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I woke up this morning feeling pretty bad. I actually woke up in a panic. I was dreaming that today was my first day of class at some school that I was starting at. I for some reason had to bring my computer to school, my desktop, on the bus. In my dream I was rushed and panicking first thing in the morning to catch the bus on time. I had no idea how to get to the school. I had no idea what to bring. I didn’t want to miss any classes, but it was apparent I was going to. Essentially what I was filled with was a feeling of preemptive failure. I woke up 10 minutes later – 6:45am to my alarm going off. I sat up in bed. I felt like shit. I still feel kinda shitty. Haven’t been in this routine since last Tuesday. I jsut spent the last week having a kick-ass time in Santa Clara, south of San Francisco with a few of my closest friends. I actually felt so shitty this morning that I prayed and then read Upon Awakening. I have no milk for my cereal. I have a dentist appointment at 8:30am where I’m getting two teeth drilled. After that I am working until 4pm.

The honeymoon is over.

I’ve been hardcore neglecting my blog lately. I have been really busy. Since I mostly recovered from that illness of death a couple weeks ago, I havce been going non-stop. Work, hanging with Lorea, eating, rocking out, writing songs, etc. etc. I like being busy, but i also like having periods of reflection with absolutely nothing to do. I hate it at the time but i think it is those moments of perceived “boredom” and “loneliness” that make me a better person overall. interesting.

I was asked by this photographer to be in a shoot this last weekend. He essentially bailed on the whole thing and didn’t have the decency or respect to call and let me know or anything of the sort. I got an email from him last night at about 10pm ‘apologizing’. I have so little tolerance for people that cannot follow through with plans they make, cannot follow schedules set out or simply flake out. It feels disrespectful and essentially is them showing me they a) don’t care enough about others to be accountable and b) are irresponsible and cannot manage their lives. Anyway, not a very professional first impression and one that will certainly take more than an apologetic email after the fact to rectify.

I am cooking a salmon for dinner. I am hypoglycemic. My blood sugar levels seem to drop really often. Right after work is one of the worst times for me, cause it’s usually been about 5 hours since eating anything and the past 5 hours spent busting my ass. I get home and I suffer some pretty harsh consequences of having low blood sugar…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypoglycemia#Neuroglycopenic_Manifestations

but anyway, this salmon smells really good. oh yeah, that’s what i was gonna say… I didn’t run today cause i worked late, till about 6 so by the time i got home i was feeling like a big tired piece of shit. so, i got some lemon and onion and put it in the dish with butter, potatoes, tomato, pepper, salt and my salmon. i’m gonna shower now and then eat my fish. smells sooo fucking good. that’s one things smokers can’t do.

I am otherwise well.

I love this girl and I’m too scared to write about it.

He needs a quiet room
With a lock to keep him in
It’s just a quiet room
And he’s there

He plays an old guitar
With a coin found by the phone
It was his friend’s guitar
That he played

He’s never been in love
But he knows just what love is
He said nevermind
And no-one speaks

He thinks he drinks too much
Cos when he tells his too best friends
‘I think I drink too much’
No-one speaks
No-one speaks
No-one speaks

He plays an old guitar
With a coin found by the phone
It was his friend’s guitar
That he played

When he plays
No-one speaks
No-one speaks
When he plays
No-one speaks

we are born alone. we die alone. between that we have moments where the loneliness seems to fade and we are connected. but it is never to last.

I’m lonely.

It’s just one of those moments. I don’t consider myself scared of death. But dying alone is a frightening reality in this moment.

I just applied to UBC! So yeah, I have considered it for a while, a few months I guess and I just took the action that will preciptate change. While I don’t need to decide yet, I am considering studying phychology. It was either that or philosophy, and I think psych is more useful and practical. It’s strange, cause I have no career goal or expectation going in to this. My motivation for going back to university is one of personal gain. I have been thinking about growing old lately. I don’t want to be 40 and look back and have not accomplished this. Getting a degree is just an important thing to me that I need to remind myself that I am not a scumbag, that I can achieve great things and that I am an intelligent, thinking being. I need it to validate my existence. I expect that graduating with a BA will not really expand my career opportunities. I think careers are hard to come by no matter what. But what I will have when I graduate is knowing that I put the time and effort in to getting something and learning a great deal about a subject. After that I can still do whatever it is I want.

There is some apprehension as I write this, thinking about the future. 2010 Olympics mean a great deal of work in the trades up until then, the next four years. Right now is such a good time to get in to the trades in BC. Work is abundant and pays relatively well. Carpenter helpers and framers are making $20 under the table. But here’s the thing, while that path would guarantee me money and employment stabilty for the next few years, I would have to live everyday with the fact that I am the same as those dudes I see hammering nails and lifting wood on every constuction site I see, and have to live with the fact that I don’t have a BA and haven’t studied psych. I just want to know that I still have a brain. I don’t want to be my worst nightmare – a 40 year old living in with a mortgage on a shitty home out in the ‘burbs married to some whench, with a bunch of responsibilites aged 8-12, and my life consisting of hammering nails every day and going to AA meetings that remind me that I’m genetically defective and socialy inept. That life sounds like suicide, and it is not my picture of a healthy, comfortable life.

When I was in treatment I met a bunch of people. Some of them were young but many were older, of all ages. This was when I really starting talking to people that were 45+ other than my parents and feeling comfortable about it – seeing them as ordinary people like me. Well, I met this old guy named Sam. He must have been 65. He was in there for heavy drinking that nearly killed him and destroyed his home life. He was president of this company specializing in marine radar systems. He did very well for himself and had a nice home in Sydney (the Victoria one, not the Australia one). I talked with him a lot and we became good friends. We were on our daily walks one day, a few days before he was to be discharged and we were talking like friends do. He said something to me that I still remember.
He said, “Nick, you’re so young. So young. You are so immensely lucky to have the rest of your life ahead of you.”
Curious, I asked him if he could give one piece of wisdom to someone my age on how to have a good life, what would it be.
He said, “Go to university. Get a degree. It doesn’t matter in what. All that matters is that you get a degree. I never did, and I still regret it to this day. It expands you, makes you a fuller person, and a more aware member of the world.”
I really appreciated his response evidently, cause I don’t usually remember anything, and we had that conversation over two years ago.

I have only applied. I may not even get in, but I think it is likely that I will be accepted. My first program choice was the Bachelor of Arts. I had to pick a second choice program, and the only other thing that looked remotely interesting was a Bachelor of Fine Arts in which I selected a Major in Creative Writing. So if I don’t get in to the BA progam, i may still be accepted in the BFA program, which I would not really be so in to, but i had to have a second choice.

The other thing: I am thinking of moving. I like my apartment accept for three things: (1) It is small (2) I share a bathroom (3) I share a bathroom with an insane german man.

I want more space, er, possibilities to say, watch a movie on a couch, make art, make a mess, play bass really loud. To be creatively expressive.

Sharing a bathroom is fucking disgusting. It’s a gross bathroom to begin with, combined with thinking about the gross dude’s bathroom activities and the remnants of such that I have to clean up, or more often than not, choose not to clean up.

He is insane. He is disgusting. He yells, but not anymore cause I got the landlord to tell him to stop being such a twat or else he would have to go to the mental health board. for real. power is being more sane, or atleast able to control when I yell obscenities, or atleast being able to sick the authorities on the insane.

Pete’s place is a viable option. His roomies are all splitting, so i figure he’ll be looking for new ones. I like his place. It’s comfy, for the most part. He has a studio, which is the nice thing. I can set up my drums and play them whenever. I can record and make music. I will have ceiling height and space to make art. I will be living in Gastown again, which is convenient, but not homey – not homey like 7th and Carolina is with it’s view and trees and park and nice people out walking their nice dogs in their nice coats on a nice sunday.

Gonna think a little more about it. Wish i didn’t have to, but i do.

Oh the other thing… I had this thought yesterday. I was at Devitt’s house, and we were fucking around on his computer and my the topic of my sickness came up, and i mentioned how I’ve been badly sick three times since the beginning of december, which i thought was a lot for me. I was thinking outloud saying, “what the fuck is up with my immune system? it’s shitting the bed.” and then I said jokingly, “maybe I have the HIV” and then I got thinking…. What if i did have the HIV. then I asked myself, if I knew my time on this earth was super limited like that, what would I be doing differently? what came to mind first was, I would take all my savings and move to somewhere hot. my second thought was, I would not be moping around waiting for life to happen. I would not be living in a one bedroom apartment. Since that thought about my life being limited my whole perception has sort of reflected that dire mode… A part of me that would have held back and go cautiously died. A part of me that presses urgency and importance grew stronger. Life is short. I’ve almost been sober a year, and it’s gone by so fast. Before I know it my twenties will be gone and I’ll be thirty. I feel an urgency to get living and get things done. I think maybe this is a trend for me, a feeling of urgency preceded by a period of dark depression, the urgency resurrecting me from my sedated depression to go out and forge new directions. Or maybe not. I’ll check back later.

Going to go try to eat breakfast at Reno’s. My throat still really hurts. Maybe a 5 out of the 10 that it was. So it’s gotten better, but it’s not better. Anyway. Gonna try to slam it with a whole bunch of solid food. Ha. Stupid fucking throat. trying to starve this human. I don’t think so. Biatch throat. I fucking kill you.

Things progressed from my last post. My throat became completely covered in those white puss ulcers and when they come off they bleed. So my throat became a pus-covered, bleeding pile of shit. I was prescribed a bunch of shit, none of which worked, except the Empracets. The empracets were good. I kept a very routined injestion habit of them for a few days. Two caps every 4 hours. For about 5 days. Sometimes the pain was so great even after leaving the second hour. then i would take a nap so i would not have to feel the pain. I’d wake up at the four hour mark and slam another two caps and feel okay enough to sip some green tea, all the while my mom nagging me that i need to eat something. When your throat has open bleeding sores and you have to struggle through a rigorous pill-taking regiment to even sip water, it is pretty unfathomable to think of trying to eat anything. Nevertheless, i managed to eat something like a bowl of apple sauce and a bowl of yoghurt everyday for the past week. That’s basicaly all i’ve eaten. Yesterday I experimented eating solid food for the first time in 9 days. it was some chicken and some baked potato. I seemed to be able to choke it down if i chewed it really well and chased every bite with green tea. Green tea is really my saviour in all this. Seems to be the only thing aside from sleep and empracets that gives me any relief.

Speaking of empracets – I’m off them now. I took my last one Wednesday night. I stopped taking them on my own behalf. My mom was freaking out about them since I got them prescribed. At first she said, “If they prescribe you codeine, I don’t think you should take them.” To which I thought, “You have no idea how much fucking misery I am in right now.” She kept bringing it up everyday since monday, saying, “You should get off those pain pills, they scare me. They’re very addictive, you know.” I knew it was scaring her and it kind of annoyed me that it scared her. I was never in to those kinds of downers. Not to say that i couldn’t get in to them. I probably would have gladly abused them previously in my life. I probably would have at one point latched on to them, given a solid supply and an environment conducive to taking them. So why didn’t I latch on to them? I had a bottle of 40 and then another bottle of 30. I only took maybe 8 of the second bottle, and the rest are still at my parent’s house. Surely I could have devised a scheme to sneak a few away. Surely I could have manipulated the doctors in to giving me a scrip that only I knew about and then have it filled in secrecy and pop away. I could have. But I didn’t want to. I guess I just saw these pills as a doctor’s order, and to not abuse it. I saw the danger for what it was, a warning of what could happen if i do not heed the warning. Also, the codeine was seriously killing my libido and i really want to have sex with my girlfriend.

Jeff, liking what you’re writing lately. You have a beautiful mind.

I have many fillings. I also have that horrible bacterial infection known as strep throat back there. This is so fucking painful. Fever clocked at 39.5 today.