T.M. Shannon

Hi everyone,

Yep, been some time. Such is your blogging fate when even your free time gets wiped out by the ADHD urge to vape and doomscroll.

It hasn’t been without inspiration to blog, two weekends in a row I had content tapped out, but that urge withers when your Ritalin drops out and you sink down. So, I was glad for a chat with the psych and some meds adjustments Monday, things are a little better.

And with nothing in mind today, I’ve stepped outside to sit in the sun and wing it with some updates instead of pursuing a single topic. Here goes.

A Dose of the Good Stuff

As mentioned, I’ve had a meds review, and while the new sleep results are something to be desired (Oh Great and Powerful Head Conditions, please stop making my dreams horrible and me hungry at 3am), the day 6 results are, well, not bad.

My combined conditions of Bipolar, ADHD, and suspected underlying schizophrenia have me on 6 meds, and I was hoping recently I could maybe cut some out. Being on a slow but steady downward trajectory, however, had other plans.

So, the psych and I switched it up a bit, especially with the Ritalin dropping out, and when it drops out, it’s heavy. I’m now onto 1.5 tablets 3 times a day, and it seems to be pretty stable and working some early dividends, but we’ll review next appointment.

The Lamotrigine is also up 25mg, and I can gladly say no fuzziness because of that, so hopefully I have room to move if it needs to go higher. And the Olanzapine got a slight boost, but I’m thinking already it’s going up with the continuing sleep issues.

I’ll be honest, I hate my conditions, and’ll probably get some patronising sympathy like, “Oh, don’t worry, not everyone’s normal,” but I wish I was normal, that 75% of things in my life hadn’t happened, and that I didn’t need a bunch of chemicals just to hit functional.

I’m in the Not Okay crowd, and these feelings are valid. And if you come across it, the best move is what I’ll call the Eeyore Move, whose gloomy mentality resonates with my depressive side, as you can read about in this article over on NeuroLaunch:

Acceptance of the person’s mood and feelings; not sympathising or sometimes empathising with then but just being there; know the positives such as simple pleasures, highlighting potentail failure points, on-point understanding; and taking breaks for yourself.

Certainly, don’t tell someone with depression, anxiety, my mix of things, “Look on the bright side.” Some days, there isn’t one. But none of the other characters in Winnie the Pooh do this, they’re always with him, and Eeyore proves very dependable to them in the end.

And with saying that, being out here in the early-evening sun, and the 3pm Ritalin dose kicking in, I feel a bit better, and’ll leave things there for a post around RUOK Day.

A Dose of Non-Algorithmic Change

As you’ll see in the Three Ways promo page link above, I’ve used a rather stock image instead of the blonde woman and dark-haired man at the bar. And if you duck to the homepage, all the latest posts have the same picture of my laptop with the title page of Three Ways visible.

This is by design, as being an author who isn’t using AI to write his book (don’t worry, Zoomers, I’m cutting my 900 em dashes down to size), it stands to reason I don’t use AI images either.

So, apologies for being tempted by the Dark Side. Some of the images were quite useful, while another was two people hugging that had three arms visible and a head missing. And as someone who’ll get my IP scraped, I certainly shouldn’t praise the AI machine that’ll bite me.

And these lazy devs too proud of the technological terror they’ve built to write their own stuff to feed the machines that they want to replace me with is but one part of the problem.

AI data centres consume copious amounts of electricity to run the high-intensity algorithms that can turn dross into a nice email or spit out slop. That’s a lot of computer use, and that means heat, so these centres also consume copious amounts of water to keep it cool.

Given the state world of the with yearly COP promises flying from buttocks, governments playing loose with environmentally-damaging gas projects (hint, my own), and the mess that is the Murray-Darling plan to prop up the cotton farmers, we don’t need more pollution.

I’m calling it. The tech chuds are pretty much setting us up for the Terminator/Matrix Scenario (anybody got these on their bingo card?), because they just see dollar signs out of their creation, so will push its adoption everywhere.

Maybe we should have a little Butlerian Jihad, see how they like that…

A Dose of “A Church in Peril!” From Nothing/Nobody

If you haven’t come across previous posts, I’m Catholic following an interesting turn of events otherwise known as my 2018 manic episode.

What’s that, you ask? A queer Catholic, when the Church has said many a bad thing about queer people? Evidently, I’m the embodiment of contradictions along with being bisexual and bipolar.

I won’t dare say I’m, “One of the good ones,” that’s for you to decide, but my favourite Gospel passage is the Good Samaritan parable, and I hold that the famed lesson, “Love thy neighbour,” applies to ALL, even the people the haters hate because of something St Paul said.

And I didn’t learn this lesson in Church, I learnt it out in the secular world, where I voted (unnecessarily) for Same Sex Marriage, and might have adopted if I’d gone with an affirming and accepting ministry.

But I found God in the realest sense I can’t put into words, I heard the call of Jesus, and I needed the eucharist in full – the bread and wine transformed into the body and blood.

You can guess my positions being an ex-atheist, bisexual, love thy neighbour kinda guy. So, I’ll tell you exactly how pissed off I was that my local priest turned the Feast of the Assumption into a paranoid rant about the Church in the West being persecuted by the secular world.

It was so bad, a therapist would’ve asked, “Is the secular world with us in the room right now? Does its voice feel like it’s coming from within you, or from behind you?”

It certainly wasn’t the voice from behind my ear that saved my life – I’ll discuss this some time – and certainly did not come from the heart of love. Which is a pity, this guy is an excellent confessor.

The Feast of the Assumption – celebrating Mary, Jesus’ mum, being assumed body and soul into heaven – is a Holy Day of Obligation, so no getting out of it excepting illness/injury. I had to be there that night, and had to suffer Father Gone Rogue.

It’s not the first time this priest has gone, “Evil secular world,” either. And he has a particular problem with volume, making his best points softly, but most of it at double volume. And for my Bipolar/ADHD brain, it’s been painful at times.

This was next level. He was so loud on his own mic and the lectern’s mic that one of the speakers kept cutting out. Unsure if it’s related, but I’m pretty sure he scared the baby that started crying when he opened his mouth. And my goodness, stay on the Holy topic!

I was reciting Luke with the deacon as he read the words that became the Magnificat – My soul doth magnify the Lord – and it was beautiful. I prayed this and the Memoriae the night after to connect to St Mary, because I walked out of there before I interrupted mass in protest.

Having had a psychotic episode and believing there was a conspiracy against me, I disdain crackpot. And in 7 years attendance, I’ve yet to see atheist gangs picket Churches, let alone fire-bombing them, shooting them up, or killing Catholics like actual persecution overseas.

Being ex-atheist, this was well beyond, “Settle down, d-head,” and “Blow it out your arse,” territory. If I wanted this, “Evil world outside,” nonsense, I’d be a Southern Baptist. Me, I’m committed to see where Jesus is outside the Church, and continue giving to a secular charity.

For my spiritual necessity, I’ve moved to another parish, and proving I turn up to Churches at the right time, in the notices there was an excerpt from the late Pope Francis’ letter about bad homilies and the priests and laypeople who suffer because of them – hi, me!

I’ve since had two beautiful homilies, two excerpts of something from Pope Leo XIV that were beautiful – he’s alright, so far – but I’m yet to hit the confessional thanks to the addiction playing up and me not doing much about it, because I’m overdue a munch on the host.

Soon, I hope, and not too long of a soon…

And a Dose of Au Revoir

If you’ve made it here, thank you so much for reading, and don’t forget to subscribe or leave a comment, either your thoughts on the topics or just to say hi – a teensy bit of engagement certainly cheers an author up and helps with the reach.

And with that, I’ll let you go. Whoever, whatever, wherever, or however you are, may you have a wonderful week, or the strength to make it through.

Take care,
T. M.