ilovefuzz.com

I hope things improve for you, dub!

Mental health is such a difficult thing to 'help' with. Our struggles are all very different, what works for one may not work for another. I have found yoga and meditation really help, even at the incredibly basic level I am at with both. And drinking enough water and eating more vegetables. This all probably sounds really stupid and shallow and maybe even obvious but we've got to take shots in the dark sometimes.

As for music, it's such a daunting artform now. Has everything worth doing already been done? Who would even listen to what I / we put out into the world? Do I / we have the right to demand or expect attention when (insert influence here) exists?

Who cares? Do you like making music in the main? That should be reason enough! There are folks out there who buy an acoustic guitar just to play their favourite songs at home, they're probably pretty content with that?

EVERY SINGLE TIME we get something delivered from a service other than Amazon, USPS or UPS, it's dropped off at the wrong house and whoever lives at that house just says "thanks" and steals our shit. Apparently it happens to our neighbor across the street all the time too.

There's our address and there's a "South" version of our address, same number, same street name, ON THE SAME FUCKING STREET LIKE 400 FEET DOWN THE ROAD

It happens even when we put in the delivery comments, "It's a yellow house with a blue porch". Like how can you fuck that up? It's the only one like that. Yet, when they send us a pic of the delivery it's at a brick house or something. It's not even at the house that has the same address as us sometimes. Do I have to specify "shitbox cars in the driveway" too?

WHY WOULD YOU EVER NAME STREETS THAT WAY WHAT THE FUUUUCCKKKK

cos it's easier for the DPW to make the signs? because it's somehow more comprehensible to folks trying to navigate a city's traffic grid? in any case it eats it.

god, am i tired. there's a great word i learned from Manic Street Preachers: "acedia." it's had a variety of definitions over the centuries, but in 4th-century Christian monastic life it meant among other things a state of despondency so severe that the monk couldn't engage in spiritual practice. that's where i am now; as Ritchie put it, "acedia's blackest hole." i've got one hell of a mountain to climb in the next couple of weeks, and am quite afraid i'll die of altitude sickness before reaching Camp 4.

dubkitty wrote:god, am i tired. there's a great word i learned from Manic Street Preachers: "acedia." it's had a variety of definitions over the centuries, but in 4th-century Christian monastic life it meant among other things a state of despondency so severe that the monk couldn't engage in spiritual practice. that's where i am now; as Ritchie put it, "acedia's blackest hole." i've got one hell of a mountain to climb in the next couple of weeks, and am quite afraid i'll die of altitude sickness before reaching Camp 4.

Like a lot of others here, maybe, I have no insight to help with your burden. But I'm glad you're on this board, and, by extension, on this earth. So at the very least I will offer solidarity and hope there's a campfire to light up your nights on that mountain.

Cold and flu season in the time of COVID sucks. I feel like I might be coming down with a cold as my throat is getting sore and I have a sporadic cough; this is about normally the time I'd up vitamin intake to try to prevent a cold from really taking hold, but instead I'm waiting to get a COVID test. At least I have to work from home until I get the results back.

i've developed pollen allergies since moving to Virginia. imagine how thrilled i am every time i sneeze.

dubkitty wrote:i've developed pollen allergies since moving to Virginia. imagine how thrilled i am every time i sneeze.

Oh I get that feeling too. I have seasonal allergies that made spring and fall interesting.

I got to learn years back after leaving home for adulthood that I’m allergic AF to pine. Guess whose parents got a real tree every Christmas? That my parents never registered “why does what’s-his-name have a cold every year around now?” is worse for me than being allergic to a fuck ton of public spaces this time of year.

the worst allergy story i ever heard was a friend of a friend in Chicago back in the 1970s who was allergic to marijuana. you wouldn't think that was so awful, but you have to remember that in that era people smoked dope at concerts so much that the air in the venue, even in an enormous indoor space like the old Chicago Stadium where CSNY and Zeppelin played, looked like a Stage 2 or Stage 3 LA smog alert. homie went to a Chicago concert and literally broke out in hives and had to leave. imagine never, ever being able to see live music in an era which arguably saw some of the best rock concerts of all time.

Oh man, that would be a terrible allergy to have. One of my friends used to have anxiety attacks when he smelled marijuana. It was something he could deal with, though, just made him uncomfortable. I couldn't imagine actually breaking out in hives around it

i should mention that i'm doing better. it would take a couple of paragraphs to explain why i'm where i'm at, but it's a point where i've realized that i can choose how i want to spend the rest of life, and who i'm going to be. i had a nice peaceful birthday with Becca, the dogs, and her family, and this afternoon i saw a new psychiatrist with a shiny new preliminary diagnosis of Bipolar 2. i'm going to do a bunch of research before i see him again next week, and we're going to sort out what to do with my medication. it might not work at all, but there's no logical reason not to give it a go.

the weird period i had after Thanksgiving really changed something in me...first i ran out of weed, then i fell down a flight of stairs and bruised a rib. they gave me tramadol as a painkiller (anything that fucks with your ribs hurts like flaming hell) so i spent over a week narcoticized to a point where i could think about things more fearlessly than usual, and then a startlingly nasty five days of withdrawal. who ever heard of an opiate pill that has your system strung out in a week? especially since i'm not even that sensitive to opiates, which generally make me sick to my stomach before they make me stagger? i know exactly what it was, cos i've had to go off prescription benzos twice and know the symptoms like the inside of my eyelids. as Iggy said, it was No Fun.

the effect of this was that after a certain period of reflection on narcotics and snacks (the Jerry Garcia Diet), i had to completely stop and reboot. i mean, EVERYTHING stopped other than that i had Penny, Becky's dog, over for a visit as my "emotional support dog" and so i had to do doggo things. and now i have to figure out which way to go. though i'm not really going anywhere, i feel like when Bono said towards the end of the Rattle and Hum tour that "we have to go away for awhile and reinvent ourselves." i'd already been contemplating some big changes which i've talked about elsewhere on here, but i'm looking at the possibility of a long and uncomfortable transition. on the other hand, the new pill might light up the daylight and the moon at night. i have no fucking idea at all. but at least i feel like i'm doing something and moving in a positive direction. now if the fucking Fender Lead II would get here...

I'm glad you're doing better dubkitty. I wish I had more help or advice I could provide

thanks. it's not really that i expect solutions from you guys--i'm literally hiring people to do that--as that i know some folks do care. and i reckon that writing about it makes me state things in ways that make me understand them differently.

dubkitty wrote:they gave me tramadol as a painkiller (anything that fucks with your ribs hurts like flaming hell) so i spent over a week narcoticized to a point where i could think about things more fearlessly than usual, and then a startlingly nasty five days of withdrawal. who ever heard of an opiate pill that has your system strung out in a week? especially since i'm not even that sensitive to opiates, which generally make me sick to my stomach before they make me stagger? i know exactly what it was, cos i've had to go off prescription benzos twice and know the symptoms like the inside of my eyelids. as Iggy said, it was No Fun.

Surprised to hear that about tramadol. That's what my dad's been prescribed and, by his account, they don't seem to do anything to him.