Unsolicited Advice

I keep going through cycles where I try to convince myself that there's nothing wrong with me, I'm just a lazy sod, and I'm whining over nothing. Symptoms are subjective. Nobody likes getting up early in the morning, they do it anyway. Nobody likes hot muggy weather, but they don't let themselves melt into a useless puddle on the bed all afternoon. Then shit happens, and I am reminded that not only are all the things I think are wrong with me actually wrong with me, I am usually introduced to a brand-new symptom that I didn't even fucking know was a thing. The tech who did my hip imaging mentioned in passing that low body temperature was a known feature of EDS. Judging from the comments I got when the nurse couldn't get an IV into me last week, and the fact that she tried to fix that by heaping me with heated blankets, I don't just think  my hands and feet are always cold, or  feel chilled when I'm short on sleep, I actually am having temperature regulat...

An incomplete list of things I would like to wrench out of my head before I die: The YA superhero book I started for NaNo and had to put down because the 2016 election had me in a state of mortal terror; A "non-fiction" retrospective that purports to shed light on an unsolved murder, as written by a historian in the unspecified, but moderately distant, future; Another "non-fiction" work about a series of artists, whom the author (who may or may not be insane) claims has made a deal with the devil, the terms of which are that they will gain incredible fame and fortune, at the price of their single greatest masterpiece remaining forever unfinished; A mystery involving a Holmesian detective who, unbeknownst to himself, is not just brilliant at deduction but also psychometric. He is forced to deal with the implications when he encounters a crime to which he "knows" the solution, but cannot reconcile this with the fact that he was personally in a differe...

Is it bad when filing your taxes gives you an existential crisis? I had to monkey with my insurance paperwork when I went into the urgent care a while ago. The lady with the Official Computer Forms asked me what I did for a living, which is apparently a required question despite the fact that state insurance in MA is entirely based on income, not field of employment. I had no answer. Fiscal 2016 is the first year I've ever had to file as completely self-employed, as 0% of my paying work was as a serf beneath giant capitalist overlords. The insurance lady pulled out her phone, opened some kind of TurboTax app, and casually informed me that I was an "Artist".  I might have argued with her, but I was busy trying to pinpoint what exact part of my body was hurting so I could ask them to amputate. I probably just made some kind of non-specific noise of agreement. This feeling that you have to wear your "job" as your identity has always eluded me. Identity b...