My rant to no one

i have a problem. this problem, which has been amplified in recent months, is trying to maintain interest in anything for an extended period of time.

this includes movies, music, conversation, or just about anything else that you can think of. Say for instance when i'm watching a movie. I think it's a pretty good movie. I laugh cos it's funny. I realise it's funny, I think to myself "hey... that's pretty funny, and that's why I'm laughing"

and then it isn't so funny anymore.

I'm not really sure whether anybody else in the world understands that, but that's what i go through. I always thought it'd been because of my own self-conciousness, which in turn, is related to my own self-esteem.

I mean, that's how i got over it. I find that when i feel better about myself, i stop being self-conscious, and i can truly revel in things like movies, music and conversation.

but today, i met a guy. He's an old acquaintance of mine called Dique, and the reason i met up with him was to discuss him doing my band's music video in CG. Anyhows, as the conversation was progressing, he brought up the problem of bad short term memory.

"i mean like, really bad... i lost a couple of phones by leaving them on the roof of my car while i was trying to find my parking ticket"

I've almost done that about 100 times myself. so i asked him how he deals with it. He says it's so bad that he's actually on meds. Something called Ritalin. I recognised the name as a drug used on kids in america with ADD (attention deficit disorder).

when i was studying there, i was diagnosed with ADD. it was a hyperactive disorder for me. they were wondering why i'd always get into fights after school. Found out, that if we were little angels the whole day, teacher would give us jelly beans at the end of the day. When i got jelly beans into me, i could never sit still, so i'd start play-punching the guy next to me like hey..*dish*...hey...*dish*...hey...*dish*...hey...*dish*...hey...*dish*...hey...*dish*...hey...*dish*

this guy's name was hogan. and he'd punch back, and we'd get into fights.

so this was how i never got sweets or coke (i got sugarless barley) until i was like 15. i always thought that i'd learnt to control it... although in many ways, i'm still a social irritant today.

anyhows, the reason it's called ADD, is exactly because we can't focus on anything too long. Thus my inability to enjoy movies or music for any extended period of time. it was really bad for me for a long period last year, after i got dumped by an ex. first time i've been dumped since high school. so self-esteem down, self-consciousness up. and not knowing what the problem was, i can tell you guys now that i was feeling myself having a nervous breakdown.

i think a nervous breakdown happens when the problems you have in your head don't get any better no matter how hard you try... no matter how much you vent or emote, your head just gets stuck in an endless cycle.

I managed to find a way out of it, by taking measures to help build back my self esteem. I'm privileged in that sense to have a pretty good life overall.. i love my job, the income's decent and so on. I'm a pretty lucky guy, and slowly... i'm starting to be thankful for all the things i have once again. I can only hope that others with nervous breakdowns can be so lucky.

If not, i guess there's always ritalin.

I have a really old dog called Mikey. he's stinky and not all that good-looking - courtesy of mongrel genes, I guess. He hasn't had all that great a year so far, having been diagnosed with heartworms earlier this year. i'm a bit ashamed to say that its the first time i've ever brought him to the vet in all these years. The bill made up for all those lost years though, clocking in at a good thousand bucks so far.

anyways, the treatment involves putting him on aspirin to thin his blood, and then letting loose an arsenic-derivative via two big jabs on the bum to kill the heartworms. Reason why the blood has to be thinned is because it needs to be fluid enough to expel the heartworm carcasses once they're dead. An altogether impleasant thought for a v-day post, but then hey... my last one wasn't so cheery anyway.

So one of the side-effects of the medication is that the dog is going to get awfully depressed and lethargic. doctor's advice is to keep him in a clean environment (another side effect is swelling and inflamation) and not give him too much activity. So we've kept him out of the garden in a concrete stairway that leads to our house. he doesn't seem to mind since he doesn't have much energy or an appetite these days. All kinda heartbreaking to me.

Anyhow, my mom called me today, and asked me to take him out into the streets for a poo once i got home from work. So when i got home, sure enough, he was lying in the middle of the staircase, eyes half open, hardly budging an inch. in his dish lay a half-eaten piece of bread with kaya that my mom tried to feed him earlier. So i went up, grabbed the leash and came back down.

All of a sudden, his ears perked up, and his tail started wagging for the first time in weeks. Mikey loves his walks, but lately with the new job, I haven't really had the time to take him. Anyhows, i tie him up, and the next thing i know, he's pulling hard at the leash looking for all his favourite pee-stops. halfway through, i stop down for a cigarette. he wants to go further, but i don't want to exert him too much. after giving up, he comes up to me and raises a paw... i pet him, tell him i still love him even though he's smelly and old.

we both kinda cheered each other up (me being alone on v-day), and like a good little doggie, he poos in front of my least favourite neighbour's house before coming back inside.

I think when we're feeling lethargic, and depressed, it's really in ourselves to find the will to go out and enjoy the things we love regardless. And once we've done that, we realise that everything we're feeling is half due to the circumstances around us, and half due to our own pessimistic nature. Or something like that. Or I'm just trying to sound profound.

Anyways, i'm sure his dish should be empty by morning, and I'll have made it past another stupid v-day.

yup, you heard it here first. regardless of whether you're with someone, or without, you'll either be spending next month's salary or wish you had someone to spend it on.

"oooh, that's fuckin sour"

well, thing is, I've never (repeat NEVER) had a V-day in the conventional sense of the word before. The date, the dinner, the obligatory kiss (how can something be fun if it's obligatory?). Bleh.

You know what's worse than spending V-day without someone to love?

I'll tell you. Loving someone, and not being able to spend V-day with them. Yup, it's that sort've fucked up holiday. Even I'm affected. again. for the 26th time in my life (i started young).

the worst thing about it, is that it brings out all these hormones, that don't usually exist in real men like Chuck Norris and Charles Bronson, and makes you feel like shit no matter how many times you tell yourself that you don't believe in this stupid occasion.

Yup, rant done. Move along...just another lonely psycho, ma'am... nothing to see here.

I've been coughing up phlegm (tried spelling that three times before it looked right) for a week now. Today, there were a few traces of blood, which brought back memories of my scary scary bout of pseudomonas aeruginosa back in 2001. Luckily, it was only once in the morning. After that, it's just been the normal yellow icky kind. That's supposed to be good, according to this link.

http://www.medhelp.org/forums/RespiratoryDisorders/messages/2354.html

Saw some other pretty interesting stuff on that forum. Like one guy said that our capacity to heal our own lungs stops at about 30. That's 3 years away for me. I'm feeling the urge to quit smoking again, but then I think about midnight ciggarettes, and all of a sudden, I feel like having one now.

So then I thought... why not make a Healthy Cigarette? Read this.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/cigarette/history2.html

It's a pretty shocking article. Apparently, some rate the Healthy Cig as the Holy Grail of Tobacco companies, and would give them plenty of ammo to go bad mouthing their competitors, and steal a huge market share.

UNFORTUNATELY... there are such things as lawyers. In short, tobacco companies have long touted the line "smoking isn't bad for you", but now, if they came up with a Healthy Cig, all of a sudden, other lawyers would be like "so you're saying that your other cigs are unhealthy?"

it's all very complicated, but very interesting at the same time.

This brings me to my 2nd subject. Ever since i got my internet connection at home, I've felt my life wasting away. I'd come home from a long day at work, and be like... "ok... let's check my mail and get started on some Splinter Cell!"

and i end up spending four hours, surfing up stuff like the nonsense you've just read. It's just addictive the amount of information and entertainment here - and it's mostly free (yes, even porn!)! You know how those health warnings on ciggie packs overseas go like "each Cigarrette reduces your life by five minutes"? how about this...

"each stupid blog entry reduces your life by five minutes"

wow... that's a fantastic endorsement to keep coming to this blog. whoever is reading it.

I've come to realise that there are two types of bloggers in this world.

A. those who want to be recognised
B. those that don't

It's pretty funny that I find myself with one foot in each blog bucket, because while I don't really feel the need for more recognition than I already have, I have these feelings inside me that are really hard to keep to myself.

It is with this intention that I throw the metaphorical message in a bottle into the vast ocean of ones and zeroes. I don't really care if the person who reads this knows who I am or not, but I hope to make a connection with you.

Connection.

It's funny, because this is something that happens less and less as we grow older. Sometimes I like to reminisce about days when we were kids and we could just play with any other kid and not worry about things like acceptance, respect, pity, love, lust, or quality of conversation.

And yet sometimes it seems so implausible. So implausible that sometimes even I don't believe that I was ever like that. Life throws so many things at you that sometimes its hard to remember the post-it notes that were you, and the ones that someone else stuck on.

Blogging to me shall be like a diary. Consider this my most honest post ever. Because it is the first, and no one knows about it yet. Once people do, I'll start having to worry about things like acceptance, respect, pity, love, lust, and quality of conversation.

For now, the only thing I worry about is me. Alot.

Hello everyone.