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I'm still having problems with light headedness and fatigue with occasional flickers of a tickle in my lungs. I have no idea what's going on that way.
Scott worked 12.5 hours yesterday and is currently at work. He has tomorrow off (meaning he can go to the fundraiser for Cordelia's choir). I really, really don't like how physically exhausted he is by the time he gets home, and I think that the three day run coming up later this week is going to be very bad.
Scott will also be off on Tuesday which has me wondering about my appointment with the vocational counselor. If Scott were working, I'd absolutely ask to reschedule because I don't think I'm safe to go downtown and get back home again after, but Scott's going to be around to provide transportation. Then again, I can't think very well, and I haven't been able to do much of anything the last two weeks because of being sick, so I'm not sure that actually meeting with the guy does anything but check off the 'yes, I'm still paying attention' box.
Which might be a thing that I actually need to do. I don't know. But last time we met, I was still having constant trouble breathing (day 2 of the prednisone) and he made a point of saying that rescheduling isn't a big deal.
I just keep feeling like there's something I'm going to do that will be a breakthrough that lets me think and function clearly again. Past experience suggests that I'm wrong, but I keep reacting to the fog as if it's something I'm going to recover from if I just rest. I would rather that it be so, but I think this may be the new normal.
I have discovered that using the donut pillow around my neck decreases my neck and shoulder pain considerably. It does more than anything else I've tried and more consistently. Remembering that is, however, oddly slippery because the thing is inconvenient, prone to slipping off, and not easy to clean. It's also really unpleasant when the house is at summer temperatures.
I really would like to be able to make an appointment with my primary care doctor about my hands/wrists because I think I might be having carpal-tunnel issues, but I really can't do it until the LTD stuff is resolved (even though this is likely pertinent).
I have written a little bit the last couple of days, but I'm struggling to make the words become story. I'll have a little time when things flow and when I can't imagine stopping writing, and then... it'll be gone again. Very frustrating.
Ingress is now gone as a thing that I can play in the ways I used to. The version that used the old interface is now dead, and Ingress Prime is barely usable for me. Possibly, I could use it better with a new(er) phone, but that's not happening, and a newer phone would likely only address the battery drain part of the problem.
I don't think anything is going to address the fact that the visuals are confusing, headache inducing, and nausea inducing. The designers wanted to make a lot of things wispy and then have other things do frequent pulses that kind of hit the worst flickering strobe effect that I can bear to look at at all.
Ingress Prime is also very unforgiving of hand tremor. A tap that also swipes a fraction of a millimeter is taken as a different command than a straight up tap.
I have this issue for all things with touchscreens or touchpads. I have no solution beyond turning off as many of those commands as I can in the device preferences. I have issues, too, with my fingertips only sometimes reading as conductive surfaces. There will be times when I can tap repeatedly and not get anything. Licking my finger and then tapping will work then, but it's gross and needs frequent repetition, so I'm more likely to keep trying different fingers.
Back to Ingress Prime-- It's slow to respond and eats through battery rapidly, especially when the phone isn't using WiFi. 90% of my Ingress play is done while I'm walking around in places where I don't have WiFi. The current program will support 15-20 minutes of running the program on a single battery charge. I normally spend 2-4 hours out and about when I play.
My phone doesn't charge reliably. Either it has to be left utterly still to charge, or I have to manage to hold the charging cord in exactly the right position without any jarring. If the cord vibrates at all, including hand tremor movement or the cord bouncing off my leg/arm/purse or even a strong breeze, the plug loosens in the socket on the phone. The socket is as clean as we can get it and isn't repairable short of replacing the phone. This has been an issue for years (I have a hand-me-down iPhone 5). It's possible for me to charge while walking, but I have to check every 30 seconds or so to make sure that it's still charging. Holding everything that way is hard on my hands, and reinserting the cord is painful, too. (The battery with the best capacity will shut down and stop charging if the connection to the phone is disrupted. It will only start charging again if the cord is unplugged from the battery and then reinserted.)
Scott and I have been looking for other games that will do for me what Ingress used to. I like the finding things part of it. I like having the game track goals based on places I go. I like being able to build things and get badges. I like the idea that I'm playing a game with other people even if I never interact with them. I like the utter lack of urgency and lack of need for manual dexterity and speed. (I have never done glyph hacking. It looks like the in-game equivalent of smashing my toes with rocks, over and over and over.)
Pokemon Go and the Harry Potter game come from the same company that made Ingress. The changes to Ingress that make it unplayable for me were built into the first releases of those games.
I'm not interested in the story particularly. I have zero attachment to collecting things (as opposed to incrementing numbers) and am only interested in competing with myself.
So I kind of want something that's lower pressure than Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon but that also rewards me, in game, for walking around to various (preferably real!) places in the real world. I could get by if it was just Ann Arbor, even just downtown, but I like that I can go most places and find a few Ingress portals.
I don't care if the graphics are pretty so much as I care whether or not they make me ill. Something that looks like what Google gives Scott for driving directions would be fine if it had more details about things that are actually useful for a meandering pedestrian.
I can't wear anything fitbit-ish. Those are too painful. Also, my thumb splints cover the areas where a fitbit would normally sit.
We've been searching (sporadically but for months) for games that might work, but we haven't found a single good option. I'm so very angry at Niantic for this. I've known that it was coming, but it's still a painful loss.
I've been using Ingress as a means of focusing my attention when I'm in situations where I desperately need a focus that doesn't touch what's around me. It makes walking a couple of hours to get home from an appointment only about 10% as stressful as it would be otherwise. It lets me ride a bus without spiraling hypervigilance. It gets me to walk places where I've never been before and have no reason to go because I can look for portal candidates.
I don't enjoy walking. It's tedious. The benefits from it are all nebulous things with zero application to anything I can perceive. I don't feel better, physically or emotionally. I don't relax. I don't come up with story ideas (mostly, when I'm walking, I don't think about anything except Ingress and how I'm never getting these hours back). Ingress makes it more meditative because I can pull my thoughts back from the long list of scary, unpleasant things I have to work on ASAP and can't because I'm doing something useless and less pleasant instead.
It's not that I glue my eyes to my phone, either, so I can't substitute reading something on my phone. (Even if reading were a thing that would help ground me, I have issues with reading on my phone.)
Scott worked 12.5 hours yesterday and is currently at work. He has tomorrow off (meaning he can go to the fundraiser for Cordelia's choir). I really, really don't like how physically exhausted he is by the time he gets home, and I think that the three day run coming up later this week is going to be very bad.
Scott will also be off on Tuesday which has me wondering about my appointment with the vocational counselor. If Scott were working, I'd absolutely ask to reschedule because I don't think I'm safe to go downtown and get back home again after, but Scott's going to be around to provide transportation. Then again, I can't think very well, and I haven't been able to do much of anything the last two weeks because of being sick, so I'm not sure that actually meeting with the guy does anything but check off the 'yes, I'm still paying attention' box.
Which might be a thing that I actually need to do. I don't know. But last time we met, I was still having constant trouble breathing (day 2 of the prednisone) and he made a point of saying that rescheduling isn't a big deal.
I just keep feeling like there's something I'm going to do that will be a breakthrough that lets me think and function clearly again. Past experience suggests that I'm wrong, but I keep reacting to the fog as if it's something I'm going to recover from if I just rest. I would rather that it be so, but I think this may be the new normal.
I have discovered that using the donut pillow around my neck decreases my neck and shoulder pain considerably. It does more than anything else I've tried and more consistently. Remembering that is, however, oddly slippery because the thing is inconvenient, prone to slipping off, and not easy to clean. It's also really unpleasant when the house is at summer temperatures.
I really would like to be able to make an appointment with my primary care doctor about my hands/wrists because I think I might be having carpal-tunnel issues, but I really can't do it until the LTD stuff is resolved (even though this is likely pertinent).
I have written a little bit the last couple of days, but I'm struggling to make the words become story. I'll have a little time when things flow and when I can't imagine stopping writing, and then... it'll be gone again. Very frustrating.
Ingress is now gone as a thing that I can play in the ways I used to. The version that used the old interface is now dead, and Ingress Prime is barely usable for me. Possibly, I could use it better with a new(er) phone, but that's not happening, and a newer phone would likely only address the battery drain part of the problem.
I don't think anything is going to address the fact that the visuals are confusing, headache inducing, and nausea inducing. The designers wanted to make a lot of things wispy and then have other things do frequent pulses that kind of hit the worst flickering strobe effect that I can bear to look at at all.
Ingress Prime is also very unforgiving of hand tremor. A tap that also swipes a fraction of a millimeter is taken as a different command than a straight up tap.
I have this issue for all things with touchscreens or touchpads. I have no solution beyond turning off as many of those commands as I can in the device preferences. I have issues, too, with my fingertips only sometimes reading as conductive surfaces. There will be times when I can tap repeatedly and not get anything. Licking my finger and then tapping will work then, but it's gross and needs frequent repetition, so I'm more likely to keep trying different fingers.
Back to Ingress Prime-- It's slow to respond and eats through battery rapidly, especially when the phone isn't using WiFi. 90% of my Ingress play is done while I'm walking around in places where I don't have WiFi. The current program will support 15-20 minutes of running the program on a single battery charge. I normally spend 2-4 hours out and about when I play.
My phone doesn't charge reliably. Either it has to be left utterly still to charge, or I have to manage to hold the charging cord in exactly the right position without any jarring. If the cord vibrates at all, including hand tremor movement or the cord bouncing off my leg/arm/purse or even a strong breeze, the plug loosens in the socket on the phone. The socket is as clean as we can get it and isn't repairable short of replacing the phone. This has been an issue for years (I have a hand-me-down iPhone 5). It's possible for me to charge while walking, but I have to check every 30 seconds or so to make sure that it's still charging. Holding everything that way is hard on my hands, and reinserting the cord is painful, too. (The battery with the best capacity will shut down and stop charging if the connection to the phone is disrupted. It will only start charging again if the cord is unplugged from the battery and then reinserted.)
Scott and I have been looking for other games that will do for me what Ingress used to. I like the finding things part of it. I like having the game track goals based on places I go. I like being able to build things and get badges. I like the idea that I'm playing a game with other people even if I never interact with them. I like the utter lack of urgency and lack of need for manual dexterity and speed. (I have never done glyph hacking. It looks like the in-game equivalent of smashing my toes with rocks, over and over and over.)
Pokemon Go and the Harry Potter game come from the same company that made Ingress. The changes to Ingress that make it unplayable for me were built into the first releases of those games.
I'm not interested in the story particularly. I have zero attachment to collecting things (as opposed to incrementing numbers) and am only interested in competing with myself.
So I kind of want something that's lower pressure than Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon but that also rewards me, in game, for walking around to various (preferably real!) places in the real world. I could get by if it was just Ann Arbor, even just downtown, but I like that I can go most places and find a few Ingress portals.
I don't care if the graphics are pretty so much as I care whether or not they make me ill. Something that looks like what Google gives Scott for driving directions would be fine if it had more details about things that are actually useful for a meandering pedestrian.
I can't wear anything fitbit-ish. Those are too painful. Also, my thumb splints cover the areas where a fitbit would normally sit.
We've been searching (sporadically but for months) for games that might work, but we haven't found a single good option. I'm so very angry at Niantic for this. I've known that it was coming, but it's still a painful loss.
I've been using Ingress as a means of focusing my attention when I'm in situations where I desperately need a focus that doesn't touch what's around me. It makes walking a couple of hours to get home from an appointment only about 10% as stressful as it would be otherwise. It lets me ride a bus without spiraling hypervigilance. It gets me to walk places where I've never been before and have no reason to go because I can look for portal candidates.
I don't enjoy walking. It's tedious. The benefits from it are all nebulous things with zero application to anything I can perceive. I don't feel better, physically or emotionally. I don't relax. I don't come up with story ideas (mostly, when I'm walking, I don't think about anything except Ingress and how I'm never getting these hours back). Ingress makes it more meditative because I can pull my thoughts back from the long list of scary, unpleasant things I have to work on ASAP and can't because I'm doing something useless and less pleasant instead.
It's not that I glue my eyes to my phone, either, so I can't substitute reading something on my phone. (Even if reading were a thing that would help ground me, I have issues with reading on my phone.)