Build Tomorrow - Another Day Of Life

Back from the pain inside my head

I have been absent for a while. I spent the last few days mostly in bed trying to resolve a migraine I woke up with Sunday morning. Then of course you take some sick leave and it is always time to play catch-up at work. I have been a migraine sufferer for at least 15 years. I started getting them at about age 12, and go through periods where they are virtually gone, and then times like now where they are a constant. I guess its back on my trusty migraine medicine for a while.
Home is still there, and still eventful as always. Our 8 year old had recently decided to test the waters of independence, and challenge his mother and I on our decisions. Needless to say it doesn’t always work out for him, because with independence wisdom, is a necessity, and at 8 his wisdom meter is not too full yet. Now today though I think I need to talk about and acknowledge the events of the week, something fairly local to me, the shootings at Virginia Tech.
It was a horrific terrible thing. My thoughts and prayers go out to all of the victims and their families, and to me it drives a point of how little our society to this day understands mental illness. The more that comes out about the shooter, the more we learn how truly disturbed this individual was. As I hear more and more, the more I feel as though if mental illness were better understood, the sooner that this person, could have received the help they needed, and avoided this tragedy. I also think that the amount of media coverage he receives just continues, while not giving the respect to the victims.
Mental illness is a disease, and in many cases a treatable one. Yet too many people want to look away, because there is no obvious mark, or physical symptom, a cast won’t fix it. Yet a little effort can go a long way. Someone once wrote, that “Anyone can feel bad for a person who is down, yet it is our humanity, that should make us offer a hand to help him up.”
I hope to have more later, but until then…..
~Another Day

Well yesterday was a day of errands, check-up, and the dreaded day of bills. With things so tight lately it amazing how fast the money that comes in goes back out. I can say my mood today is down. Some days the frustration becomes more like a ten ton weight pressing down on you, to the point you don’t want to talk to anyone or do much of anything. And with that frustration comes the guilt.
The guilt is primarily self directed, and probably a bit selfish. I love my two buys to the ends of all earth but there are times especially the 12 year old frustrates me. His anxiety and inability to change sometimes push me to my limit. He doesn’t like things that are a challenge, honestly because he plans for the worst outcome, or his failure. So this week he spent a few hours in the school building which he didn’t like, but has the psychiatrist asked him, no major disasters, no one disappeared, and the world didn’t come to an end, so was there anything he really needed to feel anxious about? His answer was “no”. My wife has put the majority of her life on hold, and as a result I get much of her frustration as well, and there are days I feel like I don’t understand, or that I can share my frustration as well. I guess it’s frustrating to see what could be, and what is, and not be sure how to get from here to there. But this too shall pass, or so I must believe. Still no rich benefactor, but I can keep hoping. I have to send my thanks to all of the excellent blogger resources about making money on-line. Kind of hard to know where to start, so any guidance will be heartily and gratefully accepted. I know one of the secrets is traffic. And some of the secrets to that is spreading the link love. I am mulling an idea on my other site of setting up a link network, to allow more sites and blogs to link to each other. As I formulate it I will let everyone know. Thomas Edison once said, “If we all did the things we are capable of, we would astound ourselves.” I hope to be astounding.
~Another Day

Yesterday was a busy day. Have you ever had one of those days that seemed like every time you got something accomplished 10 other things popped up? Such is life I guess. My wife had a meeting with the school yesterday, which was the first one I didn’t attend, and it unfortunately did not go well. The school always seems more concerned on the next step or how quick can we move forward, not the well being of our son. It can be extremely frustrating. I know it’s frustrating for them as educators, but at the same time they do not seem to realize it can be multiplied by 1000 for the parents. Many things in our family life are put on hold, and are dreams for another day, my wife can’t work, and we have built our 52K debt load trying to find ways to help him succeed.
So they asked that he attend an “Extended School Year” of 10 hours a week for July and half of August. While we think that it will be a good resource to continue his adjustment to the school building, and the school, it becomes a fine line between helping him and punishing him for his disease. It sometime amazes me how little metal disorders are acknowledged even today. While John is a typical 12 year old in many ways, and has the typical “tweener” (that’s what he call himself) behaviors, they are many aspects of his behavior he cannot control. That will come with his continued therapy. As his doctor explained, you take a vivid imagination such as his, and a fear of only bad outcomes, you have a constant fear of the other shoe dropping. And it’s always a fight for him to grow and gain independence, and the fear of that independence, and being alone. It’s a fear we all have sometimes, but his is 24/7. I have run across so many excellent blogs. One in particular I have been reading is Stressskills.net. It’s written by an author named “Help”. It has some excellent links to resources, and the author is a licensed professional.
Our other son Will is doing much better with his strep. He is on a much stronger antibiotic which is a battle to have him take twice a day, you would think we are asking him to take poison, but he is definitely the actor of the household. I am now up to $0.66 in on-line earnings, which leaves $51,999.34 left to raise. I have also run across some excellent blog and site resources to help folks looking to raise money. Make Money on-line is already listed on the blogs I read, and I have a more to add.
I hope to let my “fingers do some talking” a bit more later. Hope you’ll come back later.
~Another Day