04:49:42
Awake. Unable to get back to sleep.
Realize that the Collège des médecins du Québec will only be making a decision as to the appropriateness of its own earlier decision. They will either endorse the prior decision or send it back for a further review. They have 90 days from the deadline which was sometime in early November. So Nov, Dec, Jan then back to the prior committee for a 90 day review Feb, Mar, Apr, then to the insurer who render some kind of decision and then have 90 days for a medical review so May, June, July.
This is called an insurance scheme. You need an insurance scheme to protect yourself against the insurance scheme. This is not insurance. It is theft. It is bureaucratic employment and lots of it.
11:14:46
Reviewed some Lynda.com training then back to bed around 0630?
Slept until 45 minutes ago.
Trying to record details of my day and where the time goes.
Made coffee and then worked at trying to tidy up blog related files.
This is a tedious sort of housekeeping but I feel I need to continue with it. It holds me back from a spiral of despair. It provides some form of structure to my life, a demand that forces me to exert myself, phrase my life, investigate it, come to some form of understanding of what I am today. There is also the implicit hope that I will improve, grow better, return to my prior level of capacity.
That is a blind hope. A forlorn hope. An aspiration that any rational inspection of events quickly shows to be untrue. Yet it is something I cling to beyond all forms of reason.
I find I am in conflict between two or three forms of activity. First there is digital housekeeping, a matter of enforcing structure and understanding on my life. I create exactly the type of record you are reading out of the belief that it will help me to unlock and improve my future.
Second, there are the submissions made to comply with outside institutional demands. I am afraid of these. I seek to avoid them. They are extremely taxing and place a huge burden upon me. When I complete them there is a period of despair as the unspoken expectation is that a successful submission will provoke a positive institutional response. But that positive response never comes. I am left in overwhelming silence, left alone to confront all of the issues that have arisen from the accident. There is the unpleasant recognition that what is spoken of as an “insurance” scheme for the benefit of the accident victim is in fact being operated as an “employment” scheme for the benefit of those persons who work within the institutions of the state. I am needed by them as they require a victim in order to justify their own employment. I have come to despise these people and their false promises.
The third category of endeavour encompasses things which have the potential to improve my employabilty. Such activities include working on web design, information architectures, improving my coding skills, creating web sites that advance my job prospects, or better position me for employment.
There are two aspects to this engagement. The first aspiration is that I am able to develop my skills to the point that I can find employment. I think this is very unlikely. Everything that I have learned about my injury points to a compromised future, one in which I am unable to maintain task focus, in which I suffer from fatigue, a short attention span, and a strong tendency toward irritability bordering on irascibility. Recognition of these facts, and my consequent low sociability and productivity, drive acknowledgement of the fact that no employer is likely to offer me a position and I am better off trying to generate some form of employment on my own.
So my day to day priorities are focused on obtaining skills that permit me to generate an income.
12:43:37
Spent the prior hour in the kitchen. I have a surfeit of vegetables and have been making stock. There was a sale on both carrots and onions: 10 pounds for $2. I snapped up a bag of each.
From bitter experience I have learned the low price is due to the vendor’s recognition the product is on the verge of rotting. The 10 pounds of onions will quickly turn to 10 pounds of mush. The carrots develop a coat of black rust and are then embraced by a cloud of white fungi. At a certain point the carrots too disintegrate into mush.
So you spend $2 for 10 pounds of carrots and think “What a fantastic deal!”. And it is fantastic in every meaning of the word. If only there was a way to consume all 20 pounds of the produce within a day or two. As a single household this is impossible. Well perhaps not impossible. Certainly unappetizing.
12:48:41
Flutter in left upper arm.
Also while I was in kitchen. And pain in right thigh area. It feels like it is weakening.
12:52:44
Pain in left upper thigh.
13:02:44
Flutter in left upper arm.
The reason soup making takes such a long time is that I am poor. I pick through the veggies and preserve the boiled carrot as an addition to other dishes.
I also save all peelings and vegetable ends. Likewise all decomposing vegetables and any dubious leftovers. I am my own composter.
Any ends of bread or slices going mouldy? Cut out the mould then expose what is left to the air so it drys. Then cube the stale bread for inclusion in soups or bread pudding. Rub it with a clove of garlic to add flavour.
13:19:56
Start eating soup. First meal of the day.
13:50:11
Finish soup.
Very satisfying. A mix of some leftover tomato lentil broth with the addition of last nights reserved potato cooking water, the liquid saved when the cooked potatoes are drained.
17:32:07
Attempted to do some study of wp coding.
Fatigued and went for a nap about an hour later.
Woke up at least once and did not want to wake up.
Went back to sleep.
Have been up now since 1600 something.
Did some kitchen clean up.
Made a coffee (now cold).
Went to bathroom.
Feel very bad about wanting to sleep and not moving my life forward.
Developing the same sense that I have with documents.
That I need to force my way forward.
At the same time I am very conscious of being lost.
Started working with all these open data files.
Discovered that I have several log files all of which serve the same purpose and I have logged in each one indiscriminately and also cross logged ie logged data in file X when there exists a dedicated file Y for this same data. So even areas in which I am very active are obstacles to me.
One of the – forgot the intent of this sentence even though I started it.
Realize that I now have so many blog posts (verging on 70 plus) that I do not recognize some of the earlier material. My own blog has become a foreign entity to me.
Hanging behind me like a gleaming executioner’s sword is the recognition that I need to do something to generate an income.
18:54:22
Have been working on Proposal site.
Realize that I have created an ersatz work environment. The task requirements are very close to what I would need to perform in a real world environment.
I still make too many errors.
At an hourly rate of $10 I would not survive.
19:20:38
Have generated a headache and should stop blog work.
I believe the headache results from the fact that I have been working to discern and identify differences between two sets of image files. I am removing one set and deleting them to be replaced by the modified set. To ensure I only delete the correct files I have been forced to pay very close attention and perform multiple checks to confirm my actions. This aspect of the work is very detailed and very tiring. Once this is complete I will have an image package which is ready to be uploaded to the actual site. From then on much of the work is simple text entry.
19:53:05
Flutter in right eyelid.
Have been having pain experiences off and on all day in thighs. I need to ensure I stop activity and log each of these events. Not sure I have done so.
Just finished a pasta meal. Put water on to boil while still working on proposal.
20:17:22
Clean kitchen and prepare a nice hot cup of decaf.
Still have headache. This is not a normal headache. It sits on the left side of the head and once I trigger it there is little I can do to make it go away. Except perhaps for a holiday from myself.
21:20:42
Futzing around on the computer. Headache still present. There is no way I know of to force it to cease. It is triggered by cognitive activity. So the only means to prevent it is to stop all cognition.
22:07:58
Just completed entering this post. Most of the time has been spent in making corrections. Somehow I have become reasonably effective in making corrections. I expect this is because I have a lot of practice. I do not believe text editing is as taxing as some other activity. I read a short section of text, find a missing period or whatever, change screens, locate the error, correct it, update the post, change screens, do a browser refresh and go on to the next short segment of text.
I have been doing this now since March and I think I am reasonably proficient. The key is to see if I can recover my coding skills and bring them back to a similar level.
On review, I realize I omitted mention of the fact that my morning activity was prompted by a meeting I have with Dr D tomorrow at 1430 (need to check the time). For each such meeting I prepare a checklist of items I need to gather, and other errands I can run at the same time. All of these events are then listed in the Task List. This will be referenced first thing tomorrow as I prep to depart the house. The Task List entries were made this morning and from there I went on to perform a general file clean up.
22:15:17
Just completed making the corrections in the last paragraph entered (the 22:07:58 entry).
22:25:01
Completed the SEO for the page.
22:28:35
Made corrections to the 22:25:01 entry. This took a while as I was investigating stop words.
A Day in the Life
A Day in the life is not yet over but I have stopped making entries in this post. My current plan is to make a nice hot cup of tea, check the news and the weather for tomorrow and then get to bed.