Checking in – October 2024

Unfortunately, things got worse. Quite a lot worse.

The Return Of The Digestive Problems

The recent weight loss has become precipitous and severe. I'm losing a kilogram every fortnight and now it's being paired with a loss of appetite at night. In the end, I went to the A&E, the first time I've ever done as an adult.

I was sent to an observation room for two whole days but they couldn't find anything so they discharged me after a while. Nevertheless the pain has continued to hang around so I am booked into a battery of tests to see what is going on. Hopefully this can be caught before a trip under the knife is needed again.

I don't really know much more. The doctors know more than I do, which may or may not be normal.

Update: they think it's Crohn's disease now. I don't know what to make of it. My mum looked it up on Google, and then a magazine said a risk factor is an unbalanced diet and then she filled in the blanks and said that it must be because I ate no vegetables. Which:-

• isn't true, as I do have the occasional chopped chives and onions, but mostly true as I do go multiple days without either;
• is because of texture problems with the green leafy vegetables that create a gag reflex; and
• is basically an exercise in confirmation bias, as the magazine - which is hardly a reliable source to begin with - didn't say that it causes Crohn's.

And so now I have to do the whole song and dance again. They think I'm faking it, that I'm exaggerating all my reactions, and if only I would just try again for ten thousand times maybe I'll flip and eat "normally" the ten thousand and first time. I guess it doesn't help that I changed my mind on the two vegetables listed above; that must have reinforced that way of thinking. But then again those veggies stop counting because of "insufficient fibre" or something. (My own take is that they don't count because they don't eat those either.)

I don't know man. I feel very passive as things wash over me and I just let it happen.

Nothing to Create, Too Much Twitter

I do know that it has eaten up all my time and I can't focus on anything else. Not only are my longer term plans delayed yet again, even the things I ostensibly "like to do" have been pushed away as well. I hope to play Minecraft soon; I hope to write about conlangs soon; but they all have to wait.

Another problem is Twitter. I was very nearly free of Twitter until that unpleasantry in 2019 happened, where news updates were fastest there. But now it is over, but the website still sucks me in with things that look fun.

I've fallen into the trap of trying the "for you" tab and it was very bad. Not because the tweets are rage-inducing and make me angry, but because the tweets are easy to read and they just encourage endless scrolling until I reach the top. It's so easy to keep going and watch the commentary flow by but it takes up so much time.

I don't know how to fix that either.

Crisis of confidence

One final thing I want to talk about is that I think I have finally hit the wall when it comes to Japanese learning. Things just aren't as easy as they were before even though it's been ages since I have reached the new material. Listening is a bit hard.

Nothing to do here I guess?