The new story is called Buster, written to a short prompt yesterday. I've got more I need to type up! I'm beginning to feel a bit backlogged.

Well, I haven't been blogging for awhile, and every time I do that the peeps get restless and start calling me worried if I am still alive. I had better post an update.

I'm actually doing quite fine at the moment. My mood has vastly improved the past couple of weeks. I've gotten very disciplined about taking my antidepressant medication around the same time every night, and the side effects are no longer noticeable (thank god - I hated being so nauseous and yawny. That was the main reason I had been inconsistent). I've also started taking megadoses of B vitamins, a sublingual B complex heavy on the B12, and an extra B6 supplement called P5P - a form that is rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream. This is a bit experimental, but I figured that since the antidepressants I'm on are Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors (SSRIs), and they only block the destruction if serotonin, not stimulate its production, and they hadn't been improving my mood, so I figured I had low serotonin production. So, I looked into the neuroscience of how serotonin is made. Serotonin can be found in food sources, but the blood-brain barrier prevents it from being metabolized in the brain - it must be made from scratch in the brain from more rudimentary building blocks that are small enough to cross the barrier. These blocks happen to be tryptophan and vitamin B6. I eat food with a lot of tryptophan (like turkey), so that wasn't much of a problem, but I am really bad with B vitamin sources, and I haven't consumed vitamins regularly since childhood. So I decided to go with the B vitamin supplements.

It's been about 2 weeks with the B vitamins every night consistently, and I have seen improvement. There are moments where I spontaneously feel giddy (no internal or external stimulation), and I really haven't had that in about a year. I don't know if it is the vitamins, the antidepressants, randomness, or the placebo effect, but something is working.

Other than that, I've taken a bit of down-time for myself with so many people out of the office on holidays (probably to my financial detriment, but I don't really care), and have just been chilling out. I've been a bit frustrated with work lately - with the contracting stuff, not my classes - and have come to the realization that I've let my ego get in the way (that and my habitual need to be a brooding, misunderstood, genius). I'm very intelligent and experienced, but I've been riding my own coattails for too long - time to roll up my sleeves. Just as an aside, I developed some bad habits in elementary school that have stayed with me my entire life - I was totally unchallenged with schoolwork so I would slack off and do things at the last minute and still come home with As on my report card (or worse, play around with an assignment that bored me, like turning it in written in calligraphy or embellished with professional quality illustrations). I never developed the habit of focusing consistently on something for a long time, just plugging away and getting it down. That's the skill that I need right now, and I've got to figure it out. If I ever do have kids they are getting homeschooled so they will always be challenged.

I'm coming down with something, so I took a trip to ABC to find cold/flu medication that doesn't interact with the other stuff I'm on. I didn't find anything, but I did come across a neat little product my mom had when I was a kid, and I hadn't seen since, called Fever Reader. It's just a strip of temperature sensitive plastic, and is calibrated for the forehead (so the actual forehead temperature would be less than what it says). When I was a kid, it was so much more tolerable than a thermometer in the mouth (or anywhere else).

Too pithy a title? Heehee.

I spent the weekend (including Friday and today) trying to get my Prozac prescription refilled. Kaiser won't let you refill a prescription the same day you ask for the refill (haven't a clue why, seems *stupid*), so I went to the Kaiser 3 times with no luck. In the process, I found out my health insurance had lapsed (oh, such a long story there, but I'll be able to restore it soon hopefully). With the lapsed insurance, the cost for one month of generic Prozac (aka Fluoxetine) skyrocketed from $13/month, to $100/month. Needless to say, I was a bit shocked.

After some finagling (and standing in line behind a rather smelly old guy for too long), I got my prescription transferred to Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart had my prescription ready by the time I got there (instead of 4 freaking days), and guess what? It cost me $12. For a 3 month supply.

Say what you may about big-box stores, but at least Wal-Mart is fucking the whole healthcare racket. They have a policy on offering $4 prescriptions on generic drugs that will more than likely bring down the cost of pharmaceuticals world-wide.

I had lunch with my friend Emily today, and we spent quite a bit of time talking about "bus friends", characters we've met at bus stops. Ironically, on my way home I made a new bus friends - an older woman, dressed from head to toe a blue and white gingham cotton pantsuit (which was weird enough by itself), who has been to every continent, including Antarctica.

She was really neat - though a bit hard to interact with since she talked so quietly. I had to rely on my so-so lip reading skills half the time I was talking to her (yes I have lip reading skilz - I developed them as a kid when I would watch the TV without sound so as not to bother others, or notify my presence out of bed and in the living room at some wee hour of the morning). Anyway, she was quiet, but we chatted about the plusses and minuses of living in Waikiki versus Makiki. Then I noticed a penguin pin on her lapel with a little flag I didn't recognize. She fingered it, as if she had forgotten it was there, and said "Oh, that's from Antarctica," as if she had picked up at a convenience store around the corner. Apparently, she is some sort of penguin aficionado as well, and rattled off quite a bit of penguin trivia. My bus came shortly after, though I would have loved to stay and talk to her. She was really cool.

It's weird, but since coming to Hawaii, my opinion of people in general, as a species, has skyrocketed. I guess I had come to the conclusion that most people are assholes - and they need to prove themselves otherwise. Now I think people are generally okay, that everyone has at least one interesting story, and we could all get along much better on this planet if we stopped being obsessively suspicious and paranoid of each other.

I just had a couple of really crappy days - my moodswings were pretty alarmingly chaotic even for me. For instance, on Wednesday, I was depressed, so I took a break from work and went snorkeling for the first time. I was euphoric. About 30 minutes after I came home from the beach, I had zoomed across the entire emotional spectrum and I was curled up in a ball crying for no particular reason - my depression even worse then before I went out. Sometimes logic and reasoning are the only things I can cling to as I get through a dark mood (I am an okay person, worthy of breathing oxygen, it'll get better because it has before, etc), but when there is no apparent reason for a dramatic swing like that, it's really hard to deal with.

Unfortunately, my moods tend to regurgitate on the people around me. My emotions become more juvenile and fragile when I am in a dark mood - and I know it puts people off. However, it's quite nice that so many people genuinely care about me, but I feel a bit embarrassed for burdening others with all of this - especially since I am so open about it (this is something a lot of people deal with in silence and alone). When I talk about my moods I'm also afraid I am crying wolf - will I wear out other people by talking about this?

Today I'm pretty mellow and feeling okay. This is where I prefer to be. Not sad, but not euphorically happy either - just mellow and even. I think there are a couple of factors in that. I've been experimenting with B vitamins, in particular B6, which is a crucial building block of the neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine. I went to the vitamin store yesterday in search of a megadose B-complex that my stomach could tolerate, and the salesguy yakked at me for about 15 minutes on the virtues of P5P - which is a form of B6 that is readily available for the body to use, and does not have to be processed in the liver before it can be utilized. A bottle of it was cheap, so I got it. I had been taking B vitamins from energy drinks, but this is free of ginseng (which I do not tolerate will), taurine, and caffeine, so hopefully I stop looking like some sort of fidgety meth-addict.

The other thing that was cool is that we had this cool guy named Olaf come to BLT to talk with us (individually) about how everyone gets along in the company. Olaf talked a bit about himself - he hails from Norway, and fought Nazis as a teenager (stimulating my unhealthy WWII obbession). What was really cool though, is that he asked me about who I am, specifically my work history. I felt weird rattling everything off - though kind of proud when I got to the bit about my book. He said I was a fascinating person who has led a very full life. I thought, really? That was the second time in a couple of weeks someone has said that I'm fascinating, which just shocks me. I'm a black sheep in pretty much every social context - maybe my weirdness is finally paying off. Anyway, the upside was that after talking to this guy, I began to feel much better. I probably labor under an unfair burden of feeling completely unworthy to exist, and never living up to my own expectations.

I saw a promo site for the upcoming movie "Expelled" written and starring Ben Stein. The movie is openly ID, and basically cries foul that intelligent design is not given a fair hearing in the scientific establishment.

I decided to post a comment on Ben Stein's blog.I am so bad. I know better than to bait creationists, but sometimes the temptation to lash back is too great. At least this is a better format than the time I lost my temper in public at a street preacher who was yelling those of us trying to politely wait at a bus stop, about the evils of abortion and how we were all going to hell (my argument that not all of us believe in heaven and hell, that not everyone is Christian or even cares to be, or even worries about what might or might not happen after one's body expires, was met with a frighteningly blank stare. Freaking pod man, abdicating his free thought for the contents of a single, ancient, badly translated, heavily edited book).

Anyway, since my comment is one of a thousand (mostly people pinging back and forth well tread minutiae of the ID/evolution argument), here it is:

The premise of the film seems interesting - even though I am a dyed-in-the-wool atheist I'll probably rent it on DVD. I am deeply concerned when anyone cries foul over lack of freedom of speech. The deep rift between scientists who adhere to ideas of evolution (and may I mention, M Theory) and others who prefer to bring in religious dogma, is indeed damaging to free speech. When anyone of any stripe feels they are not listened to equitably, anger flares and even fewer ears listen.

In the trailer Ben Stein mentioned that he surmised the reigning scientists wouldn't listen out of fear. That is definitely true - scientists do have a lot to fear from the intrusion of religious dogma. Galileo learned that the hard way after defying the Church with the idea that the Earth was not the center of the universe.

The scientific "establishment" has won some hard fought battles over the untested ideas of religious dogma, and will fiercely defend what has been won so that science may progress further. Again, I'll bring up M Theory, which isn't yet even on the radar of intelligent design advocates. Without the complementary progress of ideas in evolution, chemistry, and quantum physics, an idea as revolutionary as M Theory could not have arisen (and just to note, as opposed to evolutionary theory, which is well tested, and is "theory" in the sense that music theory is "theory", M Theory is a largely untested hypothesis, though is extremely promising and explains more than any other competing idea on how our particular universe in the multiverse came to be). M Theory will likely prove to be a gateway to tremendous scientific progress in the next few centuries, wiping out any remaining notions of an active "hand of god", though ironically, still leaves open the possibility of a supernatural origin (it still doesn't answer the question "why is there anything?", it just answers "how did the universe come to exist?")

In essence, the supernaturalists (of any religious or ID stripe) by definition, are not scientists. Scientists concern themselves with explaining and understanding how things work in the natural world. By definition, scientists have nothing to do with, or care about, anything that may be supernatural. Therefore, god, gods, God, chi, Thetans, the ghosts of dead ancestors, or what have you, are strictly supernatural concepts, and have absolutely no place in actual science. Got it?

I've been thinking about my work lifestyle a lot lately, and have come to realize just how spoiled and privileged I am in regards to my work life.

For awhile I was a little embarrassed to have a cobbled together work life. Back in 2002 I finally understood that having multiple streams of income instead of one steady "career" job leads to work independence (though for awhile, also poverty and insecurity). I was also embarrassed to have taken a retail job at a bookstore - a somewhat radical departure from the "career path" I was on. However, that job was the most fun I've had at a regular job. I learned a lot about writing, publishing, and business, and got to work with some really cool people (bookstores tend to accumulate jaded anti-authoritarian intellectuals who have a hard time fitting in anywhere else; I unclogged toilets (we all shared in the store's janitorial duties) with two former NASA engineers, a fellow photographer/writer, and a talented up-and-coming fashion designer, among others).

Now I own my own photography business, teach classes online, have a book published, and work part-time at a really cool start-up, and I live a block from the beach in a tropical paradise. I'm not wealthy yet, but I'm not eating ramen either (actually ramen in Hawaii isn't considered poverty food - there are actually ramen themed restaurants here).

I popped into work today (because I have my own schedule and work mainly from home now), specifically to hang out with my coworkers and play video games. We have a small room called "the cave" outfitted with a mini fridge, a suede sofa, a huge beanbag chair, flats of RedBull, a Wii, a PS2, an AppleTV, and most recently an Xbox 360, complete with the game "RockBand" and it's plethora of instrument controllers. The game was won by one of my coworkers at the Christmas party, and instead of taking it home, it now resides in the cave for all to use together.

Back when I lived in Iowa and worked for EAI (a now-defunct software company), the work lifestyle was also very free (all night Half-Life gaming sessions on the testing machines, free food and soda, going barefoot in the building (even in the public bathroom), 4 hour lunches, coming in whenever the heck you felt like it, sleeping on the leather couches in the lobby, bicycling in the halls). It was great - then the bubble burst in 2000 and that sector of the economy took a huge hit. We all thought the halcyon days were over, and we would have to start acting like serious adults. Luckily, the Web 2.0 bubble came along, and surely there will be more after that. The work lifestyle that has defined the geeks of my generation is probably here to stay.

I'm a little worried that I take this all for granted. I really have a tremendous amount of freedom - I'm not sure I could do a 9 to 5 job, where I had to be somewhere specific and had to take lunch at a certain time, and dress in a certain way (I haven't worked at a place that didn't at least allow jeans every day of the week since March 1998). I have friends of course who do the 9 to 5, but they seem to be getting scarcer. Many work the 40 but get to slide start times.

Many people in my generation own their own side businesses, or are constantly scheming some new business adventure. Many have taken risks to pursue something artistic, but still suffer under the cultural pressure to be a "serious" adult. It's a completely ridiculous cultural bias though. Only in the past few centuries has a "regular job" had any meaning for the majority. Before that, you did whatever you needed to get by. Family bonds were more crucial, and families were like little mini business units. People needed a wide variety of skills to create tools and necessities for themselves (bereft of a global economy that shuttles resources and consumer goods all over the planet). I think we are moving back towards that sort of mishmash of skills and mini job roles, and away from the uber structured and artificial 9 to 5 with its scary reliance on some corporation for your health and security (a strange variety of employee socialism). Only this time, instead of having to do it just to survive, we can do it for the joy of doing it. That's freedom.

I'm trying to work my way up to actually posting a story a day, so here is my latest effort, Isabelle.

When I posted this, I read it out loud to myself (a good technique to find errors and improve readability - I am not batty just yet). I read it in a thick southern accent (but I am eccentric), and thought it might be an interesting idea to do a weekly podcast - developing something from story-a-day each time. It might be a good way to a) drum up a readership base (branding me) and b) encourage me to write more frequently (a lot of why I write is to see people's reactions - very gratifying!)

What do you think, would you subscribe to my stories (free of course)?