I did have an oat fudge bar, though. But I didn’t complain about it! Because it was yummy. And many calories.
I’ll burn the calories off tomorrow when I run. It will probably be raining, but I won’t complain. I’ll just get wet. I don’t mind, it just makes me appreciate being dry later on even more.
On to Day 21. If something trips me up tomorrow and I do complain by accident I’ll be very slightly distraught. Maybe I’ll just take a vow of silence for the day.
I did not complain today because I had no one to complain to.
Technically, that’s not true–I could complain to myself, and I kind of did, because I stayed at home to battle the worsening congestion I have been experiencing in my sinuses over the past few months.
In spring 2016 I experienced allergy-like symptoms and my doctor said it was quite possible that I had developed an allergy or two as allergies are neat that way. You can get them later in life because allergies are jerks.
Spring of 2017 saw similar symptoms but in the summer they went away, as one would expect of seasonal allergies.
Then something curious happened. When the weather started to cool and turn damp in the fall, the symptoms came back. Was I suddenly allergic to bare trees and the absence of pollen? I grumbled a bit to myself but kept on keeping on.
In the last month or so it’s gotten worse to the point that:
I sometimes get so clogged up I can’t breathe. This is never good and it sometimes happens in places where I really wouldn’t want it to happen, like on public transit or when sitting in a movie theater.
certain sleep positions will cause the same thing, to the point that I’ve started using Breathe Right strips every night just to force my nose to stay open (they actually help, too).
even when I’m not completely clogged up, I’m usually no less than 50% clogged up. As I type this my left nostril is open but the right is about 95% blocked. This will arbitrarily switch later on*.
the symptoms persist everywhere–at home and at work, in the rain and in the dark, on a train and in a car**.
The ever-persistent state concerns me because if it is an allergy, it suggests I’m allergic to something that’s ever-present, like dust or air or atoms or something. Anyway, I’m going to get tested for allergies soon. In the meantime I’ll just keep moving about rapidly, as it’s one of the few ways I can keep my sinuses reliably open. Gotta go!
Oh, all of which is to say that while I may have complained extensively to myself today about my congestion, I didn’t complain to anyone else–and I’m not complaining now! I’ve assessed the situation, made a plan of action and will be following up, because that’s how winners battle being allergic to atoms.
On to Day 20!
* in the time it took to get to the end of the post, the nostril situation has reversed. It’s all very weird.
** apologies to Dr. Suess
There were 11 school shooting incidents in the U.S. in the same month that I read Columbine (January 2018). That the number of shootings has actually accelerated since the April 20, 1999 attack at Columbine High School, is testament to both the gun epidemic in the United States, and a broad failure to apply lessons learned from Columbine.
As author Dave Cullen sees it, the significant takeaway on Columbine is how important early detection is for teen depression. Eric Harris was a psychopath but not necessarily beyond control. He conscripted Dylan Klebold, who spent the last years of his short life mired in depression, anger and sadness. Early detection and treatment would likely have stopped the attack from happening or even from being planned at all. There’s no way to ever know for certain, but Cullen’s plea for better help for troubled teens stands against a backdrop of dozens upon dozens of school shootings since 1999.
Cullen also holds out blame for the media for sensationalizing these types of attacks, for giving the killers the fame and notoriety that many of them seek. Local media in and around Littleton, Colorado ran stories on the shootings every day for months after. Cullen offers deliberately ghoulish advice to would-be killers to make his point: you need to go big to crack the top ten (up the body count) or go all-in for “performance violence”–spectacle murder.
Today the spectacle murders have left as many as 58 people dead at the hands of a single individual, the usual empty “thoughts and prayers” offered, while help for those that need it most goes unfulfilled, and the guns continue to pile up.
Against this, Columbine offers little hope. Cullen has researched his subject exhaustively, starting at the school less than an hour after the attack started, and kept researching and interviewing for years after, compelled to determine why and what to do with that knowledge.
He deconstructs the myths that quickly built up around the shootings–that the killers were victims of bullying, that they targeted jocks, that they were Goths or it was “The Trenchcoat Mafia” behind them. What he found is a lot simpler than all of that. Eric Harris was a full-blown psychopath and used his charm to recruit others in his nihilistic plan to exterminate “inferior” humans. He convinced others to secure weapons and supplies, but it was Klebold that he was most successful with, tapping into the existential despair of his friend and conscripting him as an ally against everyone else. The world.
While Columbine is remembered as a shooting, Cullen points out that it is only Harri’s incompetence at bomb-making that really made it that way. The intricate plans, had they worked, would have seen propane gas bombs explode in multiple locations, such as the cafeteria, to maximize casualties. Harris further planned on covering exits to pick off survivors. He wanted to kill hundreds, to destroy the school because he could not destroy the entire world.
But the bombs all fizzled.
They still killed 13 before killing themselves and Cullen details how the families of victims handled the aftermath and–in some of the few hopeful moments in the story–how some survivors overcome the shooting to triumph over the tragedy.
Columbine is not an easy read and given the climate today, it is hard to remain hopeful that anything has changed for the better (one thing that did change was the idea of creating a “perimeter defense” around the area of the shooting. This setup allowed the killers to freely wander the school for over an hour before SWAT teams entered, shooting any and all they encountered. That doctrine has been abandoned in favor of going in as soon as possible to take out the threat). Even Cullen himself admits to depression following his immersion into the story.
All this is before you even take into account all the information suppressed by local law enforcement. They knew about Harris early on, but ultimately did nothing and later covered it up. This serves to further underscore how important early detection is. The killers extensively recorded and spoke of their plans, and were largely ignored.
The book is a tough read, but it’s an important one. Too many people slip through the cracks. Cullen vividly details the events of Columbine as both lesson and warning. Highly recommended.
