Back when I started college, some of my professors were bemoaning "life in the 24 news cycle." Due to the relatively new phenomenon of the 24 hour cable news network, already shabby TV journalism was falling apart at the seams. My concentration was on political news in the afterglow of President Clinton's first election. In the days before the 24 hour news cycle, you expected news to follow the sort of pattern that a relatively healthy adult might live in the prime of life. I figure we'll call it eight hours of news just so the math works out right. Around the time Clinton began his first term, a lot of people were getting all news all the time or something along those lines. Then, people in politics were doing the same amount of work (a lot more than 8 hours but that doesn't matter) and the 24 hour news cycle came along.
News declined from Walter Cronkite being trusted in every living room to Faux News' "Manifestly Unfair and Psychotically Imbalanced" (in my honest yet humble opinion, of course) over the course of my first decade of paying attention to the news. Some of it was genuinely malicious stuff that would have been illegal in the U.K. but most of it was the result of people competing for those advertising dollars generated by those looking for political commentary at four in the morning. President Clinton got both varieties in vast quantities from the supposedly liberal media but I'm not going there. This is a segue into the fact that I am that person looking for something to do at four in the morning.
I've been living the 24 hour day for quite a while now but I've been healthy enough for others to notice it this month. One example came in the form of good old Linda Johnson and her hospital stay. It ended up being benign as these things go so I can use it. Linda posted on Facebook that she was going into the hospital with some heart trouble. She's okay now. Judging by the standards of my casual friendships since I got sick, we've been somewhat close. She read Blahthings back when I was terribly serious about it all and we exchanged emails regularly. That would be regularly averaging out to something like once a month over a decade or so.
With my new chair and my tablet computer allowing me to be more active online using less energy, her hospital stay got exposed to my version of the 24 hour news cycle. First, it was a quick post about two sick people and one who just happened to be stretching her metaphorical social legs. Melissa might have made some polite inquiry at home so I posted again. Pretty soon, I was surfing those neurotic waves we insomniacs know and even love sometimes. I had all this nervous energy and I was concerned about Barbara so I was thinking about hospitals and Linda was in the hospital and... If I were on TV, I'd have gotten to the point of having the graphics department come up with something in a special font: "Linda Health Watch: 2013."
I'm sorry if I offended with my excess of attention. This is the point where the serotonin and other neurotransmitters produced by my insomnia and my arthritis flareup stopped making things funny for me. It's not a pity party but a mere physical fact. I'm fresh out of good humor.
I don't know why my arthritis is flaring up so badly. I'm in a temperature controlled environment but it seems awfully humid in here which is just weird. Humid is supposed to be what an AC unit handles best. It wasn't just my joints that hurt. My muscles joined in on the fun and that hints at a fibro flareup. Of course, I'm running low on sleep or I think I am. Didn't I lose Sunday to sleep? I sure remember the dream about being some brain sucking alien invader but one with remorse issues so I was trying to make things right with the humans. Maybe pod people dreams reflect a lack of restful sleep.
What I do know is that I had an epic fail moment in the husband department today. We got some good news - we think - on the sudden flood of sick people who aren't me (or Linda) which pretty much narrows it down for you. The good news resulted in someone (who lives here as a human but isn't me) getting emotional. I tried the hug until it's better routine but my knees ended up slightly bent and...well...arthritis flareup! The white hot agony in my knees pretty much triggered all of the other pains to flare up which left me sitting in my recliner while Melissa tried to be superhuman. If I can't help people understand their human limitations, I don't know what I'm good for because I pretty much am one big limitation.
That thought translated for me into one stomach twisting, want to despair but it isn't my turn combination. I need to be there for Melissa when the shit goes down. (While the good news plays out, there's bound to be tension and dysfunctional behavior so it's a little like bad news while you wait.) I need to be there for her and I'm starting to hear reasons why I can't be there for her. What do I do when I have to be there and I can't be there? Well, whether or not it's really for her, I have to make a choice and endure. I know from experience that almost any physical pain is preferable to being separated but I also know she was making preliminary plans involving exactly that.
This day is just full of the realization that other people are more important to me than I am to them. I'm used to it or so I think.
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