Brian's World

Disoriented

I had considered penning some of this on paper, if you know what I mean, but I realized that the nouns were definitely not as important as the verbs so I could get by in a more public fashion.  I also figured that some moral metamucil could help.

Over recent days I’ve felt strangely disoriented at times, both physically and mentally.  I incorrectly estimated a corner and walked into a wall in my apartment yesterday and I spent ~11 minutes this afternoon trying to sort out some strange balance feeling I had.  I can assure you I’m not actually playing pin the tail on the donkey or whacking a pinata, but I certainly have felt like some force has been spinning me around.

Remember, all that was talking about physically feeling disoriented.  While it’s pretty unpleasant and has upset my stomach from time to time, I’m not too worried.  The physical state of me isn’t that important approximately all the time (and I’m pretty decent at autocorrecting for feeling dizzy).  I also remembered to buy some ginger ale today to help qualm my stomach a bit.

Feeling mentally disoriented is much more unpleasant for me. I’ve spent the past as-long-as-I-can-remember walking in a straight line, like on a balance beam or something.  And I don’t even do tricks on this beam like some people might… there are a lot of people out in there who, like me, tend to walk a pretty straight line but they get their kicks by jumping or doing some kind of handstand thing…. I keep things pretty simple and just walk.  In the interest of full disclosure, there are of course others who switch beams all the time or walk on non-straight beams, but I think that’s a whole different can of worms…. not a bad can, just a different one.

What stands out as so strange is that I’ve been walking in this straight line so long I can’t easily explain any disorientation.  If I was spinning in circles or walking in a spiral that would make sense.  If I was jumping from beam to beam I could definitely account for a little confusion every now and then but I’m not, I haven’t even done any tricky moves on my beam that I can recall.  Perhaps I’ve had trouble finding a solid point of reference, like walking in one of those fun-houses with spinning walls.  Unfortunately, whatever funhouse I’ve wandered into is not very fun.

Usually I write something down and feel worse after writing it, then I go to bed and wake up without having to worry about things. I actually wrote that before I did a few dinner dishes and found myself feeling a bit better later.  I think doing the dishes helped focus my mind for a few minutes.  Note to self – find more dirty dishes to wash.

There are many times in life when I wish I could just be a passenger on someone else’s boat.  I really think that most of the time it’s nice to not have to worry about every little thing and chart out exactly where you’re going next.  Sure, you can’t do much but complain when you sail into choppy seas but a good captain wants to navigate out of that quickly too.  Unfortunately there aren’t enough boats headed in my direction for me to be a passenger (and I would be a pretty good passenger, offering to the dishes and swab the decks, etc) so I’m left to be a captain of my own vessel.  Sure, sometimes having your own ship is really cool when people point and are like hey, that guy’s on a boat (or something like that)… but other times the seas can be awfully lonely, charting where to go next can be very tricky, and we all know a good captain can’t fall asleep.

I would really like to talk about transience, but I need to get some lactose issues off my mind first.

I think that skim, 1%, 2% and those other low fat milks feel pretty stupid most of the time.  I understand whole milk isn’t the most health conscious choice for most people, but it is whole milk… as in the default option.  It’s not like they are making the regular milk more dense or anything like that.  I think what bothers me is the notion of watering it down, like you want to drink milk to feel healthy or something like that but you don’t want all of the milk so you’re just going to water it down and bit and pretend things are normal.  If you want to drink water than just do that or if you want to drink milk you should go that route, I don’t know mixing them is fair to the cow or the water…. and it probably makes the milk feel inadequate or like someone you have to interact with just to get a job done but you really don’t like them that much.  I think Diet Soda’s might fall into the same category, but a whole lot more chemistry / engineering / work goes into that process, you don’t just add extra water to cola and sell it as diet cola.

Following the lactose trend we’ll talk about ice cream.  When I lived at home with my parents growing up I would eat ice cream on a fairly regular basis, but as I grew older I decided to stop because it’s hard to eat ice cream and operate a computer at the same time and I think my parents were just trying to fatten me up.  Now when I eat ice cream I tend to eat really conservatively, like plain old vanilla or chocolate.  I’ve found, through extremely limited trials, most of the flavors at a place like Coldstone are too exciting for my stomach to enjoy.  Initially I think this was a menu thing, like I had to order quickly (time was running out) so I chose something and just stuck with it because that was easier.  It was also nice to eat ice cream for a change, so if it wasn’t upsetting my stomach I saw no reason to change and try another combination / flavor.

I don’t have this craving to go to Coldstone right now (maybe Friendlies) but I’ve given thought to trying something different. There was once a day when I liked gummy bears on my ice cream, so that notion has popped up again.  I’ve also given thought to trying like Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream, which used to be my favorite flavor but I haven’t had it in years.  In my mind I don’t understand where these strange ice cream thoughts are coming from though… it’s not like I eat ice cream often and have recently gotten bored of the same thing every night. Nor have I had a particularly unpleasant experience with any of my regular choices.  Luckily, I don’t find myself in the ice cream isle at the grocery store or at a Coldstone/Friendlies prompted to make an order…and if I did I’d probably play it safe for now anyways.

Good night moon.