I have started a new blog - or created the container for one, perhaps I should say. To state something that seldom needs stated about physical things, but is often forgotten with intangibles, the proper intent for creating something new is to service a different necessity. That is the case here. Anyway, it's not a case of overflow, certainly, given how infrequently I have been posting here.
Rather, I have found my blogging constrained by that most ancient of obligations - to reality - where even my more drifting thoughts anchor to some post set in the real world. What I have discovered is that my desire to write has changed over time, from expressing a clear reality of a circumstance to expressing a clear essence of a circumstance. These are very different things, and whereas I once finished most of the posts I began, nowadays my batting average might be 25%. The most common cause of these failures is an acute frustration, caused by a desire to break free of the bounds of reality within a format where I feel compelled to tell a literal truth. This compulsion extends even into the subjective, and feelings - I could not so much as claim a feeling I do not feel in this format.
Fifty Mile Point will be a place formally detached from this narrow constraint, though I don't believe this means necessarily that the content of the blog will strictly resemble self-contained fiction. Though I often do write fiction, I also find inspiration by starting from some memory and taking creative license with it. This process of exploration is really an artistic endeavor - to uncover some broader truth within it. In theory (and maybe in practice - we shall see), it is just as likely that a post there would resemble one here - if it does, it will be nevertheless detached from literal reality to some degree.
I have moved one prior post from here to there - the single time I posted something here that now belongs there - a creative license that I never repeated. I will provide the warning that I feel no special obligation to finish fiction - not because it is not an important goal, but because I will never get anything released if I hold myself up to that standard (by which I would have a whopping one thing to show for 2+ years of writing). They will be better thought of as sketches, or brushstrokes. Some will be bad. I am certain many of them will resonate only with me. For all the challenges of fiction, the most elusive to me is the means by which something that speaks to me is judged on its appeal to others. I have no such talent.
I hope this doesn't mean this blog is done, although as long as I am using writing to express things that are meaningful to me, I will be satisfied that I have this hobby.
Saturday, February 22, 2014
Saturday, February 8, 2014
The Richness of Life
As I have slowly become more educated on nutrition, and slowly come to eat healthier (and one and the other again, in a virtuous cycle), I have come across the concept of the Omega 6:3 ratio as a causative factor for predicting general health, and especially brain health. The basic theory is that the ideal ratio (and the one we would have received before modern times) is 3:1. However, due to modern methods of raising livestock, fowl, and fish, combined with the average person's diet (higher in flour, sugar, and processed foods and lower in these natural sources of protein), today the average ratio is 20:1.
When I was chronically depressed, I was prescribed and tried between 10-12 different anti-depressant and AD/HD medications. Usually the medicine had an effect, and in fact, it usually helped, at some point between 48 hours and two weeks after I started taking it. Some of them had side-effects that made me stop taking them, while others were only temporarily effective. I took one thing or another for almost nine years, until I left for Finland (I took a big bottle of Wellbutrin and Strattera with me, but never used any of it). Somewhere early on (year two or three), my dad suggested I try taking Omega 3 supplements, because he had read some research that indicated it could alleviate symptoms of depression. I took a capsule one morning and spent the rest of the day unable to function. It was a stronger and more immediate reaction than I had to any prescription. I think I may have even taken a second one that next morning. I couldn't read, or write, or concentrate. My mind was all over the place, uncontrollably and all at once. This was a bizarre feeling for someone who had been living mostly in a haze the past couple years. It was shocking, and without a sense of nuance to interpret my own reaction, it was merely "bad", and so I never revisited Omega 3 supplements as a treatment for depression.
During my depression, I explored all the common explanations for what I was going through: I was unequipped for life; I had unrealistic expectations for life; life was traumatic by its nature; I wasn't tough enough; I wasn't smart enough; I had treated someone bad and this was karma; I had made a mistake and this was bad luck; I had taken what I had for granted and this result was inevitable; I was out of spiritual balance; I was out of existential balance; I had been a child and now I was an adult and didn't know how to deal with life, and this was only the beginning. I could go on. And on. Nor were these passing thoughts - one or two at a time, they inhabited me for weeks, months. Strangely, if the psychological explanations were far-sighted, then the physiological explanations were unforgivably near-sighted: it was a chemical imbalance, and the cause of that cause need not be identified.
This does, at least, explain the narrow class of solutions that were attempted.
My diet after high school was fast food, bread, candy, soda, alcohol, occasional home-cooked meals. I would guess my Omega 6:3 ratio was at LEAST 20:1, but who knows, and what's in a number, anyway? I didn't eat fish, seldom ate eggs, and seldom ate meat except on fast food.
By the time I went to Finland, I had been going to the gym consistently for a couple years, had started eating more meat, and fruits and vegetables, had stopped drinking soda and eating candy, had mostly stopped eating fast food. I still drank alcohol and certainly didn't always eat good, but I consistently ate far better. And, once I was there, I ate better yet, because the cafeteria at school served meat and vegetables for lunch almost exclusively. I went to the gym because it was across the street and I walked at least an hour a day, to and from school, and the city square, and if I was traveling (which I did often), I would walk far more - two or three or five hours a day.
I recount all of this because only now, years later, has it finally occurred to me that the most likely explanation for my experience of chronic depression - the descent, and persistence, and eventual surfacing - was this simple Omega 6:3 ratio, and the simplest fix was Omega 3, the nearest miss that I did not persist in taking Omega 3 supplements for a few more days until my mind had acclimated itself to them.
Within the world of mistaken explanations and unforeseeable regrets - guesses practical and absurd, the haze of ignorance - exist strange and surprising colors, as real a part of the richness of life as anything else. I existed within that haze for years, weak, lost, but I wouldn't take it back. I am too satisfied with myself for surviving, and learning, and being a person today who continues to learn. Quite frankly, it does not matter to me that such a simple thing took me so long - I could wait a lifetime to learn a lesson, so long as I retained all along the experience of traveling the road of learning. I have never particularly liked the knowing, itself - to know something is for that lasting magic that preceded understanding to be extinguished, but the satisfaction of knowing is too fleeting, and too self-centered to enjoy.
I am too satisfied, too, to find that I am still a person with flaws - large and small - who cannot conquer the world the way I sensed (the way we all sense?) that I would when I was a child. Perhaps I have become incapable of imagining myself living a different life. That's okay. When I ask myself what I would change, my mind goes only to the future. There are so many worse things. Maybe there is nothing better. I have heard of people on their deathbed that feel that way, that deep sense of gratitude. I wish I knew if I will always feel this way. I suspect not, but I am grateful to feel this way here and now.
When I was chronically depressed, I was prescribed and tried between 10-12 different anti-depressant and AD/HD medications. Usually the medicine had an effect, and in fact, it usually helped, at some point between 48 hours and two weeks after I started taking it. Some of them had side-effects that made me stop taking them, while others were only temporarily effective. I took one thing or another for almost nine years, until I left for Finland (I took a big bottle of Wellbutrin and Strattera with me, but never used any of it). Somewhere early on (year two or three), my dad suggested I try taking Omega 3 supplements, because he had read some research that indicated it could alleviate symptoms of depression. I took a capsule one morning and spent the rest of the day unable to function. It was a stronger and more immediate reaction than I had to any prescription. I think I may have even taken a second one that next morning. I couldn't read, or write, or concentrate. My mind was all over the place, uncontrollably and all at once. This was a bizarre feeling for someone who had been living mostly in a haze the past couple years. It was shocking, and without a sense of nuance to interpret my own reaction, it was merely "bad", and so I never revisited Omega 3 supplements as a treatment for depression.
During my depression, I explored all the common explanations for what I was going through: I was unequipped for life; I had unrealistic expectations for life; life was traumatic by its nature; I wasn't tough enough; I wasn't smart enough; I had treated someone bad and this was karma; I had made a mistake and this was bad luck; I had taken what I had for granted and this result was inevitable; I was out of spiritual balance; I was out of existential balance; I had been a child and now I was an adult and didn't know how to deal with life, and this was only the beginning. I could go on. And on. Nor were these passing thoughts - one or two at a time, they inhabited me for weeks, months. Strangely, if the psychological explanations were far-sighted, then the physiological explanations were unforgivably near-sighted: it was a chemical imbalance, and the cause of that cause need not be identified.
This does, at least, explain the narrow class of solutions that were attempted.
My diet after high school was fast food, bread, candy, soda, alcohol, occasional home-cooked meals. I would guess my Omega 6:3 ratio was at LEAST 20:1, but who knows, and what's in a number, anyway? I didn't eat fish, seldom ate eggs, and seldom ate meat except on fast food.
By the time I went to Finland, I had been going to the gym consistently for a couple years, had started eating more meat, and fruits and vegetables, had stopped drinking soda and eating candy, had mostly stopped eating fast food. I still drank alcohol and certainly didn't always eat good, but I consistently ate far better. And, once I was there, I ate better yet, because the cafeteria at school served meat and vegetables for lunch almost exclusively. I went to the gym because it was across the street and I walked at least an hour a day, to and from school, and the city square, and if I was traveling (which I did often), I would walk far more - two or three or five hours a day.
I recount all of this because only now, years later, has it finally occurred to me that the most likely explanation for my experience of chronic depression - the descent, and persistence, and eventual surfacing - was this simple Omega 6:3 ratio, and the simplest fix was Omega 3, the nearest miss that I did not persist in taking Omega 3 supplements for a few more days until my mind had acclimated itself to them.
Within the world of mistaken explanations and unforeseeable regrets - guesses practical and absurd, the haze of ignorance - exist strange and surprising colors, as real a part of the richness of life as anything else. I existed within that haze for years, weak, lost, but I wouldn't take it back. I am too satisfied with myself for surviving, and learning, and being a person today who continues to learn. Quite frankly, it does not matter to me that such a simple thing took me so long - I could wait a lifetime to learn a lesson, so long as I retained all along the experience of traveling the road of learning. I have never particularly liked the knowing, itself - to know something is for that lasting magic that preceded understanding to be extinguished, but the satisfaction of knowing is too fleeting, and too self-centered to enjoy.
I am too satisfied, too, to find that I am still a person with flaws - large and small - who cannot conquer the world the way I sensed (the way we all sense?) that I would when I was a child. Perhaps I have become incapable of imagining myself living a different life. That's okay. When I ask myself what I would change, my mind goes only to the future. There are so many worse things. Maybe there is nothing better. I have heard of people on their deathbed that feel that way, that deep sense of gratitude. I wish I knew if I will always feel this way. I suspect not, but I am grateful to feel this way here and now.
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