Shingles

Things have been going pretty well of late.  Not everything has gone as I would hope, but things are better than they have been and I have been reacting better to those things things that I didn't care about so much.  Last week, I went to Pitchfork and I had a lot of fun.  I saw friends there and outside Pitchfork and things were good.  I did seem to get an irritated eye on Saturday or Sunday.  Things didn't get better, so I thought that I might have gotten in my eye and decided to see my eye doctor on Tuesday.  He has had experience with things in my eye, so I trusted him.  He didn't find anything, but did notice that my eye was irritated and prescribed an antibiotic/steroid eye drop to try to take care of it.  This didn't help, and in fact, things got worse.  I started noticing irritations around my eye and on my scalp.  I saw him on Thursday and he did some more looking.  He then asked me before telling me anything if I have been under a lot of stress of late.  While things have been better of late, I did have to say yes.  He then told me that he though that I had shingles.  Two siblings and my mom have had shingles but they had them on their trunk.  I had never heard of it on the head.  He sent me to a specialist on Friday to confirm, which he did.  My eye hurts and things are very painful.  I have had a headache since Tuesday and the eruptions are very tender and painful.  It's worse in the morning, but things do improve as the day goes on (although never gets good).  I am taking an anti-viral, Valtrex, and L-Lysine to fight it.  Hopefully things progress quickly.  I missed three and a half days of work last week and I wan to have all of my work done before I go on vacation next week.

Bad Day

I stopped doing affirmations because I wasn't really sure if they were doung much.  I do knoe that writing about my feelings does help somewhat becaus I have done it in the past to some success.  I will not say that writing brings me back to normal, but it does bring me out of a nosedive.  I am in a serious nosedive right now and am in a serious existential crisis.  I am very sad, a little lost, and wondering what the he'll I'm doing.  I am and have been dissatisfied with my job for a while.  I have remedying this for 15 years by volunteering.  The problem is that the organization that gets the most of my time is just about at its end.  I do volunteer at other places, but there isn't as much opportunity.  I need to find another place to give my time.  As far as friends or romance are concerned, there is nothing.  I have friends, but I really don't have anyone I can call in a minute and my love life is a joke.  I am on Tinder, but I have had very little luck there.  I have had a few matches, but only one that has written back to me and that didn't work after the first date.  This is kind of the story of my life.

I am going to meet the person here in Chicago that is probably closest to me.  While we are close though, we can't hang out at a moment's notice.  At the present point, I am wondering if there is anything holding me in Chicago.  I am very close to a few people here, but I also have very close friends in Midland, Washington DC, Indianapolis,  Detroit, and Greenville, SC.  I really don't know if it matters where I live.  Having said that, if I do leave, I will have to choose a place that has some good food.  My food blog, while it isn't read by many people and makes me no money is kind of important to me.

Sitting in Beermiscuous writing and listening to Broken Social Scene, my mood has improved quite a bit, so I think I will end here on a happier note than when I started.