Big Scary Doggo

I got sent a message and some pictures today, of a timid rescue dog that has, after a couple of weeks I believe, taken ownership of the bed that was presented to them when they were rehomed.

It's a nice tale. One of happiness. Of a good ending. Of interaction with a cheeky little rescue pupper.

So why is my chest crushed and why am I crying?

Well, the story talks about the timid dog not taking up the bed, implied in part because it's scared of its own shadow, the pupper only being scared of the garage door, and the potential big scary dog that might own the bed and how it might come back to bite the new guy. As, if the pupper is *only* scared of the garage door and the pupper hasn't taken the bed then, the big scary doggo has to be very scary.

Except there is no big scary dog, the previous incumbent was also timid, and deaf, near blind, and a practically mute little critter. My last memory of him is him 'sniffing' back at me as I said goodbye at the airport.

This little guy never really gave up his bed, more sort of lost it when he went for a wander around the mountains without his owner and never found his way back.

So no, new little wonderful occupant, there's no scary doggo coming to take your bed away, and if the previous doggo ever comes back well there's plenty of room to share.

Living 1 To 9 In A 9 To 5 Society

If you normally wake up at around 7:30 am or 8:00 am and start work at 9 am...

Imagine if every regular job started at 5 am and an early meeting started at 4:30 am or earlier.

Imagine regularly getting a phone call from a client at 5 am who needs you to jump on something immediately.

Imagine if almost every shop closed at 1 pm apart from some supermarkets which close at 4 pm.

Imagine if every doctor closed at 1 pm apart from on 'special days' when they close at 4 pm.

Imagine if every service you have to interact with closed at 1 pm.

Imagine if every restaurant or takeaway closed at 7 pm and last bookings were 6 pm.

Imagine if every pub closed at 7 pm.

Imagine if every nightclub closed at 9 pm or 10 pm.

Imagine if all your friends regularly went to bed at 7 pm.

Imagine that's every day of every year.

Now imagine almost no-one cares or understands. Not your friends, not your partner, not your family, not your doctor.

I'm pretty sure you actually can't. I'm pretty sure you think you can but try it.

You have to wake yourself up at 4 am at the latest every morning and get to work for 5 am (hey you'll love the traffic, but I'm afraid there are likely no buses running).

Try to convince your boss that you need to start at 5 am and finish at 1:30 pm.

If you don't manage to make it to work for 5 am then get your boss to give you a quick meeting about your time keeping and how you need to improve it.

Try for a month to eat breakfast at 4 am, lunch at 8 am, and dinner at 1 pm or 2 pm. You're not allowed to eat anything after 3 pm.

Try for a month to not go to a high street shop or contact any business that you need to interact with after 1 pm (You'll just have to do it tomorrow).

Try for a month to not go food shopping after 4 pm. If it's after 4 pm you can buy from a shop that stays open till 11 pm up until 7 pm in the evening (local co-op/tesco express/corner shop).

Try for a month to not do anything social of an evening after 7 pm.

If you've got a social event that starts at 6 pm try getting there for 2 pm and leave at 7 pm.

After 7 pm, go home and sit alone and don't interact with anyone in your social circle. You're not allowed to talk to your partner, kids, friends, anyone.

Go to bed at 7:30 pm or earlier. Try and sleep.

You can't phone any friends or family after 5 pm. You can't SMS them, email them, or interact with them on social media.

Go on try it, just for a month. Now imagine doing it for over 20 years.

This is an approximation of chronic Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder in a 9 to 5 society. I cannot stress enough how this is just an approximation and not the actual reality.

This is every day of every year in my adult life. This is not considered to be a disability. This is mostly considered to be "you are lazy". Get at least one of your acquaintances, colleagues, or even friends, to tell you that you are lazy or you just need to go to bed earlier at least once a week. Try going to bed earlier as they suggest. Try removing caffeine and/or sugar. Try not using technology. Try closing the curtains and not having any lights on of an afternoon/evening.

Now imagine that on top of this you've been mentally abused, had a breakdown leading to physical disorders, are suffering from anxiety and depression disorders, and are trying to get your life back together.

No, I'm not sure what to do either but I'm still working on it.

(If you normally wake up earlier than 8:00 am then take whatever the difference is away from all the times here. If you normally wake at 7:00 am then every 4 pm becomes 3 pm, every 1 pm becomes midday and so on. If you manage to shift to waking up at 4 am then take another hour off of everything and wake up at 3 am.)

Can I Go Back To Bed Now

Anxiety is pounding away at me. I'm shaking. I'm trying to not give up or give in.

I need to login to file my tax return. I've got 9 tabs for HMRC open at the moment trying to find out how to reset 2fa security after having lost my phone. This is before I even get near to filling in my first ever tax return, which will itself be a stressful encounter of "And what do they mean by that".

The only way I can reset my security is to "contact an admin user and ask them to remove extra security from your account" and how exactly do I contact an admin user? No, no info on that. I click "Still need help?", yep, I definitely need help.

Please call us if:
You need to reset extra security

Before you call
Make sure you have your Self Assessment Unique Taxpayer Reference (UTR)

UTR found. So what's the phone number. No phone number. Okay I'll go find the phone number then.

The deadline and a £100 fine is looming closer.

I'm already confused by what I've read online. I have to report my business income and my personal income. When you're a sole trader what's the difference?

And how does the government scheme for live-in landlords tie into this? I don't normally have to claim the rent from the lodger as it is tax free when under a certain amount. But do I need to claim that for a self assessment? I haven't even started and I already have questions. Hopefully some of them will be answered when I actually get through to the form. Past experience says this will not be the case but I'm going to keep an open mind.

That I can only make phone calls from one room of the house (If I want to hear anything without it breaking up constantly) and that the room happens to be next to one of the busiest roads in the city makes any call awkward at best.

I'd use WiFi calling but for some reason that doesn't work anymore and many attempts at investigating why it doesn't work have failed. It doesn't help that I have a phobia of phone calls.

At the same time there are many other things vying for my attention.

I need to design the next stage of the architecture for a system I'm building for a customer. Then I need to implement that architecture. Preferably before tomorrow. I need to get a quote done. Also preferably before tomorrow. Both activities are highly technical and require focus to be held for a long time.

I need to do something about the old washing machine (the lodger broke it) to get it out of the way. I've taken it apart so that I can manhandle it into my car but since the council changed the parking around here I'm looking at lugging it all to two roads away or risk getting a parking ticket. This will take physical energy I don't really have. If I'm going to take the time and effort to drag a bunch of stuff to the recycling centre (The map was wrong but I found it anyway) then I should probably find a few of the other bits of junk that are lying around in the backyard and take them too. It's not going to happen today. That's now a Saturday job.

I need to finish off cleaning the kitchen because the lodger thinks that it cleans itself....

...Stop that, this is not important you can deal with these things later.

These are all minimal things but they all add stress to an already stressful situation. My teeth are grinding, I'm nauseous, and I'm panting, so I'll spend a few minutes now controlling my breathing and relaxing my jaw.

Nothing moves forward and I'm almost in tears at my perceived failure. You can't give in. You need to do this. You've got a mask you need to wear.

My brain chimes in "You need to eat". I don't have time to eat. I'm not hungry and I have no appetite anyway. Shut up.

Timing is everything. My reminder to eat pops up just as I'm thinking this (Yes, I have to remind myself to eat because my body doesn't do it for me).

The hot drink I made (I'm cold and shaking) has already gone cold. I'm thinking about making another one but that just feels like procrastination and it makes my heart pound harder and faster.

So one step at a time. Find the phone number needed. When I've found the phone number then I can think about what I need to do next.

I'm exhausted by the thoughts. I could quite literally crawl back into bed and never wake up again, but I won't.

The shame of it is that it's a beautiful day and I really hoped I'd get out for a brief walk while the sun was as high as it gets in the sky. That time has passed, it will be cold and dark soon.

Title Undecided

I regularly suffer from Executive Dysfunction.

Executive Dysfunction seems to be a rather ambiguous term and I don't wish to appropriate it if I'm applying it incorrectly. It's not a disease per se but more a symptom of other functionality.

Like a lot of people with mental health problems I am comorbid, I could spend a fair amount of time listing the various things that ail me on both the physical and mental side. I'm going to try and focus on the mental activity side and how it has an impact on the physical side.

I've been fighting Executive Dysfunction for a couple of years now as an almost constant thing. Some days are much better than the average and some are much worse. The average, once combined with mental and physical exhaustion, is really taking a toll.

Constant stress, and the anxiety that goes along with it, causes most of my mental and physical exhaustion. Stress leads to hormonal release and eventually your body gets topped out on adrenalin and other self-made stimulants. When this goes away, particularly after an anxiety attack, you can be left sat in a mental slump, a physical one, or both. Just as in the physical world of material science we can only take excessive stress for so long before we break.

My intentions always start out well. I just about keep on top of things that need doing. Just about. I organise my priorities based on needing to earn enough of an income to not go under completely, basic health, and then other stuff. There are days when I don't even manage the first of those priorities. There are days when those priorities invert. But those are the general rules in order to keep having a chance to get out of this.

Earning enough income means paying the mortgage and other bills that I will ultimately be taken to court for non payment of.

Basic health means eating, cleaning, and rest.

Other stuff means socialising, personal projects, sorting the house out, exercise, photography, guitar... and the income to support them.

I'm writing this because I've failed again today and I'm hoping I'll see writing this as something positive about today, it also forces me to think about how and why my head works as it does.

I've failed to move any work forward (though I probably will later), other than answer some support queries, which means I'm repeatedly clock watching as the hours of the day tick by (ooh look notable number, it's 13:37). I've looked at todo lists (I wrote my own task list software that has a "Go to hell" button as well as a "Like" button, to help me prioritise), I've looked at code, I've looked at infrastructure. I've not been able to find an avenue forward.

I've failed to do much productive in my personal life; still nothing significant organised, still nothing on any of my projects moved forward. I had a new washing machine delivered yesterday which I've sort of manhandled into an okay place for now and hooked up. Therefore, I've managed to reduce the washing pile that has built up since the old one broke. Finding a laundrette that I could park near and wasn't busy whenever I could get the energy to leave the house seemed to be an impossible task, so I've been washing small batches of clothes in the bath.

I'm finding it hard to see anything about today as a success (more washing to do, still need to dispose of the old washing machine [tick: added to ToDo list]).

This is about as far as I can write at the moment. My eyes are weeping, my arms are aching, I'm yawning, and I'm panting.

I am now in Executive Dysfunction.

I stop writing.

My mind fills with half whispered thoughts. Not direct stresses, just ghosts of all the things that need doing. I can't form a complete thought.

I cannot make a decision on what to do (continue writing, sort life problem A out, sort life problem B out, sort life problem...) or even the simplest thing (do I want a coffee? My lips and mouth are dry, I'm tired, I'm thirsty. Nope, I don't know). I cannot find the energy to stand up.

I want to keep on writing but the thoughts invading my mind won't let me focus. I fight to blank it all out and with a temporary reprieve and screaming at myself to "fuck off and leave me alone" I manage to write another sentence. After four or five, the effort is overwhelming. My arms ache even more, my eyes are now dripping and I keep closing them, I've gone from panting to full hyperventilation, I can feel my pulse throughout my whole body. I keep on fighting to write.

It will be at least an hour before I recover enough to post this. Time to go back to staring and stressing about working out how to log in to fill in my tax assessment. Maybe this time trying to reset my gov.uk 2factor auth will not error and I will be able to login.

What works works

I'm drunk.

What works works.

I arrived home from work stressed and dysfunctional and totally failing as an adult; even in my attempts to not be an adult.

I'm now drunk. I am now functional as an adult and as an adult attempting to not be an adult.

What works works.

Don't beat yourself up about it.

Life's a Game

Image from http://theskyfx.deviantart.com/

I read Luke Rinehart's The Dice Man as a child, probably pre teen. I consumed huge numbers of books as a child. You do that when everyone's telling you to sleep and you have a wonky circadian rhythm, no torch, and you know how batteries and bulbs and wires work. At least until you get an old valve radio or big black and white television and start listening to the world service or watching open university on BBC 2.

The Dice Man was an influential book along with Stephen King's IT, James Herbert's Rats, and a bunch of other adult drama and horror.

The Dice Man isn't a way of doing something, it's a way of thinking about something.

We make decisions all the time. We apparently make all of them subconsciously long before we make them consciously. I see this in effect all the time.

Two times recently in my life I saw two different people act out an identical act for similar reasons and goals. The resemblance was uncanny. In both cases both seemed confident that they were making the decision at the time they were with me. In both cases they had made the decision long before. In neither case do I believe that they had consciously made the decision. In both cases their conscious was genuinely trying to decide between two courses of action.

Most days as I go through life I see discussions that have an obvious outcome. The decision has already been made.

When we think we're rolling the dice has nothing to do with when the dice were rolled. This is an element of The Dice Man. A friend of mine uses a coin toss to expose her subconscious. Her approach to ambivalent decisions is to toss a coin. If you agree with the coin's outcome you go ahead with the coin's "decision", it either means you didn't care or you agree. If you disagree you'll tell the coin to fuck off. This exposes the unconscious decision. It forces you to accept the choice you have already made.

This is how we travel through life. We make decisions. The decisions we make have consequences.

We roll the dice to deal with those consequences.

The Slippery and Darkened Spiral

Depression is a spiral for me.

Each person I know who's been through depression has a different way of seeing it. The classic feeling for me many years ago used to be one of feeling like I was in a tunnel someone else made and mostly I couldn't see the light at the end of it. Occasionally there'd be a glimmer but it was impossible to tell if it was an actual light or if my brain was just making things up due to the long term meta sensory deprivation.

I got out of the tunnel. I had 15 years or so of living in the light. I occasionally got depressed, everyone does, but let a day or so go by and whatever it was wasn't important any more.

This time it's not a tunnel. This time it's a very dark and slippery spiral.

In recent weeks I've sat at the bottom of this spiral well a lot.

Occasionally I scramble up the slippery spiral or I jump from level to level and briefly get to see the light. It takes a huge amount of effort both to get anywhere near the top and a huge amount of effort to hold on to wherever I have made it to up the spiral.

While my strength lasts I try to use being in the lighter shadows to improve my situation. I call out to those around me and let them know I am still alive. They matter to me.

When I'm sat at the bottom of the spiral I rest and plan for my next assault on the spiral. This time the plan will work.

The worst times? When you have an obligation and your state of mind is fighting you every step of the way to fulfil that obligation. I'm useless, I can't even get out of bed and make a coffee, let alone do my duty. You kick and scream at yourself from inside. You lie to yourself about how things will be if you just get on with it. You try and work out who you used to be and how you got here. You go round in circles.

If you're suffering from chronic stress as well... you shake, you're cold, you're hot, you're thirsty and by the time you've made a drink you're no longer thirsty. You're hungry, you make food, you throw it away with only the tiniest nibble taken to justify having made it. Food disgusts you, people disgust you, you disgust you. You spike on adrenalin and then crash and become comatose.

Nothing is enticing. Nothing is worth it.

Nothing.

You sit in the well at the bottom of the spiral.

I Feel Like...

It's the most common thought in my mind, I feel like...

I feel like taking photographs, but I can't just go wandering around as the opportunity arises, the weather sucks, my ankles hurt (broke them both a couple of months ago) and I can't justify funding suitable lighting to effectively take photos indoors. So I don't take photos.

I feel like fixing up my broken house, but the state of my house just reflects the state of my mind - messy. There's always more to do to it but I give away half of anything that will increase it's value till I'm free of previous legal encumberments.

I feel like watching films, but I know I won't concentrate on them so what's the point.

I feel like company, but company is complicated. It means many things and the company you get is not always the company you want.

I feel like writing code, but my brain won't settle on an idea long enough for it to become a mathematical model of reality that is stable in my head.

I feel like setting up my new Raspberry-Pi HiFi computer in the living room (it rocks), but I need to do a lot more before I can make anything permanent in the living room and I won't sit in there on my own for any length of time so what's the point.

I feel like making something wonderful to eat, but there's only me to eat it and I won't care if I eat or not. It wouldn't be the first time in the last few years I've made a wonderful dinner and thrown it all in the bin a couple of hours later.

I feel like going out and socialising, but it takes a lot at the moment to even walk out the door and I just can't afford it most of the time.

I feel like catching up on work, just to help out, but work hasn't given me a pay rise in a few years now so my inclination to help them out when I've never got any spare cash to have fun with is limited.

I feel like... so many things... and yet they all seem to have their own counter feeling creating a general state of mass ambivalence.

Stalemate.

TL;DR I ranted at my doctor. I may have gotten some progress.

My doctor is a really nice guy. I like him a lot. He didn't deserve my visit the other day but he's also the face of the NHS and in that role he is there to take some of my frustration at the lack of care given to my health over the years.

I have two long term chronic health problems. My eczema and my sleep pattern.

Right now I have a bunch of complications driven by the stress I've found myself under, over the last two years particularly. On a monthly basis the work in my life seems to get more and more with no sign of letup. In my personal life various things have occurred that mean on an almost monthly basis I have found out even more about what a lying cheating whore my ex is while she "sweetly" tries to negotiate with me an exit for our legal entanglements.

Last weekend I broke. I broke badly. The "sweet" ex decided the best way to help me with this was to make up some story about how she'd reported me to the police for abusive behaviour against her, including that I had invited around specifically "a person with known violent behaviour when drunk" to get drunk with me. This person has been drunk here many a time and shown no violent tendencies, because any tendencies he may have had were related to emotional circumstances at the time. He's also probably my closest friend right now, so he was here because I knew he could quite happily listen to me rant without making comment or judgement.

The "report" was based on me sitting within earshot of her while ranting. I'd just found out that every word she has said since this process started two years ago has been a blatant bare faced lie. I was ever so slightly upset at the over £6,000+ I have spent on legal and financial advice to try and sort this process out over the last two years. To say nothing of the money I have invested in the house itself. If we sell I get nothing. If we sell she get's little and likely doesn't cover her original deposit.

So it's beneficial for us to play nice isn't it? Instead she carries on her illicit relationship and extends it, now infecting the entire house. This is where my head is right now. You don't want to know anything about her actual relationship, because I've recently learnt more about that that makes it even more scary and I can only conclude she is living in some fantasy world, hence the continuous lies even when they don't benefit her.

This is what my doctor was facing me trying to explain in under 10 minutes. And the big problem being none of the above is what I wanted to talk to him about. It's just some background.

So I started discussing what I believe is an underlying problem of mine and has been my whole life. It's just like my eczema in that respect.

My parents were told when I was 3 months I'd grow out of my eczema, when I was 3-4 years old I was told I would grow out of my eczema by my teens, when I was a teenaager I was told I would grow out of my eczema it's a teenage thing... You see the pattern. The same with my weight. Yes he'll put on weight when he's a teen, he'll put on weight when he's a young adult, he'll start to fill out when he's 25. Oh middle age, that's definitely got to do it. I have recently been consuming alcohol and food at a rate that means I should have a world class gut right now. Nope, still 57 kg. I am now middle aged (and pretty healthy according to my recent inspection)

So this is genetics. It's not my lifestyle, it's not I don't eat enough, it's me, just get used to it.

There's another thing that seems to be part of my genetics and that's my circadian rythym. It's a bit laggy. No, it's a lot laggy. If you let me run 3 hours behind everyone else I seem to do okay, things seem to occur normally. The problem is when you're trying to conform to a 9-5 style lifestyle it doesn't really fit. Your 9am meeting is a 6am meeting from my body's point of view. I spend my life working as if I had a 6 hour jet lag to contend with every day.

I believe I suffer from a delayed sleep phase type circadian rythym sleep disorder. The only way to prove it that I have found, till recently? Prove you don't have any other kind of sleep disorder.

Have you ever tried to convince a doctor to spend a bunch of resources on a bunch of tests that are all going to come back negative. It's not easy.

So a year ago when I went to the doctor over some major sleep issues I was having at the time I presented them some information on DSPD (Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder) just as an "I'd like to investigate this sometime, do you know anything about it?" at the end of the appointment. They took it, read it, filed it. No more than I expected at the time.

So I'm broken, sat in the doctor's office, I've summarised as much of the above as I can in ten minutes while being in a state where my thoughts are all over the place and there are so many possible places to diverge off into more detail (It was only about half an hour previously that I'd had the dawning realisation about how much my ex had been lying to me).

He turns and says so we just need to sort the stress. I exploded at him verbally. I screamed something along the lines of if all you can offer me is a 5mg valium as a short term chemical fix then you are fucking useless to me and I am wasting my time here. He then asked what I'd do and I said go home and continue to self medicate using alcohol as a sedative because I've read the data on valium and I've read the data on alcohol and it basically comes down to one is socially acceptable and the other isn't.

If you can give me a short term fix with some promise to actually fucking listen to the data I'm trying to present to you then we might get somewhere and I know we haven't had time to deal with this here, I said it when I booked the appointment, it was also the first thing I said to you as I walked through the door, I kept stopping myself part way through things because I knew we had no chance of delving into it any deeper and here you are saying well that's it time's up. No.

So he asked me what the diagnosis was and what the treatment was. This again made me explode with I'm not the fucking medical professional but I can see one simple fix if this is the case and that's just simply some medical acknowledgment of I'm not pathologically lazy I'm just permanently jet lagged. That's something I can take to my employer and maybe we can all benefit and maybe my stress will reduce (ya know not being jet lagged all the time) and maybe my eczema will improve and my diet as I'll be consuming foods when it wants to eat not when I'm forcing it to eat.

So he said okay what about if I give you enough valium to get you through to next Tuesday which is the next earliest appointment I can book you in for and I shall go and read up some more on this.

Thank you.