Stabbing It With My Penis

Well, it seems like it’s high time I realized that I’m just wallowing in my own misery, and actually take some active steps to do something about it. No matter how utterly fucked up I feel, common sense dictates that I’m not ever going to get any better lying around in bed forever moaning about how crappy I feel.

People have been telling me the simple ways to fix things for many years now. Unfortunately, for the most part, they’ve been people I’ve conditioned myself over the years not to pay much attention to, like my mother, or my housemate. Deep down I’ve always known that while they may not have been sporting miracle cures, their advice certainly wasn’t wrong, as such. It’s just that often I tend to assume that there are no simple answers to complex problems, so when I’m feeling pained and nauseous and vile and achey, and my mother says "You just need to get out more!", I tend to say something along the lines of a marginally politer "Oh, shut the fuck up!"…

But hell, it’s time to look at the bigger picture. What’s that they say about the odds, where if enough totally unrelated people tell you the same thing, odds are they’re probably right and it’s you that’s wrong? There are a lot of very simple, but very important elements that are almost completely lacking in my whole life. They are, mainly:-

• Sunlight/serotonin/vitamin D
• Fresh air
• A regulated sleeping pattern/routine
• Exercise of any kind
• Any kind of different or interesting activities, events, hobbies or actions beyond my usual very isolated routine
• … and money, but that’s a whole ‘nother entry… =)

Now, when it’s just my mother telling me these things, it’s very easy to brush them off as the ravings of a deluded harpy who’s never been truly sick or in pain a day in her life and believes that regular walks and lots of green leafy vegetables could cure cancer. But now, as of me writing this, I’ve been advised I should remedy at least one or more of these things by no less than my mother, my housemate, my best friend, my therapist, at least two guys in a chat room I run, plus now Amylouise, Timmy, and Janna…

So, with nine totally unrelated people who have absolutely no reason to try to con me into believing in something that isn’t true, telling me pretty much the same sort of thing, chances are it certainly couldn’t hurt to give it a try now. Even if for no other reason than to say that I did, and ruled it out. At least then I could shut my mother up, hahah. But yes, it does seem time I bow to the weight of collective advice and best wishes, and try to improve at least some of these seemingly small, simple and obvious, but very important, and very lacking, things in my life.

So, I’m planning to make a few small changes in my life. They might seem stupid and trivial to a lot of people, but with my particularly unusual lifestyle, some of them are pretty big things to me. First of all, I’m going to try again to force my body to something of a schedule. I’ve got an alarm set for every day at noon – no more sleeping all the daylight hours away for me, no matter how shitfully I may find myself sleeping at night. If I force myself up at the same time each day, no matter how little sleep I got that night, maybe my body will finally play catchup and sleep when I tell it to. I’m going to start aiming for bed around midnightish too, which, with my bedtime routine, probably puts me asleep around 3AM on a good night. Better than the break of dawn, and I hoping that by setting this schedule which is tighter than what my body is used to, but not so rigid that I’ll fail on the first day, I can slowly and carefully encourage my body to go to sleep around 1-2AM each night, and wake up around 10-11AM each day. To those of you working in the rat race, this probably seems like a luxuriously lazy schedule, but with all my problems, not least of which are chronic sleep problems, it’s a little bit of a challenge.

Anyhow, this will allow me to be awake during the sunniest parts of each day, as opposed to sleeping through them like I naturally tend to do. Enter the second part of my plan. During those "brightest hours", I plan to aim to be outside, weather and temperature permitting, or at the very least, in my living room which gets the most sun in my house. Even if I’m just reading a book, or hell, even laying on the floor, that’s already more healthy than hiding in my lightproofed cell of a bedroom during that time. That little infusion of serotonin and vitamin D will be a lot more than the practically none I’m getting now, and hopefully will make some tangible difference to me.

The next step from there will be to try and use some of that time productively, namely in the form of exercise. It’s ridiculous, I have pretty much a fully equipped gym here, with multi-functional weight bench, a barbell and dumbbells, a hydraulic stepper, a kickbag, even an ancient treadmill. Do I ever use any of it? No, practically never. So it’s time I changed that. Got to get myself back into a light routine, nothing life changing, or even body changing, just yet, but just something to get the blood pumping and remind myself I’m alive. Even if just for an hour while I’m getting my sunlight, I do a few sets of deadlifts and break a light sweat, that would be infinitely more exercise than I get now. I’m surprised my blood doesn’t have a layer of mold on it with how little I move at the moment, it’s no wonder I’m constantly tired, lethargic, weary and drained.

Last but not least, my housemate has agreed to help me try to find something different we can do in our lives, something that, even if silly, is a break from the same old pointless shit I do day in and day out, just to break the tedium a bit. Even if we just go catch a movie once a week, or play a board game or something dorky like that, it’s at least a change of pace. It might get me out of the house some more (which means even more fresh air and sunlight, kids!), or at the least, out of my room and off the PC for a bit, which can’t be a bad thing. Again, even if I’m sitting in the living room for a while instead of in here, that’s already marginally more sunlight and fresh air into my system, and better than nothing.

So, in the end, it may seem like a lot of words here for not very much results, by most people’s standards. Some people might read this, and think, "All that angsting just to sit in a different room and occasionally leave his house? Poor baby, I have to do that every single day, it’s called life, deal with it!", but I can comfortably offer those people a week in my shoes and see how easy they find it. The fact is, I think I’m almost at rock bottom now, and it’s high time I picked my ass off the floor and dusted it off. And if that means I have to make much ado about something as seemingly trivial as sitting in my living room for an hour a day, or getting out of bed before noon, then that’s what I have to do. These things may be natural instinct for most people, but I can promise you that a lot of things I can pull off without thinking twice would be a challenge for you, too. Someday if I’m feeling and doing better while still keeping up this journal, maybe I’ll tell you about some of those things…. =)