tubthumping

Posted on by kylar

today a penguin tapped me on the shoulder and mentioned that i took some of her ideas when i built my blog. yup, i did. should i have contacted her first and asked? yep. did i? nope. of course imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but none the less, when she asked that i change the look of my site, i quickly and happily agreed. the point here is that while we may ‘use’ or ‘borrow’ others ideas (and i use the term borrow very loosely – who among us has no mp3’s on their drive?), they aren’t ours, and if we don’t respect others rights to protect what *they* develop, create, and bring about, then why should others bother to respect yours? i guess this could be taken as some moralistic statement about everyone’s rights etc etc… the real point that i guess i’m trying to get to is that i found something that i thought was fantastic, and wanted to use it for my own purposes, neglecting how the rightful owner might think or feel about that. to jen: an open apology; i’m sorry, and don’t let my stupidity dull your creative juices :)

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loneliness

Posted on by kylar

i’m all alone tonight, my wife left yesterday to visit a friend and took my daughter. she’ll be back tomorrow some time (i hope :)
i’m realizing right now what really being alone is. i haven’t been all alone very often, there’s usually friends, family, roommates, etc.
but tonight there’s no-one. i’m just realizing how much i have come to depend on the closeness of other human beings.
sometimes you wish for some time alone and it’s good, but when forced on you, it’s not as good. i am going to make up my mind to enjoy this time by myself,
watch an old movie, make some food, curl up and watch bogart kick some ass. but even though it will be good, it will be bittersweet, since it would be better if
my wife and daughter were here to sit with me. melancholy baby, i hear you.

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energetic or add

Posted on by kylar

today i listened to a radio interview with lisa marie presley (yes, elvis’ daughter) on alice 97.3 and she was talking about how she spoke to congress about the willingness, or should i say zeal, of teachers to recommend that kids be put on ritalin or lithium or whatever a.d.d. drug is popular at the time if they are too active. then she went into a line of reasoning that i thought about, saying that it is the school’s place to educate, not diagnose medical problems.

my two younger brothers both were diagnosed with a.d.d. when they were about 12 or so. they were both having a hard time with school, concentrating, all the ‘usual’ signs. bear in mind that this was 10 years ago and the perscribing of long term drugs wasn’t as prevalent as it is now. after a battery of exams, blood tests and meetings with doctors, it was determined that they should try a mild dose of a medicine, under tight control. this meant the same time every day, blood tests and exams every 3 months to determine it’s effect, etc. the point i’m trying to make is that it wasn’t something that was jumped into without a lot of thought, nor was it treated lightly. it seems to me that today any kid who is deemed to be too high maintenance is written off as being a.d.d or a.d.h.d and medicated back to what is considered ‘normal’.

this appalls and disturbs me. my mother is a teacher, has been all my life, and i can count of the number of times that she has seriously thought that a kid should be on medication on one hand. it’s a rare occurance, and becoming rarer. what teacher wants to deal with 30 high strung, undisciplined, untractable 8 year olds when they could all be calm, high-attention and easily moulded by medication? it makes the teachers job easier, no doubt, but at what cost???

are we taking the life out of our children in order to make them easier to deal with? i was a scattered, high energy child (at least until puberty), and i am thankful that my parents didn’t medicate me. if a child is high energy and more difficult to teach, why is the first answer a pharmaceutical one? and that brings me to an even more difficult question, one that i may have an even harder time with.

when a teen or adult is having difficulty such as depression or anxiety and it is determined to be serious enough that medical treatment is necessary, where does that leave the person? if the person is able to reach some semblance of a ‘normal’ life (more about this another time) with the help of one or more drugs, does that solve the problem? is the person being the person they really are, or are meant to be with a little help? or are they only who they are because of the medication? sadly i don’t know the answer to this either, but then again, in my vast 28 years on this earth i’ve finally come to realize that i have a lot more questions than answers, and the seeking is more important than the finding.

usually i’d like to tie this up with some kind of pithy message, but i’m kinda depressed now too, thinking about this. here’s some links for a.d.d. and a.d.h.d. hope they help someone.

attention deficit disorder organization

children and adults with add

the add f.a.q.

these links are only for your guidance, don’t diagnose or try to figure this stuff out alone. get a doctor that you trust. tell your mom, sister, brother, dad, best friend. frankie says: “relax.”

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motivation

Posted on by kylar

at work i’m involved in this huge project that half the company is working on, and i just got re-orged, and among all this i’m suffering a real lack of motivation. in the words of the immortal oddtodd:

“the next thing you need is motivation. this is like a *problem* for me too. i mean, if i’m sitting, watching tv and i lose the remote control, i can’t even get motivated to change the channel. i could be stuck watching animal planet all day. mep!”

i feel like this a lot lately. i have a really hard time getting motivated when i get there in the morning, so i surf, read email etc until lunch, hoping in vain that i’ll fall through some black hole where i’m really motivated. it never happens, but i keep hoping. on rare occasions i get super motivated and can work like 20 hours in a row, or at least for a the whole day at a super high production level. other than that, i struggle on a daily basis just to get out of bed :) anyone else deal with this on a regular basis? i’ve been wondering if maybe i’m just really lazy? if all the time i spent in grade school, high school and college (not to mention slacker jobs) not doing anything and just gliding by has finally caught up with me. then i realized that my life has become just like office space. i’m unmotivated to work really hard, only enough not to get fired. someday, perhaps i shall find my muse.

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twilight zone

Posted on by kylar

so the last couple of months i’ve been surfing a couple of different blogs looking for style, good management systems and stuff, trying to design mine.

one that i really liked, stylewise etc was followthepenguin. (see any similarities?) i based the style template of my blog on hers.

anyways, today i’m surfing through some of her entries and i find this one, from june 2002 that talks about where she got the idea of “follow the penguin”: she was at a conference and a speaker from ireland was talking and kept going off on tangents, and when asked if there was a saying for this, someone called out “you’re following the penguin”. as soon as i read it i got really freaked out, because *i* was the one who said that. it was one of those totally random occurances. still.. strange.

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