I’m still feeling shitty from Serotonin Syndrome –see the previous post about it here—. At least, I assume it’s still Serotonin Syndrome based on my symptoms. I haven’t been able to sleep consistently, have frequent headaches, and am extremely sensitive to light and sound; I have random aches and pains in my back and neck, and barely able to take care of myself before I park in my office chair and scroll mindlessly or watch comfort tv/movies because mental effort makes my head hurt.
It concerns me enough that I’ll be calling the nurse line at my doctor’s office to get medical advice. I should be doing better by now. My doctor said that this condition should resolve in two weeks. Yet I don’t feel much better and can’t leave the house. I tried so last Thursday because I was craving ice cream from a trendy fusion spot, and I paid the price for days because it was bright and sunny. This was even though it was a 20-minute round trip. That was a mistake.
I guess that was the eye of the storm where I briefly felt better. I’ve been doing the right thing, yet I still feel shitty.
And my original paid leave expires Monday. I have no reason to think that work wouldn’t be okay with me taking more time off to feel better… (Well, I have some apologies to make due to mistakes I made before medical leave). Maybe this awful feeling that something is wrong is anxiety.
Well, that’s probably a side effect of stopping the antidepressant that caused this. …Or just because.
I’m so tired of struggling with my health. I’m sick of experiencing horrible side effects with medicines.
On top of this, I’m going through an existential crisis and a breakthrough in a way. The little time I have not been in pain I’m thinking about my future. Is this the best I can do? Is this the life I want? Being alone with your thoughts with few distractions does that. I’m ready to change my life whenever I’m healthy. I’m ready.
I’m not going to make a promise when I am blogging again regularly because I don’t know when. It currently hurts me to exert myself, which causes pain when I write mentally. I must take care of myself and get my life back on track. See you all soon!
P.S. I guess being able to write this post is proof that I have recovered somewhat. I’ll take that win.
I’m back, but out of work on Paid Family Medical Leave
Thank my state for being civilized with paid medical leave. An outlier in the US.
Since the second week of February, I’ve been experiencing new strange symptoms. Some went away, such as increased dry mouth, thirst, and excessive sweating while sleeping. Some symptoms did not. The concerning ones stayed.
My brief history of prescription medications
As a man long familiar with prescription medication, I am all too familiar with the risks from side effects. Prescription drugs and specialized support in preschool saved me from a seizure disorder I had as a toddler. I haven’t had a seizure since. Thankfully.
The only other time I needed medical attention was began seeing a psychiatrist for help and was prescribed Vivance, an amphetamine medication used to treat ADD. It caused me to have a heart attack in my early twenties. Worse yet, when my mother called him to tell him what happened, he coldly said: “What do you want me to do.”
After recovering with no damage to my heart and healthy results from tests on my heart, I tried again with a different psychiatrist. I discovered that I had severe chest pain or other similar heart attack-like symptoms with every other amphetamine-type medicine for ADD. In 2010, there were two nonamphetamines ADD medicine options (the exact same as the day, to my knowledge), Strattera and Guanfacine. The former didn’t help. While the latter did help, it wasn’t generic. It wasn’t covered by insurance (Typical because insurance companies play these games to make a profit over helping people. AND add insult to injury and tell you to try medications you’ve already tried before.)… Which meant it was $150 a month in 2010 dollars. I couldn’t afford it until two years later at Washington Apple Health.
After changing jobs and careers a couple times I learned first hand how screwed up insurance companies are with coverage regarding medicines. Whatever they say the cost of prescriptions is on your plan (with the exception of Washington Apple Health which is state Medicaid and covers stuff 100%) is a lie. Often they say they cover non generic, but try to fill it and they decide they don’t want to because it’s “too expensive” aka not profitable. (This is the case Even if you are paying for private insurance). Even if it’s the only medicine that works for you. The only place to get the actual price is to ask a pharmacist outside of your insurance what the out of pocket price is. No matter the insurance company or coverage, the bullshit was the same. It is confusing, deliberately made to be hard to understand your coverage, and if you have a serious accident, you go into debt. Lots of jobs tie insurance to it. Lose your job in most states and you lose coverage. If you are poor in America, you’re fucked.
Back to the future
2023. All these years later on my personal mental health journey for sanity and I’m still struggling with the same stuff as 13 years ago. That is to say, to find a medicine to treat depression that won’t kill me, or makes my life worse than before taking it. I’m glad to say that Guanfacine works to treat the ADD I have and became generic a couple of years ago, so it is affordable. My struggle with antidepressants continues.
What is Seratonin Syndrome?
“Serotonin is a chemical that the body produces naturally. It’s needed for the nerve cells and brain to function. But too much serotonin causes signs and symptoms that can range from mild (shivering and diarrhea) to severe (muscle rigidity, fever and seizures). Severe serotonin syndrome can cause death if not treated.”
Usually, when googling symptoms online, it’s common to get a worst-case scenario for whatever health-thing you are going through.
In this case, it was true.
I started having these symptoms two weeks after my doctor suggested that increasing the dose of my antidepressant could help with depression. Since I’ve been taking this medication for months without side effects, upping the dose didn’t seem to be a risk.
We were both wrong. While I eventually returned to work on February 22nd, and worked the next day, I had to take Friday off due to a migraine. And despite work helping me out with reasonable accommodations by adding a new policy, and buying me sound-reducing earplugs, and me buying brand new sound-dampening headphones, I had another migraine sick day last week.
So, while these symptoms are diagnosed as serotonin syndrome by my doctor, the noisy environment likely didn’t help. Being autistic and having long covid each make me sensory sensitive.
Therefore, starting today I will be off work under paid medical leave until the 27th to recover. And I didn’t know until today, that I have wait 15 to 20 days to receive this pay. Which is bullshit. The process is annoying when you’re healthy—figuring it out while sick is cruel. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was due to lobbying by the insurance industry. 15 to 20 days for an online application is unacceptable.
Well, I did it and now I have to wait to complete my application. The insurance company won’t (I asked the people at the doctors office). Can’t do anything else.
At least I am able to write again. I physically couldn’t due to headaches.
Even before this happened, I wondered if continuing was worth it. I loathe the SEO process, and having to advertise to get readers and feel that I’ve lost my purpose of blogging. I do not want to do SEO for a living or social media marketing. It feels like this is the only way to get noticed. Reading about how to articles or forums feels like I’m surrounded by snake oil salesman who only care about making money over the content. I lost the few friends I made doing this for different reasons, and its going on three years of blogging. I don’t want to blog for a living.
I’m age 36 and live with my mother. It’s far past time that I move out, and I need help. I can’t stand living in the same house I grew up in and need my own place to live by myself.
I will miss our family cat Lucy dearly. She snuggles next to me in bed almost every night. It will be heartbreaking, and I’m sure Lucy will never forgive me. Im sure that Coco will also miss my mother, along with Lucy.
Living with my mom drives me crazy. I need my own physical space. While our relationship is okay, I feel it would be much better for me to have space. We’re different people at different times in life.
A big reason I have struggled with dating is that I feel embarrassed that I live with my mother as an adult man. She sees me as her child first and an adult second. Living at home, ill never feel like an adult man.
I have gotten much better at asserting myself, communicating my needs, and setting boundaries. My mother has gotten better at accepting these and improving herself too.
There are other reasons too, but I only feel comfortable discussing them with my therapist.
However, this is not my house. I don’t feel comfortable living here. I feel trapped in a psychological prison, constantly reminded of the past.
I need a fresh start living on my own, without roommates, with my cat Coco.
Taking this step is something I have to do to continue healing. It scares me simultaneously because I’ll have to rely solely on myself. But, I won’t feel ashamed to bring a woman home. I’ll feel the freedom to bring friends over in my space without having to worry that my mom will embarrass me or nitpick me about how I’m doing something wrong, like what happened the last time I invited friends over in early 2020.
This will be difficult to find a place to rent on my budget since Seattle is an expensive place to live. Not impossible.
Lately, it feels like I’m entering a new period of my life
First, I have to acknowledge the gap between posts. It’s been a week, and I could not write a post for Monday. I have no excuses. The reason why is that I have felt ill. I think I’ve caught whatever is going around, and possibly am having a flare-up from long covid.
No doubt I’m feeling like this because of the events of the previous post last week. Romantic rejection is hard enough. It’s harder when you feel you have a close connection with that person and get each other. Alas, while the friendship remains in a more limited version, heartbreak sucks, and I miss the connection we had. I’m getting better day by day, and eventually, I’ll be able to read her posts; for now, I need time. It’s okay if a woman doesn’t want romance with me. There are women who will. I’d prefer this journey to find love to be over and to find that woman who wants to be my girlfriend, but for now, it’s working through the steps of grief. It will pass, though not knowing when the end is annoying.
I’d prefer grief over trying than the regret of not trying.
In positive news, I’m coming to a point in therapy where I’m ready to end this period with my therapist. Since June of last year, I’ve been going to sessions online through the Ginger app via video sessions. Every few weeks, I have a survey about my symptoms, which have been improving steadily. At the same time, work will offer health insurance sometime in the spring, so it’s a good time to start thinking about what comes next. My therapist suggested taking a break, which I agree would be helpful. I also want to find a different therapist, possibly one local with a different approach.
Work is going great. It’s so nice to do well and have a workplace I can count on. While my job is repetitive and recently feels like the walls are closing in because of all the new storage shelves in our tiny space, there is nowhere else I want to be. (Other than sleeping a bit more and being home to write during peak hours.)
When I’ve tried to write recently, I’ve had headaches from the mental strain. It hasn’t helped that I couldn’t get up at 5am, despite getting plenty of sleep or extra sleep, and my body feels physically awful. I feel like I have been going crazy not being able to write. This isn’t because of anxiety as has happened in the past; its new symptoms are directly related to long covid. Increased mental strain hurts my brain, my physical exhaustion rises when I try, or it feels like my brain is empty, foggy, or like swiss cheese. When I am clear-headed or feel normal during the day, I’m at work and can’t write. In that case, I’m limited to nine A.M. to two or three P.M.
I should be grateful that I can finally write on Thursday morning at my regular time.
The creative demons are back in full force today. Shame for not producing. Guilt for feeling like a hack writer who doesn’t make anything of worth, regret for stories I never finished in the past, frustration for now being disabled, and having physical and mental limitations when I can write. Imposter syndrome creeping in.
I know none of these are helpful. I know it’s part of the creative process to learn to handle each of these emotions so I can get to the parts I enjoy. I understand that the only way to be creative about anything is to sit down and do it. I must get through the mountain of shit to discover and process the gold into a usable product.
Hello, demons. Nice to see you again. I know you are me and my insecurities speaking.
I’m tired of feeling frustrated because I can’t complete something I actually want to do. I want to be a storyteller. I want to write stories that matter. That feels meaningful to me. Fiction. I need to do something different.
I’ve done enough reading on the how-to. Watched hundreds of hours of how-to and writing tips on youtube. I need to go and do it. Maybe I need to change the location where I do this writing as my current methods and writing at home isn’t getting the results I want. I feel too distracted at work and too pressed for time on breaks to be able to focus on writing.
I feel that many things in my life that have either been on hold or stuck will change when winter is over. This covid winter feels like it will be the last year where it is a threat to catch.
No post today. Well, just this short explanation. I was rejected by a friend I asked to be in a relationship. I wanted a romantic relationship with her but, she isn’t in the place in life to do so. Sometimes that happens.
She’s still a blogger friend. We remain friends with boundaries and a clear platonic blog friendship. For now, I need a break from her site…
So, this is all I can do. Write.
I feel like I’ve been cursed in the month of February with dating.
At least this time, I handled it maturely. So I have that going for me, at least.
Maybe I’m just not suited to do so. I feel like quitting it entirely. I’m 36 going on 37, and the whole dating experience is just painful rejection with tiny glimpses of success that are squashed.
This hasn’t happened to me before! I’m so grateful and I don’t know who to thank!
Cellphone repair
This happened yesterday, and the reason I didn’t know or post about it was because I was getting my phone repaired. I badly needed a new battery and charging port.
My phone is about two and a half years old with heavy use, so I’d have to recharge it multiple times a day with a fast charging cord. So both the USB port and the battery needed to be replaced.
I ordered the parts myself and was going to do the repairs myself, I’m handy with computers, and most repairs are straightforward with a guide and cheap tools you can buy online. I’ve built my past three PCs for gaming, so replacing parts on the phone is easy.
While I can and have blogged on my Personal desktop computer, I don’t like to. I get too distracted. It’s the thing I use to relax after work and on weekends. I’ve noticed that my best production comes away from there in other locations in the morning.
It was as simple as finding my phone model in the settings, looking up: “battery replacement for model” on YouTube, and acquiring what I needed on Amazon, which was about $30. I have much better compared to purchasing a brand-new phone for like $400-600. Plus, that would be wasteful and unnecessary since my phone, as I type on it today, February 1st, is working like it was before the battery started to wear out.
I had a problem with the repair. I got the back case off with the tool kit and a borrowed hair drier, BUT some of the tiny custom screws were stripped, and none of the eight miniature custom screwdrivers worked to remove the screws. So, I brought it to a local cellphone repair shop in my neighborhood on Monday. I picked it up Tuesday night after work. The total cost of replacing the parts with an expert: is $75—a fair price. Maybe I can get another two years out of this phone. Or more? I don’t need a fancy or overpriced expensive model.
That brings us today on Wednesday morning.
Sorry, Im late with a post. I lost Thursday through Sunday because of my health. I had a Long-Covid flare-up out of the blue. While I was feeling better on the weekend, I still had brain fog and could not do anything requiring a strenuous mental effort like blogging. Which is a bummer when that falls on the days I plan to write new posts.
Other
Thankfully I had a doctor’s appointment on Wednesday last week. My bloodwork was in a healthy range, and the results from the EKG were good. I’m already feeling better from her advice on changes to make. Which, among other things are to add a dose of vitamin B12 and CoQ10 to my regimen. I’m also increasing my antidepressant which will help with that part of long covid symptoms.
This is the third round of medical tests done in the past year. While all have been in the healthy range, which is good, it’s frustrating that I’m still dealing with long covid. Since science is catching up on research, and understanding thus disease, I’m doing all I can. It’s out of my control when or if I recover. So all I can do now is to practice Radical acceptance.
All things considered, Life’s good. I’m still terrified of catching covid and waiting until the peak season of winter is over to socialize in person, Still, I’m slowly improving with this and my therapy-centered issues.
I’m not sure how to end this post; Thanks for reading! If the mysterious gift giver would like to identify themselves in the comments, please do! I would like to personally thank you!
Tomorrow after work, we’re having a Potluck Party.
A Potluck at a pot company. Couldn’t pass up this pun. Lol.
This is a a party that I’ve been leading as I proposed the event. It started as a holiday potluck, but changed to a general potluck after rescheduling to mid January so everyone could attend, and to limit the risk of spreading or catching covid after the holidays.
I’m bringing two dishes to it, which will be recipe posts next week. One: Twice-baked Alaska and braised greens. I also wanted a 30-day advent calendar with weed as the prize each day, but… I’ve been too tired after work and spread myself too thin organizing the party. My duties at work have changed in the past month and turned to much more physical tasks of knocking joints and, much more often, grinding weed.
Being able to knock joints or grind weed is a massive step in progress. For long stretches last year, I would not have been able to do these for half or more of a shift. I would compare it to the physical and mental focus that working as a cook in a restaurant requires. One needs physical energy, being able to stand on your feet for hours of the day, attention to detail, checking for quality and speed, and focusing on repetitive tasks for hours.
I digress
Despite the tight time before and after work to cook this week, despite my worry about catching covid in a small space –though it will be required that everyone take a covid test and have a negative result–, despite the stress and exhaustion I’m feeling… It will be all worth it once it’s party time. Then I can relax and enjoy myself like I did at the company Halloween party.
I’ll be doing my part to see that not too many people are in the trim room getting food to mitigate exposure risk.
Well, this short post is all I have time for this week.
This week marks 1 year since I caught covid, which became Long Covid.
Song of the post: Virus by Del The Funky Homosapien · Dan The Automator · Kid Koala on Deltron 3030.
Lat year in 2022, during the Omnicron Surge in the middle of January, I caught covid at work.
It may seem strange that I am giving my catching covid an anniversary… The concept is most known for getting married, being at a job, or being a marker of success for relationship longevity. Since I have read The body keeps the score, I’ve learned that those under the effects of PTSD can hold up traumatic events. Between catching covid, living in a pandemic, and still randomly suffering from long covid, it’s no wonder I’m feeling off today.
I caught covid at a pizza party I threw after my first week as a department manager. While everyone then was wearing masks, and to my recollection, the majority wearing kn95s… I could have been safer and limited how many people with masks down were getting food in our small breakroom. Masks are useless if they are pulled down when people are eating. It didn’t help that the space where I set up the pizza was in our work breakroom, which is tiny and has poot airflow (still). I probably should not have brought the leftovers home and eaten them later. (Even if I did reheat and store them properly, that was too risky.)
I should have been more persistent in getting the booster shot then. I was not boosted because demand was so high in my area.The new covid booster had just become available in December 2021. Nowhere I called or looked had open appointments. The only way I could have received it was to drive to every pharmacy and wait until it closed, after work, for there to maybe be an extra shot.
Now that I think of it, I could have died if I did not have the original vaccine series.
Other factors that didn’t help:
A) I was exhausted by keeping up with safety after 2 years;
B) I wanted to treat everyone at work to pizza (people pleasing);
C) to that point in time, we had not had a work party, and I had barely socialized with anyone outside my immediate social circle.
20 minutes with my mask down/off to eat pizza in a closed space with many people, during peak covid infections was all it took.
This short post below I wrote in the middle of it when I was home sick.
I would add symptoms: Feeling so tired that you can’t focus or do anything but rest, confusion, rapid or slow heartbeat, and the worst fever you have ever had.
If you are sick and suspect it is covid, STAY HOME. The U.S. government is giving away free covid tests here. If you test positive, stay home for 14 weeks. 5 days with a mask is not long enough. Even going to work with a mask on is like having a loaded gun where your mouth is. even if the safety is on, it’s still loaded. A loaded gun that is pointing at others. Your mouth doesn’t have a safety switch, and people make mistakes.
Don’t risk your health. Take your time to recover and prevent the spread to others, please.
Do you really want to put your health in the hands of the American healthcare system?
A reminder on how to properly wear a mask:
This is what the symptoms of Long Covid are
AS is currently understood by science and those suffering from it. Research is underway to treat Long Covid and how it attacks the body.
“Long COVID (sometimes referred to as ‘post-acute sequelae of COVID-19’) is a multisystemic condition comprising often severe symptoms that follow a severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. At least 65 million individuals around the world have long COVID, based on a conservative estimated incidence of 10% of infected people and more than 651 million documented COVID-19 cases worldwide1; the number is likely much higher due to many undocumented cases. The incidence is estimated at 10–30% of non-hospitalized cases, 50–70% of hospitalized cases2,3 and 10–12% of vaccinated cases4,5. Long COVID is associated with all ages and acute phase disease severities, with the highest percentage of diagnoses between the ages of 36 and 50 years, and most long COVID cases are in non-hospitalized patients with a mild acute illness6, as this population represents the majority of overall COVID-19 cases. There are many research challenges, as outlined in this Review, and many open questions, particularly relating to pathophysiology, effective treatments and risk factors.
Hundreds of biomedical findings have been documented, with many patients experiencing dozens of symptoms across multiple organ systems7 (Fig. 1). Long COVID encompasses multiple adverse outcomes, with common new-onset conditions including cardiovascular, thrombotic and cerebrovascular disease8, type 2 diabetes9, myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS)10,11 and dysautonomia, especially postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS)12 (Fig. 2). Symptoms can last for years13, and particularly in cases of new-onset ME/CFS and dysautonomia are expected to be lifelong14. With significant proportions of individuals with long COVID unable to return to work7, the scale of newly disabled individuals is contributing to labour shortages15. There are currently no validated effective treatments.”
Long covid is considered a disability under the ADA:
“This guidance explains that long COVID can be a disability under Titles II (state and local government) and III (public accommodations) of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA),3 Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504),4 and Section 1557 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Section 1557).5 Each of these federal laws protects people with disabilities from discrimination.6 This guidance also provides resources for additional information and best practices. This document focuses solely on long COVID, and does not address when COVID-19 may meet the legal definition of disability.
The civil rights protections and responsibilities of these federal laws apply even during emergencies.7 They cannot be waived.”
That is the all-time most views for the blog, which happened in 2020. I was close to topping it last year in 2022 but fell short at 2,254 views.
My blogging goal for 2023 is to exceed these numbers. The plan (the CRAZY plan) so far to meet this goal is to post twice a week, or 104 posts in the year. This was 26 more posts than in 2020, when I wrote 78, and more seats than in 2021 and 2022. One thing to note about the 2020 stats is that I posted 28 times with a total of 841 views because I wanted to. I will not repeat that because I worked part-time then, and this was before I had Long Covid.
Ah… I regret making this decision to post twice a week… That’s a total of 104 posts in a year.
My goal for 2023 is to exceed 2,477 views.
For new bloggers, it is wise to ignore the views each post gets and the overall views your page receives. This is because it is more important to focus on discovering and polishing your writing routine, discovering how many posts you can publish that are high quality and stand out from other blogs, mastering the art of writing and blog writing, learning about and increasing mastery of SEO, and patience because it takes time to build an audience. Of course, if your blogging goal is to use it as a journal or post whatever for whomever, this doesn’t apply. That is okay too.
(The movie adaptation is solid and I would recommend watching it. If you are interested, I would recommend reading the book and watching the movie, as both are excellent for their formats.)
When I started blogging a couple of years ago, I naturally started the same process of figuring out how to be successful with the information I had available to me with the resources I had at the time, which weren’t much. I was at rock bottom emotionally, recently laid off, and barely hanging on with unemployment, the pandemic started, and everything shut down. I didn’t feel safe seeing friends or family. While I was living with my mother, she had her own struggles then to face, so I had to learn to support myself and learn how to heal on my own at the darkest time in my life.
Thankfully I gave therapy one more shot and was assigned an excellent therapist who was part of a wonderful mental health organization called Sound Mental Health.
For me, blogging is multiple things. I use it to track my life, journal publically, grow as a writer, and challenge myself. It is a way to hold myself accountable and prove that I can do better and deserve better. I like blogging because it’s a perpetual goal to write. Being an excellent writer is one part of it. In this world, to stand out, you have to acquire skills in multiple areas. If I want to be an author, showrunner, or professional writer, I need to view writing and my brand as a small business.
Naturally, as I change, I want the blog to change and grow. Therefore, I like the traffic to my blog posts to increase and the blog traffic to grow.
Blogging and this website are something that I have complete autonomy over. Its success or lack of it is tied to how much time and effort I put into it.
Blogging/writing makes me feel alive.
I feel I best express myself through writing. I think it’s the one way I can impact the world.
Blogging feels better than being an anonymous message board person. People read and react to your comments, but it’s not the same as coming up with an idea for a long piece, writing it, editing it, and posting it online for everyone worldwide to see. It feels good when people follow you and connect with what you wrote. It feels good to build something that is yours.
At times it makes me crazy because I’m pressed for time. I need to write before work because I’ll be too exhausted to write after work. Bloggers need day jobs like most creative people. Sometimes I do have the energy and clarity of mind, but… I have no idea what to write. And the only way to get it done is to grind the post out one word at a time until you discover inspiration.
One day the pandemic will end, and I won’t have to be afraid of catching a deadly strain of covid. Maybe this will be in a year from now. Once China recovers from this current covid wave, the world will feel safe. There is the threat of the XBB strain here in the US, but thankfully I live in a city and state with a high vaccination rate. As long as I avoid packed places, continue to wear a mask, stay up to date with vaccine boosters, and avoid conservative political dominant areas of Washington state (because the vaccine rate is lower here and every other conservative dominant county of the US), I’ll be safe. All that and avoid socializing in big groups in winter in closed spaces. All I can do at this point is protect my health. Safety is different from excuses.
This year will be the one where I finally heal from trauma. Make this the year where you grow up. Make this the year you finally follow through on things you said you wanted.
3/104 posts done for 2023. As of the time of this post at 719am, 123 views have been achieved toward the year goal of 2477+.
Thank you for reading! I hope that you enjoyed this post! Have you set a goal for 2023? If so tell me what it is in the comments below!
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New Posts for 2023 will be on Mondays and Thursday mornings, before noon, Pacific Standard Time.
It is now 2023, as is tradition on social media and the world at large… It’s time to reflect on 2022 and review my life of the previous year. Unlike the cliche, 2022 felt like a year and didn’t go by fast and, more often than not, slower for me than others.
2022 can be summarized by the following themes: Work, Long Covid, Going out into the world again, online dating, and Inner growth.
This post is about when I went to a book signing for Alton Brown, one of my cooking idols. I used to want to be a chef and worked in the restaurant industry, so going to buy his new book, get it signed by him, and have a word was something I wasn’t going to miss!
Pumpkin Spice Cinnamon Rolls is a recipe I created, which is to add pumpkin pie filling and double pumpkin pie spices to the classic cinnamon roll. This recipe is dairy free and doesn’t use sugar. instead, it uses an erythritol blend.
The Mariners 2022 ALDS… (Part 3 of 3). (Not a fan of this title after the fact) This post is about my experience going to the first Seattle Mariners home playoff game in 21 years! It was the first time I had ever gone to any home professional sports game in my life. Boy, was it worth it. It’s the conclusion to a 3 part series, in which previous posts are linked in the post. It was game 3 of 5, win or go home for the Mariners, the entire state was covered in dangerous forest fire smog, and I did my part by writing a prayer to the god of the mariners by visiting its first stadium site in town, and burning the prayer to the god before the game.
This post is about my experience getting an article published in the Seattle Times newspaper about the challenges of finding a therapy that works for me and learning that I was on the Autism Spectrum at age 36.
Days in a Life is a post set in a challenging time in my life, right after I had finally had sex for the first time and was a virgin no more. My cat Coco wasn’t doing well either, and I was worried she might have had a UTI. I was freaking out and was sure something was wrong with me too. You’ll have to read the post to find out. Unfortunately, I haven’t had sex since.
And finally, Long covid. In about 10 days, it will be a year since I caught covid and I haven’t recovered. While the severity of sickness has improved slowly since I’m not the same person physically, I was a year ago. If you haven’t gotten the covid vaccine or the latest booster yet, please do. You don’t want this disability. I wasn’t able to blog for long periods due to this disease. I can barely exercise without becoming so exhausted that I need to go home and sleep. There’s no cure. There are treatments, but that isn’t a guarantee because it’s basically throwing shit at a wall. Even if there will be treatments, I bet it will be expensive and not covered by insurance in America. Which is the case with conditions that do have medical solutions such as ADD or diabetes.
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