So now for the people actually buying DVDs and Blurays, they get to sit through a double feature on anti-piracy. For the pirates however, they actually won’t see them. The new warnings now feature ICE and the FBI instead of just the FBI. They also list a website you can visit to find out more.
So, it’s been awhile since I posted about e-cigarettes, snus, snuff or the like. Basically I have yet to fully quit nicotine. The good news is I can pretty much not use it if I have to, so my dependence is much, much less than it was when I smoked.
Unfortunately due to the PACT act with Snus I started to use dip a lot. This caused gum recession very quickly, so I now try to stick with my snus when possible.
As far as e-cigarettes go, I still take a puff every now and then, but it’s really uncommon and only when I’m really stressed or something, I get a craving for a cigarette and just puff on that. I haven’t touched a cigarette for 2 years or so now, but I have smoked cigars, very rarely.
Pretty much I use my moist snuff or snus and that’s it all day, and I’m fine. I will be quitting that in the future as well, though I’m not sure about how to approach it.
So yes, the “harm reduction” path has worked for me, but who knows something else other than tobacco may kill me, it’s the risk you take living life. Stress, anxiety, and depression has caused me 100x worse health effects than cigarettes ever did.
3 Years have passed since I first started this blog. My intention at the time was to make money from this blog – obviously that has failed miserably. So why do I keep it running?
Simple answer is I like to write on it now and then. It’s more of a primer for writing my adcopy and other things that actually do make me money. So, this is what happens when you don’t have commercial interests in mind and just write – nothing really.
It’s funny that I can write horrid things on a site I’ve optimized for SEO and make buckets of cash, but when I try and write for people and give them something of value, nothing happens. This is mainly because I don’t have the budget to properly SEO this site in a “legit” manner.
This is a problem many sites face. You have a choice: Blackhat your way to the top or pay a bunch of money for proper links and write articles for already established sites. You also need a writing team and a lot of other things to have a “proper” site. Many people just spam their blogs and have thousands of crap articles, but yea they get traffic. I’ve also been very sloppy with the SEO on this site. I never have anything really in mind when I write a post.
Some day, maybe, just maybe this site will run at a profit, but for now – it’s just a hobby activity and a primer for other things. Makes me sad but it’s the truth for now.
Perhaps if I would’ve stuck with this blog as my primary activity for the last 3 years and wrote 3 articles or more per day I’d be in a different situation at this point, but I chose to work with TONS of other things that have slowed down the progress here by a ton.
My plan now is to at least post once per day on here for the foreseeable future and hopefully this thing will give me SOMETHING. Expect layout changes as well, because the dark theme is on the way out, and the server is going to be changed to a faster one.
Stay tuned…
Since this is more of a personal blog, I might as well go over why I haven’t posted in like a year and why this blog has slowed so much.
Anyway, the main reasons are:
My dad died, I got depressed, I had major anxiety issues, I got sick with labrynthitis. Unfortunately, I am still struggling with vertigo, even though it’s been 3 months. Another thing to note is I got sick about 3 times in a row before getting this. (influenza, stomach flu, and sinusitis, every time I got better I got sick again)
Funny thing is before this, I hadn’t been sick for years.
My symptoms have been:
Now, will I return to my former self? Absolutely. It was a bad year, time to hit the reset button and get back to work and real life stuff. The labrynthitis was probably caused in the first place by the huge depression & anxiety issues to begin with. Am I getting better? Yep. Every month I get a little better. I still can’t do “risky” things like get on a ladder and I have to be VERY careful with stairs.
Let me tell you, I would’ve rather broken my arm again in 2 places and have a full cast for 3 months than this. I broke my arm pretty bad when I was about 14ish, the bone almost popped through the skin. That was an easy experience compared to this. Just the initial huge amounts of pain, but I can deal with pain easier than this psychological torture extreme vertigo puts you through. I was stuck in bed for a friggin’ month! The next month I had barely any mobility. Third month I’m starting to get back to normal again, but not quite there yet. I thought I was dying at several points.
(Thankfully, full on rotational vertigo with nystagmus occurs in relatively few disorders – and is somewhat rare in people with MS. I don’t have any other MS symptoms, pretty much rules that out. BPPV, epley maneuver is useless so it rules that out. Started very strong and is slowly going away pretty much fits VN/labs to a t, though maybe a bit more severe than most cases. Tumors/brainstem strokes are like winning the lottery to get the same symptoms as labs so I’m not worried about it for now. I researched the heck out of this thing and pretty much agree with my dr. In summary most likely DX is vestibular neuritis. )
You do not want inner ear damage. Period. You get the joy of living in agony every day for months on end while on the inside you’re perfectly healthy. Before this experience I had no idea what anxiety was capable of. Now I do, and it’s not pleasant. It can cause some nasty physical problems that will make you feel as if you’re dying. Never again will I think someone with hardcore anxiety isn’t experiencing anything truly terrifying, because it is. It truly is. If you haven’t been terrified for your life with anxiety, then you haven’t had true anxiety, and you can’t speak down to people experiencing full anxiety.
That’s about it for now. I will post some new tech stuff later on, reviews and such, and try to get back to my normal routine. See ya then.
