15 Megs of Fame




Diaryland is da bomb I just *have* to tell you how much this all sucks. Who're these other people he's writing about? Who's the freak writing this, anyway? What's gone before. What's going on right now? Where do *you* visit on the web? What're you building right now?


New! Search this site:



Subscribe to the notify list for announcements of updates and changes




Buy Blue


Make me a friend on Twitter.





Another smart-assed remark from Mike
It's a lost cause
22:50:00 on 1999-11-09

I'm currently watching the little ICQ flower spin and spin in my system tray.

Is it just me, or has ICQ been extremely unreliable lately? Considering there are a lot of people that I tend to contact via ICQ (as do a lot of people!), this is a Bad Thing�.

Maybe it's time for an open, distributed ICQ server infrastructure or something... or how about the IETF define an open messaging protocol?


When I started this journal, I told myself that I wasn't going to whine like I had been doing for months, and I wasn't going to write about my daily life, because I don't really have an interesting life on a day-to-day basis.

Most of what people have always found "interesting" about me has gone on between my ears, not in my day-to-day life. I've always been an observer, a commentator, a recorder, an analyst. When I finally get motivated to do something, it's because nobody else will do it, or nobody else sees the wisdom in doing it, or I think it's something only I can do.

Unfortunately, I don't seem to be in quite the place of stability or confidence to act, much less have a whole lot going on up there right now. I haven't even been observing the world around me very much, listening to the news, answering my email (my apologies to those of you who haven't received replies in days; I've been working on some of the replies that haven't been made in months the last couple days).

I guess, in short, I saw my journal as a scrapbook for information and items, a notebook for ideas, a collection of information in various states of processing, raw data for me to build the tools and organization around that I wanted. Instead, it's become a constant gripe session, but I guess that's the state I'm in right now.

Currently, I have a number of relatively long entries in various states of completion or planned in my mind, where I describe ideas, views, my interests and how my past got me here, and all that sort of thing. But I just haven't found the inspiration to finish some of them.

I've started to think about doing a new site to organize all that information, and maybe not even just for myself, but for many people, perhaps a community site. (This goes with a strange idea I have about a new business model for a high-tech startup. Yet another thing I wanted to write about; I would be surprised if it hadn't already been done, though, to tell the truth.)

I have been doing some positive things. I've been taking the "magic herbs," as Gurugrrl and I call various over-the-counter remedies for depression and other ailments that we are taking (short writing break, while I take them now, in fact). I haven't been walking, but I need to; the change back to standard time has made it somewhat inconvenient.

How to form your very own
Silicon Valley corporation

Step 1: Go to Menlo Park. Find a tree.
Step 2: Shake the tree. A venture capitalist will fall out.
Step 3: Before the venture capitalist regains its wits, recite the following incantation: "Internet! Electronic Commerce! Distributed Enterprise-Enabled Applications! Java!"
Step 4: The venture capitalist will give you four million dollars.
Step 5: In 18 months, go public.
Step 6: After you receive your check, go back to Menlo Park.
Step 7: Find a tree.
Step 8: Climb it.
Step 9: Wait.


My friend from SiliValley sent me this. All I could reply was, "it's this easy, 'eh?"

He said not quite that easy anymore, but if you have a serious product or project...

Gosh! What am I doing in Texas, then?

(I also think this assumes I'd want to become an angel investor...)

I am slowly reestablishing some contact with people. The latest is a forty-something guy who lives in Silicon Valley that I know only by the 'net. It's like I'd never been gone, we fell right back into our multithreaded, rapid-fire, high-bandwidth discussions of what he's doing (he left his job of more than a dozen years with a company to form a new company with his ex-boss (egads, sounds too familiar) doing consulting work for other companies, and commuting down to southern California) and what I might want to do (he's warning me off a certain "vulture capital" firm, because it financed the buyout of the company that he and his ex-boss came from. Horror stories abound).

I actually picked up a book the other night and read a chapter without my mind wandering every page, or the story upsetting me because anything that was remotely like something that I've had go on in my life bringing back bad memories.

I've been actually talking through things with Gurugrrl. This is actually a big step for us, so don't laugh. [smirk]

I've actually been in a really good mood, and I haven't written because I have had my mind going in a hundred directions at once, thinking about so many things. I was starting to try to organize my mind, write about some of the things I mentioned above, rather than constantly complaining about things going on in my so-called life. I just couldn't believe that things have been looking up, after all these months.

I guess that's what made me really upset when a few small things brought it crashing down today.


Nearly five months ago I went to get some help from the mental health authority in my county. I figured it was a mistake when I went, but I really wanted (okay, needed) the help, there were lots of people on my back to go do it, and I had this sudden urge to go, so I up and went at the moment before the notion passed. Torpedos be damned, right?

First major suckage point: it's in another town. Fair enough, I live pretty far north in my county, away from the coast, right near Houston. So I query Yahoo! for directions, get in the car and go. Apart from not actually following the driving directions along the way (once I got to a certain point, I was already on Highway 35 and that goes to Alvin, so why not wing it?) and getting lost, and driving in near-infinite road construction zones with no activity (yes, the same construction with no work going on that I complained about the other day; why didn't I go to the center in League City?), I pull into the parking lot around back and go in.

The receptionist's desk is probably 25 feet into the building. Strange place to put it, I thought. How many people use that 25 feet as a buffer to change their mind and turn around and leave? I know I almost did; maybe it's their evil, cunning plan. If she hadn't spoken out, I may have.

"Can I help you?" she said. You'd think with that dark hair she'd do something about that mustache. Yours shows as much as mine does. (I must have been in a bitter mood - I do hate driving, after all.)

(In a hushed tone:) "Yeah. I don't know the procedure, but I'd like to talk to know what I need to do to see someone for counseling."

"Oh, you want to see someone for counseling?" What, are you deaf? Can you shout that a little louder? Ohmigawd, what am I doing here, anyway?

"Uhhh... yeah." Get a grip, Mike.

"You need to go through intake. Someone will be with you in just a minute. Please have a seat."

So far, so familiar. Well, except when I was at the university counseling center, I got lots of the deer-in-headlights looks from other people in the waiting area, and they didn't let me leave for six hours because I was a wreck when I finally stumbled in there.

So I wander to the waiting area. I start to look at the surroundings and my gaze falls on a printed Plexiglas plaque on the wall listing donors, the board of directors, dedications, what have you. The facility was built in 1992. I wonder to myself if it was just remodeled, because it looks like it was built six months ago. Apparently it doesn't see a lot of use, which seemed somewhat strange (at the time).

I begin to wonder what's up with a public facility that should probably see a lot of use, when I hear a whisper, "yeah, that guy used to sit in front of me in drama class!" I look, and sure enough, it's somebody I went to high school with, albeit that I was a senior and she was a freshman. She closed the door to the room she was in, probably surprised I heard. (Well, that was a little unprofessional, y'know?)

(Me? In a drama class? Egads, yes. It's certainly not anything I'm proud of.

See, about three days before my senior year in high school was supposed to start, I get this call from the counselor's office telling me yadda yadda, summa cum laude, yadda yadda, want to graduate with honors, yadda yadda, got to take a full credit of fine arts.

Oh, come on, you're kidding, right? I have to drop AP Chemistry II so I can draw bowls of fruit or learn what it's like to become a tree just so I can get a designation of "graduated with honors" on my freaking transcript?

And yes, that's what they were telling me. I should have just taken Chem II, but hindsight is 20/20, blah, blah.

So I compromised. I took the first semester of Art I and then a one-semester drama class the next semester. It worked out okay because I had to take a semester of Spanish II, too (I dropped the after the first semester of honors Spanish II a year before because I wanted to go ahead and take trigonometry) and a course in special topics in math the first semester (fundamentals in linear and modern algebra (vectors and eigenvalues and groups, oh my!)). Geek-o-rama.

In retrospect, the funniest thing I can remember from seeing this girl after all this time is that I thought I was the only one who still had the same hairstyle that I had then. I can get away with it - my hairstyle is traditional part-on-the-side Ward Cleaver, but honey, the '80s just don't look good on you anymore!)

My flight instinct kicked in and I sat down on the other side of a support column and picked up one of the barely-thumbed magazines, one that had at home from a complimentary subscription courtesy of our hardware vendor while I was the Benevolent Dictator of Technology at my last job ("I bought Compaq and all I got was a bunch of headaches and this lousy magazine"; what's more, the subscription has run out), but haven't had the heart to read the article on digital cameras. (ObAdvice: if you don't like your job and companies send you offers for free stuff, always have it sent to your home address. That way, you are pretty sure to still get it. A good way to tell if you don't like your job is if the turnover rate there is over 80% per year, either due to people leaving for greener pastures or due to the paranoid delusions of the owner.)

After a few minutes this tall guy who looked not entirely unlike a younger Larry Byrd without the huge Adam's apple came out toting a clipboard. He sits down and tells me a bit about the place, and starts to ask these questions.

"Have you ever received treatment before?" I tell him briefly about my UH experience, but don't bother to tell him about the few times I'd been in my childhood.

"Do you hear voices?" Raise eyebrows, rumple brow, perk up ears. "Uh, nooo."

"Do you know what the date is?"

"The fourteenth."

"Of what?"

"June."

I was waiting on him to ask me what year it was. If he did, I was going to tell him 2375, roughly the current Julian calendar year in the Star Trek universe. (In retrospect, I should have told him it was stardate 52814.5, I just beamed down and was looking for Starfleet Command, maybe I'd have gotten some help then.)

"Do you ever have hallucinations or visions?" I didn't like where this was going. They don't want people who are "just" depressed or bipolar, they only treat mental illnesses the community would consider "scary," like oh, say, schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder. I sighed and replied "no."

At least I got to say yes to strange appetite and problems sleeping.

Finally, Mr. Byrd wrapped it up, telling me that he was going to put me on a three-month (well, that's what they said then) waiting list so I can come back for a three-hour intake session. He suggested that I not get my hopes up, and gave me a list of other potential resources (largely dead ends), because their center didn't have enough funds to help everybody, so I may have to look into state resources, even though they would cost me nearly what a private psychiatrist and/or psychologist would cost. What a guy!

You know, they must lose a lot of patients during the waiting period. What if I were suicidal? You know what? He never asked that. Then again, I don't want to be put in a straightjacket and institutionalized, so I better neglect to admit those feelings.

So add another data point. This wasn't anything like my experience with the university's counseling center. Of course, I don't remember too much about that experience, because I was at the end of my rope and the knot was coming undone, sitting there using up a box of tissues and everybody in the place making sure I wasn't about to run over to one of the physics buildings and jump off.


Well, I waited the three months they told me to wait. When the three months was up, I called them up to see if I'd just missed their call or something.

"Well, it looks like we're only up to April callbacks. It'll be at least another month and a half." Thanks for nothing.

Once my ninety days were up... I didn't even bother calling. I figured they'd just tell me another three weeks or something. Why bother? To play patsy for the sadistic streak of the county?


Yesterday they called me. Of course they'd pick now to call me.

I mean, things have been looking up. They did warn me not to expect much, they only treat the most "severe" cases. And of course, now, if I am doing okay, then they certainly wouldn't see me, would they? This has all been a farce.

I wasn't exactly sure why the whole deal with the call from the mental health center was upsetting me, but it was. I guess it seemed futile. But one call couldn't make me this agitated. I wasn't sure what was bothering me; I have been complaining and griping to no end about everything from traffic to the temperature of my oven-fried chicken, and everything that I tended to take in stride or even made me smile a little has been driving me up the wall.

I was chatting with Gurugrrl (or being a pest, it's hard for me to tell these days); she thinks partly it's because I've been an "ear" for people again, trying to help them, but keeping my feelings and thoughts inside because I didn't want to add to anybody else's burden with my petty problems. That may be, I can see that possibility.

She thinks I should cut back, but I hate to tell people no. People need somebody, and sometimes, poor them, I might be all they have. I figure if people are that desperate, then this must be their last ditch, so I can't let them down.

Also, I'm stressing myself out. I guess, when I feel better, I want to get back into the swing of my life, or a semblance of what I thought my life would be like. I tend to put a lot of pressure on myself. Unfortunately, my energy level hasn't caught up with the ambition yet, so I get upset with the disparity when the spirit is willing, yet the flesh is weak.

Not to mention, after I let Gurugrrl go last night, I felt somewhat better, but as soon as I went into the kitchen I got a healthy dose of reality right in the face. Moogie was in the kitchen cooking something for the Thanksgiving luncheon they were having at work the next day. I asked her if she was okay, she looked a little upset, and she said, "no, I'm okay, I just need sleep."

"Oh, I thought maybe you were hungry, you didn't eat much." The peas I made with dinner tasted... funny. Like the last ones I made from the same grocery store. We probably won't buy them anymore, they just taste strange.

"No, I'm just always tired, because I can never sleep!" she yelled at me. Instant implication - I keep her awake. I get creative around 10:00 PM, so I stay up, and not liking to be Troglodyte Boy, I of course leave the lamp next to my desk and Gillian on. But it shines down the hallway.

Any moderately intelligent monkey would think, "he doesn't have a door, so I could shut mine." But apparently this simple solution escapes her.

I just stalked off down the hall, turned off the light and crawled into bed. Heaven forbid I try to fight my moods, be creative, be a person.

I am really starting to think my life is pointless.


One of the engines of my World War II-vintage plane was smoking while we roared only a few dozen feet over the rooftops. I guess it had been hit by fire from one of the planes that was chasing us.

"We're losing number two!" I said as I flipped some switches to do something. (Apparently I did it because you see it in the movies all the time.)

"We have another one coming in," shouted my nondescript copilot as tracer fire flew past. "You might want to think about going in closer to the ground."

I complied, and we were traveling only ten feet or so over the houses. Our pursuers followed suit. I pulled up just in time to keep from hitting a chimney and a tree.

There was this annoying sound, like a bleebling screech. "What is that?!" Whatever it was was driving me mad. I stared at the dashboard looking for what was giving this horrible signal sound, looking up only to realize there was a steel power line tower directly in front of me.

I was awakened to the telephone ringing off the wall. (Well, okay, off the table.) I knew who it was, so I wasn't in a big hurry to get up; anyway, I was still wondering what was up with this weird dream and why I was dreaming I was flying an airplane (I never remember any airplane dreams before, although I certainly have had dreams of being chased).

After about ten minutes and another bleebling screech of a call, I get up to see who was calling, even though I already knew it was Moogie. There were five messages on the answering machine, including the one the day previous from the mental health facility. I grumbled and hit the play button play, immediately followed by the skip button to go to the second message.

All of them were Moogie, and, of course, what she had to say was A Dire Emergency�. She needed me to call her back immediately.

Against my better judgement, I called.

She had forgotten to leave a payment that I was supposed to drop off for her (another one of her errands that I get stuck with), so I had to drive all the way to the Medical Center to pick it up, and then drive all the way further south than home to make the payment. And, oh, by the way, since you're coming this way, bring the two buttermilk pies at home for the luncheon, too.

As I've said before, this is not the way to start my day, at least not in a good mood.

I wrap her pies up in foil, get dressed, and gradually make my way towards the door, after checking my email, reading some web links, checking everything conceivable online, and wasting all the time I can manage before driving into Houston to the Med Center.

Once I get to her building, I drive around and around the loading zones out front looking for enough space to wedge my car in. Finally I give up and just park in a tow-away zone, put on the emergency brake (if they tow it they're going to have to drag it) and consider putting a sign in the windshield that says "this car is protected by Smith and Wesson. It's your call." University of Texas police are a bunch of rent-a-cops anyway.

I run upstairs, drop off the pies in the dinin... er, conference room, pick up the envelope with the payment in it and start to head out, when I get waylaid by one of Moogie's cubicle-mates.

"Why don't you stay and eat with us?" she asks. "We have a ton of food."

"Y'know, I'm in a tow-away zone, and I need to go drop this off, and..."

"Come on, go park in visitor parking, we'll validate your parking ticket so you can get a token to get out." Somebody else walks up and nods in agreement.

You know, I can only guess what Moogie tells these people about me. The way she does me to my face, it can't be anything particularly good, and I don't feel like doing anything in front of these people to prove her right.

"I really can't, sorry." I step between them and walk down the hallway towards the elevators.


Instead, I end up driving to drop off her payment, and then once I get done doing that, I find myself driving around aimlessly.

Apparently, it's drag-asses or old folks' day out of the home out on the streets; nobody is going even the posted speed limit, it seems.

I pass the graveyard; there's hardly anyone out there. There are no pending funerals, since there aren't a crowd of people at the funeral home. I just can't make myself turn in, though. Now isn't the time.

I go to look for an album that I've been wanting since I saw the video on MTV while flipping channels at Kirk's. I drop by Best Buy (yes, that Best Buy, but thank goodness she wasn't there, I didn't need confrontation), and as usual, they didn't have what I wanted. At the last moment I decide not to go to another place to look for the album because I didn't really need to spend the money.

I ran through Arby's and picked up a chicken club combo, parked on the lot and ate it nearly choking on a piece of overcooked chicken, and flipped the channels, finding nothing worth listening to, as is par for Houston radio (read: bought and paid for by the same couple corporations on most of the dial).

None of this was helping my mood in the slightest.

In my new guise as Mr. Road Rage, I give up and head towards home, muttering at and flipping off Sunday drivers and weaving in traffic, and making a general menace of myself, I'm sorry to say. Fortunately, the trip was uneventful.

Once home, things settle into nice, even-handed despair. I checked the machine, and there were no new messages, just that one message I didn't want to return.

Instead of calling the center, I walked back to my bedroom and started fidgeting around online.

I read a bunch of email. I wrote some. I watched TV. Anything but call.

I talked to Crafty for a while, too. She had new observations on my mood; she seems to think I am environmentally-triggered, in that I can get into really good moods, but small effects can plunge me back into fairly blue funks easily.

Oddly enough, this harkens back to what my shrink at UH used to say. She always told me the best thing I could do for myself would be to get away from my family and maybe even Houston if I was this unhappy.

I don't know what to think about that, really. In theory, that would mean that changing my surroundings and circumstances of my life could go a long way towards making me happy and productive again. It gives me definite goals to work towards, changes to make, a hope to be "fixed." This is good news for me and my life, and maybe a life with Gurugrrl and doing the things I've wanted to do all my life.

This idea gives me pause, as well. Could it be that I am that I have the "artistic temperament?" I hate people like that; I think they just need to be slapped sometimes. What does that say about me? What does that say about my feelings or emotional states? What about my paranoia? My lifelong self-injury? If I am just a bundle of short fuses and personality disorders, shoot me now.


I finally called the mental health authority. Maybe part of the reason they don't have any money is that they gave me a toll-free number to call.

I called and asked for the lady who left the message on my machine. After a quasi-infinite wait, they scared her up and put her on the phone. She asked my name and wandered off to go get my file.

When she came back, she started asking me if I was still interested in an appointment.

"Well, yes..." I've only waited five months, goofball.

"What are your symptoms?"

I wanted to tell her if she could give me her email address I'd drop several months of writing on her, but I figured that'd get me nowhere fast, so I started to stammer around and tell her about sleeping problems, general low mood, irritability, mood swings, inability to perform basic tasks. That pretty much covered things, even though I wondered why I was explaining this to this woman, was she the doctor?

"Are you working right now?"

"Uhhh... no, not right now. I had a business until the very first of this year, but I left it. I haven't worked a regular job since October last year, but I've done some contract work since th..." She cut me off.

"How do you exist?"

I started to tell her that matter is bound up by the strong and weak forces, and that particles were basically forever, but protons may start decaying sometime later in the lifetime of the universe, but decided this would get me nowhere, ether.

"I live off my savings."

"Oh." I got the distinct impression that if we were sitting across a desk from each other, she would push her glasses down on her nose, put her hands together in a self-righteous way and peer at me disapprovingly. "You have to have some visible means of support. We have started to select patients based on an ability to pay so we can see more patients. If you assess as being unable to pay much, then we do have 590 more people in the waiting list."

"So what am I supposed to do? What do you want me to bring?"

"That's up to you, I just want you to keep that in mind. We have to justify our assessments to keep our funding, you understand."

In other words, have a job by Monday.

Yeah, well, if I was feeling good enough to be back out working again, maybe I'd not need you after all? It's bad enough I have to come hat-in-hand like a beggar to ask for your help. At heart, I'm a libertarian; it hurts my pride to ask anybody for anything, but I was making an effort to be of use to get past this, because I know if I don't, I'll never be anything worthwhile to anyone. But then you have to tell me that I'm too dysfunctional to get help?

I may just blow it off. I knew it was a waste. I'll always be like this.

restlessmind


Ancient history:
2013-03-01"You'll be stone dead in a moment!"
2007-08-07I covet fuck you money
2007-07-16My own long, dark tea-time of the soul
2007-07-11My internet experience is lacking
2007-07-10Coincidence



<< Before nowAfter now >>