Lo Scriviti

One side of my family all died (except for my grandmother) of cancers. I have the chance to get genetic testing and find out what, if any, cancers or other gene-delimited illness(es) I could fall prey to.

I would get the test and find out what I’m likely to die of.

But the information would be shared with my health insurance provider since they’re footing the bill for the test. And I’ve realized by extension that they could deny treatment for any predisposed cancer. I’d know what will happen, and be powerless to treat it.

I’m wondering if I can pay for it privately without insurance.

I’m employed again contract. But I’m making low money for FT, and the commute is long. Always complaining, I guess. The good thing about this job is that it does let me write somewhat. And it pays better than retail (hell, anything pays better than retail). But the commute into central Dallas to a factory/office is costing me $50 in gas every week bc my car is old. And then there’s the loooong drive at dark thirty and again at 5:00 pm. every weekday. I’m making more than minimum wage, at least.

My spouse is happy not to be the sole breadwinner any more, and I’m glad for that as well.
It’s just that it shows me what kind of shape I’m in: Bad. My knee has a fracture, so the limping around factors in as well. I guess I’m getting old/er.

My biggest problem is no longer “how will I keep my household afloat,” and I am grateful for that.

And this job may also teach me more about structured authoring, which is kind of cool.

I just hate the dark-thirty commute.

Well, the time-honored, obvious thing happened. I quit my PT job.

It went well enough for about 7 months. Then the manager came over and gave me crap -again – about something minor – not being familiar enough with their tablets. Their tablets are Android. And all my devices are Apple, so no it wasn’t “obvious” to me how to scan a barcode. She treated me like I was an idiot – and that really sets me off.

So I went home, thought about the four times she’s done that (different subjects), and then called and told the assistant manager I wasn’t coming back.

I contacted another asst. manager whom I’m friends with, and she said the manager does that to her all the time. The asst. manager said this manager left her a two-page letter about everything she was doing “wrong” right before the assistant left for 3 months’ medical leave.

It was the idiot thing that really set me off. Everyone who really knows me already knows I’m not too stupid, as in highest SAT score in my class.

I can’t help it, that’s a great big red button with me. So I did something that wasn’t too smart, and am stuck looking for another PT job while still hunting for a FT job. Just brilliant.

Dopamine is the feel-good chemical in our brains. It’s triggered by happy feelings of any kind.

Apparently there is something called “dopamine scrolling,” in which a person scrolls through social media to get a hit of the happiness chemical. I have been dopamine scrolling a lot lately. S asks me all the time, “Are you scrolling for your brain?” It’s a form of addiction.

But, you ask, What’s wrong with that? Only when it’s taken to extremes, such as gaming.

People who are unemployed or getting psychiatric treatment are probably the sweet spot for dopamine scrolling. Them, or adrenaline junkies. So, I’m all three.

There’s nothing really wrong with that. But it’s an insidious habit, right? Ads are even targeted at dopamine scrollers, such as for ADHD treatment apps. (I tried one. Don’t do it, not worth the money.)

It’s useful a lot of the time, but you run the risk of being labeled an attention whore if you do it too much. Probably I’m a dopamine junkie looking for the next chance to be right.

I’m also a “Questioner,” according to Gretchen Rubin, and I continually ask “why” out loud or in my head. Here’s where the dopamine hit enters, the RESEARCH rabbit hole. Whenever I (or someone) poses a question, I quickly research and get the hit of feel good from being the first to find the answer.

What’s the down side? Being called a know-it-all or pathetic?

YES, I am definitely pathetic right now, but I’m also RIGHT 😇 most of the time.

I got a 3-day-a-week part time job. The pay is above minimum wage. It’s at a plant nursery where I worked 3 years ago. Something is better than nothing.

Also, I passed a first interview with flying colors for a software company. I have a second, two-hour interview with 3 people this Friday. Sounds taxing. My first thought is, when am I gonna pee?

My best suit is too small. I think the secondary one also is. I decided to take water pills but they haven’t been delivered. May or may not be a mistake. Anyway, we shall see.

I don’t know how I feel, or how to feel. My life is saying “hell, NO” pretty consistently right now.

In the past, when I’ve run up against roadblock after roadblock, I’ve eventually succumbed to the truth, that something is not well in the state of Denmark.

Down the list:

Marriage – pretty ok

Finances – sucky

Body – as ok as it’s possible to feel when you’re dependent on five meds to function

Career path – beginning to feel like maybe wrong, because nothing’s gone really right in about a year. Yet, I’m not qualified to do anything else.

Is there anything else to ask about? Right now I don’t feel like there is.

I’m pretty empty.

Thought I would be able to retry TMS, but can’t afford the copay this time.

I get up at 5:00 a.m. to take meds so that that they click in before work. Sometimes they don’t work. On those days, I try to cope by venting on Daylio to myself. Sometimes, that helps.

I have an exceedingly understanding boss, fortunately, for the first time. He lets me work part-time and come in when I can.

I don’t get what my hangup is -in what part of life, on what subject(s), in what frame of mind. This kind of reminds me of Tugging Buddha’s Ear to comprehend what I’m missing.

On Thursday I’ll tell the doctor, this is some kind of depression rising from the ashes of what I thought had been fixed.

Well, I didn’t get the chance to express myself to him, because he has been hammering on me to try getting trademarked Wellbutrin from a Canadian pharmacy (to lower costs).

Sometimes I really wonder if the point of psychiatry is to take advantage of a patient’s low threshold and whip him/her into drug company slavery. I mean, who is it they’re serving?

There, I said it.

The famous statue from a grave at Savannah’s Bonaventure Cemetery.

We were in Savannah for the weekend, and I suggested we go to Bonaventure.

Once we started through the Civil War graves, Mark, who’d bought new hiking boots for the occasion, pulled them off and angrily threw them at headstones.

The whole weekend I’d been considering the relationship. Earlier I’d stared at the Bird Girl, who attracted pigeons and such from people leaving seed in the balances, wondering what to do.

The previous weekend, on New Year’s, we’d been in Charleston. He said at midnight, “I was going to ask you to marry me, but you said you didn’t want to get married.”

It was true. I was unhappy with him, and had begun spending time with an Italian man who made me feel buoyant, happy, and alive. I didn’t want to sign up for more constant fights and him mistreating my furniture.

At the cemetery, camellias were blooming, a few birds were out, the sun was alive, and the afternoon was luminous. I walked past him, picked up the boots, and waited for him to catch up. I said nothing, but turned in the direction of the car. “Where are you going?” He asked.

“I’m done,” I said. We got into the car; once we out on the highway, he told me to pull over, and he got out of the car to walk a bit. I waited for half an hour, then pulled up wordlessly and waited for him to get in and dropped him off. Then, I went home and neatly bagged his things to return.

Toward the end of the summer in my first year of grad school, my boyfriend Jan returned from two months abroad, and we were together two nights before the end of the year party.

I went to the party with my best friend, Melissa. I was feeling stoked and got a drink. Upon turning around, I happened upon Jan with his hand around his ex-girlfriend Louise’s butt in a group of friends. I threw my drink near Louise’s butt and screamed, “I thought you loved me!”

“My hand just fits there,” he said with raised eyebrows and a slightly raised voice of defense.

We had more words out at my car. I left and wound up at his apartment building, waiting hours for him to come home while sleeping in my back seat. When I woke up, all the lights in the building were out and he had obviously gone to bed – with or without Louise. I drove home.

Two hours later (now 4:00 a.m.), Melissa knocked on my window. “Andrew and I went all over the place looking for you,” she exclaimed. I told her I’d gone to Jan’s, and that I was all right.

The next day I found out I would not be getting a teaching assistantship, and therefore would not be returning to grad school. I got a bottle of red wine, called Melissa, and she said, “I’m sick of you,” and hung up on me. End of the year of living voraciously.