| 22 feb 2002 hm. i wonder if i'm in one of those nervous breakdown phases. i mean, i usually get them on a tuesday, and they last for about a week. it seems to fit the fact that i started to feel really shitty this past tuesday. but anyways, i was having a smoke outside, and i was trying to *feel* how my body and mind are. so i think i've decided that the reason why my mood is so crappy is because of my current phase of tourette's. to clarify, i think my tics are starting to rule my life again. the previous evolution of my tics used to give me a lot of pain. the jerking around of my neck caused pain to shoot up and down my spine, shoulders, arms... but now, in the current incarnation, i seem to have traded pain for energy. in other words, it may not hurt as much, but hell, my tics take a lot of physical effort. and i just get tired, and soon afterwards, my exhaustion just makes me cranky. i realized it must be the TS when i noticed that i would spend a lot of time just sitting still, not wanting to move. that's a classic sign of the tics getting to a point where my body is shutting down and not wanting to deal with being conscious. i have this documentary on TS where this woman says that people with TS have minds that are running at 100mph. that's true... our brains are hyperactive, and we're just exploding with nervous energy. but an equal amount of energy is running parallel, trying to suppress the tics, like a subconscious regulatory process, so at the end of the day, we're just fucking spent. tired. i don't know if anybody without TS can relate to what i just said. so what to do? damn, if this is the case, then the best thing for me is just to recharge over the weekend. sleep as much as possible. but that means that i should skip out on the ski trip. god damn. i don't want to do that... but anyways, i don't feel like talking about it anymore. i'm sick and tired of dealing with this, and talking about it only reminds me that i can be just messed up sometimes. poor michelle kwan. that's all i can say. i mean, i guess from what i've heard, she does skate conservatively, and while she's expressive, she doesn't do the fancy triple combinations that other girls do, so her technical marks can't be as high as the other. oh well. that sarah hughes girl skated really well, though... i think it's interesting how _time_ magazine put her on the cover instead of michelle, like they had this hunch that sarah had the potential to win gold. while i was sitting outside during my smoke, there was this nice breeze flowing through. and these pink sakura-like (cherry blossom) petals were flying everywhere. it was cool to watch. but then, my mind took a step further and wondered how to come up with a fluid formula that would model the rate of the petal flow through a cross-section of the air, and how it would compensate for the fact that the rate would decrease from the depletion of the petal source. shit. then i got pissed off that i couldn't even enjoy something as simple as pink thingies flying around, and i had to go ruin it with my brain. geesh. i had a talk with my project lead this morning, james. holy shit. this block i'm doing is not as easy as i thought. well, the reason why i thought it would be easy is that everyone else was teasing me, saying that i should be able to finish it in "two days." so i just thought, "dude. it must be something trivial then." but damn, i have been working on it for three days, and i still have such a long way to go. funny how the expectation of it being easy is stressing me out. i hope to get it done by the end of next week. ugh. i'm really torn over this ski trip thing. i just wish i knew for sure that a weekend of recuperation would put me in a better place. i mean, i know spending time with my friends would also make me happier, but if my body and mind aren't ready for it, it'll only make me worse. *ponder* i have about 150 cd's left to rip. finally, i'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. so far, there have only been two cd's where i ripped all of the songs... madonna's _immaculate collection_ and new order's _technique_. honorable mentions where i took all but one or two include NIN's _pretty hate machine_ and new order's _substance_ (disc 1). but i'm pretty picky about what i'm putting on my hard disk... i like to imagine that i'm building a list of "dardy's favorites" from my cd collection, and that someday i would like run a radio station with a playlist that's probably just as good as a real radio station. so. what do do about this haldol situation. you know, i've been on meds for such a long time now that i have no idea what i'm like without them. like, i remember days that were similar to this week, when i just sat there, feeling restless and lazy all at the same time, just sitting there, unable to focus on anything... but what i can't remember is whether i was on meds at the time or not. because i really need to figure out if i want to try going off haldol for a while and seeing how life treats me then. all i can say is that i haven't felt like myself in a really long time. by that, i'm saying that the last time when i felt happy and normal was the first part of 2001. at that time, haldol was working fine, i was hardly even ticcing, and stress level was so low, and i was basically as close to "normal" as i had been in years. but something happened after the japan trip that just really fucked me up. or maybe it was after i stopped getting regular chiropractic treatment in june. either way, some time after the summer, i just got really tired and lazy and fucked up and ticcy all over again. i think i need a distraction. maybe. i was talking to carol the other night, and she said, "you know, i don't think being with a woman would solve you problems." i thought about it, and maybe she's right. i mean, i don't even know if i have the energy to keep up with a girl. it's absolutely no fun being with someone who doesn't have enough pep to do standard mundane things, let along exotic fanciful romantic excursions. so i don't know. part of me thinks that she's right, that i need to "fix" myself first. but part of me also thinks that if i'm distracted enough, i'll stop wallowing in my self-pity and cruise away to a better mode of operation. i know for a fact that if i'm constructive occupied, then i kind of forget about my worries and do decently well. a thought that just occurred to me might explain why i am so lethargic all the time. maybe by being lazy (not focusing on work, sleeping infinitely), it's my body's subconscious way of avoiding stress. having TS basically means i'm a walking stress barometer, and i definitely know that when i get overwhelmed, my body just shuts down and clamors for nothing but sleep. so maybe right now, it knows that, and it's just trying to keep my stress level to a minimum by keeping me tired. you know, our bodies are fucking amazing. i mean, sometimes it really disturbs me, because there are so many ways we can be messed up, but just the fact that it works most of the time is pretty impressive. i just wish mine worked better. |