Wow, it's been 7 months since I posted last.  A lot has happened since then.  I've done about a dozen conventions.  The company who did three very lucrative sister conventions in Dallas got sold to a Canadian company, who has gone and mucked it all up (doubled vendor fees, among other things), so I've lost those three events.  I also didn't make it into my biggest convention this year - it would've been my 10th year.  I wouldn't be so sore about it except they changed their entrance requirements without telling anyone in advance.  There's an event in November that I have done for more than 10 years, that I'm not doing, because there's another one that's about 25% better in terms of sales that I'm doing instead.  Can't find someone to work the other event for me.

So I've been picking up other events.  I got into a big (relatively; it just opened this year but apparently all the dealers went home very happy, and the people running it know what they're doing) convention in Pensacola, so unless I get a job that doesn't let me have vacation around then, I'll be doing that and visiting family and friends at the same time.  There's another I just got in on in February in Dallas, which makes up for one of the events lost to the Canadian company, and probably another in Houston in May that might make up for a second.  And so on.

Going after some tech-related jobs at a company for whom two of my friends work; the company is willing to hire people with a bachelor's degree in anything, and who also pass an IQ test, and train them.  Salary, benefits, good company culture, the whole shebang.  Fingers crossed.

Halfway home from Oklahoma in the middle of July, my left foot exploded in pain.  I gritted my teeth and worked the clutch pedal with my heel the rest of the way home.  There has been a 2-month-plus saga of remissions and relapses, a podiatrist who left his practice in the middle of my treatment, me having to ask my housemates for help with basic things like doing laundry and getting groceries out of the car, crutches, painkillers, side effects, sleepless nights, exhaustion, watering my garden and pots while shuffling around on my hands and knees (with knee pads), finding a different car (thanks Dad! Could not have done it without you!), etc etc.

There was no injury associated with this and it's pretty obviously nerve pain (felt like my entire arch was on fire).  Possibly sciatic in origin; my only real relief was to either take hydrocodone and go to bed (I know the internet says regular painkillers don't work on nerve pain, but I guess that stuff just makes me happy enough that I don't care?), or wiggle my butt / back around until I got in just the right position... and then the pain would vanish.  Took me awhile to figure that out.  Move, even just tensing muscles in preparation for sitting up from slouching in a chair, and the pain would come back.

A new podiatrist showed up at the office, and I was probably the second or third patient she saw on her very first day.  She's nice, I like her, and she's proactive.  She gave me a shot of something (alcohol?) directly into a nerve center on the bottom of my foot.  The only two good things I can say about it are that 1) it was short and 2) it seems to be working.  I cussed with increasing volume and then just lost it and screamed; I think the closest I've gotten to that level of pain was when I tripped on the stairs and drove the nerve in my elbow down on the sharp end of a wooden banister.

Being lamed for more than 2 months appears to have activated my northern European stockpiling genes - I think my grocery bills have been double what they usually are.  There were plenty of times when the slog from the car on crutches just to get inside the store to where the electric carts are was exhausting.  Walking at normal speed on crutches is the caloric equivalent of sprinting, I think.

And I will only mention in passing the incompetent moron nurse at my PCP's office who did not understand the criteria or procedure for issuing a handicap parking tag, causing me to do an entire convention without access to handicap parking.  It was a nightmare.  When my first podiatrist said he would give me a handicap tag when I mentioned it, I could've hugged him.  It's the only thing that has made it remotely possible for me to go to the grocery store and do conventions (don't even get me started on the jackholes who park in handicap parking without a permit, nor on the numerous businesses who have only the minimum number of handicap spots required by law, which is almost never enough).

Like I said, I think the shot is working (I hope so, because going back for another one is too horrible to contemplate for long), and I'm also trying to remember to incorporate some hamstring / glute stretches into my daily routine, in case it is sciatica and it's the kind that can be fixed by loosening muscles.

Um

Talked to my dad earlier this evening; he'd had a transient ischemic attack after being off aspirin for 3 weeks.  Still trying to process this, but I have one request:

Assume another 20 years of life, at least.  Assume survival and thriving.  Any time you are talking to him, or even to someone who talks to him, whether it's over the phone or in person or even via text, assume these things.  Believe it and let that belief saturate everything you say.  I'm not advocating overdoing things, or grandiose posturing, or ignoring risk factors or treatment options, or ignoring planning (heck, I ride a motorcycle, I've done some planning in the event of my untimely demise, and I'm only in my mid-30's).  Not in the slightest.  Just... assume health the way you assume that technologically simple thing you've had for decades is going to keep on working.  Know it the way you know the sun is going to rise tomorrow, the way you know that it's almost spring and it will get gradually warmer.  Find a metaphor that works for you and believe it.

I ask this because, having studied neuro-linguistic programming and associated things for the past 5 years, I know that subtle word choice - what tense you choose amongst the dozens (I don't know what the real number is) available for a given verb - can have a positive effect on people.  And here's the thing - only 10% of our communication is in just the words.  The rest of it is pitch, volume, timbre, timing, tempo, all the myriad facial expressions no matter how minute, what we do with our eyes, all the gross-motor stuff we do with our body, and even our clothes and haircuts.  And all that is affected by what you believe, whether you realize it consciously or not.  

My business partner, who is getting paid to help people using everything we've learned, can have a noticeable - as in noticeable to a third party - effect on his clients in the space of an hour.  In 6 months to a year's worth of weekly meetings, his clients' lives have turned around - they are successful in business, all their relationships are strengthened, they're living the lives they really want to live.

More than half of what he does is with the other 90% of our communication channels.  The non-verbals are vital.  Remember that on the phone, everything you do with your voice (and by extension, your upper body posture) that's not the words themselves can be heard.  So make your non-verbals convey, "you're going to be around for a good long while."  Assume life.  There's another route to this if the one I described doesn't make sense yet, and it's really easy:  compassion.  Not the grieving type of compassion.  Just the being-present kind of joyful compassion.