this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2024
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Hey Lemmy,

Long story short, I got unlucky. At age 18, I got one of those nasty neurodegenerative diseases that slowly deteriorates the body's nervous system. Now at age 21, after ravaging my vision, bladder control, balance, memory, heart rate, cognition, and sense of touch, it is now taking over my breathing. My breathing simply doesn't work during sleep anymore. It slows down and stops entirely before restarting again. I read that this is likely because the disease finally reached the part of the brainstem that controls breathing, and that if it gets worse, it may be fatal. It would appear that I'm hanging on at 1 HP, and the next attack could be the one that does me in. It's getting uncomfortable knowing that every day is another roll of the dice, because I don't think mine have many sides left.

I want people to know that life was the greatest fucking thing to ever happen to me. I loved it all, even the parts that sucked, just because I got to take it all in. The highs of joy, the lows of sadness, the good, the bad. People will say "Too bad he never got to live a full life," but I say FUCK that! This was fucking incredible! This IS a full life because it's the one I got, and just the chance to experience this universe is so unbelievably goddamn beautiful. You think I'm going to complain when we are basically supercomputers, made up of incomprehensibly complicated microstructures, and we have the technology to experience the richest and most creative worlds other humans have to offer ON TOP of that?? HELL NO! From my perspective, there was nothing, and then there was the most beautiful, intricate, and awe-inspiring light show - incomprehensibly detailed, amazing, and endless. Whoever gave that to me, I just want to say that I fucking love you. Whether it's God, the creator of the simulation, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or mathematical soup, there is no string of words in the English language to describe how grateful I am. How the FUCK did this happen?

I've been writing a lot recently in a note-taking app called Obsidian. I'm using it to record my thoughts about life and the person I was, because I want to share who I was with my family and the world. See, I was always sort of the black sheep in my family. I often kept to myself because I didn't always have the best relationship with them. That was all well and good... until now. I realized that once I die, the essence of my personality will instantly be gone, and my family will only remember the boring, inoffensive outer shell that I presented. But I want them to know the real me, even if I think totally differently than them and even if some differences upset them, because at least then they will know what my actual, genuine feelings were. Because I had a whole lot of them.

I also wanted to share them with my Internet friends and the hundreds of people in my community who enjoy my projects. I think it would be really cool if people could browse my thoughts like a wiki (save for a few personal pages for just my family). Perhaps I could use something like Quartz for the site generation and GitHub Pages for hosting? I'd prefer if it didn't incur cost. As for the notes for my family, I guess I could put them on a USB stick? The only problem is that it could decay or there could be a house fire or something like that.

One thing I'm a bit worried about is the idea that damage in specific parts of my brain could suddenly alter my personality or give me delusions that cause me to delete or remove everything out of some insanity that I can't comprehend. I feel like I have to physically give my family a copy for them to hide from me in case I become a zombie. But then, what if I want to write more notes for them? Maybe I can have it published to the cloud somewhere and they periodically download it?

I wanted to pose the question here, because I think others might have better ideas than what I'm thinking of right now. I'd prefer something I could do in one day, since I really want to avoid risking more days without this. I just want to write and ideally be able to sync everything pretty quickly. My thoughts will never be complete, but I'll have much more peace of mind knowing that people will at least see what I have written so far.

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[–] ted@sh.itjust.works 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Quartz is a great idea. Make a public repo for your public stuff.

Then, you can make a private repo for your private stuff, and send the generated files via email/Google Drive, or use a different static host that has password protection (not really aware of any off hand)

[–] inspxtr@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

some wiki backends allow password protection. for example, mkdocs, which also renders markdown, has mkdocs-encryptcontent-plugin to allow global or even page-specific passwords for private repos.

but these encrypted pages would of course have the risk of not being archived by the wayback machine.

[–] solivine@sopuli.xyz 9 points 10 months ago

Share everything you've written here, write more stuff, send that to them.

[–] Chobbes@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Wow. I’m sorry to hear about your illness, but I’m really happy you seem to have thoroughly enjoyed living and have made your peace. I have such a hard time enjoying life sometimes, so I really do appreciate hearing your perspective.

I think the best thing you can do in life is appreciate what you have, and not worry so much about the things that are out of your control, and you seem to have this all figured out.

I hope you do go through with these notes and don’t decide to delete them or anything. Genuine perspectives from people are a rare treasure in this world, and I think if you’re comfortable sharing them you really should!

If you want to hold yourself accountable, maybe the easiest thing is to upload to a GitHub repo or something, and I’m sure some of us would be happy to download it and mirror it. I’m sure many of us will happily run a script to fetch it every hour or so, and then you wouldn’t be able to delete it from me and other volunteers. If you gave us contact information we could make sure it gets to whoever you wanted. Might be a bit of an awkward email to send, but I guess it would be for the best 😅

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago

I can't begin to imagine what you're experiencing.

The only thought I have is that you should do something to record how you feel, whether it's writing your thoughts down or recording a video.

Something like that.

[–] Catfish@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 10 months ago

I don't have any advice but I'm so happy you were able to love and cherish the time you shared with all of us on Earth. This post brought tears to my eyes and happiness to my heart. :)

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You have an amazingly positive outlook on life and we're all lucky to have your company. I'm just reading "I am a strange loop" by Douglas Hofstadter, and what you were saying regarding recording your thoughts reminded me of a point it made. Hofstadter argues that as we learn about another person we effectively start replicating the same patterns that happen in their minds in our own. These obviously don't have the same fidelity as the primary pattern in the other person's head. However, in some small way a part of that person does end up in our own heads. And in that sense an aspect of that person is alive. When I listen to Prokofiev's violin concerto 2, a tiny part of what Prokofiev was ends up running in my mind as well. So, I think your idea of leaving as much of your thoughts around is spot on.

As for the technical question, I think GitHub Pages is probably one of the easiest ways to host for free. Using a generator like Quartz or Hugo makes it easy to add content too. I've been using this approach for my blog, and it works well. You just add a Markdown file with new content whenever you want. I'd suggest maybe putting your ideas on a couple of different services as well. GitLab also has a pages potion, you could make a thread on Lemmy. The more different servers the data ends up on the longer it will persist.

I wish you all the best, and hope you get to enjoy this ride a while longer.

[–] ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Also the benefit of GitHub pages with the text being stored open-source is if they ever do the Artic Code Vault again, that could in theory last for over 1000 years: https://archiveprogram.github.com/

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml -4 points 10 months ago

oh neat, didn't know about this

[–] Maggoty@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago

I'm not sure if it's possible, but when I was 18 and pretty sure I wasn't going to survive it was my family and the future opportunities to travel that got me the most. So if you can, I'd travel places with family. Your Internet archive idea sounds cool too though. It's a heck of a lot more creative than I am.

[–] Cracks_InTheWalls@sh.itjust.works 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

You, my friend, are my favourite sh.it.head. The feelings you have about life are the precise ones I try to keep in focus. And regardless of the ultimate outcome of your condition (I truly hope one with a solid recovery path!), this is a beautiful sentiment and a wonderful idea.

I have no suggestions regarding tech for going about this, aside from whatever method you choose, occasionally make hard copies for long term storage. There's many ways to make a robust digital archive, but paper is there should it fail.

[–] Alllo@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I'm a young whippersnapper but all my friends are 70+ so I have done quite a bit in the realm of tackling age related cognitive decline. I feel this probably isn't related to your health problem, but if faulty myelinization of neuron connections is an underlying cause (and that COULD be widespread across nervous system), AlphaGPC plus Noopept is very known to repair and protect myelin. I would typically be wary of medical advice, but AlphaGPC and Noopept are sideeffectless at any dose, so I am actually confident suggesting it can have no repercussions. Of note is the healing of previous braindamage, protection against braindamage, and the extreme 'like flipping a switch' way it does it. My friend Jackie with MS was having a stroke a month and it looked like basically the end for her. These two things together 100% stopped strokes and it is now like 3 years later and we just casually chatted on facebook this very night. As said, I have many 70+ friends, and AlphaGPC + Noopept seems to do the same in all. Has 8 day ramping up period, can last 180 days after last dose if u get enough in your system. I know literally from watching my friends memories and when they start to again forget things. Anyway, thought if there was anything I know that could help it would be this. There are studies going back in to the 70s if I remember correctly on Piracetam, a predecessor of Noopept, showing a bunch of rats induced with braindamage. They remember like 23% average. Then shows the Piracetam rats bar and they remember 100%. And it really is like that from my experience. Switch flipped and suddenly strokes and various age related cognitive decline things just can't happen. If it were me as you, but with my experience, I would order both online (they aren't expensive) because, with the no sideeffects part and the huge possible recovery, it looks, to me, like 'why not'? If your health problem is related to the myelin of neurons, I am confident you will see positive effect upon 8 days of taking both. Though there are many things that could be underlying your symptoms and not all have to do with myelin.

[–] vlad76@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 10 months ago

I wish you luck on your journey. Thank you for sharing your thoughts!

[–] EfreetSK@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

I'm into genealogy so my idea always was that before I go, I'd like to left something about me on some genealogy website like familysearch.org . Now bear in mind that the website is owned by some Mormon church but it's huge. Afaik you can put quite a lot in there (not just birth date) although I personally never executed my plan of putting that much info in there (I'm a bit afraid that my info will be missused or cause problems for me or my children but once I'm gone it won't matter that much). I don't know if it's right for you but there is this option. Maybe someone somewhere will make a family tree and say, hey, there was this distant relative of mine and this is their story

[–] 1984@lemmy.today 4 points 10 months ago

I really envy your positivity. So many people are not appriciating life at all, mainly because capitalism / lack of money and all that shit they have to deal with though.

You learned to see the beauty of life and you are so young. Many people never see it.

[–] baseless_discourse@mander.xyz 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

If you have some technical friend with the time and will to organize your note. Let your friend make a github (or whatever git based system) repo, do not give you admin/owner permission, and turn off your permission to force push.

In this way, even if you delete everything and push, said friend still have the ability to recover everything from git history.

They can also setup a basic 1-2-3 backup system, so that a mistake on GitHub's side (highly unlikely, but not unheard of) won't delete all your work.

[–] Maeve@kbin.social 3 points 10 months ago

You’re an amazing person, I would have loved to have known you. I’d propose you leave them all your recorded thoughts during this journey, good, bad and ugly (I’d anyone gets judgey, they get to work through that without you) written and recorded, including this one. And thank you so much for sharing this with us. I wish you all the best, now and in the hereafter – whatever that looks like to you. Bon voyage!

PS: I feel weepish now, and wish I could give you a hug; so I’m going to hug my fur baby.

[–] Maeve@kbin.social 2 points 10 months ago

You’re an amazing person, I would have loved to have known you. I’d propose you leave them all your recorded thoughts during this journey, good, bad and ugly (I’d anyone gets judgey, they get to work through that without you) written and recorded, including this one. And thank you so much for sharing this with us. I wish you all the best, now and in the hereafter – whatever that looks like to you. Bon voyage!

PS: I feel weepish now, and wish I could give you a hug; so I’m going to hug my fur baby.

[–] rufus@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

You're awesome.

Maybe consider a version control system like Git on Github. Maybe do an occasional backup. USB sticks might work for that. If you circulate 3 or so between you and your family/friends, you can update the last backup and then continue the circle and 2 backups will always be with them. I can imagine a blog that is snapshotted regularly or a cloud drive could do the same.

Writing your stories and thoughts down is an excellent choice. My granddad used to do this and while he told us many stories when he was alive, I can still read his words today.

You could also experiment with recording your voice. I don't know if you're still fit enough to do it. But I read some people would love to hear the voice of their relatives once more. I don't think it matters too much what you read/speak. It brings back memories anyways.

I agree with other people here. Convey your values, your positivity, stories and perspective on things. Maybe I should take a step back and think about my values and if I want to share my perspective, too.

[–] HerbalGamer@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 months ago

Very weird to me; I've been severely depressed since 18 and now at 32 don't think I can go on that much longer. I genuinely can't understand how anyone could say life is all that good.

[–] dutchkimble@lemy.lol 1 points 10 months ago

Not what you asked, but have you considered getting some credit cards and maxing them out to buy things like cars, TVs, PS5, etc for your family

[–] Paragone@lemmy.ml -1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I'm a braindamage survivor.

You need to communicate your values, and why they are your values.

You need to communicate who you are, via the most-significant-moments/events you experienced: the most-significant-for-you meanings, see?

As for you disappearing, the Soul/CellOfGod/ChildOfGod/Continuum ( whatever you want to call it ) that causes the molecules in your body to continue-living ( yes, there is a physics-level cause for the anti-entropy behaviour expressed as living-organisms, and it isn't there, when those same molecules are doing the disintegrating-corpse thing, obviously )

That cause is unkillable.

It keeps getting caught in conceptions/lives, through endless-stream-of-Universes's perpetual recycling/churning of ALL energies ( including meaning! ) contained within it.

It isn't the-individual-life that is the center,

it is the Soul/CellOfGod/ParticleOfBrahman that is.

IT experienced some of ITs growing-up, in/through your-life.

With you, your Soul got a gift, fersure.

My life's been hell, & I'm glad:

nothing like aversion-therapy to force a Soul/CellOfGod to grow-up, eh?

The Soul that had "me"-personality won't ever make that mistake, again.

: )

If you've still got any ability to read, or to have someone read to you, please have someone get Elisabeth Haich's "Initiation" into you:

it is likely that only part of the book will be important for you, but that part will likely be IMPORTANT.

The world her Soul 1st inhabited was something like 10,000y ago ( it hasn't rained much there, since then ).

My Soul's spent most of its time inhabiting insect-lives, or particularly-stupid-fish-with-bad-eyesight.

It's been centuries since it had been in a human-category life ( the Catholicism I was pressed into, by mom, got nuked when I discovered those strange-memories were memories of my Soul's having lived in other kinds of lives.

Not only did it nuke all the Abrahamic religions, but it forced me to accept that ALL lives are lives because they have a Soul underlying them, and there isn't anything "special" about the life of a human, except for our Potential & our Opportunity, which most take for granted, including me, in my younger days ).

Anyways, you can't unexist, from Eternity.

You'll always have-been, see?

The Soul/CellOfGod who had you has YOU in it, indestructibly.

I'm earning removal of me-personality now ( should be days ), so the nervous-system currently having "me" can get that "me" ripped-out & can replace it with a better personality ( it's a Buddhist technique, apparently nobody remembers it, in the modern version of Buddhism, for some reason ), so you can stack multiple personalities/someones into a single incarnation, to get-through multiple-lives of lessons/growing-up crammed into a single incarnation/life.

It works, but it takes work to force one's own identity-death, or removal of the instance-of-ego underlying one's personality...

There are 3 kinds of mind that death-itself has difficulty "gripping" on:

  • Wisdom-realizing-that-all-phenomena-are-empty-of-self-inherent-existence

  • immeasurable-compassion for all sentiences ( but tempered by wisdom )

  • Faithing, which is the simultaneous surrendering-to higher-power, relying-on higher-power, and gratitude-to higher-power.

Faithing on one's own CellOfGod/Soul is perfectly find/workable.

It has BuddhaNature/GodNature, so all you have to do is orient to that aspect of its nature, and then faithing is powerful/valid, see?

Guru-yoga, is faithing.

"a faith", ie noun, .. isn't what the original texts said, btw.

Anyways, I hope something in this helps, gives you leverage.

Either way, our Souls will meet again, after "us", sooner-or-later...

Salut, Namaste, & Kaizen, Hoomin!

( :

_ /\ _

[–] BrundleFly2077@lemmy.wtf 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] dutchkimble@lemy.lol 2 points 10 months ago

Yeah wtf was that

[–] Mango@lemmy.world 0 points 10 months ago

Yeah I don't think you really survived the brain damage.

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