38 posts tagged “me”
In September, I began purposely distancing myself from various faucets of life. In particular, my online presence, Flickr, Vox, Facebook & Twitter, became virtually non existent for almost 2 solid months, some longer. Even recently my activity has been guarded.
I purposely took myself offline, and removed myself from real-life social situations in order to refocus on myself. After the events of 2008: being laid off, our miscarriage, moving out of our inner-city apartment, which became symbolic of our inner-city era, which were easily the best years of our lives, I found myself floundering through life. Putting on a brave face to the world, full of ambition, but feeling dead inside. Feeling guilty, feeling like I had failed, feeling hopeless.
Admittedly, I had a lot of hate in my head. It wasn't the result of those events in '08, or even the subsequent struggles of '09, it had been building for years prior. The drama and the politics, and perhaps the injustices of life built up gradually over time, and came to a head. My anger was directed at various people and various situations, and in many cases it was justified, but it blinded me from the joy and positivity of life. I moved forward with a sense of false direction or purpose. I was motivated to act more by revenge, as if to attack with a "I'll show you" mentality, sizing myself up to others every step of the way. It took me nowhere, and by September I had hit my breaking point.
It's really only been in recent weeks that I feel I've had that "eureka!" moment that has changed my perspective, or at least begun to. Every day is a challenge, and some are better than others, but at the root of it, a single word has become the foundation from which to build from: Discipline.
Inspired by Theo Fleury's recent comeback attempt to the NHL, and all the "positive chaos" that has surrounded him in recent months, I realized that I was heading down a road towards self destruction, again. I had no structure even in my day-to-day routine. I realized I needed to focus solely on myself, and get back to basics, and that required discipline. I began by focusing on my health.
Whereas most people "hit the gym", I chose to "hit the rink", and began ice skating twice a week, by myself, having not skated in almost two years, and even back then, only skated for a few weeks, casually with Ange. In a way, I hadn't really skated in over 10 years. I started from scratch, I paid my dues, got hurt, got injured, and have fallen flat on my ass a few times. But in a way, it was symbolic of the woes of life. I think that people sometimes think that if we fall, some mysterious person will come by to pick us up, and essentially do it for us. There's no one coming to save you. It's all up to you. When I fell on the ice one of my first times, I remember sitting there, cold, covered in snow, wondering what to do: get up and leave/give up, or get up and try again. Either way, I had to get up by myself. What I chose to do afterwards would subsequently dictate the direction of my attitude. I chose to get up and try again. I've been going to the rink twice a week ever since, and today I skate better than I ever have before, and improving every time I go because I purposely challenge myself to try something I hadn't tried before. Discipline got me there.
I had issues brewing inside that I had merely tried to sweep under the carpet and forget, but that doesn't mean they went away. I realized I needed to bring those issues to the forefront and confront them, because otherwise, they simply linger by the wayside, waiting for an opportunity to attack and consume your mind.
Again, Theo Fleury helped inspire this realization after a post he made on his blog in which he lists the 12 steps from AA's "The Big Book". One step in particular that struck a chord with me was: "Made a fearless and thorough moral inventory of ourselves." To be brutally honest with yourself about the state of your life, and identify those demons responsible for bringing you to the place you find yourself now. To hold yourself accountable.
I have had a lot of hate in my head, but much of it was never confronted, or again, blinded me from acting with the proper intentions.
I've only just begun confronting those demons, where possible, but already I've seen a shift in my perspective. I've tried to turn the other cheek and, if unable to confront things, at least come to have peace with it, to put it behind me, but not out of hate, but out of growth. I've actively chosen to remove people and situations from my life whose energy is toxic to my own, who radiate negativity and engage in drama, politics or gossip. It does nothing positive for me, and I choose not to expose myself to it.
For me, a new chapter has clearly begun, and though every day is a challenge, I at least wake up every day looking forward to them, as opposed to trying to skirt by them just to get through the day. There has been a lot of changes that seem to have come as a result of this new-found discipline and attitude, and plenty more to come, I'm sure of it.
Sunday morning I woke up with an intolerable pain in my back. I've been seeing my Chiropractor the week before to deal with it as it's been bothering me for almost a month. On this day, however, instead of progressively getting better, it revolted on me causing me what is hands-down the worst pain I've ever experienced in my life, radiating from behind my right shoulderblade, shooting down my right arm. By mid-afternoon, the only position I could get into that felt even remotely comfortable was laying flat on my back with an ice pack on the floor with my arm extended.
After a few hours of that, I sat up and the pain shot down my right arm. I felt like I was stabbed. I tried Ibuprofen & a muscle relaxant- neither worked.
I got on the phone to call the HealthLink service and discussed my symptoms with a nurse. She told me I should "get checked out within the next 4 hours". This was Sunday afternoon at 4:30- few walk-in clinics were still open if they were open at all! She did mention that if I begin to feel numbness in my right arm at all, that I should definitely seek medical attention.
We hopped in the car and head towards the only open clinic near us. Halfway there, my Index Finger on my right hands went almost completely numb. The top of my right thumb and the tip of my right middle finger soon followed.
We changed route to hte Urgent Care centre in South Calgary. Over 4 hours later, I was examined by a doctor and told I have a case of Bursitis in under my shoulder blade. They said the inflammation likely was pinching a nerve causing my fingers and part of my hand to go numb.
Treatment was to take 600mg of Ibuprofen every 4hrs for the next week, dropping to 400mg the following week, and basically not use the arm at all for at least a week, and they provided me with this arm brace to rest my arm in so not to use it.
I didn't sleep at all that night. The pain was intolerable, but it was the numb sensation in my hand that kept me freaked out enough to keep me from falling asleep at all. I'm a bit of a paranoid hypochondriac, so I had visions of falling asleep with a numb hand and waking with a numb- and dead arm. I tried everything to get comfortable, but it didn't happen.
The following day I saw my Chiropractor and confirmed the pinched nerve. The inflammation is still there, but my Chiro doesn't seem to think the nerve is necessarily the RESULT of the Bursitis. We began treatment accordingly, but neither the numbness nor the pain has begun to subside as of yet.
I've seen my Chiro Monday, Tuesday, and will see him again on Thursday. He expects the pain to at least begin to subside by later this week, but the numbness may take "a few weeks, to a few years- or it might be permanent". He's kinda seen it all so there's no real way to give a prognosis for that.
Regardless, I wouldn't wish this kind of pain on my worst enemies. I guess if there was ever a sign that I'm no longer 15 and can punish my body with 12+ hour-long computer sessions anymore... I guess this is it. Getting old officially sucks.
Which cartoon character best represents you?
Three that I identify with come to mind immediately- though there are definitely others:
Eeyore: Poor Eeyore. Nothing ever seems to go his way, and he just couldn't care enough to do something to change it. I don't identify with Eeyore all the time, but sometimes it's just nice to feel down-and-out about the challenges life hands you. Sometimes you gotta knock it down in order to rebuild it up again.
Garfield: The fat orange cat has long been a favorite of mine. To say that Garfield is 'sarcastic' is a grotesque understatement. Mix in a little bit of prima donna, an unending annoyance with excessively upbeat people and a hatred for cold floors, and it isn't hard to see why I tend to identify with this feisty feline.
Show us your reflection.
Just took this the other day. I think this is the first selfpic I've taken with the Nikon. (Actually, I've taken others- but this is the first one worthy of posting)
What are you looking forward to this week?
This week is looking pretty low-key. Not much going on this week with the teeny tiny exception of my 30th Birthday on Thursday!
Thursday night, we are going to FlamesCentral to see Tiesto on his 'In Search of Sunrise' summer tour. This is my first time seeing Tiesto (or even ever being to a 'rave') and my first outing to FlamesCentral (which, me being a huge Flames fan- is kinda unusual), so I'm really pumped about it. What I'm not so pumped about is being out that night until almost 3:00am and having to be at an appointment for 9:00am that morning- but that's another story. ;)
So incredibly much going on right now.
Big announcements coming soon-
-wish I could just brain-dump and announce it all...
... but can't. Not time yet.
30 will be a whole new realm.
"Put up- or shut up" ;)
I've been sick all this week. I started feeling it Monday afternoon, and by that night I was well into the throes of illness. Ange caught it too- in fact, we started feeling the symptoms at about the same time on Monday, so we've at least been able to suffer through it together. The only difference is that she still has to go to work, whereas I have the freedom to stay home and rest- and rest I did.
Unfortunately, after 4 days, I have yet to really begin to feel like I'm on the road to recovery. I actually don't feel all that terrible- but being sick around those who simply can't afford to be sick at this time of year has kept me in my own personal quarantine all week.
So this afternoon we decided to get out for a bit. I picked Ange up from work and we were off for an afternoon full of chores- but not bad chores.
Ange's laptop has slowly continued to rot. The DVD drive is completely unusable, and more recently, the wireless network card rendered itself completely unusable- it connects to my network, but at a paltry speed of 1Mbps, even when less than 2 feet from the wi-fi access point itself. A far cry from the expected 54Mbps.
So I backed up all the data to BlackFlame (using a cabled network connection) and took it back to Best Buy to cash in on our purchased 'performance plan'.
Browsing forums the past few days has revealed that the wi-fi problem seems to be a near-epidemic problem with this line of HP Pavilion laptops (Ange's was a model dv6000). And it's not a Windows problem- it's a hardware problem. Often times the motherboard needs to be completely replaced. I know plenty of people who have bought HP laptops similar to this one in recent months. I presume it's only a matter of time before their wireless network connections begin to crap out as well.
I decided to do a little self-tech support of my own with my workstation/server, BlackFlame. Nothing serious needed to be done- but my lone 1GB of RAM has become a performance hinderance lately- especially running both Linux and a Windows XP VM (virtual machine) concurrently. I added another 1GB stick of RAM to the system to bring it up to a more acceptable 2GB. I was a little weary about the upgrade since I've read mixed things about the memory setup on my motherboard. But the memory took to it like a fish to water with no problems whatsoever, and the performance difference has been very noticable thus far.
I also replaced my CMOS battery on my motherboard. Sometime last year, the battery died- and I've simply been dragging my feet to replace it. It hasn't been a real pain- but in the few cases where I've had to power-down the system, I've been forced to reconfigure my CPU speed and memory configuratation from (my) memory. I put an end to that tonight too, or rather, Ange did since her hands are small enough to get into the tight space and hold onto the quarter-sized battery. My big ape-like hands probably would have done significantly more damage.
While I was out picking up dinner and a CMOS battery (just a typical Friday night outing for a computer geek)- I stopped by my local EB Games store... just to see if they were open. I decided that if they were, I'd pop in and reserve my copy of Mario Kart Wii. Sure enough- the doors were open, so I proceeded to reserve me a copy... and an extra Wii Wheel for an extra $10! (somehow I imagine I'll be picking up a few others shortly after launch as well).
There are a few games that I'd honestly love to pick up and go through right now- including Rainbow Six Vegas 2, and the upcoming Grand Theft Auto 4. But I figured when it came right down to it- I don't have the kind of time to put into a game like GTA4 or even Vegas 2- but Mario Kart is always something quick and fun you can pick up and play for 20 minutes at a time and still make some progress through it. That's the beauty of Wii, really. While developers for XBOX 360 and Playstation 3 are hell-bent on creating 'epic' games that essentially require you to quit your job and give up food and sleep in order to get through them in a decent degree of time- Nintendo continues to stick to the idea that games should be just that: games, not 'epic' adventures or a form of virtual reality. Don't get me wrong- I still enjoy my 360 and the games on it- but in the past year the Wii has clearly received the bulk of my gaming dollar. And why? Because they're simple to pick up and understand- and most of all: they're genuinely fun.
In some ways, losing my job 2 weeks ago was the best thing that could have happened to me. It's forced me to re-evaluate everything and formulate a plot to move forward. Everything from my career direction to my online identity has been called into question- and subsequently begun the process of reformation.
It's time to put up or shut up- and thus, things that I have sat on in the past are now coming to the forefront and action is being taken. But, obviously I'm not going to disclose any of these plans here- but creativity and innovation are at the helm right now.
As for 'gotkube'- I've been toying with killing off this identity (including deleting this Vox blog and closing my personal 'site' gotkube.com) in the spirit of reinvention and doing a little 'restructuring' of my own. A centrallization of my personal content- blog, photos, etc. under a new identity, and thus, new domain, has also crossed my mind on numerous occasions.
Big changes are coming- it's all very exciting. Don't ever count me out.
