T.A. Michaels

 It's Sunday. I've spent the better part of the day running errands and doing chores. I went down to Walmart this morning and picked up 3 out of 5 prescriptions. I gotta go back later in the week to get my other two scripts. While I was there I also picked up some razors and a pair of sweat pants. My Goal for December is to go to the gym everyday its open. Walk 5 miles. And then call it a day. It's not just a goal for December... but an ongoing goal for the next year or so. I recently heard a story from a Musician who told me he lost 77 pounds in 8 Months by Cutting out Booze... Walking 5 miles every day on the Treadmill... and Counting Calories. So I figure if a guy in his 60's could do it... why can't I? I cleaned up the house today and vacuumed around the litter boxes. Also I made the bed, and hung back up the spice rack which had fallen down about a month ago. It's drilled into the studs so that should mean that it wont fall out anytime soon. I'm waiting...

 My Birthday is today. 36 years old. When I think about it... I'm double the age of 18. So I'm a double adult... or as I am starting to think about it... in my prime. From 0 to 17 you are learning what it means to be human. Then you carry that with you into Adulthood. From 18 to 35... you are learning what it means to be an adult... and from then on you carry that with you the rest of your life. While i would say that my misadventures have led me here.. there were some good times.. and good people along the way. Our birthdays are often a day to reflect back on what came before... and try to align ourselves with where we are heading.  My 36th year has a lot in store for me and that's providing nothing changes in the short term. Katie and I Will be getting married. I'll be traveling outside of the country for my first time. I'll be completing one year at my new job. And I'll have left the addiction of smoking in the past. November 9th 2003 i started smoking... and...

 Today is a good day. Katie had to work this morning so I spent it mostly cleaning up the house. Its weird though because I got locked in a dream I couldn't escape from. Some sort of dystopian future where I'm focused on mining Ethereum and an old friend whom I haven't seen in years is next to me at my job and he's worried about the sugar rations and temperature outside the building. When I finally shook myself out of it it was nearly noon. Katie was upset with me and basically told me to get my ass in gear. I got dressed and got a coffee and a donut. From there I started cleaning the house. Cleaned the bedroom first... then the living room.. and finally the kitchen. Took out the trash... and dropped a bag of clothes off for recycling. Then i came home and took a shower. Then I put on a nicotine patch. I read about 12 pages in my Network+ Exam book. The topics covered mainly including IP Addressing and Subnetting. It's heavy on the math... but it's concepts that...

 My Birthday is in a few days. Going to be 36 years old. Seems like just yesterday i was sitting by a computer blog posting at my parents house in Riverside... but a wee little one posting on live journal. Writing posts has been something I've done my whole life. I'm not really sure why. I think it has to do with the progression of thoughts through my head... being transcribed on a keyboard.. without ever having to pass through my lips. Much in the way someone can write a book with the whole story line being trapped inside their head... The internal voice that dictates my life gets released through these blog posts. and for the most part its a good thing. Today is a good day though. While i hit a sobering milestone on the scale (265.2lbs)…  I'm still in a generally good mood and overall optimistic. I've heard a few good stories lately about people that lost a decent amount of weight within a year and that gives me hope that I'll be able to do it just the same. The l...

 I start a new job in a little less than two weeks. I feel I've come a long way from where I was this time two years ago. Two years ago i was out on TDI... unable to hold down a job because of my symptoms... and living at my parents wondering what the next 3 months held for me. Today, i am living with my finance. I have been working for a year and a quarter... and overall i'm happy. Things could always be better... I could be 170lbs soaking wet... But I'm doing my best not to focus on the things i dont have, and rather focus on the things i do have. Therapy has been helping a bunch with me just being able to vent about my life. Sometimes i am able to make a breakthrough but more often than not its just a bull session where i get to vent about lifes frustrations. Talk therapy really is my key... and it allows me to not dump all my problems on friends and family. Today i left work early. Nghia indicated i could... i just wouldnt get paid for the day. Figuring that im getting ...

 Things are good. As i used to say, today is a good day, and tomorrow will be even better. A simple mantra that pulled me out of some dark times in my life when I was younger. Truth is... I'm doing ok. I'm not about to jinx myself because the last time I did something like that I got rear ended. I'm doing ok because of i have the basic security and comfort that I had been looking for many years. It's true that everything's always in a state of change... but if you are moving in a good direction that change will be good change... interesting right? That's all for now.

 For the last few days I was on vacation with Katie in Upstate New York. We rented a small cabin about an hour south of the Canadian border. The cabin itself was tucked away in the woods. The drive up I started to experience some symptoms which I'm not used to. A fear overcame me that if I so much as looked away from the road for even a moment, I may crash. I know its not good to take your eyes off the road as it is... but each time i looked over at Katie... or wanted to observe the mountains in the distance... a shudder came down my spine. It wasn't fun... and once I was done driving I was happy to be out of the car. We mostly went hiking for our few days up there. We went and visited Lake Champlain which little known fact... was a great lake for about 18 days in the 90s. The scenery was nice and we ended up having a fire for a couple of nights. Katie wanted to sleep outside one night... but the scurry of small animals... and what appeared to be the flashing lights of a camera...

I no longer want to watch or read the news. Yesterday there was an article I saw detailing the UN's latest report stating that it is now to late to save the planet from the 2 degree Celsius temperature threshold that will become basically Doom for the planet and human race. As I read it I realized that even if I went 100% Carbon negative... there's nothing I can do to change the future. The earth will warm up.... The Sea Ice will melt... extreme weather will continue... and all I can do is hope to survive. With all that said... I'm now going to be changing my focus. Instead of constantly thinking about the Big Picture as people often told me to do when i was younger... I'm now going to be thinking about the small picture. Me... my future wife... and my cats. My Close Family too.  One thing I hope to do in the coming weeks is getting back into some of my old hobbies. I like creative writing... and while I'll probably never make a career out of it, its something that ...

 I have a plan... Take half of the money that i put towards savings each month... and put it towards paying off a bill. I'm coming to realize that the only way that i am going to free up additional money for savings... is by using my money for savings to pay off my debt faster. If I do this for one year... then at the end of the year I'll have paid off an additional $2400 in debt. In thinking about long term savings goals... if i can get to a place where my debt is gone in 2 years... and I don't accrue any new debt... then over the course of five years I'll have saved almost of a full years salary. It seems tough now... but honestly its where i want to be 7 years from now. Debt free.. ready for the next stage of life with my wife... with money in the bank... and onward to the next adventure.  I'm attempting to quit smoking again. My boss is out of work for the next week. Then I'm going on vacation next weekend so think that without his influence and my own will ...

 I'll start off by describing my current mental state and then move on to recent developments in my life. The auditory hallucinations are not as frequent as they used to be. The man in the basement sounds more like a muffled noise... if anything. Rather than a voice speaking to me directly. When i'm out in public im no longer hearing the out of sight people talking about me at great lengths. If i am picking up bits and pieces of conversations im no longer stringing them together in a storyline that revolves around me... It's kind of nice to be honest. I would say my last episode was when we went out for our 18 month where it sounded like the table next to me knew who i was and was talking negatively about me. Dinner was nice though. My therapist said that i should try to ignore these things because whether or not it was actually happening... there's no point in feeding energy into that kind of negativity. Recently though we went up to Maine and even though there was boa...

 I'm not even sure where to begin. I guess I could start with yesterday, then work my way backwards. Yesterday i had my annual Physical. The wait in the waiting room seemed long but to be honest the actual appointment went better than expected. The Doctor and I get along well. He's aware of my mental condition which - full disclosure - led to some very interesting stories for me to recall to him. He said it would make great material for a book. Truthfully while the adventures I've gone on while not medicated are incredible in the sense of "how did i survive?" The truth is that I put myself and a lot of other people in danger as a result. I got my blood work done this morning... So hopefully that doesn't come back with anything unexpected. I'll find out Tuesday after the holiday.  In recent weeks i had been trying to eat better... and be more physically active. But this weeks weather had led itself to be a bit more difficult than I originally expected. The ...

 I've been experiencing some symptoms for the last couple of months. Basically its what i am hearing that i can neither confirm nor deny are real. It happens both at work and at home. It sounds like people are being extremely condescending not to mention the fact that they are speaking and reacting to my thoughts. While this has been ongoing for Several years now I an now questioning whether or now there are even people doing this or if its been a symptom of my psychosis. I was reading an article today that indicated people in early stage psychosis experience an issue where their temporal frontal lobe (where most of the communication is translated in the brain) doesn't work as normal and as a result other areas of the brain (Which aren't designed to do it) end up try to interpret language. This would explain the whole center of the universe complex i have had going on. Its sad that here i am 5 years out from my last major incident and I'm still experiencing symptoms. I ...