mental health Leave a comment

Self Care Brain Dump

The term “self-care” gets thrown around a lot, especially via social media. It’s a legitimate concept, but the popular idea seems to be that self-care equates to taking time away from the daily grind to pamper oneself, and that isn’t the only part of self-care.

Self-care is also the everyday things: the little bits of maintenance that keep us from breaking down. Going outside and getting some fresh air. Taking some time to doodle. Putting away the smartphone. Drinking a glass of water. Sitting with your thoughts. Writing them in a journal or a blog.

A few months into our… relationship? …my therapist gave me a printout of a short essay by author Brianna Wiest, entitled, “This Is What Self-Care Really Means, Because It’s Not All Salt Baths And Chocolate Cake.” (Make sure your ad-blocker is turned on if you choose to read the entire essay.)

Self-care should not be something we resort to because we are so absolutely exhausted that we need some reprieve from our own relentless internal pressure.

True self-care is not salt baths and chocolate cake, it is making the choice to build a life you don’t need to regularly escape from.

And that often takes doing the thing you least want to do.

—Brianna Wiest
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ADHD, randomness Leave a comment

Friday Morning

It’s a morning of self-care, now that I think about it. After I dropped Connor off at school, I drove to the salon to get my hair cut. After that, I had a little time to kill before having to be at my next appointment, so I opted to hang out here at Starbucks for a half hour instead of going home.

I haven’t had the occasion to sit at the laptop bar at a Starbucks, even though my local Bux has had one for years. It’s kinda super convenient that I can sit here and blog using my iPhone and my Bluetooth keyboard — positioned at a perfectly ergonomic height, by the way — while my Apple Watch is plugged in to charge via the USB port by my right elbow.

In a few minutes, I’ll head down the road to my next appointment: a New Patient Visit with a psychiatrist who can prescribe my ADHD meds. My GP has been the prescriber for all the brain meds I’ve tried over the years, but he confirmed at our last med check that he’ll be retiring within a year or two. I figured I’d rather transfer ownership of my prescriptions to a mental health professional so I’m not left scrambling at the last minute. Plus, while I do love my doctor, and he seems to be up to date on the latest pharmaceuticals, I suspect it would be in my best interest to have my brain meds prescribed by a brain expert.

Hopefully I haven’t spent too long tickety-tapping here — time to wrap things up and head five minutes down the road to meet my new psychiatrist.

house, pets, randomness, the ongoing saga of my job Leave a comment

Unpublished, Jan 2023: Life Keeps Happening

Once again, I uploaded the relevant photo from my iPhone, plus a topic sentence, with all intentions of returning and fleshing out this entry. Alas, this is as far as I got:

I thoroughly enjoyed my two-week holiday staycation, apart from the washing machine breaking and my Mom not being able to visit for Christmas.

To summarize:

  • Our washing machine stopped agitating a few days before Christmas, and didn’t get fixed until a couple weeks and two laundromat trips later.
  • My Mom had other obligations over the Christmas weekend and gave us plenty of notice that she wouldn’t be driving out to see us. As it happened, a winter storm came through and cancelled her plans.
  • The Sportage started smelling of exhaust fumes, and we spent hundreds of dollars on multiple trips to the Service Department at our local Kia dealership before the problem was finally acknowledged and rectified.
  • On my second day back at work after my staycation, I was given some privileged information about the future plans of my employer, as it pertains to my department and to me specifically. I couldn’t act on this information, and I couldn’t share it with anyone else. As of this writing, I still can’t.
  • The very next day, I woke up to find that Baxter’s eye was goopy. I provided the photo below to the vet, and they recommended he be seen by the vet ASAP. We came away from that vet visit with a two-week regimen of eye ointment.

Yet another example of that feeling I get of barely keeping up with the treadmill that is Life.

family, snapshots Leave a comment

Unpublished: Christmas 2022

I uploaded the photos before Christmas Day was even over, but never quite got past the first line of copy:

“My Mom had already given us notice on Thanksgiving that she wouldn’t be driving out to see us on Christmas this year.”

Instead of leaving these memories to languish in my Drafts folder, I’m opting to share them now, with captions for context.

Connor helped me make snickerdoodles in preparation for our Christmas celebration.
Christmas Eve featured our traditional meal of maple-glazed ham, green bean casserole (courtesy of my brother-in-law), sweet potatoes (scalloped this year), and sweet dinner rolls.
Obligatory holiday selfie.
All four of us — Aaron, Connor, my brother-in-law, and myself — played a game of Chronology. (The original version, not the 20th Anniversary reissue, in case you were wondering.)
Connor got an iPod Nano in his stocking, loaded with video game soundtracks, and suddenly turned into a teenager.
Obligatory Christmas Morning selfie
Aaron got me this fantastic Totoro embroidered hoodie, and it is now my favorite comfy sweatshirt.
Baxter must have decided that a shoulder-sit was an appropriate present for Aaron, who had never experienced a properly-perched Baxter up until then.

It was a low-key Christmas, but a relatively merry one that deserves to be remembered.