Anxiety, Acceptance, Ash Wednesday

Again: I'm not writing this to benefit you. I'm writing because I need to write. But if you benefit, God bless <3 

I've written about this before, but I keep coming back to it.

https://englishverse.com/poems/ash_wednesday
The first time I recall encountering this poem was when reading a book by Karen Armstrong called "The Spiral Staircase". In it, she goes on a life journey similar in many ways to my own.

Over and over I come back to a few lines in this poem.

"Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will"

Unless I should live to be 104, I'm well beyond middle aged. Yet, somehow, I'm still trying to learn to care without caring, and to sit still; my peace in His will. Even that statement reflects my impatience with my own predicament: "I'm 52 years old, and I still haven't learned ..." * angrily shakes fist at sky like old geezer that I am*

I more often need reminded than taught.

I need reminded to care without caring. I need reminded to let a thing break my heart or fill me to bursting with anxiety or rage; and to realize that I don't have to turn away from it.

I can be angry or heartbroken without changing the way I hold someone in my heart.
I can be anxious to the point of having an out of body experience, and just sit with it, having the experience, letting it be what it is until it isn't anymore.
I can burst into tears that make my body heave and quake, let them subside, then get up and do the next thing on today's list.

I think a lot of people do this very naturally. For me, it's a journey.

Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will.

Anxiety

I'm not writing this to benefit you. I'm writing it because I need to write. 🤷

Still, some part of me hopes that someone finds this and takes some small benefit from it. May God bless you.

My journey with anxiety has gone through many phases. I suppose they're reminiscent of the phases of grief. 

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

To set the background: I have severe anxiety attacks. A doctor I had said I had the worst case of depression-anxiety he'd ever seen. I don't doubt him. At some point, I had become fully agoraphobic. 

The first time I had an anxiety attack, I was like “ no way, man. Not me. I'm big Joe H*****. That s***'s for girls. “ - denial.

I've spent so much time angry over the last 23 years. 23 years. Almost half my life. Jesus. 

I would characterize the bargaining phase as the part where I just really worked at it. I prayed. Good Lord did I pray. I meditated. I exercised. I practiced self-hypnosis. I dutifully took the myriad of pills they gave me until the side effects of each one in its course became intolerable. I tried to rededicate my life to God and revisit what at one time I thought was my calling in life. - bargaining 

And sweet fluffy pancakes! … the depression. 

So much shame. So many wonderful moments in life ruined or lost. Such an abrupt end to a promising career. Such terrible impact on my wife and young children. So much hopelessness. 

Which, I suppose, brings me to acceptance. Have more or less accepted that this is the way it is. I have to find a way to work with it. Today I did something that was very triggering. I did what I could to lessen the impact, and then powered through it, having anxiety attacks as I went. It's a hell of a way to live, but I suppose it's how this goes.

The one phase that the stages of grief don't mention is “complaining” 😉.

I have so many complaints. Endless complaints. Valid complaints. My biggest complaint at this point, though, is just that it's so f****** exhausting. It is so incredibly exhausting to have to fight through anxiety attacks to do simple things like go to an appointment, go to a basketball game, or go to the store to buy something. I live my life in a state of perpetual exhaustion on a scale that I just cannot even explain, and I'm so terribly depleted and utterly used up, and I just don't get to stop. Ever. 

I'm so tired of spending my days wanting to cry. I'm so tired of all the things that people look forward to as a big fun thing, for me, being just one more thing I have to get through. 

So, that's complaining. 

Maybe there's another phase. Maybe there's a phase after " I just have to power through this “. Maybe a day comes when I wake up and can just do the things I need to do without having to fight this battle. 

Maybe the next phase lies in the words I just said. Maybe it's not so much a new phase, but the return of hope for a new phase.

Just some glimmer. 

On Misery

I've decided that I agree with Jordan Peterson.

No, not that socialism inevitably leads to totalitarian regimes that commit mass murder and other atrocities.

I agree with him that life is suffering, and you're not going fix that. If you find a moment of happiness, GREAT! Soak it up. You're a lucky, lucky bastard.

For the most part, though, you're not going to be happy. I think we're programmed to be unhappy, and no matter how good things get, to always be looking for something better. (This serves an obvious evolutionary purpose that I can explain in comments on the off chance that anyone is interested. )

What we need to do is find a way to make our lives have enough purpose to justify the misery.

The real misery of my life is not in the details. The details of my life are amazing. It's in the lack of purpose or the feeling that I serve any function more useful than making money for someone else.

I've found purpose over the years working with young people, but I always allow myself to start to feel overwhelmed and pull back. At 51 years of age, I suppose I should accept that as my nature and just ride that cycle.

So, recently (well, within the last couple of years, at any rate), I got overwhelmed and pulled back. Now I'm feeling the pointlessness of my existence. Guess it's time to find some meaning again.

Keeping our heads above water in the time of Covid-19

Inspired by a post from Grant Fritchey.

I used to have Eagle Vision. I was tested at 30/20, which means I could see at 30 feet what most people could see at 20.
I remember going to the eye doctor, deeply concerned about my vision. "Doc, I feel like I'm going blind. I can't see anything anymore".
The eye doctor very sweetly replied, "You're down to 20/20 in one eye. You're still 30/20 in the other. In one eye, you see like a normal person now. You'll live."

I made it past 40 before needing reading glasses, and then just-like-that, *BAM!* ... bifocals ...  (#OLDGuysWithComputerEyes)

I'm not gonna lie - I spent some time mourning my Eagle Vision. To this day, I genuinely miss being able to see teeny tiny print that nobody else can see, or being able to make out fine details or something in the distance that those around me can't make out.

Mostly, though, I genuinely miss getting through my day without having to fiddle with glasses. I'm too dingy to keep track of them. I lose them on top of my head, and they're always missing when I have somewhere important to go and I'm not allowed to drive without them. :-/

Right. So, I have an obvious choice to make.

I can whine and cry and lament how, to quote Toby Keith, "I'm not as good as I once was."

- OR -

I can take a deep breath and let it out slowly, thanking God for the clever people who developed the wonderful technology ( glasses ) that my excellent job pays for to correct my vision so that I can see things that my ancestors and so many in the world today would not be able to see at my age and with eyes in my condition.

So, get to the point. Glass half full, right? 

Not really. I'm not normal. You're sweet to laugh, but I mean it. I'm contrary and defective in a lot of mildly interesting ways.

For instance:
During quarantine, I find I'm living my best life. I don't have to go to the things and suffer the social anxiety and gut out the endless, huge gatherings. I have all of my children back under my roof. We're not spending all of our money running to this and that, so my bank account runneth over, which is REALLY weird.

How can that be?
Well, because of my spiritual practice, I've made peace with some things that I don't think most people do.
I've made peace with impermanence.
I've made peace with that fact that I'm going to grow old, get sick, and die.
I've made peace with the fact that, not only will this happen to me, but to those I love.

Don't get me wrong. Understanding the way pain works doesn't make pain less painful.
But it does allow us to create distance between us and the reality of it, and it does allow us to surrender our anxiety over the pain that's coming and replace it with acceptance.

For you, right now, life is what it is for me during more normal days. It's a game played in the mind.

Like so many things in life (having a clean house or car, being organized, maintaining a healthy weight, etc), I've found that mental health takes time and effort, but it's *generally* not rocket science.  (Please understand that this is not true for everyone. I think for most of us, though, it holds up.)

Make time to breathe deeply. Fear is a produce of our reptilian core, and the pathways from our high mind don't really reach down there. Our breath connects our mind to our bodies to our deeper mind.
Make time to focus on things that make you happy.
Make time to remind yourself that most of the negative things don't matter. That's hard right now, because so many of the negative things REALLY DO matter. But they are nonetheless beyond our control.

Which leads me to the next point...

If at all possible, make peace with the fact that it is our nature to grow old, to get sick, and to pass away. This is hard. Having done it, though, I can attest that life is much better on the other side of that effort.

And, finally, make time to be thankful.

So, I'll go first.

Thank you, little glasses, for allowing me to see this ridiculous long thing I just typed.
Thank you, ridiculous job, for creating structure in my life and providing me with good pay and benefits.
Thank you, body, for holding up so well against 46 years of profound abuse. (to be clear, that's me, abusing it with sugar, loud music, etc.)

All law springs from the 10 commandments?

1 - I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

Our law - we have enshrined the opposite of this (ie - religious freedom) in our constitution. https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment

 

2 - Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.

Our law - Umm - I don't thing we have much of anything that addresses "graven images"

 

3 - Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord they God in vain.

Our law -Again, we have enshrined the opposite of this in our constitution in the form of freedom of expression

 

4 - Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

Our law - get to work, there's money to be made.

5 - Honour they father and they mother

Our law - I'm unaware of any laws dealing with this. I suppose it could be argued that elder abuse laws take this into account? I really don't think so, though.

 

6 - Thou shalt not murder.

I don't mean to sound snippy, but you think we could figure that out without Moses going up the mountain to be told?

7 - Thou shalt not commit adultery

To the best of my knowledge, we have no laws that even approach enforcing this.

8 - Thou shalt not steal

See my response to #6.

9 - Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor

We love this one so much that we made lying a political pass-time. We have laws against slander, I suppose, though, so I'll give you that one.

10 - Thou shalt not covet they neighbors house, wife, slaves, animals, or anything else.

According to our laws, someone could literally seduce my wife, leading to my divorce and thereby scarring me, my children, and ruining me financially, and the only one going to jail is me when I punch him in the throat.

DBT-05509 when creating pluggable database using DBCA from command line

An odd occurrence when trying to create a pluggable database in a newly created container database.

This is Oracle 19c on Windows, but it will likely apply to other platforms as well.

I am able to connect to the database using SQLPlus.exe.

However, when I try to run DBCA from command line, I get the errors shown below.

 PS D:\backup> dbca.bat -silent -createPluggableDatabase -pdbName PSEUDONIMOUSPDBNAME  -sourceDB PSEUDONIMOUSCDBNAME -createPDBFrom DEFAULT -createUserTableSpace true -pdbAdminPassword PSEUDONIMOUSPASSWORD -sysPassword PSEUDONIMOUSPASSWORD

[FATAL] [DBT-05509] Failed to connect to the specified database (PSEUDONIMOUSCDBNAME).

   CAUSE: OS Authentication might be disabled for this database (PSEUDONIMOUSCDBNAME).

   ACTION: Specify a valid sysdba user name and password to connect to the database.

 I had forgotten to add my username to the ORA_DBA and ORA_OraDB19Home1_DBA groups.

After doing so, it worked without issue...

 PS D:\backup> dbca.bat -silent -createPluggableDatabase -pdbName PSEUDONIMOUSPDBNAME  -sourceDB PSEUDONIMOUSCDBNAME -createPDBFrom DEFAULT -createUserTableSpace true -pdbAdminPassword PSEUDONIMOUSPASSWORD -sysPassword PSEUDONIMOUSPASSWORD

Prepare for db operation

13% complete

Creating Pluggable Database

15% complete

19% complete

23% complete

2023 Iowa Derecho / Tech Work

 Being a human is weird.

Most of you are well aware that we had a derecho blow through.
For 4 days, I cut trees and cleaned branches and called contractors and insurance agents and adjusters.
My body hurt. I sweat profusely. I was in a hightened state of awareness, worried that more limbs would fall and actually hurt someone.

And ... some part of me absolutely loved it.


Today the electricity is on and I'm back to work. I'm cool and caffeinated and staring at the beautiful screens that constitute the bulk of my life. Things are getting back to normal.

And I'm ... horribly depressed?

Not looking for sympathy. It's fine. These things (depression/anxiety) come, they visit for a while, and they go on their way. I've learned to separate from them and let them be what they are until they aren't anymore.

What's weird, though, is the very fact that I'm depressed. I should be exuberant. Power's on. It's the 4th of July week. I have vacation coming. I can play video games watch YouTube and microwave lunches and charge my phone.

But I'm not exuberant. I want to turn the power back off. I want to leave my desk and go do something with my body, and feel powerfully connected with the earth and a part of a community. I want to feel how rewarding it is to work with people I love, and make progress toward a goal.

It's almost like I'm mourning this brief time, uncomfortable as it was, where I got to be an actual human.

I've known for a long time that I was kind of living my life wrong. I just don't know what to do about it.

I keep telling myself "3 more years." (That's how long until my youngest graduates HS)

Oh, well. Back to the money machine...
Happy Monday, kids.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯