Suicide Statistics

November 26th, 2009 Personal

The Toronto SUN recently released a number of stories regarding the TTC and suicide, namely the subway suicide death toll and a TTC train driver’s account of a suicide. There has been quite a bit of chatter on some social media sites regarding the statistics and why they should have, or shouldn’t have been released.

Personally, I’m all for the release of any statistics — particularly ones that relate to suicide, depression and things that are generally (or frequently) left out of the discussion for whatever reason. Often they’re considered taboo within societies and are closely guarded to prevent copycats. I’m on the opposite end of the argument myself, having been suicidal for a number of years previous: The topic does hit close to home.

My argument is that suicidal people don’t need to hear these statistics to know that suicide by bus, train or any other method is viable: We already spend our days thinking of ways of killing ourselves, how it will affect our families, friends and those around us — or worse, concerns about how it won’t have any effect on them. What suicidal people need is more open discussion, thought, and the topic being less taboo so we have outlets and people we can discuss it with, without feeling alone.

Society needs to be social in order to help one another with their problems.
Pretending they don’t exist is no solution, it only allows them to propagate.

Add your comments.
Sobering statistics:

Suicide is the second leading cause of death for Canadians between the ages of 10 and 24

According to a report by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), more men in Ontario committed suicide in the past 10 years than died in car crashes

Halfway, somewhere.

February 16th, 2009 Personal, Projects, RandomTags: Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, Glenn Reynolds, Ice skating, Mental health, Toronto

Halfway, somewhere. The internet and it’s effect on my attention spans & workload.

Overload, is what it comes down to. I’m writing this as I glance down at a book open in front of me: “An army of Davids”, by Glenn Reynolds. Great book — I’m partway through the third chapter and really loving it. Next to that book are two others (God’s Secretaries: the making of the king James bible and God&Empire, if you were so curious to know) while splashed out on my computer screen are 27 different firefox tabs. In the midst a few of them I’m partway through some writings, readings and viewings. In particular I’m halfway through two videos I’m watching while reading a couple of betanews & mental floss articles, auditing my phone bill and my recent paypal transactions.

So, here I am. Writing something different for a change – I contemplated completing any of the above and just decided to say forget it. I wouldn’t complete any specific task without moving on to the next without feeling as if I hadn’t gotten anywhere. And the truth is, I didn’t. See the truth is for the past year or so I’ve been dealing with what I call ‘internet overload’, an extremely (un)rare form of attention deficit disorder. I can’t stay on task and haven’t been able to since business began picking up – my full-time job (Fused Network, which I do love dearly) scaled from sixty to a hundred to twelve hundred clients in a short period of time. Since then, the barrage of emails, phone calls and tasks have left me inundated. The daily deluge, I like to call it – is actually relatively easy to escape. Often I simply ‘turn off’ and disappear for a few hours to the confines of a coffee shop, book or ice skating.

I have learned to cope with it in my own interesting ways. This past fall I took a train ride from Toronto to Vancouver, escaping my reality for a total of three days (And taking in mesmerizing sights) while my awesome-worker-bees took the brunt of most phone calls and emails. Just a few weeks ago I drove from Toronto to California and back. Three weeks in total.

And I’m here again, cleaving to my workload like some high strung sailor in the middle of a hurricane. The ship isn’t going down by any definition but learning to cope is a task. I’ve dug around the internet and tried to remedy the situation by reading (half, I never could complete any) of a million articles on defining tasks & completing them, organizing and structuring life and about halfway through every article I’d take three phone calls, make lunch, do laundry & acquire a company. And then I’d forget about the article only to return to it sometime next week disinterested or far too busy for it.

My task list does dwindle though – during the past week I’ve completed roughly 4 items on my list of 30, got 2/3rds of the way through about five books (Two on PHP & BASH programming and the three aforementioned ones). I cope.

Coping
I often find ‘escaping’ simply the easiest way to cope. While I’m away out of the office I do often at the very least structure my thoughts, compile more thorough & feasible todo lists and make arrangements. It isn’t as though I’m that much of a mess when it comes to things to do — there’s simply far too many of them and far too little of me.

I’ve had a call out for additional positions that we’re attempting to fill at Fused Network, in particular the ‘personal assistant’ one but to this day out of 197+ resume applications I have only had time to audit two of them. Laundry, dishes, and over 110+ support tickets a day, of course, took precedent.

I’m busy planning my next attempt at an escape, admittedly though I don’t get far. I always have my 3g card and blackberry attached at my hip: readily available in the instant that I’m required to be available. This next one will either be to the Philippines (Blackberry rentals aren’t cheap there), Vancouver or maybe another stint in California. I’d like to go some place ’seemingly’ less busy on the outside versus another few days in Chicago where things feel rushed.

I have no doubt that somewhere out there I can find a pill to suddenly generate copious amounts of attention to provide to a single topic or task; But I (for some odd reason) prefer my quickpaced life – I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I wouldn’t mind a nicer view or some sunshine at the moment but having 4,000 tasks keeps me busy, something I’ve always loved.

I need somewhere slow, where I can work fast.

Disconnecting, for now.

February 6th, 2009 Personal, Random

I’m going to spend a few days disconnected from the internet for the most-part, interacting with it at random through input only. I have been finding myself far too inundated with the amount of information I parse through on a daily basis. I am not being left sufficient time for true interaction, peace and reading.

I’ll blog several times during the next few days and obviously won’t disconnect from my responsibilities — just the likes of Twitter and other distraction frenzies. I’m extremely amused at how often I need to disconnect from a world I have created; scary.

I’m dying!

December 16th, 2007 Personal

Well, not quite. But I had to take some Buckley’s earlier today and that was nothing short of a near death experience.
That horrid, disgusting taste lingers in my mouth like vultures circling their already-dead prey.

On another note, I’ve pulled every important muscle in my neck, back & shoulders leaving me to wander around quietly at home like a cripple. I’ve yet to escape to warm, wondrous Florida but a’las, better late than never. For now, work. Or something similar to it shall proceed.

Here’s a few links for today:
Ron Paul
Coffee Drinks Illustrated
Obey
The Sky is Falling
I’ve got whiskers, yes I do. I’ve got whiskers and so do you!

Peace, britches.

What is love, anyways?

November 13th, 2007 Faith, PersonalTags: Faith, love, marriage

Before delving too deep, I’d just like to explain the premise for the topic. Earlier this week I was having a conversation with my father about relationships, marriage & all that jazz (Blues, most of the time).

I was attempting to grasp a few ideas from him regarding marriage primarily. How to choose, whom to choose & what makes a woman marriage worthy, anyways? Given that he’s been in a fairly solid marriage longer than I’ve existed, I thought he would be a prime target for information extraction….

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