

Me: Mostly get yelled at by idiots who should never be allowed near a phone or computer system until they gain enough brain cells to operate one correctly.

2000: Oh. Okay...like....tech support? Jesus.

Me: I work for [redacted] as a contractor through [also redacted] where I run a team of people who help get business customers' internet and phone services restored when they go down.

2000: So...like tech support then.

Me: No, goddammit...okay, look. It is in the same vein but that's not what it is.

2000: Sure what it sounds like to me. And this is what I end up going to school for? Fuck my life, man...do you at least get paid well for it?

Me: Nowhere near what I'm worth. But I can tell you that it's a living and I'm currently making more money doing it than you'd think.

2000: Wait, so you didn't go to school for it, and you don't get paid well for it, so...why are you doing it?

Me: penny for every time I've asked myself that question...

2000: What? I didn't hear you.

Me: Nothing, nevermind. No, I went to school for something completely different and ended up falling into this career when I needed to pay the bills and put gas in the car.

2000: Oh good, you have a car.

Me: ....

2000: ...you don't have a car?

Me: ...not at the moment. Look, if you keep asking questions like this it's gonna make me sound like I'm a real asshole waste of skin, alright?

2000: ....

Me: ...I had a car, it was a good car, it was my baby, and then some assholes broke into it and destroyed it while I was at work one night. They were trying to steal it, and completely tore out the ignition and starter and....yeah. I had to get it towed back to my apartment to sell it for scrap, okay? But it was mine, I owned it outright, I took care of it -- it was a piece of me.

2000: Jesus, okay man, you don't have to start crying about it or anything, I get it.

Me: Invest in a good auto security system. That's all I'm gonna say.

2000: ...okay then.

Me: It was a sports car, at least. Sort of. Ish. I've got that going for me, right? One day you'll own a sports car that you'll be able to drive really fast and recklessly in, and it'll feel amazing. You'll write poetry about it.

2000: This took a really sad turn. It's okay man, you'll get another car.

Me: Oh, I did. It was a truck, actually. I had a truck for a while. I got it for free.

2000: Someone gave you a free truck?

Me: Yes, actually.

2000: And you don't have it anymore?

Me: I sold it for about $850 when the wife and I bought our house. There wasn't any room for it and it was falling apart, but yeah, I owned it for several ye--

2000: A wife! And a house!

Me: Hahah, yes, well, you didn't ask about those things before--

2000: Is it Becca? Do you have kids? How many kids do you have?

Me: What? Oh, no kid, not her. She's an awesome person, but she's not the one. I feel like telling you that even is gonna fuck up the timeline.

2000: ...oh.

Me: Look, man, it's fine. It's okay. It just wasn't meant to be with her, you know? I know that's rough for you to hear now, and I know people say that sort of thing a lot, but they say it because it's true. Trust me. There will be others. Ahem, several others.

2000: Other wives?

Me: No, no, just the one. And you've got some time before you meet her, so, y'know, loosen up a bit.

2000: Kids?

Me: No, no kids. At least none that I'm aware of. No, we're taking our time on that; maybe there will be kids, maybe there won't be.

2000: How long?

Me: Before kids?

2000: No, how long have you been married?

Me: Oh. Going on six years.

2000: ...only six years?

Me: Trust me man, she's worth the wait. If there's anything I can impart on you during this conversation, it's that you seriously need to learn some fuckin' patience. Shit isn't going to happen to you overnight. It's going to take time and work and effort in many, many cases.

2000: Says the man who was given a free truck.

Me: ...coming from the kid whose mother gives him a free car in a few years that he never uses more than five times. 

2000: Mom's buying me a new car?!

Me: ...no. You know our mother, do you ever think that would reasonably happen?

2000: Well, I always thought that if I kept doing well in school, I mean, I got my permit a few weeks ago, and I need a car for college--

Me: Hahah, no.

2000: Come on, man! Aren't you going to tell me any good news?

Me: I legit just told you that you get married to a wonderful woman, make a decent living, and you own a house.

2000: Yeah, when I'm thirty-seven! Doesn't anything good happen to me before that?

Me: not a whole hell of a lot, actually...

2000: What? I couldn't hear you.

Me: Nothing, I was clearing my throat.

2000: Oh.

Me: There are twelve Star Wars movies in 2020.

2000: Now that is what I'm talking about!

Me: Only eight of them are any good.

2000: ...so it's like the Star Trek movies then?

Me: By 2020 there are thirteen of those. I think, I may have lost count. With only about eight or nine of them worth watching, and a few of those only worth watching once. So...yes?

2000: There's an X-Men movie supposed to come out this year too.

Me: Oh good lord, don't get me started on comic book movies.

2000: Why?

Me: I've seriously lost count of how many there are at this point and I've only seen about half of them.

2000: Seriously?

Me: Just you wait.

2000: They've made a bunch of comic book movies and you haven't seen all of them multiple times?

Me: I feel that you'll understand why a lot more as time progresses.

2000: Why, are they bad?

Me: Some of them are...

2000: And some of them are good?

Me: Some of them are very good. Some of them redefine what comics are and can be. Hell, some of them redefine cinema.

2000: Okay, well, the future has that going for it at least.

Me: That it does. You have no idea.

2000: What's the best one?

Me: ...don't you want to know more about yourself? Your wife and home? The future in general?

2000: Well, I mean, yes.

Me: Okay then.

2000: I take it you haven't hit the lottery yet.

Me: ...no.

2000: And I see that you're still fat.

Me: Hey now, fucker!

2000: Well, you are. Am I lying?

Me: I have a gym membership!

2000: Seems like a waste of money to me, since you don't appear to use it.

Me: I use it!

2000: You're going bald and gray too. Fuck, I'm gonna go bald and gray?

Me: Look man, genetics are genetics. And I'm old.

2000: You're thirty-seven! That's not that old!

Me: Well, let me clue you in on something. You will feel old at thirty-seven. Sometimes you will feel really old. As for looks and weight, it comes and goes. There are times you'll have hair halfway to your ass and a full beard and people will call you the wolfman, and there are times you'll be clean-shaven and have really short hair. You'll even give yourself a punk rock mohawk-looking hairstyle at one point in the teens.

2000: ...the wolfman?

Me: Yes, and you'll have a theme song too.

2000: Uh...huh.

Me: Anyway. Yes, you'll lose a bunch of weight, then you'll gain some back, lose some more, gain a lot more when you quit smoking, and then lose most of that weight again. You will never feel or be thin. It's not in your genetics. But you can and will be much healthier than you are now.

2000: That sounds....tiring.

Me: It IS.

2000: You wear glasses.

Me: I do. Your eyesight will go to shit soon enough, it'll start with a pineapple...

2000: A pineapple?

Me: Long story. Anyway, yes. You'll need glasses. You'll need glasses and you'll be fat and hairy your whole life and your dick isn't gonna get any bigger than it is now and these are all things you'll just have to deal with, man. 

2000: Sounds like a delightful future. You're not instilling me with a lot of hope here.

Me: But you should be hopeful. There's a lot you're going to do with your life that you never would've guessed you'd do.

2000: You can start by telling me about some of that...

Me: Well, for one, you get the fuck out of West Virginia and don't look back.

2000: Good, that's good, please tell me I'm living somewhere on the beach, not somewhere boring like...oh, Kansas or Nebr--

Me: Nebraska.

2000: Son of a bitch!

Me: You live in Kansas for five years, too.

2000: Fuck me, man, what did you do with my life? Couldn't you at least put me in or around a city, someplace with people and technology?

Me: Hey now, Omaha is actually a pretty nice place. You've lived in far worse places before.

2000: Like Kansas?

Me: ...well, okay, not gonna lie, Kansas mostly sucked. But it was quiet.

2000: I've lived around quiet all my life; I need something with some spirit, some people, something to do.

Me: Believe me, the older you get, the more you will appreciate the quiet.

2000: Okay, so, let's recap. In 2020 you're married, you own a house, you don't have a car, you hate your job, you went to college for seven years, you didn't win the lottery, I'm still fat, and of all places...Nebraska.

Me: Well, if you gloss over everything like that...

2000: Tell me something fun. Tell me you started a punk rock band or stabbed a guy in a bar fight or have a bunch of tattoos nobody knows about until you take off your clothes. Anything, man.

Me: Only one tattoo, on my arm.

2000: Let me see.

Me: ...

2000: The Star Trek emblem? Really?

Me: There's a bit more to it than that.

2000: Is there now? Because to me it looks like you just decided to tell the whole world that I'm a fucking nerd.

Me: In 2020 that's not nearly as looked down upon as it is now, trust me.

2000: What's next, you gonna get a Star Wars tattoo too?

Me: ...actually...

2000: Oh for fuck's sake, dude.

Me: I'm telling you, stuff's different in the future. The internet is everywhere. Nerd culture is a huge thing. We carry everything with us everywhere we go on mobile devices.

2000: Mobile devices?

Me: Oh yeah, that's not really a thing yet. You have a ce...no you don't, you don't have a cell phone yet. Okay. Well, twenty years from now, everyone has a cell phone, and everyone uses them for everything. They're like miniature pocket computers.

2000: ...okay, that's cool.

Me: It is. Hit a few buttons and you can watch a movie, listen to literally any album or song ever made, call a friend with video, or check to see what all of your friends are doing in real time on Facebook.

2000: Facebook?

Me: Right. Not a thing yet. You'll see in a few years.

2000: And all of this has made the world a better place?

Me: That's very, very debatable.

2000: What else is going on in 2020? Is there alien life? Are we at war with anyone? Did they bring back the draft? What is television and music like?

Me: Whoa, slow down a bit.

2000: Sorry, got a little excited there.

Me: No, there is no alien life we know of yet. As for war...well, that's sort of debatable as well. No draft. Yet. And television and music...hoo boy.

2000: "Hoo boy"?

Me: You're not gonna like a lot of it. What you do like you'll keep coming back to over and over for years on end, at least on the music side. Music basically goes off the rails into pure shit in about five or six years and never really recovers. As for television, the best of it now is all online -- TV-based-TV is, well, not that great anymore.

2000: So what I'm hearing is that the internet sort of takes over everything. Like Skynet.

Me: You're not too far off.

2000: So I guess here's the big question -- who's alive and who's dead in 2020?

Me: That's a really loaded question. Like celebrities or people we know?

2000: Both. Family first.

Me: We're all still alive. Mostly.

2000: Mostly? I assume Grammy is dead in 2020?

Me: She is, but she almost made it that long. It was close.

2000: Other family dead?

Me: A few. Nobody you were super close to in your adult life, but I mean, they're obviously gonna happen here and there. None were incredibly surprising. Okay, well, one of them is surprising.

2000: Friends?

Me: What, like friends who have died? There's a, um, fair number of them actually. They're all...bad. Far more friends than family.

2000: Close friends?

Me: Yeah. Yeah, a couple of them.

2000: ...anyone you fucked?

Me: Jesus dude, no. And before you ask, you've got a few more years of waiting on that, too, so again, be patient.

2000: Fiiiiiine. No celebrities of any importance?

Me: ...yes, a ton of them.

2000: Harrison Ford?

Me: Harrison Ford is still alive. He's older than dirt, but he's still alive.

2000: Harrison Ford is my touchstone celebrity death, you know. When he goes, I'll know I'm old.

Me: I know.

2000: Stan Lee?

Me: ...dead. Yes.

2000: Fuck!

Me: It was really sad, too. I cried.

2000: George Lucas? Steven Spielberg?

Me: Both still kickin'.

2000: Keith Richards? Willie Nelson? Um...Bob Dylan?

Me: Remarkably, all still alive and all still making music.

2000: Holy hell, they must be ancient.

Me: They are.

2000: Um...who else? I'm sure there are other people I could think of...

Me: There are a few huge ones you'll never see coming, and I don't want to spoil their macabre surprises.

2000: Betty White?

Me: Still alive, and still acting -- defying almost all laws of aging.

2000: Wow, man.

Me: My time is almost up here, kid. Anything else you want to know before I have to return to the future?

2000: Okay, so, government and politics? Who's our president in 2020?

Me: Nope. I am not even going to attempt to open that box.

2000: Why?

Me: You don't want to know, kid...you don't want to know...