Base Camp – 5,290 fASL

I think I need a slightly bigger tent.

I bought the floor model of a North Face Stormbreaker 1 man tent at Cabela’s probably a year and a half ago and this is my first opportunity to use it. I wanted something small for my excursions that I planned on taking by myself since I know that camping is not my kids’ hobby.

Anyway, it’s squishy. It fits my air pad and sleeping bag perfectly but there is room for nothing else. So my bag stays outside.

I’m at the Kananaskis Trail overflow camping or something, I’m not exactly sure what the name of it is. I’m in the Peter Lougheed Provincial Park and random camping wherever the fuck you feel like it is strictly verboten in Provincial Parks. They do patrol the day use trail heads that explicitly say ‘no camping’ so they’ll bust your ass if you even try.

I wanted to come out here to get away from people but, of course, it’s getting more and more densely populated as the evening progresses. And, of course, the pair of couples with a shitty toddler decide to bunk adjacent to where I’ve set up. If I wanted to listen to a miserable, whiny, over-tired kid… I’ve have saved myself a 4+ hour drive and just sat in a McDonalds Play Place for a few hours around naptime.

But whatever. There are a lot more bears out and about around here right now than there was last year when I was here and there is safety in numbers. The bears definitely don’t want to listen to some whiny fucking snot-nosed bitch kid either so they’re more likely to stay out of the area thus not looking at me as a giant pre-wrapped meat snack.

The tent is squishy but it’s not bad. The air pad keeps me comfortable and off of the cold, cold ground and my sleeping bag should keep me nice and toasty. Plus, I have a couple of wool blankets in a bag that I’m using as a pillow and will just throw over myself if it gets too cold tonight. I don’t think it will but you never know.

It’s not as comfy as my bed but I also don’t have mountains in my bedroom. The trade off is worth it.

Wasted

I watched this rerun episode of The Nature Of Things about addiction:

http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/m/episodes/wasted

I found it very informative but it has left me feeling quite melancholy. I feel like I’m broken and always have been broken… that I was predetermined to be this way. I have wrecked so many things and because of my actions in the past, I will continue to wreck things… setting events in

motion that cannot be undone.

Strength Of The Mind

Strength of the mind

Looking back on the life that I lived

What I leave behind

Mistakes and memories serve to remind (they serve me to remind)

The reflection staring back from the mirror

No longer looks like me, like me

Strength of the mind to fight what’s inside

It takes strength of the mind

Before I lose control

Who can raise you from the fall and save you? Only you

Who can take the pain away and change you? Only you

A thousand miles between this never ending feeling

Just looking for something more

Searching for a release

I’ve seen rock bottom and I’ve smashed my fists against it

Just keep telling yourself it will be alright

Who can raise you from the fall and save you? Only you

Who can take the pain away and change you? Only you

Gather all your pain and suffering

Turn them into strength and weaponry

To overcome the enemy

That’s in you, that’s in you, that’s in you, that’s in you

Come face to face with a war that rages in you

Yeah

Who can take the pain away? Only you (only you, only you)

Who can raise you from the fall and save you, and save you, and save you

Only you

Strength of the mind

Before I lose control

Brain Damage

The past few years have represented some significant changes in my life, particularly with respect to my health and wellbeing. Between car accidents, alcohol abuse and a tonic clonic seizure due to alcohol withdrawal… I’ve had more run-ins with our fantastic health care system than I would like. 

I had been abusing alcohol for a while; exactly when it went from semi-casual consumption to out-of-control alcoholism, I can’t really say. However it had obviously been long enough that, when I decided to take a break from booze, I had a withdrawal seizure less than 36 hours later. Regardless of how long the road was, the destination was the same and the facts are irrefutable. 

With the seizure, I experienced a posterior dislocation of my left shoulder and I am quite certain that I also anteriorly dislocated my right shoulder which subsequently popped back in. My shoulder being in a funky sling for a few months was the primary thing that I had to deal with but the long term effects of that dislocation continue to nag me. I am plagued with pain and have to be careful about what I lift and how I lift them. But the most significant and disturbing change that I have noticed since going sober is with respect to my brain. The first things that I can recognize as having changed are my memory, my ability to process information and being able to focus.

I often have trouble remembering the specifics of events or, sometimes, entire events themselves. There are times where I can recall the memory if someone reminds me of a few key parts of it however there are an equal number of times where recollection is just not possible. It’s gone. In addition to memory, being able to process information has been impacted. Being able to take a situation and break it down in my head, figure out the important facts and then extrapolate or apply that to other situations is much more difficult now. Then throw in the struggle associated with staying on task? It’s kind of difficult to know exactly what I’m going to be like from one day to the next. 

I also find that my judgment is questionable at times. I think that’s related to my aforementioned issue of difficulty in processing information… the faster I have to make a decision, the more likely it will be that the answer should be highly suspect. 

From what I’ve been able to read, both alcoholism and seizures will cause some level of damage to the brain. So, it’s really difficult to say how much I had done to myself before the seizure and how much damage was directly related to the seizure. I feel like I don’t really have a solid connection to the person I was before the seizure and the alcoholic blur my life was before it so I can’t really tell when the degradation of who I am started.

Immediately after my seizure, I attended a week-long session about substance abuse recovery and took away a lot of lessons… of particular note were the recommendations to start taking a vitamin B complex. Alcohol decimates vitamin B levels in your body and brain and, considering how important vitamin B is to the body, I felt that I needed to try to limit the damage and maybe try to feed my brain again. Maybe a case of ‘too little, too late’ but I’m not giving up hope.
My emotional state? It’s related but… I think that’s maybe best saved for another post at another date.

Light

Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.

– John Milton, Paradise Lost

Self re-discovery can be difficult when you don’t see yourself in the best light to start with. Getting sober and separated all in such a short time while my kids are moving from teenagers into young adults has left me realizing that I don’t know who I am anymore. I’ve lived for so long doing things for other people out of necessity that I have real issues with doing things for myself; I see it as a waste or an extravagance. 

I have issues (which should come as a shock to no one, everyone has issues of some type) and find that they really restrict my ability to find happiness in anything. This is probably the source of why I started to drink in the first place and has, to date, remains unaddressed. 

I don’t talk about me a lot. Mainly because it’s easier to ask people about how they are doing and the things that are going on in their lives than it is to open up about the vacuous hole in my chest that is sucking my soul and bringing me ever-closer to oblivion. I know I use this as a deflection. And I use humour as a deflection a lot too. I don’t want to deal with the pain. I don’t know how to deal with the pain. 

I feel like this past few years of me coming off the rails, having that seizure, getting sober while being on the brink of losing my job for 18 months straight and then having my wife leave me… I feel like I’ve had an epiphany about who I am and who I am not. And this awakening only amplifies the depression that I was already feeling; that I actually am not as smart as I thought I was. That I’m not as strong as I though I was. That I’m not as liked or desirable as I thought I was. 

I know that I somehow have to get past this if I want to be able to find some kind of happiness. It’s the ‘HOW’ that I have issues with. 

Grindin’

Officially, I’m on the downhill slide into the end of my work term up north. I passed the midway point yesterday morning, actually, but I’m just seeing some light at the end of the tunnel now. 

It’s been pretty intense to say the least. One guy was told yesterday by the PM to ‘get it done or I’ll find you a bus home.’ So, the pressure is on to get problems resolved… it makes every other work situation I’ve been in look like a fucking bike ride. 

My timesheet this week is going to have 44 hours of overtime on it. While the overtime is good, there isn’t a lot of financial incentive from the company to come up here for a second term. If you’re a professional engineer in this company, you don’t make 1.5x on overtime. I’m not a professional engineer so I’m enjoying the extra boost… but I get paid less to start with so maybe it’s a wash. Whatever. 

I’m just super exhausted, these long days are wearing on me. But I just gotta push through and keep grindin’. 

Carnage

Fire erupted at our client’s refinery almost a couple of weeks ago and, as a result, there was a desperate request for people from our office to go up north and assist. 

Upon arriving, the one week stint changed to a 12-2 shift rotation with me returning for multiple tours of duty. I haven’t given an answer to the return but I probably should today so that they can line up a replacement for me. 

Anyway, it’s 12 hour days with an hour of travel going there and an hour of travel coming back. So that shit is long. as. fuck. I wake up at 5:00 am and I am fighting for consciousness by 9:30 pm. And there is a ridiculous amount of work to do where things are constantly changing as the client discovers more about the condition of their facility after the fire.  It’s pretty intense and high paced. 

I’m still here for another week, flying home Sunday night. And in the next seven days, I have so much crap to do. It’s ridiculous how much there is to do and how little time we have. We are doing in days what would normally take us weeks… figuring out what the bare minimum is that we need to do and still make sure what we are doing is correct and workable. It’s a balancing act that I haven’t quite got figured out yet despite having worked in this industry for almost 20 years. The challenges are also technical things that I’m not used to dealing with so it’s hard to know what to do. 

Here’s hoping I figure it out… and soon. 

Handing Off

Originally written on March 9th, 2017

Well. Welly welly well well. 

I’ve been trying to multitask the shit out of everything and avoid dropping the ball on a project that I’ve been working on. And, predictably, its resulted in me starting to drop the ball on ALL of them. That’s kind of how it works when it comes to trying to do too much; you end up sucking at EVERYTHING. 

So I had to have a hard discussion with my Supervisor and Project Lead for one of the jobs that I just can’t do it all. Because I also have this other role in the company that I fill which I can’t plan for that also messes up my shit. 

Anyway, it has and is going to continue to require me putting in some overtime. There is some stuff that I need to wrap up and hand off on one job and then other things I need to do to get caught up on another two jobs where *I’m* the Project Lead. There is engineering to be done and materials to be bought… and I ain’t done shit. 

I feel bad doing it, like I’m leaving a co-worker in a lurch… but it will be worse later if I don’t do it now. I have a bad habit of taking on too much and not managing my workload properly. I’ve gotten better but it’s still a problem for me. 

Lost To The Ether

Originally written on March 2, 2017

This probably would have been a better idea for me to do years ago when I was writing a lot more. Now, it feels like I’ve already lost the vast majority of my writing to the cyber-ether. I would like to be able to look back at my documented history and reflect upon it. Maybe marvel at some of the things I wrote in that it was I who wrote something well thought out and poignant. 

Sometimes, the old ways are still the best. When all is said and done, a book with withstand the test of time far better than memory; nothing and no one can escape the ravages of time. Not even technology. Especially technology. If I want to view some of those writings that I saved within that XML file, it isn’t easy. All of those words are interspersed amongst so many code fragments that it is barely intelligible. 

Even writing this is pointless unless I transfer it to paper. These words will be stored somewhere within Apple’s iCloud servers and easily lost and/or deleted. That seems to be the progression of our society; that we continue to own less and less. We lease this, rent that, subscribe so that we can borrow… none of it is OURS. It’s someone else’s property. Without that ownership, we have no control over it and, thus, have less control of our own lives. We are more easily becoming pawns to be manipulated en masse.

I’m not overly materialistic however I do recognize the pattern of society handing over ownership of our own destinies to both government institutions and, more significantly, to corporations. It’s a choice we make in our search for cheaper and more convenient. As space around us is taken away, our individual footprint becomes smaller and smaller.