Category Archives: Distractions

“Psychotic Drugs”

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a.k.a. “My Extreme Dystonic Reaction And How I Wound Up In The Emergency Room For The Fourth Time In Less Than Nine Months”

It was my intention to write a post about another night, another ER visit.  It was also my intention to get a little rest first.  The latter was not to be.  About the former, I guess we’ll see.

(If you think I ever actually know and plan and decide upon what I’m going to write here, you’ve lost the thread somewhere along the way.)

I watched the movie Serendipity instead.  Everyone reading this should know by now how I love the concept (why haven’t I made a category for it, I need to do so, post-haste. . . okay, done).  I don’t just love it, I hold a very strong belief in it.  The movie is cute as can be, at any rate.  It also features a wonderful score, with a particular song running through it that was also in another movie released I think around the same time, also wonderful and with a not dissimilar concept, Practical Magic.

I don’t know why I stopped liking movies, but if anyone could, please tell me in the comments, what has John Cusak done lately?  Or Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, even Kate Beckinsale?  I’m terribly out of my element with modern-day movies, I’m forced to admit.

So.  I’ve put it off long enough.

What happened was this.  I had an extreme and acute (I promise you I am not overstating the situation by deliberately using two absolute declarative adjectives to describe it) dystonic reaction to perphenazine, also known by the name Trilafon.  It’s a conventional antipsychotic, and thus much more prone to cause this (and other neuroleptic symptoms and syndromes).

Which forces me to explain dystonia, a task I don’t much relish, particularly after experiencing it so severely.  Here goes (I’ll also throw in a couple of links for a more clinical picture).

It started with my voice, actually.  It had this funny affect, and it was hard to get my tongue to make the sounds I needed it to.  But I got that under control and didn’t worry too much (that would have been. . . Monday night).  Last night (Tuesday) I noticed it again a little, but everyone went to sleep and so I did no more talking.  But as I lay on the couch, and later in bed, trying to fall asleep, I noticed some rigidity and tension in my face, my tongue especially.  I couldn’t fall asleep, and it spread through my body, little by little.

I kept talking myself down from thinking it was anything, except something in me must have known better.  I got out of bed and went and got my mother, at my age and at three a.m.  And then we sat on the couch and I cried, because I was terrified.

I settled down some, and even tried a few odd moments of humor, which were lost in translation because I basically couldn’t speak.  Long rest of the story short, I got worse, my mom got more concerned, we both put on our shoes and coats and got in the car to go to the emergency room.  I remember when she was backing out of the driveway, I just about told her to call 911 instead, but I lost my direction at that point.

It was worse on my left side, my toes were curled tightly, my head tilted, my abdomen locked.  I couldn’t keep my eyes open.  I described it to my mom as like a very long, drawn out, slow motion seizure, and she said she had thought the exact same thing.

Apparently I was as gone as I think I was, because she also said everyone in the ER seemed freaked, and I couldn’t even sign my name to consent for treatment, I had to do a “verbal consent” (policies).

My blood pressure and my pulse were high enough to set all of the machines beeping, and then after a minimum of discussion and the magic word “perphenazine,” a wonderful young doctor had a dose of Benadryl shot into my IV that knocked me silly.  Seriously.  I kept going, “Oh wow.  Oh, wow.”  My poor mother sitting there, eyes filled with tears from her terror over my state, and I had to reassure her that they were good “oh wows,” because I was feeling completely back to myself within a minute or two.  Well, kind of floaty, but otherwise very much myself.

So with some discussion, an injection of diazepam (Valium) for good measure, a prescription and instructions, I was sent merrily on my way, better than before.  Better, because now I know to say “fuck all” if a doctor tries to put me on a conventional again.

Add those to the growing list of drug allergies.

Moral of the story:  “Don’t ever hit your mother with a shovel, it leaves a dull impression on her mind.” ~ Paul Newman, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

I decided this one needed a light moral, because it’s been a heavy post for me.

And, oh, the links:  Dystonic Reaction (one link, I’m tired)

Whoops, a last note:  The title of this post, my mom was trying to find the word ‘psychotropic’ in reference to my meds, but came up with ‘psychotic’ instead.  Based on recent experience, I’m coming to agree with her Freudian assessment.

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

I Do It To Myself

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At just about this time tomorrow I should be lifting off for the first leg of my trip home.  So naturally my laundry is done, I’m packed, I’ve got all of my medication refilled, and I’ve even done the online check-in thing!

And if you believe any of that crap, I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I will give you such a deal on. . .

Didn’t do any laundry yet.  This only matters because I have items which need to be dried flat and others which need to be hand-washed and dried flat.  And of course I can’t pack when I haven’t got anything to pack.  Oh, but wait, I’m not new at this.  You pack the Woolite and wash things when you arrive (what, the sink in the room isn’t every bit as capable of holding water as the sink in my bathroom?).

I think I have a medication that needs refilling, but my pharmacy is open 24 hours, so no rush there.  I did make a very half-hearted attempt at checking in for my flight, but it got to be too much hassle after like one screen.

So, come on!  Time for me to get going on all of this!

Maybe I’ll watch just one movie.  Charade is kind of calling to me. . .

Moral of the story:  Go out for Starbucks first.

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Distracted Driving? ME???

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So usually I am very focused when I drive, almost militant in my attention to the road and the car and the homicidal maniacs all around me.  I admit that I blast my music.  But I don’t even turn it on until I’m done backing out of the driveway or a parking space.  I also will occasionally take a phone call.  Yes, I am horrified to admit to that (it may be legal where I live, but there are plenty of things which are legal and still stupid).  But I only, only do it with my earpiece and when it is expected and it is an emergency – i.e. my shrink.

This morning, though. . .  Oh.  My.  God.  Drinking a Starbucks (okay, I do still also do that one from time to time).  Not so high on the meter of distraction.  I know my car well enough to pick up and set down a drink in the cup holder without removing my eyes from the road.

Incidentally, I drive a manual (stick).  That’s incredibly relevant and adds a whole other dimension for focus, as well as a much greater need for using both hands while I drive.

So I had made myself late for a doctor’s appointment.  I wasn’t “running late,” nothing “happened to make me late,” it was just carelessness on my part.  Hey, I see a theme for this post.

The first thing was the worst.  I had filled out all of my pre-appointment paperwork, but I realized I had left off one medication I had just started.  So what did I do?  I grabbed a pen and wrote it on the back of my hand while on the on ramp to the highway.

Breaking all rules - probably the only picture of me you will ever see on here

Now it isn’t quite so bad as it sounds.  I mean it is, but it was an on ramp with a light, one car per lane (there were two) per green, so I wasn’t actually moving. . . much.  Justification.  I know!

I had to take the picture because I can’t remember the last time I wrote on the back of my hand.  It was probably middle school, I used to do it all of the time.

So I didn’t kill myself or anyone else getting onto the highway.  And I’m driving along and realize I need to call my psychiatrist.  So what do I do?  I search for his number in my phone book, then call and leave him a message on speaker.   You have to push a button to leave a message, too.

I blame the fact that I have had severe insomnia and woke up at 2:45 this morning.  No, I take full responsibility and I blame myself.  I know better than to do shit like that.

Moral of the story:  Let this be a lesson to me.

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

I Don’t Know Why I Feel This Way

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But someone whom I respect tremendously (and have a bit of a crush on – yes, still, and forever) has kindly offered a medium to explain at least the way I feel for me so’s I can give my overloaded brain some respite.


(This song and video are solely the property of their respective owners and artists. Absolutely no copyright infringement is intended.)

(And anyone who knows anything about me knows how crucial it is to me that he introduced the bass player/vocalist.)

Moral of the story:  “Give your ears a chance.” ~ My maternal grandfather and most kindred spirit, heart of my heart, soul of my soul

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Whatever You Do In Life, You’re Going To Regret It

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I spoke with someone yesterday at some length about my decision not to have children.  Actually, she spoke, I nodded and smiled (even though it was on the phone and she couldn’t see me) and tried very hard to change the subject.

People in my life, even my closest friends, most of them don’t seem to understand that just because I have made the decision not to have kids, that doesn’t mean it’s an easy topic to discuss.  As it happens, it’s one of the more difficult in my life.

I helped to raise the two most perfect baby girls you could ever imagine.  I was there every step of the way (literally as well as figuratively), from the magical to the hellish to the every day.  Every moment on the spectrum.  And I never held them at arm’s length because they were “someone else’s kids.”  They were, and are still, my kids.  Their triumphs are mine, I endure their trials alongside them, when they bleed I scar.

I don’t think anyone in the world who has made the decision not to have children knows quite so well as I do exactly the particulars and consequences of that choice.  I would love to have a child, and I would be an incredible mother.  But this is something I have thought about long and hard over a course of years, it’s a decision I make again most every day, and whether it’s an easy or a difficult conclusion for me to accept, it’s the right one.

There are so many things I could have been, could still be, and I would be wonderful at them.  A doctor, a mother, a linguist, a writer, a photographer, a teacher, an advocate.  But I don’t do things in my life half-way.  I won’t throw myself into a million different ventures, because you cannot devote yourself to any of them wholeheartedly when you do.

Were I to have a child, everything else would be dropped completely.  Having spent so much time raising other people’s children, I’ll be damned if I will miss out on any of the moments in my own baby’s life.  From bath time to play time to meal time to nap time to being thrown up on and wakened because a diaper needs changing or a nightmare has caused for my little one the need to climb into bed with me.

Eventually, when my child started school, I might be able to return to writing.  The only way that I know how to write, you see, is to give it my undivided attention.  No phone calls, no knocks on the door, no distractions at all.  That’s how I’m wired, the end.

And we’re talking strictly of the “me” aspect on this one, not even beginning to consider whom the child’s father might be and his role and understanding of the way I am wired.  I am not going to deliberately bring a child into this world without a man whom I love and trust to help me parent, and that ship sailed long ago.  I know that there are many out there who think I am just being cynical, but you know not the details of that particular aspect of my life.  And you never will.  The best way I can choose to be a good, responsible, loving, caring, nurturing parent to my child is not to conceive them.

Still, last night, after I got off the phone with this dear friend, I did something I haven’t done in some time.  I curled up on the floor in my bedroom and I cried some.  Was I crying for my baby?  Yes.  Was I crying for love?  Yes.  Was I crying for the doctor I will never be and the roads I will never walk?  Also yes.

It isn’t something which can properly be explained, but that doesn’t mean I won’t attempt it.

Every choice you make in your life, big or little, automatically eliminates endless other choices.  You choose today to get the mint chocolate chip ice cream?  Well that rules out the strawberry.  You choose to spend your money on a plane ticket?  The newest bestseller and that dress you fell in love with and the shoes that would be perfect with it?  You can’t have them now.  You choose to devote your life to one path?  You rule out almost every other.  You choose instead to include in your life many different pursuits?  You miss the smallest pieces, the finest mundane moments of each.

I (I was going to preface this statement with ‘I think,’ but I don’t think,  I know) have a capacity to feel and understand and grasp the ramifications and subtleties of those things in life that nearly no one can.  Most people just aren’t wired that way, some are but choose not to let it all in.  And it has absolutely nothing to do with my manic-depression or mental differences.  Except perhaps insofar as the combination of my innate ability for seeing what others don’t coupled with my bipolar makes certain moments and life experiences more visceral.

The title of this post is, ‘Whatever You Do In Life, You’re Going To Regret It.’  Most people won’t, because most people don’t see the smallest, most infinitesimal threads that make up the greater fabric of life.  And that’s for the best, it’s as it should be.

Moral of the story:  I know I will look back and regret the choices I didn’t make, and the lives I didn’t lead.  But that doesn’t mean that those choices would have been right for me, nor those lives ones I should have lived instead.

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The Wait Is Over

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Here it is!  I have been working very hard, and collaborating on the development of another blog.  This one is a different approach, a community of people blogging together.  Well, it will be, anyway.  Three authors (including me) are already on board, another has given a yes, and after the diversity is a bit more properly on display, we’re going to get to reaching out and recruiting and advertising.

As far as I am concerned, I’m keeping this blog for my primary, and just contributing to the new project here and there, and only with regard to my mental differences.  Although so far there are two posts up, and they’re both mine.  But I have the most time, currently.

So shall I give you the link?  Would you like to know where to find it?  Are you sure?  Do you really want to know?

Okay, I’ve kept you in suspense long enough.  A Canvas Of The Minds - still very much in development, but I’ll keep you posted!

Ruby

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Sleep? What Sleep?

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Day five.  Twelve hours spent asleep, 121 awake (and counting).  To give you some perspective, most people spend one-third of their day asleep.  These past five days, collectively, I have slept about one-twelfth of each, if you average it out.  Or eight hours versus two.  I am keeping records, best I can.

I suppose this experience was always a possibility, looming out in the Universe.  I won’t say inevitability, because I still maintain that it’s a manifestation of post-traumatic stress.  But I also never really thought much about the reality of reaching a moment where there would be no new pill to knock me out.  I should have, none of the newer sleep meds helped, the older and less commonly prescribed meds were usually effective in the beginning, but I would need higher and higher doses, and even they would fail eventually.  It feels like my body’s drug metabolism is increasing exponentially with each new medication it discovers.

But I always figured there would be more pills to try.  And there are, but I have yet to find a doctor who will write for them (well, there’s one, but I have to speak with her more on the subject).

I don’t even know so much that it would matter if I took an entire bottle of phenobarbital at once.  I’m fairly certain it would kill me, but I doubt it would put me to sleep first.  My unconscious has determined that I have to listen to it for a change.  And after approximately three decades of me shoving everything in my life into it, it has a whole lot to say.

I think it would be very interesting if there were actually some way for a specialist to study me, to test and somehow independently verify how quickly medications clear my system, versus the half-life that is the standard.  Perhaps there is.  But as interesting as it would be, I’ve felt like a lab rat for far too long.  This would be one area where experience, self-interest, and emotion would overrule my curiosity.

Sarah, who has been most directly privy to my struggles these past days, and who has walked with me, given honest but kind assessments of me and my situation, nudged me gently when my thinking has been compromised, but most of all just held my hand, today asked me how I was feeling.  I answered with complete honesty.

“Very flat.  Very, very flat.  I think that right now my brain is conserving all of itself for the vital functions, so the ups and the downs and the anythings fall by the wayside.  All in all not a bad compensation.”

I don’t mean flat as in adhedonia, the loss of all pleasure and interest that is a symptom of depression.  There are things that can keep my interest and keep me busy.  Thank God for my incredible movie collection and the projects I have that I can work on in bits and pieces.  I’ve kind of established a pattern of doing the automatic, easy tasks until I start to get weary.  Then I’ll put in a movie, and with luck start to drift into a bit of real sleep.  After a reset of a few hours, I wake up and use what I have recovered for anything that requires thought and creativity.  After that fades, I go back to the automatic, and the cycle commences again.

There is a part of me that thinks I should call my doctor about this one.  But I know he can’t do anything.  Moreover, a much bigger part of me feels like for the time being I just have to keep everything, quiet, calm, and soothing, and let my body make the decisions.  Until I feel it shouldn’t anymore.  For as much of a hard-head as I have always been, I have learned a lot, quickly, about letting my reactions direct me.  It has always been the other way around in my life.

Although something else my body seems to really be pushing me to do is get pregnant. Ha. No. That one is a decision made, and non-negotiable.

Moral of the story:  Let go.  Just let it all go.

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Effing PTSD, Effing Sleep, Effing Brain

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So I thought I had myself figured as far as sleep issues.  Usually it was pretty impossible, but once I finally passed out I would sleep extra-long so my mind could catch-up on shutdown time.  Occasionally I would have periods of sleeping 16+ hours a day.

My newest sleep problem has gone thus:  Woke up late morning Thursday.  Did not sleep at all Thursday night, Friday, Friday night, most of Saturday.  As in no naps, no drifting off, zip, zero, nada.  No mania or anything, just an almost complete brain shutdown by Saturday morning.

Late afternoon Saturday I got a bit of a reprieve.  I finally slept some, two-and-a-half hours, max.  Was up for a bit, then I got myself to the in between place, you know, drifting in and out but never going fully to sleep (thus in no way allowing my brain to recover).  Two hours tops there, not that it matters because it didn’t help at all.

I’m blaming the PTSD for this.  Lately, dramatic changes in behavior, reaction-sensitivity, and all things in any way tied to my mind (and often body) can be traced back to this, even if I can’t give an exact linear progression.  Also, I’ve been grinding my jaw horribly (bruxism), both while awake and asleep, which I have done while awake before, but never in my sleep.  That started with the latest post-traumatic stress episode.

My mind is completely blown (and not in a good way).  I have no idea what to do.  The only sleep meds left for me to try are barbiturates.  One doctor brought it up entirely on her own as a possible, my two regular docs (PCP and psych) had previously said no way, and I get why.  I may just try to get in touch with the one who suggested it.  I know the risks and certainly don’t want to develop TD (tardive dyskinesia, I’ll explain it some other time), but I am getting so desperate here.  I cannot understand why two doctors who know me and know bipolar well don’t view this with serious concern.  Even if I don’t go manic, sooner or later I will start hallucinating hard-core and progress to full-blown psychosis from lack of sleep.  In the meantime, my mind is pretty useless in general, and completely non-functional about the important stuff.

And this is really important stuff.

Also, I want to hunt down all of these assholes who publish anti-medication, anti-sleep med “articles” (none of whom I have found to be professionals – probably at anything) and who insist that you can manage everything “naturally” and that you just have to “reset your body’s natural rhythms” and make them spend a month with a completely unmedicated me. Let them see how insane and desperate I get, and how hard I struggle. Really I want to kick the shit out of them, but, well I was going to say seeing me in my deepest desperation would be more effective, but you can’t change the minds of ignorant reactionaries who are so used to listening only to themselves that they can’t hear or see anything else, no matter how true.

Moral of the story:  
“To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;”
~  William Shakespeare, Hamlet

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

For The Time Being. . .

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First, if you want passwords, I’ll be happy to supply them – especially to my subscribers and those who check this blog regularly.  But you have to let me know, because WordPress doesn’t give me any way to contact selective people who have not explicitly given me their contact info.

Also, I’m going to “advertise” a page my friend has started on Facebook.  Check it out, and “Like” it to join in the conversation!  Let’s Open Some Minds And Obliterate Societal “Norms”  :)  Good stuff!

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Lessons I Have Learned About The Interweb And Me

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This is the post that has been stewing around in my mind.  That’s probably why I didn’t write it yesterday, because it wasn’t done cooking.  My ideas don’t come out until they’re good and ready to.

This really goes back to when I got my new laptop about eight months ago and started using Word.  The Auto Correct got me so bugged, because when I write, I write according to my rules, not Microsoft’s.  And mine are usually correct where theirs are not, for the record (which is not to say I don’t make conscious choices to break them, because I do that when I feel it’s warranted).  I was given an incredible education in grammar thanks to my first elementary school (in Pittsburgh).  We began diagramming sentences in the third grade, my high school out westward didn’t broach that concept until Honors English in the tenth, I think.  And of course I have major issues about anyone or anything changing my writing without my explicit permission.  I’m going to be hell on an editor one day.  :)

But I knew how to turn that feature off, so okay.

Here’s how that relates.  Google Chrome is awesome for some things, one of them being that it underlines a word when you’ve misspelled it.  In theory, this is handy.  But not unlike Auto Correct, the predictive text feature on my phone, and every spell check/pre-designed electronic dictionary feature I have ever encountered, there are words that I use that Google Chrome doesn’t have in its repertoire.  You can add words to the dictionary, which is nice.  But more and more I found myself relying on it to just ‘click and fix.’  I would have it just change the word for me and not pay attention to what my mistake was.

I started making more and more errors.  I thought it was due to my memory issues and general mental state.

One day, I don’t know what exactly prompted it, I stopped with the ‘click and fix.’  If I saw a word underlined, I would look at it and figure out how to fix it myself (I have always been an excellent speller, that probably would have been something good to include prior to this).  From there I progressed to fully using my own brain, and when that couldn’t get it completely, a real, actual, print form dictionary.  I heart my dictionary.  It’s enormous and beautiful and I spent well over one hundred dollars on it thirteen years ago.  I hunted and hunted until I found the perfect one.  It’s a Merriam-Webster, for anyone who cares.  I love Oxford, and one day I would love to get my hands on a copy of the complete OED, but Oxford is an English language dictionary – as in British English – and I live in the United States, so I write in American English (even though the British English variations so often look much more aesthetically pleasing).

So guess what has happened since then?  I have been making fewer and fewer mistakes, and the ones I do make are usually because I’m not focused or my fingers are flying across the keyboard too quickly.  It’s helped me have so much more confidence in my brain’s abilities.

As to other things online, I got into this terrible habit of leaving my email open while I wasn’t using it, so I would get a new message while I was trying to do something else, and even if I tried to ignore it, I would still lose my focus a little.  I would leave tabs open which I didn’t need at the moment, all sorts of things that not only ended up making me crazy and distracted while online, but in life.  I stopped doing that less than two weeks ago, and I am so much more focused and relaxed, generally.

I noticed something else, which is using the computer makes me sleepy but unable to sleep.  Things like reading, or even watching a film, only make me sleepy when I’m genuinely tired, and I fall asleep easily (easily for me).

Of course computers and the internet have their positives.  Documents are easier to edit and don’t have to be rewritten in their entirety longhand.  You are given the ability to easily connect with loved ones states or even continents away – although I still say letters and phone calls beat emails and IMs any day.  You have access to articles it would take you ages to locate at the library (love me some PubMed!), I’m not trying to bash the whole concept.  But I know that in many ways computers and being online were making me lazy and contributing immeasurably to any cognitive deficits I am already dealing with.

Oh, and because I am a huge believer in full disclosure about the important stuff, I always use the proofread feature after I have written something.  But if there is ever a doubt about what the computer says versus what I think is correct, I consult an impartial expert – my dictionary.  :)

Moral of the story:  Try relying on your own brain some time.  You’ll be amazed what that sucker is capable of!

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