Adjusting My Life, Part 5

Life is hectic. Work sucks. Union negotiations again too. My step-daughter Maya had to go back for another brain operation; they saw a mass on the MRI.  She flew to Ft. Worth to Cook Childrens’ Hospital, as they are experts in her type of tumor, and have advanced techniques for brain surgery.  The Dragon didn’t want me there, and Maya didn’t want her more upset than she was, so I had to cool my heels here while she underwent surgery. (I was so angry when the Dragon told me that I was shaking).  Turns out it was only radiation necrosis (dead cells) from those radiation treatments she had. Her previous surgeon suspected that, but her chemo doc felt it was unlikely, since it’s has been almost four years.  Anyway, she has no other evidence of any return of cancer, and she was only in the ICU/post-op for two days and then released from the hospital directly from there.  She’s home and resting, but anxious to be out running again.   Anyway, besides that, my job finally got to me.  I just can’t take it anymore. I’m going to take my retirement in October.  I have no idea what I’ll do then. I need time to rest and think.  I have been so stressed that I don’t sleep more than 4 hours a night, or less, ever, and it affects my work performance, and makes me tense and irritable as all hell.  I’m making lots of mistakes all the time.  So, I talked to a physician, and he started me on bupropion, the ingredient in Wellbutrin. (It is also used to help smokers quit and often results in weight loss  – I wish).  Anyway, he recommended I get counseling with it, so I’m doing that at work through the counseling and referral services here.  I reached a point where I didn’t care about anything, and really wished humanity would just go away.  I felt capable of anything, going postal, suicide, anything.  It’s slowly getting better.  Before I started the medication, I joined a hiking club, and went on four ten-miles hikes before I started to lose interest. Then I finally started guitar classes.  I was doing well, but had a hard time maintaining interest.  As it is, after starting the drug, I kept going with guitar, and I will be joining my classmates in a party/recital on May 29.  I will be learning new songs and practicing all summer until classes start up again.  There are night school classes, but those are very fast-paced. I tried a short one concurrent with this one, and I didn’t learn much from it.  This one is taught by the Southwest Organizing Project, so we get politics with our lessons. We even went on an ‘environmental justice’ bus tour of farms, ditches, pollution, the area around Intel, etc.

Music Tardeada
Friday, May 29th 5:30-7:30pm
Patio 211 10th St. SW
*Performance for families, friends*
*Potluck*
*Awards*

The instructor is great; she is the daughter of old friends and roommates.  The class is ostensibly for ‘youth’ but adults are welcome. The pace is good for me.

I’m somewhat less stressed, and less irritable (on a scale of 1 to 10, maybe 6).  The state union staff rep has taken over as lead negotiator this year, as it was obvious I was too stressed to handle it.

I went hiking again, after a three month absence (January 1 had been my last hike).

I’ve been on three hikes in the last three weeks.  There is a woman hiker I go with, Barbara, with and without the club.  I was introduced to her via email, by my old  live-in lover  from 33 years ago, Elaine, who has become a rabid conspiracy believer, and extremely right wing. She has ditched three husbands (#’s 1, 3 and 4, not counting my pagan ritual with her; #2 left her.)  She lives alone with 10 to 12 cats and two dogs.  We’ve actually gotten together to play chess at my place, because her house reeks of cat and dog urine, so I don’t like going there. We reestablished a friendship, but that’s all.

Anyway, Barbara is nice. She really likes to hike. We went for sushi after the last hike, and enjoy each other’s company so far. I don’t know what will happen, as I’m leery of any relationships at all.  Sex would be nice, but the overwhelming need for that is submerged into my dreams, even though I often wake up horny and hard.

It’s one day at a time for me now.  I look forward to getting the hell away from work, but I don’t know if I can afford to keep paying rent where I live now, as I’m three years away from collecting any social security.  I have many options now: become a guitar-playing gypsy; volunteer to work in Afghanistan; apply for work somewhere else in the world.  Very directionless right now, with no ties that bind, and no plans. Could be a good thing, but it is not what I’d had in mind, but, after all, the “best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft a-gley,” according to Robert Burns, using Scots dialect.

Well, that’s how I am.