Time for a rant

I don't intend for this to be a ranting blog, but I will do this occasionally. I expect there will be some humor in these posts, admittedly usually dark humor. People who've been in public safety seem to be able to laugh at darker humor than most others, IME.

One of my co-workers went to the site clinic today with chest pain. They told him it was probably stress related, and that he should try to reduce his stress level.

I always get highly annoyed when the medical establishment says something like that. "You should reduce your stress level." "So, I should quit my job?"

Admittedly, only about a quarter of my own stress comes from work, but that quarter is also the only part I really have any control over. The rest is a function of being alive. Granted I imagine dead people have rather lower stress levels, but I somehow don't think that's a good option either.

I want some way to stop growing hair where I don't want it (for example, my chin) and grow it where I actually do want it (the top of my head).

I want to know things. I always want to know how the story ends, who's interested in who, how things work, why things happen. I even want to understand the ordering system at work! To me not knowing is the worst thing. Learning something unpleasant can be painful, but I've yet to learn anything that I felt was worse than the suspense of not knowing it. I guess it is an integral function versus a diminishing quadratic - over enough time, the integral will still win even if its a low-level constant.

I'm using math to describe my emotional state. I'm reminded of a campus EMT I knew who once told me that the third derivative of his life was improving. Perhaps it is a sign of my geekiness that I immediately understood him.

I can't make the people I want to be happy be happy. I need to be able to do that. I wasn't much of a medic and I'm not much of an engineer; if I can't be a good person what's the point? Being a jack of all trades and a master of none just doesn't seem to be useful these days.

I keep thinking on the things I'll never know the answer to - those bother me the most, usually. I'll never know what would have happened if only I'd _____. Would things have been better? Worse? Not really any different? Could I have kept her alive? Would I have become a good medic? Did she mean it? Did he know? Would I still have Dawntreader?

Maybe I need to go shooting again. There's something incredibly relaxing about destroying an innocent piece of paper. Sparring is good too, but it isn't advisable to just let yourself go in attacking someone - even with protective gear, people get hurt, and if you injure people they tend to get very unreasonable and not want to spar with you again. Silly people. What are a few broken bones between friends? Computer games let me get rid of some stress too, but there's only so long I can play a given game, and I tend to get lost in them and forget to do other things. Like, historically, eat, sleep, go to class, go to work... bad things happen.

Sex can relieve a huge amount of stress, but the activities that surround sex often seem to cause more stress than the sex relieves. And, of course, anything that requires another person's cooperation is harder to do than something you can do on your own.

I miss having the time to write, too. I ground to a halt on my last story on a reef of overtime. I feel bad because I let people down, but I don't know how to fix it.

That's a recurring theme; I know what is wrong, I DON'T know how to fix it. I hate that. I'm a licenced paramedic and a degreed engineer. I got medical command and a patent. I'm SUPPOSED to be good at analysing problems and coming up with solutions.