A Splintered Mind

PEM: Thinking Tactically

2025-10-06T05:18:00.006-06:00

(These AI images make me laugh. Yes, I know the calendar is messed up. Allow me my silly moments.)

I’ve decided to think dramatically about my obstacles in my first attempt to blog about my new condition with a sense of humor. Honestly, there hasn’t been much to laugh at. For example, I got distracted playing Chess on Duolingo the other day and gave myself Post Exertional Malaise (PEM). First, I noticed the headache, then I noticed that I was panting, and then I realized that I was dizzy. It was just chess! But I lost track of time, got caught up in it, and overtaxed my brain. Stamina spent. Crash incoming. An entire day wasted. It’s hard to laugh about things like that. I had big plans to implement. Instead, I watched TV—until that gave me a headache, too.

Every day I have lists, but I rarely make it to the end of them because of the drain cognitive, physical, and even emotional events have on my stamina levels. Chronic fatigue is complicated.

That’s when it occurred to me. If ADHD is heading to the grocery store and ending up in Vegas, depression is a dreary, overcast day with frequent downpours, and Tourettes is a random mugging on my way to the park, then Post Viral Dysautonomia is like climbing up a hill, then getting run over by a truck.

Since I don’t live in a Japanese light novel, that truck isn’t sending me off to an isekai adventure. It’s more likely that truck puts me in bed. When I began my new neuro PT exercises last week, I did too many of them and ended up in bed for three days. This illness requires careful planning and tactical thinking, contrary to my ADHD impulsiveness.

For example, I have problems now with dangerously low oxygen saturation levels thanks to COVID–19. It occurred to me that I hadn’t been playing any woodwind instruments in a long while, so maybe I could add that to my daily routine to increase my lung capacity again. Perhaps that would help.

So I practiced for a timed 15 minutes for two instruments, and found that I could only sometimes make the full 30 minute session without getting dizzy and light-headed. Yesterday, I shortened the session to 10 minutes per instrument. It’s a far cry from playing for hours like I used to enjoy, but there are other things that I need to do daily, and if I can tolerate a 20 minute session, then that’s fantastic. I can build up from there. However, I will cap it at 30 minutes. My goal isn’t to play the shinobue and ocarina professionally. It’s just lung exercise and a bit of fun. Other things like freelance work, packing to move, and writing require vast energy reserves. I need to plan my time better. Using a timer is key, but being mindful of the calendar helps, too. Laughter is another tool that I am only now using again. It’s rusty, but I’m sure I can get it shiny again—assuming I can avoid getting hit by more trucks.

~Dˢ

Traveler's Notebook Distractions and ADHD eBay Blunders

2024-10-02T23:42:00.017-06:00

I joined the Midori Traveler’s Notebook (TN) club this past Summer. I missed the big blogging heyday about them around 2012 to 2015 when the Internet seem to explode over this nifty little notebook system, but I was all about digital back then. I loved my iPhone and didn’t feel a need to go analog.

Recently, though, I noticed some artists doing inspiring things in their TNs, and I thought this could be the kick in the pants I needed to fit sketching back into my life. I started small with one notebook insert with a leather cover. Only when I noted that I was actually using it, I invested in more inserts. The only feature it was missing for me was a ToDo list insert, but nobody made one.

And thus I began my journey yesterday into DIY Notebook Hell.

With ADHD as my guide, I boldly discovered blog after blog of incredibly ornate notebook inserts that people made for themselves because the official ones were just “too expensive”. Since you can get official ones for as low as $4.30, I wasn’t sure what they were talking about. Perhaps TNs weren’t sold in a US store back then. If people had to import these inserts from Japan, I can see why they might want to make one themselves. If you ship via Japan Post, you could practically grow your own tree and harvest it for paper before the package arrives. Yet the examples I found online were so detailed, elaborate, and time consuming. These bloggers clearly weren’t trying to save money. Personally, I didn’t need custom stickers, embossed leather, and personalized charms. I just wanted a notebook that had squares next to lines that I could fill in and then check off.

Then I discovered Ray Blake of mylifeallinoneplace.com who provided the journaling community Midori TN templates to download. He’s still providing updated templates for free, even today, but it was his video from nine years ago that showed how he made his own booklets that caught my fancy. His no-nonsense approach was perfect for my needs, and armed with the knowledge that he shared, I loaded up my Amazon shopping cart with fountain pen safe printer paper, cracked leather cardstock, and a Swing-Arm Swivel Stapler perfect for saddle stapling. There I was, ready to plunk $38.96 down just to make a ToDo list insert for my traveler’s notebook.

But I didn’t pull the trigger.

You see, I just recently got myself in over my head with eBay purchases. I had ignored the rule:

Never Bid on an Auction When You Are Sick or Ticking.

Unfortunately, I steamrolled over this rule a few weekends ago when I was both sick and ticking (I have Tourettes). Somehow my brain thought it was a loophole? Alas, it was not. I ended up purchasing quite a few Splatoon collectibles. Oh yes, it was glorious. Finally! My collection was complete.

Except one of the figurines I bought was broken. I failed to notice the photograph that showed that it was broken. It was right there in the auction. The seller photographed his own hand pointing at the broken part. The little character was missing its ponytail. I missed a giant, gaping hole in the head of the figurine. As obvious as a blinking stop sign. I was gobsmacked. And the other figurine was what I thought was the Smash Brothers version of the Splatoon inkling girl. However, it turned out to be one of four I already owned. So now I have five.

Of course, the other figurines are still on their way from Japan. Who knows what I got wrong with them? But it gets better. The money I used to buy these wonderful bonehead bargains had been earmarked to register my car. Go me.

If I were to tell you that adults with ADHD have a lack of impulse control, please consider me the poster child of ADHD in this regard. When I am sick or ticking, that impulsivity is hypercharged. That’s why I have so many rules to keep myself from making a fool of myself. It doesn’t always work, and now I feel like a jerk. I’ll have one heck of a collection when the packages finish traveling from the other side of the planet, right⸮

So with these wounds freshly bleeding, I looked very suspiciously at my shopping cart filled with new equipment to pursue a shiny, new distraction. Did I really need this stuff? I mean, really? I decided to go to the source. I went to the Traveler’s Company USA site and looked through all of the inserts that they offered. Maybe there was something I missed.

And there was.

Down at the bottom of the list was an insert with a dot grid pattern. One of the examples that demonstrated how to use this wonderful little insert was a ToDo list. So I bought a few, and they’ll arrive next week. In the meantime, the DIY items have been removed from my shopping cart. Maybe one day I’ll invest in them for the fun of it. That day is not today, however, especially since I still have to register my car.

⁂

When Does Research Become a Fixation?

2022-01-27T23:00:00.001-07:00

I pull back the curtain a bit today, revealing a deep, dark secret about myself—a secret so dank, surely I’ll lose the last three readers I have.

I’ve been reading far too many Japanese light novels lately.

It started as a form of research, but now I actually like the darn things. I can’t get enough of them. They’re my personal Pandora’s Box. I opened the beautiful, ornately engraved box, saw the plentiful wonders inside, and now I can’t shut the lid. Is this an ADHD obsession, or a newfound joy? I can’t tell, which is why I’m troubled. Have you seen my Goodreads timeline? I read almost all escapist manga and light novels these days. I know I’ve been struggling with depression lately, but it’s embarrassing! I’m sitting here wearing a Fair Isle style, wool sweater, a designer, long-sleeved, henley shirt, and Izod tech pants, not a 1-ply t-shirt featuring Sailor Moon with chip crumbs all over my belly. How will my polished author image survive this lapse in pretentiousness?

In 2019, I had noticed that many of my favorite anime that season had origins as light novels in Japan. The more I looked into them, the more I realized that most anime was based on successful light novels. I’m not sure when they crowded out manga as the number one source. Even many successful manga are light novel spin-offs these days.

The best way to describe a light novel is as if pulp fiction and anime had a baby. Most stories are told in the first person. Most are written in a rush, with rapid output outweighing literary craft as the number one priority. The emphasis is on story and entertainment, not languid, literary explorations of contemporary themes. That’s where light novels are similar to pulp fiction, but where they differ is that the stories share more in common with comics with overpowered characters, romance being secondary to adventure, and so many portals open to fantasy worlds, it’s surprising Japan has any population left. In fact, many read like visual scripts to anime—as if the authors already have the licensing goals in mind. At worst, they can be fannish, derivative tales where they don’t milk tropes as much as they stick a spicket in and drain them by the bucketful.

Light Novels are not all bad. Otherwise, I wouldn’t spend so much time enjoying them. I’ve found my favorites. The intricate settings of Ascendance of a Bookworm are inspiring, as is the characterization and complicated plot. So much detail and research went into that series that I’m a little bit in awe of it. Unnamed Memory is gorgeously written. Earlier volumes are more sumptuous than later volumes, but over all I find the strong world and character building very engaging. The story reads like a fairytale whodunnit. The marathon-named Banished from the Hero’s Party, I Decided to Live a Quiet Life in the Countryside is a LitRPG, traditional high fantasy story that slowly reveals deep explorations on the meaning of free will while it subverts the proverbial hero role. Like Unnamed Memory, the story bucks the Light Novel trend and features romance in a warm and healthy way. Also, the Rascal Does Not Dream of… series is notable for its rapid-fire and funny dialog. Imagine a Young Adult X-files crossed with Moonlighting situated in Japan. The story is funny, but the author makes me care about the characters. The last volume was a bit cruel with my heartstrings.

Reading for research is one thing, but light novels have replaced vegging out in front of the boob tube. That’s an improvement, right⸮ They’ve replaced gaming, too. The downside is now that I read for fun, I’m no longer studying the craft, the pacing, the compromises, or the output of the authors involved.

I blame j-novel.club (JNC). I paid for a subscription to read everything I could get my hands on. I wanted to understand the phenomenon better. JNC serializes the stories as they are serialized in Japan—weekly—so one can find themselves quite busy keeping on top of several series all week long. I just paid for one month, but here I am two years later. I’m just glad that JNC doesn’t serialize daily as some of the stories are released in Japan.

I’m not complaining. Light novels and Kindle Vella gave me the kick in the butt I needed to write more. Serializing daily? Do you realize how much work that is? Even if the output is a tropey lark with no originality, I am still impressed with the dedication and output. On top of my Tourette’s and other issues, the pandemic, along with family drama, snuffed out my writing flame. I felt like a podling from Dark Crystal, drained and lifeless as I moved from day to day. Now I’m anxiously engaged in a good cause in my own way instead of letting depression win.

If only I could cut back on reading and do more writing. (Serialized daily! I’m exhausted just thinking about it.)

~Dˢ

Doomsday in December?

2021-11-30T23:00:00.001-07:00

I’m run down and sick, so I’m posting something positive every day this week until I lift my spirits.

There is a reason I’m depressed. It’s more than having major and persistent depression disorder. I’ve had a surprisingly cruddy year. I have to admit that I’m frustrated because my coping strategies are failing me. This is the sort of year that could only happen to a protagonist in a dark comedy. I’ve already written before how I was severely sick for seven months before the pandemic began. This feels like slow death sometimes. I’m so isolated from others, I’m forgetting how to be human.

Here’s my calendar since May. I think it’s a bit much:

May: I began running to lose weight and get in shape, but tore my right meniscus in my knee. I know its a torn meniscus, but insurance demands I do physical therapy first. Thus ends my newfound hobby, as well as my summer of longboarding before it began.
June: Babying my torn meniscus, I bent over to get something out of the fridge and ripped my quadratic lomborum on my right side. How did such a thing happen? When did I become so frangible? I have to cancel my knee PT.
July: My back is improving, but still sore. No exercise can be done, though I manage to walk long miles. It’s very painful, especially on the knee, but I’m determined to lose weight and get in shape. Then I catch a summer virus and go down for three weeks.
August: I feel like I’m getting back on top of my life, though my LD daughter began an extremely volatile stage this month. We haven’t seen temper outbursts like this in a few years, so it was surprising. It took up enormous amounts of time to deal with. Halfway through the month, She and I got rear ended on a highway onramp in the rain. One driver ahead of me braked, causing a pileup. The guy in front of me avoided that guy, and I avoided him, but the guy behind me wasn’t as skillful. Now I need a chiropractor, I can’t do my PT, and my car is wrecked. But we are alive and thankful that things weren’t worse.
September: Mostly filled with chiropractic visits until 2/3rds through when I have surgery to correct my torn meniscus. By the end of the month, I had one day where I began to feel functional again. I spent the day helping parents register their car, but not mine. I’d do it on Monday, except…
October: I got COVID–19 despite dual vaccinations. It was probably Delta. I have never been so sick in my life. It lasted for weeks, eating up the entire month.
November: Finally, I’m feeling normal again! I register my car. I get the insurance fiasco and repairs going. I put out fires here and there that had begun to smolder in my life. Then my daughter got RSV. I spent eight days tending to her needs. She hadn’t been as sick as that in twenty years. Then she shared it with me. I tested positive for RSV and COVID a week an a half ago. I hear I’ll test positive for COVID for up to three months. My symptoms were all RSV, but I was already run down from COVID. It was brutal. I’m still sick. Fortunately, I got the car in for repair. The bill came to over $5000, but insurance paid for it. One bright moment. I got my car back today, and I feel strangely giddy about my worldly possession. I have freedom again.
December: That’s tomorrow. Nothing short of disaster and ruin can follow up this chain of events. December shall usher in a personal Ragnarök, resulting in smoke, carnage, and a crater where my hopes and dreams once resided. Oh, is that negative? Gosh, shucks. I wonder why my outlook is so dark?

What’s most frustrating is that for most days, there is no brightness or joy in my life—just sickness, pain, and suffering. No friends to socialize with. I’m quarantining. No health to explore the world around me. I’m too sick to be active, and going outside will result in me getting more sickness. Just me stuck at home, sick and miserable with a compromised immunity system. In the past, I would hold tight and wait for Spring when the warmer weather would begin my days of living and health. It’s a dull way to live, though.

I recognize that this entry is filled with self-pity. Nobody set me up for a fall. There are no angry gods making sure my life is perfectly disastrous. Yet still, I had such high writing goals for the year. I needed to reach forward and lift myself up. I have little patience for life’s nastier distractions.

This is why I’m posting something positive every day. This journal entry doesn’t quite count. It’s sad, bitter therapy, but I feel better getting it out. No, I’m referring to my attempts at gratitude. Here is today’s:

I’m grateful for ebooks. I can go out shopping at 4am, dressed in swaddling clothes, and never leave my bed. 📖

I have not given up hope, but I may not make my writing goals. I wanted to have my new fiction work up on Kindle Vella by Saturday. That may happen. I wanted my ADHD visual ToDos book up on Kindle Unlimited by my birthday. That may happen. I owe a friend quite a few articles for his website. I think I can bang them out by the end of year, but it might be a bit much to expect them done by my birthday as well. I also wanted to reach certain goals in my Japanese studies. Those may happen. I’m not dead yet, and wallowing only makes depression stronger, which makes productivity harder. It is dour enough that I am sickly. My mental outlook doesn’t have to reflect that. I’ve been lazy in my coping strategies. It is time to recommit to being in control.

With that said, I’m being grateful and posting a blog today. I even took a selfie and tried to make myself look human. These are three proactive tasks that are hard to do when my outlook is bleak, but I feel that I’ve accomplished something, even if this blog is overly maudlin, lacking in humor, and heavy on ruthful observations. I’m getting it out of my system. I’m going to put this year behind me. I’m going to succeed.

~Dˢ

What Gets You Down?

2021-09-20T15:00:00.005-06:00

Sometimes external forces can induce depression. They can induce panic. They can control how you see the world if you let them.

I’ve got surgery coming up this week, so I’m getting my blogging in early. I want to work on my current novel when I start to come out of the anesthesia. We’ll see how that goes. In the meantime, I’m watching the crypto market implode…again.

I decided to get into crypto last Spring—two days before China cracked down on Bitcoin miners and the Chinese banks that did business with them. I had only invested $10. It was play money, to be honest, but what a lesson that was for me! China’s crackdown caused the market to crash. That $10 became negative in just two days.

I laughed. There I was. Mr. Moneybags. The Crypto Guru. All because I was so entertained just twenty-four hours earlier when my $10 had gained 50¢ in value.

The main character of my book made and lost a fortune in crypto, so I wanted to understand that world better before writing about it. He lost his business. He lost his girl. He lost his charm, optimism, and self-respect. He was destroyed in a week. It wasn’t my goal to lose my $10 bucks. I don’t need to write that authoritatively! However, I did feel that some background knowledge would make me write a more realistic character.

They say that the cryptocurrency market is volatile. Saying that is like saying the sun is somewhat warm. Since Spring I have seen the crypto market crash three times. It’s doing so again right now. It will probably be up again sometime after my surgery, but for the moment it is leaving a trail of blood all the way to the floor. The common internet advice is to “buy the dip”, which means buy during the crash. I’m not in a position to do that. I’m better off focusing on paying off my medical bills. Besides, sometimes dips have dips, too.

Though minuscule, watching my investment shrivel last Spring wasn’t a happy feeling, but I was insulated from the depression and panic many people experienced when their investments went South because I hadn’t invested very much, but also because I had already prepared to potentially lose it all.

Which made me wonder how people actually lost money on the stock market. As long as the market goes back up, I haven’t lost anything. I’d have to sell at a loss to lose my investment. As part of my book research, I talked to family members who had lost money in the stock market crash in 2008. With my newfound knowledge, it seemed the only way they could lose anything is if they sold low—which is exactly what they did. They sold for fear that getting something was better than getting nothing.

Panic & depression cause us to make very emotional decisions. Our worldview is skewed darkly as we envision nothing by doom. For me, my investment in crypto wasn’t meant to make me rich, so I wasn’t emotionally impacted by the dips. However, I mused that there were many other external forces that caused me to panic and be depressed aplenty.

This time I don’t have a succinctly numbered list of advice for you. I’m still formulating ideas. One thing I can say is that the trick to not becoming depressed by external forces is to separate your mind from the events that are impacting you. Personally speaking, I have to decide that those external forces don’t impact me at all. Just as the ups and downs of the crypto market don’t affect my self-worth, I need to ensure that the ups and downs in my life don’t affect my self-worth either.

My entire book on fighting suicide was based on the idea that there is always a dawn. Improving our perspective through discipline is a very appealing thought process to me. I am grateful for the second crypto crash this month for reminding me of this lost lesson…….

~Dˢ

Date: September 20, 2021 at 2:53:10 PM MDT
Weather: 61°F Sunny
Location: Sandy, Utah, United States

Finding the Beauty in Chaos

2021-09-19T12:30:00.003-06:00

A new beginning that looks an awful lot like the old one.

When I set out to explore fractal art, I face a confusing array of controls & parameters. It has taken me years to develop the eye to select the best cropping, the most flattering palette, and the most interesting settings, then present them in a pleasing manner. Without this discipline, the fractal is an utter mess with no focus. By making a few poorly chosen decisions, the same mathematical location and the same color palette can appear completely different—and far less appealing.

Of course, anybody with the time and desire to learn the software can produce pleasing images. It isn’t as if I received a PhD in advance fractal art, traveling to distant lands to study with the Mandelbrot masters before writing my doctoral thesis on the societal implications of sliders versus number fields and how they subvert the patriarchy.

However, as I was exploring a particular fractal set the other day,—tweaking the parameters to get something beautiful to leap out of the screen—I had an interesting thought that caused me to stop and ponder:

I wish my life was as easy to organize as these fractals are.

There is too much chaos to detail here, but suffice it to say that my life is more like the bottom image with its cacophony of line and color, overwhelmed with indiscernible patterns. It feels like absolute and total chaos, and I’m not pleased about it one single pixel.

I sat there wondering what my slider controls were. What could I tweak to bring my life back into focus? Was it as simple as choosing a new palette, in other words, changing the scenery? How could I pacify the waves of chaos that seemed to be carrying me far from my goals? Oh, I self-pontificated grandly, assigning various aspects of my life as metaphorical tools in my fractal art program. After a few minutes of that, though, I realized it was all a bit silly. There is no “frequency” dial in my life to reduce the amount of chaos.

But if there could be such a dial, what would it look like? How would I use it? Would I want to?

Since the pandemic, my family life has become complicated. I don’t write as much as I’d like. I don’t draw or play instruments anymore. It seems that I am entirely preoccupied dealing with my disabilities as well as those of my daughter. I must admit that I am thoroughly depressed, my ADHD is not being managed well, and my Tourette’s is running my life. Although I am not lying down, playing the victim, I am so busy surviving that I am giving no consideration to thriving.

Instead of being knocked around by life, I want to choose the direction. Recording my thoughts on social media has long lost its charm. I want to thrive. It’s not enough to tread water. We only tire ourselves out that way. Instead, we need a clear direction to head in.

Since I’m still living out in the fractal weeds, so to speak, that clear direction that I want in my life is obscured by chaos. I’ve decided to record my thoughts as I work through the process. ocial media has lost much of its appeal for me, yet blogging has also lost its appeal. I began to worry too much about each article being quotable, SEO-optimized, and shared. So I’ve begun a new journal instead, then post the pages here. I’ll try to get back to my roots to when I began blogging, offering more personal observations.

I will discuss my process more, working through my ADHD, depression, Tourette’s, and family life as obstacles. It’ll be more like my old Writing in a Fishbowl series, but I will try to be less colloquial and more beautiful in the way that I write. Finding beauty in chaos starts with me. I need to highlight the good in my life and emphasize my progress.

I hope you won’t mind coming along for the ride. There are some beautiful sights to behold. They may have even been right in front of my face, but I missed them because I was focused on the chaos instead.

~Dˢ

Date: September 19, 2021 at 12:30:54 PM MDT
Weather: 76°F Sunny
Location: Sandy, Utah, United States

Depression: Five Throw-Away Journal Ideas You Write in Secret

2021-05-07T22:47:00.000-06:00

Sometimes the best kind of journal is the one that you shred, light on fire, then cast its ashes to the wind.

Last January, I woke up severely depressed one morning. At first, I didn’t realize what was happening. I just knew that I had no will to move, no will to eat, no will to do anything. I felt interred with heavy, suffocating sadness.

Mmm, that sounds rather dramatic, doesn’t it?

The moment I realized I was depressed, I grabbed my iPhone and began dictating a blog entry to Siri as a coping strategy. However, it was all in the same vein as that emo sentence above—nice and juicy with just the right amount of adverbial angst and self-indulgence. We should all be grateful that I deleted every single word of it.

Normally, I avoid blogging or posting on social media while under the influence of Major Depressive Disorder. Despite my efforts to sound upbeat, depression affects my narrative voice and mental outlook. Fortunately, hindsight gained from experience keeps me from embarrassing myself online. I tend to write only when I have a handle on my emotions. Otherwise, my writing would become a morbid dance that leans towards the theatrical, like graves dancing in the rain.

That morning, however, I wasn’t worried about the need to self-edit. I had an urge to express my fathomless despair. I wouldn’t dream of sharing that private, turgid moment of maudlin, morning, mopey malaise with others.

Okeh, okeh…I’ll stop with the purple prose!.

The abandoned journal entry did serve a therapeutic purpose, however. It was so over the top, I laughed, which lifted my spirits immensely. As I deleted the colorful journal entry, I realized that sometimes my first blog drafts are just as cheesy. I wonder why I never noticed the similarity to throw-away journals¹ before.

The temporary, throw-away journal is a fantastic coping strategy for when you need to purge your feelings but don’t necessarily want to share them with anybody. One of the worst things you can do for yourself when you’re depressed is to bottle up your emotions. Those dark and toxic feelings tend to bounce around in our head, building up momentum and importance. When I am emotionally agitated, keeping ideas to myself is the quickest way towards blowing things out of proportion.

Although I’ve talked before about the importance of support networks, sometimes I don’t want to share these dark feelings with anybody. They’re too personal and often a wee bit self-indulgent. Long ago, I decided that burdening a family member or friend with that potent prose was a bad idea. Instead, I express myself into a journal I have no intention of keeping. I can be as turgidly maudlin as I want. Sometimes, the temporary journal helps me vent the worst of my feelings so that I don’t overburden my support network when I reach out to them afterwards.

Here are five temporary journal ideas for when you need to vent or work through your feelings before talking to somebody:.

Write a letter to yourself, then crumple and throw it away after you’re done: By purging negative emotions in a creative and constructive way, we can prevent things from becoming more complicated in real life. This strategy has the presidential endorsement of Abraham Lincoln. Fireplace not required.
Tap a letter to yourself, then delete it: We can be commuting, surrounded by people, and still vent into a notefile without anyone being the wiser. I would probably advice against using this technique where your boss or coworkers could look over your shoulder. You may also not want them to know about your mental health issues.
Dictate to your phone, then delete it: It can be very helpful to just speak your feelings sometimes. You gain the benefit of feeling like you’re talking to somebody while also expressing yourself via voice if typing isn’t your thing.
Record a voice memo, then delete it: If transcription errors make your note unintelligible, you could use a voice recorder or your phone to record instead. Get all of your feelings out, then delete them. It’s very therapeutic.
Make a fake phone call: When I’m extremely agitated, and there’s no one to talk to in my support network, I’ll go for a walk and pretend that I’m on the phone. With earpiece in ear, you can walk down the street while talking out loud praying, dictating a note, recording a voice memo, or just talking to yourself and no one will think anything of it. Be careful of who is nearby because voices carry.

Although my depression did not magically go away that morning, I was able to lighten the depth of it, which allowed me to get out of bed, eat, get myself dressed, and move on with my day. I didn’t take to social media and embarrass myself with a self-pitying plea for sympathy or post that purple pile on my blog. I love journal writing, and I have a dozen or so volumes tucked away in boxes, but I don’t want every moment to be preserved for posterity. Sometimes, I just need to vent—maybe even wallow—until I’m ready to let it go. Those moments are private. That’s why I like to delete them. Hopefully, you’ll find these suggestions helpful when you have a bad day of your own.

The Throw Away Journal: Point #5 in Six Journal Ideas to Deal with Depression and elaborated on in my book, Saying NO to Suicide ↩

Depression – Breaking Out of the Cocoon and Thinking You've Failed

2021-04-29T23:22:00.006-06:00

Sometimes we can be so fixated upon the finish line that we miss how far we’ve already come.

Ah, if I hear another commercial on the radio with a smooth-talking announcer earnestly pretending their company cares about me during these “unprecedented times”, I may puke. I’ve moved way beyond that acid reflux-ish moment where my stomach’s contents race to my mouth to voice their opinion. I may not be able to hold them back next time. Between you and me, I’m a little worried about it. I’m still making payments on my car.

So I’m not going to talk to you as if you just woke up next to Rip Van Winkle and need me to explain what COVID–19 is. I’m just going to write from my heart about how this pandemic has affected me, and maybe you’ll be able to relate:

I feel like my life has been sealed in a cocoon.

This is a funny thing to write because I’ve never before been so productive in my life. No, the BIG goals like publishing my new books haven’t been accomplished yet, but I’m paying off debts, I successfully swam through oceans of paperwork and petitioned for guardianship of my disabled daughter, I’m the fittest I’ve ever been in my adult life, I’m dating again (which means I occasionally leave my home), people pay me to write for some reason, and I have raised four lovely daughters.

But life feels like it’s on hold. Some of that is the pandemic’s fault. After all, who gets happy in a lockdown? However, in this case the pandemic only added to an already crushing situation. I haven’t had such a bleak, hopeless Winter since my divorce nine years ago. What happened to my coping strategies? What happened to my fighting spirit?

Consider this. I’ve just had the healthiest Winter in forever. I cannot recall a year in decades where I didn’t spend weeks sick in bed during the Winter. However, this time I only experienced four colds at most, and each one was over within a day. Talk about unprecedented times! I’m never this healthy. The diagnosis of asthma, the meds to treat it, and the new coping strategies I employ to keep myself healthy have all turned my world around. This was thanks to my consistent, proactive efforts to solve my health issues despite being sick.

But do I focus on that in my head? Why would I? I haven’t published my new book yet. I haven’t lost ALL my weight yet. I’m not married. Loser! Wait, what?

I should be ecstatic. I should be happier than those models you see in bank advertisements who are so excited to be in debt, their smiles wrap fully around their heads. The reality is that my life isn’t so bad, even without a 360ª smile. I’m incredibly blessed. What’s to be depressed about‽

Yet each one of the complaints I fixated on sat upon my chest like an elephant of disappointment. I could barely move. While I lay there focusing on my burdensome list of failures, I wasn’t focusing on the good that I had accomplished, nor was I benefiting from the rewards. I was disavowing them instead because “I haven’t done enough”. I understand that depression doesn’t need a reason to lay waste to happiness, but my errors in thought weren’t helping.

How thankful I am that Spring came early for a spell. I got outside finally. I jumped on my longboard as often as I could and cruised around in the sun, talked with strangers, smiled a little, and felt good about myself. When Spring snubbed Summer and passed the baton on to Fall, however, my mood began to sink. That’s when I noticed what I was doing to myself. Was I really allowing the weather to determine my mood? Well, it’s more complicated than that. I have major depression disorder and persistent depression disorder. I don’t need an overcast day with chilly rain to get me depressed. However, I certainly was allowing weather to dictate my coping strategies.

I had let my guard down. During all those months locked away from others, I began to see my goals as the only way of measuring my progress—which can usually be quite efficient—but there is a serious downside if you link that progress to your self-worth. No progress = no self-esteem. In essence, if you fail to do something unrealistic in an impossible amount of time, you are ensuring your own ego’s self-destruction. Those warm Spring days were a distraction—an outlier—but once they faded I realized that I had allowed success to determine my self-esteem again.

As you start to come out of your pandemic cocoons, keep in mind your coping strategies and don’t ride yourself too hard. You may have lost valuable time in a lockdown stupor, but, as I remind myself, just because it seems dark, that doesn’t mean that tomorrow will be dark as well. The sun always rises. Well, unless it’s running around with Summer right now.

~Dˢ

ADHD: ToDo Tabs Done Right

2020-10-01T09:00:00.001-06:00

Sometimes I wonder if there’s a support group out there for adults with ADHD who have an open tabs addiction.¹

Hello, my name is Douglas Cootey, and I’m a hard core tabs junkie.

Maybe this seems like a first world problem. Maybe you’re asking yourself, “What’s the big deal with several hundred open tabs?” If that’s how you think, you might need to join me at that meeting.

In theory there’s nothing wrong with lots of open browser tabs. I did things that way for years. If I found a web page with a great project or article I wanted to refer to later, I’d keep the tab open and leave it with the other saved ToDo tabs. The problem I ran into, however, was although ToDo tabs helped me not forget important data, I had so many tabs open in my browser I couldn’t find what I needed.

Just as ToDo lists can get long and unmanageable, ToDo tabs multiply until they become noise—no longer useful as resources or reminders. Yes, you’ve got web pages open for that funny self-surgery with tweezers, fifty things to do with a used toilet paper roll, and The Astounding Link Between Lizard People and the Founding Fathers, but where are they?

Productivity takes a hit when our ADHD tendencies aren’t reined in for a simple reason: chaos means extra work. I once had so many tabs up, I kept researching the same material over and over again. I had forgotten the very same research was already available in two identical tabs. Other times, when I do manage to remember I saved something as a ToDo tab, I have to dig through dozens upon dozens of tabs to find where the web pages I want are hiding. Worst still, I might be distracted by an old tab while making my search. Open tabs can weigh on the mind. Many of them represent unfinished projects waiting to snare my attention. This is what happens when you keep “31 Pumpkin Spice Recipes that Will Win Her Back” lurking in the background. Instead of writing, I’m suddenly in the kitchen making pumpkin spice sushi rice.

What turned me around was when my learning disabled daughter hopped onto my open Mac and somehow reset all my tabs. I had three windows open with 20–30 tabs in each window. Yes, some of the tabs were a kind of wishlist on how I wanted to spend my time or money, but the majority were important research for my first book. I literally sounded like Luke Skywalker when he met a certain long-lost relative. All my research! Gone!

Fortunately, my hourly data backup allowed me to restore what was removed, but since that time I’ve changed how I utilize ToDo tabs. If you’re as prone to distraction or wasting time on the internet as I am, you might find the following tips helpful:

Wipe the slate clean – I’m not going to lie. Deleting all your ToDo tabs and starting smart from scratch is the easiest solution. One time, after a long bout of illness, I discovered that I had 197 tabs open on my iPhone alone, never mind what I had on my iPad and Mac. There were multiple hundreds of ToDo tabs! Why did I have so many open tabs anyway? I simply didn’t have the time or energy to prune them all. I opted to wipe them all. It was amazing how liberating that felt.
Use a “read later” app – Instead of loading dozens of news stories into tabs, I like to send articles I want to read later to Pocket, a read later service. Then the articles appear on my Kobo ereader for later perusal, but they can appear just as easily in the Pocket app on my iPhone or iPad. Kindle users can use Instapaper for that purpose, too. Read all your news later, leaving no open tabs in your browser to distract you or clutter up your work environment. The downside is that you will still have to eventually prune them afterwards in Pocket or Instapaper.
Browse in Privacy Mode – One way to reduce open tabs is to separate your productivity web browsing from your break time browsing. I developed the habit to browse in privacy mode when reading news. I realize that privacy mode is usually used for hinky sites you don’t want anybody but your ISP to know about, but you can use this feature for other purposes. I prefer to use the Brave browser for this purpose. It never saves privacy tabs. Once I shut off privacy, the tabs all go bye-bye. This is perfect for cruising around the web on a whim, but leaves nothing to clean up later no matter how many tabs I opened up. You can do the same thing in a new window just for breaktime. Then when you’re done, just close the window.
Segregate your ToDo tabs by window – To keep ToDo tabs from becoming cluttered, designate different browser windows for different purposes. News, work, research, fun… Each window can have its own ToDo tabs. Personally, I found this method a bit too prone to abuse. I’d mix themes all the time and end up with five or more browser windows with dozens if not hundreds of tabs all in a jumble. However, if you’re disciplined, this method may work best for you.
Segregate your ToDo tabs by device – I need more austere ToDo tabs separation to fend off chaos. For this reason, I do my blog research on my iPhone. Writing research is left for my iPad. On my Mac’s browser, I keep only tabs that relate to my current project. Since I use iCloud, all bookmarks and pages are shared, so the segregation isn’t as hard core as it sounds because what I have open on one device is available on the other. Keeping a theme for each device helps me be more organized. In this way, ToDo tabs become very useful.
Segregate your ToDo tabs by browser – If using different devices to organize tabs seems too much work, you could use different browsers for your different ToDo tabs instead. This can help you manage the clutter and keep important pages from being buried in a wasteland of open tabs. When I was researching my Pokémon book a few years back, I did all my work in Chrome browser while keeping blog work in Safari. This made finding my research painless and productive. Segregating by browser or device is extra work at first, but once you get used to it, you will find the productivity benefits worth the effort.

My old ToDo tabs system was terribly inefficient, risky, and a drain on productivity, but now ToDo tabs have become a powerful tool at my fingertips. I have to admit that every once in a while I need a reminder lesson. About once a quarter I prune my ToDo tabs to make them easy to access, visually accessible, and useful again. My ToDo tabs and bookmarks are much more useful when I take time to prune and organize them. Since open tabs represent ToDo list items to me, each tab needs to be important and deserving of my time. Now that I manage them, I don’t need intervention or a support group anymore.

This article was based on an older article originally published on May 20, 2017. ↩

People Read What I Write? Who Knew‽

2020-08-13T03:16:00.002-06:00

22K Pageviews? Not bad!

Have I mentioned I was sick for a long time at the beginning of the year? I may have mentioned it once or twice ¹. Well, while I was down for the count, my editors over at ADDitude Magazine were counting pageviews for an article I wrote for them a while back. Apparently, I hit 22,213 pageviews for that article alone. They told me all about it last February while I was slightly inconvenienced. I just recently discovered their post when I had to use carefully placed demolition charges and a pick axe to catch up with my email.

I know my mother wasn’t reloading that page over and over again as she wardrived from free wifi network to free wifi network all around town. Not only would she not think of doing that, she wouldn’t understand what I just wrote! Instead, I can only assume that there was a sizable amount of people who were interested in The Reinvented Chore Chart That Actually Motivates My Child

It was a fun article I wrote about how I finally got my stubborn teen to work on her chores. There was a lot of psychology involved, some of it even on a comfy chair, but in the end I succeeded in transforming my daughter into a celestial chores-happy being! There wasn’t any hypnotism or coercion involved either. Yep, I’m wicked good at taking what other people tell me and making it my own. You should read the article.

I make no apologies. I was sick for over half a year. It’s taken me four months to work off the weight I gained and build back the muscle tone & strength that I lost. ↩

I'm Not Dead Yet

2020-07-16T19:26:00.003-06:00

I’ve been rethinking the purpose of my blog lately. Haven’t I written enough on ADHD & Depression? I don’t write exclusively about either subject, which turns some readers off, so I’ve never had the meteoric rise of some bloggers who target one or the other subject (although with ADHD bloggers & YouTubers, they usually blaze through the sky then disappear after awhile). Writing about comorbid conditions isn’t sexy, though I think I look pretty good in my newest jeans. Seriously, though, it’s hard to compete with Facebook. Remember when RSS, not Facebook, made the blogosphere go round? Heck, who even uses “blogosphere” anymore? It makes me wonder where I should be putting my focus.

The first blow to my blogging schedule was getting sick last Fall for SEVEN months (I cannot write enough about how disruptive that was to my life). Then COVID–19 arrived just as I was getting better, and my learning disabled daughter needed every ounce of my focus in order to graduate. Meanwhile, I decided to make the move to WordPress (in order to have comments again and to escape Google’s fickle ecosystem), but configuring WP templates was so needlessly complicated, my boredom resistant brain wandered off, leaving a half installed blog on my personal server with no new posts on my “old” blog. Plus, I was dealing with a major bout of depression which was defying my coping strategies. My answer to that was to leave social media entirely for over a month—not write more. When a friend offered to take me on vacation down to his parent’s home in Saint George, Utah, I leapt at the chance.

Then I rethought it, backed out, discussed with him how I could still do it, backed out again, then got him to delay HIS vacation by a day, and ultimately went. That is the kind of laser-focused, steely-eyed determination I am all about lately.

What I discovered on my time away from stressors was that:

I miss writing about ADHD & Depression.
I don’t schedule time for my blog book projects.
I am taking too much time preparing/researching for my middle-grade novel.

So I made a list. What does a prolific Douglas Cootey look like? The concise list gives me eight thought provoking, evocative reasons to ponder my purpose in life while empowering me to do better. I am contemplating how to implement these sweeping changes into my life, and thinking, “Hey! This exercise would make a great blog post!” I’m finally feeling more like myself. Hello, Douglas. Long time no see.

Before charting my next move, I want to state something publicly: I do not regret taking time off from my writing to focus on life. Consider it my gap year. My blog has taken a beating in key search results terms, but I am still here. Sometimes life throws up unexpected detours. My family needed me; I was incredibly ill; and now I’m emerging from all that with greater insight. I am undergoing a chrysalis of sorts. Even the frustrating, overwhelming, often burdensome experiences have made me a better person. I look forward to showing you my personal growth here in these pages over the next few months.

~Dˢ

One Step Forward…

2019-12-13T14:13:00.001-07:00

I picked up particulate respirator masks so that I can go outdoors again. I’ve apparently developed asthma due to the pollution in Salt Lake Valley and the California forest fires. It’s why I’ve been so horribly sick since September. I’ve been a near complete shut-in.

Alas, I overdid things yesterday. I looked like a dork in my mask, but I happily ran errands all over town. I also worked out on my treadmill, exercise bike, and did twenty minutes of aerobic activity. Unfortunately, I forgot to use both my inhaler & nebulizer. My lungs are burning again, and the cough has returned. 🙄 I feel so feeble. I kinda hate this.

I don’t regret my busy day, especially going to the library for a writing session. That felt great. I’ll just have to make sure I use my inhaler and nebulizer faithfully. No skipping days!

My coping strategy for today is to:

Use my nebulizer. I’m huffing on the contraption as I type this.
Add my nebulizer to my medications app. I forgot to do this. I can only assume ADHD boredom settled in after three months of taking a basketful of meds every day.
Get in the habit of using that app again. I haven’t been updating the app faithfully since I started to feel better. This was a mistake. I’ve been forgetting to take my blood pressure medicine, too, as well as my sleep medication, my antacid, etc. My whole regimen has gone out the window.
Stay indoors today. My body needs a chance to heal.
Keep pushing forward. Just because I had a setback doesn’t mean I allow depression to get a foothold again. It’s mentally exhausting to follow my new daily regimen of medicine paced throughout the day, plus an inhaler and nebulizer twice daily, but the alternative is to be so sickly I become bedridden again as my body tries to fight off the pollutants.

Between coming home with con crud after FanX in September, dealing with a severe allergy season due to the unusually rainy Summer, and then the California fires mingled with the good ole Salt Lake Valley inversion, I felt like I had stepped out in front of a speeding truck. I can now say I’ve never been so sick in my life. My depression this Fall has been worse than it has been in a long while, too. Being bedridden will do that to you.

The upside is that the con crud is gone, allergy season has passed, and we now know what I’m dealing with: asthma. The air quality has become my kryptonite. It drops me to my knees and leaves me feeble. What is strange to me is that inversions have never troubled me like this before, and I’ve lived here non-stop since 1988. However, I refuse to be discouraged any further.

I’m off to take my medicines, and maybe work on a book or two. How many have I begun on this blog? I’ve lost track. I sat down to work on an old project the other day and discovered I had already written the first chapter. Then I just wandered off, apparently.

I’ve got a follow-up article about Goo Hara I want to write, then I’d like to continue working on my middle grade novel and get back on track with my ADHD ToDo list book. Now I’ve told you, so I’m committed. Being a shut-in will work to my advantage today.

Of Awards, eBooks, and Depression

2019-02-23T17:23:00.001-07:00

Just a quickie update for you this weekend.

I recently received an award for depression blogging. I even had to send off a headshot. I’ll write more about it when their post goes live, but in the meantime, I realized that I haven’t been blogging about depression much this year. I wanted to let you know why.

I’m cured!

Nah. Wouldn’t that be great? No such luck for me, however. I still struggle with mild depression daily and occasional heavy bouts when most inconvenient. What really has me distracted is my latest book project. I’ve dug through the past fourteen years of articles and collected the best articles I’ve written on ADHD and ToDo lists. That’s the theme of my next eBook. I hope to have a first draft finished by the end of next week.

Some of the articles stand as is, but many need to be updated or rewritten (For example, how about this one? Three Simple Ways to Prevent Your PDA from Becoming a Paperweight). As I update or write the chapters, I’ll post the first drafts here as articles. Then I’ll clean them up and hit the presses. Or press submit. It’s the same thing these days. By incorporating the book writing as blogging, I hope to prevent one from overtaking the other, as has been the case for the past few years. And then I’ll make time for my middle grade novel.

Once I’m finished with the task management for ADHD adults ebook, I’ll tackle the fighting depression book I started a year ago. Or was it two? I also started an upsides to ADHD book, which was also abandoned, come to think of it. It’s like I have ADHD or something. Weird.

For those of you who have come here seeking depression help, please click on the “Main Topics” tab above, then select “Depression”, or take advantage of the search field in the sidebar. I am certain you will find something that will be of use to you. If you have any questions, hit me up on Twitter. I’m @SplinteredMind.

And now I’m off to write.

⁂

If you are interested in coping strategies for suicidal depression, you should read my book on fighting suicide.

Capitalism as a Coping Strategy, Plus Other Successes

2019-01-02T23:17:00.000-07:00

2018 was a good year for me. Thank you all for reading my articles, sharing them with friends, and supporting me over the years. This blog, A Splintered Mind, has been tackling ADHD and depression with attitude and humor online for fourteen years now. It is the longest project, aside from parenthood, of which I have remained consistently engaged.

In the past year, I have been spotlighted in Esperanza magazine, had blogs published at ADDitudeMag.com, had an article published in ADDitude Magazine’s Fall issue, and was selected to participate in a blogger advisory panel. 2018 was busy, but it all came together in the Fall.

The event that took the most effort was the blogger advisory panel—even more effort than trying to get a decent portrait for Esperanza magazine that didn’t make me look like a doofus. That project involved all of my smiling daughters giving me encouragement on a bright summer day. I felt so awkward doing a photoshoot in a public park, as if I’m a looker, but my girls boosted my self-esteem and got me through it. For the Boston gig, in contrast, I had to utilize every coping strategy I’d invented, plus make up a few on the fly, to prepare and present for the panel. It was me vs. myself.

I was flown back East at the beginning of December to give my feedback on depression websites. It was a paid gig, so I spent weeks putting all my focus on making it happen. No ADHD mishaps for me! I was so anxious to be ready for my flight, I accidentally got ready a day early. I felt both stupid and liberated since all I had to do now was leisurely head off to the airport on the correct day.

This gig came at a good time for me. I needed the self-validation and focus on myself. My family life has been hectic due to the Brownie’s challenges. I haven’t been blogging. I haven’t been writing. I’ve just been busy. This gig helped me reassert my own needs into my life. It sounds selfish until you realize how completely lost I have been in my daddy duties. There wasn’t any balance.

Finding balance between what I want to do and what shouts at me the loudest is a constant battle, especially when ADHD tips the scales. To give you an idea how focused I was on fighting my own tendencies, I woke up in the hotel room on the day of the event and caught myself reading news. I lost about fifteen minutes. Fortunately, I all of a sudden realized what I was doing.

I couldn’t read news! I had to shower, dress, attend breakfast, and socialize, never mind show up on time to the panel. Sticky notes, iPhone alarms, and ToDo lists weren’t going to save me. I needed to crowd out distractions from my mind. My solution was simplistic, but effective. I chanted the speaker fee out loud nonstop to myself for the entire time it took me to haul my fanny out of the room. Any time I even feared a distraction was eminent, I’d chant the speaker fee even louder! I got there on time with capitalism as a coping strategy.

I signed an NDA, so I can’t tell you too much about what we discussed. I can tell you that I completely agreed that █████ and ███ were important considerations when a product like ████████ is brought to market. That’s why ████ ████ ██ ████████. Also, █████.

When I arrived back in Utah, all that hyperfocus had a price. I had pushed myself too far and was knocked out of commission for a week, but the trip was worth all the effort. I had a fabulous time meeting new bloggers as well as meeting old acquaintances I had only previously met online. One of those bloggers used to take issue with my posts because of my earlier anti-meds stance. We went back and forth for a while. I was initially concerned about meeting her, but it turned into an extremely positive experience (More on that at another time). I also made time to visit with family for a day before hopping back on the plane.

Most importantly, I took away from the experience several epiphanies. The first I described above. I need to take more time out for myself. I interpret this to mean that I need to socialize, date, and work on my book projects more. I’d already been exercising over the summer with a secret project, but it wasn’t enough. I still walk around like a soda bottle shaken to its limit. Those will be good goals for my 52nd year. The second epiphany I took away was that my blog needs a serious revamping. After spending a day critiquing other blogs, I could no longer turn a blind eye to my own blog’s shortcomings. I also need to recommit to a regular schedule. The final epiphany is that I miss traveling. I need to plan more trips. I don’t need to travel across the country to satisfy this itch. There is plenty in Utah I have yet to explore. I should get out there and reflect those new experiences in my writing.

I hope you continue to come along for the ride.

Life Usually Has Other Plans

2018-11-09T21:30:00.000-07:00

For the past week, I’ve been stressing out over an upcoming event: my return to the dating pool. I can’t say that my swim went well. First, I paced back and forth on the pool deck, eyeing the water suspiciously. Then I stuck a toe in, but quickly retreated to a safe distance. Wet! It was much too wet. Then I shook myself off, scheduled my swim, awaited my moment, and dressed for the occasion. I even took a selfie to send to my daughters before I took the plunge.

In the photo, I’m so nervous in my bathing suit, I don’t recognize the man looking back at me. There’s something wrong with his face. He doesn’t look anything like me. It might be his rigor mortis smile, or the overly pink complexion moments before he begins to steam from apprehension. Whatever is ailing him, it doesn’t matter. Life managed to keep him away from the water 35 minutes before he was scheduled to dive in.

The school gave me a call seconds after I took the selfie. My daughter was having a breakout seizure.

I recorded the following to Facebook on my way to the Brownie’s high school. For some reason I chose to use text-to-speech in Facebook. Maybe it was the app already open on my iPhone at that moment. Maybe I just wasn’t thinking clearly. Regardless, here’s what I said:

On my way to the high school instead of a date. The Brownie is having a seizure. It’s a rotten timing. It’s taken her years to be ready for me to date. And now, this happens. Hopefully, she’s all right. I’ll keep you updated. If you are friends or family, please let others know thank you bye

I later posted to Facebook that I shouldn’t dictate messages during an emergency. Text requires care to communicate tone. But I think my exasperation came through just fine. I was worried my date triggered her seizure. I was feeling frustrated and guilty all at the same time.

So why did I think this was about me and not her? To say she’s not been open to me dating since the divorce would be an understatement. Despite their mother remarrying quickly after our divorce, my youngest two daughters entered a state of abject terror whenever I mentioned the D-word. The decision was a simple one. I chose not to date for the past seven years. My second youngest daughter finally deigned to allow me to date once she got her first boyfriend, but my youngest remained adamant: NO DATING! Years passed, and I thought she was finally ready because she’d been telling me it was okeh for me to date recently, and she wasn’t upset about my upcoming date at all. Then this happened.

Her seizures for the past year have mostly been anxiety panic conversion disorder episodes taking the well-worn neurological path of seizures from birth. They’re non-epileptic, but still legitimate seizures. Part of me wondered if maybe she wasn’t okeh with the date after all. Maybe this episode was the result. That’s what I was thinking when I recorded the message above.

Then I arrived at the school.

Paramedics were already on the scene. A secretary was waiting for me out in the hall. In the school’s main office, my daughter lay on the floor, crying and incoherent. She was agitated, disorientated, and thrashing about, making it difficult for the paramedics to inject her with midazolam, a common sedative for seizures. You haven’t seen needle skill until you’ve watched a paramedic move his body to track a flailing arm to prevent a needle snapping. This was the post ictal phase of an epileptic seizure for my girl. There was no denying it now. The epileptic seizures were back.

Two days have passed since that moment, and my body hasn’t returned to normal. We spent only two hours in the hospital, and the Brownie has slept well and recovered, but I’m still a wreck. I picked up a bug at the hospital. My week’s plans have been obliterated. I’m frustrated, but not at her, poor thing. I am frustrated at how selfish I sounded in that initial post. I am frustrated with my fragile self. I am frustrated that my control over ADHD is still susceptible to random events because my week is in tatters. I am frustrated that my health is so lousy despite the hours and hours of exercise I have been doing all Summer long. I am frustrated that I am not perfect, something I know logically I cannot achieve, but emotionally I demand of myself.

That’s why I’m blogging this. This is my therapy. I write about what troubles me in a creative, and hopefully, entertaining way so that I wash away my discouragement. I do it to help me see things in perspective. For every person who reads my blog and thinks I’m no big deal, there are others who are looking for the human touch while they struggle with issues that overwhelm them. They aren’t alone. We’re all on the same path. Some of us are further ahead than others, but it’s common decency to look back and offer a hand—the same type of hand that others have offered ourselves. It helps us not feel sorry for ourselves. It helps us find the strength to move forward. Life is hard for everybody to deal with. Disability just adds flavor to the dysfunction.

And now I feel better. It’s time to mimic my daughter’s resilience in my own life. I have articles to write and a book awaiting my attention. It’s also time to suit back up and go for a swim.

The Best-Laid Schemes

2018-11-09T17:19:00.001-07:00

This month, no, my life isn’t going as planned. It brings to mind a certain poem:

❝But, Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!

~“To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest With the Plough”, Robert Bruns, November 1785

I know. It’s not the most upbeat outlook, and Steinbeck repurposed it better, but life certainly does have a way of uprooting our carefully built nests. In response, I could get frustrated, or I could get creative. I chose the creative solution, even if it feels a bit bleak—even for me.

~Dˢ

⁂

New blog posting later tonight.

Worry Is a Waste of Imagination

2018-10-27T23:12:00.000-06:00

What Do I Get out of Blogging about Mental Health?

2018-10-27T00:18:00.001-06:00

I was recently contacted by a college student who requested an email interview. I share the answers below because the interviewer asked excellent questions.

If you follow my blog, then you’ll already know that I have been diagnosed with Clinical Depression (Major Depressive Disorder), Adult ADHD, and Chronic Tic Disorder (Tourette’s). What you may not know is what I get out of blogging about my experiences with these conditions. This was the one of the questions the interviewer asked that made me think.

Why on earth do I do this?

My family resents my writing or is horrified by it. My friends don’t read it. It’s not making me a chick magnet. It doesn’t do anything for my abs. And it certainly doesn’t make me rich and famous (though you can change all that if you buy my book. It’s only $5. Heck, buy two!). Also, since it’s an online pursuit, blogging doesn’t, generally speaking, make new friends in the real world. What drives me to do this solitary and bloodletting pursuit‽

Certainly, I haven’t blogged as often lately. My disabled daughter’s needs coupled with my own have made blogging a bedraggled event. That doesn’t mean I’ve lost interest in blogging. Originally, I blogged to connect with other people like myself. After I got over the shock that I am an odd duck even in the mental health community, I focused on higher goals like writing tighter articles and improving my craft. However, now I blog to help people along the path that I have successfully traveled.

Have I been cured? No! But I’m happy, fulfilled, and equipped with a tool belt filled with dozens of coping strategies. This is what I like to share so that others can learn to manage their mental health as well. You don’t have to be cured to live better.

I started blogging in 1995, but it was more journal-like and lacked focus: this page is updated…that page is updated…people are mean… Riveting stuff like that. A Splintered Mind began in 2005 due to somebody telling me that ADHD was an excuse to get kids out of doing homework. I couldn’t defend myself at the time because I was gobsmacked. That bothered me deeply. Why was I ashamed to speak up? Why couldn’t I tell that person that ADHD was very real for me? I determined to learn how to discuss my mental health without stigma by beginning this blog. And here we are almost fourteen years later.

The interviewer also wanted to know what I got out of reading other people’s blogs. Another excellent question. I don’t follow mental health bloggers as intensely as I used to years ago, mostly because I am so busy with family and my own writing projects, but what I gained by reading others’ works were insights into how to describe mental health conditions as well as obtain new perspectives. It helped expand my compassion for others and informed my writing with new experiences.

The last two questions were the most thought provoking of all. First was how do I think other people see mental illnesses? Generally, I find people are ashamed of mental illness. They revile it. They become uncomfortable talking about it, thinking only of their state of mind. They want to change the subject and sweep the issue under the rug. No matter what church leaders, doctors, or government PSAs may advise, people, in general, drive those who they should be helping away to the dark corners of the web. Because of stigma, they cut themselves off from being the loving support people struggling with mental health issues desperately need.

This sounds bleak, doesn’t it? Things are not as bad as they used to be, but individually, people still stigmatize mental health issues. We have a ways to go.

As for how I see my own mental illness, I don’t think of it as an illness. However, I used to hate myself because of it. ADHD-inspired buffoonery and gaffes left me with very low self-esteem. My depression fed into that. I struggled with suicidal ideation. Then I hit rock bottom and decided I couldn’t continue on this way.

No, wait! I didn’t mean it that way. I suppose it’s too late now for that email I fired off.

What I meant was that I needed to overcome my mental health issues if I wished to enjoy life. I had dropped as low as I could go, so I began to crawl back up. I taught myself to manage my anxieties; I learned to laugh at myself when I made silly ADHD mistakes, and I began to fight my depression—to change the negative way I looked at the world. I improved my life in the process.

Mental health is a journey I will be taking for the rest of my life. The road is not as rocky and difficult to travel now that I have learned coping strategies. This is because I have confidence and optimism for what lies ahead. My life has been one of hope for over two decades, and I know I can keep going. That’s due mostly to the years spent blogging about mental health.

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Coping Strategy: You don’t have to blog to manage your mental health. Keep a journal, and learn to laugh at yourself. Self-deprecating humor is a wonderful gift. If that sounds too difficult to manage, start with one thing a day that you are thankful for. If that sounds too daffy, try thinking of one thing positive a day. This is what I did over two decades ago. It was incredibly difficult at first, but I persevered. Daily positivity practice made a colossal change in my outlook over time.

Nothing like ADHD…

2018-09-19T15:58:00.000-06:00

❝Nothing like ADHD and a good fight to the death to make time fly.”

– Rick Riordan, The Lost Hero (The Heroes of Olympus, Book 1)

Begins to Hope Again

2018-09-03T14:17:00.000-06:00

“But a sanguine temper, though forever expecting more good than occurs, does not always pay for its hopes by any proportionate depression. It soon flies over the present failure, and begins to hope again.”

– Jane Austen, Emma, ch.18

Obstinance or Brilliance

2018-07-10T12:33:00.000-06:00

I am still paying the price for pushing myself in June, and I thought it was time to share with you what I’ve been up to, how it went, what worked, and what I could have done better. The TL;DR version is that I did too much, loved almost every moment of it, and then I ended up feeling like a haggard and disheveled octogenarian who had dragged a couch up a mountain trail.

To give you an idea of what I’ve been up to, here’s a concise whirlwind from April to present. I have left out my daily duties and medical care for my daughter:

I signed up for the conference in April, had to write 6000 words in two days, took six weeks to design a story from scratch and write 8000 words instead, finished in time to design & complete my daughter’s very late wedding invitation—as well as her web site, prepared for the conference, attended the conference from June 11–15, attended my daughter’s wedding on June 16th, stayed up late tearing down decorations, moving tables, and stacking chairs, attended church and performed my duties, spent two days ticking, spent 11 hours purchasing gear and packing my youngest daughter for her all girls church camping trip, recuperated for one day (ticking), packed myself and sped across Utah to stay on site at the campground just in case my daughter had a seizure, read thirteen volumes of My Hero Academia, wrote three articles, wrote one blog, finished a bound journal, went for a hike, practiced my tin whistle on a mountain top, got lost (briefly), came home at the end of the week, then ticked for three days before coming down with a virus for a week and a half.

Two things stand out to me while reading that list. First of all, I cannot believe how much I was able to accomplish. This is phenomenal progress for me. I was focused and productive, so ADHD was managed, and I kept myself upbeat & positive, so depression was managed. In fact, they weren’t even a factor. I noticed, however, that I began to run out of steam, tic more, and eventually got sick as the whirlwind moved deeper into June. Tourettes is still my Achilles heel. I can keep the ticking at bay for hours at a time, but it always overpowers me with a vengeance at the end of the day. If I push too much, it will take me down for days.

Here are shockingly simple things I did right and plan on doing again:

I woke up at the same time every day.
I ate a healthy breakfast, lunch & dinner every day.
I used protein shakes and protein bars as snacks, making sure to eat every two hours.
I kept myself hydrated.
I took breaks as needed by the end of each day, and allowed myself to leave early during the breakout sessions. I had to drive home while I was able before TS prevented me.
To manage the TS, I used fidget spinners ߷ discretely during the workshop, usually under the table and hidden within my hands, to manage mild ticking. I also used industrial strength exercise putty to manage the moderate ticking. I would take a break when the ticking became severe.

Most of these coping strategies sound simplistic, don’t they? Yet these strategies are the first things I toss out the window when under deadline and rushed. I forget to eat and hydrate. I work without breaks. I sleep irregular hours. Then I start ticking, crash hard, and become useless. Keeping ADHD & Depression in check involves steady maintenance. As evidenced over the past few months, I am much better at this now (and it’s about time…).

There’s still room for improvement, however. I missed an awful lot of breakout sessions at the conference because I petered out by the end of each day. I also struggled with ticking as the conference week wore on. Afterwards, I ran on pure adrenaline to be there for my daughter’s wedding, then the following week getting my youngest daughter prepped and sent off on a camping trip. I was forced out of the game for a day, then hyped myself up on adrenaline again to get myself prepped and sent off to the same camping trip! Once all events were over, I crashed for days—shambling about on forearm crutches because I couldn’t even walk properly. Also, after weeks and weeks of pushing myself to my limits, is it any wonder I also became sick?

I’m glad I was there for my girls, but adrenaline shouldn’t be a lifestyle choice. The price we pay for using that fuel is too high. Stress, depression, insomnia, heart failure… I owe it to my daughters to live healthier and smarter.

Here’s where I went wrong: 1. Since I was under deadline for my daughter’s wedding projects, I didn’t spend time before the writer’s conference to read and review everybody else’s stories. I saved that for the week of the conference. That means I had to read several 6000 word stories multiple times and then review them before I could go to bed. What terrible and stressful planning! 2. I stayed up late every night getting that work done, surviving on less than three hours of sleep a day on some days, but mostly less than four daily. It seriously impacted my stamina. That may seem self-evident, but if you’re an insomniac like I am, you’re used to functioning on too little sleep. It can seem normal over time, but it’s detrimental to productivity. 3. I didn’t exercise during the conference week. That resulted in higher stress and less stamina when I needed it most. No wonder I ticked so much!

Some of these faults may have been unavoidable this time around, but that doesn’t mean I can’t analyze where I have room for improvement for my next conference. You may have noticed that the things I did wrong had a cascading effect, like massive cement dominos crashing through my life. If I set up my work flow differently, I could have avoided being crushed by my own short-sightedness. Better organization would have led to better planning and pacing. Better sleep would have led to better productivity and stamina.

Lastly, many people with TS don’t believe in suppressing tics. Don’t be embarrassed or ashamed, they say. Embrace the tics because we pay a price for suppressing them, they advise. It can be like holding back a flood. You can stop it up for a short time, then be washed out with the deluge, or you can just let the waters flow . Those folks aren’t necessarily wrong. One shouldn’t be ashamed of their involuntary tics, but unfortunately for me, my tics aren’t benign. They pick up steam and intensity, then interfere with my cognition—meaning I can’t learn or think well while ticking. I have memory lapses. So I suppress them whenever I can. I’d much rather push hard all day and get things done, and then tic at the end of the day after meeting my goals.

Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe this is just me justifying bad habits. As I refine my coping strategies, I’ll know better when I’m being smart and when I’m being obstinate. However you choose to manage whatever ails you, keep pushing! Carve out a life for yourself. It’s hard work, but worth the effort.

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**Coping Strategies:** The ToDo list is your friend. I’ve written many blogs about using them, yet keep meeting [adults with ADHD][adhd] who won't use them. Baffling. Read more about the advantages of task lists here, here, and here for starters.

Too Proud to Have ADHD?

2018-04-21T09:00:00.000-06:00

Are you too proud for ToDo lists? Don't like to admit you have ADHD memory issues? You aren't alone.

I have a family member who has ADHD. They never write anything down. They don’t make reminders. They insist that they have to remember everything on their own, and of course, they seldom do. I’m so glad I don’t have that hangup anymore.

It reminds me of the hard time we had with my daughter in middle school. Her teacher—supposedly trained to teach learning disabled children—insisted my daughter had to remember to complete all her homework assignments on her own. She wouldn’t tell me what the assignments were so I could help my girl get them finished. Her grades were terrible.

You see, my daughter has severe memory impairment, among other issues. I fought every year to get parental homework reminders on her IEP, and that teacher resisted. She didn’t want to be bothered? She was stubborn? She thought my girl’s memory issue was a discipline problem? I may never know. She’s retired now. However, it took us a full psych eval at Primary Children’s years later before we could have that diagnosis added to my daughter’s IEP. Fortunately, her teacher in high school witnessed and understood that my girl had memory issues. What a difference addressing that learning disability made in my daughters education!

I, too, have memory issues. They are of the ADHD kind. I’ll walk into a room and forget why I entered. I’ve developed the ability to reconstruct my fragmented thoughts and get back on track, but sometimes, there are too many distractions to filter out. For example, I can’t remember more than three things on a shopping list. Heck, I’m lucky if I can remember two. I’d enter those delectable warehouses of colorful distractions and suddenly I’d be calling home to ask why I was there. Embarrassing! So I don’t bother trying to remember anymore. I haven’t tried for over ten years. I write everything down.

I used to be too proud for ToDo lists. I HAD to remember on my own!! But after many years of coming home from the store with the wrong items or worse, having to go back for the items that I forgot, I became a convert. I love love LOVE ToDo lists now.

I wish my family member wasn’t too proud to help themselves out. I’d rather take pride in never forgetting anything than to obstinately insist that my flakey brain had to get its act together. I remember plenty of things, but milk, eggs, and that other thing aren’t among them.

⁂

Big plans! I had big plans to blog every Thursday while finishing up my Pokémon gaming book and structuring my next mental health book on fighting depression. I was also going to start sending out articles for publication again. Yes, indeed. BIG PLANS.

Then an interesting thing happened. I was awarded a scholarship to Writers and Illustrators for Young Readers out of the blue. I took a few days to decide if I wanted to accept the offer, and ultimately accepted. But I was in the middle of one of the longest bouts of illness I’ve had since 2013. Adenovirus led to a sinus infection, and Mother Nature’s ambivalence about whether it was Spring or not left me ill for over 45 days. I was bedridden, coughing up lungs ill. It was a nasty virus. You cannot imagine my relief that it is finally over. I wrapped up my research for the Pokémon book, finished the first draft, caught up with everything in life I’d been unable to attend to while sick, and only signed up for WIFYR two weekends ago.

Then I was told on the 10th that I had until the 12th to submit 6000 words of my story. “What story?” I asked myself. I had hoped to have more time!

I’ve been working long hours plotting, plotting, plotting since last week. My story idea was only the slimmest of thoughts — a cottonwood seed upon the wind. My original plan was to begin formulating the story sometime in the summer. Now it’s planted, and watered, and only needs 6000 words of growth. No worries. The hard part’s been done. Haha…

I have to admit that this ADHD thing of not being able to focus if there’s too much going on is a pain in the binding when I have blogging, writing, caring for a disabled child, and Tourette’s to collate and organize. I’m a mess, but it’s been fun. I began my book last night. I will not allow illness or disability to deprive me of this opportunity. Now if only I was that determined to stay away from Twitter.

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Coping Strategy: ToDo lists are your friend. I’ve written many blogs about using them. Here, here, and here for starters.

Mormon Musings: A Reverent Moment with the Brownie

2018-04-08T15:15:00.000-06:00

I don’t shy away from mentioning my religion here. I’ve even discussed LDS doctrine and how it intersects with mental health, but today I just wanted to capture a moment and share it with you.

“Dad, you’ve got silver things in your sweater,” my daughter whispers out loud. Perhaps it only sounds loud because we’re sitting in church waiting for the sacrament to come our way. I turn to my right to see my daughter picking at my new Irish Aran sweater. There’s a look of disgust on her face as she pulls out a silver strand.

“Yes, that’s because it’s made out of sheep hair,” I whisper back.

She recoils, then looks at me suspiciously. She always thinks I’m teasing her.

“It’s called wool, honey”. She relaxes with her mouth shaped in a silent “Oh.” I can see she’s still confused, though.

“But why does it have sparkles in it?”

“That’s because I have a daughter.” I smile at her as I watch her assume I’m teasing again. Then I motion with my eyes to her dress. She follows and shapes her mouth in another “Oh”. Her dress is a sea of sparkles. She leans in to hug me, splashing my sweater with more.

⁂

No pitch today. Just enjoy your Sunday.

ADHD: Playing Cat & Mouse with Catfishers

2018-04-05T23:48:00.000-06:00

She was a total stranger. She was cute and posed with a kid in her profile pic. She had an aversion to punctuation. Suddenly, she said, “Hi Douglas”, and I was off.

Today is technically Day 42 of my bout with adenovirus. Some aspects of the cold linger like our obstinate Winter this year, but I’m feeling better. This was fortunate, because today was the last day my daughter, the Brownie, would be wearing a home EEG to capture a seizure. She had gone the entire week seizure free, so I spent the day trying to induce one. I finally resorted to flashing a strobe light in her face. When that didn’t seem to work, she, her Mum, and I had a last, desperate prayer. Her seizure began one minute later. Coincidence? I’ll leave that for you to decide.

During my weeks of sickness, I finished the research phase of my latest Pokémon book. At this point, I am finishing the project out of sheer will. My enthusiasm for the project fled to more sparkly pastures weeks ago. I hope to wrap up the second draft this week before sending it off to an editor. See? I’m not entirely wasting away, but I am still wasting time, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Some wasted time is a lot of fun, like when I string catfishers along.

I’m wrapping up my current project, so I’ll post a meatier article for you next week, but what follows is the most stultifying romance I have ever lived through. You can read for yourself that sharing is not her goal. She is trying to get ME to do all the talking. So I obliged, drifting further down the rabbit hole the longer she kept at it.

How do I know she’s a catfisher? When an unknown girl hits on me online and tells me how handsome I am, I can’t take her seriously. Real girls didn’t even do that when I was a god-like, 185lbs, all-muscle twenty-year-old. So I play with them.

I test first to see if she’s perhaps just conversationally challenged, but when her (or his, to be honest) idea of conversation is to exchange pictures, I know she is fake. Then I like to see how weird I can take things before she’ll break out of character. Because they want money out of me, they won’t stop messaging me no matter what I say or post. I let the ADHD in me go wild. By their rules, I’m engaging them, falling in love, and ready to mail them money, but we know better, don’t we?:

MAR 19TH, 9:23PM
Claire H——: Hi Douglas

MAR 24TH, 4:29PM
You accepted Claire’s request.
Douglas: Hi Claire
Claire H——: How you doing today?
Douglas: Just great! And you?
Claire H——: Am doing good thanks
I saw your profile on my friend suggestion list…you handsome and i have to tell you, lovely smiles you got
Douglas: Wow! Thanks! You good smile too
Claire H——: What are you up to
Douglas: Preparing for the zombie apocalypse. Got any plans for Saturday? Mine crashed.
(I should have said, “Mine were eaten,” but you live, you learn.)
Claire H——: Oh not really
Douglas: Yeah me neither
Claire H——: Just at home relaxing
What do you do for fun
Douglas: I am boring. I have forgotten what fun is. Haha
Claire H——: Lols don't be dirty minded…what do you do at your leisure time
Douglas: I plait goat hair. It's very relaxing.
Claire H——: Oh okay
I will like to know more about you
(Claire took my comments in stride. I have to admit it took me a while to stop laughing.)

MAR 24TH, 6:02PM
Claire H——: Hi Doug

MAR 24TH, 8:13PM
Douglas: Hi! Sorry! I've been away shaving my back. How's your night going, love?

(Completely unphased, Claire returns the next day.)
MAR 25TH, 6:11AM
Claire H——: How are you doing

MAR 25TH, 3:49PM
Douglas: You're back! I thought I scared you off.

MAR 25TH, 5:42PM
Claire H——: No
What are you up to Doug
(At this point, I have decided that I am being too subtle. It’s time to pull out the stops.)
Douglas: I am sick. Day 29. It's very exciting. I may be getting better, but the humongous boils on my feet are making it difficult to ballroom dance. At least the facial swelling has reduced. I can see again. Great, huh?
Claire H——: May I have some pictures of you

Are you with me

(Claire is getting nervous that she’s spooked me, but I am scouring the internet for the perfect photo.)
Douglas: This is a pic of me and my pet bear, Killer. I don't believe that last time was his fault. Besides, the guy was really old.

Claire H——: It seems like a photo shoot
(Now we know that Claire is not a bot.)
Douglas: It is! My bear and I pose at petting zoos professionally. We have had zero casualties this year. Let's not talk about last year.
Claire H——: Okay
Can I have another pic of you
Douglas:
This is me with Killer. He is licking blood off my hands, the rascal!
Hey! This is awkward. I don't have any pictures of you!
Do you have any pics of you cosplaying as Laura Ingalls? I love bonnets.
They're hot.
Claire H——: I don't want pic like that
Send me a pic of you without bear
Douglas: You first. It doesn't have to be pioneer cosplay. I think pilgrims are hot, too.
Claire H——: (Claire sends a picture that is square in format, complete with white borders on the side, as if copied off the web.)
Douglas: You're cute! I like the borders, too. They've got that screencapped-from-Instagram feel that's super popular these days.
Claire H——: Oh thanks

MAR 26TH, 5:27AM
Claire H——: Hi

(I am beginning to suspect that my account is being passed around the catfisher office to different workers. How many times can one person say “Hi”‽ It’s time to wrap this up.)
MAR 26TH, 2:54PM
Douglas: Hi. I think I am feeling something that I haven't felt since Mia Sara kissed me in the second grade. I really feel like we have a connection here. This conversation has been riveting. Can you move out to Nebraska to be with me?
I don't live in Nebraska, but I'd consider it if you were there.

MAR 27TH, 1:53AM
Claire H——: Lols
(At this point, I feel that I won because she broke from the script with her first honest response. It’s time to say “Goodbye”.)

MAR 28TH, 4:40PM Douglas:
Claire H——: Why are you sending me the bear
Send me a picture of you

(And so I bid Claire adieu. I wish her the best of luck in reeling in the big one with her captivating conversation skills. I could have continued sending bear pics, and she would have kept replying, but I had lost interest. Nevertheless, this was almost as fun as when I convinced the car scammer that my name was Mick Dundee and I would love to pay to have the car shipped from North Carolina, but could they ship it to the Australian outback instead?)

⁂

Coping Strategy: Sometimes I use ADHD as a coping strategy for depression. During the nadir of my illness, I was bedridden and miserable. Playing cat & mouse with a scammer was a perfect distraction and a healthy boost of endorphins. Hi.

If you’d like to support me or see how I use creative coping strategies to overcome suicidal depression, buy my book.

Dolores O'Riordan and I Have Something in Common

2018-03-19T07:27:00.001-06:00

Just a few thoughts before my day takes me away.

The other day, I thought I’d celebrate St. Patty’s Day with The Cranberries. Dolores O’Riordan has been on my mind lately, and her voice was just the Irish taste I was looking for. However, I couldn’t listen to her voice and not remember what had recently happened to her. We won’t know officially how or why she died until next month. In the meantime, rumors swirl from police at the scene of fentanyl and suicide.

People pay a heavy price for addiction. Dolores struggled with depression, suicide, and addiction for years, then paid with her life. She sang in 1996 about the dangers of allowing drugs and external forces to have control over our lives, but it seems that years later she still hadn’t gained control. I suddenly felt very sad for her.

This brought an end to listening to The Cranberries. The pain was too recent and personal.

I experienced suicidal ideation early last week. It was the first time in six or more years. Just an errant thought. Caught me by surprise. I immediately fired up my coping strategies and called somebody. I let them know what was going on, and we chatted for a bit. Then the darkness passed.

If you struggle with suidism, I cannot recommend enough the importance of working out a game plan on a good day so that you can rely on that plan on a bad day. This is what saves me over and over again.

I wrote a blog about these coping strategies called “Six Steps to Overcome Suicidism” while writing my first book. I included the article in the chapter on knowing who to rely on. The article is loaded with helpful information, but I just discovered that I never remembered to post it here. Ah, ADHD… I’ll have to remind myself to rectify that.

In short, I try to talk myself out of suicide first, then pray for help second. I have a great deal of faith in prayer. However, if prayer fails to abate the suicidal feelings, then I rely on friends and family. If they aren’t available, the fourth line of defense is a church leader. The important thing is to tell somebody—anybody—what you are experiencing. Even a suicide hotline will suffice. Get your urge out of the shadows. These aberrant feelings don’t thrive in the light.

Decades ago, these suicidal feelings were overpowering, suffocating, and daily. It took me ten years of training to regulate my moods and to not let them take over my life. Now I go years between bouts. It truly is miraculous progress compared to the dark place I used to reside in. I’m so grateful that I made the effort and found success, but I never had drug addiction to deal with on top of suicidal ideation. I can’t imagine what Dolores was struggling with, or how the drugs addled her outlook. But this is speculation.

What I can say is that you are more important than you realize. Suicidal depression is insidious. It convinces us that we do the world a kindness by taking our lives. Please seek help if you struggle daily with these destructive urges.

~Dˢ

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National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
Call 1–800–273–8255