Posts in the “personal” category

Sunrise at Virginia Beach, April 9, 2017. No filters have been applied, this is what it looked like. :)

Mama always told me not to look into the eye’s of the Sun ... sunrise in Virginia Beach, April, 2017.

Last night I was chasing people who were putting bombs in buildings and flying shape-shifters (who I would later realize were on my side). When I started to catch up to them I’d find myself yelling, “please comply.” I give a “thumbs up” for the action/adventure part of the dream, but the writing and line delivery were just horrible.

~ a dream from April 8, 2017

Doctors have been treating me for “suspicion of mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS)” since 2016, and I recently got my first Covid vaccination shot. Here’s a quick summary of the experience.

Before the shot I took one Allegra pill, as usual, and then two Xyzal pills (where I normally take one a day, but as many as four).

I got the Pfizer vaccine shot, and quickly developed these symptoms:

A “Love” sign you might find at a rest area somewhere in Virginia.

“In enlightenment, death has no relevance to one’s state of being.”

As I reflected on the meaning of Easter this morning, I remembered this quote from Tibetan lama, teacher, physician, sculptor, and painter, Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche. The quote is from his book, Life in Relation to Death.

I got vaccinated this past week at Boulder Community Hospital, in Boulder, Colorado.

If you struggle to learn new things, check out this podcast interview with Barbara Oakley. A few years ago I read her book, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra), and it was helpful to me, and even influenced my book, Functional Programming, Simplified.

As a brief note today, for the last year or so I’ve been experiencing various “visions” when I wake up at night. I mentioned them to a doctor recently, and he said, “No, you’re not crazy, they’re referred to as hypnagogic hallucinations.” I found out that more accurately, the ones I’m experiencing are known as hypnopompic hallucinations.

If you’re interested in what these look like, here are three that I experienced recently. I regularly see images of “splatter” on the ceiling, and they can be all sorts of color. Last night they were mostly black, but the night before that they were red and pink:

When I edit my own text, I make comments like those shown in the images. A few of my own:

• Nice start — dig deeper
• Just say what you mean
• You lost me
• Feels fake — write from the heart (or, write to your muse)
• Passive!

When I write books I try to complete a chapter, then get away from it for at least a month, then come back and edit it like this.

The images here are from the excellent movie, Finding Forrester.

Some time ago I was at a party, and there was a woman there that I didn’t know, but I felt like I knew her. It was a strange feeling, kind of like deja vu, but it had nothing to do with this party, just the feeling that I knew this woman. Maybe I had seen somewhere before, but I couldn’t place it.

When that thought first came to me I was talking to some other people, so I shrugged it off for the time being. It was relatively early and I figured we’d meet soon enough. A little while later a trash can became full, so I took the bag out of the can and walked it to a garbage can outside by the detached garage. After I put the bag in the can outside I turned around, only to be startled to see the woman standing there.

“How do I know you,” she asked.

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.)

When I was very sick in 2015-2016, I used to tell my doctors it felt like I had been “drugged.” When I could see that they couldn’t understand or believe that, I’d tell them that it felt the way you feel after surgery, groggy and woozy.

For the most of this year I’ve been eating very well, but yesterday I went to see a movie (Logan) and had some popcorn. Shortly after eating the popcorn I started to feel sick, and today I feel like I’ve been drugged.

This — as I have learned — is life with mast cell activation disease, known as MCAD or MCAS.

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.

Today I just want to make a note about the differences between DL-Phenylalanine, L-Phenylalanine, and D-Phenylalanine. Here's a description of Phenylalanine, courtesy of this website:

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. Ten years later I still take L-tyrosine after losing my thyroid to cancer, for me it’s a basic supplemental requirement that helps with focus on concentration.

“I’ve seen a lot of my friends lose their passion and end up in a rut, afraid to take a chance. ‘Night Moves’ is about romantic passion, but ‘Ship of Fools’ is about passion for life. Maybe a guy’s working a job he doesn’t like, and he sees an ad about the Alaska pipeline or something that excites him. But there are problems. His family says it’s too cold in Alaska or whatever. So he passes it up and just keeps on with something he hates.”

~ From Bob Seger, about his song, Ship of Fools

Bob was the first guy that wrote his own songs and recorded them that I had ever met. He said, “You know, if you want to make it, you’re gonna have to write your own songs.” And I said, “Well, what if they’re bad?” He said, “Well, they’re gonna be bad. You just keep writing and keep writing and eventually you’ll write a good song.”

~ Glen Frey, talking about Bob Seger and writing music

“Good things happen if you show up.” I’m pretty sure Glenn Frey said this on The History of the Eagles. If you haven’t seen it, and you like their music, it’s a great video/biography.

If I remember it right, the context was about work, and essentially that you can’t win if you don’t play the game, or in this case, you can’t be successful if you don’t show up and put in the hard work.

For some reason Facebook thinks I should add Jim Belushi as a Facebook friend. He seems like a nice guy, and I really liked his K-9 movie, but I’m not sure if this is a promotion, psychological experiment, or if they happen to know that my dad is buried near John Belushi, which you can partially see in this YouTube video.

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.