I'm 53 years old, and a darn good piano tuner.
However, I suffer from depression, and who knows what else. I'm on Wellbutrin, which seems to help, but I still get panicky at times for no good reason, and it seems to interfere badly with my sleep. I tend to stay up all night and sleep from around dawn to noon, and again sometime in the afternoon. I also seem to go into trances from time to time, and find myself staring at books, merchandise in stores, and things around my room without being able to concentrate.
When I'm really depressed, I can't do anything. For example, I had a car several years ago, and I got a few parking tickets -- unfairly, I feel. My insurance agent embezzled the money I paid for insurance, and then assured me repeatedly that the notices I got from the state were mistakes (there were only two) and that I should ignore them. When the car broke down, and I couldn't afford to fix it, things went from bad to worse. The police told me the car would be towed away, but instead, they just left it in front of my house, where I got lots of tickets, mainly because the tags had expired. Last night, I got a notice that my debt was being turned over to a collection agency, and would jump from $1430 to $2000. Though I wanted to write to my county commissioner, I couldn't. I just want to shove it out of my mind.
I'm addicted to cigarettes, coffee, and perhaps the Internet. The first two are serious problems, but I feel the Internet offers me an opportunity "to socialize," and therefore does me good. 00/01/09 update
I also tend to overeat. Though my monthly SSI check usually runs out in the first or second week of the month, I always make sure I've got cigarettes, coffee, vitamins, beans, and rice. I intended to fast for Ramadan this year, as I did last year, but I missed it. Last year, I fasted for the forty days of Ramadan (not just during the days, but around the clock, of course), and then two weeks later, for the forty days of Lent. I didn't get much exercise, however, and only lost about fifty pounds. It's about time I did it again, but I'm planning on waiting till Lent. It gives me a goal, dates for starting and ending. If I'm lucky, I may be able to save up a little money. I really need a TV.
I don't think depression can explain all my mental problems, but I usually can't think of what else is wrong with me. As a matter of fact, I have trouble remembering how I've felt in the past, and even large chunks of my life altogether. Most of the time I feel as if there's absolutely nothing wrong with me. But at other times, I realize I'm quite abnormal, and need much more help than I'm getting -- namely, the Wellbutrin. The thoughts that usually go along with my worst depression are generally (1) "Why can't I be normal?" and (2) "Why am I always being victimized?" (It's true; I've gotten into terrible trouble, often, through no fault of my own.)
I feel as if I've fallen into a ditch and can't get out. Without a car, I can never go back to tuning pianos, and the whole idea of calling customers (not to mention getting to appointments and doing the work) frightens me. On the other hand, though I've spent most of my life at minimum-wage and less-than-minimum-wage jobs, I've never done well for long at anything. I suppose I liked taxi driving the best, but it's risky. I did it in a low-crime city, but never here. It sure beats washing pots. Yecch!
It seems pretty obvious to me that our whole family is dysfunctional, though I don't know how many of the others would agree. We don't get along very well, and though my elder brother and sister are now living in the same small town in Pennsylvania, even they don't communicate much.
My mother lives here in Florida, and I could visit her, but it's an all-day proposition, and I'd have to have the bus fares, which I usually don't. We talk on the phone about once a week (but very irregularly), but it bothers me whenever she tells me she loves me. I don't believe it. She loves entertainment -- movies, books, bridge, whatever -- more than talking to me, and many of the most important things I want to discuss make her upset. She still can't accept the fact that I'm disabled, though I've known since I was thirteen that I wasn't quite sane. She insists I'm handsome, polite, brilliant, talented, and perfect in every way.
Like all of the family (and perhaps more than the rest of us) she's amazingly intelligent.
She's getting old, having been born in 1921, and her health is failing, which scares me. Though I'm the pauper of the family, it's clear that I'll have to be the one to look after her, and I find the prospect of moving very daunting. I'll have to discard everything I own. I've done it before, but it's always been traumatic. I'll keep my computer and my bike, of course.
I don't know how I'll cope with seeing her decline, though for a while, I lived on the grounds of a nursing home and did volunteer work there.
Penny's the eldest. She and Peter are actually half-siblings of my sister Jordan and me. Penny took an interest in Dad's vocation, entertainment. That's an understatement. The last I heard, she was a regular correspondent for Variety, a theater critic, a press agent for Princeton's "Carter Theater" and New Hope's "Playhouse," the mother of three daughters (all of them in entertainment-- and at least two of whom have appeared on Broadway, like most of us), a college instructor of interpretive reading, the host of her own radio show, and very frequently an actor, dancer, and singer. When is she going to get her own theater?
Peter's Penny's younger brother. They both grew up (at least until Peter, then known as "Buzzy," was around thirteen) in Hollywood. Their mother was beautiful. At the age of 53, she appeared practically nude (under a fishnet) on the cover of "Photoplay."
Peter was in a few movies before he and Penny came to Long Island to live with Dad and the rest of us. His mother came, too, though I forget where she went. She must have felt very out of place living in the same house with my mother.
Peter was a great dancer. He won prizes back in the Fifties, when Rock 'n' Roll ruled. He was also incredibly handsome, had a great car, (a fairly new red Ford convertible complete with "suicide knob" on the steering wheel and fuzzy dice), had a nice job for meeting girls: life guard (during the summers, that is), and generally made me feel very inferior. He was Catholic, too, and "we" were Protestant. I never knew what to make of that, but the Catholics always seemed prejudiced against us, and ...
I really want to understand piano tuning from the acoustical point of view, and I shouldn't have any trouble, considering how well I did in math in college, but I seem to have some sort of mental block against it.
I guess it's obvious from the things I've put up on my website that I'm also interested in theology, but I'm leaning towards Quakerism these days, and admire the Dalai Lama immensely.