I’m sitting here at lunch, going over in my head my last physical. Just like everyone else my age, we have to have blood work. I waited a short amount of time before the nurse called me on the phone with my results. It turns out that A) my glucose level was more elevated than in the past labs, and B) my liver enzymes were high.
Fuck. Welcome “prediabetes.” Again.
I know I’m not the ”poster boy” for a physically fit male, but I do watch what I eat, and because of a possible psoriatic arthritis problem in my feet, it has been difficult for me to walk long distances without being in excruciating pain. The achiness has been better as of late, but it still appears sometimes.
On top of chronic pain, I’m exhausted when I get home from work. And not just the usual type of tired. I cannot stay awake after dinner. I am tired. I can’t keep my eyes open to look at email or check on my troops in one of my many iPhone distractions (also known as “games”). At first, my psychiatrist thought it was a testosterone issue, but that particular lab was normal. My wife thinks that because of my blood sugar changing throughout the day, and after I eat, I’m probably coming down from my ”high.”
So, after my second set of labs, the nurse called again and stated that they are labeling me a ”prediabetic,” and that is why my liver was slightly high. She told me the doctor wants me to continue eating healthy and exercise.
I. Hate. Exercise. With a passion. My idea of training is going to work and walking around the entire office and sitting and standing (my opinion of ”squats”). Or lifting heavy objects, like my coffee cup or the fax/copier/scanner lid (okay, that last part I am lying. I never lift that lid.)
So, the result is that I have to lose weight and to do that, I have to (ugh) exercise.
Another thing that over the last several months I have been working on or have needed to work on is my anger. I was seeing a psychologist to help me confront my anger, and put a stop to it.
There is nothing worse, as a parent, to be slowly giving your child a “complex.” I think I’ve already driven my wife crazy, so I don’t need to add to the equation. I was blowing up at every little thing. I would, as my wife puts it, “ride my daughter’s ass” on various subjects, from school to chores, to taking care of her things, to being a better person, and so on.
Well, because someone outside of the situation pointed out that I needed to “nip” my anger “in the butt,” I did. Not just because I wanted to be a better person, but so I didn’t cause my daughter to struggle with some of the same issues that I do as an adult.
I guess I have been thinking a lot about “results” lately because not only do we put a lot of pressure onto ourselves to be better, leaner, stronger, faster, etc. But we are expected as a society (at least in America) to be the greatest that we can be. Wasn’t it the Army Reserves commercial in the 80s or 90s that pushed us to be the “best we can be?”
Speaking more about my own results, I want to write fiction. Not just any type of fiction, but “good” fiction. I want to be up there with Stephen King and Vonnegut and A.G. Riddle and many others. I want my fiction to turn from a hobby into a career. So much, sometimes, that I hear voices in my sleep.
Okay. Before we start to call the “crazy farm” to come to pick me up again (another story for another day), let me explain. I will have an idea for a story, blog, YouTube series, cartoon, comic–you name it; I have probably come up with a concept for it. I go to bed, and sometimes I will be thinking about a story, for instance, and then I will think of parts of that story; could be a scene, or a climax to the story, or just a timeline of events that, at the time, have no meaning. I’ll repeat the ideas in my head to make sense to it, or to add to it, and to help me remember it so that when I wake up in the morning, I can add it to my digital notebook of ideas or my classic Moleskine Reporter notebook that I have been recording ideas in for the last eight years.
Thinking about all these things makes it hard for me to fall asleep. There have been times that I, like many of you, will lay there in bed, tossing and turning, trying desperately to get a good night’s sleep. The ideas are pouring into me like voices that I have to combat them with something.
Enter “Lyla.”
Lyla is a character I came up with that helps me to sleep. You see, she has a gift or a curse, that when she speaks, whatever is talking, singing, making loud noises that stop you from resting in your head while you are trying to relax, right where it was. Even if it was midsentence, or in the middle of a song that was playing over and over in your head, Lyla would make them stop. And then I could fall asleep. Sure, it sounds like an annoying character when you first think of it, but in the right hands, she can be “deadly.” But, the result is that I finally got the voices to stop, and I was able to get some sleep finally.
I put a lot of pressure on myself for results, but, I realized today that I’m not doing anything about it. My short stories are going nowhere because I want a shortcut to getting it done. I want to be more healthy and lean, but I want to take the “easy road” out. I want to accomplish all these great things, and get the results I want, but without having to do all the hard work that a lot of other people take to get there.
This post I started earlier today at lunch. It’s almost 11:00 p.m., and I’m up working on it because I needed to show myself–no, prove to myself–that I need to work harder. On many things.
I need to make results.