Time Out

Negativity

 I realise I've crashed below the negative threshold AGAIN and can't seem to get out of it. I know I need to be more upbeat. Having read the last few blogs, with one or 2 exceptions they have been very maudlin and depressing; cynical and nasty at worst. I've named people who get up my nose or who I have some beef with, and I got told off.

Yeah yeah yeah...

I've been getting stuck on current politics and personalities from my past. 

One of the things with FTD is a total failure to plan for the future. It drives J nuts - at least she knows that it's not really my fault now. I guess that's why I'm always looking to the past. Every morning I'm reminded of something from my past - a person or a particular job or project I was doing. I really get stuck on it  - like a curse. I relive it as though it's a video playing in my mind, and it repeats on the really niggly stuff that grates. I've always had this to an extent it's just that it is turned up to 11 now.

(Written a day later) It's difficult to get myself out of the mire when this is going on. But at present I seem to have emerged from it - head up, looking around and breathing in the air. 

It's pretty good really. I hope I stay here for as long as I can.

One thing about FTD that we've only recently found out (J saw it on a Rare Dementia Support Q&A session) is that the Temporal Lobe isn't just responsible for 'ABC' language, but all language: the language of society, the language of decorum. 

In other words all the social mores that were learned from being a toddler onwards will diminish. You don't understand that people could be upset at the wider ramifications of a single action or utterance; that by calling someone by name a certain thing, you will upset people and you and your partner may be excluded socially.

Difficult one for me because with a lot of people I don't really care that much if I never see them again. However, J does, and can see the harm it will do. 

Amplify this over a few years and you've ostracised everyone. 

Moods

My mood fluctuates between angry at the world and various individuals, to one of relative calm, or my version of it at least.

It happens that I wake up feeling okay every day but I can then fall into the dark side at the drop of a hat. 

I'm trying to analyse what sets me off. It doesn't appear to be alcohol or sleep-related, so I'm still in the dark as to what the trigger or triggers might be.

Break

Fascinating. Simply fascinating.

I'm going to take a break for a while until I've got something to say. This blog has gone somewhat off-piste from it's noble beginnings (!) so I'll be doing fewer posts but hopefully better ones, targeted towards living with FTD.

Ta ta, as they say.

Executive functions offline

 Sales Prevention Officer

So here we are in BST 2022. It's always a shock to the system for most of us, for the first few days, as our bodies adjust to getting up an hour earlier. I don't know why it's such a big deal but it is. I for one feel no compunction to do anything except ignore people asking me to do stuff. While last week I was all get up and go and task-central this week will be one of reading and quietness.

"I have a large crack in my threshold stone." I couldn't care less.

"We would like you to quote for reinstating a bay window." Where are you? "E17." No.

"We are wishing to purchase a property and were wondering if..." No.

"Can you...?" No.

So this is a small part of running a small business - marketing, managing, logistics, the job itself and ultimately sales prevention. It's ultimately why I'm quitting. 

I can find myriad reasons why I won't be attending to a broken paving stone or cracked paint or to and fro with a customer for weeks while having to justify a fair price for something few people have any idea what's entailed in creating (a bespoke product costing £1,500 in raw materials before we even start carving) yet I'm apparently expensive, while the same customer is prepared to pay 10s of thousands for poorly engineered bifold doors or polluting cruises in the Sargasso sea. 

I don't get it myself.

Zen and the art of bugger all

I guess this is down to the old Executive Function thing of FTD. (Nothing to do with being a miserable sod!) I'm told I have to be kind to myself and not expect too much. So this morning I've bought myself a water filter, a present for my sister's birthday (I asked her and ordered it online so it was no effort at all) read the parts of the paper I wanted to read (decreasing by the week) and am trying to get my head round some statue thing we've got on the go. Can't bring myself to do anything about it though.

This latter is the sort of thing people do in a coffee break at work. On days like today I get nowhere fast - it takes me all day to accomplish almost bugger all. 

I actually feel relatively normal. My head's a little foggy but my typing is okay, it's just that this is all I'm capable of. 

And you're probably thinking, why bother?

The Most Boring Place I ever Worked

People are often surprised when I tell them, but after leaving a company called Chorion (a rights-owning company) I temped for a bit before I did my photography course back in 2006. 

I was a PA (believe it or not) to a very nice guy (the only decent boss I ever had outside of masonry) at the Discovery Channel. He was responsible for something I've completely forgotten about.

Anyway, a lot of people worked doing the networking for the various channels. Their job was scheduling all the programmes for each channel. Some days the networking people would just do 'Fishing Day' and alternate say 2 different series for 24 hours. Or 'Gun Porn Day' where some psychopathic ex-special forces Yank wanks on about the development of bullets designed not to kill but to maim. The schedulers were guided by charts and some fairly sound data, but it wasn't rocket science by any means. And the people working on it weren't the brightest bulbs in the box.

2 women used to sit opposite me. One would always be late and when she arrived the pair of them would discuss yesterday's episode of Home and Away (great programme by the way). It would last longer than the programme itself. Aside from this, on the average day I had about 20 minutes of work to do. 

There was nothing to do, but at least it was a zero-stress environment. 

One time I was so bored we had some flat-packed office furniture arrive. Rather than wait for the men in blue overalls to arrive and assemble it I found a screwdriver and did it myself for something to do. One executive said "Gosh Geraint, you're wasted in TV!" She meant it as well.

Unfortunately I think I drove myself nuts there, along with maybe some other people. 

Definitely some other people.

How did you get on at the office dear?

They asked me to leave on the last day before Xmas! They must have hated me! 🤣🤣🤣

Actually, being fired or sacked or made redundant has been one of the great blessings of my working life. I've always found better work opportunities after those events. I learned that if you don't fit in then don't try to detain yourself in that workplace - it ain't ever gonna happen. 

I came back to masonry to tide myself over (much less awful) and photography, just as the rest of the world decided to do it too.

Masonry it was then!

Maybe with my daily 20 minute attention span I could get a job back on The Discovery Channel? 

Oh shush!

 Sills

Crashed yesterday at around 3.30. Just ran out of gas. Hung around for a bit and then went to bed at 8.30pm.  EIGHT THIRTY!!! I slept till 6.30am - so I got about 9 hours sleep. I've been really busy this week for a demented (such as I am). Yesterday I cut out some checks in the sills where they've moved and split and inserted some stainless steel and epoxy-resined them in. I spun them back flush and also put some filler over the sills where it had degraded. Then at the end I realised I'd run out of juice and had been faffing for the last hour achieving nothing. 

This is how it felt when I was working all the time - a decreasing amount of time where I was useful, and time when I achieved nothing. It's really down to about 6 hours now. And even those useful hours are 50 - 70% as productive as I used to be.

I'm really tired now, and have very little tolerance for anything. I took myself away to have breakfast on my own. Too many thorny thoughts in my head - too many jagged lines emanating from my headage.

In fact, I told J and X that they should stay away from me while I did stuff. Loads of stuff rattling round in my head, winding me up. I could have gone off at any time, like a bomb. I've heard other people with dementia needing quiet spaces before and after giving a speech for example. I don't know why they do in particular, but with me it's for everyones' sake

At the (literal) end of the day, a lot achieved really and doing stuff around the house is fulfilling, although you are then aware of the myriad other jobs that need doing.

It's enough to make you depressed...

Dungeonless and Dragonless

One of our Monday team is out for the next few weeks working crazy hard on a promotion, so we only have 2 possible Mondays until late April 25th when he comes back, for sessions. I'm also not DMing next Sunday. This is just as well as I have no capacity for reading or taking in D&D stuff. I'm slightly worried this may be permanent. I hope to hell it isn't as this would be a very big part of my life gone. 

I'm a bit of a worrier you see.

So this Sunday I'm playing. I'm happy to play and I reckon I'm pretty good. I like to think also my characters are quite different from each other. 

• Quiet Ranger hiding invisibly in the shadows
• Intellectual snob Wizard who wished he'd been a necromancer
• Dandy Errol Flynn type buccaneer/pirate Swashbuckler Rogue
• Tiefling Paladin with zero social skills who's assumed the identity of her dead best friend 

Should be a dwarf next. Or a Gnome. I have a brilliant Gnomish Wizard NPC I've created for the Monday campaign who speaks at a million miles an hour and answers all his own questions. 

Gnomes rock.

Breakfast

We're sorry for a break in your breakfast...

Breakfast is back online after a brief period of noise, which required me to leave the kitchen with a fake smile on my face, to the dining room where I perpetuated a great sulk. I'm happy to say that this was thankfully a brief period and now a Zen-like ambience has resumed where coffee, toast and newspaper consumption is the order of the day.

As you were.

Arthur English

 Noise of female

I'm very noise-sensitive today. I couldn't do breakfast at all. Too much jaw-jaw. I just took myself off and wrote a long email to an old friend I'd recently got back in contact with, who lives in Sydney, Oz. He's a mason too and still going at 65.

It's good to be in contact with old friends and with modern communications the world seems a little smaller, and the people you want to call just a stone's throw away. It's the best thing about the 21st Century. So far.

There's now the huge dull throb of whatever it is they're using to build whatever it is they're building at the hospital behind us. It's awful. Goes through to the bones. The house feels it too, as it shakes away like an old auntie at a wedding party.

My noise-cancelling headphones aren't quite as effective as I'd like. Perhaps the next generation will be world-cancelling headphones. 

I guess they'd be more like a helmet though.

The End

J has told me not to read the papers so much as I get so wound up with it all. My brain churns it around - over and over and over like hot coals in a tumble dryer. I've always had this but it seems to be worse now with FTD.

It does seem like end-times at the moment. 

• The environment. 
• War in Europe (we were told this would never happen again after WW2 but for some reason people don't count what happened in the former Yugoslavia.) 
• China. 
• Price of fossil fuels
• Everything else.

And there are still people who are so far down the rabbit-hole they think we're the bad guys.

At least in the west we have the luxury of thinking we're the bad guys. You don't have the option of questioning the state in Russia or China without serious repercussions. 

Activities for the demented

Today I mowed the lawn for the first time in months (maybe years). It was quite easy. Now we can see the dog poos too. I also cleaned the patio which was still covered in Saharan dust after that weird rain a week or 2 ago. Looks better.

Geraint Davies, earlier today.

I am also going to clean the house as J's mother who is also called J (saves a lot of fuss and bother - I'm thinking of changing my name to J as well) is coming to stay with us. So I'll do that on Thursday as the tides of chaos will destroy my good work if it's done today.

And I need to sort out the window sill on the bay. It's actually not a single sill but a bunch of protruding bricks covered in sand and cement. Pretty crap for the Edwardians. I guess we were going downhill at that stage after the high-standards of the Victorians.

Aren't you glad you read all this? But it is important for us demented ones to have shit to do otherwise we atrophy much more quickly. A few tasks every day. This is why a lot of us get volunteering work or keep going as long as we can, reducing our hours as we progress.

The Rick Wakeman of Dungeons and Dragons

As the masterful prog keyboard wizard himself played 2 keyboards simultaneously, I have been running 2 D&D campaigns - not quite simultaneously - but 2 in one week. That's quite a challenge.

We're keeping the Sunday group small and manageable as things can get quite noisy and out of hand with more than 5 players. This group is focused and I am enjoying running the games very much. I'm really looking forward to Sunday. 

It's great to have these things in the diary that punctuate our week - rather like booking holidays or weekends away. It gives us hope.

An Apology

Having been told off by J for naming names and the possible repercussions thereof, I have now turned over a new leaf with a more diplomatic and considered approach to blog writing.

I tried to explain that should anyone come to the door with bad intentions I have first-rate weaponry and a foolproof method of body disposal. Unfortunately, this did little to assuage her. 

No pleasing some people.

You shall not pass!

Help, I'm becoming Toby Young

 One thing about FTD is that you end up with no friends as you piss everybody off and when you die no one comes to your funeral. With my last couple of blog posts this aspect of the disease is coming more to fore. I find it hard to not fixate on certain people and I care less about what others think - not that I care nothing - it's that I don't understand immediately why something is offensive or how it could be hurtful.

So I deleted certain content about one particular person who I'd begun to hate as it's totally counterproductive to this blog and what its original intention was, which was to help people understand my neurological condition.

Jacqui and I originally had a name of the dementia - we called it Piers (as I dislike both Pierses Morgan and Corbyn, it made sense) and it enabled us to laugh about it, making the distinction between 'me' and 'it'.

Recently it appears that Piers is trying to dominate Geraint. This has been pointed out to me in no uncertain terms by J. 

Now I get it. Henceforth I'll make a concerted effort to look for the signs and try and head him off at the pass, Gandalf-style.

Ya Balrog bastard!

This is the reality of FTD. It's the nasty vicious side of the disease; the disappointing sequel without the laughs. 

I'm not looking forward to this or the effect it has on those around me. I have to try my utmost to recognise the signs and develop coping strategies. 

It's getting difficult.

Pick's Disease or Semantic Variant?

When we received the diagnosis back in December 2020 it was FTD Semantic Variant with a little bit of Frontal Lobe degradation. I now believe it's the opposite way round.

Pick's Disease as it used to be known, or Behavioural Variant (FTD BV) is when the Frontal Lobe which controls behaviour shows Pick Bodies and Pick Cells. The long and the short of it is that behaviour-wise it  manifests as apathy but also in impulsiveness and disinhibition.

It's the most common after Alzheimer's, which is a little bit disappointing as I thought I belonged to a more exclusive club...

The SV part is characterised by a loss of semantic understanding. I've mentioned before that if you ask me a point blank question like "What have you been doing this last week?" I stall - I can't think. I also grasp at certain words, but that aspect doesn't seem to have worsened in the last year.

For example yesterday, I ran a 4-hour long D&D session and played the parts of the characters. And then I came home and when I'm no longer in the zone I fire off a blog entry I think is really good and end up naming names and saying outrageous stuff and pissing off people I care about, as well as presumably those I don't.

I just need to retain a level of mindfulness about the here and now. Ask how my words could backfire. I know to others it's obvious, but it's getting less and less obvious to yours truly.

Asshole

My Behaviour

I met an old acquaintance at a party a while back. God it was a difficult night. So many coked/pissed-up people. It was in the West End. Coke is super popular everywhere these days. It’s a total bore. People on coke are the biggest assholes ever. There’s an arsehole-osity about every drug, but coke is the worst. It turns any decent person into the biggest twat ever, full of themselves and bursting with stupidity and obnoxiousness. 

It was a difficult night of bizarre human behaviour and of enforced interaction with said humans. 

I had to leave the place several times due to noise and general busyness of humans. One woman recognising I was mad (as I ran out shouting) kindly asked me if I was okay. That is the first time that's happened.

I met lots of people from my dim and distant past. One was Xxxx. 

Our relationship had been one of falling in and and out with each other all our lives. We’d clearly had enough of each other by this point as we aren’t in touch nor want to be. I told him in some form of confession, that my frontal lobe had probably never been all that and that I’d never really known how to behave, hence the huge drunken faux pas, the devil’s advocate in me, and other non-normal behaviour. He seemed to concer, as though he’d always realised and it seemed like some kind of understanding or nod of acceptance.

Don’t get me wrong. I know him so well and know all his tricks. But I’m assuming he knows mine so that’s fine. It was an interesting culmination of our acquaintance and mutually intimate knowledge of each other.

It was a nice way to part company.

No News

I’m no longer allowed (J says!) to read the news. The Frontal Lobe being what it is I get so wound up with things - things from my dim and distant past, or something I read in the papers, particularly  about the current situation. Stuff just boils over in me and she’s worried it will get me into trouble.

To be honest I care less these days, hence my previous post. Thing is I think these arseholes should be called out. But I take on board what she says too.

It’s a fine line writing a blog while trying to be confessional, warts ‘n all, and also being economical with all the truth. It affects other people that you care about.

As Phillip Roth said, ‘When a family produces a writer, that family is finished.’ It certainly was in his case. I want to be that, but I know I can't be.

I think there's a level of cruelty needed to be truly honest.

Return to Contentment

Yesterday I ran a game at The Willoughby. It was an old easy-to-run vanilla dungeon. I kept the numbers small and was very strict about who the players were. We started at 2 and finished at 6.45pm. I had a good time and so did everyone else. It was a pleasure to DM and it played really well.

I think we were all due a good fun session as we were all in a parlous state in one form or another.

And now the weather…

Today it’s beautiful out there. Frosty and a blue sky. 

I’m really affected by the weather and I love cold frosty mornings. They’re just beautiful and lift my spirits. 

Miserable, wet cold mornings mean working outside and perpetual cold and misery. Work sucks.

Bright mid-summer mornings give me a shiver down the spine as it’s exams and I haven’t revised!

Gloomy dark mornings mean the 1970s (Winter of Discontent power cuts etc) which is also Stoberry Junior School - a pretty happy time for me. Though not the Infants School. No. That was hell. That’s a sunny memory.

I don’t know if anyone else equates weather quite like this.

Ghastly.

Miserable Bastard

Annie get yer gun

My friend Annie is an excellent photographer and great businessperson. We live in close proximity but hadn’t seen each other since lockdown. We met up for a coffee and I cheekily asked her if she would put my blog site on her Facebook feed to her 1700-odd followers/friends.

My intention was quite selfish really. I want to get my blog out and get the numbers up. 

The reaction I got wasn’t what I expected. 

I wanted them to say how hilarious and brilliant it was. No.

People were very caring and kind. And also the numbers were quite small. 

I think part of the problem was the post they first hit on was the one previous to this, and it’s probably one of the least good (crap in other words) posts I’ve written.

I guess the other problem was people (myself included) don’t want to read stuff that will bring them down.

So in answer to the lovely compliments, I can provide the following reality check…

Sensitivity

Brave. No. I’m quite cowardly. Although when it comes down to it, instead of being a dribbling retard on a commode, give me a bullet to the head any day.

Journey Makes it sound like a noble cowboy on horseback wandering towards the sunset, like Alan Ladd at the end of Shane. It’s very romantic but the reality it’s more of piss-up in the wind.

Generous. Well, I buy my rounds and I’ll help people just as I would like to think they would help me. But in this context I think generous is the wrong word. I don’t think I’m being generous  - in fact I think calling me generous is being very generous indeed! 

I’m doing a blog as I’m quite good at writing, I find it easy, and it gives me something to do when I’m not working. Also, I don’t feel after my diagnosis I have anything to lose really, and any adulation is gratefully received. 

Quite selfish really.

Sorry to anybody reading this. But my diagnosis doesn’t make my motives or persona more noble. It’s just a thing I have and I write about it. I’m no better than you. Unless your name is Xxxxxx Xxxxxx..

Go away!

Tired and stressed and I haven't even started

I did loads today. Cleaned the house, laundry, dog-walks, shopping, and now I'm waiting for my D&G buddies to join me for the Monday session.

I'm working tomorrow. It's a job at a church doing set-backs on buttresses. The job was split into 2 parts as they were unsure they've get all the funding in one go.

And then I got this email in the New Year, grandiosely  saying "We have received List B funding". 

So I went and measured up the stones for the B section of the job. I ordered the stones and thought nothing more of it.

I got there on Thursday to meet with the clerk of works and he says I'm doing all of it. No I'm not, I reply, I'm doing section B and I show him the email. 

A or B? Or both?

Ah! 'List B consent' is a type of restoration funding you apply for. It meant they had money for all of it. It was nothing to do with the A and B division of the work.

But the only A and B I was aware of was how the job was divided. It was a case of more information in that email than was needed. It certainly confused me.

Now I'm stressing. I'm not sure how I'm going to get on with this half of the job anyway. I haven't worked for 4 months and I was hoping it would be the last. I'll have to see how this unfit 52 year old body copes with it too. 

I'm going to have to be honest with everyone - especially myself - and take it from there. I can't deal with pressure in the slightest any more. Just as well I'm getting out of the profession.

First day back at work

So it actually went fine. And we got on well. And I'm feeling relatively normal, although I am running round the house quoting cards from Judge Dredd the Boardgame.

"Coddlestocks! Getting frazzled by Judge Death constitutes fair wear and tear!"

"Is not my garbage fine?"

Much better than Marvel. So much better. 

What a prat though, eh?

Anyway, work seemed rather natural and easy. Admittedly it is a straightforward job. J asked me if it would be more regular. I don’t know as yet. Give me 4 -6 days and I’ll be able to tell you. 

The steps in October were like the touch of a wraith. 

But it was good to work again with Fyfe. We got one well, the old stuff came out easily (always a plus) and the new stuff went in easy. 

Let’s see how the week progresses.

Televisual Offal

 Homefront down the Toilet

Many years ago when I was barely a lad, I worked for 2 years at The BBC. It was a funny place. A culture of moaning, appalling pay and even more-appalling hours.

If you've ever seen W1A it's pretty accurate. Well-meaning yet sinisterly insincere types making creative decisions they really weren't qualified to make for programmes that were too awful to watch.

I was there working in 'lifestyle' programming in a pre-internet age. 

As a researcher I used to beg and borrow any product for the show. Product-placement was rarely mentioned but it was rife. After the 'talent' and the cameraman were paid, there was almost nothing left in the budget. My wage in 1999 was £14.5 K/annum. 

This is why the children of the wealthy go into the media: few can afford it or have the connections to go in anywhere other than at the very bottom as a runner. I had saved up money to come to London with and eventually sold my car to keep myself going. It was tough.

At least in the BBC they treated runners better than they did in the private sector. (Shivers...)

The department wanted to expand the 'brand' (which was the latest buzzword) of Home Front. They'd done Home Front in the Garden and now they wanted to do a non-transmittable pilot for a new show.

Our Series Editor, the Cambridge-educated Franny Moyle, had a big meeting with us to impart the great news of the new branch of the brand!

"It's going to be called Home Front in The Kitchen. It's a half hour show, where we design and make a kitchen, then make a meal...in that kitchen!"

Tumbleweed.

Somewhere in the distance a dog howled.

I could just imagine these over-educated Oxbridge types, high on coffee and biscuits, managing to convince themselves the worth of this mediocrity.

I looked around the room, incredulous at such nonsense. Everyone looked resigned and exhausted, albeit partly due to the 80 plus hour weeks some of us were enduring. 

My mate Fergus looked at the floor for the entirety of the speech.

At the end of it, I said to Franny "Can I NOT be involved in Home Front in The Kitchen?" Career-suicide I know, but someone had to say something and that's where yours truly came up trumps.

Makes me laugh to this day.

So the premise is basically welding a design and build show onto a cookery programme. I wonder if a visual metaphor would elucidate further?

Home Front in The Kitchen

So you have the designer doing their bit, then hairy-arsed builders put the cabinets and worktop together, plumb it all in with grease and dirt, then someone cooks a lasagne. 

You could even have one of those wipe cuts or transitions from the plumber's arse to a board full of minced beef to signify the natural blend of the 2 genres. The possibilities are endless.

So they spent £120k of licence fee (possible £160K but here my memory is shaky) on a programme which it was obvious to me and others would never work. They then showed it to a focus group who hated it.

I should be running the country, me.

Time to take the pills...

I'm a plain-speaking man, Mr Herriot

Bored games

A friend was running a complex game Before Covid (BC) and there were up to 6 players at any session. The game was fantastic; everyone loved their characters and the vivid world they inhabited and how both the game and the characters were developing. 

Since coming out of Lockdown there are just 2 of us. The dynamic of the game for us just didn't function; it required more players for it to work and for other players' input. It felt like we were putting more effort  in and getting less out.

I sent an email to the Games Master (GM) to tell him how I/we felt and that it wasn't working for us and why, and that we would still come to the club but do a manageable board game for the evening instead. 

He's a sensitive chap and he's taken it badly. He always wants to be the GM/DM and doesn't really like playing. He often wants us to play games he's invested in, but we don't, and it's difficult. When you play a new system the rulebooks are needed for you to understand the mechanics of the game. Whilst available as PDFs most of us prefer the actual book. Bear in mind each D&D rulebook is around £30. That's a potentially significant investment. And then there's space, which for a lot of gamers is a bit of an issue.

And it takes a long time to learn these systems, which can be incredibly complicated even for experienced gamers.

D&D Manuals

I'm being more truthful to people these days, since my diagnosis. Now I definitely have less time on the planet I've come to the realisation that I should say how I feel.

"I'll get my own as not everyone is buying their rounds"

"I don't enjoy this anymore and I think we should try something else."

Non-emotional, factual expressions. 

When I worked in offices I would have discussions with colleagues and at meetings would express how the group felt, only to find that everyone had taken a step backwards and were staring at their shoes. 

Thanks guys.

Well it's me myself and I and life is very finite, so I am going to tell you what I think. In the past I used to hold onto stuff, being poor at confrontation, and these things would well-up inside of me like a volcano, then burst out like the big bang. I didn't know I was being rude and aggressive, but people told me I was. Nowadays I'm just going to let it out as quickly as appropriate and the results are proving much better for everyone. 

It's taken me 52 years to work this one out.

The Lucid Bit

So I'm feeling really bright and compos mentis at the moment. It's great. I wasn't sure I'd feel this good again. I think it's because I've rested my brain from too much D&D writing! 

Last week I visited my parents. We were having a conversation about wills. We normally have conversations about wills when I visit. They explained everything to me about the money and so forth (I find talking about money so boring) and I understood it. But there was something bugging me. I left the room, just to gather my thoughts. How can I tell them? No. There's no way other than to just tell them straight.

I came back to the table and told them they may outlast me, and there was no point in having this money if I was in a state where I couldn't use or benefit from it. Now this is something no parent ever wants to hear from their child, no matter what their ages. But this is the reality that people in our situation have to acknowledge. This was obviously very difficult for them, but I couldn't see any other way of telling them and it needed to be said. If I hadn't said it it would have been bugging me forever. 

We came to an understanding and everything is fine. I'm so sorry for my parents having to deal with this crap so late in their lives. It sucks. But we all have to accept reality.