Mental Health

Several average days in the life of a jobless GenX-er. (FOOD and FITNESS-centric!! Lots of pics!)

That Asian-Looking Chick Leave a comment

Hello. I’m a fitness junkie, a combat veteran, and a jobless GenX-er with PTSD, autoimmunity, and a partially collapsed lung, and this post is for anyone who’s curious about what I may get up to in an average week. Let’s jump in!

Every morning, first thing: I put in lubricating eye drops so I can fully open my eyes, and I drink water so I can swallow. (Sjögren’s syndrome.) Also, take I take my thyroid medication. (Autoimmune thyroiditis/Hashimoto’s.)

The necessary lubricating eye drops and a thyroid pill first thing in the morning.

Then I make the bed. We’re looking at my side of it, with my plush octopus (that I call “Levi”).

Making the bed, not crawling back into it. (Alas.)

On this morning, I was able to bond with my desert tortoise, because he was out. It was Monday. We had our first monsoon rain of 2024 that day, and Geronimo spent more time in the yard than in his burrow! I went out to enjoy time with him in the morning, afternoon, and evening. By the end of the day, my heart was full with Geronimo love. It is so special. HE is so special. He is my heart; I love him so much. I can’t even explain it.

Lots of time with my precious little boy on this day.

Then I came in and prepared our coffee, as usual. I love this little ritual, love looking forward to coffee. My fav is black with a powdered blend of eight mushrooms, and also powdered monk fruit extract. Kyle likes his coffee the same way, but he takes plant milk in his.

Black coffee with mushrooms and monk fruit.

I prefer to finish my coffee before eating breakfast. Breakfast is usually some kind of cereal with frozen blueberries. I mix up a half-serving of vanilla plant protein shake to use instead of milk. It is delicious! If I don’t have cereal, I’ll have a piece of Ezekiel toast with Earth Balance and a full-serving chocolate plant protein shake.

(Mon-Sat, that is. I make chocolate-chip protein pancakes every Sunday morning.)

Cereal with frozen blueberries and a vanilla protein shake for the milk.

I almost always watch a video or two while I eat. I’m subscribed to quite a few YouTube channels, a handful of which are just regular people whose shenanigans I follow in their vlogs. The video I watched on this day was one of those.

Watched a video while eating breakfast.

Next, I pop the rest of my morning meds and do my Wixela inhaler.

Meds. Inhaler. Horror-themed water bottle. Check, check, & check.

Then I head into the bathroom to press a warm/hot compress onto my eyes, which is both a Sjögren’s management thing and the first step in my morning skincare routine. My Sjögren’s mainly attacks my eyes and mouth. Mostly my eyes.

The morning compress on my eyes feels incredible and makes a huge difference.

After that, I get ready for the day – brush my teeth, do my skin and hair, and put on something comfy.

For my first task of the morning on this day, I continued with my office closet re-org project. This is where I keep the clothes I don’t wear on a daily basis.

Moving things from one closet to another always generates a re-org project.

I gathered things for the Goodwill, did some laundry, and also spent some time searching for remote jobs.

Tuesday! On this day, I headed out to the dentist’s for a cleaning.

Going in to get my teeth cleaned is about a Tuesday thing to do as any other thing.

From there, I went to do some grocery shopping.

Grocery shopping at Fry’s

Also went to grab a few things from Target. Now, I’m not an impulse shopper, and I don’t enjoy shopping for clothes, but I walked past this dress on the clearance rack, and I had to try it on. Then, of course, I had to buy it. It was only $9.61!

Gorgeous dress on clearance!

It’s hard to understand what’s going on just by looking at pics. The inside layer is a short strappy bodycon slip dress, and the outer layer is a long floaty lace shift. The back is open. This dress is beautiful, and I can’t believe that I got it for less than ten bucks. Believe it or not, I didn’t own a single long solid black dress. Now I do. I have an occasion in mind for it, too.

This is the back. It’s open.

On my way home, I stopped in at a friend’s house to water their plants while they’re out of town. Later in the afternoon, I grabbed my usual protein bar for a pre-workout snack. I eat one of these bars six days a week, before every workout, and I never get tired of it. It’s basically a Thin Mint in bar form.

One of my fav protein bars.

So, yeah, I work out six days a week. This day was Tuesday, so it was strength-training with dumbbells, aka Body Pump on Les Mills On Demand. This was release #99, in case anyone’s interested in knowing that!

Hydrating.

I grabbed these screenshots from the video clip I recorded during the back track. Apologies for the horrible lighting, friends. Yikes. It’s bad.

Rows
Clean-and-press

Body Pump’s approach is an hour of light weights, high reps, and very little rest. These dumbbells are adjustable, and here I have them set at 15 lbs. It’s a good weight for the millions of reps that we do during the fast-paced 5-7 minute back workout.

Adjustable dumbbells

The next day was Wednesday, and I spent a little time in the kitchen.

Making a big batch of pico de gallo.
Fresh pico for days! I make it extra green (hot)

Then I made a high-protein “longevity” salad:

High-protein longevity salad with tahini-lemon dressing. I had half of a red cabbage, some green onions, and a couple of lemons to use up, so this salad was the perfect thing to make.

Wednesday is a Combat day. I have atelectasis (collapsed lung – mine is partial, as it’s only my lower right lung lobe); I have to do this Albuterol inhaler before I can start a Combat workout. Combat is basically 60 minutes of H.I.I.T., and I find it hard to catch a deep breath toward the end of the highly intense workout.

Because of atelectasis.

This is LMoD Combat #77, by the way. It’s one of my favorite Combat releases!

More apologies for the dark and grainy screenshots. The lighting was dim and totally unsuitable for filming. But you get the idea.

Just playing.
“The Wall”
NOT playing.
Leg check.

Later that night, I caught a mirror selfie almost by accident when I was talking to Kyle. I was standing at my little dresser getting ready to remove my make-up, and I had my phone in my hands. Glanced in the mirror while we were talking, and lo, I saw an opportunity. I will never understand how mirror selfies work, so when I saw this, I had to snap it.

Hilarious, but it seems to have worked.

The next morning was Thursday. Today. I had an onion and a scant cup of green lentils that I wanted to use up, so I made lentil soup for lunch.

I love an easy lentil soup recipe that calls mostly for pantry staples!
Lentil soup and spinach tortilla wraps stuffed with the high-protein longevity salad and tahini-lemon dressing that I made yesterday.

We also had the sugar-free vegan black bean brownies I made last week. They sound weird, but they are actually scrumptious, deeply chocolatey and rich. No one can believe that there’s two cans of black beans in this pan of brownies. It’s just a great recipe!

Black bean brownie. SORCERY.

Tonight: Dinner with my love while watching one of our current shows.

“The Boys” – if you know, you know.

I brewed up our nightly hot ginger tea. We started drinking this tea to assist with after-dinner digestion, and now, we’re oddly addicted to it. We drink it because we crave it!

Our favorite nighttime beverage: hot ginger tea.

When I sat down to put this post together, I realized that I never got pics of the girls this week! I immediately set out on a kitty-hunt. Here’s what I managed to get:

A Roary.
And a Sabrina.

And now, my friends, I’m heading to bed. Tomorrow is Friday, and I’ll be able to continue (and hopefully finish) some ongoing tasks around here.

I hope you all had a good week! Until next time!

Of mythos and life reflection, and why you matter.

That Asian-Looking Chick Leave a comment

Good evening, friends. It’s been Gemini season for two days, and I’m eager to absorb the breezy lightness and intellectual stimulation offered by it. On my way there, though, I’ve been reflecting, doing this whole sweeping review. This assessment. A taking-stock. Things have been generally good and even exciting, but there’s also an element of heaviness in the picture. Someone close to me is still lost in crisis, and their struggles give me pause. How did I come to be where I am? I’m thinking out loud here, spilling a segue from thoughts unfinished in my head.

Born in San Francisco and raised in San Jose, I found California to be cold and impersonal. Now I live in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert in a vast metro area named for a sacred firebird of mythological renown, a place that is the antithesis of the Bay Area. 33 years ago I came to Phoenix on a whim, but I stayed here to rise from the ashes a hundred times, as if I knew I’d go down in flames over and over in the process of navigating life. Emboldened by cyclical rebirth, I’ve acted recklessly a few times too many. I’ve since learned. I’ve settled down in the embers, and I’m enjoying their warmth. I’m basking, and it’s delightful. I believe I know how my desert tortoise feels when he comes out of hibernation and sits still on the rocks for hours, absorbing the sunlight.

It’s incredible to me that I’ve managed to rack up the decades despite my follies. As grateful as I am to be around, though, I sometimes feel frantic about growing older when I consider all that I need to get done, still. Look, I’m 55. Sometimes it’s hard to keep calm about aging when smooth jazz renditions of my high school rock jams come on in the elevator and I realize that I still don’t have my shit together… not as far as I’m concerned, at least.

Like everyone, I’m a deeply flawed person. I suspect that I take this to heart more harshly than I should, and I try to remind myself of this. We tend to over-criticize ourselves, as if it isn’t hard enough taking criticism from others for our life choices, both personally and generally. Sometimes, we even have to deal with people criticizing us for doing what’s right.

For example, like many childfree people, I’ve been chastised for my decision to not have kids, indicted for being “selfish” – a song-and-dance accusation. Let the self-appointed womb police say what they will. Society can trust that I’ve done it a favor by staying out of the gene pool. Society should thank me for never having kids. I was in college when the egg donor people rejected my eggs because my phone interview revealed that my biological father had a certain mental illness. (I ended up selling my plasma, instead. It wasn’t nearly as lucrative.)

Society is a mess what with the homeless falling left and right through the cracks of social order (speaking to our failures on an institutional level). Why contribute to the problem by spawning a potential Dahmer? I wouldn’t have kids knowing that I have serious mental illness in my genes any more than I’d own a firearm knowing that I have PTSD.

At any rate, regardless of my reason, no matter what that might be, I won’t be convinced that the totality of the experiences I’ve lived as a human on this planet is invalidated by the fact that I’ve never had babies. Don’t allow others to convince you that you, your life, and your experiences are worthless.

Just as strangers will criticize without knowing the scope of the reasoning behind our choices – as if it’s any of their business – there may be those who know us who will exact criticism in personal attacks. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that humans can be wretched, just petty and mean, and they will go to lengths to try to hurt us. Now, I want to direct this to a particular person, my loved one who probably won’t see this: Don’t. Give. Up. I’m sending this energy to you through this post, hoping that you’ll receive it even without reading these words.

As Winston Churchill said, if you find yourself going through hell, keep going. (…unless you want to stay there.)

Buddhism teaches us that right from the beginning, life is suffering. We are born into it. Life isn’t fair, nor is it easy and light. But carrying heavy things can make you stronger. I appreciate this truth increasingly as time goes on. I would love to run back to my angry, angst-ridden 15-year-old self and say, “Hey! You’ve got some pretty absurd and unbelievable hardships coming up in your future, but you will find the fire in your belly and the steel running down your back. (In the words of American Horror Story’s The Axeman.) You will persevere.”

Keep going. You will get through. The best way out is through.

Getting out there and doing stuff on May 11, 2024. The movie was WTF, but the company was stellar!

I hope this helps… someone, anyone, one of you, if not the person who led me into this contemplation. You and your achievements carry meaning and worth. This is a cliché, but it’s true: No one can have the power to bring you down if you don’t give it to them, and this includes your own self. You’re not meant to be pulled into self-sabotage, or lured into self-hated. I want to remind you, gently, that the personal growth you achieve through your experiences is a triumph.

I love you.

A Flustery Kind of Day. (Panic! In the Elevator)

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Why hello there, friends. First, I want to say “thank you,” sincerely, to those of you who’ve commented here recently. Replies are forthcoming. Late, but better that than never.

Secondly, this post is not any of the ones I’d thought I might write. I actually have a list of things to share with you, fitness being the major one, as I’ve been on track and well on my way to restoration. A fitness update post hovers in the wings! There are various others, but today was not a day that allowed for such writings. I ate lunch after a busy morning and then immediately left for a medical appointment.

Let me be clear: I didn’t think I would write this ever, because I never thought I’d actually spend moments in an elevator such as those in which I found myself today.

If you know me, then you know that the elevator is the foe I’d never want to meet in an alley. My PTSD-driven phobia has abated gradually over the years; I can now step into an elevator by myself, though I’m still and will always be a fan of taking the stairs. In the absence of stairs, I’m capable of entering an elevator more or less gamely, cajoling myself and breathing.

Hands down, the best elevators are the ones in which I’m not alone. If stairs aren’t an option and there’s no one around needing an elevator, I’m forced to be brave, and that is what happened today. I found myself shrouded in ominous solitude, needing to get down from the fourth floor of a building in mid-town Phoenix. 

It was an old building with an old-timey elevator, and not to be ageist or anything, but that old-ass elevator had seen better days. It was small. It exuded a cranky vibe that bristled the skin over my spine the second I boarded it. I didn’t like it, and it didn’t like me, and it let me know. The door closed behind me, and the elevator began its descent. Then it paused.

I waited.

I held my breath while listening hard, imagining that I could hear a faint creaking noise.

Scanning the operation panel, I found the Door Open button and briefly considered pressing it, but drew back into myself in horror at the idea of the elevator door opening to reveal cables and a wall, because as much as I admire Edgar Allen Poe, I couldn’t be charmed into submission by any measure of third-person gothic dread the idea might inspire. The reality was that I was not strolling moodily through the damp, gas-lit streets of nineteenth-century Philadelphia in predawn darkness. I was trapped inside a wizened and rickety old elevator, and no amount of romanticism was going to change that. 

At last, the elevator resumed its grumpy descent with a creak and a jolt, pulling me from my thoughts and moving, I thought, rather slowly. Alarmingly slowly. When it finally stopped at the first floor, it didn’t open its doors. It sat there. 

Again, I listened, but heard no sounds of acquiescence on the part of the elevator. The elevator was sullen. It had clammed up, and I was inside, alone with my panic and my rue. As if by divine intervention, the door opened just as the walls closed in around me. I lunged over the threshold and jaloppied myself into the lobby, lurching down the short hall, out the door, and into my car, which I’d parked in front of the building’s entrance. I fell dizzily into the driver’s seat, just then realizing that I’d been holding my breath.

Friends, I am never going to take that particular elevator again… at least, not alone.

Here’s my proof of life:

Post-panic, finally home.

So I guess I’m not as over my elevator phobia as I’d thought I’d been. Huh.

At any rate, I’m heading off to bed. Stay safe and do not think unkindly of elevators, my friends. They can hear your thoughts and smell your fear. 

Kpin freedom: My unmedicated sleep project.

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It was mid-September 2023 when I became aware – because two family members brought to my attention as soon as they found out – that long-term benzodiazepine usage could result in early-onset dementia. My nightly very-low-dose of Klonopin helped me to sleep for years. Without it, I would go to bed, lie down, and have a panic attack. My anxiety led to insomnia and nightmares. Kpin knocked me out. It took just a tiny crumble of a dose, and I (perhaps miraculously) never developed an addiction. How wonderful it was, though! How well I slept! But I was about to marry a man considerably younger than myself, and I knew that I needed to do everything possible to spare him a wife with early-onset dementia. I decided to quit Kpin immediately.

I contacted my shrink right away and let him know that I wanted off of Kpin. Thus began my odyssey of benzodiazepine tapering-off, a process that took months. With professional guidance and in accordance with the printed schedule given to me, I very gradually weaned myself off of the drug. Referring to the schedule with studied diligence, I applied myself to the effort even as the year continued with its onslaught of challenges. It was especially difficult in the wake of the death of Nenette, my cat, but I soldiered on.

To start me along on my tapering-off journey, my doctor prescribed Trazodone, a non-narcotic sleep medication. I took it one time, and never again. It didn’t help in the slightest with my anxiety-induced insomnia, and I felt foggy in the brain for hours the next day.

Next, I tried melatonin for a short while. It was even more dissatisfactory. I could feel it working to make me sleepy, blissfully so, but at the same time, my restless legs went from occasional and mild to every night and severe. It was maddening and absolutely inconducive to sleep. When I looked up melatonin side effects, a worsening of restless legs was on the list. Next.

I did some research and visited a local dispensary, where I made an educated choice. I brought home a low-THC/high-CBD product, cut each gummy into four slivers, and ate just one each night. It might have worked just enough, but not enough that I felt that the gummies were worth the expense. Not enough to be conclusive. I didn’t want to take more than a quarter of a dose at a time. I planned to look elsewhere for a solution once I finished the container.

At that point, turning my attention to yet more natural remedies, I started using lavender body lotion at night and spraying my side of the bed with lavender room spray. No improvement. The therapy part of “aromatherapy” just wasn’t enough.

I started wearing an eye mask, my comfortable old gel-filled sleep mask that I’d rarely used. It was lovely, but it didn’t help much, either.

Camomile tea, then, I thought. I’ll continue with the lavender products and add a cup of camomile tea to my nightly routine. Still no significant improvement, yet I felt that I was getting somewhere. The tea was definitely soothing.

Something was missing from my developing regimen. What could it be? What could extinguish the rafting clamor of thoughts in my brain as I tried to fall asleep?

White noise might work, I realized.

Kyle had a Google Nest Mini that he said would play nature sounds upon command. He unearthed it from the box whence it was stashed, and we set it up next to my side of the bed. I instructed it to play ocean sounds. It did. That same night, after drinking my camomile tea, I ventured to boost my aromatherapy game and deposited a drop of pure lavender essential oil to the top of my eye mask, on the inside. I ditched the lavender spray and used the lavender lotion on just my hands, which I can take or leave on any given night (it’s not an essential component of the combination).

And lo, my friends. Hallelujah! That did it. The magic combination yielded results that night with no ill effects, and the next night, and all the nights thereafter. The deep scent of lavender works with the calming effect of the camomile tea, and, most importantly, the ocean sounds white noise lulls me to sleep, my eyelids heavy beneath the gel eye mask that blocks any ambient light in the room.

Sleeping better these days.

I’ve finally arrived at my perfect sleep-inducing trifecta. 

My sleep routine involves a mug of hot camomile tea, “ocean sounds” white noise emitted softly from a Google Nest Mini, and a sleep mask anointed with a single drop of lavender essential oil. 

Now I just need to work on getting to bed earlier, as always. That was always my struggle, benzo or no benzo. Maybe one day I’ll have found a way to master this, though I don’t think there’s really a fix to being an inherent night owl.

If you’ve made it this far in your reading, thank you. I wanted to share my experiences in benzodiazepine-tapering and also in disordered sleep, namely insomnia, in hopes that my story will help even one of you. Not to mention, I’m so grateful for this combination solution to insomnia – relaxing herbal tea, aromatherapy, and white noise – that I didn’t want to keep it to myself. For me, it’s a godsend of a sleep package.

Enjoy your week and stay safe and healthy, my friends. Good night!

Life after Job Loss – Month One (Check-in and Mental Health post)

That Asian-Looking Chick 2 Comments

[::Exaggerated Newsflash::] I was seven on the day of the cemetery visit in my last post, not five. My brain is on vacation.

I’m not, though, however much I might as well be.

Tomorrow marks the one-month-versary of losing my job to the unfortunate demise of my company, and I’ve got a check-in report for any of you who may be interested. How am I doing? What am I doing?

I’m doing well. I’m working on projects – some important and time-sensitive ones that would otherwise have been relegated to weekends, and some back-burnered projects, as well. It’s been a great feeling being able to work on stuff.

Truth be told, losing the job’s turned out to be the best thing that could’ve happened, because Nenette became a special-needs cat at around the same time I became unemployed. It was a developing situation that evolved into the situation that it is today, which is Nenette requiring special care around a strict schedule, and it’s only because of job loss that I’ve been able to provide her with such care. It was fortunate for us that things turned out the way they did.

Additionally, I’ve found my way back to some good old fundamental perspective. I’ve spent most of 2023 worrying about losing my job, and now, in retrospect after I have lost my job, this classic flow chart returns to mind:

It was the uncertainty about my company – my job – that caused my nervousness and worry, but I’ve since realized that there’s a fine line between nervousness and worry. You can be nervous without being worried. Nervousness is a state of being, while worriedness is a state of mind. Nervousness is about feeling, and worriedness is about thinking.

No one needs the two things going on at the same time, but worry can cause nervousness, so that’s the thing to address.

I’ve been wanting to do more fitness posts, and I’m not there yet, but I consider this one to be a mental fitness post… because in terms of the mind/body connection, it counts. Worrying isn’t healthy for the body. I figure if I can do something about a problem, I will. If I can’t? Then I can’t. I’ll find a workaround, or whatever, but in any case, I shouldn’t worry. There’s no sense in worrying about something that you can’t change. You simply have to find other ways. Drive on.

I’ll always have to deal with nervousness in and of itself. I have PTSD, OCD, and clinical depression. These days, my practical approach to this largely involves identifying worry, getting to the root of it, and finding action to take. Action. It’s key.

So I’m doing well in the aftermath of losing my job. I’m here for those who need me, I’m getting shit done, and I’m restoring my health, getting lots of sleep consistently and whatnot. 7+ hours of sleep every night!

As sad as it was to leave a workplace, job, and people that I loved, I’m relieved that things turned out the way that they did. This is what needed to happen. This is The Universe looking out for me. I’m very fortunate that I’m able to get along financially, as well.

Thank you all for sticking with me, friends. I appreciate you more than you can know.

Ode to the best job I ever had. (Huge life update!)

That Asian-Looking Chick 4 Comments

Oh, the 2023 shenanegans, my friends.

So the best job I ever had? Is the one I’ve been going to for the last three years or so. I worked in ecommerce at a small business that sold party and event supplies. To be precise, the job lasted three years and 20 days. It ended officially last week on Friday, June 30th.

I loved my job. I loved my workplace and the work that I did in it. The people were amazing; we were like a family. It was a good company. Massive efforts were made to save it all throughout the spring, practically from the beginning of the year. Dramatic rescue options were floated. Sacrifices were made. In the end, though, the business wasn’t salvageable. I’m filing for unemployment on Monday.

Weirdly, when I reflect back on this wonderful job, it feels like a dream, like it never happened in real life. Like I spent the last three years sound asleep… and now I’ve woken up in a reality in which the company never actually existed.

But it did exist, and it’s sad that it’s gone under.

I’ll tell you what I’m not sad about, though. I’m not sad that I’m getting 7+ hours of sleep now. Neither will I be upset when it’s winter and my ass won’t be getting up and leaving the house in the dark and cold. I’ve decided that the next job I hold is going to be remote. When I get back to work, I plan to work from home in some capacity or another.

Also, I must admit that it’s great to be able to run (whatever) errands at any time, and to make appointments for any day without checking a calendar and requesting the time off two weeks in advance. For instance, I was able to stroll into my optometrist’s office yesterday (as a walk-in) to select new glasses frames.

These are the ones that I chose:

Glasses re-style 2023

And of course I believe in applicable adages in addition to the silver linings I’ve stated above.

I believe that when one door closes, another one opens.

I believe that when you carry heavy things, you get stronger.

2023 has been hella heavy. Starting on January 2nd, there’s been four deaths. The demise of my company. A catastrophic medical event that left a loved one blind. Another loved one suffered a devastating situational mental health crisis. A vitamin of the horse pill variety dropped into my lung, causing severe pneumonia. The last six months have been messy with grief, stress, anxiety, and depression, and working out would’ve helped, but it was start-and-stop for one reason or another… and then the pneumonia happened (on May 12), wiping out my fitness plans completely. With all of this heaviness, I’ve done my mental strength training, and I’m ready to compete in a strongwoman contest. Sign me up!

[Side-note about my illness: the same day my job ended, my pulmonologist determined that my pneumonia has been resolved, and now I’m just contending with Reactive Airway Disease, which is a significant downgrade. I’ve been cleared to work out to the extent of my tolerance…!]

Despite all of this, there’ve been incredible, magickal, once-in-a-lifetime moments in 2023 – which I will share, in time – and there will be more. I’m excited for the future and for the creative projects I’ve got underway now, which I would not be able to do were I still working.

It’s the end of an era and the beginning of a new one. My work friends are now friend-friends (as far as I’m concerned), so we’ll keep in touch as we move forward along our respective paths. I don’t see my position now as limbo; I see it as a crossroads, and I’m lucky that I have the luxury of being able to hang out here for a while.

I’ll wish you all good-night now, thus sparing you further clichés. Have a magnificent day or evening, my friends. Until next time!

May the Fourth stretching session. (Fitness updates!)

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Hello, friends. I was going to tell you the story of what’s been going on with me this last week – since last week Wednesday night – but I stopped mid-draft and set it aside for the time-being. I don’t have all of the clinical information yet, and I’d rather tell you a complete story than a Part 1. A Part I leads to a Part 2, and I don’t wish to write about this (latest awful and weird – insert eye-roll) incident more than once.

So instead, I come to you tonight with a post I drafted a couple of weeks ago. I’ve got some (dubious) pics of a stretching session I did here at home on Thursday, May 4, and I thought I’d share them with you fitness enthusiasts. There’s honestly not much to say about the stretching workout, itself, except that I went into it with the intention of doing actual yoga. Beyond that? It just felt damn good to get down onto the yoga mat and stretch out my limbs, back, shoulders, chest, pretty much everything.

I said they were “dubious” because getting the pics turned out to be somewhat of an adventure. My new living room configuration has me working out between the back of the couch and a wall, leaving very little in the way of photo ops at decent angles, distances, and lightning. Working out behind the couch is fine, but grabbing footage/pics back there is another story. I’ll figure it out!

As for my plan to do more stretching, I’ve got an eye on Les Mill’s BodyFlow program. I figured I’d just try it out, see how it goes, how I feel about it. I find that I benefit the most from guided workout sessions, and Les Mills On Demand is the absolute business in that arena.

My main interest in incorporating dedicated stretching sessions into my workout routine is stress-reduction. Inordinate stress can wreck the body. It’s been doing a number on mine, let me tell you. 2023 has been challenging. There’s been a lot in the way of stress and distress, and my body’s shown textbook signs of it. I’ll spare you the rundown of the medical shenanigans that’ve gone down over the last few months. Suffice it to say that I’m now taking action at the root of the problem.

Bottom line: It’s in my power and it’s on me to do something to manage my stress levels. I need to sleep adequately, stretch my body regularly, and engage in a meditation practice in order to invite equilibrium and balance back into my being. A moving meditation practice such as yoga can strengthen the mind/body connection, and that’s what I need.

So here we are at the pics, friends. As I’d said, I just got down and did a few basic stretches, and I’m sorry that it escaped me that doing stuff on the floor in a cramped space would present a problem with photojournaling. The pics are pathetic in terms of, well, you can’t really see what the hell I’m doing. Again, I’ll experiment with the camera situation so I can put up decent fitness posts again.

There are just a few, and they’re from last week Thursday, May 4.

Here’s Yours Truly behind the couch:

Stabilizing in a side plank.

Working on my forward stretch/arm flexibility.

I’m not flexible at all, friends. That is literally as far up as I can raise my arms with my hands clasped behind my back.

Stretching hips and triceps.

I have to figure out a better way to place my phone to capture shots for my living room workouts. You can’t see what I’m doing with my lower body in the above pic. It’s a hip stretch.

Attempting an upper back stretch, again the best I can do with limited flexibility. I know I can achieve improvement. Give me a few weeks of self-discipline in a guided yoga program, and I’ll come back with a progress report!

(This is my attempt at a cobra pose, by the way. It’s okay if you’re laughing. I am.)

Performing a hamstring stretch.

I have one leg bent at the knee in front of me, and the other leg stretched out behind – though that back leg is supposed to be bent at the knee, too – and I’m holding that pose while leaning down toward the floor.

Holding a triceps stretch, both arms overhead, left handing grabbing my right elbow and pulling it toward my head.

(I remember that I wore those pants to work that day; I just changed my t-shirt when I got home.)

There you have it, my friends. If anything, I hope you got from this that if I can do any kind of exercise in a cramped space, then so can you!

Dealing with my current ridiculous (soon to be explained) situation, I need to recover adequately before hitting the floor for more working out. My 2023 fitness journey has been a start-and-stop endeavor, but you know what? Listen to me, 2023: I get knocked down, but I get up again, you’re never gonna keep me down.

That’s my theme song of the year. I’ll leave you fine folks with the video.

I hope you’re all doing well out there, wherever you are in the world. I love and appreciate that you’ve stuck with me despite my inconsistency here. Thank you.

Confessions of a (former) Gym Snob: I joined Planet Fitness, and I love it. (Fitness updates!)

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I went to the gym today. And yesterday, and the day before, and four days last week. I’m hanging on to my Les Mills On Demand subscription for home workouts, but recently I’ve added an actual gym component back into my fitness routine. I’ve returned to my old habits, my friends, and I feel so much better! I’m eating 98% high-vibration foods and lifting weights and doing cardio and feeling strong and energetic and good in my body again.

In my car in the gym parking lot before heading in to my workout.

I can feel my renewed commitment to my physical well-being benefiting my mental health, as well. I experienced two losses last month that both cut deeply, pretty much back-to-back. My cat has been sick. A close family member has been struggling in ongoing crisis. It’s been stressful, and I very much needed to return to gym therapy. When I finally did, I joined… Planet Fitness.

Now, fellow gym rats, I know what you’re thinking. I know because I used to be right there with you, mocking and ridiculing Planet Fitness. It’s the gym notorious for kicking people out for wearing spaghetti straps, for sounding a “Lunk Alarm” when someone commits the crime of grunting while lifting heavy weights, and for lacking an Olympic barbell.

Lies. Lies, my friends.

Well, the 45lb Olympic barbell part is true. There isn’t one at Planet Fitness. But that doesn’t seem to discourage seasoned strength athletes and career gym rats from working out there.

I mean, even two weeks in, I go to the gym and look around in bewilderment, because I still don’t recognize the place. I know that I’m in a Planet Fitness, but… am I?

I don’t recognize the women in the short, tight gym shorts and sexy sports bras and nothing else, because those women in those outfits aren’t supposed to be there… yet they are, and no one says anything.

I don’t recognize the guys in bodybuilding muscle shirts and the kind of tanks that have wispy straps of fabric looped over their shoulders and armholes so long, the guys might as well be unclothed completely. Those guys aren’t supposed to be there, either, according to Planet Fitness lore. But they are there, and no one cares.

Neither do I recognize the super built, ripped folk walking around in skin-tight microfiber t-shirts and weighted vests, because Planet Fitness is a “beginner’s gym” – so advanced athletes aren’t supposed to be there, either.

Or any of the serious strength athletes – of all ages and genders – focusing intently on their training.

Oh, there is indeed a “Lunk Alarm” warning banner up on the wall in the free weight area, but it seems to be there for entertainment purposes, because the Lunk Alarm isn’t sounded when people audibly exert physical effort. My trainer said that they only time the Lunk Alarm is used is at the end of days that have closing times, as a way to alert people that the gym is going to be closing soon. (The gym is open 24/5 and has closing hours on the other two days.) Even in that case, he’s only seen it done once or twice.

What else? Little pleasant surprises, like the electronica music they’ve got playing overhead. I guess I was expecting standard pop music fare. Silly me!

I wasn’t expecting the gym to feature a spa with cutting-edge equipment. Apparently, some people join Planet Fitness just for the Black Card spa. They don’t go to work out. They go for the Total Body Enhancement red light therapy capsule booth, the HydroMassage lounge seats and beds, the various tanning technologies, and the massage chairs.

I certainly wasn’t expecting unlimited free personal training with my $10.00/month no-commitment membership! That’s right… personal trainers are included in your classic membership, which sets you back TEN DOLLARS each month.

It’s solid good training, too. My trainer sat me down to discuss my goals, and the next time I went in, I found he’d created a custom workout for me based on a four days/week schedule… and he trains me during the workouts. I still can’t believe that a custom workout plan and unlimited personal training is included in the Planet Fitness Classic membership. Ten dollars a month, friends.

(I called EOS, my former gym, to compare. At EOS, one 30-minute personal training session costs $36.00 on top of your membership fees.)

You do have to pay more if you want access to that Black Card spa, though. In order to use that spa, you have to spring for the pricey Black Card membership, which is… $25.00/month.

Looks like the whole time I was laughing at Planet Fitness, the joke was on me.

On that note, have a wonderful day, friends!

(Mental health post.) So I drove along the road

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…lined with light-rail tracks this one day, which led me directly to the roundabout I was trying to avoid in the first place. Does that kind of thing ever happen to you? You go out of your way to avoid a situation, then encounter detours that lead you right back to it? But usually, I end up feeling grateful for the opportunity to undertake a navigation situation I wanted to dodge. I always come out fine.

This is going to sound silly, but there was a fire extinguisher that used to present me with a challenge every time I’d encounter it in a certain way. I felt that it was my nemesis. (Even though I believe that comparing a fire extinguisher to the Goddess Nemesis was actual sacrilege.) But those encounters would simply remind me to move cautiously through the world, and that would be lesson enough.

For those of you who don’t know, I have PTSD, OCD, and depression. It’s been a while since I’ve posted about it – I used to do it quite frequently – because I’ve been doing really well. I still am. I just thought I’d pop my head into this space today.

This is an idea of my mental health tableau as it fades in and out on a bad mental health day:

When the air in a room is strange, disquieting in a ghostly kind of way (when the ghost is a stranger).

When a conversation can be more treacherous than a heavy iron bar free-falling in rapid descent toward your head.

When I’m impacted by things that are nothings, like the time I heard an R&B remake of Nena’s “99 Luftballons” and felt that all hope for humanity had been lost.

When I feel that two words that should be added to the English language are “ungood” and “unignorable.”

It can be a dicey time, but those are also the days on which I can turn a particular dark, tight corner and feel like I’m protected from the world. I learn things about myself that surprise me in positive ways.

Sometimes I pay attention to the sound of my own typing. I tap the keys lightly and rapidly and imagine that I’m listening to rain, or to a drum from another country.

I’m doing well, friends. Monday morning I had an OCD episode that almost made me late for work. (Then I got to work and learned that a co-worker’s car battery died on Friday evening at the same time as mine did, and he purchased his new battery on Saturday morning and had it installed at the same time as I did, as well. What are the odds? But that’s neither here nor there.) …I’m doing well overall.

I know that some of you appreciate reading these posts as much as I feel grateful to write them. This is for us. I know that I can relate when I read other bloggers’ mental health posts, so I’m glad to give back.

Equilibrium. (Mental health check-in! Comfort in the dark: Where I go when wounded.)

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Three or four days ago marked the low point of the dramatic ups and downs of last week. That was when I wrote the draft of this post. It served as a kind of therapeutic exercise, and I was going to post it in the mid-week moment, but circumstances had changed in the 24 hours that’d passed, so the post wasn’t applicable any longer. You got Leon the lobster instead. (I’d had it in mind to share him with you at some point, anyway, so I was happy to do it then.) And now I’m reflecting back on the week, as I often do in the quiet moments of the weekend where I sit and ponder this space, and I’m thinking that I want to share this with you even though the moment in question is over. Consider this to be one for the mental health files. You don’t have to have depression or PTSD or any other sort of mental illness to be able to relate to content pertaining to The Downs of life. I could have written this exact same post as a person without depression.

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Tonight, I write to you from a private dark place of mine, the place to which I retreat when wounded in any way. It’s not The Abyss. It’s my comfort zone for situational down times, and it’s soothing. Once I’m here, I’m at ease, despite the dull pain of sadness. (If you’re thinking this is sounding emo, let me assure you that I’m not emo. I found the path to this place back in the sixth grade as the groovy 70’s gave way to the neon 80’s.)

Being here isn’t without its hazards. I’m enticed to find the edge, to get as close to it as possible so I can look down in safety. I push back gently against the desire to visit places I deem to be dangerous, and it’s a resistance that feels good regardless of my degree of success. I get dressed into the self I rarely express to the fullest anymore (mostly due to life – I’m looking at you, COVID). The self-destructive streak that I find to be alluring comes into focus while everything else softens and blurs; I enjoy it, but these days, I’m smarter about it. (Here, I have to check myself and admit that I’m either lying or being pretentious or both. The truth is that I’m smarter about it now because I’ve made the same dumb mistakes countless times, and I’ve finally learned. Or have I…? I don’t know, actually. Maybe that’s too much to hope. Maybe I’m just scared.)

My music here is the biggest comfort. I’m currently obsessed with Angelspit, and at the same time, I’ve revisited my passion for country artist Steve Earle. To complete the trinity, I’ve spent just as much time engrossed in the cozy dark sleeve of classical – specifically the temperamental range of Chopin’s waltzes and all three movements of Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata, which I play on repeat. Dark electronica (I think of Angelspit as the lovechild of Lords of Acid and KMFDM) and country and classical, my friends. Loving it.

In this dark place I have a vantage point from which I can see irony absolutely everywhere and anywhere. I can cry and laugh (at myself) at the same time and marvel at the brilliant and idiotic fractals that comprise my life. Last night I sustained emotional wounds and went to bed hoping for a diminishing of the pain in my sleep – I don’t know about you, but I would rather wake up from a nightmare than wake up to one. I’d gone to sleep in a strange two-places-at-once, a flashback and a wry look at my life thereafter. This could be translated as self-pity, and I’m not proud of it. I woke up as stunned as I was when I went to bed, cried a little more, and went to work determined to keep the sadness at bay, kicking ass to the fullest extent of my ability – as much as an uncomfortably stitched hand at a hands-on physical job could allow – and I only cried a little bit.

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As mentioned at the beginning, all is well. Within 24 hours of writing the above, I emerged, gathered the pieces on the ground, and put them back together in a new arrangement; equilibrium had been restored. I brought the music out with me, though. That part hasn’t changed.

Thank you for hanging around to read these words, my friends. I hope – I know – that many of you can relate; I appreciate the virtual camaraderie in which we can luxuriate here. Many blessings to you for the new week ahead!

Sociopaths: Stigmatized into the shadows. (On Antisocial Personality Disorder.)

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Greetings. It’s been a while since I’ve written a mental health-related post, mostly because I’ve been blessed to be in a good place for such a sustained period of time.

Tonight, however, I’ve got a specific mental health topic on my mind. I want to talk about sociopaths; that is, people who are diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder. I’d actually planned to post along these lines last Wednesday/Thursday night, but I found myself blocked and floundering in my attempt to shape my thoughts around my feelings. I didn’t know how, exactly, to say what I want to say.

I guess I’ll start with the basic idea that society has determined that it’s okay to openly abhor and malign sociopaths. We perceive them to be less than human because they lack empathy and can’t feel guilt or remorse. They’re seen as a danger against the general public, and against us as individuals. Thus dehumanized and diagnostically relieved of any benefits of the doubt, sociopaths are open for castigation from all angles. (Okay, that might sound a little dramatic. What I mean is that at the least, there’s a general consensus that sociopaths don’t deserve kindness.)

We don’t consider what we’re doing to be a vilification. We consider sociopaths to be villains by definition, so we can’t be vilifying them, right? Neither do our societal rules against hate speech apply to them, because hate speech is only hate speech if it’s directed at humans, not at monsters. And so we will say that sociopaths are demonic. We will suggest that sociopaths should be rounded up and deposited on an island, just as lepers were shipped off to the Hawaiian island of Molokai in the 19th century… but you can bet that there wouldn’t be a Father Damien for the sociopaths on the island.

Reaching further beyond hate speech, there are books written matter-of-factly about how to detect “the sociopath next door,” and how to arm yourselves against them. Such literary material encourages us to become armchair psychologists while seeding fear and perpetuating the stereotype of sociopaths being monsters walking around in human suits, one-dimensional and beyond hope, help, or understanding.

So here’s what I’ve been thinking (and I know that this may be an unpopular opinion): Empathy, while important, is overrated.

People with empathy can and do engage in gaslighting, manipulation, and verbal/mental/psychological abuse. People with empathy can and do commit murder, premeditated and otherwise. In fact, only people who have empathy can commit “crimes of passion,” some of the most violent and gruesome murders, because these crimes are emotionally driven. Sociopaths don’t act out of emotion. Where is the book warning us about the person next door who might have empathy?

The fact of the matter is that high-functioning sociopaths can be morally good people. They can be morally good because there’s nothing stopping them from having a moral compass based on ethics.

I’ve been pondering this for a while, too, the relationship between empathy and ethics. No matter how I look at it, I see that ethics is intellectual reasoning and empathy is emotion and the two things are unrelated. Sociopaths don’t have empathy; we act as if it’s impossible to be morally good if you lack empathy. I just don’t think that this is the case. Ethics is what’s behind our ideas of right and wrong, not empathy.

I find it sad that in all the talk I hear swirling around the importance of destigmatizing mental illnesses, sociopaths are left out of the conversation. Antisocial Personality Disorder simply isn’t up for discussion, because we see sociopaths as unfixable and unworthy of medical attention. All we’re taught about sociopaths is that they’re ruthless fiends who should be avoided at all costs. We (the ones who have empathy!) treat sociopaths as “other” so we can’t be accused of hypocrisy when we speak of accepting all segments of the population – including those with all varieties of disabilities – while maligning them, the sociopaths.

It’s not just sociopaths, either. Antisocial Personality Disorder is one of the four cluster-B personality disorders, the other three being Borderline, Histrionic, and Narcissistic, and all are highly stigmatized and well-maligned (though none more than the antisocials/sociopaths).

I could go on and on, but I’m going to stop here to present this YouTube video. This is Kanika Batra, a diagnosed sociopath and narcissist making videos on YouTube to humanize, support, and advocate for others suffering with the same (and all cluster-B) personality disorders.

For me, a layperson with no formal background in psychology, Kanika’s video is an eye-opener to the notion that sociopaths can feel empty, lonely, depressed, and suicidal because of their inability to relate to others. Making things even more difficult is the fact that many mental health professionals refuse to work with them. Many sociopaths know that they’re broken, and they want to get better, but they have nowhere to go for help. They are shut out, stigmatized and stereotyped “into the shadows,” as Kanika words it.

Elsewhere on her channel, Kanika points out that you don’t need to have empathy in order to have compassion, to value human life, to know right from wrong, and to have a need for community. Her videos are fascinating and important, I think. Go check out Kanika’s channel! There’s a whole lot in the way of informative material in the relatively few videos there. (Kanika started her channel not even a year ago.)

With that, I’ll bid you a merry week ahead, my friends. Thank you for reading this far!

Coronapocalypse quarantine week 4. (On pandemics and mental health.)

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Callaghan and I sat down in the kitchen the other day to take stock of some of the items we’d kept in our bug-out bag. As we sorted through them, I tried to remember whether, in the Before Time, I imagined that the bag’s contents would ever be put to use in an actual situation. I don’t think that I did. At least, I don’t think I imagined the bug-out bag being used in this sort of apocalyptic situation. I always thought of it in terms of its intended use, which is the get the f*ck out of dodge STAT sort of situation.

The disposable gloves are out of the bag. The future is now, the hypothetical has become reality, and it’s all still so new.

It’s so new, we’re still mentally wrangling with the challenge of changing our behaviors, and we’re finding that this is incredibly hard work. A part of changing behavior is changing our thinking, and most of the behavior we’re talking about is subconscious. Not only is it mentally hard work, but it’s work that we have to do in order to survive and to save others. How can we not be at least a little anxious with this thought in mind? There’s a lot of pressure here, and there’s very little room for error.

Broadly speaking, this is how the pandemic impacts our mental health: We have to do this strenuous mental work in order to save ourselves and others while also trying to maintain our calm.

A zombie apocalypse would be easier to manage than this, in my opinion. You could see a zombie approaching. You cannot see this beast of a virus floating in the air and attaching itself to surfaces. This thing is encased in fat that makes it buoyant, and it’s festooned with little suction cups that make it sticky.

New behaviors to learn, and the mnemonic aids I’m using to ingrain them into my consciousness:

If you must go to the store, don’t do it without bringing a mask, gloves, and hand sanitizer or wipes, because all air outside of the house is poison.

If you have to bring something into the house (that hasn’t been disinfected outside), handle it with caution and then treat the entire area like it’s a crime scene and you’re the murderer and you need to remove your fingerprints from every surface you touched.

If you’re out walking, imagine that this is the zombie apocalypse, and every person you see is a zombie. Six feet between. (A fast-moving zombie could cut through the six feet distance in a heartbeat, so imagine that they’re the slow-moving kind.)

Wash your hands constantly, as if the whole day is spent chopping onions and garlic and you’re desperate to rid yourself of the overpowering aromas.

Train yourself to think before you touch your face, and I mean think as in all of my fingers are sponges soaked in hydrochloric acid that will burn holes into my face if they get anywhere near it.

And to keep my anxiety in check, I’m prioritizing working out. In the best of times, working out is the paramount fix where my mental health is concerned, so now, it’s even more critical that I get into “the gym.” I had time-consuming technical difficulties accessing Body Pump this morning, so I actually canceled my phone appointment with my shrink, as it was the next item on my agenda. I couldn’t imagine forgoing my workout, and I couldn’t do it any later in the day. I’ll have to explain this to him next week and hope that he understands. I’m sure that he will, but you know. I just felt terrible canceling at the very last minute.

Callaghan and I take evening walks every other day. Here’s a bad picture of the moon last night, on the eve of its super-ness:

 

The moon the night before it was pink and super. [06 April 2020]

 

 

Take care and stay safe, everyone.

 

 

 

Thanksgiving Weekend: Being thankful for things I don’t like.

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Hello! Welcome to today’s post that’s actually yesterday’s real post. (You may have seen my non-post post from nearly midnight last night.)

Maybe it was because yesterday was Thanksgiving Day that I woke up in a weird, meditative state this morning and started thinking about the concept of gratitude. Counterintuitively, I wondered, could I be thankful for things in my life that generally cause angst or distress?

I realized that:

1). I’m thankful for my depression, because it reminds me that I can’t guess a person’s struggles. Every stranger is a mystery, and it doesn’t make sense to judge a mystery. It doesn’t make sense to react to a mystery, either, no matter the rudeness or awfulness of it.

2). I’m thankful for my phobia, because it means that I can feel something. I can think of nothing positive about my paralyzing fear of roaches, but I can appreciate that it evokes a pureness of any emotion.

3). I’m thankful for stressful situations, because they force me to practice patience, self-control, and nonchalance.

4). I’m thankful for awkward situations, because they force me into a place of self-scrutiny.

5). I’m thankful for pain, because it heightens the bliss of not being in pain.

6). I’m thankful for cold, because it heightens the bliss of warmth.

7). I’m thankful for bad days, because they make me eager for the next day. Every day is a new day.

8). I’m thankful for the intensely trying or traumatic experiences in my life, because remembering them gives me perspective.

9). I’m thankful for hard times, because I come through them – I hope – as a more understanding person.

I realize that I can choose to see my struggles as positives; they can help me to become a better human out in the world.

 

“Without darkness, you can’t see the stars”

 

 

 

Relaxing my grip on goals.

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“Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans”

…is a true statement, and also antithetical to pursuing goals, when you think about it from a certain angle.

I haven’t achieved all of my goals yet, but I will one day… and then what? What happens when you’ve achieved everything you’ve set out to achieve? What do you do then?

I’ve flippantly said that I’d die without goals, and in my darkest moments, I’ve believed it. Something’s shifted in my thinking this summer, though, and now, with the season changing and the year just about 3/4 over, I’m approaching my 51st birthday thinking that goals don’t matter as much anymore. How can they matter when I’ve been busy discovering how crazy exhilarating it is to conquer the present moment?

Let me tell you, it’s been so damn satisfying and fun making changes rather than running after goals. I guess what I’m saying, really, is that once I get my shit together, then I can laser-focus on future goals. That’s where I’ve been. I’ve been in the moment, but I haven’t been floating along in it all serene and zen. I’ve been shaking it up.

I still have goals for the future, of course, but I like what I’m doing right now. I don’t want “life to happen while I’m making other plans.”

Onward!

I’ve got the following slew of pics because I heard you when you said that you wanted to see: selfies of me in tees not included in my t-shirt post, pics of me with Geronimo, and more than one selfie at a time. I tried, anyway. I took all of these pics late this afternoon! The lighting is different in the interior pics because change of location means a change of natural lighting, and I don’t care to spend time messing with my selfies to make them look differently. I take it, I post it, that’s it. I’m wearing a Nine Inch Nails shirt today.

This one’s in my office – I’m sitting at my desk (with my back to it), and there’s a glow on the left side of my face from the pink salt lamp just below:

 

In my office

 

This next one is in my dining room, which is brighter and warmer in tone than my office. Yeah, I’m as awkward as ever holding a selfie stick. Eh.

 

In the dining room

 

Here’s my first attempt at getting a selfie with Geronimo! I had to point the phone down in order to get him in the picture.

 

With my scale-baby!

 

Callaghan took this one. You can’t really see Geronimo’s face, because the whole pic is hazy with the late-afternoon sun behind us. In fact, now that I look at it, can you even tell that he’s a tortoise?! I’ll work on these pics with Geronimo, for sure.

 

Courtesy of Callaghan

 

Until next week!

 

 

These are exciting times. (Mental health updates post!)

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Since the weekend, I’ve been so stoked about rearranging the desk part of my office that I’ve forgotten to write. Then over the last two days I’ve been engaged in catch-up work on personal bookkeeping and accounting, and I’ve been so excited to be doing that that I kept forgetting to write even more. As I may have mentioned, I’ve been wrangling with depression to a slightly higher degree than usual these last few weeks, so being productive in creating new spaces and organizing numbers and files felt like a party.

One interesting thing I discovered about myself during this last little slump (which I’m sure was triggered by not having worked out in a while due to wound-healing) is that I get super sensitive to color when I’m in that mental state. I realized this the morning I put on one of my favorite t-shirts and immediately took it off because I wasn’t feeling it, or, rather, the wrongness of the color for that moment felt like a physical aggravation. It was definitely the color. I felt that if I had a super soft, thin, plain black t-shirt for every day of the week, I’d always be comfortable. (I have just one.) The other shirt I have that always feels right is this equally soft, thin shirt that I’m wearing at the moment:

 

Perfect.

 

The picture on the back is Donald Duck’s back, in case you were wondering.

Speaking of t-shirts, one of you requested to see my top 10 favorites. I would’ve taken those pics for today’s post, but I was too busy whooping it up rearranging furniture and organizing invoices and looking at my budget and accounts and shifting things around and whatnot. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll take pics of my favorite shirts so I can post them on Thursday!

Anyway, I’m feeling better now that I’ve been back at the gym consistently since two weeks ago Saturday, re-filling my empty feel-good fuel tank. Working out is straight-up medicine, guys. If you think you’re already in a good place, you’ll be surprised to find that there’s an even better place to be when you get your body moving. I’m always surprised by it, anyway, even though I know it.

 

 

Why I scroll past mental illness denial memes. (Thoughts on happiness as a state of being.)

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Self-help has good intentions, but I think it’s gotten a little out of hand. I mean, I shouldn’t be, but I’m still kind of astonished when I scroll through social media and see that suddenly, everyone has become a life coach.

Wisdom wrapped up in little square boxes. I post memes, too, sometimes. The last one I posted said, “Reading can seriously damage your ignorance.” Most of the few I’ve posted have been fitness-related.

My pet peeve of the self-help meme universe is the genre I think of as “mental illness denial.” At the tired center of this genre, you get phrases like, “Happiness is a choice.” “Happiness is a choice, not a result.” “Today I choose to be happy.” “Happiness is not a feeling, but a choice.” And so on. I know that these are meant to serve as motivational, but I have a hard time with this category.

Happiness isn’t always a choice when you’re clinically or acutely depressed. The opposite of happiness is depression, and depression isn’t a choice, either. Happiness and depression are states of being, states unalterable by neat and tidy little happiness instructions. Glib quotes like “happiness is a choice” or “today I choose to be happy” can’t loosen bleakness embedded in your consciousness.

Dear Everyone Living with Mental Illness:

It’s not your fault if you can’t attain happiness by simply waking up and stating an intention to choose it that day. You’re not a failure. We know that “Today I choose to be happy” can’t account for a day that hasn’t happened yet. We know that a conscious navigation of our thoughts toward a mindset of happiness just isn’t possible all of the time.

Scroll on by those pebbles of wisdom online, because the last thing you need in front of your face when you’re struggling with depression is a meme suggesting that it’s your own fault if you’re not happy.

I get you.

What we might be able to attain is a state of being okay in specific instances; it’s worth floundering between anger and sadness in the process of talking ourselves into okayness with the situation. We have to get brave and get real with ourselves, and this can be difficult. It comes down to mental strength, an especially relatable concept for the mentally ill, as “okay” is more of a mindset into which we can will ourselves. For us, “okay” is “well.” Wellness is a solid aspiration.

Happiness is a state of being. It’s my humble opinion that the declaration “Happiness is a choice” cheapens the experience of being happy. I think it makes happiness superficial. (I may be interpreting the word differently than you do. Do you feel that happiness is the same as joyfulness? As contentment?)

We all have our definitions, interpretations, and strategies to get us through. A few of mine:

1). I work on reaching a state of okayness, and then I seize on that and do what I can with it. Okayness is a good foundation for me. It’s something I can top off with music, for instance… and then I can derive joy from those moments. It’s always the little things.

2). It sometimes helps to throw together a list of joyful little things, just quickly, without thinking about it. Reading over such a list can be soothing. I free-wrote a list for this post. It came out looking like this (in no particular order):

music.
poetry.
stories: fiction and creative non-fiction, whether depicted on the page or on a screen.
plants.
animals and their rights.
fitness and combat sports training.
paranormal, horror, thriller, action.
lipstick, band shirts, skin care.
sumo and mma.
desert and the sea.
black, gunmetal gray, periwinkle and other blue-violets.
tortoises.
cats.
volcanos.
albatross!
the zombie emoji.
food writing.
zodiac.
blueberry scented anything.
anticipation.
buddha.

3). I take a cliché of vague resignation like “Life is full of mysteries” and I tag “mysteries make life interesting” at the end. Then I have something of intrigue to ponder, rather than the hopeless quality of the mystery, itself.

4). I take optimism carefully. I’m all for optimism, but I’m even more for cautious optimism.

“Happiness is a choice” – not that easy. Such declarations in these self-help memes don’t account for we who battle depression. Don’t let them make you feel worse. We know we can experience moments of happiness… days of happiness, even. As for those other days, well, we shouldn’t be hard on ourselves. We know that we’re trying.

Love,
Kristi

~~~~~

Afternote: this pic is the last you’ll see of me in these glasses. Yeah, I got new ones. New prescription, new frames. It’s the little things.

 

Retired glasses. [23 February 2019)

 

 

 

“That one time I went to the shrink…” (My worst therapist experiences!)

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You’ve likely had at least one negative therapist experience if you’ve been in therapy for any length of time. This is normal; no one meshes with everyone. It’s like psych medication… you have to find what works for you. I’ve been lucky to have had mostly good experiences with my counselors over years of on-and-off therapy.

I do have a couple of bad experiences to share, though, so I thought I’d go ahead and do that since I regularly discuss my mental health adventures in this space. Moreover, I know it can help to hear about others’ bad experiences!

Let me say that my two unfortunate therapist experiences weren’t bad in the usual ways. That’s how my life works. I can’t just have a normal bad therapist experience. It has to be a really freaking bizarre therapist experience, maybe more bizarre than bad.

First, there was:

  • The shrink who ghosted me.

I’d gone to this counselor for several months. I thought we had a good rapport, so I was surprised when I went to my appointment one day and she stood me up… as in, I knocked on the office’s front door, and she didn’t come to answer it. She was there. I knew she was there. I could see the light on in her office through the glass. She just didn’t come to the door! I even called her as I stood outside. Maybe she can’t hear me knocking. She didn’t answer her phone.

We later re-scheduled. The same thing happened again. I don’t remember if there was a third time, but for all of her apologies and excuses, I never saw her again.

To be ghosted by someone in your personal life is one thing. (I’ve had it happen to me, and I’m guilty of having done it, myself. Not proud of it. Just being real.) But by a counselor? A therapist? I’d never heard of any professional in the field of mental health doing this kind of thing to a client.

You place your trust in your therapist, right? Trust is a fundamental of the therapist/patient relationship. That’s why you keep going back. You’ve established trust, and you’re confident that you’re in a safe place free of judgement. Trusting this particular counselor turned out to be a mistake. After those last experiences, I felt worse than I did before I started going to her.

I might as well have wired $1,000 to a Nigerian prince to get the riches promised, only to discover the scam and find myself $1,000 poorer.

 

Next:

  • The shrink who lectured me for an hour about the evils of gluten.

He was an interim counselor, so it was the one and only time I saw him. But during that one appointment, all he did was try to convert me to a gluten-free lifestyle.

His proselytizing had nothing to do with mental health. What happened was he started out reviewing my list of medications, noticed that I was seeing a rheumatologist for autoimmune issues, and decided that I could easily cure myself of everything. All I had to do was go gluten-free. Miracles happen once you quit consuming gluten. I spent the rest of the session receiving an education for which I never signed up.

And I mean, he went on at length into biochemical detail, even showing me anatomy graphics to illustrate how gluten was wreaking havoc on my immune system and destroying my body from the inside out. His conviction was profound. A true evangelist, he made sure to pull out a pamphlet for me to take home. His passion for the gluten-free lifestyle bordered on fervor that almost edged me out of the room, but I sat frozen in awe. Without a doubt, this was the most bizarre and unhelpful counseling session I’d ever attended.

Seriously, I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried! Rest assured, most of my experiences have been good, if not excellent. The two that I’ve shared above are anomalies… don’t let them deter you if you’re thinking of seeking assistance. Talk therapy does many worlds of good. It does help.

 

 

Conquering the day. (On chronic depression.)

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My next shrink appointment is in August, and I have a feeling it’s going to be a long two months.

There’s no cure for clinical depression. Coping mechanisms are the currency we need to survive. We look within and gather what we can, learning from ourselves. We learn from others, too… mental health professionals, counselors, clergy, friends, family. We look to individuals we admire, gaining inspiration from them. And, of course, there’s the internet, always ready with advice and “life hacks.”

Certainly, coping mechanisms and strategies and inspiration can be found online. That stuff abounds in books and videos, too. We have popular culture contributors, historians, philosophers, teachers, poets and writers, celebrities of all sorts, and spiritual sages and practitioners and self-help gurus whose words of wisdom are posted as adages meant to uplift or even save us.

I’ve written about a few adages I find to be helpful. I haven’t mentioned those that I find to be detrimental, though. There are a few out there that I think are really just not good. Some adages or tidbits of “wisdom” (often displayed as memes) only serve to show you that you are to blame for your own depression. I saw one on Instagram recently – the one that spawned this post:

“If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.” (attributed to Lao Tzu)

We’re constantly looking for those coping mechanisms, for ways to survive depression. When we see these kinds of adages, we think, well… maybe that person isn’t aware that they’re trivializing the struggle by placing pithy quotes before our eyes, suggesting that if we wanted to, we could change our outlook or perspective and just “get over it.”

We’re happy for those who are well, and we know that many of them mean well, but those who are well aren’t helping when they (inadvertently or otherwise) wellsplain our lives to us. The last thing we need to be told is that we’re doing life wrong.

Unfortunately, there’s no “how to” when it comes to being happy. There’s only a how to cope. How to get by. Clinical depression presents like any other chronic illness: we go through spans of time that feel “normal” and fine. We can feel good and at peace. Then there are the dark spells. The dark spells are tough to work through. I lean on gratitude and love, purpose and intent, anticipation and music, working out, reading and writing, “little things” and those adages that do help. But general happiness is a unicorn in the forest of the depressed.

Each trial through mental illness is individual, because the people living with those illnesses are individuals. There is no panacea for mental illness, and if there is, it’s just not going to arrive in a meme. I know it’s easy to misunderstand depression and think that the depressed can just “get over it.” I wish that it worked that way. It just doesn’t.

Depression can be managed, though. I’m doing a pretty good job at managing it, a fact that I can recognize even though I’m in a dark spell.

 

Conquering the day.

 

Speaking of life hack memes, is there one for how to not eat a whole box of Medjool dates in one sitting?

 

May Favorites!

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I’m not sure how to sum up the month of May. Mental health real talk: May was the white serial killer van creeping slowly down the street in front of your office window; you’re mesmerized by a combination of horror and morbid fascination as you wonder when it’s going to stop, and what you’ll see when it does. The van doesn’t stop, though. It keeps going, slowly, and when it disappears from view, you’re relieved, but you wish you’d seen more. Then June rolls around in the form of another serial killer van, and now you’re wondering whether you should ask for an adjustment to your depression medication cocktail.

In other words, ugh. This is what “Little Things” are for, right? Here are some of the Little Things that I enjoyed in May:

 

1). Ali Wong: Hard Knock Wife (Netflix)

 

 

Some hilarity was in order. We got it by watching this. BEWARE if you have delicate sensibilities. Ali does not hold back!

 

2). A Quiet Place (film)

 

 

We finally made it out to a movie, and we picked a good one. It’s immensely gratifying when a horror film turns out to be good and not cheesy at all, like this one, though I love cheesy horror flicks, too.

 

3). The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu, S2)

 

 

I probably noted the first time around that the phenomenal The Handmaid’s Tale is visually stunning, and that you could hit “pause” anywhere and it’s like you’re looking at a Vermeer painting. Season 2 follows suit.

 

4). Evil Genius: The True Story of America’s Most Diabolical Bank Heist (Netflix)

 

 

Netflix’ real-life crime drama docuseries game is strong.

 

5). Cobra Kai (YouTube Red)

 

 

Cobra Kai is a current day “where are they now” blast that puts you back in the 80’s because the main character is stuck there.

 

6). The Americans (FX) Series Finale (S6)

 

 

The Americans series finale couldn’t have been better, in our opinion. We’re sad that it’s over, but it had to end at some point, I suppose.

 

 

Philip and Elizabeth in the final scene of the very last episode of The Americans.

 

7). Sumo/Natsu Basho (May 2018 Grand Sumo Tournament) and Tochinoshin’s promotion to Ozeki.

 

Tochinoshin (actual name: Levan Gorgadze)

 

We’re big Tochinoshin fans, as you may recall if you’ve been here for a while, so we were thrilled to witness Tochinoshin’s historic promotion to Ozeki (Sumo’s 2nd-highest rank) at the end of his spectacular May tournament.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUUuk9eyovs

 

The wonderful tribute video above doesn’t include Tochinoshin’s most notable victory of the May Basho (for reasons of respect, I would guess), so I’m posting another video showing that match. This is his win over the formidable Yokozuna Hakuho. Yokozuna is Sumo’s highest rank. A Yokozuna is basically like a god in Japan.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tBZtxTBSQ0&t=11s

 

8). Cherry season.

Cherry season is when Dad drives 1.5 hours to the cherry orchards in Brentwood (CA) and picks pounds and pounds of cherries and sends a big box of them to me, and then I know that we’re on the verge of summer, because I can taste it. Cherries are my favorite fruit. Callaghan doesn’t like them, so these were all for me.

 

Rainier cherries and another type whose name I can’t remember. The deep red-black Bing cherries come later in the season.

 

9). Popcorn with nuts.

 

popcorn and nuts

 

I started dumping roasted, salted mixed nuts on top of my popcorn, and it’s so very satisfying.

 

Alas, I could only come up with nine Things this time. They were outstanding. They were more than enough.

What do you get when you cross a flamingo and a ukulele? My office.

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I had a hard mental health day on Friday, and all of the late-afternoon popcorn and Perrier couldn’t fix it. Neither did it help that that was the day I decided to watch Childish Gambino’s “This is America” video. Excellent song and video. Bad timing.

But then things got better, because when I woke up the next day, it was a gym morning and it was Mother’s Day weekend. I got cards from Nenette, Geronimo, and Callaghan, and for my main gift, Callaghan took me to Home Depot and said I could go crazy and choose any plant I wanted, emphasis on “any”! I chose this tall guy and named him “Flamingo”:

 

Flamingo! (He’s a Dracaena ‘Massangeana’)

 

My desk now, as seen from the doorway:

 

Four of my nine office companions, from left: Holder, Flamingo, Icarus, Thoreau

 

At some point, I’ll do an updated office tour and take you around to see all of my companions of the chlorophyllous persuasion. Two of them have joined me since my last such update, and some of the older ones have migrated to different spots.

Also, you may be noticing that there’s a ukulele sitting next to my desk. Yes, I’ve brought the ukulele back into the light! I haven’t dusted it off yet, but it’s out. That white binder on the shelf above it is a lesson book. Mom gave these to me, as some of you may recall, and I proceeded to capitalize on the opportunity to share some of my favorite ukulele jokes.

i.e. (from my previous blog post about the ukulele):

What’s the difference between a ukulele and a trampoline? You take off your shoes to jump up and down on a trampoline.

What’s “perfect pitch”? When you throw the ukulele into the garbage can without hitting the rim.

What do you call a beautiful woman on a ukulele player’s arm? A tattoo.

And my personal favorite:

A ukulele player suddenly realizes he left his vintage ukulele out in his car overnight. He rushes outside and his heart drops when he sees that his car window is broken. Fearing the worst, he peeks through the window and finds that there are now five ukuleles in his car.

I still love to laugh at the ukulele, but I do respect it, and I’ve decided to learn to play it. Going through my old rhythm and timing workbooks, composer collections, and sheet music made me realize how much I miss doing music. Self, I said one day recently – yesterday, in fact – why don’t you learn to play that beautiful, new ukulele Mom gave you? Why not.

I’m sure I’ll be back with ukulele-learning updates for any of you who may be interested; I can’t wait to laugh at myself as much as I laugh at the ukulele.

Oh, and my second Mother’s Day gift was a new tool box! Callaghan knew that I wasn’t thrilled with the one I’d been using. My new one (which I chose) is shiny and black and spacious and lovely. I should’ve taken a pic of it, too.

I hope you’re all having a great start to your week!

On minimizing “decision-fatigue.” (Mental wellness post!)

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One day, in the third week of April 2017, I figured out what I’d wear to the gym each workout day of the following week. I wrote it all down. It was life-changing. I’ve since kept up the practice: once a week, I plan and list my gym outfits in a notebook (to keep track), gather the clothing, put them together in neat little bundles, and place them in the drawer in the order of the workouts. This completely eliminates having to think about what to wear to the gym as I’m getting ready to go.

This might make it sound like I have gym-clothing fashion concerns, but I do not. What I have is limited time and a limited mental/creative energy capacity each day.

No matter how little I care about my gym attire, I still have to decide what to put on. It’s a small, inconsequential decision, but it’s still a decision. Toward the end of the day, small and inconsequential decisions have added up, and then I start to make poor decisions, or I struggle to make decisions at all anymore. It could be that when it’s late-afternoon and I find myself stressed and unable to pinpoint a cause, I’m actually looking at decision-fatigue.

Why do couples sometimes bicker (stereotypically) over what to have for dinner? Maybe because they’re both at the end of a long day of making hundreds of little decisions, and they’re decision-exhausted and hangry. Decision-fatigue is a documented phenomenon; I’ve found web pages devoted to it.

As I said, my habit of putting gym clothes together a week in advance has been life-changing. It helps immensely that getting dressed for the gym involves only opening a drawer and pulling out the bundle on top. Zero decisions, minimal time. Even if I know what I’m going to wear, I’d still have to search for the pieces (t-shirts and pants – told you I didn’t care about gym fashion!) if they weren’t already bundled together.

 

Minimizing decision-fatigue: gym outfit prep, week-in-advance

 

This week-in-advance planning and prep – as opposed to multiple night-befores – allows me to devote my mental/creative energy and time to writing. Early mornings are especially precious to me; my primary focus each day starts with my “morning pages,” which consist of whatever part of my project I have in front of me. (Usually, it’s a single chapter.)

Gym-clothing planning is just an example. I’ve made it a point to try to be aware of other little decisions that feed on my energy levels throughout the day, and to get ahead of these decisions by strategizing accordingly. Because of my new awareness, I’ve returned to the habit of making daily lists of things to do. I might know what I have to do, but having the list in front of me saves me time and mental energy.

This leads me to a tangent: I don’t consider decisions to be distractions. There’s always a time and reason for distractions. Callaghan’s the same way! Perhaps we who work in creative realms need distractions because we’re easily over-saturated with our creations. Distractions carry me into a different head-space… they wipe the slate clean, so to speak. When the text is no longer at the forefront of my mind, I can start the next writing session and see what I couldn’t see before.

With that, I’m going to slam the door shut on this topic, because I can sense other tangents rising up!

Happy Friday Eve, everyone.

Getting personal: autoimmune disease. (Sjögren’s syndrome)

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Though I’ve mentioned it in recent posts, my current medical situation has been a big enough part of my life that it warrants a post of its own, I guess, for anyone who might be interested. I’ve spent most of my adult life dealing with autoimmunity, working around various symptoms until receiving my diagnoses with Sjögren’s syndrome and autoimmune thyroiditis (hypothyroidism). I used to write about my Sjögren’s syndrome a lot. I haven’t written about it at length in years.

I felt fine when I left the country in 2011 and stopped taking my medication (hydroxichloroquine – Plaquenil, in my case), and I assumed that I was in remission. A few years later, I came back to the Land of AZ and went to my optometrist for a routine vision check. He informed me that as far as my eyes were concerned, I never went into remission. (Telling myself that I was in remission sure helped me to feel like I was in remission, though!)

Musculoskeletal symptoms started up again toward the end of 2016, along with worsening “brain fog.” I’d entered an autoimmune disease “flare,” and it left no room for denial. Weird things started to happen, as they do with autoimmunity. When the middle of one finger turned blue one night (“Idiopathic Blue Finger,” diagnosed the E.R. doctor – not Raynaud’s, which I also have), I returned to the rheumatologist, who put me back on hydroxichloroquine (again, Plaquenil). I shrugged my shoulders and pressed forward. I had a rough draft to finish! It was the thing that was causing my stress, but it had to get done.

Toward the end of 2017, my immune system went into overdrive again, even as I diligently took my daily dose of hydroxichloroquine.

2018’s been more difficult, yet. The last three months have revolved around some of the most painful attacks on my joints I can remember, some of it incapacitating. My agenda jammed up with medical appointments and testing of various sorts, as my rheumatologist wanted to rule out the development of other autoimmune disorders before deciding on our next course of action. Let me just say that my rheumatologist at the Phoenix V.A. has been the best I’ve ever had! She’s fantastic. Autoimmunity is something that can gather steam with time and generate additional disorders, so it’s good to re-check everything when things go awry.

Genetics likely play a role here, by the way, and I think I know the source of mine: when we met, my bio-mom told me that I physically take after my father’s mother’s family (the Ashcrofts, in England). I would love to meet them and find out who’s had what autoimmune disease. I’m assuming there’d be something to learn.

It’s pretty easy for me to dismiss my symptoms. I’ve had dry eyes for so long that I forget that it’s a part of my disease. A lot of people have dry eye syndrome without having Sjögren’s. It’s “my normal” to be unable to open my eyes in the morning until I put in artificial tears. (I might have stopped taking the hydroxichloroquine when I moved to France, but I’ve never stopped with the eye drops.) Since I push myself in the gym, it’s easy to assign blame to my workouts when I experience bouts of musculoskeletal pain. I focus when I work out. I don’t consider that I’m dealing with Sjögren’s symptoms. I don’t want to go there in my mind.

I don’t feel sick, for the most part. There’s a general malaise sometimes. My energy levels are mostly good, but fatigue sets in more quickly during my workouts now, and I can feel that it’s Sjögren’s-level fatigue. I have occasional abdominal pain and nausea. The brain fog has led me into some embarrassing conversational exchanges. All of this is minor enough.

Since 2016, my white blood cells have mainly attacked my joints and my eyes. My vision in my right eye has worsened slightly over the course of a year, and there’s more scarring on my corneas. My optometrist applied a temporary contact lens bandage to the cornea of my right eye (the more affected one, the one that hurts) and sent me to a corneal specialist.

My last musculoskeletal attack started at a party a week ago Saturday. In typical autoimmune fashion, it struck all of a sudden and out of nowhere. My left hand seized up with intense pain, starting at the large joints on the outside of the hand and radiating inward. For the rest of the night and into the next day, I couldn’t open or close that hand all the way. It swelled up a little bit and changed colors, and it felt like a mild constriction was happening. It was excruciating. Thankfully, the episode lasted less than 24 hours. Some of my recent attacks have lasted for almost two weeks.

I’m grateful that so far, Sjögren’s syndrome has left my internal organs alone.

Meanwhile, my plant-based lifestyle helps me to function at a physically high level with Sjögren’s syndrome.  I’m trying to keep processed foods to a minimum. I’m trying to get more sleep. I’m continuing to drink water all day long, including water spiked with organic, raw apple cider vinegar. I really believe in that stuff!

Now that my test results have come back, my rheumatologist is adding methotrexate to my hydroxichloroquine. On the alternative side and courtesy of my amazing parents, I’m also adding Manuka honey (Comvita brand, from New Zealand) and Ukon (tumeric) to my daily supplement cocktail. I’m hoping for the best, but expecting life to continue as it is, with good days (as in, I can go to the gym) and bad days (as in, I can’t go to the gym). No, it’s not all or nothing – there are days that are bad because I’m in pain, but I can still do something, so I go to work out and I do whatever I can.

I went to the gym this morning. I took this selfie about an hour ago, in the late afternoon. I’m still feeling fine.

 

Autoimmune, don’t care. Today is a good day.

 

With my new treatment plan, I hope to see the end of this flare. The attacks on my joints should stop. My head should clear up so I can remember things like, say, the first thing about a prominent politician, and that a person who’s ridden in my car on many an occasion does, indeed, know what my car looks like, and that a friend’s get-together was in April, not in March. About that last: I’ve never missed an occasion by a whole month before. It just happened, and it sucks, because the friend who invited me lives out of town, and it might be years before I can see her again… not to mention, I’d accepted her invitation. I accepted, and I didn’t show up, and I regret that very much.

That’s the story. I know that many of you also live with chronic illness. HUGS to you all. Let’s keeping fighting the good fight!

 

The silver lining of a bad day is the day after.

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This has been a week. I’m sure you can all relate to this: there is no day as good as the day after a really bad day. The great thing about today is that yesterday was a day of epic fuckery such that today can only be better. For one thing, I was able to get to the gym this morning. I couldn’t go on Tuesday or yesterday, so you can bet that today’s workout made an immense difference.

For me, everything about working out makes everything better, even an aspect as simple as setting up whatever area I use. I took this pic weeks ago when a friend pointed out how I always organize my area, with my backpack and water bottle to the left:

 

Organized crime.

 

I took this picture jokingly, but it’s soothing to see it because I see habit, and habit can be a balm. It’s a way of feeling in control; in this case, it’s a healthy way.

This post comes from a place of gratitude. Yesterday is over. Today is a new day. I have yet another doctor’s appointment this afternoon (my third this week) – one of my medical specialists – but this is a good thing. Today’s doctor will be different, and I’m very optimistic that whatever he does, the experience will be the opposite of the one I had on Tuesday. I’m talking about ophthalmology, the only medical specialty not available at our V.A., by the way.

Yesterday, man. There was just something about it. Callaghan had a Very Bad Day yesterday, too, for reasons different than mine. It was awesome that we didn’t get into it despite our equally bad moods!

I’ll try to remember to repeat this mantra on future bad days: tomorrow is a new day. Some sayings make profound sense, and there’s nothing like experience to appreciate a tired old adage as something more than a tired old adage. Everyone is different. It’s good to hone in on adages that help get us through. For me, “things can always be worse” is a good reminder, but it isn’t as reassuring as “tomorrow is a new day.”

 

Cancel your resolutions! (Staying motivated in the new year.)

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We’re early enough in the new year that we’re still thinking and talking about our resolutions, or about our decision to not make them, as the case may be.

More than once, I’ve been asked how I keep my resolutions, so I thought I’d share my thoughts on that, for whatever they’re worth.

I’m not a life coach or a psychologist. I don’t have it all figured out. There seems to be no end in sight when it comes to my manner of inadvertently f*cking shit up or making a fool of myself or both, and the last thing I am is the walking picture of contentment, regardless of the (considerable) depth of my gratitude.

But I’m strong-willed when I have the passion to fuel my drive, and I do have a lot of that. In my opinion, that’s most of what we need. It’s hard to stick with resolutions in the absence of passion.

My main advice would be to cancel the resolution if you lose your passion for it. Focus your energy elsewhere! If the resolution is of critical importance, you will come back to it – or it will come back to you – once you’ve given yourself a break from the pressure of it. Sometimes that’s all we need to kick-start our second wind (or third, or fourth, or tenth): a break. Put that resolution down and back slowly away. Don’t hang onto it and worry over it and lament your struggle and your apathy and your “failure.” Just put it aside.

Yes, reverse psychology on your own self works.

If the resolution is not of critical importance, then you didn’t really need it, anyway. Sometimes, the mood you’re in when you make non-critical resolutions isn’t the mood you stay in for the next 365 days. That’s okay. That’s not a failure; that’s a realization.

Some other thoughts regarding staying motivated and not sabotaging yourself in sticking with your resolutions as the new year gets underway:

1). Deadlines hold no power. They really don’t. If you’re the kind of person who gets overwhelmed by the notion of a deadline, then try to relax where that’s concerned. Any progress is still progress. If all you can do today is get out of bed and get dressed, then you’ve accomplished something!

2). Don’t say too much – not to be secretive, but to keep something sacred within. There’s something weirdly empowering about hoarding a goal or an aspiration. Maybe it’s just that if no one knows you’re aiming for it, then no one can ruin it… no one can judge your progress or lack thereof. Having a resolution that only you know about turns that effort into something magical, a secret quest, a journey that you take alone. Share a resolution or two with others, but keep one for yourself. It’s amazing how progress toward your secret goal can help to build your confidence.

3). Helplessness is a mere state of mind. If you feel helpless, tell yourself that you’re not, because needing help and being helpless are two different things. Thinking “I am helpless” is self-sabotage. Thinking “I need help” is not. If you’re capable of asking for what you need, then you’re not helpless… if you need help and you have the wherewithal to ask for it, you’re not helpless. You’re more resourceful than you know, and you have more courage than you know.

4). Your journey is directed by you. You can make your own decisions, own them, learn from your mistakes, and move forward accordingly. When it’s all said and done, you have executive power over your own life.

5). Suffering is a fact of life; it’s a motivator, not an impediment.

 

January 2018 – Here’s to a bright and beautiful new year.

 

Another thing to remember: every week has a Friday, whatever day that may actually be! Again, you can decide what day that is. Revel in it.

 

Friday mental health meditation.

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It’s been a hard week.

With chronic, clinical depression, you live with a continuous mental health ebb and flow. It’s usually unpredictable. When I feel the ebb, it’s easy to dwell on factors that might be feeding my mental state into the darkness.

Because while the low points usually come from nothing in particular (such are the vagaries of compromised brain chemistry), there are also times of stress responses to factors I can identify.

I recognize the counterproductive nature of dwelling on those factors, but still, it’s hard to avoid gnawing at them sometimes. This is why I constantly enumerate the things for which I’m grateful. When I catch myself going over the negative stuff, I can fall back on my long-standing practice of counting my blessings throughout the day, every day.

When I’m down, I try to dwell even more on the positive.

In other words, actively practicing gratitude amounts to depression damage control. I have other forms of therapy. Working out consistently is therapy, literally: exercise frees the body’s endorphins to help the brain make you feel better. Creative endeavors such as writing are therapy. Loving on (and being loved by) my cat is therapy. Eating well to avoid poisoning my body is therapy. I try to laugh a lot. I try to maintain a lifestyle that can help others, rather than hurt them. Now, minimizing my life is even a form of therapy. I see a shrink and take psych meds, as well, but in the daily course of living, it’s these other actions I choose to take that help the most.

I’m grateful to have the unwavering support of Callaghan and my parents, but I try to manage my mental health without leaning on them too much. I’d never take them for granted, but I don’t want to be needy, either. It’s helpful just knowing that they’re there. I have to take responsibility for myself, because what if they’re not there one day? I can’t allow myself to become dependent on others for my mental well-being. This is a survival instinct more than anything.

Apropos of nothing, here’s a selfie I thought would be amusing to take (the other day):

 

Yet another awkward mirror-selfie attempt, but hey. Hi.

 

There’s always another day, and next week will be a new week.

 

Rest in Peace, Chris Cornell. (And Gen-X. And okayness.)

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Man, I’m in a dark and strange mood this morning. I shouldn’t be. It’s gorgeous out there.

I live in Arizona and it’s May 19 and we’ve been sleeping with the windows open. It’s been like this for almost two weeks. The bedroom air is slightly chilly in the morning, so I reach for a light robe. This bizarre behavior can only mean one thing: we’re entering a new Ice Age.

It’s not just at night, either. After I get up, I go around the house and open one or two other windows and the front door, and leave them open for a good half-day, if not longer. I open them again in the evenings. This, my friends in other places, is paradise. We desert-dwellers love the desert, but we also love an unseasonably cool breeze through our security screen doors.

For posterity, here’s me this morning:

 

May 19, 2017 – in a light sweatshirt. In Arizona.

 

At the same time, awful things have been happening in the world, including the recent and tragic departure of Chris Cornell, whose widespread fame was launched with his Seattle grunge band Soundgarden. His death was not only shocking and sad, but also somewhat alarming for we “lost ones” of Generation X.

When you spend your childhood in the 70’s, your teens in the 80’s, and your twenties in the 90’s –and when the 90’s was your favorite decade, and Ten is one of your all-time favorite albums – the untimely deaths of icons like Kurt Cobain and Chris Cornell are sobering. It makes you want to watch Singles (older Gen-Xers), Reality Bites (younger Gen-Xers), and Office Space all day, kicked back on the couch eating chips and not looking for a job, all of us stereotypical, slovenly losers and slackers of Generation X.

Should I complete my own stereotype as a Gen-X writer and install a coffee pot on my desk?

Should I stare off into space and then write a letter? (“Dear Eddie Vedder: please don’t.”)

But I’m lucky. My depression is under control. I’m okay. We’re okay. Everything is okay. Everything is fine, despite global shenanigans at the highest levels of power, shenanigans of which there’s no need to speak. It’s like that one meme… that one where the dog is sitting in a house that’s burning down around him, and then he perks up and says, “This is fine.”

That’s a sign of our times, though, isn’t it? “Okay” and “fine” have long since been code for “things aren’t exactly hunky-dory.”  

“How are you?”

“I’m okay.”

“JUST okay?”

Commence questioning all of your life choices as you’re prompted to consider why you said just “okay.” You can’t be okay if you say you’re okay, because okay isn’t good enough. To tell the well-meaning inquirer that you’re okay is to send yourself an invitation to spill all of your not-okayness right there in the office hallway on your way to the water cooler.

Is this the product of a society defined by extremes? If we’re not flying high on the vaporous joy of life at all times, then something is wrong?

I’ll take “okay.”

Maybe this entire post was a sort of tangent. Maybe I just wanted to say, Rest in Peace, Chris Cornell.

 

 

“Be the best version of yourself.” (And other stories.)

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I have a confession to make: I don’t like the phrase “Be the best version of yourself.”

The phrase has become one of my pet peeves. When I hear it, I immediately think of that Batman slapping Robin meme. You know the one.

Mind you, you don’t annoy me. I’m not judging or making fun of anyone who uses the phrase in any of its derivations. If it’s helpful to wake up in the morning and think, “Today I’m going to be the best version of myself,” then that’s awesome. It’s awesome because it works for you, and what’s more, what works for you is none of my business. Sometimes, catchy self-help adages are motivational. Whatever works!

If I may ask again, though – at the risk of sounding like a broken record – why do we insist on pressuring ourselves with all of this honing in on the self?

We’re constantly analyzing and judging ourselves, and often feeling not good enough. “Be the best version of yourself” seems counterproductive. It’s a command that could readily set us up for failure. We could end up feeling worse if, at the end of the day, we conclude that we didn’t live up to our own expectations.

Because that’s what “be the best version of yourself” means, I think: “Live up to your potential.”

“Potential” in terms of being good human beings: we don’t always have to be the hero risking our lives to save everyone all the time. It’s just as good to smile genuinely at someone to make their day a little brighter. Maybe that’s how you save someone.

“Potential” in terms of achieving excellence in everything we do: we don’t have to expect perfection of ourselves in everything we do all the time. 

Being the best version of yourself can mean that you smiled genuinely at someone, and you also made sure to not miss any spots when you cleaned the table.

Sometimes, it’s too much to try to be the best. Why even put a superlative on what “version” of yourself you’re going to be on any given day?

If you make it a personal policy to be a decent human being, there’s nothing wrong with deciding to be the flea market version of yourself, or the mix tape version of yourself, or whatever version of yourself you need to be that day… whatever version lifts your spirits. Whatever version makes your smile genuine, so you can pass it on to someone else.

 

Simple advice on a tank top (from my friend in France)

 

PHOENIX FORGOTTEN. (PTSD diagnosis story AND a review, of sorts. No spoilers.)

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We went to watch Phoenix Forgotten, which brought back the year of 1997.

As I sat there, it occurred to me for the first time that the beginning of my PTSD coincided with the Phoenix Lights.

[NOTE: The link function to open the linked page in a new window is down at the moment, so you’ll have to back-arrow to get back here]

NOTE: Scroll all the way to the bottom for my very brief and informal “review” of Phoenix Forgotten.

Probably many of us living here in Phoenix metro in 1997 remember the lights that moved over the Valley in March. For me, 1997 was also eventful because it involved numerous doctors throughout the year. 1997 was the year I was diagnosed with PTSD. Yes – six years post-main event.

I wasn’t in school in 1997. I was taking a year off, the year after college and before grad school. There were only two things on my agenda for 1997: write poems and train for my black belt in Tae Kwan Do. I was also working.

So I was doing all of that, just minding my own business, like you do, and then, one night, I went to bed feeling sick to my stomach. As soon as I closed my eyes, my heart jumped in and crashed the party, like, Hey! I’m here too! Whheeeeeee! Cannonball!!!… and I couldn’t breathe, and I thought I was going to die of a cardiac event.

Then I was waking up. It was morning. What the hell just happened?

It happened again the next night, and the next and the next. It got to a point where I was too gun-shy to go bed. Going to bed had become a horrifying prospect, so every night, I put it off until I was passing-out tired. I don’t know why I didn’t go to the doctor sooner.

Eventually, I did go to the doctor, because I had an episode that was different than the others, and that was the proverbial last straw.

In that episode, I was trapped in another dimension and I was going to die for sure. Somewhere between awake and sleep, something happened. If I was completely asleep, it would’ve been a nightmare. Whatever this was, it was psychedelic and real, like, 3D real… and that was on top of the physical Armageddon that was my new normal. After I survived that night, I finally went to the doctor.

*****

1997 became a year of medical mystery. I went back and forth between different internists and specialists, cardiology and gastroenterology and cardiology again, everyone referring me to everyone else. I was deemed healthy – good news! – but I was still having these ridiculous episodes.

Then my baffled first internist started asking me questions about my background. When it came out that I was a combat vet, she referred me to a shrink. The shrink explained that panic attacks mimic heart conditions and other physical issues, which was why no one thought of the PTSD possibility.

He explained that the first episode was a panic attack. After it recurred nightly for a period of time, it became a panic disorder (PTSD, in my case). And the next-level attacks, he said, were “night terrors.”

Why did it take so long for the PTSD to manifest? He said it wasn’t unusual for vets to come home fine and then experience a trigger years later. The trigger could be anything, he said. So what was my trigger? We’ll never know, and it doesn’t matter.

All we know is that my PTSD was triggered by something in the spring of 1997. Coincidentally, I’m sure, the Phoenix Lights also happened in the spring of 1997.

*****

I sat in the movie theater remembering and pondering all of this, and that is how my non-review movie review became a post about my PTSD diagnosis.

I can’t be objective about this movie, but I can say that in my opinion, it wasn’t bad.

Phoenix Forgotten begins on a robust note, then bleeds out into the Found Footage horror movie sub-genre. In my experience, Found Footage movies made after the first Blair Witch Project are doomed to the basement where Bad Horror Flicks live. I often really enjoy Bad Horror Flicks, but I can’t even say whether this movie was bad enough to qualify as that bad.

If you’re intrigued by the Phoenix Lights and/or you’re a fan of Found Footage horror movies, you may dig this one.

What you never read about the V.A. Health Care System.

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Yesterday morning, I went to the V.A. medical center, where I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few years… especially over the last few months. I’ve received wonderful care there. I’m a lucky veteran in that I have access to non-V.A. health care, too; I choose the V.A. over non-V.A. as my primary health care resource because I’ve found it to be a better system. In my experience, V.A. health care is superior to non-V.A. health care.

I know why you might be surprised. The media only wants you to know about the bad stuff pertaining to the V.A. health care system. Believe me, if the entire V.A. health care system was BAD, I wouldn’t be going there.

In brief, my experience at the Phoenix V.A. Medical Center has been superb.

In more detail, I prefer the V.A. health care system for the following reasons:

  • The time I have to wait to get in to see the doctor is significantly less.
  • The time I have to spend sitting in the waiting room waiting to be seen for my appointment is also significantly less.
  • The time that I spend sitting with the doctor during my appointment is considerably greater. I get more personal, thorough attention at the V.A. than I’ve ever received at non-V.A. medical facilities.
  • The quality of the care that I receive from doctors (including specialists), nurse practitioners, lab technicians, and administrative staff at the V.A. is better than what I’ve experienced at non-V.A. health care facilities.
  • V.A. doctors order labs and X-rays readily and on the spot. Since the orders are put into the computer system and the labs and radiology are right there under the same roof, I can leave the doctor’s office and go immediately to have the testing done.
  • If other testing needs to be done, the clinic in question contacts me promptly to schedule my appointment.
  • If I prefer an open MRI due to claustrophobia, the V.A. sends me to a non-V.A. clinic that does open-MRIs.
  • Doctors at the V.A. take a precautionary approach; they send orders for in-depth testing if they think there’s even a remote possibility that something of concern is going on.
  • The pharmacy, too, is housed in the same facility. I can procure my new medication in the same visit and go home with it in hand.
  • Lab and radiology test results come back in a fraction of the time it takes to get results and analyses done in non-V.A. clinics.
  • The V.A. has an online portal system that allows vets to access all of their medical records, notes, and lab results. Vets can also contact their doctors and other health care practitioners online via the My Health-E Vet system.
  • The V.A. is merciless in sending appointment reminders in the mail and calling with reminders. (This is a good thing.)
  • If I have to cancel an appointment, the clinic will call to re-schedule – repeatedly, until I’ve been re-scheduled.
  • The V.A. has a seamless phone-in system for pharmacy refills. Refills show up in my mailbox within 8-10 days.
  • The V.A. always asks me whether I’m safe and whether I have a place to live.
  • The V.A. always points me to available resources, should I need them.
  • The V.A. reimburses vets for their travel costs in getting to and from the medical center.
  • The V.A. ensures that vets have the suicide prevention lifeline phone number.

 

 

I could go on with this list, if I had time. I could offer specific personal examples, if I wanted to share details of my medical picture. Suffice it to say that I’m speaking from experience. It’s not just me, either… I don’t know (or know of) any vets using the Phoenix V.A. health care system who have a bad word to say about the health care that they receive within that system.

I’m impressed anew after the outstanding experience I had with my new rheumatologist at the Phoenix V.A. yesterday. (Previously, I’d gone to my former non-V.A. rheumatologist, who’s nevertheless also good.)

Now, at the Phoenix V.A. medical center, I have my primary care physician, my shrink, my doctor at the women’s clinic, and my rheumatologist. They’re all first-rate.

Yes. The best medical care I’ve ever received is at the infamous PHOENIX V.A.

Do non-V.A. health care systems have problems? Yes. Corruption at the highest levels occurs at non-V.A. health care systems, and patients’ risks on the ground can include negligence, poor conditions, poor treatment, scheduling hold-ups and issues, and all manner of malpractice.

I remember a case I’d read about a diabetic man who had the wrong leg amputated. It didn’t happen at the V.A.

I’ve heard about patients contracting varieties of strep and Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections in hospitals to disastrous effect, but all such cases that reached my attention have happened at non-V.A. medical facilities.

The thing is, non-V.A. health care systems aren’t scrutinized under the glaring political spotlights that blow up the V.A. health care system.

That’s actually another good thing about the V.A. health care system, though: since the system IS scrutinized, problems are addressed with highest priority. When corruption is discovered at the V.A., a gigantic national scandal ensues. The V.A. health care system is suddenly the worst thing that ever happened to veterans… mistreated veterans, poorly treated veterans, and veterans who aren’t treated at all. Action is taken.

Whereas non-V.A. health care system corruption and problems can go unnoticed and unresolved for years.

I’m in no way denying, discounting, or trivializing the horrendous or non-existent treatment veterans have suffered at the hands of the V.A. health care system; I’m not trying to detract from the real problems veterans have experienced with the V.A. I’m pointing out the fact that similar problems exist at non-V.A. hospitals, too, and they aren’t magnified x10,000 in the media. We hear about the V.A. because the V.A. is inextricable from politics. But from what I’ve seen, more veterans are pleased with the V.A. care they receive than not.

Speaking of medical matters, I’m happy to report that I had a great workout this morning. Here’s my gratuitous post-workout gym selfie:

 

Post-workout on a good physical day! I’ve been on a roll. I had five good workouts last week, and I hope to get in five more this week.

 

I am so grateful for my health and for the care I’m receiving at the Phoenix V.A. medical center.

Reiterating just to be clear: I’m not disillusioned about the V.A. health care system and its problems. I wanted to write this post so that somewhere, in some minuscule corner of the interwebs, there’s something positive to be found and read about the V.A. health care system, because it really is, despite its shortcomings, an excellent system.

It’s a shame that although there are many positives, only the negatives are reported. The public eye has been blinded to anything that could be positive about the V.A., which is a lot.

Thank you for reading, if you’ve made it this far.

I went to a big-ass party and this is what happened. (PTSD post.)

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We went to a party on Sunday. It was Callaghan’s company’s “holiday soiree.”

 

thatasianlookingchick-com-holidaysoiree2016

 

(I concealed the names of the company and the party’s hosts.)

If the colors on the invitation seem unusual for such an event, it’s because the party’s theme was “early Mardi Gras.” If you didn’t know, Mardi Gras colors are purple, green, and gold. I’m not sure why it was decided to celebrate the holidays as another holiday that takes place in February, but that’s irrelevant. Well… mostly irrelevant.

We donned the requested semi-formal “festive attire” (I wore a red dress because I was feeling the current season… I wasn’t alone in this), and we ordered an Uber.

The Uber took us to BFE (far away from us, in the middle of nowhere) with no discernible civilization around. We were dropped off in a big-ass parking lot. To enter a big-ass tent. Which led us into a big-ass warehouse. In which there was a big-ass party with roughly 800 people, pretty much in the dark, save for spot lighting here and there.

No part of which agreed with my big-ass case of PTSD.

Not only that, but when we walked into the warehouse, the first thing that happened was a few metallic strings suddenly dropped from the air, straight down, and landed with a clatter on the concrete floor, right in front of my feet. Because, you know, Mardi Gras. It was someone’s role to stand on a second-floor balcony and throw beads down in front of people walking in. This surprise INCOMING situation set me more on edge, though I didn’t show it. I smiled and laughed and talked to people, and I enjoyed the excellent band. I enjoyed meeting some of Callaghan’s co-workers and their wives. I did have a good time in some sense. I focused on that. We stayed for four hours, and I was fine.

Here’s the thing: Like everyone with PTSD, I have some known triggers, and I have some random triggers that can come out of nowhere. I went into the party thinking that my introversion would be the issue, but my panic disorder overrode that completely. It would’ve been great if being an introvert was my biggest challenge.

In response to all of this, I’ve decided to book myself an hour in a sensory deprivation tank.

Yes, you read that right. I’m going to strenuously push my limits in the tank – claustrophobia is one of my issues – and that is the point.

I may never be able to enter a room without immediately looking for the exits and other avenues of escape. I may never be able to sit in a room with my back to the door. But that’s okay. That’s my normal, and those behaviors are valuable, so I have no problems there. Meanwhile, though, I would like to work on lessening the impact of some of my known triggers. Coming out of the party with this realization was the gift of the whole thing. I will act on it! I’ll let you know how it goes.

An aside: I have no pics of us or of the party, I’m sorry to say. There were roaming photographers and co-workers who wanted to take pics, so there are some images floating around somewhere… if I get my hands on one and get the permission of the people in them, I’ll post them at that time.