Category: Uncategorized

(Average annual vacation days: Italy 42; France 37; Germany 35; Brazil 34; Britain 28; Canada 26; South Korea 25; Japan 25; U.S. 13.)

If I count my personal days as vacation days, I have 13/year, which I guess is the national average. Still, it seems a little shoddy compared to the Japanese, who get twice that, or the Italians, who apparently only work 10 months out of the year. I’m having trouble finding the exact numbers online right now, but I’ve read a couple of times that worldwide, America has the longest workweek of any industrialized nation, averaging 48hrs/week. European nations are said to average 30 or 31hrs/week. They work fewer hours per week, they take more than an entire month off every year, and they are more productive per capita than America. We are doing it all wrong over here.

If by fun you mean something totally unrelated to fun, then the migraine I am having right now is oh-so-fun! Like a Fun-O-Rama!

Have you ever had the kind of migraine that is foreshadowed with partial temporary blindness? Those are the best. For me, at first I’ll see a little patch somewhere in my vision of what looks at first like the “burn” from looking at a light too long, except that it’s flashing quickly through a variety of colors… Then that patch starts to grow, and as it grows I realize that I’m not so much seeing a patch of something fill my vision as much as my brain is trying to fill in the increasingly large lack of vision I am experiencing… Usually it effects both sides of my vision, but today I managed to lose 90% of the vision in my left eye and just a tiny patch of the vision (just above center) from the right eye.

The blindness usually doesn’t last longer than 30-60 minutes, and during that period, I usually don’t experience pain in my head. I do sometimes experience problems with coordination and with standing or walking without help. Then, as my vision clears up, the “blindingly” painful headache creeps in. I become more sensitive (in a pain way) to bright lights and sounds seem magnified. I have trouble concentrating. The pain is nearly overwhelming.

I know the problem is due to blood-flow restriction followed by the release of toxins when the blood-flow becomes unrestricted, so the only thing I could do is try to take plenty of deep breaths from the moment I relaize I’m losing my vision, to try to get oxygen to where it needs to be to keep my brain functioning and maybe help reduce the effects of the migraine. Now, I have a pretty good tolerance to pain, so even when experiencing something as sever as this, I am still able to function on some levels. Like, I can sit up, and I can still read and think (though slower than normal, and again, sometimes confused). I’m not sure I’d trust me to ride a bike at the height of one of these headaches, since I usually have trouble keeping my balance just standing. I found a hat to cover my eyes, but they still feel like they’re bleeding. Trying to take tech support calls is almost ridiculous. The glow of the CRT hurst my eyes; I have to type with my eyes closed.

FYI, the blindness cleared up around 11:30, and the headache is stll roaring. I’m hoping that it has cleared up or reduced acceptably before I am supposed to get on my bike at 3. Typing this has been a slow-going chore, but has distracted me from the headache a little.

So, I found the link to The Kill Everyone Project while reading the online comic Real Life (which I highly recommend). Then I started helping kill everyone. You should be able to see my progress here. You should sign up and help out. It’s for a good cause. Really.

It’s sad, but I can’t really take a nap on my lunch break to try to make the rest of the workday more bearable. I don’t have a car to go nap in, and whereas some employees could get away with curling up under their desks for a quick nap, I understand that my snoring is apparently a thing of wonder and fright, and is not a safe thing to subject unsuspecting strangers to. (It may in fact, now that I think about it, be the reason for more than one breakup that I didn’t quite understand…) So, while I don’t feel exactly as bad as I did a couple of hours ago, my eyes are complaining at every chance they get and I keep experiencing headaches bordering on the level of migraines. Luckily the headaches seem to come and go. More luckily, the day seems to be going by pretty quickly, though that may be because I’m aleep for 1/3 of every second.

So upon further consideration, I realize that lately I have been in what would be considered the “Manic” phaze of a bi-polar disorder (if I had one, which seems unlikely since I’m able to function in society without traditional treatment). I have more energy and motivation to start new projects and get good work done on outstanding projects. I re-arranged my living room furniture all-of-a-sudden the other day. I painted two new paintings (though I have a couple hours work left to do on one of them that I need to go to an art supply store to get a certain supply before I can continue) Sunday night. I wrote a 2500 word treatment Monday night for the short film I want to produce, and have only been having more ideas and details about how I want to re-write it since then. I have posted as many words on this site so far this week, with who knows how much more yet to come.

Also, I haven’t been making entirely rational decisions, including the sorts of decisions that maximize my waking hours to the detriment of my health. Still smart enough to take my vitamins in the morning though, which is better than I can say for myself when I’m on the “depression” side of the coin, but I still need to get rest. I think that my exhaustion stems not just from my lack of sleep, but from my extra exertions from trying to get so many different things done. I’m just glad I’ve been able to keep myself from riding my bike all over town. Who knows what state I would be in if I’d been riding for hours/day for the last couple of days?

So, as always, what I need to do is manage myself more carefully in any phase. The real “bi-polars” are dispensed medication that manages their mania and depression for them, usually leaving a very flat emotional and creative landscape. I have worked for years (successfully, in my opinion) to keep myself from pushing myself too hard when I am manic, and to keep from pushing myself over the edge when I am depressed. Still, I do what I can to make as much use of my mania as possible, usually making detailed plans for continued production that I can carry out in any state and managing a creative explosion so that I produce many/brilliant works without allowing myself to neglect my other responsibilities. I also do what I can to make as much of my life as I can while depressed; I continue my work on the plans I set forth while manic (like continuing to produce comics intermittantly during October after the manic burst that created nearly 100 comics in a couple weeks in September, for instance), though often at a slower pace.

In either case, I have introduced certain elements to my life that make every day and every week routine to a certain extent. I work a job where I am scheduled for the same hours every day, and the same days every week. I attend Beer Club most Thursdays. I do my laundry on the weekend. I eat breakfast every day. I prepare and eat dinner most days around 6. I select primetime TV shows on every day of the week but Thursday to watch, so that even if I’m feeling to down/lazy to get up off the couch, just getting to primetime everyday begins to bring me back into my routine, and back on track. I know that they’re simple things, everyday things that many people have in common, but I think that is part of what makes them so easy that I can keep doing them even when I feel like it isn’t worth the effort to go on living my life. They ensure that I’ll have clean clothes to wear and something to look forward to at the end of the day besides just going home and passing out. They ensure that no matter what day of the week it is, no matter what time of the year it is, I know there’s something to look forward to, some small reason to go on. Also, they mean that I’ve got a regular routine of things to do that interrupts my manic activity and brings my overactive mind back to reality for a little while.

Well, my mind is wandering now, so I don’t feel that I should continue to try to be coherent on this topic. Still, I know I’ll go home at 3 and come back tomorrow by 6. I know I’ll eat breakfast in the morning, even if something all-too-pressing keeps me from sleeping tonight and I wake up late tomorrow. I know I’ll do what I can tomorrow night to attend Beer Club, though I may end up bringing pads of paper to jot down ideas while I’m there. And, I know that eventually I’ll come down again, the mania will dissolve and all of a sudden I will find myself barely able to move. And my life will still go on.