My life's Adventure

Relaxed day went to the dentist and I have no cavities.

I had a fairly relaxed day. I only had some 4.5 hours sleep and these sorts of days after little sleep often feel this way if there are no stressors. I am not really stressed out. I have been a little tough with some real life friends in on-line communications with them but nothing that will end our frienships. My wife too had a relaxing day and was out with her ACT team today and went to sleep early. She went shopping for some shorts but the store had closed for good in that mall so she will go shopping on Saturday at a different mall because tomorrow is Canada day and everything is closed. Even with lots of beer in the house she did not drink and is saving the beer for Canada day tomorrow. I went to the dentist and for the first time in years had no cavities. Thanks to the battery operated tooth brush for that. I am chilled out and going to mark some papers tonight and another satisfying activity will be to print out my blogs for June at midnight. I will also burn some back up CD's. If I am really good I will even do some more poly filla work on our bathroom and even help with the Canada day paper delivery. Anyways I am up late tonight and won't sleep until 8 am or so.

The concept of "triggers"

The idea that certain words or thoughts will trigger a mind to react a certain way is common in schizophrenia treatment. Beyond this being a gun metaphor which tells you where it came from, the concept is not the best but is useful.

Some times I have tried or instance to not talk to people about rock stars or famous people and have even said to some fellow consumers when they begin to talk about these people quite franky: " I do not want to talk about famous people with you because, one you are likley to be delusional about them; and two, why talk about famous people what use is it to us here some poor workers. What can famous people really do for us and besides we are really wasting time talking about them?"

But I am learning to talk about academics and have certainly learned to talk about politicians but the same warning should be given talking about famous people is likely to trigger unreal thinking.

Well that is just some thoughts and my rude way of dealing with one of these so-called triggers. There are other suggestive things like suicide and murder but I know in the case of suicide it is often better discussed in the open so this trigger concept falls apart in some cases.

Hello to some of my readers, public v private.

Hi I am getting a few more comments lately on this blog and wanted to say hello to you all. I appreciate your concerns for me and also welcome questions etc. It is my hope that by sketching out how I am doing you too can help a little your own recovery or a relatives. But really it is up to you and what works for me, one, may not be obvious from my posts, two, may be different in your case, and finally you should have a good psych team behind you in whatever you do. Also the person with schizophrenia has to choose solutions for themselves. Except in some cases, unless the person with schizophrenia does the changes herself it might not help at all and can make matters much worse. This is true of medications too. One needs to give ones self prescribed medications becaused forced medications will not work in the long run and will work so much better if taken voluntarily. So rather than putting efforts into medication compliance it would be much better to educate someone on why they should take meds. That is the best therapy would include education as a key component just as heart patients are taught about their condition and how to manage it. This is a proven effective way of treating schizophrenia. This also means there is no one treatment for schizophrenia and in fact many different treatments are needed at the same time. And this also means beyond multiple medications but also other types of therapies like occupational therapy, social recovery, and health education in general.

Some thoughts on this blog in that I have to write here in a public mode so some of my darker thoughts or more gross humour will not appear here. I am really just an ordinary person with no different biology than many. I have had sexual difficulties and unemployment difficulties and even been in jail for a night before. I have kept some people's secrets for years in fact some things I have kept totally private for decades about myself and others. I also have signed certain documents and agreements with volunteer organisations and also employers to keep things secret. I also keep people out of trouble with law enforcment when in my judgement they do not need the trouble. But I do call the police about crimes that I think are violent and this may be different than the US definition of law enforcment and violence because Canada does not understand war as a legal activity for instance and we do not have guns the way they do in the USA. Also you should understand that in using self help whether you use schizophrenia.com for self help or some real life group or some other on-line help one principle we borrow from alcoholics anonymous(AA) and others is that people's medical facts should remain private if we learn them in self help meetings. In fact, I read a good article in a Canadian national newspaper today about AA and not one last name was used. This as I understand AA is how it should work. So please don't start to use this blog to write things in newspapers or other places because as well as me asking you to respect my privacy this blog has been copyrighted by me just by the fact that I write it and this is copyright law in many countries. Just a joke to close this post my speaking fee was 50$ for my last talk.

Another 24 hour day.

I did some volunteering yesterday for about six hours. I bought some books at a book sale that was raising funds for an arts programs for disabled people. I played dungeons and dragons. I read advanced studies for about an hour. I watched some of my law lecture #12. I also sent some email and also did some blog entries. I read a little news and a little science fiction. I bought us cigarettes for another week. I replied via email to someone in Finland about schizophrenia. I need to sleep I have been up 24 hours now. I have a dentist appointment at 2 PM this afternoon and I need to pay for my domain name and my new used iBook Macintosh laptop.

Getting more sleep; short days happening.

I had only a 17 hour day yesterday and felt tired when I went to sleep at 10 PM. I woke up this morning at 5:30 AM. I had been out volunteering in the early evening. I seem to have some stomach bug. My wife has had a bad cough and headaches lately. I have some volunteering to do today and then some marking later on in the afternoon. As usual I will go out to my dungeon and dragons role playing game tonight.

Dreams all night

I slept a good 14 hours or so last night. I dreamed a lot. I had when young and first psychotic recorded many of my dreams. I had thought my schizophrenia was the result of this dream study of myself. Recently I have done less recording of dreams and even started not dreaming much. Last night some battle related to my volunteer shift was happening in my mind. But after waking up today I am fine and on call and the shift is happening. It was a battle between my personal feelings and tiredness and my duties in public. I am feeling more secure now and working on my email transfer and thinking of getting started on some marking today. This problem is one of the pubic self and private self. This was discovered to be related to feeling embarassed in schizophrenia by R.D. Laing in his book the Divided Self. It took me twenty years to finally read most of the ideas in that book.

Recertified in CPR.

I recertified in CPR level C last week. I took my CPR certifcation card to the safety office at school today so they could keep a photocopy record of it for my joint health and safety committee qualifications. 5 compressions and two breaths for a child and 15 compressions and two breaths for an adult. Bingo I am a lifesaver.

Hot weather causing deaths.

There is very hot weather here these days. We have been running our air conditioner. I was caught in the heat today outside in the mid day sun. I know that my medications can make me sun sensitive and I am also someone who had a bad childhood sunburn so skin cancer is something I am learning to prevent.

I have a test to grade and some assignments to mark.

I have no security work this week. But I do have some statistics grading to do. I will do this over the next few days. I have three on call shifts this week in my victim's support work. I am just looking at my paper notebook agenda and see I also have a dentist appointment this Thursday in the afteroon.

Other than this above work I am taking the next week off. I go back to work on Monday with 5 hours of teaching assistant work to do at school. I have three security shifts booked for later in July.

We have three pay days this week. Many of my moods are now tied into money and getting paid and spending the money. We have been eating some very good food lately.

Yahoo, another spring term ends successfully!

After a steady pace and then two long days and one short day I completed my essay. I worked with a tutor this morning and got the paper touched up. Mostly with these tutors they point out grammar errors then it is up to me to rewrite the sentence. I then handed it in to the law department office.

Well this course requires this one essay then a final exam. The exam is in mid August. One of school friends who also has a mental illness is writing a mid term test in statistics tonight at 7 PM. I helped him with some concepts from multiple regression while we smoked in front of the library. I couldn't directly answer his question but I helped him understand the whys and hows of making multiple regression models. He asked about the sequential sum of squares something I don't know about.

I got working on the footnoting for my law essay.

I did about two pages of footnotes. I used the McGill Law students' citation guide book which is our standard method in our law department. I also searched the new calendar on the web for next school year. I plan to study either multiple regression techniques or stochastic processes along with a law course. I am not sure which law course but three fourth year seminars come to mind. One is about police and surveillance. Another one is medical issues in criminal law. The last choice is a course about risk and the law. But mostly this spring I have been studying Internet research and also feminism research.

Woke up late in day began on-line shopping

I woke up late at 8 PM. We just finished some chicken I cooked. I was thinking of buying more UMD movies for my PSP. I have two now and have ordered a third. I may order a fourth. But I need to get my debit down too.

Two 24 hour days in a row again.

I can't seem to stop being awake. I did the newspapers delivery job again this morning. I also marked papers for about 15 minutes. I also was busy transfering email for awhile yesterday. It is still difficult to say if it is today or yesterday. And sometimes it is difficult to realise that midnight has past. I worked on my school paper and it is almost done. I started painting the bathroom.

I am re-certified in CPR level C now for another year. In about 8 weeks I re-certify in first aid. My wife has a cold or headache and sore throat these past two days. I am going to take my meds and sleep.

Email back ups done, transfers done.

I am trying to build an archive of my email. I do not have any email from my early days on the net that is June 1994 to about March 2001. This is a lot of missing email. If I look I may find my email from September 1995 to about April 1999 written on my Perform 580CD. I may have backed these up to zip disk. I have most of my email since March 2001 and I am saving it on the eMac and WinXP laptop. I found a way using an IMAP server to pass email between the two machines. So I now can share email with the two computers.

Studying becoming more intense again along with everything else I do.

I think my studying pushes me in other areas of my life. I just spent about two hours writing my legal studies paper. I spent an hour on Wednesday with a writing tutor as well. So for this week I have spent 2:30 hours in lecture watching and 3 hours so far in extra work or homework. I also read for about an two hours this past week. I will also be working more on my paper. This is the key task at the moment because the paper counts for marks. It is not that I am only trying to score good grades. I am also using this course content to be activist in my community. I am also spending time on campus talking to other disAbled students and am active in a union at school. So all this activity is picking up once again. This is probably why I have made fewer entries in this blog this month.

I am busy working on my computers.

I am very busy after my social night playing dungeons and dragons. I am doing some transfering of files to my Macintosh computer. I sent a few feedback messages to Apple computer about their help pages not addressing my computer problems about switching data from a PC to a Mac.

I am not working in security again for about 25 days from now. I did work 24 hours this past weekend.

The newspaper deliver guy just knocked on our door at 2:30 AM. He wanted to know if I would help him with Thursday's papers. I said no because I am working on my computers right now.

I am updating all my blogs right now and working on a school paper. I will also do some web site work.

I had a union meeting this week. It was scheduled for 7 hours with one hour off for lunch. I stayed for six hours. We decided various things for our newsletter writing, recruiting stewards, working with other campus groups and other teaching locals. I ate fish and chips for lunch and talked to a Ph.D. student in geography.

Speaking of school work I worked three hours this week and now have about 8 hours of marking to do by July 4th. I am also working an extra two hours on July 4th giving extra help to students in the basic statistics course.

July 4th is not a holiday in Canada. July 1st is Canada day our nationalism holiday.

I am volunteering on July 1st and 2nd in victims support. In fact, I will be volunteering on Friday's for most of July.

I am planning on not completing my law BA this summer as I had been thinking the past two weeks. I will instead try to study two law course next year and raise my graduation average a little. I will also study statistics courses next year. I should be studying two law and two statistics courses next year. Two courses per term, four per year is considering full time in Ontario colleges for disabled students.

I am studying Canadian public law this morning.

I have my TV playing a lecture on Canadian public law this morning. I have been reading about the Internet and human rights and the Internet and public policy. Someone asked here about employment as an Internet researcher but I am not actually employed as an Internet researcher I only have a membership in this organisation for Internet research but earn no money this way. I actually earn money making web pages for a mental health self help network.

Worked 24 hours in two shifts this past weekend.

I am just waking up after sleeping about 5 hours. I worked two 12 hours shifts this weekend. This was my security work job I was working at. In a few hours I am working in my teaching job. I was worried that I would not wake up on time for my second security shift and also my statistics teaching today. But I am up and ready to go. I have one late assignment to grade and then I will be collecting the second assignment today. I will also be giving a test this evening at 7 PM. I have two basic statistics labs to give as well one at 5 PM and another at 9 PM. There is a Ph.D. liberation party this evening in a local bar for a fellow worker and criminology doctorate candidate who has just completed her oral defence this afternoon.

Tomorrow we have a day long union meeting to discuss union local priorities for the coming year.

Peter Hogg is a good constitutional scholar for this public law course.

I am finding the Peter Hogg book a good read to help me understand the lectures. I have been watching the 8th lecture just now after the guests have gone home. This part of the course is about constitutional amendments. This concerns Pierre Trudeau.

C, J and R over again on Friday. We watched Robocop and talked.

R brought over some DVD's. He has learned to shop on-line by himself now. We chose to watch Robocop. We then chatted a bit. There was a newspaper article here this week that says some medications cause dementia. Some of the women who take these meds here tonight mentioned that they are loosing their memory.

Working this weekend and on Monday.

I have two security shifts this weekend over night. I also have labs and a test to give on Monday. Later today I have volunteer board duties from 1 PM to 4 PM. Then in the evening friends will come over. I am also on call in the evening in victim's support. I will also help this weekend with deliverying Saturday's newspaper. I am working on some resumes as I start to look for work for after I graduate from my legal studies BA. I am fairly frustrated with my present wages. Actually my wages all my life have meant I am poor and have been poor all my life. I am thinking of revoluting. I am doing my statistics teaching assistant work well again this term.

I have been studying for two days now.

I have been studying for two days now in public law. I am surprised I did not make an entry yesterday early in the morning. I was at the computer on Thursday morning and thought I had made an entry. I have been reading about the French-English duality in Canada and also viewing lecture tapes. I have also written about 750 words now for my 2000 word paper.

I bought a couple of books today and my mom sent me a short Canadian history book. I also talked to a fellow student today in a bookstore about statistics courses, statistics professors and statistics.

I got about a third of my paper written now and am going to sleep.

It has been a long day of over spending and watching TV. But I did pay a lot of bills and made supper. I also got 700 words now written for my public law spring term paper. I also got further through the lectures I am re-watching now. I did some committee work yesterday for a couple of committees. I am going to sleep now and will wake up at about noon. I took my meds about half an hour ago and now feel tired.

Supposed to be working on my law paper.

Tonight I am also watching news and politics as the government faces confidence votes about our countries budget. I should be working on my studies. But today was a pay day so when I woke up I needed to do shopping. Even with a quickly looming deadline for a 2000 word paper I was busy starting to paint our bathroom. I did some preliminary poly filla work this evening.

But I have almost read now all the required sources and last night felt the anger and arguments rising about feminism and the Supreme court and the Charter but then I slept without getting the arguments down. I do know that I support feminism and the law and this is my own voice that I need to add to the paper. I have started the paper with a sketch of the idea and concept of judical review.

I have CPR training next Friday.

Next Friday we have CPR recertification training at my security guard job. I will also recertify in standard first aid August 6th.

We got my wife a weekly pill box pill dispensor today. I filled it up with a week's worth of pills. She just came back from the hospital and her clozapine blood test. She has a blood test every two weeks.

Bought paint and supplies to paint bathroom

Our landlord gave me permission to paint the bathroom. My wife choose Canary Yellow as the colour. So today I bought a large can of paint that will paint 400 sq. feet. I also got a smaller can of white paint for the baseboard. I also got rollers, and trays and tape. Cost was almost 100 dollars but everything was on sale at our local hardware store. I learned of the sale from a TV add.

Marking assignments today and preparing to solve some problems in tonight's tutorial.

The only work I need to do today is complete marking some assignments and prepare some answers and problem solving for tonight's tutorial. I will then have some time off this job until next Monday when we have a test in one course and then that week I will need to mark the test. In the other course students will hand in their second assignment next week and I will also have that assignment to mark next week.

This will be the same time as my final week of essay writing so I should work hard on my essay this week and get it mostly done this week.

Attended union meeting on Sunday.

I attended a union meeting on Sunday. We discussed some union projects and I stepped down from union secretary and we elected new officals namely a new secretary and treasurer. We also met a new member.

I then went to school and returned two lecture tapes. I then slept for the rest of Sunday.

I am getting a fair amount of studying done.

I have now been awake about two hours. It is 6:15 PM. I am studying a fair amount the past few days. I will basically have the rest of the weekend to study with a short union meeting tomorrow and then work again on Monday in statistics. I also have a doctors appointment on Monday to have a sliver of glass taken out of my foot

I read an email mail about copying web pages without acknowledgement and a wikipedia entry on community informatics.

I read an email by Barry Wellman on the aoir email list about copying web pages without acknowledgment and this led me to the wkipedia where I looked up some entries including this one on community informatics at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_informatics.

C and J came over and we talked all night.

First my wife and I talked with C and J then L our houseguest came out and talked and my wife went to our bedroom to watch a movie while I came into the office to be quiet and I am now working on the computer a bit.

I replied to an email K sent about the famous David Rosenhan experiment. The article is called On Being Sane in Insane Places by Slater, Lauren and was in the Psychotherapy Networker and the article is here on the web http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4016/is_200403/ai_n9465234.

The Psychotherapy Networker is here http://www.psychotherapynetworker.org/. The joys of internet research eh?

Did not attend suicide intervention training.

I was supposed to attend suicide intervention training today and tomorrow but I have too much work and school work to do so I did not attend. I also had trouble waking up which made the decision for me in the end.

I gave a talk yesterday on my own recovery and received a lot of compliments and gave some compliments of my own to other speakers. We used my PA system at the forum and our self-help group paid me for the PA rental so we can string things along for another few days until I get my first spring pay for my TA work.

Volunteer meetings today. Recovery forum today.

I have a joint health and safety meeting this morning. I just printed the agenda and am ready to go. I will buy a coffee on the way to the meeting.

Then in the afternoon I am giving a little ten minute talk on my recovery and participating in a recovery forum at our self help group. The forum is a joint project with the mental health association of Canada and our local psychiatric hospital and our self help group. We will be doing a workshop on recovery later in the day.

Then at 6 pm I have a monthly volunteer meeting for our victim's assistance organistion. Then finally in the evening I will relax with friends and dungeons and dragons and sci fi TV shows.

I haven't shaved today but I have clean clothes and will be dressed fairly well for today's activities.

We won my grandfather's painting and I paid for it today

We won my grandfather's painting and I paid for it today.

We went to the Ontario Science Centre yesterday. We enjoyed the musical technology exhibits and also the information about talking with chimps. We ate lunch there and bought a few things in the gift shop. So we had a bit of a holiday.

We are safely back home after a long train ride.

Our train was delayed yesterday. I had a difficult time with the train staff because I was asking for my coffee in my mug rather than in their styrofoam cups. The first porter had no problem with this. But the night porter had a problem and gave me lecture about corruption. I could have had real problems with the night train staff if I had not noticed this confrontation and relaxed myself so as not to go psychotic.

We are buying one of my grandfather's paintings tomorrow

One of my grandfather's paintings has ended up for sale on ebay so we are going to bid on it and try to bring it back into the family. My dad is paying for this purchase but I am acting as agent. So my career as art investor continues today and tomorrow.

Visit went well got pictures and movies

The visit with our daughter and her new family went well. We gave her some presents and talked with her. I helped her with climbing and sliding in a play ground. I talked with her sister and sister's friend. We all took pictures and they gave us some pictures and a candle.

My grandfather's painting is for sale on ebay and my father has decided that we will buy it and bring it back into the family. So I am arranging that tonight.

Visiting with our daughter today

My wife and I produced a daughter in 2003 and have given her up for adoption. We have an open adoption so we are allowed visits. We are visiting today.

I will tape today's lecture and study the source book this weekend

I will be studying our courses' source book this weekend. I will also read the sources for our term paper and possibly begin my term paper this weekend. This coming week we hae a recovery forum with the Canadian Mental Health Association and the local Psychiatric Hospital and our self help group. I will be displaying a work for art at this forum. I also have a health and safety meeting that day in the morning and a volunteer meeting in the evening. Then on Thursday and Friday I have ASSIST suicide intervention training.

I marked a test and am done my TA work for the weekend.

I completed marking the first test for the engineering students in on of my statistics courses. I will not be working in security for another two weeks now. I will maybe do some web mastering this weekend. I will also do some job searching.

Monthly back up and print out.

I am just about to back my computer folders up to CD and also save my various blogs as word processor files and I will also possibly print them out. I am studying over night and helping with the newspapers and then staying up until about 4 PM or 6 PM today.

Up later than I want to be

Even though I have been good at sticking to plans including my budget this month I am up two more hours than I want to be this morning. I am now tired and took my meds about an hour ago. I will now go and sleep until 4 PM.