Saturday, February 25, 2012

Frustrations and Philosophy

Last night, I went to bed just after 11pm. I cannot remember the last time I went to bed before 1am, let alone around 11pm. This is a sad thing...I was utterly frustrated with my body. I developed a rock-like stomachache just after lunch, so around 1pm yesterday afternoon. It was frustrating, but I could work through it enough to complete my seminar. When I got home in the evening, however, I found it hard to sit in my desk chair, so I camped out on my left side on the floor-lying on my left side usually helps relieve things when my stomach hurts. It helped, but not enough, and I guess lying down confused my body enough so that it kept trying to fall asleep. Eventually I gave up, put on my pjs and went to bed. I have really got to stop lying down on my back and falling into a half-asleep state as it makes for messed up dreams and wasted time...but its that "oh, I'll just listen until I finish this song on my ipod..." routine.

Sleeping cured the original stomach issue, although there was a brief resurgence of stomach pain for about half an hour around 4:30 or so. I think it was the hot chocolate that I had...made with dairy. Dairy is a frustrating thing...somedays, I can have hot chocolate and be totally fine, other days, it causes my stomach to swell almost instantly and causes pain. It only seems to happen with milk, which I guess is a blessing. I don't usually drink that much milk anymore, especially now that I have started using unsweetened almond milk on my morning (or anytime of day...) cereal. I was certainly berating myself for not doing anything productive yesterday evening. And I'm talking NOTHING productive. All I did was lie down on my left side, and close my eyes.

From today until wednesday, I am going to be on philosophy overdrive! I have a Philosophy of Music midterm exam on monday, and then I have a presentation for Philosophy of Music on wednesday. I chose to present on Leonard Bernstein's series of lectures at Harvard University entitled "The Unanswered Question" (a play on the work by Charles Ives titled 'The Unanswered Question'...one of the works that we studied in 20th century Music last semester). Thankfully, Bernstein is much easier to understand than many of the other philosophers we have studied. I think I am overthinking things in the presentation, or at least in interpreting Bernstein...it seems to be quite clearly laid out in his main points and arguments, but I keep thinking there must be something more. That it is 'too good to be true'. Overthinking is definitely one of my struggles!

For part of the afternoon, my breathing was pretty bad, but it's much better now. It was frustrating that just making my bed seemed to be doing it. Note that this is NOT the typical breathing-hard that you might get if you were working out. Trust me, I know. This is very different...and very frustrating.

Well, I think I shall practice now, given that I did not practice yesterday (for which I did berate myself a bit...or rather, I berated myself for obviously eating wrong/too much/something and causing my stomach such grief). Trouble is, there is often not a clear-cut rhyme or reason to what my stomach will/will not accept on any given day. Pretty much the only foods that have stayed 100% completely acceptable are dry plain cheerios, oatmeal without milk and other basic dry, bland foods. It bothers me...a lot!

No comments:

Post a Comment