I sit here, cigarette in hand, typing out my first blog post. I’ve dabbled with the art of blogging for a while now but I’ve never fully submerged myself in it. I guess it’s more of testing the waters, but now I want to dive in head first, instead of dipping my feet.
I’ve wanted a blog with a niche, something that EVERYONE would want to read. I guess I’m one of those people who just wants to please everyone, by creating content that would be appeasing to most people.
Fuck that.
That’s never gotten far, my “projects” have always faltered before ever getting off the ground, so I’m just going to write about what I know best. And what I know best, is myself, and the things that interest me.
A little bit about what I’m interested in: I like history, astronomy, science, psychology, and a little bit of politics. Politics, I usually keep to myself. Why? Everyday we hear too much of what everyone has to say about their beliefs in politics, and I don’t give a damn about what people have to say about it. I don’t have the same exact beliefs as you, and we’re going to clash, so you might as well keep your mouth shut, and I’ll do the same.
On the topic of myself..I say I know myself best, but that’s not true. Every single one of us still has no full insight to who we are, what we want to be, or what our exact purpose is on earth. I am no different. I’m young and healthy, I’ve probably still got a good sixty years ahead of me, but I have no clue what those next sixty years will entail. I still have no solid footing of what I want to do with my life. I’m not the only one, but sometimes it sure seems like it. Everyone around me is getting married, breeding, and starting careers which begins the journey of the rest of their lives.
Me? None of that. I’m not married, have no (known) children, and I sure as hell have no idea what I want to do with the rest of my life. Boy, is that sure scary. I always have this nagging fear that by the time I figure out what I want to do with myself, it will be too late and everything will have passed me by. Even when you can think about it and realize that’s the dumbest, most unfounded fear, good luck convincing your brain the same thing. It’s a hard task to accomplish. I have a lot of irrational fears in my psychological tool belt. Some cause more distress and worry than others, but some are uncalled for and stupid.
One of the things I’ll probably blog about most on that topic is anxiety and panic attacks. For the last ten years, I’ve been a chronic sufferer of social anxiety disorder. It’s something that has plagued me off an on. I had a great three years where it was completely in “remission” as I like to call it – I was leading a normal life for the first time in years, and it was fantastic. Then my panic attacks returned seemingly out of nowhere, and for the last 9 months, I’ve been stricken almost daily with them. Thank god for psychologists, I finally broke and returned to one for the first time in four years, hoping to send it back into remission where it belongs.
Mental illness, as much as some people like to dismiss it as people just being crazy, is in fact, a real “disease.” I use quotations because it isn’t a disease like cancer, AIDS, MS, or a debilitating physical condition; but for those of us who suffer from it can tell you, some days it might as well be one of those. You can’t sleep, eat, go outside, work, or anything. It can literally debilitate you, paralyzing you from the inside out.
As much as we know about mental illness, it’s still one of the most mysterious things we know about. Take the medications prescribed for depression; depression is thought to be a chemical imbalance in the brain. A doctor prescribes you Prozac, because it is believed that Prozac increases the chemical production in your brain, elevating your mood and bringing things back into balance. It’s “believed” to be caused by a chemical imbalance, it’s not known, just theorized. It’s obvious they’re right about chemical imbalance, because even Prozac can do too good of a job boosting your brain chemicals. It can boost it so much, it remains out of balance and makes you worse than before you took the medication; hence the suicide warnings that you hear about with depression medications on television. I’ve never had that reaction to an antidepressant like that before, but the idea of it happening and making you WORSE is just scary to think about.
Wow…this post was a lot longer than I had anticipated. Oh well, I’m cutting myself off for the night. Time to get some sleep, it’s been a long day!
Richard