June 2009 – An experimental week without Facebook and Twitter

I declared last Sunday, on Facebook, that I would be going on Facebook hiatus. I didn’t say for how long, but in my mind, I’d be quitting FB and Twitter cold turkey for one week. I am 5 days into this experiment. I find myself resisting that URL address bar like an unsmoked half pack in the back upper corner of my closet, kept for emergency use only. Nagging at my mind every couple minutes. But mind you, I don’t smoke. Never have. I know my addictive personality well enough to not bother trying. Just thought it was an appropriate simile for habit breaking. But I haven’t faltered yet. Those links are everywhere, though. EVERYONE trying to be someone is on Twitter, to the point of ridiculosity. Well, not really…just businesses, oddly enough. CKNW, CNN, BBC Science, BBC Health, Daily Planet…(my personal favourites) …and there was that one week where everyone hopped the bandwagon at the same time. T’was an odd week.

But I couldn’t have picked a more interesting week to go FB/Twit free. I just couldn’t break the habit of thinking that my thoughts all needed to be expressed and thrown into some intangible online world, that, excepting global nuclear meltdown circumstances coinciding with the time of my death, will exist beyond me, providing that inactive accounts don’t get deleted after a certain period of time, and there isn’t a massive server crash affecting all the backup copies of my accounts…etc. SO…I took to writing down all my thoughts on index cards. GOD do I love index cards. For some reason of kinaesthetic x visual learning it works for me. And here are some of the thoughts that rampaged through a manic mind going through withdrawl. Actually, happily, this week seemed like one of those rare weeks that I wasn’t overly manic or depressive. Actually, no. I take that back. I may have thrown a temper tantrum on monday. But after that things seemed to clear up, mood wise. Hopefully it lasts a little longer this time.

From the index cards:
June 23 1700h: Fascinating that so many things – economic phenomena etc. can be described/explained by little lines on a graph. Really cool.
June 24 10ooh: How the hell did I injure my knee? Left inside tendon/ligament thingy sore upon awakening. Did I sleepwalk?
1110h: There are a lot of funny looking asian men in ECON103.
1230h: I really enjoy talking to professors in office hours.
1345h: Correction: I enjoy talking to ungrumpy professors in office hours.
1400h: For every short and cute asian woman that exists, there exists an equally short, not-so-cute-asian man.
1415h: When you can’t figure me out: The secret to women is that we say things we don’t mean and we mean things we don’t say. But not all the time.
1415h: Today I feel very happy and calm and content.
1710h: I am quite possibly…floored. On gradebook, if “MT” stands for midterm, I just got 34/34, i.e. 100%. WTF?! In CMPT120! And so far I have 100% in the course! This has Never Happened Before. Not even close. Never.
1734h: Just discovered my flash animations don’t work on the CSIL computers. Not pleased.
1756h: The secret to not being frustrated and irritated all the time…getting laid.
June 25 1000h: Farrah Fawcett died. Cancer. Brings out my fears. And Jon and Kate Gosselin are divorcing. Not that that matters to anyone except their kids. I hope deep inside that all people who die are at peace. I hope the suicide bombers and war criminals, and serial killers given the death penalty are all at peace. I hope the man who believes he will be rewarded with 72 virgins in the afterlife gets just that. If that’s the best thing he had going for him, I really hope he gets it.
1315h: I just get so fucking agitated at jerks like the guy who made a left turn from behind me while I was halfway across the street during my pedestrian walk light who then told me to look for traffic. It’s my walk sign, fucker! Concentrate on your own fucking half baked fucking driving, idiot!
1350h: playing piano really gets me unagitated. New “easy piano” piece yeah that disney song “A whole new world” from Aladdin. Love it and it’s just so beautiful and takes me away to a different time and place and imaginary life. Need to get a piano of my own so i can stop renting rehearsal space.
1425h: Low F + high GAC chord. Quite a nice way to end a song.
1700h: I had a breakthrough at singing class today. Lowered larynx + space + focus. Singing the exercise “Me-lia”. Letting go. Throwing it away. Fuck yeah. And going to McD’s inbetween rehearsing and class and thinking to enjoy fully and be present doing anything because it might be the last time I do that thing – gosh Steve cried last week when he ate a chicken nugget, having not had one for so long, and thinking that it might be his last. So I went and bought chicken nuggets today to remind myself to live. I couldn’t bring him any, though because he’s fasting, preparing for his colonoscopy tomorrow. And then I came home to find that Michael Jackson had died. What a day. What a week to choose to be facebook & Twitter free.
June 26 1117h: Watched Confessions of a Shopaholic and it wasn’t good. I am disappointed because I had been looking foward to that one for quite some time. Movies and people that try too hard to be funny are rarely really funny. The Make More Money scene ended up on the cutting room floor. All the essential bits of the story that made it a charming and funny story got cut out of the script. Nobody is sympathetic towards a woman who spends too much money (GUILTY!), but somehow the book made you identify so strongly with the protagonist, and the movie just did not succeed. Director needs lessons in directing comedy.
1440h: Been at Burnaby General Hospital since 1230. Steve’s colonoscopy today. yay. One year since we’ve been here for one the last time and we’re still where we began. Not pleased. Hopefully some answers.
1700h: +1 Medication for Steve. Prednisone. At least it’s cheap. + Humira starting ~2 weeks pending all clear from upcoming “urgent” MRI. Apparently the colonoscopy looked very different from last time. Some serious side fx on prednisone i hear. fuck.
1745h: Found out Lorena Gale (Priestess Elosha on BSG) passed away on June 21st. Shocked and saddened. Cancer. Found out Google, Twitter and Wikipedia etc crashed yesterday from too much traffic/too many edits. Again, I re-iterate. What a week to be Twitter and Facebook free.
1800h: Realized that I have this lifelong pattern of disillusionment with stuff. Note to self: write blog entry about disillusionment.
2143h: Made myself a little jar with little 1/8 index card chips inside with things to do when I don’t know what to do. Will pick one each time I find myself not knowing what to do and be just one minute more productive. Each task can be completed within one minute. I like this jar already. Note to self: write blog entry about this jar.

Sore Throat and Bad Dreams

4;28am. I have a sore throat and I fought to sleep earlier tonight. My limbs were weak and funny feeling, and I felt like throwing up. AND I CAN’T SLEEP. Fucking hell this is so painful – I try to sleep and I can’t. I just can’t fall asleep properly. And then I have these major anxiety attacks and can’t help yelling out because everything feels really weird and i can’t sleep.

And when I finally did, the dreams were killer. My dreams were all excessively vivid and about near death, and heavy exertion…like being inside a truck container and throwing ourselves off a cliff, and being forced to be the subject of some vigorous physical exercise exam in the snow to the point of exhaustion, and flying. I never fly in dreams. But tonight i did. Really fast. Really really fast. And couldn’t slow down. In the dream, I told myself that I was dreaming so that I could control exactly what happened in the dream. So i was able to slow down a little. But when I slowed down, I would start to fall. But the city I flew over…was so incredibly detailed. I thought…”this is pretty crazy detail for a dream”. And then when i got back to my starting point, i said to a friend, “did you see me fly? That was amazing, I never fly in dreams!” And she said she saw me walk over to a spot and then stand still for about a second…

And when i woke up my heart was racing. It took fucking 20 minutes for my heart rate to go down. I lay in bed, thinking to myself, “I had the big dream scare, now I deserve some sleep”. Couldn’t fall asleep, and my heart was still racing so fast i had to get up. And sit on the couch in the dark and wait for my heart rate to go down. Eventually it did. And now i’m typing this.

This is the second fucking night of really bad sore muscled, tingly numb-limbed, sore-throated, mild headache, mildly nauseous insomnia / severe night frights. And I’m sick and tired of not being able to sleep. I’m tired. My throat hurts like a bitch. Is it strep? I don’t know because the doctor swabbed it on thursday, and being a long weekend, they won’t get the results till tuesday. I don’t have much of a fever or cough or runny nose or sneezing, or congestion, just feeling weak and spacey and tingly numb limbs and severe night frights. What the hell is it? Today will be day 4 of sore throat, so apparently if it’s viral it will start subsiding today, and if it’s strep it will continue to get worse for a while. Lovely.

Not a good time. I have some ADR to do on monday and a narration voiceover on tuesday. SO the worst time for it.

I am trying to stay away from people as much as possible because i could be contagious. That and I don’t feel like talking to you or just talking, period. Or standing, or shopping, or eating. Eating is kind of good because it helps scrape the slimy thick brown sputum away from my throat.

Ugh. My blog entries often seem a little complainey but often when i feel most like writing. I mean, Steve’s fast asleep so i can’t complain to him. I’m restless and i can’t sleep. The sky’s starting to get light outside. I’m afraid to try sleeping again.

Dreaming. Again. And Again. And…again.

I love dreaming. Last night I guess I didn’t sleep very well but I had a night full of manic dreams. It was wonderful. Dreaming for me is like life x1000. And last night it was better than life x1000. I mean, i go from dreaming strange wonderful sense-ful (taste and smell too!) colourful dreams (to a soundtrack of U2!  or at least that’s the song that was in my head when i woke up) where all my favourite people are living their extraordinary lives and i’m just part of that world and I get to talk with people that I normally don’t talk to (because our paths just don’t cross in real life) and go on GRAND adventures with them, to waking up at 9 in the morning to a messy bedroom, nothing but the sound of traffic, rain outside, and feeling dehydrated, realizing that it’s time to take my next Penicillin pill for my stupid bacterial infection that takes away my comfort in…swallowing. You know, it really is disappointing.

Some people have excellent memories, and in their times of loneliness they look back at the good times. I have excellent memories of dreams, and though those memories don’t last a long time, the residual strands of those dreams haunt me for days. It’s a nice feeling.

Some highlights:

1. I found out what it’s like to crawl through an air vent like the on-screen heroes: it’s dusty.
2. I was at a halloween party in the middle of summer and somebody thought it was cool to pour a “Brain Vat” over everybody. (Cheap goo). It was gross and goopy but tasted like bubble gum and foamed like bubble bath. So then there was this goopy bubble bath fight in the middle of a big game of scrabble where the letter blocks were these little blue translucent cubes and so really the letters were no secret.
3. I took a long beautiful walk through a profusely blooming rose garden (archways, trellises, rose trees) with a favourite person of mine and had a deep conversation about…a lot of things. Oh that rose garden. I must find it. And at the end of the walk it led me to home. An old home. And then something happened there that made me run away.
4. I decided to go on a bushwhacking trip through a tropical jungle and for some reason i was under the impression that i was not allowed to wear shoes (for authentic experience). I couldn’t decide until i found out i was allowed to wear my Teva sandals. Then I went.

Okay it never sounds like much when you write it out after the fact. unfortunate. Maybe you, reading this, can imagine your own version of what it might be.

It’s like my body’s way of producing it’s own special LSD because everything is just so heightened! I’m an addict. I really am. I can’t wait to go back to sleep so I can dream some more.

I dream of…music.

please, somebody, break out into spontaneous harmony with me. please. please.

if you can hear it, i need to sing with you. i repeat, i NEED to sing with you.

i dreamed that i was just planning to go to the mall, and in the parking lot of said mall, i saw many old friends, most of whom i do not see or communicate with on a regular basis anymore. and so we agreed to all have dinner together. and somewhere along the line, we ended up in a recording studio that looked a lot like a movie theatre.

we sang in up to 8 part harmony, spontaneous vocal jam style. mostly barbershop style tags, but all new stuff that i’ve never heard before.

and i really want to sing it/hear it in real life, because it sounds great in my head, but they disappear when i wake up.

i want it to really happen again.

so if you see me, start singing.

I’ll join you.

That’s really all i want for Christmas this year.