I typically do not like to talk much about the day-to-day going-ons of my life, but I felt that perhaps some of it would help other people who may be going through the same thing, or will go through it in the future. A few weeks back, for the first time, I had a panic attack, then within twenty minutes, I had another one that was worse. The problem is I had never had a panic attack before, so the whole "Feeling of having a heart attack, or fear of dying" is very much real. After having them, you can recognize the symptoms and realize that nothing really bad is happening.
The problem with it is that it does not really go away, at least not for me. I can only liken it to the opposite of depression. Instead of going inward on yourself, you explode with anxiety. Both are debilitating, leaving you with the sense that this thing will keep you from doing anything productive. It even keeps you from becoming depressed because of the anxiety.
I did some research on the whole anxiety/panic disorders. The Pharma-bought websites tried to push their anti-depressants and anti-anxiety pills that have side-effects of "depression, and increased anxiety" and one of my personal favorites: "hallucinations." Instead I checked out Natural News which had a few articles that listed the different nutrients found in nature that helps anxiety and mood.
Unfortunately, I am not a rich person (very poor in fact), so the only available nutrient supplements I could get my hands on were Iodine, Magnesium, and Omega3, in addition to a bunch of other vitamins and minerals, but the three mentioned before were on the list.
I have also changed my eating habits. I gave up coffee (which is what I had the day of the panic attacks; I do not know if it will cause them again, but I do not feel like testing fate for something that really is not good for me anyway), and started to eat better foods like yogurt, bananas, and watermelon. Now after only a few weeks, I feel about 75% better with natural help. I still have some anxiety, but it is not as crippling as it was. I am back to writing, and if I do start to feel anxious, I simply focus on my breathing and count 3 in, 3 out if I need to. I would like to think I am more active, but who knows if that is the case. In a world of processed food, people are starving for nutrients. Even if you have what I have, a better, healthier life can be all that you need to manage the condition.
In semi-related news, the TV died in a puff of smoke, so that is one less thing to keep me in a vegetative state.
On the writing front, I have done a lot for the sourcebook for Palladium Books, and I have almost twelve full pages written. Just to be clear, a printed page is larger than a manuscript (.doc) page. When writing fiction, a hardcover book is about half or less of a manuscript page vs a printed page. In actuality, a manuscript for a novel is double-spaced, and that typically is what will end up single-spaced in the book. Because a sourcebook has bigger pages and has columns, more has to be written on a manuscript page to end up on a printed page. To give myself an idea of how far along I am, I simply set the page display to have two columns. So I have approximately twelve pages with two columns, and sixteen and a half pages with one column. More stats have to be rolled up for the many NPCs I have, plus more on their background.
Recently, I had a dream, and while the dream did not make much sense, I began to think about it more and more. Finally I decided that it would make a decent story, so I wrote down as much as I could remember from the dream. As I began to write, I developed some of the holes left by the some-what weird nature of the dream.
The story is set in the future where bloodsports are the norm. A large corporation runs pretty much everything including "The Game" (tentative name for the bloodsport). The Game has four teams, Red, Blue, Green, and Purple who fight to gave control of The Grid (also tentative). The matches are timed, and whoever has the most area controlled at the end wins, and also has the option of killing other teams afterward in a massacre. There is a single person on the Black team who is there to disrupt the other teams and has no allegiance or alliance with the teams. The Black team member's identity is secret known only to the corporation. There is a resistance group that is bent on exposing The Game and everything the corporation does. They hack into their system and find out who the Black team member is. They turn her over to their side and during a sabotage operation, she falls a great distance. Six months later, a new member for the Black team emerges who is just as good as the previous one. She has amnesia, but is slowly regaining bits and pieces of her memory.
So it is a fight against this corporation, and that is about all I have for it at the moment. There have been a lot of movies and books about bloodsport games where usually criminals are given the chance to play the game so many times to be free. If you think about it, it is simply a modern re-telling of Roman gladiators. I set out to not make this bloodsport anything like this. This is simply the killing of other human beings for a game. You do not get out of the game unless you die, or become good enough to become the sole Black team member. The Black team member only gets out of the game if they die. It is not a pretty society, and there is a stark dichotomy between the dark nature of the society and the book, and the bright white architecture, and bright colors of the players in The Game.
I did not really plan on writing this story right now, but I really wanted to get as many ideas about it written down before I forget it.
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