A Splintered Mind

Update: I did it! Please visit Part Two to see the completion of this challenge. I was challenged to post a video of myself doing twenty-two push-ups a day for twenty-two days by my friend, Matt Coombs, on Facebook. The “22Kill Challenge” is intended to bring awareness to the estimated twenty-two veterans every day who take their own lives. As somebody who has struggled with suicidism since I was fifteen years old, I know how hard it can be to carry this burden on your own. I believe #22Kill's plan to bring awareness to this veteran plight is a noble one. I never served in the military, but my brother, Ryan, did. The day he finished infantry training at Camp Pendleton, a drunk driver plowed into the van he and 10 other marines were in, ending their liberty, and for some, their service. My brother died the next day, so I accept this challenge to honor his memory and to help raise awareness for suicidal vets. To you veterans who served, you served with honor, and we do no...

I’ll be flying out to the Mental Health America convention this summer to discuss blogging about mental health as a form of therapy. I’m looking forward to the new experience. I’ll get to meet peers and talk about a subject of which I feel passionately. I’ll even get out of my state again, something I don’t do often enough. Obviously, blogging about your mental health takes a bit of gumption. While you may hope to connect with other individuals who share your experiences, or maybe you dare to inspire, you also open yourself up for criticism from strangers. Sometimes they see your struggle and wonder why you have the nerve to put yourself out there as a shining example. They came looking for guidance and found somebody down in the muck with them instead. Consequently, they feel betrayed. Even worse, they might read only one article and decide to pass judgement on your entire life. Wow. Why do I do this again? A reader commented recently that my ...

One of the main reasons that I implemented Disqus was because of their robust anti-spam features. The other reason was because of their strong social media support. Over the years, Disqus evolved to be their own social media network, and the social media tools I loved (like being able to easily post a comment AND have it simultaneously post to Facebook & Twitter) were removed. Another reason that I switched was because Blogger's comment system seemed to give people trouble. Well, comments are way down, and people send me comments on Twitter, Facebook, email, and privately instead of posting here. They all begin their messages the same way. "I tried to leave a comment on your blog, but couldn't." Not even my oldest daughter is able to leave comments, and posting on my blog is one way that she feels connected to home while she attends school in Germany. After I received only two comments during my "Writing in a Fishbowl" series, I've begun to th...

7:20 PM: Finished! I started and finished a book in under one month. Next up, I’ll spend the next week on the second draft, which will mean that I only fix typos, commas, and focus. Then I send it off to a copyeditor. While that’s away, I’ll gather graphics and put together landing pages and book summaries, etc. My goal—and, boy! I like them aggressive—is to have everything finished so that I can self pub by April 30th. Then I can begin my next book project on May 1st. I’ll probably miss all those deadlines. I might tic a few days away, my daughter’s problems might flare up, or I’ll get distracted designing icons for my desktop. Maybe even reorganize my garage one night at 3am. Who knows what might happen‽ With ADHD, depression, chronic motor tic disorder, and a daughter with epilepsy, I obviously run into one issue or another. However, making this serious goal—and failing it—has focused my life in a way that it hasn’t been in a long tim...

2:47 AM: Made a lot of progress in the closing chapters tonight. Deleted a ton of useless material, so my word count was going backwards for a bit, but the results are worth the effort. Can't keep my eyes open. Will write more later. Totals: Day No.1: 1250 words Day No.2: 703 words Day No.3: 671 words Day No.4: 262 words Day No.7: 2725 words Day No.8: 231 words Day No.13: 974 words Day No.17: 633 words Day No.19: 758 words Day No.21: 473 words Day No.22: 1277 words Day No.26: 815 words Project Word Count Total: 10,772 words

12:49 PM: Will today be the day I make steady progress? I’m not ticking. I’m not depressed or sick. I have half a brain. No family drama is on the horizon. Once I drop off the Brownie at her mother’s, my schedule is wide open. Will I be smart, or will I fire up Splatoon? 3:47 AM: Time for bed. It’s been a wonderfully productive day. I have no regrets. Although I came down with some intestinal thing during the afternoon, my friends convinced me to let them come over anyway. Good friends are more precious to me than diamonds. I’m glad I relented. Finally, I finally saw Star Wars Episode VII. I am no longer an outcast in society. Knowing my friends were coming over gave me a boost of adrenaline. I tidied up as best as I could, but I made sure that I worked on this project before they arrived, then worked on it again after they left. I chose not to work on a blog article. I was too excited to work on this project. I finished Section IV, utilizing al...

2:35 PM: More research has been needed. That’s how I spent yesterday. As much as it destroys the writing flow, I’d rather struggle now and get things right than rush to maintain a public display of writing wonder to impress passersby. The whole point of this experiment wasn’t to BE Dean Wesley Smith, or even write as much as he does, but to see if writing about my writing would make me write MORE. These entries, obviously, don’t count. Holding myself accountable in public has helped me push forward despite the effect depression, ticking, insomnia, and plain old absentminded ADHD has on my life. I tweet less. I post on Facebook less. All I need to do is read news less, and more time than ever will be spent writing where I would otherwise just spin in place. What I mean by that is if I am ticking, I might plop down on the couch and watch TV while I wait for the episode to pass. However, one episode might turn into an entirely different episode as ADHD kick...

6:29 PM: “So easy to turn the world down. No matter what you dream, you got to get back to being found.” ♪ I am listening to “Becker” off Autolux’s new album, “Pussy’s Dead”, as I post a quick update before getting on with some more writing today. Those lyrics stabbed my conscious acutely today. It is so easy to turn the world down. You just stop caring, and the pain of failure/rejection/adversity can fade away. Although my daughter’s new Chinese medicine formula has had an incredibly positive change on her mood lability, the struggle over the past two weeks has flipped my sleeping schedule upside down, exacerbated my tic disorder severely, and has triggered probably the worst bout of depression I’ve had in a year. When I finally passed out this morning, I slept the deep sleep of the sleep deprived, neurologically offline so deeply that if you had set my bedsheets on fire, I wouldn’t have even dreamed that I was i...

5:30 AM: Two quick things, then I’m off to bed. First, I lost a great deal of time over the weekend. The Brownie’s medical issues exhausted me, but also stressed me out. It affected my sleep drastically. I had about 7½ hours of sleep for the weekend, but when it came time to crash Sunday night as I had planned, I couldn’t fall asleep until 6am. 7½ hours of sleep for three days is not enough. Insomnia is a terrible thing. Is it any wonder I’ve been so depressed lately? I started to feel more like myself a few hours ago, so I sat down to write for the first time in four days. I edited and rewrote sections in need of focus, I created tables for reference, and I ended up with a measly 633 words added to my project word count. Maybe I should be keeping track of how many words I delete, too. I suspect the number will be higher than the new word count. Second, if I wasn’t aware before, I have become painfully aware now that turning my sleep schedule around s...