04-23-2020, 04:33 PM
Well ok, two months late on my reply, sorry all.
@RTBoss thanks for the well-wishes and sorry I didn't get back here until now to acknowledge. Turns out in February I would have no idea just how long the wringer would keep wringing...
Today April 23rd is my birthday and I turn 35 years old. At no point in my life did I ever expect that I would have a birthday in the middle of what is generally accepted to be a worldwide viral pandemic and still somehow have non-virus related nonsense trump that as far as personal trials and tribulations are concerned, especially living in New York City which is considered the hardest hit of all American cities and somehow the world.
On March 10th I was let go from my job, about a week before all the shelter-in-place, stay-at-home, quarantine, whatever you want to call it closures. HR officially said it was because "there were no clients at this time in need of my particular skillset and they did not foresee that changing in the near future, so they didn't want to waste my time and their money," while I'm pretty sure it was more because of the sweat and odor problem. The biggest plus of being let go in this way was that I would not be subject to their nonsense early-contract-end fee (US$30,000 supposedly because of the "amount of investment they put in training me" etc), while the second plus is that I was actually eligible for unemployment benefits for the first time in my professional life because this was the first time I'd ever been fired from a job. I've been receiving unemployment for a little over a month now, so at least for the short term my financials are somewhat ok.
That being said, many other aspects of my life are now garbage. I had more tests ordered by the various specialists and now have more definitive results for the various diagnoses. The atherosclerosis is still a thing, but the tortuous aorta was ruled to be a misread of previous x-rays. Blood pressure and cholesterol were still high so they finally prescribed me meds for those. The insulin resistance was ruled to have led to me currently being prediabetic and as a result the endocrinologist has decided to prescribe me metformin, normally prescribed to patients who already have full-blown diabetes but because of being ruled as overweight at about 245 lbs at the time he felt it would serve me much better now while there's still a chance to prevent in addition to the draconian diet regimen he already had me on. As of this morning I have dropped to 222 lbs weight, so clearly something is going right with the combo of diet and medication I currently have.
Against my psychiatrist's recommendations I have made the decision to end my second and last anti-depressant, the Wellbutrin XL, tapering off the 450mg/daily to 300mg/daily for one month, then 150mg/daily for the next month, then done. He's not jazzed about it but I felt its intended effect of narrowing perceivable emotion was letting too much anger through and not enough happy. The 300mg month is still in progress.
The blonde Russian girl has decided to show her true colors. She has shown herself to be a drug addict, constantly begs me for money pretending it's for other stuff she actually needs and not spending it on, and keeps trying to guilt me into it to boot. She used to be a really good friend to me but destroyed all of that good will and faith over the past five months, and while I genuinely want her to get help it's clear any help I gave her in the past and she might have gotten from me in the future didn't and wouldn't go to where it truly needed to be.
Hanging in there while all this nonsense continues around me, trying to stay sane and regain some sort of productivity. Still have not had sex and still disappointed that the idea of attracting via money has not been wiped out or otherwise superseded by better, more effective ideas of sexual attraction. Still listening to DMSI regardless.
@RTBoss thanks for the well-wishes and sorry I didn't get back here until now to acknowledge. Turns out in February I would have no idea just how long the wringer would keep wringing...
Today April 23rd is my birthday and I turn 35 years old. At no point in my life did I ever expect that I would have a birthday in the middle of what is generally accepted to be a worldwide viral pandemic and still somehow have non-virus related nonsense trump that as far as personal trials and tribulations are concerned, especially living in New York City which is considered the hardest hit of all American cities and somehow the world.
On March 10th I was let go from my job, about a week before all the shelter-in-place, stay-at-home, quarantine, whatever you want to call it closures. HR officially said it was because "there were no clients at this time in need of my particular skillset and they did not foresee that changing in the near future, so they didn't want to waste my time and their money," while I'm pretty sure it was more because of the sweat and odor problem. The biggest plus of being let go in this way was that I would not be subject to their nonsense early-contract-end fee (US$30,000 supposedly because of the "amount of investment they put in training me" etc), while the second plus is that I was actually eligible for unemployment benefits for the first time in my professional life because this was the first time I'd ever been fired from a job. I've been receiving unemployment for a little over a month now, so at least for the short term my financials are somewhat ok.
That being said, many other aspects of my life are now garbage. I had more tests ordered by the various specialists and now have more definitive results for the various diagnoses. The atherosclerosis is still a thing, but the tortuous aorta was ruled to be a misread of previous x-rays. Blood pressure and cholesterol were still high so they finally prescribed me meds for those. The insulin resistance was ruled to have led to me currently being prediabetic and as a result the endocrinologist has decided to prescribe me metformin, normally prescribed to patients who already have full-blown diabetes but because of being ruled as overweight at about 245 lbs at the time he felt it would serve me much better now while there's still a chance to prevent in addition to the draconian diet regimen he already had me on. As of this morning I have dropped to 222 lbs weight, so clearly something is going right with the combo of diet and medication I currently have.
Against my psychiatrist's recommendations I have made the decision to end my second and last anti-depressant, the Wellbutrin XL, tapering off the 450mg/daily to 300mg/daily for one month, then 150mg/daily for the next month, then done. He's not jazzed about it but I felt its intended effect of narrowing perceivable emotion was letting too much anger through and not enough happy. The 300mg month is still in progress.
The blonde Russian girl has decided to show her true colors. She has shown herself to be a drug addict, constantly begs me for money pretending it's for other stuff she actually needs and not spending it on, and keeps trying to guilt me into it to boot. She used to be a really good friend to me but destroyed all of that good will and faith over the past five months, and while I genuinely want her to get help it's clear any help I gave her in the past and she might have gotten from me in the future didn't and wouldn't go to where it truly needed to be.
Hanging in there while all this nonsense continues around me, trying to stay sane and regain some sort of productivity. Still have not had sex and still disappointed that the idea of attracting via money has not been wiped out or otherwise superseded by better, more effective ideas of sexual attraction. Still listening to DMSI regardless.
A Better Alex (ISTJ): EPRHA → ASC → AM6 → …
A Sexy Alex (ESTJ-T): BIABWS+DAOS → DMSI → …
A Better Alex (ENFJ-T): AM6 → …
A Sexy Alex (ESTJ-T): BIABWS+DAOS → DMSI → …
A Better Alex (ENFJ-T): AM6 → …
