I've Been Downhearted Baby

In states that use lethal injection, prisons use potassium chloride to stop the heart. Potassium is necessary to keep muscles functioning, but too much interrupts the heart, causing cardiac arrest. My general practioner told me that last bit of information before I found out my blood potassium level this month, which was unexpectedly and dangerously high. So high that I'm on additional medication that binds with potassium in my kidneys to flush it out, that my kidney function has decreased again, and that I've been eating celery, rice and apples and avoiding broccoli, cheese and potatoes (boy do I miss potatoes). And if diet and drug therapy doesn't work, then, well, I'd rather not like to think about it.

I've been more pensive in this last month. The girl's gone, my health is shot to hell, depending on the health situation, the money might be gone and I might have to go back to a job that is a soul sucking vortex of misery. Oh yeah, and my Xbox finally died. If this happened to a fictional character, this would be so over the top that you would be unable to suspend your disbelief.

If you had an inclination toward a higher authority, or a belief that this existence is but a single aspect fo a greater existence, then I guess it would be during times like these that you would find religion. I'm intelligent, creative, somewhat funny, and kind to animals, so there has to be a purpose for all these bad things happening--enlightment perhaps, finding God, etc. Otherwise, life would be such a waste, chaos, wouldn't it?

But even after all this navel gazing, I've found that religion is not my path. The universe is too complex and too quirky to be designed by a single entity (I know it sounds counter-intuitive to you intelligent design folks--gosh if it is complex it must be designed. But engineers strive to design things as simple as possible while providing the most function, not as complex as possible. If an engineering student designed the eye, where the image is turned upside down by the time it reaches the retina and our mind is meant translate that upside down image as rightside up, that student would be flunked).

Unfortunately, I still don't know what the deal with life is. I mean, theoretically, I could literallyhave a heart attack at any time, and thus each day could be my last. And yet I've had no insights. The only event that has resonated with me since I found out about this high potassium is that dream where I saw the Milky Way.

In the meantime, I had to take a break from writing (not only do I have dangerously high blood potassium, I have a vicious cold I'm only beginning to get over). Things seem stuck.