End of 2018

It’s getting close to the end of this year. As I’m writing this, I have hardly slept and spent a few nights laying in bed wondering and thinking to myself. I have slowed down in writing my thoughts in my blog in this latter half because I haven’t been too well since my doctor passed away. I am still hoping I will get the help I need before it’s too late. I just have to practice and find a balance to everything which I hope can help me away from my malaise.

I haven’t picked up my camera in the past month. Starting to feel bad about it since I haven’t taken a lot of photos. Looking through it’s viewfinder, I miss how it feels and the joy it use to make me feel. Perhaps around Christmas or after Boxing Day I’ll take up photography again. The most difficult part right now is keeping up with work.

Getting a seasonal gig with my former employer is great, despite all the pain I went through last year. I hope eventually it will turn into a part time job considering the first time I felt fairly qualified to work more than a sales associate, assistant manager perhaps? Regardless I’m glad and I get to see all the people I’ve met before, though I have forgotten most of their names.

As what I hope to be the second last post of the year I guess I should try and make a list of all I have accomplished this year. As per my doctor’s last recommendation, I’m starting to look into a lot of cognitive therapy to cope. So…accomplishments:

Went to Niagara Falls for the first time In January it’s still beautiful despite the cold, icy, wet weather. I wish I spent more time.
Surpassed 300 photos on 500px. Also surpassed 10, 000 shots on my first DSLR camera.
Bought a new laptop. For now I have two but eventually I will have one once I feel comfortable enough to part this old thing I found in the trash. You have served me well.
New toys! Bought two used lenses, one (almost) brand new lens, and a used camera body. Overall I paid market price after having them professionally cleaned.
More recent, started to look into sleep meditation and actively managing my depression. The ADHD behaviors I can accept but the feeling sad stuff needs a lot of attention.
Enjoyed a long lost hobby, reading! I’m nowhere near attentive for novels but I’ll accept a good narrative after playing Life is Strange and Life is Strange: Before the Storm. Which reminds me, I should preorder the comic book.
Finished Fallout 4. Now I can move on to other games. Hopefully that gaming list shrinks quickly.
Paramore!! Second time I saw them live. Still great but I connected more with their previous album.
Getting on the dating scene? A bit embarrassing but I can own up to it. Been on way more dates than the last 4 years combined. No winners…yet.
A year without Star Trek Online. I haven’t logged in for so long. I think I can finally move on since the Kelvin timeline and Discovery kind of gave me a sour taste for it.
Nuit Blanche art event. Spent the entire night checking out all the arts and culture. Last year was way too political. Still very crowded if not worse.
Bought CD’s. An old medium but once I get a portable disc player, I’m going to have fun.
I got Instagram to share some photos.
I got business cards, I wish I could add my Instagram on them. They came first.

Still more to come in the last few weeks. My plans are to buy the SNES Classic and maybe the NES. I’m thinking of another Niagara trip either Niagara-On-The-Lake or somewhere small. I still want to snap photos and hopefully punch through to 400 on 500px. Lastly…

…I want to write my final post for the year. Stay tuned!

ADHD is…

Last week, I’ve wrote about what goes on in my head when I’m depressed. Depression is also one of the comorbidities with ADHD, just one more thing to make mental health even more complicated. The mind is just a wonderful and immensely messy medium.

In some ways mental health is both a good and bad topic. It’s not just identifying disorders and disabilities but to really give someone closure and inclusion to their problems. It gives everyone the “now I know what to do” strength and the “I am not alone” peace. Rest in peace my doctor who gave me 5+ years of service, he helped me identify who I am mentally. I came in as a sad young adult and over time I’ve came to accept it. A lot has come in terms of researching mental health ever since I self-identified. However there is much more to do to find cures rather than fix symptoms.

Like in my last post, I want to those who identify as “normal” and without any mental illness to really understand the world I live in. Also give context for others to really relate back to how I am or what I feel.

So what does having ADHD feel like? ADHD is…

Going out always involves doing something random. The Big Bang Theory has a neat sketch to illustrate this. Take a dice and put all the options on each side and roll it for every decision (no matter how menial).
Fidgeting. Uncontrollably. Try not tapping your bouncing a part of your body.
When you get to your favourite place and not be hungry.
When you get to the tacos place, “I want dim sum.” A Chinese restaurant later, “I want a burger.”
Anything shiny or colourful off the corner of your eye will result in turning of a head.
My brain persuades me to sleep.
Going to kid stores. As an adult. And you don’t have a child.
The girl across from you is gorgeous and should go say hi but your burger is delicious.
Reading a novel. After 1 hour, you find yourself finishing the first paragraph and spent the last hour on YouTube.
Hopping on YouTube at 9 PM and going to bed at 5 AM.
4PM is your morning.
“You come off as strong” is a universal phrase when dating.
Being sick of taking your medication but you can’t risk having any “negative” symptoms. Can’t be sad or impulsive or anything that may be seen as abnormal.

I might have put this lightly but this is my insight to what I have, I’ve seen others demonstrate the same symptoms and are definitely ADHD but choose not to do anything. Even then, these people can sometimes point the finger right back and call you crazy. Mental health as a whole is a large pool of undiscovered solutions. In a way, mental health is like a frozen lake. Staring past the ice sheet you see the darkness. For me, I’m the darkness staring up to the beautiful sky.

Here we go again 2018

So after being medicated for several years, I’m still very uncomfortable about taking medication non-stop. I’ve been on/off with my medication which isn’t so good, however I’ve been busy with either work or photography.

Actually yesterday, I sat down and focused on looking through about a thousand photos. Looking through them, I managed to pick just over 60. I’ve been starting to put post-processing off to when I have a lot more photos. Just makes it easy so I don’t have to spend a lot more time cumulatively. However I’m starting to realize this can get a bit confusing. I think it’s coming up to where I need to start saving my TIFF files to a DVD. I did it for last year’s photos and I’ve reorganized my PC folders to make it easier to burn to a CD or a DVD. I wish I could limit a folder to contain a certain size.

Next week is going to be a busy time and hopefully even with this funk, I’ll get it all done and I can move on to take more photos and even start to travel again.

Determination.

Last 7 years for me hasn’t been the smoothest time of my life, nor has the past decade. In my times as a teenage and even not in my youthful adulthood, I always have to remember progress comes at a price. Regardless what I do, what we do; easy or hard, we do make small or large sacrifices to make sure it gets done.

Admittedly, I’m not a top score student. I have talked about my ADHD openly with you here and you can understand how difficult it is to pay attention at times. Even with the minimal distractions, I can easily be distracted. Which means sometimes I don’t always complete tasks or I never really see my goals through. My teachers and counsellors use to say I should set goals for myself. To be honest, even goal setting is a challenge for me since I would wander away from those goals and head towards something entirely. When I’m approached with the same question, I tell them same; goals setting is only a visualization of your end state. Goals happen at the other end and not necessarily what happens between where you are now and where you will end. Within this space, a lot can happen to throw you off your goal; and a lot will turn up to prevent you from finishing. I am not a firm believer of setting goals, but I do believe in setting steps towards an end state.

Like many things you learn or do, require set of instructions in a form of steps. With in these steps, certain things have to happen before you can continue to the next step. Once you finish the last step, you have done what you need to do to get to where you are now. For me, I set steps to get from one point to the next. Taking it at my own pace as efficiently as possible. These steps aren’t listed by they merge within to the following step to keep with the flow to get to the end state or goal. In honesty, most of these steps don’t necessarily take me to a goal. Rather these steps help me progress farther along the chain, not necessarily small goals because these are not my desire end states but rather points where I know I completed a small contribution to a large task. Let’s face it with a ADHD head, every task is a large task.

No matter how painful and long this takes, you take each step towards something you want to complete. Sure you can call it a goal, but I call it an end state. An end state being whether it is complete or not and even towards something I didn’t necessarily desired to happen. What matters you learned something from the experiences you had, did you best to get where you need to go, tried your hardest to push yourself there and saw it to the end.

Until next time remember no matter what your end state you want, always push yourself towards what you want to do or become and to never stop pushing yourself to it.

#200 – Woop woop!

I intentionally wanted this as my 200th post. This is technically 201, sorry!

Huzzah! I have written over 200 posts on WordPress over a span of a few years. Though I quietly celebrated 100 posts, I think 200 is a bigger accomplishment. On the occasion, I want to reminisce back on the last 200 posts and give you folks the view on this side of the Internet.

Origins

When I started this blog, it was for a few reasons. During the time, I was a pretty angry person. Just pent up with anger that I just needed an outlet. I didn’t really have anyone to vent to; the only times I ever felt like I was myself and calm was when I was writing. Not just journal writing, but a medium where someone will read it and maybe people can share or chime in. I wouldn’t say my blog is a success story, but I can say I’m calmer because of it.

I tried vlogging a few times, all failures. For one thing, I had to edit them intensively. Devoting an hour of unpaid work for a few minutes was not feasible for me, not even now. That and also I find my voice and face pretty unattractive. Maybe some day, I will vlog.

So I decided to blog, choosing the host site was problematic since there were a lot of blogging site. For awhile a was milling about having it on Blogger. Just before I had this blog, I was still in high school if you can believe it. One of the classes had me create a Twitter, I never update the thing after I got out of the class. Microblogging like Twitter is not as appealing as a medium that doesn’t restrict you on the amount of content to can put out. Sure I can have parts to a tweet; but if you ever read my long posts, you will know this isn’t very scalable. Tumblr was pretty hip during the time, but it’s seemed very much of a popularity contest to get content features. I’m not funny or an adorable cat so I couldn’t really be sucked into that drama. WordPress seemed to be a good choice since the community was somewhat inspiring and the interface was and still is very understandable and not super user friendly. One thing I like is the fact I have control over a lot of things on my blog.

As I said, I was pretty angry so I thought to let it all loose. Every time I had something to say it would be a long rant. At the time, my free time was a warpath in video games. I was playing up to 8 hours a day, “hooked” would hardly describe it. You think it would make me violent or more angry but it helped me calm down a bit after a day of before the day starts.

“One Post a Week”

This was my mantra and usually still holds firm. At the beginning I feared I might burn out if I put out a blog post every day or every time I finished one. So I thought to release one every half week, but I still thought burn out was pretty short. So once a week sounded pretty reasonable; weekly content and I can think about each topic and prep a good list of topics to hit on before I publish it. Aside from this, it allows me to supplement with new content that might be relevant for the week. For those who have followed since post #1 would know sometimes I publish one or two more for the week. I sometimes I have a different topic I wanted to touch on before I forget it. But I try to stick to a schedule of one a week even though sometimes I might be early or late on a post date. I do this on my free time which at the moment I have plenty of; if I drop names, I drop it because I like it not because I’m not being paid for it. Yeah Allahweh, I’m talking to you; name dropped.

That ADHD!

I’m never up front about my mental condition since society has a monopoly on taboos. People don’t really know how it feels to be ADHD or try and play it up as “well, you’re just lazy” or “why can’t you sit still for 5 seconds?” It’s very tough to explain from my point of view if someone asks how it feels. The way I put it, it’s a good thing if you can control it or at least manage it and a bad thing if it’s slowing you down. In a way, it’s a gifted curse. I allows me to broad my horizons and learn things in general, but academic performance would vary. I may not hold many post-secondary qualifications, but I can study bits of it and get what it’s about. People will tell me it’s not right, not normal. To me, being right or normal is never the point of living. If it was, everyone would be perfect and boring. And if you know me, perfect isn’t normal. Perfect is an idea and not a way of life. Life is imperfect and in itself, is unique between everyone. In short, being imperfect makes you a more unique individual.

Randomly Yours

If I could somehow let you into my mind, you would see some crazy stuff and maybe hear some very random ideas. It’s not a hallucination, but it would be all the stuff I daydream and think of from a day to day basis. I always wanted to put it in perspective for those who don’t really know how it feel like you have a lot to say but no necessary outlet – or you just forget about it and when you remember, you say “Dang it!” So here I go to emulate in words of stuff in my mind.

I got to email this guy. But first, Chrome –> Youtube, Facebook, WordPress. I wonder if anyone still uses writes “Facebook” as “FaceBook”, I use to remember a few people who did that. Same with YouTube. Was WordPress use to be known as WordPress? Gotta watch this video, watching this video linked here. I wonder if there are any Facebook update. I wonder if those bloggers have anything new posted – tab up! Note to self: write blog post. I got ideas right? Well, probably come to me when it comes to me. Crap, I got to pack for that trip. Huh, the more I think about it my neighbourhood is pretty good to hide in the zombie apocalypse. Assuming each building houses an average family and most buildings are detached so they can’t jump and get me. Being a Canadian, so firearms are going to be hard to find. Unless someone on my street secret has a firearm or a police car happened to stop right there before the end of the world. Though it would be semi-likely to find a cop car within 4 blocks from me. If there isn’t a cop car, there are a couple school nearby. I could raid the janitorial closets for a shovel or something. Maybe fashion myself a spear with safety scissors. Hah! Most people would say large populated areas are pretty bad for a zombie apocalypse so the local malls are out of the question which sucks since there’s just a large gold mine of materials to loot if it came down to it. Probably for the best is to gather food and materials and go self-sustaining.The local supermarkets sell seeds so get a small wind turbine or something steam powered for an underground or backyard greenhouse and surplus power for anything interesting. There should be a game like that. Just a video game where you gather junk and craft it into barricades and stuff to survive a zombie apocalypse. There use to be a television reality series on Discovery, The Colony. If there was a video game, it should be closely to that. Huh, I remember there use to be a season 2 of that show; did they every make a third? Google it! Well, I spent a good 6 hours on YouTube and still nothing done today. I feel like playing video games.

Without reason or provocation, I would sometimes have some good ideas and sometimes my head feels like it’s riffing random thoughts and things I should do. I can’t stop myself aside from drowning my thoughts with music or just trying to hang on working on one task. Even with that, my mind can permeate through the noise. Whatever you want to call it, right or wrong, that is me and that makes me unique.

Going On, Going Strong

After 200 posts with almost 80 subscribers, I can say it’s fairly unexpected anyone would hear a lowly voice. Starting this blog had only one goal in mind, an outlet. I always come up with ideas and opinions that strike serendipitously and the forays into games which lead me to this very point where I am content with what I have. It’s small following, but no doubt I am very thankful I have this very opportunity to share to the world at large what I think about it and what I think about myself. I don’t expect to possess the best material on WordPress, but I do want to try and aim for the best material I can ever provide. As for number 200, lets celebrate it by bringing back my old Twitter account? Yeah, why not!

Thanks for those of you following, liking, and subscribing; here’s to 200 more posts!

Video games and me…(Part 2: The whole “and me” part)

Took me awhile to really sit down for this one. For one thing, I haven’t told my doctor I’ve been off my medication yet. I should call them and get them to give me the okay on it, but it’s been about a month and I’ve been ~~feeling fine~~ almost fine. My mind has been preoccupied with a few tasks that are incomplete, even “half ass-ness” is something incomplete at the moment (I think 5 “quarter half ass-ness” is putting it a bit too generous too). But here it goes, getting personal with stuff.

About a few years ago on my hopeful last year of high school, I had a lot of trouble in terms of finishing stuff. Just straight on unable to complete anything, mind wandering in class, and even my attendance dropped significantly. I use to be the kid who would go to school and infect other kids just so I won’t be absent or miss a class. And too those kids who did get sick; don’t blame me, blame my parents for forcing school on me. So there I was, the oldest teenager in school sent down to the vice principal’s office on the one day out of the month I actually made it to school. He sat me down and asked what’s wrong with me. Seriously man, I was pretty freaking young and there was a lot of things wrong with me because of everything sabotaged by entities beyond my control. My life at that point was pretty much a mastery of puppetry. My answer I think was “I have no excuse or reason, sir.” Then he started the whole interrogation thing with the whys and the whats followed by the whens and the “how can we fix this?” Anyways, a long amount of time has passed as in I spent most of the period in that office just trying to get out of it since every visit I had with an authority figure in an educational institution up to that day was for a bad thing (for the record, I wasn’t a bad kid…just a kid who never had a chance for anything). Anyways about a good hour passed in this question period and the only result was a school psychologist was assigned to me. I tried making to the appointments, attended only 2 sessions with little to no success. It just made me feel a bit more miserable since I was set aside from my classes and pretty much flunking even faster than I was before since I’m at school but I’m not in class. But I was skipping so much I couldn’t make it to every appointment so after awhile I just forgotten about it.

So halfway through my last year of high school (…again), I finally cleaned up enough to talk to my physician who referred me to a psychiatrist. Ever since then, it’s a drugged filled roller coaster ride to find out what’s wrong with me and ways to cope with it. First I thought I was just depressed, but my head doc said I may have ADHD. I read and compared both and I believe I might have ADHD after all. It took a good half decade to really figure it out, but I’m glad I can identify the problem. Unfortunately, that’s the first step into getting out of the hole good ol’ life has dug for me. No less, a good step out of it.

I read from a lot of recommended sources about ADHD and Wikipedia and I am certain of the symptoms to be more incline to ADHD symptoms. Most of these as honest I can put it, don’t bode well for me in terms of getting hired for jobs. Second to that would be according to Wikipedia, I would need more than life to sustain me. By that I mean a lot of stimulation of the brain area region where my mind is housed in a muscular tissue within the skull cavity. To break it down to 4 symptoms wouldn’t do it justice but anything that’s based on a workload, mood or behaviour changes up how you play the game, which includes according to Wikipedia on Adult ADHD:

Inattention
Difficulty in task management (initiating, completing, multitasking etc.)
Impulsive
Seeks constant activity

I have accounted a lot of people who have no clue how this must be like because they’re always showing pity on me or something. Seriously if I could describe their quizzical emotion, it would be between ignorance and misrepresented curiosity. Either case it’s a response when I tell them this fact is like this:

Oh………………-forgets about that fact and moves on-

So to those who may not know how ADHD feels like on the inside or want to know more on a personal level, here’s how you can really understand it, through some morbid random story I cooked up for your entertainment! Start by making a long list of stuff you want to do. Now go to the mall or anywhere with a lot of stuff. From what point on, do everything on the list but every time you see an item or a person or anything, describe or name it. You see a long pointy object, it’s a pencil. What else is like a pencil? a pen. What can you do with a pen? Write an awesome list. What’s on that list? Well you already have one, so why are you asking? Now when you get to each task you want to do, half ass it. I’m serious; if one of the things is “pick up milk at the grocery store” you better leave that check out lane without putting back the milk you wanted to buy. I mean it, like totally ditch that dairy and walk out to work on the next thing on the list. Keep doing it until you went down that list and did everything half ass.

“Babysit [insert noun]” – arrive to babysit, play video games and eat all the junk food
“Write a story” – first part is very detailed and then as you get up to the middle somewhere, end it in midsentence.
“Pay your bills at the bank” – Don’t pay for it, just withdraw $20 and buy some junk food and play video games.
“Take out the trash” – Take the trash out of the trash bin…you’re done with that task.
“Write a two part blog post” – Start with the first part, the second part will require 20 breaks to play video games and watch YouTube.

Well you get the point from the sample. While you walk about, don’t forget the part where you see something you will have to name it or describe it. This is to emphasize the point that, your brain is firing everything it’s got to process everything. It just doesn’t stop on a whim; it goes at 100 km/h, it will always goes 100km/h. Though medical science can coin it a disorder all they want, but in all the faults it has its moments when it comes in handy. I may be indecisive, but I can also make the most impulsive chooses at a drop of a hat. I might not be smart in terms of just picking one thing and getting a major for it, but overall I’m know a bit more about the world than a few people who have majored in university (kind of ironic). Besides the points, the Wikipedia page also says it could be hereditary of it anything it is most definitely a problem than an ability (…or is it evolution? I don’t know, throwing ideas out there).

From learning this mysterious thing I have, I learned much about myself and life itself. The lesson is life in it’s fairest ways is its unfair quality to be fairly unfair. Life does suck for one and for all, but life does many good thing for one and for all.

Talk to you guys next week!

Happy Obvious Week?!

This week was pretty weird that now I’m calling the second week of September “Obvious Week”. So I hope you people had a seriously “Obvious Week”. Honestly, the way to start this week’s post is somewhat difficult. For one thing, I’m confused to be offended or affirmative to people’s looks.

Monday, not so bad a day to head downtown and check out electronics. I’m not going to name the store, if I was the service rep I would’ve done the same once or twice. But on with the tale. So I walk in, as always I don’t buy anything. My computer works, no need for upgrades or additions. As part of the the customer service thing, they should be asking you something along the lines of “Is there something you need help with?”. Well this guy/girl did ask me, but read on. So looking around I go; peripherals, cooling fans, internals and so forth. As a few minutes passed, blonde girl walks in. This may or may not affect you, but when a girl walks into the place, my mind just deletes itself like CCleaner. Though I’m not buying anything, I usually note down the prices of things in case my computer dies and I need to replace parts. So chick walks in and I blank out, everything I’ve forgotten for the last few minutes just gone. So I’m standing there thinking “now I got to get back to the peripherals and start all over.” So I do just that, ironically that same girl standing there looking around. So this time, I go through everything I would need at a slower pace. The rep walks up to me and passes and goes for the girl first, “Hi, looking for something?” She says nothing. The rep comes back the same way he came walking passed then turns to me, “Need anything?” I say the same. He/she walks off and I turn back to the girl to get a second look. Somewhere in my mind, I went “I see what you did there, you bastard.” Side by side, she looks way amazing in a dress and jacket. I’m not superficial, but the dude walked passed me twice before he ask me if I need any help. Just kind of bad customer service, I’ll go back there since the parts are cheap but now I know I’m so ugly that I could pass off as a computer mouse.

Wednesday, out and about. I had no where to really go, I wanted to just go somewhere and just be outside pretty much. So went for a walk and decides to grab a snack. Found a small pizza place and sat down with a slice. All is well, except the part where I sat by the window and watched people walk by. People looking at me seemed like they were offended I was eating there. I wasn’t chewing with my mouth open or anything, but everyone had the same look too. Odd that many people passed by with that look too. You know that look when you pass by something you don’t want to step on or touch, yeah that was the one they were giving through a pane of glass while I’m eating a pizza.

Thursday, got on the subway. When passengers were getting on, there is this woman. She works at an office most definitely because of how she was dressed, in this business casual looking suit. But there was a seat beside me, I’m just minding my business reading a book I got on loan. So I look up a bit to see her looking for a seat. Beside me is an empty seat, it’s been empty since I got on there. So she’s looking around and totally turns away and walks to the far end of the train and sits down. Talk about avoiding people who are uglier than you regularly see. After that I just stayed home for the rest of the week, my shaved head is just attracting way too much attention.

So about this book is about ADHD and ways to cope with it. After the first pass through the book, I think this book alone explains a lot about my behaviour in the last decade and even further back. I’m almost convinced considering I have some of the symptoms and it explains why I’ve been pretty depressed for most of my life. Crap, I totally forgot to mention the name of the book. It’s called “ADHD Stole My Car Keys”, it’s a pretty good book. Fourth book I’ve read for the year which is way more books I’ve read in school, kind of ironic I read more for pleasure than for work and this book explains why (see what I did there? Eh? Eh?). According to this book, people with ADHD have a whole lot of benefits and drawbacks. It would explain why I like and dislike certain things, like work and sitting still (even this blog). It’s definitely one book I’m going to spend the next few months taking notes on to gain some insight on myself. I’m starting to be more accepting with my problems rather than trying to chase it out of my life. Well, I still want it out since the disadvantages are kind of sucky. Of course disadvantages of anything is sucky, but I’m talking really sucky where everything in the world is against you. Think of that one ability/weapon in every game that nobody wants to have and you have it and you can’t get rid of it traditionally, like you drop it and you get the same crappy ability/weapon. “Well I can switch weapons/abilities?” Nope, you can switch to it but it’s still there wasting space. Wait, how did this paragraph go to video games? This book is pretty good, it’s kind of hard to really push through it since it’s a pretty thick book in my opinion for a self-help. With my attention span, I pushed through to the first half and the middle was really difficult to swallow. I had to rest page after page. After a bit of that, I finished the second half with ease. The attention span is fairly longer than when I started this blog. It’s only a matter of time until I get out of the situation I’ve gotten myself into; with my medication cut back and actively finding ways to ease myself away from the medication, I feel I can do it and really turn out to have a pretty damn good life when I start living it.

Staying positive…at all cost.