Things that make you go hmmm in the night

I said in several previous posts that I knew eventually I would take pills again, and I did. I managed to acquire three (yes THREE) low-dose white wonders yesterday and gobbled them right down. As expected, a half hour to an hour later, I felt the familiar huge sigh of relief come over my whole body. The dosage was low—not enough to put me in total bliss-town, but just enough to lift the weight of life’s constant heavy burden. That feeling only lasted an hour or so, then it was back to normal, but for that brief time, I had no problems in the world. I felt hopeful. I felt placid. I felt… okay.

Once the real world came back (as it always does), I went about my normal daily activity of doing absolutely nothing except waiting for bedtime.

Strangely, sleep didn’t want to come. Since I emerged from detox a month ago, I’ve been pleasantly surprised that I haven’t had many major problems with sleep. In fact, aside from a sore back from my bad mattress, I sleep pretty well—much better than I have in years. I set in place a strict bedtime routine that has worked pretty consistently, so much so that I’ve come to trust that my body does indeed know how to sleep without using Vicodin or Ambien to induce it. But my experience is contrary to the norm—everybody seems to suffer from horrible insomnia after detox, not before. I considered it a small blessing in this hell I call my life and never put the two together. But after yesterday’s small trip to Vike-town, I am left to puzzle about it.

Eventually, I went to sleep, but I awakened exactly at 1am, bright as a new penny, insatiably thirsty, and unable to go back to sleep. If this happened a month ago, my reaction would be to take a Vike with a big glass of water and go back to sleep. Instead, from 1am until 5am, I was wide awake—eventually drifting back off to sleep until 8am this morning.

I doubt I will have any issues going to sleep tonight since I haven’t taken any opiates today, but I can’t help but wonder WHY the insomnia and thirst returned with the Vicodin (since that’s not a normal reaction to the drug) especially with a comparatively low dose? What are the metabolites of the drug? Why that paradoxic reaction?

And maybe that’s why I’ve had insomnia for so many years. And I also wonder if the key to curing my depression is in there somewhere. If I could isolate the particular metabolite or enzyme that is activated, maybe I can cure my depression without the negative side effects.

I don’t know. I just don’t have all the information.

I value sleep above most things these days, so I guess if I were to say I have a passion, it would be sleep. That’s one thing I value above the Vicodin. This round of the exact same pattern of insomnia and extreme thirst makes me wonder what’s really going on — and makes me reconsider whether or not I want to go back to using. Hmmmm….

Hopelessly broken

Another day spent on my fat ass doing nothing but eating.

Since I stopped taking pills, I eat constantly. Not that I wasn’t eating like a pig before, but now it’s like I’m eating like two or three pigs. It won’t be long before I can’t fit in my sweat pants and will need to buy new ones. Horrors! This girl’s got issues.

Someone the other day asked me what I’m passionate about—that pursuing that passion might lead me to a way out of this funk. I realized, in that moment, I’m not passionate about anything anymore. Worse yet, I don’t think I want to be. When I mentioned past “passions” — the singing, the acting, the watercolors and artwork — this person suggested I use them to find some way back into the world. When I explained that those ‘passions’ had been proverbially beaten out of me by former associates, this was her response: “It’s your passion – why would you give it over to someone else so easily? Or blame them? I doubt they even know they “took” it from you in the first place (or know that you let them take it from you).”

This sentiment, in all of its cold stark reality, sat and stewed with me. I’m angry that she was so blunt, but she’s right. Absolutely correct and on the spot. Once again, it’s my fault. I’m to blame.

But the fact is—the bottom, baseline fact is—I don’t know any other way.

I am broken.

But this is me. I am a “life performer”. Everything I do, I do for an audience. I seek approval and applause whether on stage or off. I need love and approval like people need air. In the absence of it, I am nothing.

Some people call that sick and disturbed, and I would agree. But I would argue that up until recently, optimism has always lurked in the background. I’ve always hoped I’d find the man of my dreams—that guy who would totally “get” me—then I’d have a family and a normal life. Every time I was onstage, I hoped there’d be a scout in the audience who would discover me and think I was special. And every time I got that “big chance” I really did believe it was true, this time.

But it’s not that way.

When I was a kid, it was all about getting good grades and not getting in trouble. In my house, getting A’s wasn’t enough—they had to be A-pluses just so I didn’t get yelled at. I was taught that I wasn’t pretty; I had dark circles under my eyes, a big nose, and a fat belly. As a teenager, I wasn’t allowed to date or have friends or go out after dark. My acne wasn’t treated because it was considered my fault, and I wasn’t allowed to wear fashionable clothing because that was considered extravagant and vain (and why waste money on a kid, anyway?). When I wanted to go to my prom, I was told no because “Who would ask you anyway?” As a young adult, I went to work at a place that treated me like I was scum—where even when I succeeded, I was punished. I was told to stay at that job by the sole main figures in my life (family). I never could keep a man—even a gay one—because ultimately, I always needed too much from them. I have always been convinced that everyone will leave or die—nobody stays or can be trusted. I’m always scared that nobody likes me. Always concerned that I will never measure up no matter how well I do. Worse yet, life and circumstance always seems to support those negative messages.

That, folks, like it or not, is my history.

So yes, I have let other people destroy my joy and passion. It’s all I’ve been trained to do—how am I supposed to react any other way?

When I see myself in the mirror, I see my mother’s prediction that “no man will ever love you” to be true. No. No man will ever love me. I am the fulfillment of 1001 broken dreams.

And THIS is why I take drugs. The vicodin allows me to be okay with all of this shit rolling around in my head. When I get in these depressive states it lifts me, even for a few minutes. I don’t have a loved one to help me. Nobody in my world cares. It’s not self-deprecating if it’s true, and that is. All the people that were supposed to care about me, did not. That’s not fair, and it sucks hard, but that’s just the way it is.

That is what I have to live with every day.

And that’s why I will probably start taking pills again just as soon as I can afford to.

Dead Ringers

Time to update my character list, because, thanks in part to Doppelganger week on Facebook, I now have a much more accurate collection of actors to portray my family in the movie of my life. It’s really scary how accurate these are—even my sis nominating Annie as herself is frighteningly close. I hope Stacy London (as me) can get used to the heavy prosthetics for the scenes where I’m fat. I also apologize ahead of time for the multitude of hair colors she’s going to have to go through. Maybe they can fit her with wigs. Sorry Stacy!

Me (skinny): Stacy London

My Evil Sister: Annie Lennox

Brother #1: Jason Lee ("My Name is Earl")

Brother #2: Brian Dennehy

My Mom: Queen Elizabeth

My Dad: Frederic March

All cubicles are enemies

I found myself lying my ass off when I had an unexpected phone call this morning. My former friend Cyn, from my former workplace Initech, decided to call and check in on me.

We actually had a fairly pleasant conversation after we got past the first few awkward moments where I was grilled about “where have you been?”. Then I had to lie like a cheap rug concerning my present circumstances. For public record: I am fine, everything is dandy, and I’m working all the time, busy busy busy.

The truth need not be bothered with.

Anyway, she gave me all the updates on her and my ex-job. First, Cyn is recovering from her cancer treatments and is doing pretty well. Her hair is growing back, but apparently it’s curly and not growing as fast as she wants it to. She’s in her final immunotherapy treatments after months of various and sundry chemo/radiation/etc. pills, IVs, surgeries, etc. I feel bad that I haven’t spoken to her in so long (our last conversation was over the summer), but then again, she never called me either so… fuck it. Besides, turns out she’s on Facebook now, so she’s going to approve my “friend” request when she gets home. So, all’s well.

All is not so well in my former workplace. Cyn is has an angle on a new job which she hopes to get now that her cancer treatments are over with. As for my office, while my department has not been shut down yet, they still aren’t faring well without me. They’ve had to change their services. Some tasks they simply don’t do anymore (because I’m not there, they don’t have anyone capable of doing them). Like, instead of the original work I used to produce, my office does a lot of cheap, quick copy jobs or templated work. Before Bossman took over, that would have been blasphemy, but I knew the day he threw out all our old original paintings and artwork, this would ultimately be where they would end up. Just an in-house Kinko’s.

And, with the economy in the tank. Initech finally decided to start offering early retirement incentives to get some of their expensive, tenured employees off the books. So my ex-friend Cee apparently decided to sign up. Even though Cee is their last remaining senior designer, it looks like she will be approved, then all they’ll have left are the idiot newbies. Then again, what kind of brain trust do you really need to run a copy machine? And—get this—they’ve already found Cee’s replacement. Remember that young asshat kid that was hired right before I left? Yeah. Believe it or not, they want to leapfrog promote him to her position (but pay him half what they were paying Cee). How could they do this,  you ask? Wasn’t that kid a complete idiot? Why, yes he was, dear reader, but he is also the son of one of the Big Cheeses in Charge of Initech, and supervisor Bossman wants to get his brownie points in to ensure his next promotion.

Because, as it turns out, Bossman’s Bosslady—the screaming banshee bitch who you’ve heard me complain about back when I worked there—is ALSO putting in for retirement. This means, Bossman is angling for her spot when it’s vacated—and he’s gambling that The Powers That Be (including AsshatKid’s Dad) will graciously hand him this prime management position as thanks for all the underhanded favors he’s done for them. You know, all those nepotistic, illegal, backdoor, wink-wink-nod-nod, suitcase-full-of-money deals must eventually pay off, right? Yeah, for a measly extra 10 or 15K a year, he sold his soul and sold out all who worked for him. Nice.

If you ask me, those fuckers are getting exactly the company they deserve, and I couldn’t be more happy that I left. When I was talking to Cyn about all this, I could help but giggle with delight. I apologized on the phone and explained that I couldn’t help but be glad and, for all I’ve been through, I wished I’d left 20 years ago. “The only real handicap I have now,” I explained, “Is the fallout from having worked there for 20 years and all that did to me mentally.” Yeah. Fuck them for all they put me through and everything evil that they represent. I hope they all rot in hell.

I must take a moment to pause and remind my dear readers that of course everything I’m speaking of is encoded to protect my own identity and privacy (and the privacy and identities of those I cared about and worked with). I would like nothing more than to name names and tell you exactly what and of whom I am speaking. Really I would. For now, I’m choosing to keep silent because I, personally, can’t handle being ripped apart by the papers. I don’t want to be the lead story on TMZ or watch the “experts” on CNN discuss my credibility. I can’t. I have no money, no insurance, and therefore would have no lawyers or PR staff to protect me. So, you will have to trust me when I say that the place I am speaking of, and the corruption I know of, is very real—and if it were to be uncovered and ultimately proven beyond a reasonable doubt, the scandal would keep the major newspapers buzzing for months. If you think Enron was a scandal, or the recent Toyota safety recall coverup is big, the things I know (or have been rumored to me) would blow those off the map. Up until now, none of it has gotten out because people like me (or those much smarter than me) leave and forget about it. My problem is, I have a conscience, and what I know, irks me deeply—and I don’t know what to do. So for now, I’m choosing to shut the hell up like every ex-Initech employee before me did, and try to move forward with my life.

Oh! And my old position? Kaput. They never hired anyone to replace me, and according to Cyn, they never will — plus, believe it or not, my cubicle stands empty to this day. Like some empty bombed out battlefield or something. Maybe they should put up a dedication plaque: “Mad Margaret—1987–2009″

Well, joke’s on them because I may not be dead, and my life may be full of worry and doubt, but AT LEAST I’m not working in that pit of snakes anymore. No more oatmeal colored cubicles and oatmeal colored windowless walls.

That’s one thing I can always be grateful for!!!

An Apple a day keeps the competitors at bay

With the introduction of the Apple iPad this week, I’ve heard a lot of speculation and derision. Not everyone that’s doing the criticizing has been around as long as I have, so the following are a few thoughts from a longtime Apple fan, on why Apple doesn’t suck, even when it does.

1. As Apple goes, so goes the world. If Apple is working on something, you can be assured the rest of the world will follow. Remember how candy colored iMacs changed all those old beige boxes into stacks of life savers everywhere you went? And how many clones of the iPhone are out there? Sure there were touchscreens before iPhone, but nobody really “got it” until Apple did. Hell, go back to early Apple and see the “invention” of the mouse and the Graphic User Interface (all those lovely icons you click to open). Were these original ideas at the time? Not really. But nobody was using them to their fullest potential. Steve Jobs knows a good idea when he sees it. It is largely because of Apple that you interact with your computer the way you do on this very day.

2. When Apple introduces a product or a feature, it’s usually representative of some shift in the American zeitgeist. Home computers? Thank Apple. This week, we saw Apple introduce a type of tablet computer called the “iPad”. I think it has the possibility to change the way we do everything—from reading books to subscribing to magazines, to playing games, to taking notes in class. Whether or not it lives up to the hype has yet to be seen. Back in 1994, Apple introduced the Newton (their first attempt at a “tablet” computer) which ended up being a notorious flop. A lot of people have brought up the Newton this week, as if to say, the iPad is bound to be “another Newton”. First of all, iPad is NOT a Newton. Newtons sucked because the technology wasn’t there to support it at that time. It was too much too soon. The text recognition was a great idea, but in practice, it never worked. But they were on to something. Ask users of the Palm Pilot—a product I despised far more than the Newton because it had it’s own stupid shorthand language that you had to learn in order to write on the thing. As an example of what a bad product the Palm Pilot was, my former boss, Bossman, owned one (and probably still does). If that’s not a reason to avoid it, I don’t know what is. At least Apple had the right idea, in that, you should be able to write in the language you’re familiar with and have the computer understand it. Too bad they didn’t perfect it. Also, keep in mind, the Newton was released during the span of years that Steve Jobs was no longer the “Chief Brain In Charge” at Apple. Steve-o is back, and Apple is building on its previous success with the iPod, which means, the iPad will not suck. Which brings me to my next point….

3. Steve Jobs. Apple works because it’s Steve Jobs’ baby, plain and simple. In the years when Jobs had been booted from the company, Apple floundered. You had bean counters running the company, interested only in making a buck, not taking a chance on a creative vision. As I said many times while working at Initech, that’s how you destroy a company, not how you succeed in one. Sadly, being a creative visionary means stepping on people’s toes and being called a bully, or Stalin, or a flaming bitch from hell who’s gone nuts…—oops, am I speaking about myself again? Sorry. Back on topic. Say what you want about ol’ Steve-o, the man knows what he wants, and he also has his finger on the pulse of what YOU want. Plus, Steve is something of a perfectionist. Nothing goes out the door unless he’s done the testing on it himself. The Newton would have never passed the Jobs test. No way, no how. Their quality control is due to one man’s vision: Steve Jobs. He hires good people and keeps them around him. He can communicate what he wants to these people, and work with them to bring his vision to life. Is he an asshole? Probably. Is he a little bit of a hippy dippy fruitcake? Maybe so. But unlike so many modern businesses, he is interested in making a damned good quality product first and foremost. He is uncompromising in his vision—and THAT is something I deeply admire.

4. Apple builds on previous successes. I find this part of Apple intensely fascinating. This week, some have said (including yours truly) that the iPad is just a big iPod. Perhaps, but pay attention to the details and the things Apple didn’t say. For instance, Apple created their own chip for this little baby. You’ll notice they didn’t talk a lot about it… but you’ll hear more. If it works (and I’m betting it does) this means Apple is likely to use that knowledge and build on it. They are also no longer dependent on outside vendors to provide the brains behind their computers. This is big. Really big. I have heard this chip is considerably faster than previous ones, which may be why they created it. But… why did they create it… that’s the question you should be asking. This is really big news and not a lot of people are talking about it. You don’t hear about Microsoft creating their own chips, do you? Nope. Also, take the idea of your screen being touch sensitive and completely interactive. It’s the most intuitive way of interacting with your computer — the idea has been around for a long time, but is only now coming to full fruition. How long before this is incorporated into laptops? Or all-in-one iMacs? Notice also the paint program that Apple demonstrated. It’s an ideal use of the iPad’s touchscreen. How long before it’s a ubiquitous tool for artists? These things are really big deals, and it all started when Apple took some of their biggest successes and built on them.

5. Failures? Apple’s had a few, but are they really failures or “lessons learned?” People that know I own one, ask me: If the AppleTV is not a bad product, why didn’t it catch on? Often cited as the most recent Apple “failure,” Apple TV is hanging out in the wings, waiting its turn on the stage as the next star product. Haven’t heard of it? You’re not alone. It never achieved the worldwide success of the iPod or the iPhone, many consider it an orphaned product just biding its time before ending up in the junkyard. For those who may not know, the AppleTV (or iTV as it’s commonly nicknamed) is a stand-alone unit allowing you to download songs/movies/TV shows from the iTunes music store and play them through your TV. For what it does, it’s terrific. An elegant solution that takes movies from your iTunes store (even links to your computer) and plays them back in high resolution on your big screen TV.

But, the main problem seems to lie in what AppleTV is not: it is NOT a DVR. You cannot record and play back anything. It’s a companion to the iTunes store, that’s it. So why didn’t Apple make it into a DVR? Seems logical, right? Tons of people would gladly tell (say) Time Warner Cable to go stuff it and replace their TiVos and DVRs with an Apple TV if it could record TV shows. Well, Apple has its reasons, mainly having to do with the complicated rights issues involved with how much control the TV Networks are willing to part with.

The tide may be changing in AppleTV’s favor. The rise of DVRs and TiVos, Netflix, Roku, and more recently Hulu.com, have changed how people watch TV, and the Networks have noticed. They believe that TV as it stands now may be a dying medium. They’re bleeding money through advertising revenue and with the current economy the way it is, more and more people are canceling cable subscriptions and going to alternative solutions. So… is it Apple to the rescue once more?

Rumors are swirling that Apple TV is in the process of a major upgrade/overhaul that could change the way we watch TV and movies in the future — and if rumors prove true (and Apple succeeds with it), they could do for TV what they did for the music industry. The most promising rumor I’ve heard so far is that Apple is negotiating with TV networks and movie studios to allow you to subscribe to what you want, similar to the Netflix plan. In other words, instead of paying (just an example) Time Warner Cable a flat-rate fee per month for 1500 channels you never watch, you would pay Apple a per-channel subscription fee to watch only the channels YOU want. Of course, this is fraught with concerns over the ultimate cost (no one will do it unless it’s cheap) and whether fledgling channels would get a fair shake in the deal. The same arguments have been made for years by the cable companies. However, to me, this rumor has the ring of truth. Apple builds on existing technologies and makes the best of them. They tap into the current popular thinking and make an elegant solution to meet those needs. I can see Apple TV really winning if they did this.

So for now, I’m hanging on to my AppleTV, waiting to see what happens next.

And in the meantime, I’ll see if the iPad lives up to the hype. When I have money again and am gainfully employed once more, I intend to buy one. Critics be damned.

And to all those who think iPad sounds like a feminine hygiene product? Grow up, Beavis.