Posts in the “personal” category

Imagine being 30 years old, and life is good. You’re healthy, vibrant, and even astonishingly good at math.

But then just a few moments later you can’t make sense of the world. You don’t know what’s real and what’s not.

You begin hearing voices that aren’t there.

Shortly after this you’re put into a “mental institution.”

That’s what happened to my mom. For whatever reason, shortly after I was born, she was stricken with schizophrenia.

(If you’ve ever seen the tv series Fringe, my mom is almost exactly like Walter Bishop, or vice-versa.)

If you ever wondered what the theme song is from The Dead Zone tv series, it’s a song called New Year’s Prayer, by Jeff Buckley.

I haven’t looked into it, but somehow the song New Year’s Prayer was released on an album almost a year to the date after Mr. Buckley died, drowning in the Misssissippi River.

Quick note: Since The Mood Cure helped me so much with my thyroid problems last year, I bought The Diet Cure, and have been reading through it. In short, the power of amino acids blows me away. While I've never felt any different after taking any other "supplements", the difference I've felt by taking amino acids has been amazing.

This is the amino acids supplement chart from the excellent book by Julia Ross, The Diet Cure. With this chart you look at the first two columns to find whatever “deficiency” problems you may be having, then look for the amino acid supplement(s) that are known to help with those problems.

I originally learned about this when my thyroid was failing in 2011. A nutritionist told me about this book, and I quickly found out that L-tyrosine was a major help in living through a failing thyroid.

This is my interpretation of the meaning of the Alanis Morissette song, Thank You (also known as Thank U). I don’t claim any special knowledge about the song; this interpretation of the lyrics is just based on my understanding of Zen and Buddhism, and also my practicing of yoga, specifically Iyengar yoga. If you’ve read some of the personal entries on this website, you know a lot of what I know.

[This is a chapter from a currently-unpublished book I’m writing on meditation and mindfulness.]

As a spiritual being, one possible way to think of life here on Earth is as a “game” that serves as a training ground for the soul. It’s a game like other games, so it has many levels, and they get harder and harder as you progress. So in this case, the better you become at the game of spirituality — The Soul Game — the harder the levels become.

Note: I originally wrote this article in the summer of 2010. I survived on this diet for a long time, but eventually gave up my gallbladder to a surgeon.

My gallstones diet advice: Ugh, my health has destroyed my productivity lately. Due to a mysterious stomach ailment, I’ve had a lot of “stomach” pain, visited the ER several times, met a lot of doctors, had many tests, and lost thirty pounds in less than seven weeks.

After my first-ever bought with diverticulitis, I wanted to make notes about what happened over the last five days.

Monday, April 7, 2015

On April 7, 2015, I woke up at 3:30am with pain and discomfort in my lower-left abdomen. I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what it was. It felt like a golf ball was lodged in there, and several hours later it was still there.

A cartoonized bearded version of me, circa 2021.

This is me with a mustache, circa early 2021. I had this mustache for a few minutes when I shaved off my beard. Hopefully I look like a cowboy, lol. :)

I’ve gotten back into creating faux paintings again recently, and this is one of Silas, from The Da Vinci Code.

Today (February 19th) is an anniversary for me. After knowing “something” was wrong for a long time — I used to tell doctors it felt like I had been poisoned or was experiencing the symptoms of anaphylaxis or sepsis — I went unconscious for the first time on this date in 2014.

While that in many ways was a horrible event — if I had fallen to the right instead of the left when I blacked out, I probably would have cracked my head on the bathtub and died right then — in the end it was necessary for doctors (and I) to take things more seriously, which resulted in seeing a total of 26 doctors to learn that I have MCAS, a rare but treatable non-contagious blood disease (something I was born with).

Last week I was trying to remember the name of a hotel in Wyoming that has/had a big boot in front of it. Then Google came up with an interesting suggestion. :)

During a dream this morning, I was going off to college and my wife’s grandparents gave us a stack of papers, thinking I could use them at school. The papers were all like plain printing paper, and most were clean, but some of them had things written or printed on the back side. They were big on using everything, so the implication was that I could use the blank side for my needs.

When I flipped one of the pages over I saw that there was writing in my grandfather’s handwriting. It was like a diary page, with today’s date on it (with a different year), and it had two notes about his wife. The first was, “Take care of you Dilly,” meaning that he would take care of her. The second was, “Seriously, I think that was the best meal you have ever made.”

~ February 16, 2021

Traditionally I’ve spent a number of springs in Virginia Beach.

#MeepMeep

The tv series Becker was one of my favorites back in the day, and I always wondered why it wasn’t available on DVD. I just looked, and it’s now available at Amazon, just released in 2018.

A favorite episode that helped me snap out of a personal funk was when Becker finally got to be with his long-lost love, a woman he pined for for many years. When he finally had a chance to reunite with her it turned out she was wild and crazy, ran up his credit card bill, then took off. In its own way, that episode helped me get over someone I felt the same way about.

I honor the place in you
Where the entire universe resides.
I honor the place in you
Of love, of light, of truth, of peace.

I honor the place in you
Where if you are in that place in you and
I am in that place in me,
There is only one of us.

~ The meaning of the word “Namaste,” as interpreted by Ram Dass.

(If I remember correctly, I found this hand-carved Namaste plaque at the Tibetan Cultural Center in Bloomington, Indiana, where I spent some time meditating many moons ago.)

“I have no idea who that guy was, but I know that he just reset our karmic destiny.”

Part of a story from the book, Love Everyone.

This photo is from the Cubs Facebook page back in 2015. It’s relevant again in 2021, because Jake Arrieta is back with the Cubs.

The story of the two wolves, from the movie, Tomorrowland. (You’ll have to see the movie to know the answer, if you don’t already.) (Or Google it. It’s actually an old American Indian story, not a Disney thing.)