A Hostage of Right Brain Disorder

After a long interruption caused by this thing called “life”, we’re back to live action. The blog managed to get hacked at some point in between, so some of the old content is gone forever. I do, however, have some of my oldest posts that I’m going to re-edit and post in the near future.

I realized something last night…something that has been hanging around the periphery of my consciousness for a long time waiting for a chance to scream “I told you so!”.

People like me, sufferers of RBD, face an unusually difficult time in life when it comes to trying to be a helpful member of society. Left brainers don’t tend to get overly involved with a lot outside their own sphere of influence, so they tend to not be in situations where people can rebuff their efforts. Right brainers typically are a little intimidated by the technical side of getting involved, so they tend to only get involved in things that have little chance for failure.

RBDers, on the other hand, are willing and able to jump right in and offer assistance to anyone with any problem that falls remotely into the RBDer’s own personal knowledge base. Having had to find creative ways to solve lots of problems for themselves, mostly self inflicted ones at that, the RBDer is both capable of doing a lot and being confident in their own ability to make it happen.

Unfortunately, in a lot of these cases, the RBDer is rebuffed or worse because the person on the receiving end of the offer of assistance views any help as an attempt to butt in or steal the spotlight. The RBDer is usually embarrassed on the spot by being told to butt out or worse. Also, because of the hyper-sensitive nature of the typical RBDer, embarrassment is usually the worst possible thing someone could do to them.

I was on the receiving end of a major “butt-out” a while back, while trying to help someone accomplish something that would make him look good in front of a lot of his peers. The task that I was working on at the time was one that I have been involved with longer than the “help-ee” has even been walking this planet. I was made to feel quite stupid and quickly slunk back to my regular post with my tail between my legs. That is a mistake that I will never make again. The person involved is/was a good friend, but I can’t trust that anything he says is sincere after that issue.

The really sad thing here was that he had nothing to lose and everything to gain. My assistance was in doing something that no one would have known about and it possibly could have resulted in major plaudits being delivered to him by people whose opinions matter.

I suppose that, in the future, I should simply be more self centered and ask “what’s in it for me?” about everything that I touch from now on or simply refuse to act when the opportunity arises. The problem is that I have a real desire to help people and it seems to be the way of our world today that the average person will only focus on one’s self.

When you have a borderline addiction to helping people that could give a ratzazz about you, it is a situation where you are going to get your feelings slammed on a regular basis.

I suppose that I will keep on trying…it’s just how I am. Besides, the last person that actually succeeded in trying to selflessly help everyone he ever met got nailed to a tree for his efforts…and he would do it again in a heartbeat.

Greetings, all.

Yes, I know that it’s been almost two months since I’ve last posted, but those two months were spend building the most challenging project that I’ve ever worked on. I’ll leave that for the next post, but today I came across something that simply must be touted.

I’m in Dallas, getting ready to present a lecture about my graphical film work. I’m staying at a very nice resort hotel. I’m not saying which chain, but it’s a very upscale establishment.

The room is so nice that it has one of those wonderful “In Room Bar” thingies. Even this is upscale. This one actually charges your room bill the second that you pick up anything inside. Now you might think that this technological wonder is what I’m posting about today, but you’d be wrong.

Instead, I’m wanting to explain to you what is actually inside this $2-for-a-can-of-Coke monstrosity.

Located in one of the bottom corner slots in the door was a little tin. A small, round tin, similar to the kind of tins that Altoid mints come in. It has a little label with the hotel’s logo on it. Other than that, it has no identification whatsoever.

Thinking that it might be something “snacky” (I didn’t get to eat lunch today) I searched the pricelist attached to the door of the unit. Soft drinks were in the $2 range, liquor was in the $6 range (for one of those microscopic two ounce bottles) and the snacks were $3-5…but they were always clearly labeled. Then at last I saw it. There, at the very bottom of the list, for a whopping $8.50 was…

…something called an “Intimacy Kit”.
Forget 50 cents in the service station bathroom, this is the most stylish condom case I’ve ever seen. I thought about buying it just to see what was in it, but I realized that I needed the $8.50 in case I wanted a Coke and some peanuts.

Folks, this blog is all about learning to relax and enjoy the online world for what it truly is…a mainline IV of mindless (and usually stupid) drivel. But every once in a while something that comes along that is so silly, childish and juvenile…not to mention being straight from the Department of Redundancy Department…that it bears passing on the masses for the betterment of the world. Here’s a site that is absolutely brilliantly about totally nothing. Spectacularly vacuous…insanely brilliant…not to mention cool factor 10. Check it out.

The Wonderful World of Longmire

Remember, Digital Valium is not responsible for injury or death from laughter. Enjoy at your own risk.

So, we have a new name. Thanks to a stray comment by my buddy Steve and an immediate rush of RBD, I’ve renamed the blog…again. This time I think that it’s going to stick, as I now see the direction that “my” blog should take. Having grown up in a family of engineers, I’ve been around computers for as long as I can remember and I’m now thought of as a full blown “gadget geek” by my friends.

I realize that I have gotten to the point where I use my computer as a security blanket and I’m sure that there are lots of folks out there like me, so I’m off to see what I can find to make digital life a little more bearable for all of us. Stay tuned.

Houston, we have a problem. So now, at a time that I can least afford to spend waste any time on something as trivial as a blog entry due to a tidal wave of work related issues, here’s an update on the state of my emotions.

AAAIIIIIIEEEEEIIIIIGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for listening.

More nonsensical yammering to come.

Well, you would think that I would have learned my lesson after the scare of the summer, but no. I had to go out and add stress to my life today. I put an offer down on a piece of property that I have been looking at for over five years. I have watched as it has gone up for sale a number of times and I was simply too scared to make an offer. The tumor changed that. I need to build a house…not any house, but one that has been dwelling in my head since my college days. I should know something very shortly and I’ll post it here…as well as my design sketches and things. Pray for me.

And so now it begins…the next chapter of the ongoing story. New blog title, new blog direction. Thanks go out to all of you creative folks that entirely failed to send me suggestions. So no complaints from anyone.

You may notice that I didn’t say “my ongoing story”, for there is one tiny lesson that I have learned from the ordeal of the last few weeks and that lesson was to become aware of how much that the interrelations of people in your life affect even the most mundane details of your thoughts. Having had more time flat on my back with nothing to do within the last month than I have had in the last, oh, 25 years, I have begun to realize how deeply these interactions have affected me.

The problem is, I now have a lot of puzzle pieces and some vague thoughts on how to put them together, but somehow I feel like the puzzle is of a Picasso painting and if I put it together wrong no one will notice…but me. And if you know me at all, you realize that something like that will drive me bonkers.

More to follow…and soon.

Also, the blog is now open for posting replies, but I do reserve the right to zap any and all replies for no reason whatsoever. Happy posting!

Yes, normal…back to work. I’d been back 3 hours when I had to deal with a problem client. Eeeeeesh.

Although there are parts of my job that I truly love, there are others that make me want to chuck it and walk away. This one falls into that category.

In better news, I finished the bike stand that I started on Saturday. When you own a bike that is as odd as mine, you can’t just go to the bike store for an off the shelf bike repair stand…I built one from scratch custom fit to my bike. Now all I need is time to actually work on the bike…or ride it, for that matter.

It’s funny, that thru all of this I’ve been remarkably upbeat. There was no major fear, nor foreboding over what was taking place. The pain meds have mostly wiped out my memory of the last three weeks. It’s funny how time has been bent for me and it manifests itself in such odd ways. Take this morning, for instance.

I typically get up and turn on the Weather Channel for a minute to see what the day holds. There is one weathercaster on the morning show that is expecting a baby…she usually wears tight fitting clothing, so that wasn’t hard to figure out. This morning I flipped on the TV and there she was…HUGE!! In my mind this happened overnight…I simply couldn’t fathom how fast the change had happened. Then I thought about it. It’s been almost 4 weeks since I had last seen the show and a lot can take place in four weeks late in a pregnancy. Again, my mind thought that I had seen it yesterday, but somewhere a lot of time has passed…passed without me in it.

Now that I’ve been off the pain meds for about a week, I can honestly say that the fog in my head must be emotional. I guess I’m due some emotional fallout from such a trauma as this, but I sure wished that it had happened while I was in that month that seems to have vanished.

Not now…I just can’t fight it effectively at the moment.

For those of you who seek pleasure at the discomfort of others, or if you just like to see cool weird stuff, here are a couple of images of my “little critter”. The first is of the x-ray that started this long, strange trip.

If you look closely, you will notice that this thing is almost as large as the upper part of my lung.

The next image is from the CT scan that was done on Thursday prior to the surgery. Although it’s huge in this image, the single image simply does not do justice to the sheer size of this thing…it goes on at this size for frame after frame in the CT series. I wondered how I was able to breathe with this thing in there.

I cannot believe how incredibly blessed I’ve been in this whole ordeal. The tumor was benign, the nurse for the surgeon lives 3 doors down the street, business is stable, everything is way ahead of plan for recovery and Dr. Briggs says my chances for it returning are aboutt the same as they were for it growing in the first place…a long shot.

Now all I have to do is sort out how to move forward from here.

…and if you have any questions as to the title of this post, then you simply need to go back and read some of the earlier posts…’nuf said.

Well, yippee…Dr. Briggs said that I’m released…free to return to the real world…whatever that is. I’m not sure that I know what is real anymore. I have nothing to go back to at work as Paul has done a superlative job of keeping things running while I’ve been out. I cannot remember a time ever that I did not have a large pile of stuff to do hanging over my head, so I’m not quite sure what to make of things now but I’m sure that I will get through somehow. Also, Katy has insisted that I stand in front of a mirror for an hour a day and practice saying “NO”…maybe this will allow me to keep my head above water. I do tend to be a pushover when folks ask me to help out with stuff…which explains why I’m the President Elect of my local CSI chapter, a regional Vice Chair for CSI as well, the Secretary of my ASIS chapter, on the Leadership Counsel of my BOMA chapter and the President of the Band Boosters.

Add that to my family and church activities and my plate can tend to be a little full. And then there’s the business…the biggest time soak of them all.

As I said earlier, it’s going to take a while for me to figure out what this all means and how I should respond to this “wake up call”…I’ve got some ideas. As always, more to come.