Pilot's Log

What do you think it says about the economy when a business sends you a copy of LAST YEAR'S catalog?

I just got a notice that TennCare (the state's medical assistance program, which is paying the bills for my mental health examination and psychotherapy) is dropping me effective the end of April, because they claim that I make too much money. But what they claim as my monthly income exceeds my total for 2007!

I'm not going to fight it, as by the time the coverage runs out, I'll probably have my new job in North Carolina and my financial situation will change. And maybe I won't need state-based mental health insurance.

That nightmare the other night was just the start of a very nerve-racking depressive episode the whole day (Monday). To attempt to burn it out of my system, I drove to Maryville and Alcoa, just for the change of scenery. It didn't quite work, but I was worn out enough to take a nap later that afternoon.

At this point in my life, there is nothing that I want so badly I feel the need to make any sort of real effort towards it. The years just blast past my face like water from a firehose. I don't have the resources to do much of anything worthwhile. I just scold myself inside, with the words that if I were truly intelligent, I would have invented a way out of my circumstance. I've had a decade and a half, and wasted every second of it. But I can't see how I could have done any better.

I'm still working through it all. I don't know what, if anything, can come of it.

FP

After helping set up overnight and doing more this morning, and then over an hour working the registration table, I took a quick circuit of the vendors and decided to go back to the house.

1) I was too tired, stressed and worn to have much fun.
2) I didn't have much money on me, so I couldn't justify buying anything. Even though a few places had things I'd lusted after for years. With my luck, they'll get reissued by Christmas.
3) I didn't have any models to enter or display, so there was no point in me hanging around.
4) After the disaster of 2006, I could not, in good conscience, judge. Judging is a tougher gig than it looks. First couple times I did it, it worked. Last couple...don't wanna talk about it.

I don't bother to travel to (or enter in) other clubs' model competitions mostly because I don't build scale models to replicate real-life objects but to explore concepts. And partly because I haven't thought much of my technique. And partly because I don't care for trophies per se. (Pay a $10 entry fee for a chance to take home a marble brick or two? The thrill of victory?--In this business, nobody really cares! As for odds...projecting the number of entries versus the number of prize catagories, the odds would be about one in ten for winning a trophy in our show. Hardly worth it IMHO.) For me, the club is mainly about socializing and trading information. I don't need the show; it's just something the club does.

I just want to get back to the workbench and finish what I already have in progress.

FP

Today, the National Public Radio program "All Things Considered" had a very interesting and enlightening segment about a discovery that autism seems to be rooted in abnormalities in the portion of the brain that on one side governs memory and the other governs reaction to specific emotions...namely fear and anticipation.

The more I heard, the more I was convinced that I do in fact have autism. Whether this is Asperger's Syndrome or something else, I don't know as yet. But still...

1) I was born premature.
2) I come from an area of the country that at the time of my birth and childhood was notorious for the level of pollution in the environment, and lived in older houses where I could have been exposed to substances that altered my development. For a while I thought that some of my problems could be linked to mercury poisoning...and I still suspect there is a little truth to it now.
3) In childhood I had frequent difficulty handling my own emotions. kevissimo can readily attest to that.
4) I have problems with affixing names to faces/people. It's gotten me into trouble at work and at social functions.
5) I've suffered various phobias. These were more pronounced in childhood, of course.
6) I was diagnosed with hyperactivity disorder by early grade school age and prescribed amphetamines for a while. And my dependency on caffeine has been detailed elsewhere in my blog.
7) I won't get into my emotional and social difficulties in my adolescence/teenage years, but they were there.

So I'm at the ultimate dilemma...get a formal diagnosis and attempt to claim disability status, or continue to struggle with myself in silence and find a round hole that can fit my square peg?

Both ways are hard. Both ways carry a shame that I'll have to live with for the rest of my life. I hate the choice. But pretty soon, I have to make it.

FP

I want to make it known that even though I tell jokes sometimes, and perhaps write some good comic bits in my stories and posts and what-not, I just don't think of myself as having much of a sense of humor.

I don't watch sitcoms.

I hate Saturday Night Live.

I don't care for those late-night talk shows either.

I hate those alleged comedy radio dee-jays on the morning slots. (I like Garrison Keillor but feel that he repeats some of his gags too often and goes too far to butter up his audiences.)

I'm not into comedy movies, although two of the latest ones I've seen in theater have been (Hitchhiker's Guide and Men In Black II).

While I read webcomics, I only read about a dozen that I'm totally loyal to.

I've given up on reading newspaper comics. I guess I'd still be reading them if the household subscribed to the Knoxville News-Sentinel, but I don't feel all that deprived.

Am I comedically burned-out, or just too unhappy at the core of my being?

I guess I don't want an answer or a punchline.

FP

Hey.

Thanks to cygnia I got to take this spiffy little meme tonight:

( Read more... )

So now you've been warned. Be glad my mother never let my father pass down the knowledge he got from Marine Corps Sniper School.

FP