(written on the 13th from notes)
Gratefully, I was undisturbed last night, but I was up late catching up on journal entries and whatnot, and then my brain woke up early, wide awake after only maybe 5ish hours of sleep, so I got tired pretty early today.
I also battled nerve issues, bad nerve issues, all day today–the kind where if everyday was like that, leaving this world would be preferable to staying.
Fortunately, I wasn’t in a bad space today, just not well physically. Ever since I did those stretches, I’ve just been miserable.
I really don’t understand this nerve condition. 15 years ago, I could only sit on hard chairs because the soft chairs would exacerbate my symptoms. Then all the sudden it completely switched and I could only sit on soft chairs, as hard chairs exacerbated the symptoms.
Just a few years ago the same stretches that I did to relieve my pudendal nerve issues now massively exacerbate other nerve issues.
Just a year or two ago, I could only sleep on my back. Now I can only sleep on my right side, sometimes my left, but now sleeping on my back exacerbates the symptoms.
My body is broken and confused. 😅
The more I think about it, the more I don’t think that it was injury that caused these issues but some kind of a degenerative issue. I suppose it still could still be injury, but I don’t have real injuries to look back on in my life. I have maybe three, pretty minor ones… Dropping off maybe a 10 ft or 12 ft concrete wall at my high school in Provo and feeling my back get tweaked pretty good, but there was no lasting symptoms… didn’t even go to the doctor; hitting a rock while sliding down a glacier as a teenager and I think cracking my tailbone, though I never saw a doctor for it either. And then in my twenties, I dove off a log into a pond head first, totally lost my brain, and put my arms to my sides, so I ended up hitting the bottom of the pond head first. But the bottom of the pond was a mesh of soft plants, so though there was a little tweak in my neck, I don’t even remember it being sore for more than a day, and certainly never needed to go to the doctor.
Of course, I have a young life full of baseball and soccer and a lifetime of cracking my neck and my back… which, supposedly, doesn’t cause this kind of stuff…
🤷
Anyway, rough day today–physically.
Spent some time chatting with the big guy this morning. My habits are all wrong for the life I’m trying to get back into. I haven’t prayed regularly. Most of my conversations with God over the last year and a half have been one-sided, with me full of hate and rage, cursing him out with a powerful, vitriolic intensity.
I’m not in the habit of talking to him much at all, let alone on and off all day long like I used to during my golden years.
And I have so many habits to undo–the vegging off before sleep with things that are not uplifting. I still need to give my brain down time, and that’s one of my weaknesses, it was even in my golden years. When I get so focused on trying to become who I want to become, I try and make every single moment of every day productive, and I’m not very good at seeing down time as productive, so it’s hard for me to figure out downtime at all.
But down time is necessary for overall health, mental and physical, so it is definitely a necessary part of the process that I still need to figure out.
Or else little me will burn out, like he always does. 🙃
I spent a very large chunk of the morning writing my journal entry for yesterday. So much light and love and happiness. 🥰
So beautiful.
Spend some time texting my friend Cory and my brother Richard.
Then I went to my credit card to pay off my bill and saw that I had been charged $30 for a late fee and 50 something dollars for interest.
I haven’t paid interest on a credit card since my twenties, I don’t think, and I don’t think I’ve ever ever ever ever ever had a late fee.
I’ve had my account set up to auto pay my entire balance on the due date should I ever forget to pay prior to the due date, and for the first time in my life, I forgot to pay, and so my auto pay was supposed to have kicked in, but something went south in the auto attempt, and boom: They slapped me with over $80 in fees and interest.
Erg. 😒
Quite the test for my efforts to be full of love. 😆
I also heard back from the United States national Park Service, that said that they couldn’t verify on there and that they had double charged me, so they weren’t going to issue me a refund, so I was going to have to dispute the double charge with my credit card company–the same one that just charged me fees and interest in whatnot.
Lovely.
With my nerves giving me grief, I decided to get out and walk around the church parking lot while on the phone trying to get things straightened out.
They waved the late fee via their automated system, which was nice, but still has me worried about my credit score. I’ve never ever ever had a late payment. My credit score is over 800, at least at my last check, and I’m not really excited about it dropping down because of an error in an auto pay system.
So I stayed online to talk to customer service person to person, and eventually, they agreed to remove the interest charge as well. 🥳
It was only after that that I realized that the reason the payment hadn’t gone through was that it was pointing to an account that I have since closed. I realized that while I was still on the phone with the customer service person and said that if they needed to recharge me the late fee and the interest rate, then that was understandable since I had the system pointed to charge from an account that was no longer active.
Although, in this day and age, one would think that they would inform you right away if there were a problem instead of waiting a week or 10 days or whatever it was.
I think the only message that I got from them was something like 5 days later when I got an automated email saying that my auto pay had been canceled but not saying why, that I can recall.
So I went online to my credit card statement / payment history and saw that the payment that had tried to go through had been charged back to my balance, so I quickly try to pay that balance, but the system wouldn’t let me because it thought I already had, so it would only let me pay my current balance.
Fortunately, due to a glitch in their system, that they’ve had for a long time, I was able to pay my current balance twice, which was equal to the previous balance that had been charged back to the account.
It’s been a bit of a mess, and I’m not sure exactly what is going to happen, and I’m a bit worried for my credit score. I guess it’s mostly my fault because I forgot that the auto pay account was a closed account, and I also forgot to pay for the month like I usually do. I usually pay at least twice a month just to always stay on top of everything so that I never even have to worry about the autopay kicking in. Funny that the very first time I ever need the auto pay to kick in, it doesn’t do what I needed it to do because I forgot to update it in January when I closed the account.
So I guess we’ll see. We’ll see if they decide to go ahead and charge me the fee and the interest because it actually was mostly my fault, and we’ll see if my credit rating goes down because of the late payment.
Erg. 😕
I did get the dispute started on the double charge, so that’ll probably get resolved in about 2 months, and the national Park Service said that they won’t try to dispute the charge on there and when they are contacted by my credit card company.
It’s nuts to think that I can get charged twice, but the national Park Service only has record of charging me once. 🤷
I even printed out my statement and sent them a screenshot of the double charged portion of it, but I guess that’s not enough.
Gratefully, my complaint was enough for Wahl, the company that makes my broken haircutting clippers.
After complaining that a warranty that requires me to pay for the shipping of their broken product back to them is not really any warranty at all when that’s going to cost me about as much as buying the product again myself, they offered to send me a one-time free replacement, which I gratefully accepted and gave them my sister’s address in South Dakota, is it’s going to take them quite a while to fulfill that replacement, so that’s the safest location to have it sent to for pickup.
Oh, these nerve issues. 😖
I cleaned up a little bit of trash from the church parking lot while I was on the phone, trying to get back into my habit of leaving every person and every place having been positively impacted because I was there.
Might take me a little while to have that habit and perspective locked in as automatic.
First stop of the day was to arrest area to empty my pee bottle. Apparently, I’ve been keeping myself hydrated. 🙃
I topped off my water bottles at the drinking fountain there, and then I headed to the state park that was on the other side of the highway down by the beach.
It had gone way past breakfast at that point, so I guess my plain Mini wheats with a couple of bananas on them would count as lunch–timewise.
I did some more online errands, getting my two Identifix bills paid. I had myself taken off autopay for them because they screwed up the bill just about every month, and it was a nightmare trying to get it resolved. Much easier to just log in and pay it manually every month until they get their system fixed.
I also finalized the transfer of money from the third party company that holds the funds just answer pays me. I hadn’t completed the setup of accounts since I switched everything in january, so I haven’t been paid yet this year. 🙃
Nice to get that set up and the money heading into my account. There was a part of me that was worried that if I didn’t get the money transferred soon, it would disappear forever. 😅
Being monday, and wanting to take advantage of my Boost in pay this week, I started answering some questions for JustAnswer. I answered, not too many, but maybe 8 through the course of the whole day?
There weren’t very many decent questions, most were out of my area of expertise or garbage questions, and there were multiple people I couldn’t get in touch with over the phone and had to push off to tomorrow because it was late at night already for them.
Anyway, I stopped at lots of pretty places. The first one, Harris Beach State Park, was beautiful, though crowded, despite it being a monday.
But I stopped here and there at different pull outs with beautiful views, taking pictures, and taking in the scenery.
At least one place that I had originally planned to go to I decided not to go to because the dirt parking lot was completely full of cars.
I stopped off at Pistol River Bridge because I saw a very large river emptying into the ocean, and a group of seals hanging out on the sand next to the freshwater portion, almost a little late before going into the ocean.
So I pulled off the road onto a little dirt pull out that actually went all the way down to below the bridge, put on my son hat, and headed down the riverbank toward the seals, though I was on the other side of the river from them.
Some of them were certainly agitated seeing me, getting into the water and hanging out as I approached.
I walked right on by where they were and sat my little butt down right at the point where the river enters the ocean.
Beautiful little spot.
But me afraid to be in the Sun. 🙃
Some of the seals were agitated enough to leave their freshwater lagoon, and swim down current past me to where the River became the ocean.
It was kind of fun to watch them swim by, popping their head up to see where they were in relation to me, before going right back under to continue downriver.
I hung out on the beach for a good little while, even accepting a work phone call while I was out there (a bit surprised to have reception, as I don’t have it much on the Pacific Coast Highway).
I spent some time wandering around Ariya’s Beach area, the only one down on the beach itself, with another older gentleman hanging out in his car in the turnout above.
The tide was coming in, and the waves were plentiful and ferocious, foaming and churning, wave after wave after wave. The amount of white water in the waves and the way they crashed, and the number of larger boulders sticking up above the water leave me to think that perhaps there were a fair number of rocks below the water helping to turn everything up.
Super beautiful.
The massive rock formations in the same area had one with a little archway through it, so you could see the ocean on the other side of it.
I love those little archways. 😊
I took a handful of pictures, got myself and my pants wet up to my knees, found clusters of muscles all clinging together, still alive, and came across some kind of absolutely beautiful sea flower that had washed up on the shore.
Was finally able to get in touch with my Uncle John, chat briefly, and tentatively set up a get-together for Wednesday night. 😊
That’ll be great, although, there’s the tiniest bit of anxiety having a deadline for where I need to be. 😆
I kept trying to work, which is hard when I’m trying not to multitask while driving. Lots of pulling over to check on potential questions, and a little bit of fudging. 😅
Funny that the fudging is only hurting myself, as it’s me going against my own values. Interesting how I try to almost deceive myself, convincing myself that touching my phone while not looking at it in order to accomplish the message sending isn’t still the same as message sending.
It’s funny because I’m even less Road aware when I do that then when I just look down and text. My eyes completely glaze over, as if I weren’t even looking at the road at all, trying to perform a function using my peripheral vision. 😆
Yes, multitasking with my phone while driving is likely going to be an ongoing battle before I finally kick it. 🙃
Stopped off at a small parking lot on the beach that had a bathroom, only to find out that the stall door didn’t close, so I waited until there were fewer people in the parking lot before I did my little hover job with the door slightly open. 😆
As the sun was going down, I was exhausted and overwhelmed. I’ve taken away all my escapes, and that right after having spent a very long time forging very solid neural pathways in my brain for how I function, escaping into the online universe when things get hard, be it into sports or news or YouTube or porn…
And the routines… Forged strongly into my brain is vegging out on my phone before going to bed, checking all of the things that I normally check, the sports, the news, etc, and then finally crashing. It doesn’t matter if I’ve spent all day in some form of entertainment or other, that part of my wind down routine has been so solid for so long…
But it’s not what I want. It hasn’t been. I’ve just been pushing away the recognition that I wasn’t living the way I myself wanted to. I tried to ignore the fact that I was trying to escape and avoid life and the things I wanted most because of pain.
But I just… couldn’t keep doing it.
Yet, having done it for so long, I have a lot of brain reworking to do. Let’s hope my neuroplasticity is relatively decent, eh? 🙃
Anyway, so my filters have done a great job of reminding me of what I want most. I haven’t even tried to look at news or sports, and the only times I’ve gone to YouTube were specifically for uplifting and/or informational purposes–my filter giving me a 10-second countdown to make sure I actually want to access YouTube, and then giving me a 20 minute limit.
It really is a great filter. It’s not going to stop you from doing stuff if you’re determined, not at all. You can just go in and change the settings anytime you want, but if you do really want to change your behavior, and you could use some assistance in the process, it’s great.
Anyway, like I mentioned the other day, one of the challenges that has had me slipping in times past is that I am not yet what I hope to be, and the effort trying to be who I want to be is exhausting. Sometimes I just want to go back to the selfish, destructive pursuits that not only don’t help me achieve what I want most, but actually prevent me from it.
And today, having sort of cold turkey stopped all of the things that I do to run away when life is hard or painful, today was hard, at least toward the end.
My body and mind were exhausted from dealing with pain and discomfort all day long. I was at that place where, if everyday were like today, I just don’t want to be here on earth, when there are no positions that I can take that will give me relief for any meaningful length of time.
They just change which symptoms I’m dealing with.
So yeah, today was hard to not try to drown myself in sports and news and run away from the world.
Instead of running away, I poured my efforts into the productive positive things. But those productive, positive things… They don’t have the same power, at least not yet, to immerse my psyche in diversion so profoundly that I can escape the pain and discomfort to some degree.
Wow. Isn’t that a testament to how powerful media, distraction, and addiction can be.
😶
So I had spent my day filling the space that normally went to unproductive, soul-deteriorating activities with positive, uplifting activities.
But now I was exhausted and overwhelmed, wanting escape.
I fired off a text message to my friend Cory, and he called me a short time later, and we chatted for a bit until he had to go.
Thanks, Cory. 🙏
Text it again with my brother Richard a bit while heading to my hoped for campsite for the night, trying to only send messages while pulled over. 😅
An evening fog rolled in, which was absolutely beautiful, as I pulled over to an overlook turn out above the cliffs below. Seeing that sea of fog right along the coast with the ocean visible a little further out, and the massive mini mountains sticking out of the water… just beautiful.
I kept trying to answer questions for work, but I had two customers in a row who weren’t getting my phone calls, so I arranged to call them back tomorrow.
So I called it a night, work-wise, and headed up elk River Road into the hills eastish of Port Orford.
The proposed campsite destinations were just little turnouts on the road, but the little mini landslides that had taken out a couple of those little turnouts gave me pause. 😅
I drove up the road a little further than the spot listed on freecampsites.net and found a turnout on the creekside of the road instead of the cliff / hill side of the road.
Figured I’d be less likely to be taken out by a landslide in the middle of the night. 🙃
The rain started falling gently on that last little bit of Drive. The area is beautiful, and I’ll be waking up to a little river by me in the morning. 🥰
It’s been a good day. A hard day because of the health challenges and having removed my more destructive escapes. My productive, uplifting escapes take energy, so they’re not quite… escapes. 😅 So that’s a bit challenging not having my standard means of running away.
But it was a good day.
Gratitude:
- I’m grateful for this beautiful world.
- I’m grateful for wonderful family.
- I’m grateful for friends I can count on.
- I’m grateful for my health blessings. 🙃 They give me an opportunity to practice patience. They give me an opportunity to increase in empathy. They give me an opportunity to be grateful in all things, even the hard things. They give me the opportunity to choose what I want most even when it’s really hard.
- I’m grateful to find places to rest at night that are places where no one will bother me.
- I’m grateful to have been able to answer at least a handful of questions.
- I’m grateful to have had the fee waived and the interest waived and new hair clippers being shipped to me.
- I’m grateful I was able to get the auto payments set up from my work to my bank account.
Success:
- I did it. I didn’t turn to any of my destructive escapes today. I don’t think. 🥳 I turned to positive, uplifting things. And I’m tired, and I’m exhausted, and it’s really hard because I want to just escape into mindless, non uplifting nothingness. But I didn’t today. One Day at A time.
Improvement:
- Multitasking while driving was still a challenge and temptation that I succumbed to today. I’ll be better tomorrow.
Loves 🥰
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 