A Splintered Mind

I'll be working today on catching up with all the fabulous comments my readers have left over the past two weeks. If you just follow this blog through the RSS feed I recommend you click through to the articles. Even if you don't feel like leaving a comment yourself I can promise you that you won't be wasting your time. In the meantime, I'll have a new article up by tomorrow for you to look forward to. I'm also playing with the idea of focusing on The Secret for September. I've been accused of being "the Secret guy" and am curious about what my personal philosophy towards coping with disabilities has in common with that pop psychology. I see myself more as a "Learned Optimism" or "Mind over Mood" sort of guy. More pragmatic, less New Age. Posted with LifeCast

What a busy summer it has been. Somehow, I foolishly believed I'd have more time once the school year ended last Spring. I suppose the reasoning went along the lines of "Hey, if I'm not driving around like a crazy person 70 times a day bringing my girls all over Salt Lake Valley, I'll have lots of time to myself. Sweet!" Alas, reality was far more bitter. After all the writing I did in May and June to prepare for WIFYR , I moved into my minivan and proceeded to stay there until 5:05am Saturday morning. I'm afraid I lost all use of my fingers. My wife had to pry my hands from the steering wheel. I'm typing this with my nose. Frankly, I blame the children. What with dance class, and out of state feisana , and five county fairs, and one last minute performance in downtown Salt Lake City, I never saw the inside of my apartment. Now I'm actually looking forward to school beginning again this week. Ah, the irony. Truthfully, I did accomplish much, but it jus...

Update 2016: This article was featured in my book "Saying NO to Suicide" , with added commentary. With so much focus on what's wrong with me this Summer, here is something that I did right. My wife and I celebrated our 20th anniversary on Monday, but it almost didn't happen. We had an argument the night before and it troubled my sleep terribly. I ended up falling asleep sometime long after the Sun had already claimed the day as its own. When I awoke, I was a neurological mess. I couldn't talk well, I couldn't focus visually, and I was twitching and ticking. My oldest daughter tried for two hours to rise me from the dead. Finally, I lumbered out of bed uncomfortably past the zenith of the afternoon. Even though I was no longer ticking, I still had only one hour to my day before I was supposed to pick my wife up from work and celebrate. The trouble was I didn't feel like celebrating. I had been fighting off the black dog over the weekend and winning, but ...

The two articles I had planned to post last week still need a bit of work. They lack heart. I'll see if I have a spare and get back to you. ~Douglas

Wendy Aron, author of Hide & Seek: How I Laughed at Depression, Conquered My Fears and Found Happiness , left the following comment in response to my post earlier today ( Caution: A Reader's Personal Experience with Paxil ): I have had the exact opposite experience with my medication. I have been on Elavil for twenty-five years and besides a greater appetite and dry mouth I have had no terrible side effects. My psychiatrist took me off the medication completely and I got depressed again. It's been a life saver to me. Thank you for sharing your viewpoint in such a non-combative way, Wendy. There are many sides to the issue of Depression, and I'm glad that the internet allows for open discussions both pro and con of current psychiatric procedures, as well as the explorations of alternatives to the traditional paths that modern psychology sometimes frowns upon. Even though some might suggest that you became depressed again because your mind rebounded when you disco...

While I finish up touches on two related articles, I wanted to point your attention to a fantastic comment left today on my " Wary of Psych Meds? Here is My Personal Experience With Them. " article from last May. (What a wonderfully productive month that was. Let me pause for a moment while I reminisce on what being productive felt like....ah, they call these the halcyon days of Summer. Mine feels more like a series of random squalls than a calm breeze. Fortunately, school starts in two weeks.) Reader Cathy had a terrible time on Paxil and she shared some of the highlights with me. Here is a sample: I don't want to make this too long because I have to get to work. To put it mildly Paxil turned my life into a living hell, especially the grueling two-plus year withdrawal that I've been through. I didn't even know the damage it was doing to myself, my family, the finances, everything until I was off and brain "woke up" seven months after my last pill. With ...

I don't know about you, but here's why I procrastinate I was digging around some old ideas for the blog and came across one from December 2005. It was titled "6 Reasons on Why are You Procrastinating" . I thought, "Hey, cool! Here are six reasons why people procrastinate. I wonder why I never wrote about this article?" I may never know the answer to that question, but I bet it has a lot to do with procrastination. Normal everyday people procrastinate all the time. The teenager who hasn't taken out the trash yet? Procrastination. That client who hasn't settled accounts yet? Procrastination. The Senator who failed to report bribes from lobbyists? Procrastination. Well, maybe there's another vice involved there. Still, everybody puts off what they don't want to do from time to time. Those who master their time, however, have learned how to avoid excessive procrastination. People with AD/HD may not be able to stop having AD/HD, but they can learn...

No big article this week. I've been swamped with work. Client phone calls, web design, daddy duty up to my eyeballs, and lastly I've been spending every spare moment helping my daughter prepare for her county fair gigs. I booked her for four fairs this summer. She's even headlining for one of them. Wish I could tell you which one. I promised my family I wouldn't expose her to the online public unless she had an album for sale. She has a MySpace band page and a podcast I help her produce, but no pictures of what she actually looks like. Just bits and pieces of her. Maybe one day soon we'll get her original music on iTunes, but until then she remains an anonymous, 16 year old girl who sings country music locally. Not that I mind, really. Look at Miley Cyrus . I covered before what a mess this past year has been for her and how that's only reaffirmed my belief that Hollywood sucks the souls out of little girls. Now somebody has released a photo of Miley in a wet t...