I made another drone thingy. I really like this one.

I spend a lot of time staring into glowing squares.

Being listless.

Everything cold and blue.

I write words that mean nothing, go nowhere.

I’m bettering myself. So they say.

So I can be prettier when I die.

Well, well, well.

When it comes, let it come easy.

 

I made another drone thing.  Second time recording.  Please continue to be gentle.

Also, I’ve been told I look super cranky.  It was windy and I was hovering the drone closer to my face than it looks.  It’s more a ‘please don’t glitch and chew my entire face off’ look than an ‘I hate everything’ thing.  Though, I guess there is that to consider as well.

The music is by a band called EF, out of Sweden.  They do really great post-rock-y soundscape music.

 

Tonight I lost myself for a while,

in a glance and a sound,

in found things connected to people I once was

or knew.

I sat, cross-legged on my floor for some time, sifting through the debris of my current obsessive reorganization and purge of old items.  I found tapes of my first band’s demo, and of a demo I made for a shady “producer” before I’d broken off and started my first solo project.  I might have found an even earlier recording of songs, and ideas for a musical I wrote in HS, but it was recorded at half speed and I need a better way to parse through it.

And I’ve been so proud of my health this weekend.  I broke barriers with run-time, and with weights.  I see the difference each time I catch a reflection and I was told more than a few times that I’m looking good.

And in my cross-legged-ness in my cold room, no socks, hours in the ether, I guess a toe decided to sleep.  Come bedtime I stood and noticed a nail was white, rather than pinkish like the others, and that the whole thing didn’t want to move when I curled my feet.

I remembered, then, how people with diabetes lose toes, and feet, and eyes.  And I got worried.  I got under my covers and rubbed my toe, flexed it, shook my feet.

It took about twenty minutes but the feeling and the color came back.  It wiggles with all the other piggies just fine now.

But there it is.  Right there, just below me.

My future.

I can hit the weights as hard as my will allows, and I have.  I can push my heart and lungs to their absolute screaming max, and I have.  I can sacrifice my happiness in eating each and every meal (and missed snack).  My A1C can remain below diabetic level.  My numbers can all be flawless.

But someday it’ll catch me.

And I don’t know what I’ll do when that day comes.  I’ve lost so much of myself already.  I can’t fathom losing physical chunks too.
I’ve always been awful at sleep.

And people who don’t have issues try to fathom how, and why.  How could it be so hard to do something everybody does, they wonder.  Isn’t it a natural thing?

It is.  And should be.

Until your brain starts playing with all the possible scenarios.

How many toes can you lose and still jog?  Can you get disability if your foot falls off?  Your leg?

These are things that keep me up all night.  Every night.  Since I was 8 or so, when the sleep problems began.  The brain whirls and the psyche is tossed like a rag-doll through thought and whim, darkness and wonder, until finally the body gives in and releases for a few merciful hours.

So I can wake up and do it all over again.

I was driving home tonight and passed one of my old favorite pizza places, The Pizza Runner.  It’s something of an Ogden institution and up until the last few years I’d have happily put it up against any other pizza place.  I have memories going back as far as I can remember being conscious of making my own food choices.  My parents liked Piccolo Bro’s, which was also excellent, but my true love was the Runner.

Back in the day it was a cool place, covered in local concert posters from what seemed like the dawn of time.  All the employees played in crazy punk and hardcore bands and seemed out-of-this-world hip to a nerdy kid who didn’t yet know his place in the world.  Aside: I guess I still don’t and I’m still pretty nerdy too.  I remember putting up my first flyer for a show my band was playing and feeling like I’d hit a milestone.  I remember years of the Runner being a standby when, broke but trying to live a vegan lifestyle, I would order their starving student special (which they still honor, btw).  Vegan sticks, pesto pizza, and two sodas for like $5.  You couldn’t beat it.  And damn was it good.  I remember the TV toss annual, where people would stockpile old televisions and put them on the roof.  The voodoo organist would play, and crazy psychobilly bands.  There were strippers mud-wrestling in sub-freezing temperatures, a car that got rolled by a mob foaming at the mouth.  In essence-destruction and insanity, boiled into a positive event.  A release for the people…sponsored by your local pizza house.

Years later friends of mine worked there and even though I was working what I snobbishly thought of as a real job and starting to make decent money, I not-so-secretly envied them a bit.  They were those cool guys now, driving around at night, serving the good people of my hometown, and sticking it to the man by doing it better, and cheaper, than anyone else.

Tonight all of those things ran through my head immediately followed by this.

I will never again order a whole, normal pizza.  I will never be able to eat a whole, or even the majority of even a stripped-down, healthy pizza.

Never.  For as long as the rest of my life may be.

So there’s me, driving my sad-but-awesome car, in my awesome but so-far-away town, being really thankful for the darkness and the beard that obscure this damnable quivering chin.

 

I don’t have much to say, so uh.  Here’s this.  I made it.  1st flight with my drone.  I threw a quick canned grade on it but otherwise, aside from a few cuts and rearranges, it’s as is.

This is mostly a rehash of stuff I’ve already said here, but in the interest of having it in the wild in a cohesive form, here’s the post I put on FB today about my splendid experience with Regence insurance.  I still can’t sleep when I think about the $30k.  It runs through my mind constantly.  I’ve become desperate to find ways to make extra money..only I’m coming up blank.  So I figured I’d write.  And tag them publicly.  I don’t expect anything to change.  But I want it in public and somewhere more people see than here.  Because if just one person reads it and goes with a different provider, then I’ve done something good.

And I’ll continue to preach that gospel.  If my profile expands due to writing or film stuff, I will sing from as high a mountain-top as I have available.  Until my dying day.  Which, you know, could be today.  I don’t have any way to even guess about that day anymore.

Here’s the post:

Serious post time again. I apologize, because this isn’t usually the kind of thing I talk about more than flippantly with anyone but my closest friends, but I want to put this on social media for any and all to read. Because I think it’s horrible. And I want it out there. So I’m posting it here, and probably a few other less overtly-mine places.
Ahem. Here goes.

As most of you probably know, 7 months ago I woke up feeling really awful and went to the ER, only to find out that not only was I having a heart attack, but that I had some massivelly unchecked/undiagnosed diabetes. I had a stent put in via my wrist artery and spent 3 days in the hospital while they monitored my heart and blood, etc.

Fortunately enough, aside from apparently having the beetus, I escaped with no permanent damage to my heart. My last A1C test showed my blood sugar below even the pre-diabetic level too. I’ve lost 50lbs, and am in the best shape of my entire life. So I’m doing alright, health-wise, luckily.

Pretty much immediately after my return home people began telling me I should just file for bankruptcy right away. The thing is I’ve had insurance through all my jobs since I was 18. I pay for whatever the best plan available is, and almost never go to the doctor (turns out that’s not a point to be proud of). So I figured I’d be looking at a lot, but probably around 5k a lot. Imagine my surprise when the bill arrived and, after insurance, I was told I was responsible for almost $30,000.
That’s thirty. Thousand. Dollars.
For a three night stay. With no major surgery. And no major intervention other than the stent. Literally the rest of my time there was monitoring.
I’m going to put that right here again. $30k. For an emergency medical visit that didn’t involve surgery.
I’ve lost a lot of sleep over that number.
I filed an appeal both as an individual and through professional advocates my company contracts with. Not a single cent was reduced. The hospital also refused to reduce the fees at all.
So here I am. Stuck paying at least $500 a month for the next six or so years…years that could very well be the last ones I have to spend now.

$30,000 is a nice car. Monthly it’s two ok cars. Or rent. I was going to get a place late last year. And try to shoot a feature.
Did I mention I sold my pride and joy? My brand new Mustang. So I could reduce my monthly $ output a little bit to soften the blow. I still miss that thing every damn day.

The thing is, I make pretty decent money. And I’d structured my life so I had quite a bit of free income. And honestly that’s the only reason I’m surviving right now. I can’t imagine if I had a family depending on me for their survival, or even if I was making the same wage i did 3 years ago. I would be absolutely ruined.

I looked on my insurance company’s FB page and, unsurprisingly, almost every single review, comment, etc that isn’t from them is negative. People trapped in similar situations…or worse. Screwed over by the company they’re required to work with. The company that supposedly exists to protect them. It’s great, too, because their slogan for the year appears to be “live fearless”. I often see billboards saying that and showing rock climbers and people enjoying their lives. And all I can do is sardonically smile and think to myself no. Live in terror that anything unplanned might happen to you. Because you will end up getting absolutely destroyed by their failure to do their job. Honestly, if any other business sector was set up the way the medical industry works it would be criminal. It *IS* criminal. The laws just favor the criminals, in this case.

So the reason I’m writing this post is I want to make sure if anyone from Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Utah​ or anyone AT ALL reads this, they really feel this next few sentences.
It goes like this.
In one moment I found out I was both having a heart attack and diabetes. I was given what amounts to a slow death sentence with the diabetes. I was put on medication that makes me likely to bleed out and die. I’ve lost many of the things I loved in life, from my brand new car, to the ability to drink alcohol, to time I used to have free that I spend at the gym now. I’ve lost the ability to use salt in my food, and to eat refined carbs. I eat almost no fat and cholesterol now. I can’t eat out almost anywhere.

All of that horrible stuff happened to me.

And out of it all, the heart attack, the diabetes, the car, the MAJOR life changes…the absolute worst thing that happened to me was that I happened to be covered by Regence.

And with that out in the wild, I strongly urge anyone who is currently covered by, or considering coverage with Regence to not give them a cent. If I were looking to work for a company that used them as a provider I would either not take the job or pay the extra to get coverage from a company that’s less known for screwing over the people it represents. If you know anybody considering them, or currently covered by them, maybe have them talk to me first. I’m more than willing to spend the time explaining why they should give their money to pretty much anyone else, even if it costs them more up-front.

Whenever I’m asked what I’ll be eating for a meal the stock response is ‘the same old crap’.  It really is a drag feeling like if I eat things wrong I’ll die soon, so out has gone red meat, butter, cheese (except on very rare occasions), booze, and salt.  Fortunately I’ve always been a pretty good cook and, if anything, now I have to scramble desperately to discover and unlock flavors.

Seriously, cooking without butter and salt is a bitch.

So this is a pretty common meal lately.  It works for lunch and dinner, and with the ‘ancient grains’ I’ve been using, I can use them for cold or warm breakfast and snack with some skim milk as well.

This is fresh pressed garlic, onion, a Serrano pepper, yellow bell pepper, beautiful huge brown mushrooms, spinach, olive oil, cracked pepper, salt-free curry powder (in my opinion if you’re buying curry powder with salt you’re buying the wrong stuff anyway), kamut, and a squeeze of lemon.  The drink is water with the rest of the lemon squeezed in.  And yes, I know the table’s dirty.  This is my work/compose/play/solder and occasionally eat station.

All told this meal is fresh, lively, super fulfilling, bright and texturally varied, delicious and, most importantly, almost entirely sodium, fat, and cholesterol free; the only real fat content coming from the tiny bit of olive oil, which we’re generally told is the good stuff.  This is also low GI due to most of the carbs coming from the 100% whole grain base.  For dinner I will often accompany this with a broiled chicken breast or filet of fish, using complementary spices.

This and becoming a gym rat are a huge part of why I’ve lost 50 lbs in the last 7 months.

Note:  There’s so much sodium hidden in sneaky places I’ve really learned to be obsessive about labels.  When I eat chicken it’s organic and not injected with brine/water/solution (the labels say different things but all mean salt solution).  Do some reading next time you’re in the poultry section.  The difference can be staggering.  The stuff I buy has very little compared to the bigger ‘regular’ brands.

As a final note, to zest things up occasionally I’ve been using Harissa from Mina.  It’s about 60mg sodium for a tablespoon, but flavorful enough that 1/2 tbsp is more than enough to brighten up a whole dish.  It’s been a godsend.  Seriously, 1/2 tbsp stirred into a bowl of brown rice is good enough to be a meal in itself.

 

Tonight at the coffee shop a girl walked in who looked so uncannily like one I used to know, who has been dead for around a decade, that I stopped mid-sentence and had to shake my head to bring it back to reality.

And it’s weird.

That I know people who are dead.

That I came so close to being one of them.  That I wouldn’t be writing in this particular location if I had.  (or any, I suppose).

She was beautiful and dark, pierced and troubled, and in the end the drugs took her like they have almost everyone else I’ve known.  Drugs or suicide’s the way to go

if you’ve known me.

My mind set to reminisce mode again, after.  I think of old friends, living and gone, who’ve lost touch.  People who once were my world and now don’t exist in any meaningful way to me.

And I find it so sad.

The way things turn out.

Where we land, after the youth fades and the party slows; when lives become more important than living and days blur into years–but not from fun, or excess…rather..

from that ugly fucking abomination of a sentence I mostly finished above.