The following is a quote from the book The War of Art by Steven Pressfield:

Creating soap opera in our lives is a symptom of Resistance…Sometimes entire families participate unconsciously in a culture of self-dramatization. The kids fuel the tanks, the grown-ups arm the phasers, the whole starship lurches from one spine-tingling episode to another. And the crew knows how to keep it going. If the level of drama drops below a certain threshold, someone jumps in to amp it up…It’s more fun than a movie. And it works: Nobody gets a damn thing done.

The follow up quote to that (which is what really struck me on a personal level) is from the author of the blog I read (Conversion Diary):

I think the primary difference is that Resistance drama is ego-focused, whereas the healthy ups and downs of the spiritual life are God-focused. When I get mired in bad drama I withdraw into a tiny solar system with my blazing ego at the center, where I fixate on who said what that offended me, whether people will think what I’m doing is great or terrible, whether what I do is good or bad in comparison to other people’s work…and I give nothing back to the world. I’m a black hole. Paralyzed by Resistance. Whereas on the occasions that I’m swept up in positive drama, I’m more focused on God than myself, more concerned with helping people than comparing myself to them, and, most tellingly, I’m still creating. I’m still giving something back to the world.

I see a lot of “ego” based resistance drama in my life (sadly).  It’s something I need to work on, and I thought this was expressed eloquently enough that it was worth sharing.

There was the time I jumped off a really tall rock spire at Lake Havasu into the lake.  The spire was probably 50-100 feet tall.  That was crazy-stupid at the time, but it’s crazy-awesome in my mind now.

Then there was the time I joined the army – more or less on a whim.  I followed that up with moving to Colorado with Allena and Nick, and getting settled in there in an apartment with eleven bucks between us for food, and no jobs.  Definitely crazy-adventurous.

One time, Allena and I gave a car to a girl that did a lot of babysitting for us.  It was a crappy car, but it ran, and she was 16 and was tickled to get it.  Crazy-cool.

The stuff where the men in white get called I don’t talk about too much…but Allena knows.  She’s saved me more than once.

A few days ago I started having another crazy idea.  I’ve been thinking about training to run a marathon.  Now I’m a big guy – 6’4″ or so and pushing 290lbs at the moment (thank you sooo much Depakote.  Not.), and I get shin splints, and I’m currently having some fun with plantar fasciitis, and on top of that I doubt I have the money to spare for good running shoes.  So, why would I do such a crazy thing?  I want to get in shape and lose weight…and I think this will help.  I’ve been struggling with depression (thank you again Depakote and Keppra too!) and I think it will help with that too.  But I think mostly because I want to say I accomplished something that not that many people have done (relative to the population of the world of course).

So what do you think?  Crazy?  Should I go for it, or not?

P.S. – Jerome – if you get around to reading this, you and your triathlon’s are a big inspiration!

• Staying up too late
• Not taking the medication to help you go to sleep (so you sit and breathe through the CPAP and stare at the ceiling for an hour or more)
• Seizures/episodes/whatever – I’m still not sure what these dumb things are
• Crying children that have decided to be awake at 3:00am
• Having to use the bathroom
• Dogs barking (and sounding like they’re in your yard, even when they’re not)

So, as far as I’m concerned the jury is still out on the CPAP machine.  I think if I ever get to sleep all the way through the night, it’ll be a big help.  :)

Another bit of upsetting news from Friday – I had a biopsy done on a rather ugly mole, and it turns out it’s cancerous.  It’s a basal cell carcinoma (which I think is Latin for “big ugly mole”) and is technically malignant, although they almost never spread to other parts of the body.  Normally I would not have found it that upsetting, since my goal was to get it removed anyway and this just confirms that it was a good goal.  But put on top of the other news about more EEG tests…well it just kind of sunk me into a pit.

I’m feeling better today though.  The day started pretty early – our neighbor shot a doe and called to ask if we wanted it.  We all like venison, so the day started pretty early with skinning/gutting a dear, but it was a good time all the same.  We also had some folks over that are buying a couple of sheep from us, and they were really nice.

Tomorrow I get to do another sleep study.  It turns out I have sleep apnea after all, so tomorrow they will be putting me on a CPAP machine and getting it adjusted to me.  I’m really, REALLY looking forward to this.  I’m extremely hopeful that I will actually start SLEEPING through the night again – something that hasn’t happened since the seizures started.

Trying to stay positive!

That may sound odd, but in a way I was hoping my sleep problems were due to apnea and they could put me on a CPAP machine and it would be this magic bullet that just fixed everything.  So I’m kind of back to square one, in not knowing why I don’t sleep well.

The technician who was monitoring me was kind enough to take a picture for me and mail it to me – I thought it would be good for laughs.  If you look closely, you can even see the red “L” on my forehead.  I’ll let you decide for yourselves what that stands for :)

All wired up

Elizabeth is definitely on the mend.  She does *not* want to lay around and rest, she wants to get outside and play.  She forgets that she’s still hurt, but gets the occasional reminder when somebody bumps her arm.  We keep telling her to go easy, but she must be using a different definition of “easy” than we are.  She has another appointment with the orthopedic surgeon today – I imagine she’ll have quite a few of these follow-ups to do x-rays on her elbow to ensure everything is mending correctly.  Very encouraging all-in-all.

My seizures are definitely coming under control.  Most days I have a handful (read: 10-20) of “shivers”, especially at the end of the day or during stressful times, but even if you were looking for them you’d never notice them.  I can feel them of course, but from the outside they’d be almost invisible.  I still have a bigger one once in a while but not daily any more.  Last Thursday (Friday? not sure), with the help of a couple of Benadryl, I slept through the entire night for the first time in about four months.  If you’ve never gone an extended period of time without a good nights sleep you don’t know how wonderful that really is!   I also got my blood tested last week to check the med-levels in it, so I hope to hear back on that today or tomorrow.  The doc may or may not increase my dosage depending on the results of that test.

I may still be on the emotional roller coaster – I may just be on an “up” part right now, but I’ll take it! ;)

I feel like calling the neurologist and saying “crank up the dosage another 1000mg and lets get these suckers knocked out!”.  :)  That’s probably not a good idea, but I feel pretty optimistic all-in-all.

Today has not gone so well.  I was getting a ride to work with a co-worker, and that apparently isn’t going to work anymore.  Having to depend on other people to get around has got me pretty down.  For the first time in years I find myself wishing I lived in a larger city that had buses – and I really don’t care to ride the bus.

So then came waiting on the MRI and waiting on the results, lots of down there.  Then the results – super up (not having a brain tumor definitely qualifies as up!!!).

Now I’m feeling pretty down again.  Not being able to drive is taking some getting used to.  I’ve been trying to find info about people with seizures like mine, and how they relate to driving in particular.  It doesn’t look good.  I’m still hopeful that I’ll be able to drive again, but I can’t help but contemplate what life is going to be like without being able to drive.  I keep telling myself “yeah but I haven’t had any gran-mal or absence seizures, surely I’m different”, and then the part of my brain that does not live in denial chimes in with comments like “that’s true, but how many times have you read that seizures change?”.

I feel very broken at this point.  Not in a psychological sense (’cause the Prozac is still doing it’s job), but in a litteral, physical sense.  I feel like I’m somehow deffective and need to be repaired, like I’ve got a part worn out.  That is not a good feeling at all.

I think this blog may get to be a little bit “diary like” for a while.  It’s somewhat theraputic/cathartic to just write down what’s going through my head.  Sorry for the down post.  I’ll try to be “up” next time.

So why sign up with Facebook.  Mostly because I’ve come across Facebook profiles for people that I’ve known in my life who otherwise have no web presence, and I wanted to see what was going on with them.  I even found out my sister has a Facebook profile…who knew?

In other news, William has a(nother) new scar on his face.  That kid is really hard on himself.  He was twirling around, tripped on a pillow and slamed his cheek into the edge of the coffee table.  One trip to urgent care and $75 bucks later and his cheek is super-glued shut with some stuff they call “dermabond”.  I was told that the scar will be much smaller this way than it would have been with stitches.

We also got three new lambs this morning – two girls out of DuClair and a single girl out of Piper.  All in all a busy weekend!