zompist bboard

jal wrote:I went skiing this weekend (three days). I can't really ski, so I had lessons, and yesterday it went pretty well. Could even parallel ski a bit and had fun. Unfortunately, today it didn't go as well, because anxiety* kicked in and I couldn't ski half as good as yesterday. Blergh. Today going home again, and I won't ski for at least a year. Not sure whether I'd want to anywway.

*The pretty realistic kind that I can't keep myself from getting faster and faster without being able to break. Pretty realistic in that that's exactly what happened a few times. I had to let myself crash in the side snow.


JAL

I went skiing once and that's what kept happening to me. I'd take off and all I could think about was Michael Schumacher, who was in a coma at the time from a skiing accident. My anxiety eventually got so bad that I took my skis off and walked to the bottom of the mountain and then kept walking to my hotel. The ski boots were torture anyway. Size 50 (!) was crushing my feet, tapering at the front where my feet are widest, and they didn't have anything bigger. I went hiking for the rest of the trip while my friends skied.

I feel like venting here even though I usually don't post at all.

I had to go to my university's main building today to hand in a form I need them to fill out for me. I don't even remember when I felt this energetic doing something official for the last time. It didn't went as planned because bureaucracy. That didn't even bother me so much though. Then I went to the bank because I maxed out my credit (it's the same account my mom opened for me when I was a teenager so luckily my credit is really small and I can't go into much debt there) and there's some money on its way to balance it out again. I really need to recharge my phone credit though, so I went to the ATM inside the bank to check if the money had already arrived. Instead of showing me my credit, the ATM was just like "We're retaining your card, please contact your local contact person".

This is such a minor problem compared to the ones I'm used to face, but it's a minor catastrophy right now. Because of German Federalism the bank I'm at is divided into a bazillion of regional branches, and mine is limited to my home region. Which means I have to go out of my way to get a new card. Which means I'm left with no possibility to withdraw cash or pay anything by card for who knows how many weeks. Luckily I still have my kitchen staples and like 15€ in bottle deposit coupons, so I won't starve (even though it's probably gonna be pasta with tomato sauce only from now on).

Only a few weeks ago I've been at one of the lowest points of my entire life, and now I'm feeling like shit over this non-issue. It feels silly, but I guess I just wish I could just not keep running into walls for once.

/edit: Great and now this post got overly long and incoherent and is on top of a new page. Oh well, I'll just leave it and try not to be embarassed.

Imralu wrote:[snip]

Psychoses really suck, and unfortunately are very commonly associated with lack of insight as is clearly apparent in this case, which makes them sometimes really hard to treat unless they get sufficiently bad that someone can be sent to involuntary. Even then that is no guarantee because there is a good chance that they will go off their meds at some point once they get out unless you, at least here in the US, manage to get a court order to have them put on depot injections, which normally requires a clear history of non-compliance. It would have been a good thing if he had actually gotten some treatment at the hospital rather than simply being locked in a room overnight. Also note that in this case the weed probably didn't help one bit, because it often encourages psychosis in people who are prone to it. (In my case it makes me significantly paranoid, so hence I now avoid it.)

Imralu wrote:

jal wrote:I went skiing this weekend (three days). I can't really ski, so I had lessons, and yesterday it went pretty well. Could even parallel ski a bit and had fun. Unfortunately, today it didn't go as well, because anxiety* kicked in and I couldn't ski half as good as yesterday. Blergh. Today going home again, and I won't ski for at least a year. Not sure whether I'd want to anywway.

*The pretty realistic kind that I can't keep myself from getting faster and faster without being able to break. Pretty realistic in that that's exactly what happened a few times. I had to let myself crash in the side snow.


JAL

I went skiing once and that's what kept happening to me. I'd take off and all I could think about was Michael Schumacher, who was in a coma at the time from a skiing accident. My anxiety eventually got so bad that I took my skis off and walked to the bottom of the mountain and then kept walking to my hotel. The ski boots were torture anyway. Size 50 (!) was crushing my feet, tapering at the front where my feet are widest, and they didn't have anything bigger. I went hiking for the rest of the trip while my friends skied.

I went skiing like a month ago and had what I thought was a minor fall, but the muscles in my shoulder still hurt a month and a half later when I lift or twist it the wrong way. I'm finally getting physiotherapy this week, but I'm a bit annoyed at having to essentially go to the doctor every week this month.

Finally got medication for anxiety, though, although of all things it was through an ENT doctor as I've been having problems with tinnitus and I suggested that it's probably more an anxious thing than anything else. I'm still getting the tinnitus, just don't care as much when I'm on the anxiety meds. They make me pretty drowsy, though, just after I take them. But at the end of the day, I don't know whether he can keep giving me them. He might have to refer me to a psychiatrist. I just can't keep up with the number of doctors I have to go to - that's three regularly at the moment (ENT, asthma and the physio), and the ENT is in a completely different place than the other two. And my list of doctors to avoid is growing larger and larger - last year I thought I was getting lucky because I found a pharmacist that speaks good English, but the doctor she's connected to (since they're all racketeering like that) was a bit of a dick (he asked a bunch of inappropriate questions because he was excited to have a foreigner in his office, like no mate I don't want to tell you my opinion on Scotland's nuclear policy), and his nurses managed to lose my health insurance card. So I can't/won't go back there, even though it's just around the corner from work and would be convenient. The guy I'm going to is better anyway, at least, but I can only get there on my days off unless I get up super early.

I miss just having one GP like in the UK. It takes forever to get referred for anything, though... and they try to fob you off because they have to pay for it and don't have the budget. The other thing about Japan is I always feel overprescribed. I really don't want to have to be taking three pills a day, it's just excessive. But back in the UK they always try not to prescribe anything and they try to reduce my dosage because it's more expensive for them.

finlay wrote:The other thing about Japan is I always feel overprescribed. I really don't want to have to be taking three pills a day, it's just excessive. But back in the UK they always try not to prescribe anything and they try to reduce my dosage because it's more expensive for them.

I am on a pile of meds (not unusual for people with significant psych problems like myself), and honestly need more (as I'm still having constant but low-level hallucinations and not infrequent but minor delusions) but my psych has been hesitant to prescribe me more meds than I am already on (she seems to want me down from two antipsychotics to one antipsychotic more than she seems to want to make my hallucinations and delusions really go away). And the thing is that I'm not overprescribed - when my psych tried to reduce some of my meds a while back, things eventually wound up going awry, and I am still not back at the point I was before then.

Acid Badger wrote:Then I went to the bank because I maxed out my credit (it's the same account my mom opened for me when I was a teenager so luckily my credit is really small and I can't go into much debt there) and there's some money on its way to balance it out again. I really need to recharge my phone credit though, so I went to the ATM inside the bank to check if the money had already arrived. Instead of showing me my credit, the ATM was just like "We're retaining your card, please contact your local contact person".

Gah, this is why I'm sometimes afraid to use ATMs. I forgot my pin a while ago (because I hadn't had any money in the account and no reason to use the card regularly except for the Kontoauszüge that I never remembered to do on my own) and had to get a new card sent to me.

And dude, seriously, no need to be embarrassed about your vent. And you think that's long and incoherent? Don't make me get competitive and show you what long and incoherent looks like! You're as entitled to vent here as anyone else and not having access to money is a pretty damn legitimate concern. And if anyone says otherwise, I will fight them.

Travis B. wrote:Psychoses really suck, and unfortunately are very commonly associated with lack of insight as is clearly apparent in this case, which makes them sometimes really hard to treat unless they get sufficiently bad that someone can be sent to involuntary

Yeah. I think, if someone doesn't have insight, it is probably going to be hard for anyone else to convince them that their paranoia is not based in external-world fact but in their brain. And yeah, I know marijuana doesn't help with psychosis. A high school friend got schizophrenia a year after starting smoking pot. Maybe he was going to get it anyway, but the change was quick and extreme.

I tried it a few times when I was young and I didn't have the "people are after me" paranoia but I had the "my friends don't like me" paranoia, which, as I think I mentioned is the kind of paranoia I tend towards. It was awful - I was with my best friend and she had the giggles because she was stoned and in my head, she was laughing at me, and as soon as she stopped laughing, she hated me. At one point I said to her "I don't know why people call this 'high'. And my empathy was uncontrollable. We were watching the Snow White money with Sigourney Weaver as the witch and when she breaks down crying because the mirror told her Snow White was the fairest in the land, I cried with her ... and my friend just giggled at me.

One thing is that there are essentially two different kinds of paranoia - the psychotic paranoia, and the social anxiety paranoia. My paranoia is psychotic, and responds to antipsychotics, whereas what you describe sounds much more like social anxiety, which should not be surprising.

I'm starting to suffer from a bad case of election fatigue.
Can't the damn thing be over already?

Also, I still have no idea who to vote for.

Ars Lande wrote:Also, I still have no idea who to vote for.

Well, not Le Pen, obviously.


JAL

jal wrote:

Ars Lande wrote:Also, I still have no idea who to vote for.

Well, not Le Pen, obviously.


JAL

Heh, no. Not Le Pen.

It's probably going to be one of the two left-wing candidates. (Not counting Macron as left-wing).

Ars Lande wrote:I'm starting to suffer from a bad case of election fatigue.
Can't the damn thing be over already?

Also, I still have no idea who to vote for.

An idea: move to Poland. Low prices, low taxes, people don't suck. The political climate kind of sucks — as it always has — but not too much (we need that EU money dammit).

Pole, the wrote:The political climate kind of sucks — as it always has — but not too much (we need that EU money dammit).

Personally, I think that the current Polish government is pretty bad.


JAL

Though I'd love to visit Poland; but I don't see myself leaving France. I guess I'm not the expat type.

Pole, the wrote:

Ars Lande wrote:I'm starting to suffer from a bad case of election fatigue.
Can't the damn thing be over already?

Also, I still have no idea who to vote for.

An idea: move to Poland. Low prices, low taxes, people don't suck. The political climate kind of sucks — as it always has — but not too much (we need that EU money dammit).

Poland is frightening.

I'm voting Macron, personally. I don't particularly like the guy, but I don't have much of a choice.

It's obvious that Le Pen will win the first round, the only question is who is going to be second. I dread to see Fillon vs Le Pen on the second round: I'd be forced to vote for Fillon, and I really don't want to vote for Fillon. I voted for Chirac once, that was enough.

Hamon is too far behind. Let's not even talk about Mélanchon. The only one that can beat Fillon is Macron, and it will be a close race. I don't like Macron, but he's someone I can get behind. So I'm voting for the lesser-of-two-evils between him and Fillon.

Besides, Macron doesn't really have a strong party behind him for the legislative elections. He can't govern without help from one of the major parties. If the legislative elections favor the left wing, he will have to govern to the left.

My dissertation needs to be finished, like FINISHED finished, in less than three weeks, and I still have a major chapter that's mostly unwritten and still needs research. I really, really don't want to take another semester, especially since I'm not guaranteed funding, but if I can't pull myself together soon, that might be my only choice. Which is a TERRIBLE choice, since my dissertation adviser is leaving the department at the end of the semester! I can't seem to get into writing mode, even panic writing mode, and it's DEFINITELY panic time. The worst thing is, even if I manage to get my ass in gear and finish the damn thing, and even if it passes and I can defend it and I graduate, I STILL have no job prospects for the fall, so it's probable that the best case scenario is I have to scrape together adjunct work for at least a semester or two to help keep my family afloat.

kodé wrote:My dissertation needs to be finished, like FINISHED finished, in less than three weeks, and I still have a major chapter that's mostly unwritten and still needs research. I really, really don't want to take another semester, especially since I'm not guaranteed funding, but if I can't pull myself together soon, that might be my only choice. Which is a TERRIBLE choice, since my dissertation adviser is leaving the department at the end of the semester! I can't seem to get into writing mode, even panic writing mode, and it's DEFINITELY panic time. The worst thing is, even if I manage to get my ass in gear and finish the damn thing, and even if it passes and I can defend it and I graduate, I STILL have no job prospects for the fall, so it's probable that the best case scenario is I have to scrape together adjunct work for at least a semester or two to help keep my family afloat.

I hope this all works out for you.

Ryusenshi wrote:I'm voting Macron, personally. I don't particularly like the guy, but I don't have much of a choice.

It's obvious that Le Pen will win the first round, the only question is who is going to be second. I dread to see Fillon vs Le Pen on the second round: I'd be forced to vote for Fillon, and I really don't want to vote for Fillon. I voted for Chirac once, that was enough.

Hamon is too far behind. Let's not even talk about Mélanchon. The only one that can beat Fillon is Macron, and it will be a close race. I don't like Macron, but he's someone I can get behind. So I'm voting for the lesser-of-two-evils between him and Fillon.

Besides, Macron doesn't really have a strong party behind him for the legislative elections. He can't govern without help from one of the major parties. If the legislative elections favor the left wing, he will have to govern to the left.

Our current system encourages voting for the lesser evil, which I think is unhealthy in the long run. I'd be happier with a parliamentary system with proportional representation.
I don't really mind Macron; his idea of appealing to both left-wing and right-wing moderates is interesting, but I can't get behind his technocratic approach.

Salmoneus wrote:Poland is frightening.

I don't feel frightened. Frankly, I feel quite bored.

I told my friend that he was a distraction, but I didn't mean it to be so negative. Technically he is a distraction from school and I distract myself by hanging out with him. It's not always a bad thing to distract yourself. Aaand he got offended by that. Won't talk to me.
I feel so cold. I have emotions but other people make me feel like I don't.
I blame the school system. High school to me was a glorified daycare where teachers spend more time babysitting us than teaching or giving us 'busy work'. Community college is what the last 2 years of high school should be like.
Whatever happened to woodshop and home economics?
Also I have to write an essay and I can't bring myself to write it. I already got a 70 on the last one for misinterpreting the topic. Who cares? I can't help that I think outside the box. It was supposed to be advice for traveling in a city for a day and I didnt pick a conventional tourist trap but rather a mining town in Siberia because that is somewhere I would go. He told me "I don't want to go there". I don't fucking care. You're a failed writer from the Washington (Com)Post and i get that you wana project your boringness onto me but i am forced to take this shitty English class so let me pass.
I can't believe I've been in school for this long and have yet to take a relevant class for my major.

cunningham wrote:It was supposed to be advice for traveling in a city for a day and I didnt pick a conventional tourist trap but rather a mining town in Siberia because that is somewhere I would go. He told me "I don't want to go there".

Was he trying to say, "Your writing didn't make me want to go there"? Because if the assignment was to write something promotional, then that's a valid criticism. Otherwise it seems totally irrelevant.

Ryusenshi wrote:I'm voting Macron, personally. I don't particularly like the guy, but I don't have much of a choice.

It's obvious that Le Pen will win the first round, the only question is who is going to be second. I dread to see Fillon vs Le Pen on the second round: I'd be forced to vote for Fillon, and I really don't want to vote for Fillon. I voted for Chirac once, that was enough.

Hamon is too far behind. Let's not even talk about Mélanchon. The only one that can beat Fillon is Macron, and it will be a close race. I don't like Macron, but he's someone I can get behind. So I'm voting for the lesser-of-two-evils between him and Fillon.

Besides, Macron doesn't really have a strong party behind him for the legislative elections. He can't govern without help from one of the major parties. If the legislative elections favor the left wing, he will have to govern to the left.

I understand your reasoning but I have seen enough recent polls giving Macron the lead in the first round to say that LePen won't necessarily be first in the first round.

The thing is that the word distraction tends to have negative connotations, even when distraction in some cases, w.r.t. distraction from the symptoms of something, can be very much a good thing.

My ex used to call me Mr Distraction. I liked it.

jmcd wrote:

Ryusenshi wrote:I'm voting Macron, personally. I don't particularly like the guy, but I don't have much of a choice.

It's obvious that Le Pen will win the first round, the only question is who is going to be second. I dread to see Fillon vs Le Pen on the second round: I'd be forced to vote for Fillon, and I really don't want to vote for Fillon. I voted for Chirac once, that was enough.

Hamon is too far behind. Let's not even talk about Mélanchon. The only one that can beat Fillon is Macron, and it will be a close race. I don't like Macron, but he's someone I can get behind. So I'm voting for the lesser-of-two-evils between him and Fillon.

Besides, Macron doesn't really have a strong party behind him for the legislative elections. He can't govern without help from one of the major parties. If the legislative elections favor the left wing, he will have to govern to the left.

I understand your reasoning but I have seen enough recent polls giving Macron the lead in the first round to say that LePen won't necessarily be first in the first round.

I can't believe you still trust the polls.

Travis B. wrote:The thing is that the word distraction tends to have negative connotations, even when distraction in some cases, w.r.t. distraction from the symptoms of something, can be very much a good thing.

Do you know of any synonyms that have a more positive connotation?

Imralu wrote:My ex used to call me Mr Distraction. I liked it.

Hehe

cunningham wrote:I can't believe you still trust the polls.

If you don't trust the polls, what do you trust? Your own intuition? And how is that supposed to be more accurate than a proper scientically-conducted poll?

cunningham wrote:

Travis B. wrote:The thing is that the word distraction tends to have negative connotations, even when distraction in some cases, w.r.t. distraction from the symptoms of something, can be very much a good thing.

Do you know of any synonyms that have a more positive connotation?

Unfortunately, I do not.