39,000k in but hands hurt so much now.”
Update so far
I originally came out of the gate strong with a full 6,000 on the first day. Thought the sooner that it could get done meant the sooner it all could be over with victory well in hand. My health decided to throw the spanner in the works there.
I can barely move now without bumping in to anything, I need a cane full time, and I am currently on Tramadol that makes the dizziness in even worse. On top of the other factors just having my body deal with burnt out any lead I had as now I currently stand going on the same rate which is something that I did not want to happen. Trying to draw blood for the tests was something too difficult that the office was afraid I would pass out with the loss making it even harder to get more tests done.
On the good side of things. I helped design part of someone else’s cover. Did a little art jam to start getting used to paint.net as a major art setup and I feel with time it may just be able to do what I wish. It took me about 30 mins, and after putting it up as something to help an actual artist they actually enjoyed mine to the point of picking it to use. It will get me a nice little nod, and credit for the illustration in book. That was not expected, but hey as long as everyone is happy then it is something that can be at least put in the art portfolio.
Still got time to pull this writing challenge around. 30k is a good place to be, but I will be a lot happier at 50k. Their is also another non fiction book idea that will be worked on after this writing project is done. It seems that after this month their are a couple ideas for a December goal.
Utter Disappointment
For those who somehow missed the title. This blog is called One Guy In Portland, and that is because my home city was Portland, OR. I loved it and my home state and I thought we did not get a whole lot of respect from a lot of other ‘hubs’ of industries. We were the food cart city, the weird one, and most of all the one where anything could be found or done.
Imagination ran through this city and the state like the blood in your veins, and I loved it. Growth, loss, highs, lows from the gentrification of the east side back to the smokey bars and speakeasy gambling rooms. I loved it because it had an authenticity to whatever it did making it seem just for a moment that there was a magic about it.
You could go and learn tea from the monks of China, gamble with some of the best in Vegas, learn from minds in every field, eat and swap stories with some of the best chefs coming up, and learn so much. I have spent days navigating the back roads and alleys just to see what little thing could be found.
There was always bad moments. Running down Burnside right after y2k at 3 in the morning, gang shootings against the LGBTQ community, drug deals from some of the smaller towns funneling in, and those people never really getting a chance they can understand to just try. Try to do something positive, and maybe they can just stop. I used to boast how Oregon was a grat place to live and Portland was the jewel of the crown.
Now, though I must say I am more than a little hurt because what started off as a branded “resistance” brought the wrong people to the dance. The crown is tarnished, and the jewel that once held some magic may have grown duller. That does not mean that efforts should stop, though. One does not get by moping about, and even though it has wavered, I will still make my home a better place, and then move outwards because that is the plan, the goal , and the dream. It does not matter now, who won or who lost. We must work with what we got and sometimes it takes a group of misfits to make something greater than the sum of the parts.
Shattered Reflections – Excerpt
Hospital Rules and Back to School
Janet was in the hospital again, and I was being dragged out of school to show our support for another surgery where more of my sister’s innards would actually be put together properly.
I hate hospitals. Back then they were boring and dismal places that one would think would have something for people to do while waiting for something to happen. That is all that happens in a hospital though, waiting for something to happen. Pokemon Red would get me through the dullest moments plugged on top of my electric purple Game Boy Color. When it was my turn to see her while everyone was getting all emotional my turn had come with madre. While mom got all teary eyed over the next surgery and how she looked in the hospital bed because that scared Janet most of all.
She wanted things to seem as normal as possible while in the hospital, and seeing me like that the first time she had to ask if I was worried.
“Should I be?”
“Well I don’t think so, but everyone is acting like it is bad.” She wondered.
“People are stupid Janet, they do not think with logic.”
“Is that why people cry all the time in hospitals?”
“No, they cry because although it is a small risk it is still a risk. That and people are just stupid sometimes.” I rebutted.
“How come you’re not scared?”
“Because even the doctors say this is low risk versus some of the other ones in the hospital. I think if it were to happen then it would be on something the doctors are a little more fearful of.”
Playing through the safari zone for a Kangaskhan she wanted to have a Pokemon of her own. After madre got involved saying the next one I caught had to be hers. She would get to name it while my opinions got return fire out in the hall. Only for after a while we walked back in to see her acting like her dyed blonde ditzy self again.
“Bro, your not scared are you?”
“Nope, you will know when I am scared when I show up of my own volition, and not dragged here.”
“You really think I will be okay?” She questioned.
Putting down the game boy our mother watched Janet calm down as my answer was explained before being shepherded out of the room. Our father would be watching the next shift passing us before we left the hall. Madre just ruffled my hair while asking how things worked in my head before we started our way to the car. School was coming back, and it was better to be in school then be out of it.
Sylvia waited less then five minutes before hugging me in front of most of the class. Twirling lightly it was a bad dance we were inseparable again in the first week especially catching up about the various things of our summers.
The warm autumn sun and smell of decaying walnuts, her hair under my chin with the darker tones of her skin on mine before we giggled happily at one of our stupid jokes. We had a wonderful surprise as half of the school would be heading out with both of our groups in the same period. Thoughts of sleeping in the same campground made us blush slightly.
The happy kids we were catching up we would just enjoy the moment.
We even talked at night on the phone whenever we had the time. It was just better because we didn’t have set guidelines to our relationship. We were each others friend. We ere each others confidant. Just her and just me enjoying each others presence to the point that our other friends were comfortable. Everyone should have someone like that in their life, and it surprised me that she was happy with me.
Outdoor school was camp for two weeks with various activities supposedly to help us learn about the different sciences. It also helped us to keep our focus away from everything that we could have been doing. Walking in the forest with our counselor and teacher for different classes. The rest of the time we would go to the various extra activities where different cabins would meet up while different counselors supervised.
We would meet only a handful of times outside of lunch at camp wide announcements. One each week and whatever time we could see each other which was an additional four times. Lunch was something our groups would have in common and most of the time we would eat together. Other kids would always say we were like a married couple that would get a blush from both of us. Sylvia’s ears would go red in case any of her friends brought up any dream wedding plans always gravitating towards grabbing my hand while arguing with others about why she was blushing so hard.
While we were being driven back we would just sit and chat while the clouds began to darken. She had taken to training my Raichu while I wasn’t playing. Trying to catch her off guard one quick peck one her cheek got her attention turning towards me slowly before draping herself over me.
“Muk attack..”
The smile on her face as well as her proximity making both of us blush.
“You know for how often this happens one would think we were used to it.”
“Does it bother you?”
“Not really, I’m just sure we would both be over it by now.” Pulling her close to me we both could smile.
Wrapping my arm around her we both sat back against the window.
Hearing the clicking sounds of a camera woke me up. We were back at the school where I threatened one of my classmates about stomping the camera to dust before hearing them snicker off. She shifted on tome of me muttering how warm I was. Which took of all my strength not to face wide blush. Having her snuggle against my chest was my trigger to as my teacher would say “blushing so brightly he could be a substitute stoplight.”
Everything all said and done it was interesting so where does that leave the blog going after this because doing daily posts will be rough. First, is the whole thing of what will be done in November there will be posts twice a week instead of a rolling tally just to keep some of my sanity in tact allowing me to focus on the matter at hand.
There are some failures that need to be righted this month. While that is going there are other things that will need portions of my attention. Keeping it to a more conservative blogging schedule like that will be important, and I will try to clear the 50 k as soon as possible.
Last year taught me how my health could nosedive even further. The year before that taught me how I could better prepare for it. Part of being so serious is also the mind set. If I can’t do this after the third try, the thought already in my head is if I can be a writer at all. Having my hands and arms hit by this mysterious sickness only drives me up a wall. I will not let my health take something like this from me. It will be a proof of concept. Can I write enough to possibly be an author? Is there enough to pull it off?
Maybe there is who knows, and all I can hope is at the end I can look at it with the pride of a victory. I don’t think I can suffer the sting of defeat on this for a third time with all my doubts. Part of why this one will also be so late is because as of me typing this it is 11:30 PM which means this challenge is over. Completed despite a couple hiccups in the timing everything was finished.
🙂 ← This is me smiling, and if you ask my family it happens maybe a dozen times a year.
Eddie G.
The best parts of my work I feel is when I have not been in the best frame of mind. It sounds weird, but I just need to be pushed a little bit before I really make my best moves. Some can call it being a villain, but I am a guy where new rules get drafted after my presence has been allowed. The previous sentences also sounded so high and mighty I had to laugh at myself for a bit. In all seriousness though finding that edge may be important to me and with my position I hope the pressure makes diamonds out of some unassuming lumps of coal. The worst thing about pressure though is it does burst pipes.
In my situation, that may not be the best in the long run. In any case for those who don’t see those as the hero in their own story then I have something that always helped get in touch with my more devious side. You can look him up, he was a pro wrestler that really made me think you did have a chance doing what you wanted. He was not the biggest or strongest wrestler, but he was skilled and his whole gimmick was that of being the wily veteran in a world of bigger wrestlers.
His name was Eddie Guerrero. Despite being gone for many years his videos on Youtube will often have more views than the pro wrestling promotion’s channels. He was the man who beat Brock Lesnar for the WWE title before Lesnar went to UFC. Eddie was one of those guys that came along very rarely, and everyone was happier for him being there. From fan’s to other wrestlers there was not a whole lot of bad talked about him even a full decade later. I also got a teacher to become a fan because of one of his catchphrases.
“If you are not cheating, then you are not trying.”
This, of course, was not meant in a relationship situation, but in a situation where you are trying for a goal. A great duelist when I was younger gave me the talk how at some point everyone cheats, and despite not taking some roads yourself you can defend against it by learning it. Happy Halloween.
Blog Challenge Retrospect
This was a lot harder than I had originally thought. Doing different things each day was difficult just to the concept of what should be allowed. Doing this has taught me how to relax when blogging. I have been always a little uptight as could be seen from some of the first posts when I had no real idea how to handle things.
I always have a habit of wanting to try something then jumping right in quality be damned. I don’t think this will ever be a blog that makes me money. It was originally about my pursuits and my hobbies and it will stay that way. The over saturation of a subject on a blog can seem to me a touch like over saturation of your own market. When there are a million things about one subject in one place I think it would constrain me. In just this month we have gone over, writing attempts, game articles, Hufflepuff pride, NaNoWriMo, different story excerpts, Youtube channels, recipes, psychological terms, meanings of them in social circles, and plenty of sass and vinegar.
One of the other posts I will have is something a bit more emotional than my usual style of writing. I will try to keep it above my usual form of ranting, but no promises. Emotionally is a state I really do not talk about because it doesn’t have a whole lot of a place in my world. I can’t feel anything because other people need me to look at things to right the ship or be that pillar that people lean on when everything goes crazy. Doing that becomes quite tiring especially when you have to learn something on the fly or explain to someone that should already know their actions could go and hurt others.
That is a post for another time because if anyone has been keeping track I do have a couple left to go to make this challenge complete. MAybe, these things will change later maybe they will not. We will see then.
An Emotional Thing
This is something difficult for me. I was never known to be openly emotional. It was something that always was found in my work, but never was there something to go read like this. Past coworkers would usually just say I am a guarded individual, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have them. It is just strange for me to show them in such a fashion.
Those who had guessed Shattered Reflections was based on someone would be correct. It is based on the experiences of my life, and one of the reasons I have not come out to be so honest with it is more about trying to remember everything and feeling that I failed. I wouldn’t to put a partial product and I had taken enough shots to the head over the years that having it in as fiction would at least cover for anything I may have missed.
Lately my health has been declining and it has been doing so slowly over a period of about a year. Now it has gotten to the point where my hands and arms will go numb for hours, and while they find things on every test they just cannot put everything together. I used to be fairly active despite my size, and it showed when I wanted to do something that people would think impossible. I can’t even walk without swaying, bumping in to the walls, and falling in to things. It makes me so mad on top of my usual plate of angry feelings. Every day seems to take something more from me making it for the first time in years all I can do is try without any major plan except ‘survive’.
I wanted the world to be a better place. People to be happy from a company with the resources to really make some changes in the processes that so many people seem lost doing in day to day jobs. It was someone’s last wish to make this world a better place. Knowing that every day my health is getting worse despite my efforts, and that her dream may not come to fruition really hurts. I define myself on what I do, what could be learned, and how to do it in the most effective fashion. Changes have been made because of my knowledge base in more then a half dozen different businesses from training of employees, to specials in restaurants, and calculations in quality management.
All of that does not mean a whole lot to me though. The job was to make the world a little better. Without her a lot of things just don’t bring a whole lot of happiness. I can put the mask on though, and sometimes fool myself to be someone else for a moment. When I get back to reality though it is the same reflection of someone who has no real meaning within himself to live. My family life is in shambles, and I feel like I cannot even be friendly at times to the only people in my extended family without money because I am so out of place in their social circles it just has to be grating to them. My brother is stuck living with my mother who will most likely lose their car again because she has a relationship with money like most bars of soap have a relationship with a tight grip. My father has found out after his own tragedy that I had been stewing in the pool of depression for most of my life while he just got used to the temperature, and he already wants to not exist anymore.
I have nothing to contribute to my friends so I try to stay out of their lives for the most part because I don;t want them to be weighed down with my problems. I may say one or two, but those are small and my list is long. What can I do when there are no successes with someone who is defined by them. I have been feeling worse and worse over the past few year especially. It seems like every effort is worthless. Every try just another small failure to mock me in a world stacked with them.
So I sit in my room trying to wring a couple pieces of mirth out of a world that just seems to be so much wasted potential, and all of this just weighs on you until you just get tired. Tired of everything. Tired of every problem, of every dunce blasting their mouth off without thinking, of every time you tried to not be in the previous group and failed, trying to grow to have a spirited debate only for people to cut me short despite not learning the previous immeasurable number of times. Tired of not having money to go hang out with my uncle so I don’t have to look like the charity case to him or his friends. I guess is what I really want is just to be respected. It struck me I never really felt respected in my life at least not as a real person. If anything the identity at my job or the person someone would go drinking with or the person who yaps a lot on a blog would be, but it never felt like it was just me.
I’m the mad scientist, the bloody brawler, the crying boy, the cagey thief, the android, the try hard, the tactician, the gamer, the competitor, the budding young entrepreneur, the hired help in school, the teen from the wrong side of town, the despicable destroyer, the villain, the evil, the good, the strange, the bizarre one, the man who will fight, the man who will step in, the person who made the promise, the angel in some rare occasion and each of those things just does not feel like me. Like it was a fragmented mask that somehow got the respect or the accolades while I remain back at square one just wanting something to know that I can get that respect at least. Maybe, it was because of that I never really felt like I belonged? Who knows.
I don’t really have a nice turn of phrase to end this, but I said I would do something to at least get some emotional thing on paper on this blog. I held to my word.
BigTAnderson in Portland 