Rediscovering The Art Of Doing Nothing

For the last 10 days I have been recovering from back surgery. I know you want to read all about it. I posted the gory details on a back problems bulletin board. It's a little gross and is mostly about me fighting with my body and the aftermath of the surgery. Now things have settled down a little bit and I am really starting to recover.

This has all made for an interesting pause in my life. I am on vacation but have no real obligations to be anywhere. All I have to do is to get better, do excercises twice a day, eat and don't break anything. So this leaves me, my laptop and my ipod together for long stretches of time. There is no constant getting in and out of cars. There isn't even a lot of leaving the house. There is just a lot of sitting in bed in front of the window watching the breeze blow by as I respond to emails and entertain myself on the internet.

The first couple of days was full of the usual catchup. I had to read all my favorite message boards that had been piling up goodies while I had been out. Then I had to respond to emails, clean out inboxes, and write some followup memos to friends and co-workers about things I was thinking about for work and otherwise. Then after a few days everything leveled out. The weekend rolled along and now there weren't even co-workers to bug me. I was not on my usual vacation spree running from place to place, constantly having to re-assemble the things I needed on a daily basis to live comfortably. Instead I was at home, with all my posessions around me and accounted for and not having to do much.

At this point, in any other condition I would have started looking around for projects to do, things to file, places to go, long expansive wastes of energy chasing around something to some location. I could not do these things though. I had a back that now more than ever needed taking care of. I was imprisoned but rather pleasantly between my bed, bedside table, laptop and bathroom.

Honestly I've never felt so relaxed. I've been on a lot of vacations but I'll never forget this one. It was cheap, relaxing, easy on the body and very introspective.

You and your Hypothalamus!

I am not a doctor or a neurologist. Never the less I was googling around and stumbled upon this article

Hypothalamus

After reading it, it seems that basically your brain is a big rube goldberg machine. The Hypothalmus is the oldest reptilian part and it's got all these other low level body systems attached to it that connect to your body and it is responsible for the emotions that you and a lizard have in common : pleasure, unpleasure, aversion, rage, hunger, thirst. It does some really screwy things


Here are some quotes from the above article.



Pathological laughter has frequently been reported to occur with hypophyseal and midline tumors involving the hypothalamus, aneurysm in this vicinity, hemorrhage, astrocytoma or pappiloma of the 3rd ventricle (resulting in hypothalamic compression), as well as surgical manipulation of this nucleus (Davison & Kelman, 1939; Dott, 1938; Foerster & Gabel, 1933; Martin, 1950; Money & Hosta, 1967; Ironside, 1956; List, Dowman, & Bagheiv, 1958).

For example, Martin (1950, p.455) describes a man who while "attending his mother's funeral was seized at the graveside with an attack of uncontrollable laughter which embarrassed and distressed him considerably." Although this particular attack dissipated, it was soon accompanied by several further fits of laughter and he died soon thereafter. Post-mortem a large ruptured aneurysm was found, compressing the mammillary bodies and hypothalamus.

...

Emotions elicited by the hypothalamus are largely undirected, short-lived, being triggered reflexively and without concern or understanding regarding consequences; that is, unless chronically stressed or aroused. Nevertheless, direct contact with the real world is quite limited and almost entirely indirect as the hypothalamus is largely concerned with the internal environment of the organism. Although it receives and responds to light, it cannot "see." It has no sense of morals, danger, values, logic, etc., and cannot feel or express love or hate. Although quite powerful, hypothalamic emotions are largely undifferentiated, consisting of feelings such as pleasure, unpleasure, aversion, rage, hunger, thirst, etc.

As the hypothalamus is concerned with the internal enviornment much of it's activity occurs outside conscious-awareness. Moreover, being involved in maintaining internal homeostasis, via, for example, it's ability to reward or punish the organism with feelings of pleasure or aversion, it tends to serve what Freud (1911) has described as the pleasure principle.

How bad can pain get? (part II)

well I found out how bad pain can get. I was in the hospital after surgery and a physical therapist tried to move my leg around. She forced my leg the wrong way and did something because suddenly the pain got so bad that I started screaming and went into shock. I was sobbing uncontrollably for about 10 minutes. That's the kind of pain you normally can only get with badly trained medical personnel during a hospital stay. There is probably worse pain than that but I hope to never encounter it.

Being acutely aware of time

I've been very acutely aware of time lately. With my current back condition my day has been divided up into 6 hour intervals between pain medication. It has also been divided up into very distinct periods based on intervals between medical appointments which I count the time till. I think a lot more about and count time much more regularly now. It is a strange experience. I see things that are two weeks away become closer and closer. It happens very smoothly and constantly, like my hand moving through dry hot beach sand. Before time would arrive suddenly, with an alarm or reminder reminding me of an upcoming appointment. Now time approaches, constantly, unstoppably, almost menacingly like the ground to meet a skydiver. A missed appointment seems like yelling out a window to a pedestrian by the side of the road as the car one is riding in speeds by. More importantly I wonder where all the time goes. Then I think of the repetition in my life that fills those hours. Getting up, going to work, commuting, trying to relax after the day is over.

Mentally escaping to reduce stress

I have had a lot of stress lately due to pain caused by back problems. I started using an anti-stress technique that I haven't used in a while to deal with this. That technique, for lack of a better way of describing it, is "positive remembering". What it involves is taking a memory of a time when I was the least stressed I've ever been and trying to invison myself there again. The time I like to remember is being in Santiago, Chile in my early 20s and being alone as a traveler. For several days I stayed at the youth hostel and during the day, which was quite warm but not humid or excessivly hot, I would get on busses that went around the city and ride them to wherever they went and then get off and ride other buses. Santiago is a big city and a very safe one at that. The whole time I was listening to great relaxing techno music. I spoke Spanish passibly but I could tune out to the messages on billboards, signs, and the voices around me if I wanted to. I did this for 8 hours a day, spoke to noone, and it was the most relaxed I've ever been.

How bad can pain get?

As readers know I've been dealing with Sciatic pain from a bulging disc. Luckily I am getting something done about it soon by a talented surgeon. When I don't take my pain medication my sciatic pain is so bad it feels like my leg is broken. I really hope none of my audience ever has to go through something like this. It really makes me feel like a big piece of flesh, not a human being.