The Column

Motto: Hello! My Name is... Mr. Complainer
I'm in a good mood. I've switched NSAIDs and my back feels great. I've had some great times over the past week and everything is going really well.

Now prepare for me to dump on stuff for the rest of the Column. First up, healthcare. Then, Google. Afterward I'll slide into a more fun Top 5 and leave you with several quotes.

As I've written about fairly recently - I have a disease. Not the kind of disease you can avoid by washing your hands or eating healthy. I have the kind that you just... get. At least that's the best science really has to say about the issue. It's nobody's fault. There's nothing I could have done to prevent it. But it's here and it's permanent. I will be on some form of medication for the rest of my life.

I was going to write a ton here about our current healthcare system and insurance and how everything is woefully hamstrung, but this is the last part of the Column I'm writing …

Motto: Opinions! They're like facts, but so messy!

I write these posts in random order. Sometimes I start on the body. Sometimes not. Today this is the last paragraph I'm writing. I didn't mean to write this whole thing tonight, but I did. Whoops.

Apple's developer's conference was today. They announced some new stuff as per usual. Some of it is pretty neat. Some of it is not that exciting. All of it is overpriced. It got me thinking, though. They updated their notetaking application to work in new ways with the "Apple Pencil", which made me wonder to myself how many people are going to change their notetaking workflows to accommodate this new feature? Beyond just this feature, how many people are going to change the whole way they've been doing stuff just to accommodate these various new devices?

Then I got to thinking about the concept of "systems" as a general topic. It seems like it's not a good idea to rely on your "system"…

A motto: Tomato

It has been a while.

Have you ever been too busy living life to live life? I have been seizing the crap out of the day, every day. Since I last wrote, I've gone golfing, different golfing, bowling, bike riding, watching baseball, building a brick walkway, playing volleyball, playing different volleyball, practicing basketball, playing bocce ball, playing lawn games, playing group videogames, playing pool, playing different pool, going shooting, shooting yourself in the face, and watching both movies and show finales with friends. My patented Aaron projects have all fallen by the wayside. They require time and boredom. I've been blessed enough not to have much of either to spare.

About that "shooting yourself in the face" bit. I had a bad ricochet while shooting some steel. It turned out alright:


And now I get to say for the rest of my life I survived getting shot in the face.

More than all of that - I got to eat delicious delicious Chuy's. They are…

Motto: Balance in the Force

This post will serve as the "yong" to the previous post's "ying". 

First I'll start by saying I'm back on prescription anti-inflammatories and honestly and truly back to feeling normal. Do you have any idea how good it feels to feel "normal"? It feels damn amazing. I think I'll take the stairs. I think I'll clean the house. I think I'll tackle that project. I think I'm going to go lift weights.

#BACKtoHealth was a last-minute success. My 30 Day Challenge for May will be for me to watch 10 movies from my "Movie Bucket List".
Wednesday was the three year anniversary of the day on which I married Melissa. It was the three year anniversary of the best day of my life. It was the 1096th day in my streak of good days (on the whole). It was the 36th straight month in which I was able to fill out "married" on hospital forms, rather than having to choose the single option and tell the hospital …

Motto: No shirt. No shoes. No thanks.

Columns will go on as long as they have to.

This Column was supposed to be a "fun" one, cause I feel like the last one I wrote was a bit of a drag to read. WELL GUESS WHAT! It's not going to be. I'm going to open up a vent and blow out all sorts of pressure (insert fart joke here) that's been building in me for the past 7 years about my incurable autoimmune disease.

If you'd like to skip the upcoming dreck and refuse, you can skip ahead to the Top 5 which I do hope you'll find delightful.

I'm going to write about what it's like to have a
progressive,
incurable,
painful,
disabling,
autoimmune disease.

I'll be using works like "pain" and "general suckiness". So calibrate yourself. You've been warned. I might insert jokey jokes for the purposes of sanity here and there - but there's really a ton pent up processing I have that I'd like to vomit all over this Column.

Pain.

I told you…

Motto: I Will Never Understand You. When Will I Stop Trying?

311 is Melissa's favorite number because she likes (or liked?) the band "311". #FunFactRightOutTheGate #MisplacedHashtags

It's rare that you know you're making a mistake while you're making it. 

Often times it takes years to realize you probably shouldn't have done X or Y. You make a choice and take an action, see the consequence and immediately write it off as the only possible eventuality that could have occurred. You're a rational person. You made the choice. So it had to be a rational choice, right?

You aren't perfect. You learn that growing up, time and time again. You look back at the choice you made and see where the path could have diverted. You could have gotten from there to here with less pain. You could have gotten to some other place that you'd rather be. 

It happens as you get older.
First, you look back at yourself in elementary school or middle school and think "WHY!?&…