Today brings us to day 7 of Blogtober! I can’t believe we are already one week as of today into this challenge. I am not sure how far I will go this year; I remember last year consisted of a lot of catch up. So far I have been proactive in my writing and writing everything the day before and publishing on the correct day of the challenge so that I stayed on time with it. Yesterday I was so tired after work so yesterday me left my current self a lot of writing to do. But that’s okay!

I have more energy today for some reason at 10pm then I have in a few days. It is weird considering last night I forgot to use my cpap sleep apnea machine, so my quality of sleep was rather low, but I did get a lot more sleep because I did a partial shift at work today. I was supposed to have today off and spend the day with Diego, however one of his coworkers tested positive for COVID-19 so he didn’t want to be a carrier and transmit it to me. Now I wouldn’t have thought much of it except I still live with my parents who are in their sixties and aren’t in the best health. So God forbid Diego or I got it, it could be deadly to them. So we are keeping our distance the next few days as long as he doesn’t show symptoms, we will hang out next week.

Since I couldn’t see Diego today, I happened to look at open shifts on the schedule and I took a four hour shift. This allowed me to sleep in til noon and do some grocery shopping, get ready for work, and go to the store for some vape juice. I have also decided that I am gonna try to quit smoking. Like nicotine cessation products, vape juice has an amount of milligrams per container of vape juice. Standard is 3mg. Then it goes 6, 9, and 12. Anything over that brings you into the salt nic world which I know nothing about besides the fact that salt nicotine is highly concentrated and gives you more of a nicotine high.

I personally smoke 12 nic. Which is the high end for regular vape juice. I wasn’t always this way. I barely smoked a tank of vape juice over the course of 3 days with 3mg nic level. After 4 years of constant chain smoking, here we are. So today I asked for a 6 nic level vape juice. I can’t say I won’t chain smoke this, but surely enough the 12 mg of nicotine in my system will subside and I will get used to the 6. Then I will go down to a 3 and then to a 0. Yes they make vape juice with 0 nicotine; I guess some people like the vape clouds. But at least then it should be easy to quit altogether from a zero.

I’ll be honest, I don’t really want to quit smoking, but I am mostly quitting because it’s expensive. I don’t care about living a long time, I don’t care about the health hazards of vaping, I just can’t afford the habit. That’s also why I mostly chose to refrain from weed and alcohol now; it’s too expensive!

I was reflecting on how blessed I truly am today and for the past few days really. When I pray with Diego before we eat dinner, I always ask God to bless and provide Diego, his family, my family, Poncho, and myself with food, shelter, water, income, and our health and whatever way or form those blessings will come. I was looking at Facebook today and saw a picture of an infant with sutures all over his belly and with tubes everywhere and the parents were asking for prayers since he had a liver transplant but he has stopped breathing twice since then and it’s been a couple weeks. So far his transplant is taking well, but there are still concerns.

My heart broke for their family because I couldn’t fathom the amount of stress and financial burden they may be facing, especially if they have other children. Now I may not be the healthiest person in the world and have some medical issues, but I am not fighting for my life in the ICU right now and I thank God everyday for that. My parents are in decent health and my sister, too. Diego and his family are healthy-ish overall.

I may be bipolar and although it gets to me at times, for the most part as of since I really quit drinking and smoking weed back in April, I feel pretty good. I still go through mood swings and rapid cycling, but at the moment I feel pretty stable on my medication. I don’t feel apathetic and dead inside like I’m on too many medications and I’m not on too little either. I have been drawing a lot lately and also blogging more which I think are two very effective outlets for me and are good coping mechanisms.

Well, I think that’s it for me. Just saying I feel very fortunate in my life and those closest to me. Hug the ones you love a little tighter tonight because you are not always guaranteed tomorrow.

Much love,

Dani