Partly cloudy, 19C (17C)

Work-related off-time task
So, this weekend, I need to decide/work out what persona with which I shall attend re-training. This is somewhat stressful because the wrong choice could land me in some very hot water without thermal protection.

Empty husk
A little while ago, it occurred to me that a sensation I often feel is that of a hollow shell. Like I'm not all that I'm supposed to be. Like I'm inflated without being full of anything ; an empty vessel, but neither the vessel nor the emptiness within it. I think I mean this most in an intellectual sense, but when I feel it it's really pervasive so that nothing I am amounts to what it's "supposed to" or what I somehow have the impression it ought to. I've felt this for a very long time. I realize now, that over a decade ago, when I felt that intense pressure to hurry through things because I was "behind" it wasn't that I felt behind but that I felt... well, empty, but stripped of any connotation, positive or negative. Just a neutral empty. Over the last decade or so, I realize that when I become engrossed in something that it's just my way of trying to flesh out the space. But the space never really goes away, I've never even felt it diminish, so I often give up on whatever (often citing a "lack of brilliance" in or for the subject), having learned more than your average person but not enough to really be a comprehensive specialist on the matter and go on feeling out the unapproached limits of myself until I find something else that looks like fertile ground.

I wonder various things about this process.... It's not really "curiosity", but perhaps akin or otherwise related. Though now that I think on that, "curiosity" is the only thing that makes it bearable. If I weren't curious, filling that space (though I suspect it can never be filled...) would really be hopeless!

On why I'm so certain I'll have a massive aneurysm one day
This morning I was stretching and manipulating my internal blood pressure when I felt the familiar pulsing pressure on the inside of both sides of my skull. It's actually kind of painful, if nerve senses from within the skull can be categorized as "painful". I am sure this sensation is from blood gushing through my brain and always assume that I feel it so acutely because something is too thin, and that something must be the vessel walls since they're what're supposed to stay the same size no matter what pressure the blood is flowing through them at...

And the source of a memory
But it brought to mind a memory... I was post-op, once, and things weren't looking good. It was supposed to have been a simple 30-minute procedure that ended up lasting two hours (my first knee surgery, when I was just barely still 9 years old).No, no, it was the second surgery, when I was halfway past my 10th birthday, the first muscle biopsy. During the operation there had been an emergency in the form of a sudden rejection of the drugs when I technically died on the table. (I also think it was strange because I've been under anesthesia without event after that, and had been instructed by the anesthesiologist and surgeon to list no known allergies in the future as they had somehow eliminated the possibility of the incident being an allergic reaction--just a weird thing I did, they said--something important since my mother has severe allergic reactions to two classes of anesthetic, though being the terrible daughter I am, I don't remember which ones. I've told her to write them down and put them in the safe with her other documentation, though, since I can't be relied upon to remember names to save my life, or, apparently, anybody else's...) Obviously, I'm still alive, so being dead on a table doesn't mean very much, but coming out all my vitals were just low. Too low. But they didn't want to give me any more drugs because look what'd just happened--one minute everything is fine and I'm tolerating the anesthesia just like the textbooks say and the next I'm dead ; at least this is what I was told.*

It was my mother's idea. She assured the staff that I was good at self-control (thank you early childhood of night terrors?) and that with coaching they could skip the drugs. So the nurses taught me how to read the monitors while I was in that twilight between awake and not awake, they taught me what numbers were bad, what numbers were the targets, and taught me tricks to manipulate them, then coached me into sustaining moderate vitals. This allowed me to stay alive without the risk of further drug inter-/re- actions ; however wise or unwise that may have turned out to be....

Well, once I've learned something that way I never really forget it--especially something so useful!--and even to this day I often manipulate these things on a very short-term basis, though I'm admittedly far more effective at raising things than lowering them. Anyway, I was going through "increasing my vitals" (as I refer to stepping through each one with the intention of raising it--sort of like giving myself a shot of adrenalin with neither the threat nor the adrenalin) this morning to prime myself for the earlier-than-{fill in}-morning when I had the sensation described above, wherein I was reminded of where I'd learned all that, anyway.

Back to the aneurysm
So, yeah, that usually happens, now, whenever I raise my core blood pressure, but this morning's incident was particularly intense. I think because I also yawned at the same time (which I don't recall doing, before).

Peasants rejoicing?
Really, just thinking about it all makes me want to get drunk (not necessarily on booze!!!) with a band of nakama and go frolicking, rampaging, parading around town shouting declarations on how most things are meaningless and few things are meaningful. I guess it's an excursion for my imagination, since it won't happen any other way... //wan smile

*
I have a theory involving this : with each near-total-shut-down of functions the body experiences, the more efficient and conservative it becomes with resources leading to things like lower heart rate and blood pressure, and lower core body temperature.... I think.

Perhaps I should start posting my weekend flower pictures, again...
Since I've been getting weekend flowers, again...



Here's the gallery....
.

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Stephanie

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