A few days ago, I published the chart at the end of this page here:

BPainFree: Mood Map

The idea simply put is that after attaining the prerequisites, the changeable part of our day to day mood is determined by certain cues.  I think they evolved to help one find his place in a hierarchy and other evolutionary reasons we are generally uninterested in.  Our interest is in having a positive mood, so we want to get positive mood cues.  See if you can navigate the chart and tell me what you think.  It's very simple once you get the hang of it.

 

What I found when I used the mood map on myself is that I have generally little problems with self-esteem as far as self-efficacy or self-worth, that means I generally think I am competent and worthy.  However, on the last 3, environment, philosophy, and work, I found myself greatly lacking.  

 

Being in a bad environment is basically a side effect of living on disability.  The streets here are mean and largely deserted.  The only good thing is that no one lives next to me or across from me, so my little squalid space is fairly peaceful but when I walk up the street and turn left to exercise, some drivers seem to think I'm a new male prostitute, and when I walk down the street to the left, they think I have crack cocaine to sell them so I have to go up the street and turn right and cross Wynnton Rd to 'the other side of the tracks' out of East Wynnton.  There have been two murders in my neighborhood the almost 2 years I've been here, both on my old walking/biking routes.  Anyway, to change that situation would require Jesse Jackson to come down here and get us all together for a revival of some sort or, I could move, which I don't have the funds to do now so I'll have to wait till around February.  So I guess I can start preparing for the move by removing my things from the yard and collecting nicer furniture.

Another thing I struggle with is pessimism.  Try as I might to be an optimist, I am a natural born full-fledged pessimist.  I think it's born from expecting to be able to have faith in man, in people, and being disappointed by our joint, natural stupidity.  So instead, I will try having faith in the truth.  The truth will always be the truth, it will sometimes prevail but whether it prevails or not, it will be the truth.  I guess that's not faith at all, but confidence.  Confidence in 'what is'.

Lastly, I need engaging, meaningful, novel work so I've started a semiautobiographical fiction blog to complement this blog that I will launch soon.  Anyway, that got real personal but that's my take on the mood map I've created.  I went mostly on introspection but it's heavily influenced by evolutionary and social psychology.  Tell me what you think, how to the cues affect your mood?  Are there powerful cue types that I'm missing?

Mood Map

*Prerequisites: Food (healthy diet), shelter, sleep, baseline wealth, and baseline health.

Cue Type	Affect spectrum/feels like (negative)	Affect spectrum/feels like (positive)	Cues (negative)	Cues (positive)
1.  Self-esteem/power	Weak/ fear	Invincible/ confidence	losing	winning
	Incompetent/ fear	Efficacious/ confidence	demonstrating weakness	demonstrating strength
	boredom	flow	Laziness	engagement
			Social cues
	shame	pride	shunning	respect
			Non-confidence	confidence
2.  Self-esteem/value	Unworthy	Worthy	Dislike (from self and others)	Like (from self and others)/ affection
	Unloved	Loved	Revulsion (from self and others)	Affinity* (from self and others)
	Ugly	Attractive	Dislike (from self and others)	Like (from self and others)
			Looking unkempt	Looking good
			Self-neglect	Self-grooming
3.  Environment	Impoverished	Enriched	Squalid	Beautiful
	Disgust	Comfort	Bland	Stimulating
			Poor	Wealthy
			Plain	Decorative
			Unimaginative	Artsy
			Uncomfortable	Comfortable
			Dirty	Clean
			Bad luck	Good luck
4.  Philosophy	Pessimism	Optimism	Bad luck	Good luck
	Heartless universe	Caring universe	Bad luck	Good luck
	Fate	Freewill	Selfishness, brutality	Altruism, charity
	Humans basically bad	Humans basically good	No reward	Rewarding
5.  Activity	Boring	Engaging	Ineffective	Effective
	Meaningless	Meaningful	Old	Novel

Update

9/1/2012 

Today it’s been a week and two days since my hemorhoidectomy and the pain I can tell would be tremendous still.  But I have totally blocked it out with dextromethorphan, and now gabapentin.  The dextromethorphan is an absolute lifesaver right now, and it’s available at walmart as a generic cough and cold otc treatment for just $2.  I take 5 pills, 150mgs of dextromethorphan and 20mgs of chlorphenirmaine.  The clorpehneirmaine is the limiting substance.  I am afraid to take more than 20mgs of it as recreational users have reported bad side effects from taking too much, but at 150mgs of dextromethorphan, the post surgical pain is much more bearable.  I cannot express how much of a lifesaver it is.  I wouldn’t be able to walk without it.  Instead I’m not only walking but exercising.  With the gabapentin added, I’m totally insensiate, i.e.  I can feel almost no pain at all.  I can still feel the sensations of where the pain is and even the intensity that it would be, but it doesn’t quite reach me and I am inexpressibly thankful for that because it is intense.  My first bowel movement after the surgery was so painful it was like shitting a crown of thorns.  My only concern is the pain meds might lower my platelet counts and thus make my recovery take longer, but all in all, I’m doing well.  My father and sister had the same surgery and they both that horrible complications and had to have a second surgery.  It doesn’t seem so far that that will happen with me.  The bleeding is minimal, not even as much as before the surgery, but it’s definitely there, especially as the stitches are dissolving.  All in all, I’m hopeful that the procedure will help catapult me back to my functional self.  Able to work and stand all day and be productive without my guts trying to exit my body.

In other news, I’m trying to buy a bike because I can no longer afford the insurance payments for my van so I’m going to have to retire her.  We’ve had some good times.  All in all, buying a conversion van was a fantastic idea.  I went to Miami beach in it, then to twice as far as the great lakes, once to go to truck driving school and once to get diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome by a nationally renowned specialist.  I found him to be rude and snobby but he did at least diagnose me and give some treatment recommendations and that has been a great help when I gave the recommendations to my primary care.

Looking objectively, things are going quite well.  I am getting the treatments I’ve been needing for a long time but I am right now in a precarious situation financially.  If I can get through the next week without being pulled over by the cops basically, I’ll be good to go.  But until I get this bike and finish all my doctors appointments and getting my medications, I’m gonna be riding dirty.  It’s still too hot outside for me to switch totally to bike riding, not to mention I obviously can’t sit on a bike seat right now while I’m wearing old people diapers.

Next week I have 3 doctors appointments.  If I can get through those with the right medications added, I know I will be 100 percent for a while and I desperately need it right now because my funds are running low and I need to make some money.  Good luck to me on that count. And good luck to yall, whatever you’re going through.

Update 9/11/2012

Everything went smoothly, completely healed, lucky me.  100 percent, here I come.

Multiple Universes

Multiple Universes

I wish perhaps, like others do, that this was a more perfect universe. But if you believe in multiple universes, there is little denying we were born in a Hell universe. Nothing makes sense. We are born for no reason than to die a generally horrible, pain-ridden death. And people are so hateful, instead of wishing others peace if there is a next life, they wish the great majority suffer eternally in a Hell worse than the one they were born in. As far as universes, I really doubt it gets very much backward as ours without becoming as unintelligible as a massive DEX trip. Our universe can only support intelligent life for a few decades, one worse than this would probably only support it for a few minutes. You’d realize you exist, then like Schopenhauer, realize you wish you’d never existed, then you’d be dead. Maybe that’s not the worst fate. What if you lingered for decades in the company of hateful, spiteful people, who wished only that your suffering was greatly improved?

I’m not always this pessimistic. It’s just a universe I’m passing through where I see clearly its evil designs. I’ll pass into a better one and hopefully into one where I am healthy and happy. The chances are better than not in multiple universes, possibly. You must really win a shit lottery to end up in a Hell universe because most Hell universes probably end up with you dead before you’re even conscious enough to realize it. The ones where you linger for 80 years then suffocate to death on your failing heart must be rare. More common are the ones where you are made of some material that does not wear out so easily, or where the sun isn’t going to explode and the whole solar system isn’t one gigantic toilet bowl, the planets, pieces of debris waiting their turn to get sucked into the sun turned into a black hole. But we will be dead as shit before we have to worry about that, and in this universe, that is comfort.