vaderpi's random rants

Introduction

There have been a bunch of recent events that I need to catch my friends up on. Some people know some details, but very few people know all of the details. So what better way is there to communicate with the masses than my blog?

I guess there is no better place to start than the beginning.

I can’t stay awake

For the last few years, I have been struggling with a sleep disorder. The diagnosis that best describes my issue is hypersomnia. The basic gist is that I cannot stay awake during the day. This also means that I have trouble getting up in the morning. Not just a little bit of trouble, but a lot of trouble. So much trouble that some days I don’t make it into the office. This got so bad that I was missing about 5-6 days of work a month. If you do the math that is about once a week, sometimes more.

It became clear to me that the quality of my work was severely suffering as a result of this condition. With that in mind, I asked to be placed on medical disability leave. Basically, I hit rock bottom. All this happened about two weeks ago.

A really good friend of mine also made it clear that I needed a change of scenery in order to really get better. I needed a soft place to land and a really good social support network. People to keep an eye on me as I worked through my issues and to be there through whatever treatment is required. His suggestion was to move back home. So I did. I have been living with my parents in the Richmond, VA area for the last 2 weeks.

My parents have been crazy supportive through all of this. They have been helping me monitor my sleep habits, and they have been using their social network to get me in touch with some of the best doctors in the area.

Serendipity

An uncanny coincidence of having to move home was having to face the people of my past. My ten year high school reunion was the same weekend that I actually made the move back to my parents house.

There were a few things that I did before the reunion. I watched the movie Gross Pointe Blank, and I contacted Andrea Goulet, perhaps my best female friend from high school, to find out if she was going to be there.

After much internal struggle about where I was/am in the world, I decided to go to the reunion, and I sought out Andrea. We reconnected and chatted. We reminisced about the past, laughed and share small-talk. Eventually, we confessed that we had crushes on each other in high school, but never acted on them.

What else could I do? I had to ask her out on a date, I just had to. There was really no option. My heart was pounding faster than the beat of the bar stereo system, and every muscle in my body was shouting that it was the right thing to do. Her response, “Here’s to finally growing a pair.”

So we went out on a few dates, and it was not long at all before we decided that we were not interested in dating anyone else. Of course we had to make things official by changing statuses on Facebook.

I am happier than I have been in a long time. Andrea is aware of my current situation, more aware about details that I am not yet comfortable sharing in a public forum, and she has not run away. She is staying by me, and she is being really supportive. Just another node in the support network that my good friend told me I needed to go find.

We have a lot in common, but we are are also really different. Seems like the perfect match. And, hey, she has a thing for geeks. :)

The Future

What’s next? I am not sure. I am working with my doctors to get to the bottom of my problem. In my spare time, I am trying to stay fit both physically and mentally. Physically, I have been riding my bike, running, and going on hikes. Mentally, I am keeping my programming skills sharp by working on cukeness, a project that I am sure to write more about in a later post.

Where am I going to end up? I am feeling a really big pull to stay in the Richmond, VA area. I really missed being here. The pace of life is so much different than it was in the Washington, DC area or the Roanoke, VA or the Blacksburg, VA area. I am glad to be back, and I think that … no scratch that … I am going to stay.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 29th, 2009 at 3:12 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.