It's been a busy and eventful weekend, and I haven't been in a mood to write. So many things have happened in such a short time.

First off, my uncle is in the hospital in an intensive care ward in Oakland. I spent this Memorial day keeping my aunt company for three hours and just talking to her about what happened. They dont' really know what's wrong with him, other than the fact that his lungs are bleeding. They sort of ruled to tuberculosis, but they just don't know.

My aunt said my uncle had a lung ailment for three weeks and was short of breath. She kept telling him to go to the doctor but he didn't want to. On Thursday he practically fainted at work so he agreed to go see his PCP on Friday. The PCP rushed him to the emergency room so he could go to the hospital for tests. On Saturday he was talking but still short of breath so they put him on oxygen and did a TB test, which turned out to be negative.

Despite the oxygen, he still had trouble breathing, so they put him in ICU on Saturday night and stuck tubes down his throat and put him on a respirator. My aunt finally started calling people on Sunday night, because the doctor said people should come now because his lungs were filling up with blood and he was close to renal failure.

My uncle's illness came as such a surprise. He seemed to be in good health, and other than the lung ailment seemed fine. I wished my uncle wasn't so stubborn and had gone to the doctor when he first starting noticing his lung ailment. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't be sitting in the hospital now if he had only gone to the doctor.

My aunt said the timing of my uncle's illness is not that great because he was thinking of retiring from work next year. They even have plans to go on a cruise to Alaska at the end of June, which my aunt doesn't want to cancel yet in case my uncle gets better.

The doctors have absolutely no idea what's wrong with him and they've got him on steroids and strapped to his bed so he doesn't thrash around and yank the tubes out of arms and mouth. My poor uncle. When I was there they decided to keep him sedated to keep him calm to stop him from breathing so hard.

The medical staff are afraid to give him morphine because of his blood pressure and because they haven't ruled out that he might have a heart attack that triggered his lungs to bleed. I think he was thrashing around because he's in a lot of pain. Thankfully one of the nurses decided to give him some vicodin, which I don't think helps his pain at all because my aunt told me my uncle takes vicodin for pain at home for his gout.

My family is flying in from all over the country to see my uncle. I'm going to spend most of my time with them this week and over the weekend. Hopefully the doctors can figure out why my uncle is so sick.

I don't think I'll ever be happy in any job I'm in. I'm convinced of this fact now. Now that I've been at my job for a couple of months, I haven't met anyone who feels very appreciated for what they do. That's sad isn't it? I kind of thought this company would be different, but it's turning out to be more of the same.

Whatever. My fatalist sense tells me that I needed to have this realization so I could get my life back in balance. After all, if I was happy with my job and worked 60-80 hours weeks when would I ever find the time to write?

But I had the realization. I worked hard all week on this important project, and I wasn't thanked, people weren't grateful and at one point someone got mad at me because they thought I did this one thing. Of course I didn't do it, but it was really galling to be treated that way after the way I worked this week. I'm still kind of upset about it, but I know that will pass.

It was really hard this morning to be calm, but I told myself that I couldn't stay mad all day. Staying angry at work just isn't worth the emotion and energy. Short of quitting, there's really nothing I can do about my situation right now.

So I put my headphones one and listened to Jim Lampley the boxing analyst, be the guest host on the Jim Rome show. Once I did that, I felt transported and very faw away from all the dramarama that was going on in my department.

Later on in the day as I mulled the situation around and round in my head, I decided that if wasn't going to be especially appreciated for working hard and staying late then I wasn't going to stay late at work anymore. I'm not going to kill myself to get something done if people at work can't be bothered to say at least thank you for all of your hard work.

I was headed in that direction anyway, and was tired of feeling guilty for wanting to write and work out instead of work. Well, not anymore. Maybe I just needed an external excuse to convince myself, because I wasn't going to be able to make the decision on my own. Well, now the decision has been made and I'm at peace with it. It was meant to happen I think anyway.

Writing, working out and taking care of myself is what I really need to be doing. I have to work as well, but from now on I'm going to be like everyone else and leave when I'm supposed to. It's not like I'm working hard to get a promotion. I'm very content to be doing what I'm doing, and have no wish to move up any more on the corporate ladder.

I need to have time to write and work out and take care of myself. If I don't do it, who will? Certainly not the people at work. It's all good. Writing is what I should be doing, not working like a dog at work.

Today was such a bad, bad, hard day for me. Shocking really, because I didn't expect the kind of siuation to me to ever happen again. But it did, and I'm fine. I can adjust, I'm adaptable, I know how to maximize any situation I'm in to my best advantage.

I sometimes unknowingly pick up people's thoughts or maybe it's just that I'm very, very perceptive and can read situatons really well. Not all the time, but just sometimes. I'd actually forgotten I could do this, but working in an office has reminded me that I have this ability.

I was feeling so jealous last week of that new guy that was getting so much work, and I couldn't figure out why. I mean, I probably make double what me makes so why should it bother me that he was getting alot of work. My workload is heavy enough without wanting more.

But when I talked to the admim assistant for our group, she confided in me that she was feeling some job insecurity because of the new guy who is also a admin assistant like she is. She was afraid that her bosses might like him better, and try to boot her out. Poor kid, and she really is a young twenty something kid.

I think I was picking up the admin assistant's feelings and thoughts, and thinking they were my own. At least now I know why I was having those feelngs.

I wish I was better at shielding my mind but I'm not. It takes me awhile to figure out that I may just be picking up someone else's thoughts, but once I do I know how to rid myself of the other person so to speak. I have enough tools, have taken enough seminars, and have enough books to quickly remove thoughts and feelings that aren't my own from my head.

When I was younger it used to be really bad. I couldn't look at crippled people or people with obvious physical deformities without tapping into their pain, sadness and anger. I still remember that time I couldn't go near the Vietnam Memorial in DC because I was picking up way too many sad, sad, and painful thoughts from other people.

I have an urge to go to New York to see the 9/11 site, but I know in my heart I probably physically couldn't go near the place witout freaking out.

I wish my friend Amy was still alive. I have perceptions but I can't analyze them. I used to tell Amy about the perceptions I was having up, and she was able tap into my perceptions and analyze them so they made sense. Amy said I could analyze them if I wanted do, but I just wasn't used to doing it because she said I ignored them most of the time until they started to infringe on my own mental space.

Amy was always telling me I need to protect myself more, and learn to put up a barrier between myself and other's people thoughts and feelings. Amy said she would literally go insane if she picked up perceptions the way I did.

But I don't how to turn them off because I don't even know how I get them. I just get them. It's an inner knowing. Amy was lucky because her perceptions took the form of images in her mind. Mine come as thoughts in my head, whether their mine or somebody else's.

I'm reading over this post, and I know I'm starting to sound like a science fiction character in one of Octavia Butler's books. Most of her books are about people who have various forms of intuition. I wonder if she's an intuitive.

At least it's not that bad for me. I met a woman in college who could literally tell when things were going to happen. She kept her ability very secret, and I only found out about it because I tapped into her once and asked her about it. She said she never shared her ability with anyone because it was just too dangerous for her, even though she had learned to turn it off. She said she could pass someone by and know whether they were going to die the next moment. She hated it and feared her own powers.

I have some tapes that are supposed to harmonize your brain patterns, and I've been listening to them to help me from picking perceptions up. I'm thinking that maybe if my brain waves were more in harmony, I wouldn't be so vulnerable to other people's thoughts and feelings. It seems be working right now anway. The tapes are also great for relaxing so maybe I feel better because I'm less stressed.

Maybe working long hours at work is starting to pay off. I'm off to North Carolina in June for a 3-day seminar. I love travelling to different states, even if it's just for business. I get to stay in a hotel, rack up mileage on my airline cards, eat out, and schmooze with other people.

I hope I'll have the chance to sightsee but I doubt it. The seminar starts Sunday and ends Tuesday afteroon. I hear Raleigh, North Carolina is a nice place, and I'll be staying at the Washington Duke Inn & Golf Club, which is a Four-Diamond hotel nestled in 300 acres of tall pines and hardwoods and located on the campus of Duke University.

All I know about Duke is that they've got a consistently well-run college basketball team, from my memories of my March madness gambling ventures.

Then in July, I fly down to LA for a conference. It will be a one day trip, flying in the morning and coming back at night. But at least I'm travelling, and that to me is a good thing.