Personal

Do I need Better Help?

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I’m mentioning that branded online therapy service again because I’ve been hearing ads for it again on the podcasts I subscribe to. I think with my discussions on my blog about my recreational drug use with cannabis and my concern about the risk of anxiety and paranoia caused by cannabis, it has become prime fodder for mental health advertisers.

I tried talk therapy a few years ago now when I was coming out of the pandemic and my troubled obsessive thoughts about burn barrels, and rural trash burning. I really like fire, I had looking at those ugly mounds on the outskirts of cities used for dumping garbage. I’ve burned plenty of trash over the years, keeping it out of the landfill, much to the disdain of my greenie friends and the environmental conservation regulations adopted in 2009 by Commissioner Pete Grannis, the New York City liberal former Assemblyman who worked in the office next to the office I was an intern in.

My therapist was in the basement of a rundown office building of Colvin Avenue. While he never suggested that I try cannabis to reframe my mind – he did mention his own trips to Massachusetts to procure it for himself. Maybe he was trying to drop a hint to me. I had previously smoked pot on some work trips with colleagues but until it was fully legal in New York never on my own. The THC in the drug may or may not have given me mental clarity but learning and thinking a lot more about our nation’s policy towards cannabis certainly has. It really got me thinking about situational morality and the law, and in many cases breaking the law and what risks that entails versus what is right for myself. The law is not something to be blindly respected though one must way the risks and consequences to not obeying the law.

I smoked pot during summer vacation on federal land, well aware of the potential serious consequences even though I don’t think I all the years I’ve been to the Finger Lakes National Forest seen a federal ranger. And chances are even if they spotted the blunt, it would get confiscated and maybe ticketed or just ignored because I was being quiet and not causing trouble. The federal ban on cannabis is stupid and everybody knows that even though there are still powerful advocates for the status quo left in law enforcement and the addiction recovery community that profit from the way things are now.

The truth is nobody cares if you’re a pyromaniac if you’re not harming anyone and nobody sees your fires or smells the smoke. It’s not unlike smoking pot, another dirty disfavored thing in society that is legal in some jurisdictions and highly illegal in others. Legal or illegal doesn’t mean moral or immoral. It just opens you up to the risk of prosecution if somebody in the government decides to make a big deal about it or somebody goes complaining to the police, armed with the law in their hands. Law is about enabling and limiting power, it doesn’t create it or pass moral judgment. People burn all kinds of shit, some quite noxious in BFE Pennsylvania, I know I was there only a few months back.

Truth is that real question in my mind shouldn’t be the morality of the law or taking hardened sides of what is right or wrong. I can’t change that. But the real question is what do I want to do with my life, what is the life I want to live and when do I leave or do I build or buy a house here? That’s not something that is obvious as there are options that all have their advantages and downsides. Maybe it’s not a diagnosable condition. I do like that grass is legal in New York and if I had land I would try to grow it. But I would have to be careful what I burn on my own land with the state restrictions. It’s not Pennsylvania. And despite how expensive everything is these days – I do make good money compared to most as as the Data Services director – and even basic cost of living adjustments are bigger the more you make. And I might not have a lot of skills – is R even a real programming language – but I have several years of experience in management now and I do some cool and useful things with R for my job.

My therapist always was critical of my labeling of myself as mentally ill. Just because you like things that aren’t locally politically popular doesn’t mean you are crazy. Maybe I just needed to smoke some grass and think more about the world around me. Maybe that’s the help I ultimately needed. Still I need to figure out my housing situation and what I want to do for the rest of my life or at least the next year if I don’t commit too deeply.

Maybe not the nicest Saturday ever 🌥

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No rain yet, but it’s coming midday. Looking at the radar it’s almost a certainty.

I think I will ride out to Voorheeesville in a bit this morning, 🚲 then catch the Nature Bus to Thacher Park. They’ve already started working on the unit next door, they were working until late into last night, 🛠 though not making too much noise and I was down at the Town Park before going down to the library with my laptop.

Pancakes with blueberries this morning. 🥞 Up at around 5 AM ⏰ though after breakfast, taking it slow, as it’s a while before the Nature Bus comes. Thacher Park will be nice, even though I expect rain and won’t stay there very long. But it’s free and a chance to get for the morning. 🚍 And the thing is the bus is running regardless if I board it, and there is no charge for the service. I just sleep so much better when I get up early.

I do want to get wireless earbuds to replace the broken headphones 🎧 tomorrow, so I can listen to tunes at work and when I’m around. I like listening to music a lot, keeps my mind in a good place in the office, when I’m struggling to make data work or other things that are utterly challenging and obnoxious.

Been reading and thinking a lot about homelessness and how to be prepared should such things happen. 🏡 It’s kind of silly, as I make good money and I have quite a bit of money saved up but you know with the current housing market and my indecision, it’s something to consider. Sure, I could probably fall back and camp in somebody’s backyard like my parents if push came to shove, or buy some land and camp there 🏕 but it’s good to be informed at what it’s like to live on street, because nobody can know what there luck is going to be like, even if I do work incredibly hard, usually pulling 9 or 10 hour days these days.

Noticed now at home I have 5G and 5G Ultra Wide Service. 📶 That’s nice for getting on the internet fast with my phone, especially for uploading YouTube videos. 5G UW is pretty sweet for uploads, though I’ve not noticed any difference between 5G and 4G LTE for normal web browsing and YouTube watching. Still it’s amazing how much you can do with your phone these days. I’ve thought about installing R on my phone too, so I can even do my data work right from my phone. If I had the VPN on my phone, I’m sure I could ssh into the server for things I can only do over the server without booting my laptop. 🖥 Neat.

I’ve been doing more reading about Unix and Java programming, 🔢 as I think that’s a useful skill to master. I feel like I’m pretty confident with R and I am decently good at C and Python. I would be even better at those languages if I used them every day, but I tend to use primarily R as it’s often best for what I do at work managing and processing data, especially working with a spatial component. Geopandas is fine, but I think R / sf is much better for Geospatial analysis especially backed by tidycensus.

I’ve been toying with the idea of taking off from Friday through Monday to go to the Green Mountains to camp. 🏕 I guess I could even leave on Thursday night after work, though I usually have meetings then that go late into the evening, and I would want to avoid driving up in the dark. 🦌 Deer are going to be running soon. Otherwise I might do Rensselearville State Forest. Some remote work, some just enjoying the woods, especially now that at least state work should die down a bit, though I’ll still be very busy with the campaign committee, and I’m sure I’ll still have some state data processing to do. 🖥 But I have my laptop, the VPN and the ssh client to get onto the Buddha server so I should be able to work remote, which will be fine.

I’m on my way home on this Friday evening… 🏡

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No rush, I figure the landlord is probably banging on something or digging big holes trying to fix the diapolated building. The whole process kind of scares me as I look at the rabbit hole or buying or building my own home. While I pay my rent always on time and truth be told I haven’t trashed my apartment much beyond ordinary wear and tear over the past 17 years it’s still pretty awkward when you’re somebody else’s bitch. And I’m the director at work.

I needed to stop and check my email at any rate, 📧 as after a relatively quiet day working on some IOICODEs for work shit 💩 started flying at four o’clock as the communication moratorium got underway. Pretty much finished my code though for campaign committee label 🔖 jobs. 230 lines of R. Making good work of pipelines and the coalesce command and the bang bang operator. I’m getting damn good at Data Processing with R. My code does everything from handling absentees, new voters, filtering and householding. I’m proud of my work.

Its a nice evening 🌃 but the sun sets so early this time of year. Maybe I’ll go to Elm Ave Park 🏞 after dinner but at this point I don’t think I have time to go to Five Rivers 🐸. I should read 📖 a bit this evening but to ensure quality sleep 😴 I should be lights out by nine o’clock and up at five o’clock. I don’t think of myself as a morning person 😦 but I feel so much more rested 🛏 when I rise and shine at five o’clock especially in the winter.