January 25th, 2022 @ 12:56 am

i have so much shit to do this year… big stuff. i always make a bunch of “stress clouds” (write out the probs, cut them out into shapes of clouds) and i put them in a little cluster on one of my walls for perspective. i like to easily see the things i need to do, and tackle them one at a time.  i take them down and tear them up into tiny little pieces.  it feels great.

one of the biggest things this year is that i have a few health things that i need to sort out – i reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally want to have my fallopian tubes removed fully, but my healthcare doesn’t cover it.  they DO however cover cutting the tubes (i don’t want them tied, i want them separated fully).  so i have to call my insurance and see what the deal is with that.

i think dealing with this whole pinched nerve in my neck/spine thing really pushed me directly into “make doctors appointments and go to the appointments”.  don’t think – just do.  that’s usually my motto for most things i need to do in life, but this pandemic really isn’t helping matters for me in that dept.  my focus for most things has been completely OFF for the last two years…  esp my health.

one of my procrastination projects is lasering off my freaking armpit hair.  i have such a pet peeve for shaving my armpits.  i have to do it every other day, and i’m prone to ingrown hairs, so it’s just itchy/painful and so annoying on a regular basis.

i clearly can’t get into the super big shit here, but i really can’t wait to see where my life is at the end of the year.  i haven’t felt like myself in a very long time for a number of reasons.  looking back, i felt really more comfortable with myself in certain eras – or did i?  i feel like sometimes we just romanticize times in our lives.  i don’t want to keep doing that, but i also want life to feel like that NOW…  not when looking back.

i feel like i don’t belong in nyc anymore.  i don’t know what’s here for me.  am i waiting for cliche happiness to find me here?  how come great things never find me?  i’m sick of looking.

i have set a goal for myself for queens/nyc one last time for the next couple of years.  if i can’t accomplish those things, i want to hightail it out of here.  there has to be more than dodging the past like an obstacle course in bayside, not looking at places my family used to live that have died (it’s so fucking depressing), seeing favorite places that have closed, not being able to see people like i used to, watching my neighborhood change into copy+pasted, ugly orange brick, marble detailed houses nobody asked for, everything being so fucking expensive for no reason (rent, especially), living paycheck to paycheck bc i’m sending money to my 401k and savings just to make sure i can survive later in life, reliving past lives being in certain places…

it’s just all so fucking overwhelming.  i need peace, calm vibes, trees, cool weather.  i need to look out of my apartment windows and see the leaves of trees – just GREEN lighting up my place.  i want nature and a skyline at the same damn time…  i can’t have that here.

oh wait, i probably could in my dream areas of manhattan, but i can’t fucking afford it.

* * *

my one beautiful escape here in this adolescent hell hole, is riding my bike.  i can’t do that with this windy ass winter, fucked up spine/neck discs and pinched nerve, AND my favorite issue (/s): two dudes i used to date/fuck are always on my route.  one i want to avoid like the plague, and he’s always at this one park in the early AM w his big scary pit bull (before kids are around) and the other one is a guy that i will probably never fully get over (not in a psychotic way, just a “bad timing/one that got away” way – i never really think of him/that situation until i see him).  every time i see him, he always calls me over, we shoot the shit and i am brought right back to that time it just pisses me off.

this is precisely why i never wanted to live over here again in my life.  i wanted to file all of this place under the “K BAIIIIIII” file in the back of my brain, yet here i am, like a big moron.  i have noooooooo idea why i agreed to live over here.  was i that enamored by a fucking park with a lake?  was it bc i was closer to my mom?  i guess i didn’t realize how long i’d be here…  four years later, i’m ready to tap out.

at any rate, i have the clouds in front of me.  there are like 10 of them…  here we gooooooooooooo!

January 17th, 2022 @ 1:41 am

sooooooooo, i had my MRI done and apparently my C5-C6 discs in my fuckin neck/spine have bulging and herniated discs, alongside my shitty little bone spur.

of course my orthopedist is out all of this week, so i can’t find out what i need to do for this shit until next monday…  so again, i sit here for another damn week in annoyingly, tingly bullshitland.  this straight almost month of tingly fingers/hand and forearm is enough to drive one to drink (meanwhile, i’ve been on prednisone, so i haven’t had any drinks…  but i did pop an edible last night, which helped).

the prednisone helped my shoulder a bit but didn’t do jackshit for my arm/hand or fingers, so i don’t know if that’s related to the shit with the bone spur or if it’s just a pinched median nerve on top of this bullshit…  he had mentioned a surgery, which i think is a laminectomy (which i am DREADING).

: exhale :

so yeah, the first half of january is sucking ass so far.  at least i have a lot of good shit lined up for the second half.

January 8th, 2022 @ 12:33 am

sooooooooo, super fun shit…  i have a bone spur in my cervical spine area and it’s pinching a nerve, which is making my forearm and fingers tingly.  i have to have an MRI done and take ‘roids this week, and depending on how the steroids go, i might have to look into surgery.

WOO, 2022 is off to a great start!

i have two things to do this month socially and i REALLY am hoping i don’t come across this shite covid variant along the way.  i have lundqvist’s retirement ceremony and then i’m going to the rangers/kraken game a couple of days later.  i’m still very picky and choosy about what i’m doing socially, and the only things i reeeeeeally bend for are hockey and concerts (aside from the like, four friends i occasionally see within either my home or theirs, and they’re just as cautious as i am).

i was feeling “safer” at shows especially bc you have to have proof of vaccination, and i’d like to think a lot of my like-minded punk community wouldn’t be gross and use fakes (i tested both times after shows where i was in a pit).  now, i don’t know anymore.  i wish more places would require an actual app and both doses and/or a negative test or booster requirement.  isn’t that how we’re going to beat it?  fuck those one dose folks for now…

kristen and i have tickets to see cursive/thursday this month but i feel like it might get cancelled.  we also have glassjaw in march, which i also think might get pushed.

this is so fucking depressing… but i mean, if i have a busted neck, wtf does it matter anyway?

January 2nd, 2022 @ 6:42 pm

well, i’m ringing in 2022 on the highest of notes…

i did something to my shoulder/neck muscles so badly that it’s shooting down my damn arm and into my hand.  i have a numb fingertip…  so i have to make an appointment to see my doctor this week (fun!).

i hate getting older.

October 16th, 2020 @ 4:55 pm

YES! YES IT CAN!

back in august, i was reminiscing about earlier in the pandemic, and about how stressed/anxious i was and didn’t feel good.  well, in addition to those feelings, i also discussed getting shingles.  well, guess what?

I GOT SHINGLES PT. 2!

yeah, and while i was getting diagnosed (again), i took an antibodies test for covid… and guess what?

I TESTED POSITIVE!

so i guess i was right in thinking i had it back then, unless that wasn’t covid and then i had it with no symptoms during the summer… which i doubt.  who knows?

i honestly didn’t think i would test positive because of how long ago that was, but here we are.

i also wanted to state that when we first started working from home, the weeks before that at work – my commute was filled with almost no one wearing masks, including myself.  we were still living normally.  i used anti-bacterial EVERY TIME i touched a train pole… so i don’t know exactly where i picked it up from, but since then, i always wear a mask when i leave the house.

since the pandemic started and that happened, i googled, and not much info came up for the symptoms that i was having.  so, doctors… if you come across this idiotic blog about a 30-something year old with covid, here was what i went through:

NONE OF THE FOLLOWING:
– no fever
– no coughing
– no respiratory issues at all
– no runny nose

I HAD THE FOLLOWING:
– nausea/upset stomach (a complete loss of appetite from it, i lost almost 10 lbs bc of it)
– anxiety attacks (maybe just because i was working from home/life turned upside down, though)
– things smelled weird and tasted weird (i never lost either sense, though)
– headaches
– fatigue/restlessness
– a LITTLE bit of being winded, but not much
– shingles (TWICE)
– some hair loss (could have been from the shingles, maybe stress)

since then i’ve been super active – working out, biking and i feel fine.  rarely out of breath, etc.  i ride my bike for 13 miles on average.

so yeah… in closing:
wear a fucking mask, wash your hands and stop being close to people – especially people you don’t know.

August 2nd, 2020 @ 1:00 am

at the start of this pandemic, i was not in good shape.  the first few weeks were terrible and full of what i only thought was anxiety, but now i think maybe it was more than that.  i had just bounced back from bronchitis, and i went back to the office for a full 5 days.  that friday, they announced we were going to be working from home indefinitely.  i grabbed what i could in a spare tote that i had on my desk: my laptop, my mouse and mac keyboard.  i left my fucking office plant behind, and i will forever regret it (RIP BERNIE).  while walking around the city that week/month, i wasn’t wearing a mask yet…  a lot of us weren’t.  while i’m pretty good at using anti-bacterial if i touch anything on the trains, and washing my hands as soon as i get to the office, maybe it wasn’t enough?

the first week, i was mentally shot.  i tried sitting down in my dining room and living room to work from home, not at my desk in my room.  it was awful, i was uncomfortable and totally unproductive.  the cat was pissy i was at home, my back hurt from sitting on the couch, i had no daily routine, my starbucks closed… i was all fucked up.

i’m usually nauseous in the morning, but this was just so extra at the time.  once i realized one of the three local starbucks was still open, i went and bought four of my triple iced espressos just to have for the week.  i got halfway through one of them, put it back in the fridge and that espresso and the others sat there for days before i spilled all of them out.  they tasted weird.  this was march 19th maybe?  i haven’t had starbucks since.

read more…

March 30th, 2020 @ 9:30 pm

with this annoying ass covid pandemic going on, i realized recently that i really have been through a lot as a new yorker.  not only do i have my own personal shit to deal with (family, friends, LIFE), but i have to deal with the times a changin’, technology a changin’, my city constantly a changin’, not being able to afford things, and then there’s the BIG bullshit.

my heart, my nerves, my soul, it aches… i am fucking tired.  either i’m training to deal for survival of any type of bullshit, or living here all of these years has shaved off 20 years of my life expectancy.  what i do know, is that all of this bullshit and the mildly technological time i grew up in gave me GREAT patience.

the point of this post was bc i was thinking about the last times NYC has had to deal with crazy shit, and i made a list from memory.  keep in mind, half of these happened when there were no cellphones, either:

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