My life's Adventure

I have enjoyed wireless Internet on the train.

No mind that my computer is filthy and I am ashamed to have it out in public, I enjoyed today on the train. I bought wireless Internet access on the train and have been surfing the net from the comfort of my train seat barely doing anything else while on board today. I am about 45 minutes away from my final destination. My brother may meet me at the station.

I have three days off now.

I am feeling good and did not wake up worried for once. I usually wake up worried about being on time for work but today I do not have to work. I have three days of holidays and am off by train to visit family and attend a little day and a half conference. I will access this blog while away so I should be able to post some news of the family visit.

I am working two back to back nine hour days.

I worked nine hours yesterday on only four hours sleep. I am working today another nine hours with no sleep today. I will come home and sleep at 5 PM today and then I have the rest of the week off as holidays. I have saved up this time and even have another day and half on credit for holidays that I may save for Christmas or the new year. I am going to up date some other blogs of mine now. I cut my hair to a brush cut this morning and will try to go into work early to write a cover letter for a computer job in the government. I also will soon find out the results of one job application that will mean a better job at my workplace. I have my fingers crossed. Take care everyone see you tomorrow.

And yes, I am in a chain smoking mood.

I am considering more advanced academic writing.

I looked into writing book reviews and still look into trying to write conference papers. I am actually invited and registered for a conference this week. I won't give details but I am only a guest not a presenter. It is a conference in a new area of study for me and not only about numbers, computers and statistics. It is about at heart society. And that is very cool to know about. Can you say social worker? I function as an amateur but trained social worker. I also don't just mean peer to peer, in fact, but things like support of clients who are in troubles I have never known and also support of academics too. Wonders never cease.

I am bitter actually. But am I really unhappy?

I can not say who I am bitter with... almost everyone! It has to do with oppression and the fact of the capitalist economy. All I can do is shop because as I recover to being all right mentally and productive, I am just turned into a consumer. Yet it is the plain struggles of working and being a member of the working class that oppress me. I do turn to religious thoughts and the belief in prayer and appealing to God. But I also try to reduce desire and be more Buddhist in my outlook. I have a messed up sexism in my up bringing as many Canadian males do. At least in my new work there are not a crowd of workers and the talk is not so free flowing and joking racism and sexism. Not that my work place is more serious in a negative way. May be I contradicted myself now. I do not like work yet work is a good place. Um... may be I just needed to get that off my heart and shoulders?

I was up all night on Friday into the late afternoon Saturday and was babbling on the street to friends.

Well I wasn't babbling to strangers but I did talk to some other consumer survivors and a union member and may not have made a lot of sense. I attended a book fair with my wife who stayed and sold books she has written. The consumer I met on the street on the way home bought me a coffee but he was talking fast too and kept showing me posters for events and newspaper pages. I told him to stop that I could not take it all in but he did not listen. I came home arranged some volunteering stuff happening over the weekend. I can't give details because it involves law enforcement volunteering. Anyway I slept until 5:00 AM this morning. In the wee hours of Saturday morning I was doing web mastering obsessively and have a very nice web site now. I studied a little today and will study more today and then tomorrow it is off to work. Work tomorrow will be 9 hours long and again that long on Tuesday to make up for leaving early for my mid-term. But then I have Wednesday, Thursday and Friday off for our trip.

I am finally going out to buy some children's software now and may buy a new computer monitor too. I like this store because they have a basically no questions asked return policy. So as long as I keep the product in perfect shape with all the bags, boxes and manuals, etc., they take it back for a full refund. So I am buying monitor today to test with a computer I have then if it does not work I will return it. I am also returning an over priced memory card for one of my cameras. I may return the camera too but I have a week or more to do that still.

My mark for my mid-term is already on the course internal web page.

Wow school has changed. I will miss class this week when in the past it would be traditional to learn my mid-term mark. Instead these days we receive our marks by accessing the school's web pages. I did this and found I scored very high after all. This is a simple course although if you don't know mathematics it might not be simple to you. I guess I am just some math person in the end.

I have an assignment due in about a week and a half. I am going to a conference out of town this coming week and have the days off work to attend. I will visit family and see some old friends in another city. These were my friends when I was first psychotic in the late 1970's. They are also academic people in a way. One of them has professors as parents both his mother and his father. The other person studied music and although not a present scholar does own a specialist bookshop. He finally bought the bookstore after working there for years. The store is a psychiatrist's bookshop, in fact. I think much of that is mumbo jumbo stuff and not all of it really practical or valid.

I am off work today just heading out to buy some children's software for some young women I know.

Cand J did not come by this evening but I am going out to see R now.

I am just about to ride my bike over to R's place and borrow ten dollars from him. Actually he owes me money for the surround sound system so this will be his first payment. Most of us consumers are broke now as it is near the end of the month. My next work pay day is next week too. I also have been paying a lot of bills so am broke because of that.

I came home from work early today, so I could study for tonight's mid-term exam.

I worked for only five hours today. I got in early and got some work done that was left for me by my boss. We then made progress with this work. At lunch my boss agreed I could work late next week and leave today at lunch so I could come home and study.

I basically have been studying and doing some organizing of my reading. I have a few notes I have read through for tonight's mid-term. I also have been applying some of the concepts of the course to see if these concepts are useful. It turns out they are and I am confident about tonight's exam. I am happy to report I have another A on the second assignment. If I do well this evening one third of my grade for this fall course will be a score of A.

Talking of grades my wife told me about a struggle she had when in school. For one geography test she memorized 100 definitions. The teacher came in on Monday and told the class that the dog had eaten the test and the class would be given a different test. My wife failed. This was in my opinion hearing this today the fault of the teacher. My wife does not have a high school diploma.

I am just about to help a women get some more computer memory for her eMac computer.

I was asked just yesterday by a sister consumer survivor for some help upgrading the memory on her computer. I think I can help using ebay to buy some memory. I am just going to start that research now. I took my meds about half an hour ago and may fall sleep. I have a mid-term exam tomorrow and will leave work early tomorrow. I am not sure if I will sleep this evening. With my meds working in my body I will no doubt become tired and fall asleep in the next hour or two.

I am off to work now.

I am just leaving for work after getting clean and doing some reading of my course notes.

I don't shower much but today I will shower and shave before work.

I do not shower that much and certainly not once a day. Today I will shower then shave. I will also wash some dishes and then get dressed for work. I will go into work early and get to work on my projects.

It has been another all nighter.

Actually my sleeplessness is not so bad today because I have only been up now some 14 hours. I bought some train tickets for our trip to visit family. I also spent a lot of time on the Internet doing self expression and self presentation like this blog but other sites where I don't talk about schizophrenia much. I also sent an email where I discussed having a disability like schizophrenia and being at a corporate workplace.

I am just getting ready for a day of work. After work I will log into a virtual world for a picnic. Then after that I am going to our monthly board meeting. Then hopefully I can come home and sleep at 8:00 PM and wake up rested for tomorrow.

I actually slept every evening this past week.

Except for being up on Sunday midday last weekend and then staying up till 10:00 PM Last Monday, I slept every evening this past week. Even when I wrote here that I was going to stay up all night on Thursday evening I instead fell sleep but did not take my meds. So in fact I had two evenings both Wednesday and Thursday, when I missed my meds but slept lightly on the couch. I guess I need to learn to study at the A+ level and never be late for work but still manage to sleep a more normal schedule and not sacrifice sleep for school study time. If I learn to avoid internet shopping then most of my Internet use will be academic work or community action rather than commercial use on the net.

It looks like I will be given an academic credit at my workplace.

My name is going on a learned paper. My new boss writes studies and I have helped him with one paper so far and he has put my name on as a writer so that is very cool and something I have worked very hard to come too. I also have a very challenging assignment now at work that involves studying and I will be working on that more as I go into the end of the year having been with this employer now almost 5 quarters of a year now. I work five days this week then only two next week and I am off on holidays for a few days at the end of the month.

I had a quiet day at home after union training.

I managed to wake up with lots of time to spare Saturday after a long day Friday. I volunteered on a festival by tending bar early Friday evening. There were many GLBT people there later and a representative of the Queen who also read fiction. It was a literary event. The gay writers were very funny but smutty and I was not entirely comfortable but had a great laugh at the humour. I also found some bad taste at an earlier none gay animation reading event. By about 10:00 PM I was home and going straight to sleep. On Saturday I completed my second day of union training and am now more aware of the grievance procedure for proper and full redress of workplace grievances.

I spent the evening as I usually do studying on the Internet. I also read some of the newspaper and listened in to the movie my wife watched in the bedroom. I am not sure now whether to stay up very late or sleep regular hours. I think I will plan to be a sleep early morning and wake up for about 5 PM. Therefore given 10 hours sleep I need to sleep at 7:00 AM this morning. It is time I began to study for school.

I did fine with my first assignment for the term.

Without saying where or exactly what I am studying I will report here that I was given an A on my first school work on the fall term. I also got my second assignment handed in on Wednesday. We have a mid-term next week so that is where my attention will now focus. The mid-term is going to be very well defined. It could be an easy mark but I must still work hard to get that mark. Does that make sense? I mean if it were a hard mark to get, then even studying hard would not produce a good mark. But this test will instead most probably reward a dedicated progressive student with a good grade. I think you can see that I trust this professor and believe that I am learning something useful and that I feel confident with my studies.

I did a little work at home just now.

I did a little note taking at home and thinking. I have union training today so will not be at my workplace. Instead at 8:30 I will go to a union office and spend a short day there today and another short day tomorrow. I will be back at my regular job on Monday.

I decided to stay up all night and to continue to read and write on the Internet.

I have been a bit manic the past half hour. I feel good. I have communicated on the Internet with other consumer survivors. I am catching up on the various sites and games I play on the Internet. I have also done a fair amount of blogging and other on-line writing. I am letting the music stop now, will relax in the quiet night, will make a pot of coffee and do some organizing now.

I sat around and used the computers all evening.

I came home and sat in front of the computers all evening. I did make some phone calls and talked with real people. I started to do the telephone banking and writing all the transactions for the day down in pen and ink. This reminds me I need to fill out and update my month end debit repayment budget excel spreadsheet now. I am creating good vibes all weekend by volunteering.

Wow! I type fast especially when listening to some old post high school rock and roll from my youth. I watched them so much and listened to so many live lead solos from their "Louie" guitarist, I became friends with that band. Most of this music is fifties based rock and roll with punk and new wave lyrics and funny always funny. They also poke fun at being insane which has its place. You have to be able to laugh at yourself from time time. This band was from my high school. They were popular in their day I bought their first record on iTunes last night. What with this music which is great and my new job duties I am feeling great these days but need to work more on relationships.

I am up early for work once again.

I was very tired Monday and managed to attend two meetings after work. I did get a little nap on the couch that day before the first union meeting. Then I attended a political meeting and went grocery shopping.

Yesterday I woke up about an hour before work and was on time. Today I am up early. I work today then tomorrow then I am in union training for two days. I will also volunteer this weekend. I have to serve a bar this Friday as a volunteer at a festival. Today should be busy at work. I am dressed for work but need to shave still. I am just sipping a coffee and smoking before work. I have had an apple for breakfast and some vitamins.

I am so upset.

My family life is bothering me. I wish there was a cure for schizophrenia but there is not.

I am off to work now. Most of my tasks got worked on this morning.

I did not do all that much work on my work. But I am leaving for work now. I did get my inner tubes changed and I did get started on my last problem in my school homework for this week. It is due Wednesday. I am tired and wired and will have a union meeting and a political meeting to attend after work today. I probably won't make all these after work meetings, but I am only working until 3:00 PM today and I am up from about noon yesterday. So it could be a 27 hour day and I will sleep right after work.

I am now clean shaven and getting started on "my" tasks.

I took the wheels off the bike and now need to get out my tire irons and take the tires off. Then I will place the new inner tubes in the tires and on the wheels. Then put the tires back on and fill the tubes up fully. As I put the new tubes on I will fill them partially.

I shaved for work today and will start reading some work in a little while. I work four days this week and then have some basic union training on Friday.

Coworkers who also have mental health issues.

I function a bit at work with one supervisor as a mental health resource. But this is now in the past as I moved onto a smaller office now with no one in our office at the same job level as me. In the old job there were hundreds of us at the same level. At the mental health week talk earlier this month I knew three workers who attended and did not know two of them had mental health issues until I saw them there. I had helped the third person get permission to attend. This person and our mutual supervisor and myself all have mental health issues. This supervisor was only recent and had been a coworker of mine and we both confided in each other about mental health issues. This was good but that was in my old duties and I am moving up to new duties where basically I work alone for a senior person as his research assistant. So far work has been good. I have mostly been reading and proof reading research reports and helping rewrite them.

I have three tasks to do overnight.

I decided to stay up over night tonight. My partner went to sleep with her clozapine and other pills about an hour ago. I just took some niacin and fish oil but will hold off on my respiradol until Monday evening. I may rest on the couch overnight but I will also try to complete some work. One thing I want to do before morning is put my new inner tubes on the bike wheels. Another thing is read for school and work and I have been doing that for parts of the day already. The other task is to complete some math homework. I should be at work in about 7 hours from now. But for now I will read and get ready to fix my bicycle.

I bought a folding tire and some inner tubes.

I have been experiencing slow leaks on my tires so bought new inner tubes today from the shop where a friend works. I did not buy my folding tire there though because their prices for these tires are too much. I did buy my folding tire at the camping coop. I only bought one tire today and will buy the other tire later in the week. They have the tire on hold for me now. The folding tires are practical for carrying around when one is in need of emergency repair. This is all building up supplies for bike touring.

R, C, and J came by again on Friday.

R is doing well in school and scored 89 on his English evaluation. He is studying this weekend for a sociology test. I helped him use my sociology dictionary to study Darwin. I also sold him my old surround sound system. We hooked it up at his apartment last night late at night.

C survived her work and is happy to be a worker again. She is already asking for more work. J her boyfriend also worked at the same job.

I started some new duties at work yesterday.

I started some duties as a research assistant yesterday. I can't write about it in any detail. But this should support my school work. Also my new boss is an doctor of economics and a researcher for the government.

We have a lab tonight at school but most of my computer homework is completed now.

I worked on school work starting on Saturday and continuing until Monday. I have most of this present assignment completed now. I have one question to still answer and may work on it now before the lab. I worked today and will work two more days this week. I have a radical union meeting this weekend. I also may walk a strike picket this evening in solidarity for an hour before my school lab this evening.

Only three more days to work this week but work is good this week.

My new duties are much better and I worked a full day today. I have another three days to work this week and then the weekend. I have three volunteer meetings this month to still attend and one presentation to give for a volunteer group. The presentation is about mental health consumers/users so I need to study up.

New hand mixer and new men's shoes purchased and new women's shoes and tweed blazers looked at for prices.

We went shopping on Saturday together. We were looking for shoes for my wife but she did not find any she liked. Some were just too fancy for her tastes. I had been wanting to get some new shoes that are very formal but comfortable. Many of my more neat shoes are batttered, either from use, or the cat scratching them. I did settle on a pair of Rockport, water proof, Oxfords. I had been bought a pair of Rockports by my mother when I was isolated and beginning recovery, so this brand hold special fasination for me. They are also amazingly comfortable and work well for formal shoes. So there is a practical recommendation for someone in recovery get a good pair of formal shoes or get your relative in recovery a pair. These types of shoes are great for wearing at work and I have never had a complaint about my shoes at work.

The hand mixer, we last used, was one we had either bought used, or we also had a hand mixer, that a former neighbour who was also a consumer survivor gave us. He died in mysterious circumstances naked in a parking lot from the cold. I still know his last partner and help her out sometimes. But neither of these two mixers was working anymore so we bought a new one also on Saturday.

My wife wanted me to buy a tweed blazer and we looked at some but I was put off by the prices. My wife asked her father about these coats and the suggested prices and then today he told her the prices we were seeing on Saturday were much too high for a such a blazer jacket. It may be time to go to a tailors and see what he can offer for tweed jackets. If I am forced to pay a lot it should be from a quality independent local source. That said I know that some persons just change the labels on suits and have seen a suit business do that before. Yes, I have witnessed crimes before and often not reported such crimes. Mostly because I did not know why or how to report crimes. I had no legal purpose or legal thinking. This was one reason I found for studying for my legal studies degree, it mad me more aware of laws and how to work and interact with laws.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy thanksgiving everyone. I hope you enjoy thanking natives for this land.

We had a fairly quiet day here

We had a fairly quiet day. L visited and took her cat with her. I worked on school work until now. My wife is watching the Jaws 2 movie right now and I am starting to get ready to sleep. I took my meds about 2 hours ago. I have not gone out all day but stayed inside. My wife did wash my clothes for this week at work. I will shave now.

I should know by now that when I think school is easy I have made some simple mistakes.

I made some simple mistakes in my homework I can see now reading the instructor's solutions. I let him know that I know I was wrong. This shows I am aware of the problem. If I was instructing this would mean that this student was trying hard may be a little too smart or perhaps a good student.

We have another hand me down couch.

My father-in-law and step-mother-in-law arranged to have their old couch brought here. It arrived Friday before we left town. Last night I asked J and C to help me take out our old couch which was in tatters and no longer very good. We put it on the curb where old furniture is picked up. I now need to vacuum the floor under where the old couch was. I also plan to move our futon couch to this space and put the new couch where the futon couch is. I have to wait to morning to run the vacuum cleaner though. I should be using this change of furniture as a reason to clean. I am not a very clean person although I can generally stay clean for work and a little less so for school.

C and J came by for Thanksgiving dinner.

I had defrosted the turkey since Wednesday morning. I put it in the oven today at 12:30 PM. I cooked it until 6:30 PM. I had to make a second grocery trip in the late afternoon to buy peas and gravy. So as usual we ate turkey, potatoes, peas, and stuffing all with gravy. We did buy stuffing at the 7-11 and they only had chicken stuffing. But it all worked out fine. We watched hockey on TV. C and J left at about 10:00 PM and I got down to studying and surfing the web.

I also read today's newspaper for politics and environmentalist news. It looks like a Canadian Inuit climate change activist, Shelia Watt-Cloutier and Al Gore are both co-nominated for the Nobel Peace prize. My father has voted on Nobel prizes before a long time ago. He votes on science prizes though. My friends are much more concerned about entertainment news. They are both working in the elections this week. I guess you might figure out where I live from that news but please if you do find out keep it quiet.

My wife and I attended a rock show this evening.

I had been listening to this rock star since 1975 or so. This evening I saw her perform live. My wife went with me. It was a bus ride and train ride to get there. If we had not gotten an extra cheque from the government disAbility support program we would not have had such a good time.

I stayed up all night and did some school work.

I read a little statistics research overnight and tried some homework problems from our next assignment. I think I have one problem done now. The professor is making this course easy.

I am preparing for an interview this morning

I am clean shaved as of an hour ago. I have picked a suit jacket out of three possible suits jackets. This reminds me that my tie must be a different colour now because I am using a blue gray suit instead of brown today. I have been tinkering around with my computer in my office for a few hours now. I am ready to put my nice pants on and leave for work around 6:00 AM. My interview is not till later in the morning. I will be tested on economics, statistics, and sociology in my interview.

I was up late last night and finally this morning got working on school work and got it done.

I did a lot of miscellaneous computer tasks geared around self presentation last night but finally got down to working on some school work due today. I slept at about 7:00 AM without meds and woke up to L and my wife drinking beer and talking a lot mid day. I am now heading off to class and my wife made me dinner and cookies. I will miss hockey games on TV tonight because of school. My problem now becomes getting up in the morning on time for work and my interview given that I am at school until 10:00 PM this evening. I am very caught up on volunteer paperwork and income reporting. Wish me luck tomorrow. We also have our speaker on anxiety at work tomorrow so the afternoon should be great.

I did not get laid off and have new duties at work as a research assistant starting next week some time.

I was off work today but felt really bad because I was waiting for a hiring decision. Our work project is almost done. I have been doing this project for the last year and many of my coworkers and myself were facing lay off. At least for me this week has been good, as I was transfered to a senior researcher's office, where I will do SAS coding for him and help him with his research.

On top of this I have an interview tomorrow for a promotion but the results of this won't be known for a couple of months at least.

I had a couple of good days at work.

I had some good news Monday at work about possibly not being laid off. I have been working towards this new work the past two days. Tomorrow I have the day off to get ready for an interview for a different type of job. So that is two possible futures plus one I am waiting to hear about for three possible futures at this workplace. Friday I have off as a vacation day to start an extra long four day weekend. Thursday someone from our self-help group is speaking at my workplace about his story and recovery with mental health.

I helped L set up her new computer, yesterday.

I first fixed the desk L had tried to build. She had bi-polar disorder and had been up all night not sleeping and trying to build the desk. I got a lift from a poverty activist friend to take the computer, printer, and monitor to L's house. So like I said the first step was to fix up the desk. I then did not take all the power away from L but had her go through the set-up posters for the computer and printer and helped her cable up the machines which she got done. I then showed her how to turn on and off the Windows Vista computer. I then came home and slept until 3:00 AM. I am now getting ready for work.