So I threw out vegetables for the umpteenth time the other day. I buy such great food and then not eat it. So I got someone to cook for me. The pay: she eats for free. I’m a genius.
By the way, check out the only measuring cup in the Learned Sergeant’s armory. Be advised: Next level nerd achieved.
Paging Elon Musk:
“You do NOT go into space without Marines, ever.”
Yes, I just watched Prometheus.
No. It’s adderall. I’ve been hesitant to make this post for obvious reasons, but I feel rather compelled to in the off chance someone rolls onto this. It was reading personal stories that made me think this was something to look into.
I’ve had depression issues for about as long as I can remember. I’ve tried a handful of meds over the years to no avail. The closest thing I’ve ever had to resolve it has been drinking energy drinks. That would buy me a good hour or so of peace and then I’d sink again. Finally it was recommended by the ex-wife of all people that I may just have ADHD or something. I did some research online and finally decided to give this a try. It took 6 months and $800 from the time I floated the idea to a doc to when I finally got a prescription written.
Outside of books, adderall is the single greatest non-living thing to come into my life. My guns, my truck; nothing has had so positive on influence upon my life as adderall. Antidepressants didn’t work to fix my depression the way adderall did. I’m written up for 10mg twice a day. This is a pretty small dosage and normally I only take 1 a day. Many days I don’t take any.
Honestly I can’t say that it’s done a lot for any attention issues, but it has almost completely gutted any depression I’ve had. My whole life I’m managed with just crushing fatigue. I’ve been able to do what I must when I must, but rarely had the desire to do what I wanted. For most of my life, my days have been a fight to get out of bed and a desire to find my way back there when the working day is done. (John, you may know this as “doing laundry”) Adderall has relieved me of that. I do have attention issues, but the depression was 100 times more severe. The only place adderall has helped my attention was in, well, wanting to study rather than going to sleep.
I’ve only been doing this for a month, and I’m worried about building a tolerance (though my dosage is extremely low) so I probably don’t take as much as I should. I’ve always been hesitant about using meds, but this is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. Honestly, I’d rather lose out on the Bar for the rest of my life than to lose the energy that this has given me.
So my theory as it stands is that the depression has come from my lack of productivity. I’ve often put my personal value on the ability to produce (Atlas Shrugged anyone?) When I couldn’t focus or even find the energy to want to stay out of bed, my productivity suffered, causing a sinking of my self-worth.
So I just posted earlier this week that the one person I’ve never lost faith in is myself. Well…
… I still haven’t.
Look, when I was a teenager I used to box. Every once in a while I’d walk into the gym and my coach would overhear me complain about a bad decision I saw during that weekend’s fight. His answer was always the same: “Never let it go to a decision. If you really wanted to win, you’d knock that other fucker out.”
This applies to life as well. Presently, it applies to academics. I fell short at the finish line. I suppose I shouldn’t have declared victory early. I accomplished an incredible amount this semester. I’m proud of myself. I did everything I set out to do. I didn’t deserve how this ended. But, I let it go to a decision. I put it in the hands of the judges and in this life, unless you knock that other fucker out you have nowhere to point that finger but at yourself. I did better than I got credit for, but no one was out to get me. It’s just that sometimes you roll snake eyes. <–( Snake Eyes can beat you up. That’s the joke. Work with me people.)
I’m not going to sit here and tell you I did my best for two reasons: 1) Losers always whine about their best. Winners? Well…
2) The second reason is that this wasn’t my best. I tried hard. Really god damned hard. I put my heart and soul into this. I put my daughter to bed at 9:30 and stayed up doing homework until after 0300. But it wasn’t my best. There’s this thing called 0400. I could have stayed up until then. I spent a few weekends chasing tail rather than than reading about renvoi, depecarge, and the 2nd restatement of conflict of laws.
There was this fella a few years back you might have heard of. He liked to refer to himself as The Greatest. The first time he lost was when he met a Taggart Continental with a left hook named Joe Frazier. Like this last semester, it was a beautiful battle, but Ali lost when he let it go to the judges. (even though Smokin’ Joe was the better man that day and honestly did earn the decision)
Where to from here? Well, I’ve never quit anything before so I’m going to unfuck this JD malfunction most rickey tick.. I’m sure I’ll lose my job now, so that is unfortunate. So I’ll take the weekend off, defer what I can and salvage the money I’ve spent to prep myself for the Bar. But I’ll probably sit down with about $20 worth of Red Bull and dominos, grab a pad of paper and a nice green gel pen and reroute a new path to fortune and glory.
We lost a titan today. Ray Bradbury dead at 91.
I very rarely read a book more than once. In fact I’ve done so less than a half dozen times. There are so many incredible books out there that I just don’t re-read books. I often want to, but always find something new. Half of the books I have re-read have been Bradbury’s.
Farenheit 451 is my favorite book of all time. His books have been integral in the formation of who I am and what I believe. Setting aside Farenheit, go back to Junior High for a moment and recall The Martian Chronicles. As adults now we’d all be much richer to read many of those books that are so rusty from our youth. MC touched on racism, jealousy, loneliness, ambition, censorship, and despotic bureaucrats; we would do well to turn off what the politicians and the pundits tell us about these things and maybe see them on a cleaner slate.
Bradbury was also backbreakingly hilarious. <SPOILER> I remember a story in Chronicles where a man comes down from the mountains to find that everyone had left Mars and returned to Earth. He spends weeks pouring over every number in the phone book desperately trying to find another soul before he finally hears a voice: a woman’s. He races across the planet to meet her and discovers a foul, obese creature with chocolate cake all over her face. He then spends the remainder of the story running away.
I say it often enough: Sci Fi matters. It matters because of men like Bradbury.
A repost, but awesome(word on the street is that he saw and approved):
I’ve never understood the great fear of Sharia Law in America. Sharia is the Commerce Clause’s bitch.
The plan was 10 miles. I figured to hell with it and finished the run to Troy: 13 Miles. When I’m done running the beast at the end of the month I will never run more than 5 miles again.
If you want to know why we’ve gone soft as a people, consider the fact that I feel like I’ve accomplished something today.
Double so, the fact that the last 2 miles I was glad I was armed. The last few miles of the trail are out of sight of the highway. Does this mean I was concerned with wildlife? No. Aliens.
Seriously, if they did that to me, that guy would have found a 230 grain hole in him. I’m not kidding. I don’t joke around about aliens. Insert the scariest thing I’ve ever seen in a movie:
The average American anti-war protester, by paying his taxes, contributes more to killing members of al Qaeda than 10 voluntary, armed, die-hard Islamo-fascists do to killing American troops.
Posting has been slow due to some unforeseen problems. For reasons I’m not sure I’m not ready to discuss yet, I may not be sitting for the Bar. Then again, I might. Hell, I don’t know.
So, I’ve taken a couple days off of Bar study and will continue tomorrow. I’m in a situation where if I do not study for the Bar and resolve the problem I will be behind the power curve. However, if I do study for it and cannot resolve this situation, then I’m losing time I need to be out pumping gas or something to pay the bills.
So I’ve gotten the rug pulled out from under me at the last minute. Who cares? It has cost me 2 days of study time, but not a single thing more. It doesn’t take from what I’ve accomplished this semester, or in this life. I had a moment today where I looked at the position my ex-wife is in, then the fact that I’m sleeping on the floor in a ratty 2-bedroom apartment barely able to pay my bills. Cops were over about 0300 across the street in response to some gunfire. Nice. After probably 15 minutes of sitting here feeling sorry for myself and leaking a little sympathy juice a few thoughts entered my mind:
The first is that sure, I’ve been kicked back a few years in “status”, but not in stories or experience. My story is but in its opening chapters. How interesting would Ben Franklin’s story be if it didn’t begin with him coming to America penniless because he got rolled by a couple of hotties? Still interesting? Yeah okay, you win. But the second and more important story is something I’m sure you’d approve of John (since you’ve probably pointed it out to me at some point)
Two monks were making a pilgrimage to venerate the relics of a great Saint. During the course of their journey, they came to a river where they met a beautiful young woman — an apparently worldly creature, dressed in expensive finery and with her hair done up in the latest fashion. She was afraid of the current and afraid of ruining her lovely clothing, so asked the brothers if they might carry her across the river.
The younger and more exacting of the brothers was offended at the very idea and turned away with an attitude of disgust. The older brother didn’t hesitate, and quickly picked the woman up on his shoulders, carried her across the river, and set her down on the other side. She thanked him and went on her way, and the brother waded back through the waters.
The monks resumed their walk, the older one in perfect equanimity and enjoying the beautiful countryside, while the younger one grew more and more brooding and distracted, so much so that he could keep his silence no longer and suddenly burst out, “Brother, we are taught to avoid contact with women, and there you were, not just touching a woman, but carrying her on your shoulders!”
The older monk looked at the younger with a loving, pitiful smile and said, “Brother, I set her down on the other side of the river; you are still carrying her.”
Now, I’ve been knocked back by the divorce. I may well be knocked back by this new development (Waiting is the hardest part). So yeah, I’ve had my setbacks, but there’s one thing I have never in my life lost faith in: myself. Even in my saddest days I’ve always believed my best days were ahead of me. I may well be a Pollyanna; I’m very likely to some degree delusional. A large part of my depression has been intimately connected to my belief in myself and the lack of doing anything about it. But there’s something incredible in each and every one of us. The only thing that separates me from the rest is that I haven’t lost my belief in that. So yeah, I’m a renegade. A renegade of self love (yeah, let’s not go with that).
But you know why I believe in myself? Because I’m moving this machine around and I’ve seen what it can do. It’s the machine that swam the reservoir in the middle of November. It’s the machine that lead some of the most incredible human beings I’ve ever known in a warzone. It’s the machine that has never stayed down. It’s the machine that is pressing through this Bar study and running 10 miles tomorrow.
There are a LOT more setbacks in my future. But as Santiago said, “A man can be destroyed, but not defeated.” So far, I’m neither. This guy…fucking Unbreakable. Also, kind of a prick. It’s a grunt thing. All hail the infantry.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K626gMvu2ds&feature=related
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