Is everyone okay??

[abarson]

My career is haunted.
Hiring managers keep ghosting me.

 

[SixtyCycleHum]

View attachment 4654297
or maybe...
View attachment 4654302

My reading material is more like this, but that's neither here nor there.

 

[LetItGrowTone]

Remember when you were young, sometimes an old person would get stubborn, and no one could make them do anything?
Well, I just recently started realizing that I'm that age now. Haven't played that card much yet, but I'm going to start.

 

[dfreeland83]

I know what everyone’s problem is… not getting enough fiber.

My wife would disagree. Except that the sad truth is, I'm 50% sure the occasional extended bathroom trip is a throwback to working in an office I couldn't stand. I wouldn't even need to go, I'd just go to the bathroom to break out the phone and check the news to get away for a few minutes. I have no reason to do it now, but it's still a habit that hasn't died. I do it in the morning, and when I'm getting ready for bed.

If there's any doubt it's a bad, unnecessary habit... This morning, I went to get in the shower... my wife said, and I quote, "I'm gonna go ahead and take a shower while you're in there on your ten minute toilet sit."

"Do you mean, while you go to the bathroom?"

"No, I said what I said."

 

[J-Bassomatic]

I’m doing well. Sitting on the porch with a beer while the grill heats up.

Man, nirvana!

 

[GretschWretch]

This thread is still going??? I think I'm suffering from Disneyfied malsomnia. This morning I woke up Grumpy, Dopey, and Sleepy.

 

[SixtyCycleHum]

This thread is still going??? I think I'm suffering from Disneyfied malsomnia. This morning I woke up Grumpy, Dopey, and Sleepy.

Don't be Bashful, go see your Doc. You'll be Happy you did!

 

[GretschWretch]

Don't be Bashful, go see your Doc. You'll be Happy you did!

If I become Sneezy, I'll be sure to see Doc.

 

[SixtyCycleHum]

If I become Sneezy, I'll be sure to see Doc.

I love these exchanges so much..

 

[The Owl]

 

[RootAndFifth]

Let's see, the past 4 years: 20+ surgeries from spinal fusion to cancer. Progressive auto-immune. Political tensions. Pandemic. Death.

Playing bass and making music with friends is awesome though. I love it. Lots of great stuff to be found here. So I will go with that.

 

[definenredefine]

Saving this for later. Last time we made French toast..... a more appropriate name would have been 'scrambled-egg-bread'

That's what my dad made for breakfast when my brother and I were growing up!

 

[definenredefine]

I'll say this to say that:

I am in a great place relative to other parts of my 67 years. I am married to the best woman I've ever known. My bills are paid. I, then have the wonderful trifecta of a roof over my head, someone wonderful to love and spend my life with, and good stuff to eat. I can remember a few times things weren't this way.

I no longer play out. I only miss it until I think of rounding the gear up and going out the door at 7:30 or 8 to be on a bandstand working by 9, then I realize I simply can't face it all any more. Proof for me I walked away at the right time. But I love flapping my gums on TB (we all need a laugh these days . . . .) and poking around with the Squiers here at home: No last call, no requests, no drunks or stoners, no fellow travelers with problems.

I've been ridiculously healthy most of my life. I feel a few symptoms of becoming an Old Man, but fewer than most.

So for all these things, I am well and truly blessed and grateful.

However:

I have fought depression eternally from my teenage years. I've no doubt it's made serious dents in my life, and at times I have suffered like a dog, and while I have better stretches of time, the biggest part is worse, and it's robbed me of so many things I could have done. I have spent large lengths of my life suffering like a dog inside. It is, indeed, the Blooze You Can't Looze.

I have developed the strength to get knocked down often, and I get up every time. I just always wonder what my life would have been without this process, but realize I would have never developed the strength and more than a little gallows humor about it. Like a submarine's commanding officer, I consider it a succesful patrol as long as the number of dives is always equal to the number of surfacings. So far, for these many years, I'm still even.

For far too many reasons to enumerate here, treatment is a sketchy, often ineffective, and inexact. You can take any number of tests and scans from the neck down to find a tumor, find high blood pressure, diabetes, COVID, on and on and on. Psychological or Psychiatric treatment is about where surgery was at the time of the Civil War. In other words, almost useless despite the many times I've made inroads into finding a way out. I can't take a scan or blood test to find the depression. Talking therapy doesn't work for me. I keep looking for a useable treatment plan to help me through this.

I've never found one. So I live with this, better sometimes than others.

I've said these things to appeal to all of you for the one part of treating folks like me better that all of you can easily become a part of:

It's very common for folks with conditions or diseases that are under successful maintenance to lead normal lives. Nobody on your job looks at you as if you have three eyes and horns if they know you're diabetic, have high blood pressure, etc.

It's not that way for folks battling their mental health. The prevailing sentiment out there is you're either 'normal' (whatever the hell that is) or you're crazy('pssst, he's going to a SHRINK!!!!).

This is completely wrong, limiting, shaming, and dangerous. That cultural outlook has got to change for millions of people just like me. There are lots of us out here.

So, please, DON'T be that guy.

I work in healthcare and it's shameful how true all of this is. I'm not sure how but we have to de-stigmatize mental health and illness. At the same time, I'm encouraged by reports of new and/or unconventional therapies that seem to hold some promise.

 

[funkmaster p]

I think the cheese done slid off my cracker.

 

[5StringBlues]

 

[definenredefine]

Let's see, the past 4 years: 20+ surgeries from spinal fusion to cancer. Progressive auto-immune. Political tensions. Pandemic. Death.

Playing bass and making music with friends is awesome though. I love it. Lots of great stuff to be found here. So I will go with that.

I appreciate and envy your strength.

 

[LBS-bass]

It's not a competition, but we've got cancer and depression and anxiety and stress and a host of other illnesses here, and that's not counting my own problems. So yeah, we are managing, but it's not great right now. I keep looking for the end of that tunnel everyone keeps talking about.

 

[5StringBlues]

^ dislike like

 

[SixtyCycleHum]

It's not a competition, but we've got cancer and depression and anxiety and stress and a host of other illnesses here, and that's not counting my own problems. So yeah, we are managing, but it's not great right now. I keep looking for the end of that tunnel everyone keeps talking about.

This is a remarkable thread. Mainly because I made it but also a little bit because the vulnerability and the sharing is just plain beautiful.

 

[Bassiclees]

Despite the title, I cannot strongly enough recommend this book for anyone on this thread. Since the first time I read it, it has shaped the ‘Lego pieces’ of my mind and become a formative element in my consciousness. The tl;dr is the book serves as a manual for living with gratitude as a catalyst for joy, even under the most unimaginably horrific circumstances.
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