Witt's End

  Winter’s coming but fall isn’t over yet. We have to remember that. The nights run shorter and shorter. The days get colder. Frost and cloudy skies are soon to be omnipresent. With the change imminent my mind pushes into overdrive. I’m writing nonstop. Leaning into the skid. Pens only leave paper so I can type on a keyboard. I don’t know why I have this push now. But I’m going to use the motivation to dig deeper and find out.

 David fell. Solomon fell. Judas betrayed the Christ with a kiss. Peter denied the Christ three times before the Cock crowed. Gideon rose up against insurmountable odds. Jonathan stayed faithful. Stephen stayed true a martyr. Paul redeemed himself from his time and actions as Saul. Which side of the coin am I on? Where does my character lie? At this time I'm struggling to know for sure. Am I one who showed great promise and falls when tested? Or am I steady? I don't know and that often scares me.

Racing thoughts Rushing emotions No control.  None. For too long.  That one didn't realize. -12/12/2021

You notice how uncomfortable it feels for the rhythm in something to be off. Think about clapping on the beat at a concert. That feeling of growing irritation when a clap sounds off from others. Or when the beat starts racing ahead of itself, or of the pocket. That growing edge of discomfort. That feeling of losing control. It applies to our emotions, both when we’re slower than normal (depressed) or even faster (hypomanic/manic).   A lot of people talk about the negative effects of depression. How crippling it can be to slow down and at times shut down. But we don’t talk about how detrimental it can be to experience the opposite.  On the surface something hyper focus, lack of a need for sleep, the ability to notice multiple details at once, more energy, those sound like good things. But what if those things make you faster than society’s best? What if you can match the rhythm of others. What if you can’t match the natural rhythm of yourself? To be off kilter is dangerous. To be out of

I’m sick of being told I’m strong enough to overcome everything I’ve been dealt with.   I’m struggling with things. Things that don’t just get fixed. Sometimes you can't will your way through the suck.  And I think something is wrong in a way that I don’t fully understand yet. That the struggle is greater than currently known or understood. That adds a complexity to my current situation I can't fully articulate. All my life I’ve been told how bright I am. The depth of my capabilities and potential. That my intelligence is a gift. Capable of so much.  I've been told I'm strong. Solid. Physically capable. Able to handle any challenge. If only we could ride potential without any opposition. If only right? Here's the thing about that. Sometimes there is a struggle that we don't see. That others can't see. Mental illness, chronic illness, pain. They all strike in different ways. Those who may seem unburdened one moment may be carrying a load you don't realize

I know how hard it can be to be drowning in the open.  That's what a lot of mental and emotional struggles feel like.  There's an expression, "we may all be in the same storm, but we're not in the same boat." It comes to mind as I think about this.  We all have adversity in life. And we're rightfully self focused throughout most of it. To a fault. That's not a bad thing. If we can't make it through life how do we carry our loved ones or our families through these adversities. We just don't see what others are going through. Oh we make assumptions don't we, but we have no clue.  The only way to know what someone is truly experiencing, feeling, is not through observation. It's through communication.  We miss so much if we only look and watch. One, we can't watch 24/7. We will miss things. Two, we carry biases into our analysis of our observations.  Think about it. You may watch someone every day for 2 hours a day. See them do the same rou

 When I look at biblical stories and heroes there’s a few that always spring to my mind. Peter and the Apostles, Nicodemus, Shadrach Meshach and Abednego, and finally Jonathan son of Saul and his friendship with David. They should have been enemies. Yet they chose to be the best of friends. Jonathan was the son of the King of Israel, Saul. Before the anointing of David he was in line for the throne. He was the crown prince. Given everything most would want. Yet even with all of that privilege he set it aside. For a friend. See David wasn't in line for the throne. But he was prophetically chosen and anointed for the role. Saul didn't appreciate it. And it determined the relationship between Saul and David. It began with suicide mission, and ended in war.  Through it all Jonathan and David had a friendship that they made a covenant over. Now that's stood out to me lately. When we think of covenants and the actions and agreements they bind, certain things come to mind. One, ba

I've been writing more about my health lately. I feel driven too. Yet trepidation about it. I want to be open, honest. I want to reach out and share what this is like that I'm going through. Mental health, physical symptoms. I do it so people don't feel alone and so I can process what I'm going through. I'm not looking for sympathy or pity. I would despise that kind of attention. It's why so much of this has been staying on the blog and not making it to social media profiles. Tonight I find myself dealing with one of my oldest friends. The ceiling. I fell asleep for an hour tonight and boom. Awake all over again. Attempting to close my eyes all over again just makes my heart race, thoughts go crazy.  If I wake in the night, it's over. That's it. Sleep is done. There's a threshold I cross and I can't go back.  Since my teens this has been a problem. It got worse on my mission. Was essential to the Army. Now it drives me through graveyards.  Some s

Change is never easy. It's even harder alone when you think no one is watching. We want people to see us change. We want the difference to be measured. Anyone who says otherwise is lying to themselves.  There's that cliché of wondering if what you've wrote even matters. That post twenties existential crisis about your worth and your contribution. It's real. I'm not going to say it's universal. But there is something about staring at the end of a decade and feeling left behind. Feeling like you may have fallen short.  There are plenty of pieces of art, literature, film that share this idea of running out of time. That the desire to do, become, or produce something of note in our time here. Health changes, disease, injury, close exposure to death of loved ones, sudden career changes or losses, the birth of children, changing or losing a relationship. All are events that can accelerate these feelings of not measuring up. Of missing opportunities. Now here is where

  I feel like things are just slipping through my fingers. I feel like I can’t focus. The meds help for an hour or two. Then the worry sets in. I’m falling further and farther behind. Every noise is happening in my head at once. Simultaneously I’m gathering information on five conversations, the TV, my water heater. My shirt is overwhelming against my skin. I don’t even feel like my body is in it’s normal proportions, the cotton feels like it’s ice on my skin. Sharp yet soft all at once. Breathing for a little while. It helps. For a moment. I scoff that I don’t have time to worry today. I’m struggling to get through the present. That’s a blessing in and of itself.  The exhaustion is gone today. The pain takes a back seat. Everything else is just overwhelming. I can’t process it. Going to the store. I hung on somehow. Yet everything was telling me to run. The whole time I was screaming inside. I’m sure my face looked pained, possibly deranged. I know I couldn’t manage a smile with the g

 Some people can confidently say that there is nothing that they wish they could do over. They proclaim that they have learned from each and every mistake, it's made them who they are, and they won't change any of it.  I'm not one of them.  I wish I could fix some mistakes. I wish I could do things differently. Truly. I think it's part of being human. Regret. A tinge of guilt. We have moments where we didn't measure up to who we were. Or what we knew we should of done. I feel that. I wish I could go back and change that. But more than that, I wish I could go back and do something else. I wish I could tell myself at different moments that I'll be ok. Because I have been there, in darker times without hope. I wish I could go back and give it. More than changing what happened, I wish I could influence how I handled the situations that were occurring around me.  I wish I could tell the kid getting picked on and messed with in 6th grade that the next year would be a

  For those of us who are avowed Christians. For those of us who believe that Christ is the savior and redeemer of us and of our sins, do we believe that? Now I ask this seemingly loaded question for a reason. It’s been my experience that purity has a hierarchy in the culture of the church. Someone who hasn’t made a sin is somehow more worthy than the person who has used the atonement of Christ to cleanse themselves of their sins. And that is bothering me. It bothers me because all of us are guilty of sins. None of us are clean and white as snow or as our savior. We all treat people wrongly. We are angry, we have lustful thoughts.  It bothers me because purity often seems to be a double standard in regards to women. We allow more grace for men who fall. We look for reasons for the fall. We hold women’s modesty responsible for men's actions, or at the very least a significant factor. I don’t see an equal paradigm for men in regards to women. Most importantly this others me because i

Time Fleeting Changing Confining All experience it’s effects But only man is bound By his own creation And volition 11/7/21   For the first time in awhile I can’t explain or define How I feel It’s out of focus It’s out of grasp But I’m reaching Yearning Learning Letting romance happen After a decade of time Like the first  Leaning Not on myself On a friend For the first in awhile I’m asking Is this happiness And can it be alongside sadness A little pain For the first time in awhile  I realize I couldn’t get here Alone For the first time in awhile  11/7/21

 The line between your physical and your mental health can be quite fuzzy at times. And people attempting to quantify how much of each effects the other and vice versa usually miss the point in my opinion.  I can think of times where subjective symptoms made me question whether they were real or not. Pain, nausea, weakness, fatigue, vertigo. You can’t see it. You can’t truly demonstrate that it’s happening. And if people don’t believe you it can be hard to deal with. You can truly question your experience.  That’s been me lately. I had been more exhausted than I have ever been. I chalked it up to burning the candle at all ends. It was 2020. It was a busy time. It still is in 2021. So I kept pushing on. And more symptoms started happening. First my migraines kept increasing in frequency and intensity. On top of the fatigue it was too much. I started missing work.  And I'm still struggling. I wound up in an urgent care telling a Doc I work with that I felt like I had concussion but d

  My tongue almost never matches my mind. It’s the honest frustrating truth. But luckily sometimes the pen can. For a lot of people who know me. That may be a bit or surprise. I’m sorry extroverted. I can make small talk easily. But I often just feel misunderstood. I have this thing where I feel like I can’t quite capture and express my thoughts as well verbally as they are in my head. I know I’m not alone with my his struggle.  Slowing down my brain with paper helps me develop the clarity None of us like to be tripping over words or to be fumbling around to express ourselves. But if often happens. I know my mind and my mouth get in a ridiculous race with each other. Taking it to my fingers eliminates that competition.  It allows for more processing and contemplation. A more completeness in my ideas. That doesn’t say I entirely ignore racing ahead to jot a note for something I want to say later, but it allows me to process the task more completely. As a really visually focused learner

Sometimes bad news is a little bit validating. Sometimes you find out you’re really in pain. Or that there’s a reason you’re always tired and fatigued.  There are lots of things that don’t readily manifest physically. There are a lot of conditions that require people to take you at your word. But every once in awhile your body (through it’s chemistry) can give an indicator of what’s going on. A laboratory result, a reflex test, or imaging can demonstrate what is wrong. That’s validation. There’s something so singularly powerful about having something unknowable demonstrated so tangibly.  I’m feeling that so real right now. 

  I just find that I’m struggling so much more than I thought I would to feel connected in a church family. The ironic part of this situation is that the more I find hope, light, and truth the more I find myself disconnected in a congregational setting. Now part of this is strangely connected to trying to do what the prophet has asked of us in a practical sense. And the more I do that the more I face criticism and ostracism from members of my faith.  There are times I truly struggled with the doctrine of the church as a youth and even recently as an adult.  Through those struggles I always knew that the atonement of Christ was real. That Jesus was truly my savior. It was a really hard fought and hard won testimony. But it was the literal rock I had at that time. It’s interesting to note that at that time I struggled with  the practical application of the church’s standards and expectations I often privately wavered. But I felt the need to outwardly in sync with those around me. All in

 I've moved a few blog posts from here to Medium to share with what will hopefully be a new audience. Now it's time to do the opposite. This is a story I told more in my past. Haven't for a long time. It's a story of trauma, irony, recovery, fathers and sons. I think it's worth sharing here. Please check it out and share it.  Trauma and Irony This maybe the most personal thing I've written in a long time. I hope it touches people or helps them out in some way. 

I've been thinking a lot about love. There’s a reason the Greeks have so many words for it. How they specify it. There's a reason that those who studied the classics more than we do looked at the word love differently than we do, and viewed relationships and friendships differently than we do. The more reading and pondering I've done lately the more I've changed how I view the relationships in my life. I'm not going to take the time here to define each of the Greek loves or how they pertain to my life, but I want to talk about how my views have changed.  I used to think I fell in love with my best friend. But it’s so much more than that. She and I are more than that.  I’ve been thinking about the circles we have in our lives. The relationships that are part of them. Closest is my wife. Always will be. We chose, we committed, and she’s my everything. It’s a unique and special relationship that I never want to take for granted. But it's deeper than friendship. It&

Maybe it's compassion fatigue. Maybe it's something else. But all I wanted to do in the entry of that ICU was go home and sleep in my bed with my wife. Instead I was in my own head watching my best friend run supplies to the crash team working on a COVID patient.  I don't know what made me feel worse, the lack of empathy for the guy who was actively crashing and suffering, or the fact I felt like I needed help too.  That's what's killing us in healthcare right now. We're physically and mentally burnt out. We're beyond tired, we're exhausted. It's becoming more and more difficult to keep just doing our job. A lot of people a lot more eloquent than I have written on the subject. I'm sure others will continue to as well. But I felt I had to speak up. Just scream into cyberspace for a minute. Both out of frustration, but also what to do about it.  I just want to yell, "What about me?" or " Can I get a break here?" But there's

Nothing in my life has been more draining than COVID-19. I mean that in a literal and figurative sense.  I'm back on a COVID-19 surge unit again. Currently we have more COVID positive patients than negative. And the worst off are unvaccinated and the median age is decreasing.  I'm not saying this to be a doomsayer. I'm saying this because we have tools to live our life. And I want to live my life. I'm sick of living a half life because I give a damn about my occupation.  I don't know if other people are "done" too. I'm just ready to move on. But we can't yet. I just really wish we could.