In which the blogger returns and makes excuses

Wow.  If nothing else this past month may serve as a cautionary tale about letting yourself get out of habits.  Not that I was cranking out posts like clockwork before, but it's very hard to start something like this up again when inertia has turned against you.

I could make my entire blog about the experience and pitfalls of procrastination.  I'd have so much material.

But there are some reasons I got out of the habit in the first place.  At least, there were some interruptions in my life which serve as excuses for breaking my pattern.

Maybe this all starts with the ER visit.  Maybe not, though, because the ER visit really starts with the headache, and the accompanying numb feeling on the side of my face.  I, who have a superpower when it comes to worrying about things, was plenty worried about that, as it came and went over the course of three days or so.  The (presumably) unpowered nurse with whom I discussed these symptoms over the phone was also able to become very concerned.  So it came to pass that I was advised to go to the ER. 

And I did.

It's worth pointing out that when Girlfriend comes with me to the ER it is not a wholly unpleasant experience, as I learned through an OCD-related scare in 2009, just before we were dating.  True, I would rather be at Oasis sipping bubble tea.  (Oasis is the only place on the Ave to get bubble tea, by the way, if you can tell the difference.)  But there is something wonderfully clarifying about realizing that in a bad situation, there's really only one person who you want to be with you, and hey she's right there.

Medical professionals looked at me, and they administered the various symmetrical aptitude tests they use to look for strokes several times.  My blood pressure was high, but not abnormal for a neurotic trying to fight down the idea that he might be dying.  Actually, consciously, I was pretty relaxed through the whole process.  I knew better than my amygdala and wasn't afraid to tell it.

They did a CT scan of my head.  When the pictures were developed (around 10pm that night, some six hours after I had come in) I was told my brain looked perfectly fine.  Certainly no sign of a stroke or any other abnormality.  The people with medical degrees stopped worrying about me.  I got a piece of paper which containing the text, "Diagnosis: Headache."  All was fine, except...

There was a dot.  A brain dot.  The doctor who ordered the CT scan told me he was fairly certain it was a dot and not a tumor, which was the other thing it might be.  But you don't just let someone walk around with brain dot.  So he told me to get an MRI because the cure for brain dot is to take more pictures with a device that is less likely to put dots on your brain.

So I got the MRI a week or so later.  If I learned one thing, it's that MRI machines are loud.  It's like dwarven smiths are beating the images of your brain into iron plates just behind you.  Maybe that's what it was--they wouldn't let me move my head to look.  Anything could have been happening back there.  Maybe the magnetic resonance stuff is just to make everything sound scientific.  Because how can you convince a patient that dwarven craft will get better results than irradiating your head?  Irradiating your head just sounds like a good idea.

However it worked, it cured my brain dot.  My brain has been shown to be dotless.

So that's where some of my time went.  Another place my time has gone has been jujitsu.

I trained in jujitsu back in high school, and on-and-off through college, but fell out of it when I moved to Seattle.  But I missed it.  In fact I periodically had dreams about getting back to it.  So it's really a bit silly that it took me this long to find a place and join up.  But I did, finally, not without some urging from my doctor to do something with my body besides drape it on furniture, and use it to hold up my laptop.

So that's two nights a week gone.  The sudden loss of that time creates the sensation of having no time at all, even if my other evenings are free.  It takes some acclimatizing.

I am not proud to say that I have also been playing some Dwarf Fortress.

This week I have to file my taxes.  I guess it's a good thing that there's nothing particularly interesting going on there.

Here's hoping for more regular updates now.