Experiments

My experiment isn't exactly a pure one, and that's the frailty of human science, in as much as we try to be objective, the observer is part of the observed system and so true objectivity is not obtainable. None the less, things seem to be turning positive to some degree but there are still significant clouds as well.

I have been trying to be more spiritually aware, I've been trying to listen to God, if that makes any sense, and I don't have a firm belief system in any particular religion but I do believe in God, so I've pursued things on different levels. I have been saying the Lords prayer, sometimes several times a day because I believe in it pretty much everything important we can ask for is there and it helps to focus my intention on being what I believe God wants me to be. I've also been experimenting with some new meditative techniques and I think there is some benefit there as well.

Some positive things have happened, I was first put on Wellbutrin for ADD symptoms last August, and it would give me about three really good days and then about a week of moderately improved functionality and then by about three weeks I'd be more or less back to baseline. They'd bump the dose up and everything would repeat. I was told that "usually" one would reach a point where the benefit would remain but for me, I reached the maximum safe dosage and increasing beyond that had the potential for inducing seizures. So then they had to wean me off that and during that time I pretty much locked up.

Then they tried Provigil, again, it was beneficial initially, but I rapidly adapted to it.

Finally, Ritalin, or at least it's generic equivalent and that has given me lasting benefit. There was a couple of initial dosage adjustments to reach a beneficial dosage, and then it has provided me with stable benefits for about three months now.

During this time I've been able to get one years tax returns out of the way, still have more to do but I'm making progress, and I've been able to get much better broadband infrastructure in place for my Internet company, Eskimo North, and that is selling reasonably well and I expect will do much better once it's well documented on the web and advertised.

So those are bright spots.

On a very negative side, there are family members with age related health issues, and I worry about how long they are going to be on this plane and I feel like I'm losing a bit of them every day, and that's really hard to deal with.

My grandparents are all dead, many of my aunts and uncles have died, many of my friends have died and I am not yet at a point where I am either comfortable with their loss or my own mortality.

One of the things I really want to do before I die is document what I've learned and what I've experienced, and share those experiences and teach other people what I've learned. I feel that a lot of people could potentially benefit from what I know but I'm not a great communicator, or at least I don't think I am.

I made the mistake of borrowing money from my father when I hit bottom and I haven't been able to pay that back yet, so in his mind I'm scum of the Earth right now, but then I think I've always been too weird for him. Even before that I always had the feeling like I was being cross-examined when I'd talk to him but then I suppose that in part has to do with the fact that part of his career was working as a detective so perhaps that's just a natural response.

I wonder too though if being adopted isn't part of it, that being genetically unrelated, and different, is something that we are both unconsciously aware of. I was adopted when my parents didn't think they could have a child of their own and then my adoptive mother did get pregnant and they had my sister.

So I don't know, I pray for help with this but so far it doesn't feel like that help has been forthcoming.

One of the things that has always been puzzling to me is the nature of the Father/Son/Spirit relationship, it's something that has brought me disfavor with clergy I've asked because they always have pat answers that seem not to make sense. One of my customers made the simple statement, if you want to know about Jesus, read the book of John, and I've been doing that recently.

It's funny too because I've read through the Bible when I was younger, but now re-reading the book of John I am getting a lot out of it that I didn't before. One of the things I am finding through John is that Jesus is as I had felt Jesus was, someone who was loving not condemning which seems very contrary to the teachings of most churches that I've been exposed to, save for one, and that one wasn't successful at raising enough money to continue operating where they did.

I do wish I could read in the original language because I have read so much about inaccurate translations, and having learned foreign languages I understand that there are things that just aren't translatable. Languages do not allow us to fully express everything that is possible, at least not any one language, they all have words that have nuances that just do not directly translate. I learned Swedish and I found myself thinking things in Swedish that I could not directly translate into English; and not even indirectly entirely. There just weren't words to convey some of the nuances. I've been learning Chinese, and I am finding the same true of Chinese to the limited degree that I know it, I am not even close to fluent yet.

So I have to think that languages so far removed from English in time, there are going to be many things that just aren't accurately translated. I've had an interest in mythology for a long time and one of the things I find is that most stories in the Bible, there is a very similar story in mythology that predates the books of the Bible, but with one significant difference, the earlier versions are always polytheistic, while the Biblical versions in modern translations are mostly monotheistic though there are still some plural references to Gods. The similarity of the stories makes it hard to believe the Biblical versions didn't derive from earlier polytheistic versions and I've been told that references to God in Hebrew is mostly plural, but since I don't know Hebrew I can't confirm that myself.

Anyway, what I am learning about Jesus from John seems less "western" that the teachings of many churches or even other books of the Bible. I try to apply what I'm learning but I'm still not real good at it, still I am beginning to see there are many real truths present.