A Splintered Mind

Just like almost everybody else on Earth, I have been enjoying the augmented reality game, Pokémon Go . I'm sure you've heard about it. There has been a lot of bad press for this game. It seems each week there is a new scolding article letting people know that they're having fun wrong. Most of it is clickbait fluff with no merit. When you have millions of people playing a game, there are bound to be negative incidents, but they are the exception, not the norm. I can assure you that I have not come across any dead bodies, I haven't been assailed in the dark by roving gangs hellbent on stealing my stuff, and I haven't driven into a tree while I was trying to capture a Pokémon. What I have had is a lot of fun while playing the game with my daughters, as well as by myself. Pokémon Go is a variation of a popular game available only on Nintendo handhelds. Having a Pokémon game on a non-Nintendo device is a big deal. The original games for the past twenty years have been r...

Week Three and Four were total busts. So embarrassing. I became sick AND had a ticking bout that lasted days. When that happens, I default to just the bare minimum: taking care of my daughters. That's my primary responsibility. Learning to squeeze blogging and writing into my life around my responsibilities is secondary. That doesn't mean I'm pleased with the results. It just means that I chose to succeed at being a dad and fail at being a writer. And by fail, I mean not meet my unrealistic expectations. Later in week three, I used Pokémon Go as an excuse to go outside even when sick or ticking. That was a fun distraction. Being shut inside during the summer is so depressing, but the game had definite mental health benefits. I wrote all about it for my next article. Nevertheless, all was not lost: I finished the first chapter of my new book on fighting depression. I'll be posting it later this week. I've decided to post the first draft of each chapter as an exper...

Two things of note today: On Thieves & Lowlifes Last month I moved all the boxes in my rented garage space into my living room. I’m moving in two months, so I figured I’d save money while pruning the boxes down to fit into a smaller space. The detritus of my half of twenty-three years of marriage still awaits my sad, pruning heart. If there weren’t so many precious things mixed in, I’d dump the lot. Instead, it’s like I just got a messy new roommate. The only problem I had was what to do with my mountain bike and disabled daughter’s adult trike. I refer to her as the Brownie on social media since she’s a fourteen-year-old minor. You’ve probably heard me mention her here before. She has epilepsy and cerebral palsy, and she’s a lot of work. In fact, tomorrow we’re heading over to Shriner’s Hospital to have a gait lab done, and we just finished an MRI for her last week. Like I said, she’s a lot of work, but I...

I woke up this morning to discover I had been quoted! Finally! Somebody noticed my insightful commentary on the world and felt it noteworthy to share. I could expect to see a boost in page hits, maybe some social media traction, and dare I hope, more sales of my book, “Saying ‘NO!’ to Suicide” . Then I noticed a tiny problem. As much as I appreciated the signal boost from Healthy Minds on Facebook and Twitter, I wasn’t actually quoted. In fact, I hadn’t said any of the comments attributed to me. The cited quotes were the cheeky bullet points and summaries of the article author, Sabrina Rojas Weiss. Healthy Minds was just trying to bring attention to an important issue, and should be commended for their efforts, but I want to make sure that the right people get attributed. Just in case you missed the article when I shared it last year, here’s a link: ‘Cancer Is Just An Excuse’ – Insensitive Things People Say About Mental Illness, Translated ...

My friend, Paul Tuck, died three years ago today. I’ve been thinking about him lately. I miss his zany and quick humor. I miss his smile and his laugh. To be honest, though, I didn’t like him much when I first met him. He delighted in playing devil’s advocate on any issue that was opposite of where you stood at that moment. My first introduction to Paul was when I was giving him and my friend, Nathan, a ride from some event in Salt Lake City, and he was arguing about the superior quality of 8-bit Nintendo music over the Sega Master System or something, and I couldn’t get him home fast enough. He was a masterful troll. Over the years I learned to understand his humor, and more importantly, recognize when he was having fun with me. I, also, learned to have fun back. I remember impressing him when I got my Amiga 2500 to run a Mac emulator through a PC emulator. It was terribly slow, and Nathan thought I was insane, but Paul appreciated the mad genius of the mo...

I’m not sure what I was thinking last month, but I scheduled an enormous amount of appointments for this week. Independence Day was busy enough as it was, but I’m fairly certain my future self went back in time to punish myself by trapping me inside a hot car and sending me all over Salt Lake Valley. Then he hid my keys. Future me is a real jerk. At least important doctors appointments and therapy sessions for my kids are being met, but my work schedule has been left on the side of a hot, Utah highway somewhere. If I envision ravens circling my work schedule to feed on its disorganized corpse, that’s more creativity than I’ve been able to summon all week. I was going to post the first chapter of my Fighting Depression book, but I reorganized the concepts from the depression blog I am basing the book on, and suddenly there are less than ten items. Eight Ways to Fight Off Depression just doesn’t have the same punch for me, so I need to rethink my app...