Cha-cha changes

It’s been awhile since I’ve updated my blogs; for this I am deeply sorry.
Recent shifts in priorities have put writing on a back burner; and to be honest more then just my priorities have shifted.

My health has made a good comeback. I have at excellent control over the migraines now. Everything is getting better in some measure. I came to realize that the path my life was on simply wasn’t moving the way it should. The progress was too slow and I felt isolated from the world while trying to perfect my technique as a writer. My true strength as a writer is in my ability to observe what others overlook; in isolation I see far less and consequently become enamored with trivialities and abstractions, so I took a local retail job. Normally it would be way beneath my pay scale, but since I also get commissions I can put both my knowledge of human psychology and technology to work (and the possibility of make a killing in sales: which thus far I have.)

So no more freelance writing, all the writing I do from now on is game design, novel writing and blogging. I still have some projects that are moving along nicely and when the time is right I’ll reveal them on one of my blogs. In the meantime I’ve been working on catching up with several smaller projects….

For example: I’m updating all my old blog posts! Yes that means spell check will be employed this time. I’m also removing some stuff that might be considered offensive and stuff that is too personal for other people. In all honestly I never actually thought I’d write in the blog and consequently didn’t put any effort into it. I still “really” don’t pour my effort into it. But at least I’m more… considerate now. In the future I think I'll write more consistantly as I have more creative energy to expend.

For those who have asked: The novel and module are on hiatus until I finish the first project on my list: The re-write of my setting sourcebook. To me nothing is more important to effective storytelling then milleu and back-story. I felt that without a more complete sense of the world my characters lived in I couldn’t write the kind of story I had planned for.

The last piece of news is we adopted a new kitten named Warren; although his breed is Russian Blue he has kind of a light gray color. He’s playful but still learning that mountain dew is for people and toes shouldn’t be bitten. I have to admit I find his playful and loving personality quite refreshing. Once you have earned an animal’s trust it gives its love completely and without hesitation. It’s also truly great bonus that he is named after Warren Moons of Ogre Battle fame; and it really suits him with the gray wizened look and all.

More tomorrow; ciao.

Hormones and Chi

There is a forgotten art to the control of the mind and body.
I started like many did in my youth; I read a book about Harry Houdini that documented his ability to control his breathing and tolerance. A little known fact is that Houdini was terrified of water and considered it a personal challenge to publicly conquer his fear.
I had modest talent in that area, no. My expertise was pain and metabolic control.
I can think of a dozen examples when I have performed under extreme pain, oftentimes to my medical detriment, mostly as an oldschool dumb-as-rocks way of trying to prove myself.

Migraines are not pain in the sense I have dealt with in the past. Willpower does not make a migraine go away, meditation and diet change have very minimal results. I can see them coming but I can do nothing to stop them or cure them why then arrive.
So I commited myself to research until I could find some kind of answer.

I searched a variety of medical papers, a few mainstream articles and generally made a nerd of myself in the area. One of the things I noticed was a pronounced connection in many papers to hormones. It appears that migraines are indeed linked to hormonal imbalances (like many neurological problems.).
This reminded me of a paper I read several years back about the connection between the Taoist concept of “chi” and the daily hormonal cycle.

It was interesting but inconclusive, the Taoist “hotpoints” in the day coincided with peaks in hormone levels. Diet, meditation and tai chi also had very visible impacts on hormone levels. The theory of the paper was that the entire concept of “chi” or energy was merely the subtle control of hormones.
I rejected the thesis of the paper, one because it had no proof and two because science cannot proof faith. I have seen and felt energy in ways that it is beyond science to explain. But I admit the meat of the paper was compelling enough to remember all these years later.

Lets say your energy affects your body. Hormone levels would be one affected area. It might be possible with experimentation to control the hormones enough to prevent or even cure the migraines. It even explains the depression and mood swings that follow and precede each migraine attack.

Like many Taoists who practice consistently I have some degree of control over my bodies energy. I can’t snuff out candles with my fingertips or choke snide officers from another galaxy but I can profoundly change my body. I can metabolize faster, I can exceed my physical limits, and I can transcend pain and fatigue. Maybe I can control my hormone levels too.

I cannot with words describe how tired I am of being sick. I am literally completely disgusted by it. I want to sleep 8 hours without horrible mindbreaking nightmares. I want to close my eyes and not have those nightmares haunt my waking sight. I want to go to work and drive my car and go out and have fun like everyone else. Instead I am trapped inside avoiding the sunlight like a bug under a rock. I have changed so much in the last few years. But the core of who I am has stayed the same, my beliefs have been scorched by doubt and insecurity and neglect but they survived. My friendships have endured incredible stress and I have lost many of the things and people I loved.

It is for those last remaining; precious things that I have to commit myself to this.

One Hit KO

Several people have commented on the lack of activity. I feel I should explain the situation and remedy it as quickly as possible.

Two weeks ago I started getting headaches. Not minor headaches. Full-blown migraines.
My entire life I’ve rarely ever gotten headaches, and never migraines. I took some painkillers and went back to my day. Later that night I attended a LAN party and nearly passed out. Since then I have been in a cycle of slowly rising headaches followed by crippling migraines. As I have no health insurance and significant debt from my previous health problems I cannot see a doctor.

For me the migraine is perhaps the ultimate and most potent enemy. Years back when I was stronger I could simply will away a minor headache or shut down pain completely in an injured limb. It was one of a variety of interesting abilities I picked up in my life. Another was the ability to control my heart rate, body temp, breathing and metabolism.
Such gifts are wonderful and incredibly useful in many situations. They are however just that: Gifts.

They are gifts that require a certain outlook on life, they require a strong spirit and a soul free of artificial evils (I.E. Greed, lust, sloth. Etc). I became unworthy of them when I slipped into a selfish and ultimately self-damaging path. It requires an unconventional combination of perfectionist and zen guru to avoid excesses and focus on goals and self improvement.

At the LAN party I was playing Warcraft 3 when my migraine struck so fiercely that I nearly passed out. Warcraft 3 isn’t a regular game to me; I’m a champion at it. Literally.
I was playing my best race, with my beat hero on a map I knew very well.
The harder I would focus the more intense the migraine became. I was ambushed, pincer-ed and destroyed. It was by the barest of margins that I slipped my workers away and rebuilt.

My teammate was dead, my base was destroyed and my two heroes were level 4 and 3. My enemies (people I taught to play, so hardly weak) had 7 heroes over level 6 between the 4 of them. Each skirmish, each calculation turned the screws again until my body began to convulse. This would be where most people give up. But I kept building, kept scouting and kept planning.

Finally my chance arrived, In a spectacular battle I killed 5 enemy heroes, 2 full armies and the bases they were guarding. If I had been at full health it would’ve been an impossible feat. But with my arms violently shaking and my eyes filled with searing pain it surpassed anything within human capacity. I won that incredible but meaningless victory. Shortly afterwards the pain forced me to collapse.

The reason migraines are so awful is they get worse when you concentrate. The intense mental focus required for RTS games is one example of something not wise to do under a migraine attack. The harder I pushed myself the worse the migraine became. It might seem silly that I endured so much pain because of a game. But I feel that if anything is worth doing it is worth doing well. You should never quit something you love and you should never give up.

The gift to surpass your human limits, even for a short time is one that I lost from my own folly. It seems a tad unusual but I was able, for that one battle to surpass my limits in every way. I have freed myself from that terrible and haunting pain by the strength of my own spirit.

Up to this point I haven’t been able to write very well, but I am slowly learning to understand and control the headaches enough that I can resume a normal work and play.If I am right, willpower and soul are enough to overcome anything. Anything.

Forgiveness

I’ve come down off the roller coaster of the last few weeks very successfully.
Since I am only now getting back to the work I love (and hate) I have had a lot of time to think and meditate on what path I walk now.

Some people have misunderstood my earlier blogpost relating to death. I did not in fact try to kill myself; rather I didn’t particularly want to stay alive. My body had maxed out on pain and I simply wanted to move on. It was a peaceful almost serene feeling. I didn’t feel bad about the things left undone, or the people I would leave behind. I felt completely detached from everything in the world.

Reality has such gravity to me after that. Everything seems more real then it was before. Colors are more vibrant and sharp; food has more taste and aroma. The unworldliness I brushed upon changed me in ways I didn’t notice immediately.

The second thing I noticed was an argument I had online just recently. I asserted that anyone who neglected spirituality was broken as a human being. I debated with great fervor the existence of god and of deeper spiritual meaning. While I’ve long believed in god and of deeper spiritual meaning, I never forcefully asserted it to a non-believer. I felt oddly compelled to do so in this case.

It feels like the experience has allowed me to grow spiritually in ways I hadn’t realized or expected. While emotionally I feel disconnected still, spiritually I feel calm and fulfilled.
If I am becoming something else I am doing so at without my perception. My thoughts and feelings appear the same, yet I am most certainly not the same person I was months ago. The rush of thoughts on the matter overwhelmed me and it is only now I can speak of them with clarity.

I started to work out again, I’ve started to meditate and practice my Qigong again. My body is slowly forgetting the terrible pain it has endured. I feel oddly alive to stretch my legs and run again. I appreciate the beauty of the trees and stars once more. It took death to fully understand that I was taking life for granted. I don’t think I will ever hate the sensation of a good midnight run.

I cannot be free of all burdens however. Some weigh upon me so heavily that I feel compelled to struggle and free myself. One is forgiveness.

It can be said that I have great emotional endurance, that I can withstand incredible amounts of punishment before I finally yield. That endurance was pushed to it’s limited and broken over a year ago when I first became ill. Since then I have had limited emotional strength in my life. It was not one cut, but a hundred biting stinging wounds that bled me of my strength.

When you hold in hurt and anger it consumes you like a fire. Repressed feelings become deviant and unhealthy… sometimes they lead to obsession, apathy or deeper more unsettling deviance. In the past I sought forgiveness and to mend the small wounds. When you do not keep attending to them the wounds reopen and bleed anew. They are not given a full chance to heal. Many of those wounds now close, I have dozens and dozens left to fix. The hardest ones however are impossible.

Trust and forgiveness are precious and powerful things. I feel that before I move on I must attempt to do as much as possible. In my spirit I feel that I it is somehow vital that I repair all my relationships, from the smallest to the most deepest. Mostly I have been successful, but a few holdouts refuse to talk to me, or are outright hostile. Some of been tricked into believing I am more sinister then I am in truth. Miscommunication and false information have made an unflattering mockery of my true self.

More spiritual? Yes. But my heart still bleeds when it is cut. It is an emptiness to overcome with friendship and love. I am most tired. Perhaps I’ll clear this up tomorrow. Goodnight.

Veiled Threats

I received some criticism after my last blogpost, much of it personal in nature.
It seems some people thought of my honest words as manipulative and my motivations selfish.
For quite a long time I’ve ignored when people attack me, I’ve ignored scathing attacks on both my character and quality of my work. (I can accept the latter but not the former.)
I have even ignored obvious attacks on my personal life, many of which came at the benefit of my rivals. I have come to people with frank honesty and myself been deceived into trust and then betrayed.

This e-mail however was little more then a veiled threat.
The apathy surrounding me in recent months has done nothing to help. Apathy caused by the heartbreak surrounding both my social and spiritual life. I had no real desire to lash out at detractors before. That changed. Whoever this is… and I have my ideas; is going to regret everything he has said.

I do not take well to threats. Even subtle ones.

Still Alive

I apologize for the lack of updates over the past few weeks. It has been a poorly concealed fact that my health has been poor the last few months. Those closest to me have known the truth: That an infection was eating my brain and nervous system. It's been removed and I'll make a full recovery.Earlier I wrote a lengthy description of what happened. Ultimately I decided that a detailed account of my suffering would further no ends. There is only one event that I feel should be told. I had to wait 10 days for my operation.

Around the seventh day the pain, hallucinations, isolation and emotional pain finally took it’s toll on me. My body grew cold and my heart slowed. The life slowly drained from my body. My breathing grew shallow. I knew instinctively that my body was dying. Part of me wanted to let go; I wanted to leave that body filled with pain. But I couldn’t go. People who loved me called me back.
I teetered on the edge for a while. Several times I lapsed into unconsciousness only to be shaken awake again.

I could not in my heart find a reason to live. Over the past two years most of them had disappeared. I ignored the slow destruction of my soul until precious few things matter to me anymore.
But still I could not ignore the pleading of a few who would not let me go.
It is a strange thing to say, but I was not afraid of death. When I was young I feared the certainty of death with such fervor; when I became a Taoist I looked at death as merely the start of a new adventure.

All of these things swirled around in my mind, until I remembered a quote from the Tao Te Ching. “The sage is filled with life so death cannot enter him.”
I had abandoned the fullness of my life. The realization that I had given up before I had finished struck me hard. And so I took the deepest breaths that I could, and I filled my soul with life.

Two days later (and 1 day before I was scheduled) I had my operation.

Given time the scars will heal, the debts will be repaid, the soul will become whole again. I didn’t have a startling epiphany about the true purpose of my life. I received no insight into the universe. Nothing-profound happening to me except one thing: I’m still alive.

I guess I lied when I said I gained nothing profound from my experiences. Everything that I was before, all that I had lost in pain and torment over the past years came pouring back to me. I gained nothing new. Just things I should’ve remembered all along.
For those interested I’m starting two more blogs soon. One will be about my local political work and the other will be an analyzed view of the gaming industry (and other related fields). On top of that I have a professional grade comic and some other stuff coming down the pipes, plus a redesign (and subsequent editing/reformatting) of this blog. I’m not making it a secret. I need to pay off my medical bills.