A Splintered Mind

Day 17 – 11:56 PM: I’ve put together a heavy schedule—a roadmap—that will lead me towards achieving my goals, but as usual with lists, life has a way of giving them a flat. Fortunately, the lists still work as roadmaps, even if distractions and responsibilities put detours in front of my deadlines. The point of writing openly like this is to share a bit of the process. I believe strongly that if we identify our stumbling blocks, we can learn to work around them. Some people who don’t have mental health issues look upon that belief as letting my diagnosis limit me—as if I could suddenly, for example, not have a tic disorder if I just stopped thinking about it so much. On the other extreme, I’ve met multitudes of people who allow depression, anxiety, ADHD, and other disabilities define and rule them. They give up and behave exactly as those who stigmatize mental health expect. I’m caught in the middle, just like a lot you. I can’t help ignorant or clue...

5:56 PM: I’ve had a flurry of productivity and focus lately. I know exactly why, but I haven’t decided to share the reason yet. Last night, I fell asleep while watching Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock Holmes “The Final Problem”. This was not due to the plot boring me. I’ve had a hard week of family drama, family emergencies, and ticking. In fact, minutes before I fell asleep, I had just been laughing out loud during the scandalous nude scene. There I was minding my own business watching Sherlock investigate Mona Lisa forgeries, when this guy 👇🏼 suddenly mugged the camera before heading off to chat with the nude model. It’s like the plot jumped the tracks for a few minutes and headed out behind the shed with the other giggling school boys. So strange. And I bet you thought Cumberbatch’s “Woman” was scandalous So I decided to go to bed early at 10pm. I’m all grown up now! Except at that point, I couldn’t fall aslee...

“Oh please, dear Lord, take me home.” ☜ Somebody posted this on Facebook last night. I had been reading this woman’s cries for help for weeks, but never spoke up because dozens upon dozens of people jumped into each post to give her love and encouragement. I didn’t believe that I could add anything that her peers hadn’t already expressed. Last night, however, this post bothered me. If you’ve read my blog, you know how I feel about drive-by suicide notes . These types of posts are cathartic for the people who leave them, but they burden the folks who read them. They aren’t constructive and smack of wallowing. I felt compelled to leave a comment, but what would be the best approach? How could I help her believe that she could take control of her suicidal tendencies? I didn't want to scold her. She was as down as a person could be, but she didn’t have to needlessly suffer, either. Most drive-by suicide notes posted in the comments on this blog were us...

3:43 AM: Since I haven’t gone to bed yet, yesterday is still today for me, and I have even less to report than I did with my last entry. I spent the day dealing with my child’s needs, seeing her therapist, doing tech support for my parents for a few hours, taking care of my child’s needs again, then spending hours trying to re-enable comments on my blog. I have no idea why I cannot fix the comments. I have gutted my blog code, replaced the code entirely with another blog of mine that has working comments, reset all the widgets, changed the template a dozen times, and STILL NO COMMENTS . I give up. It can’t be done. There is something corrupt on Google’s end that is preventing me from re-enabling Blogger, Google+, and, even, Disqus comment systems. There is nobody at Google who will help me. Nobody to call up for tech support. At this point, I have 4 choices: Create a brand new blog, migrate all my content to it, design it just right, then delete m...

4:26 AM: Alright, I don’t have great news to report. My writing goals are slightly behind. Between reinjuring my hernia surgery site, getting sick again, and ticking all the time, I haven’t been on top of my game. I’ve been so out of it, I haven’t referred to my ToDo list in days, something that is unheard of for me! It sounds like excuses, but these legitimate stumbling blocks will pop up again. If I want to get more books done this year, I’m going to have to learn how to manage these challenges. I believe the culprit was that I lost my focus. If I maintain focus—keep my eye on the goal—then I can work around these issues instead of acting like they just smacked me across the chest with a flagpole.


 I’m seeing a lot of fear & anxiety on social media these days. People are dismayed, alarmed, and outright paranoid. The panic is so palpable that it’s bound to be affecting those of us dealing with depression or anxiety. Maybe you’re getting caught up in more online arguments these days; maybe you spend an inordinate amount of time defending yourself and others, or maybe you’re the one who’s enraged and attacking everybody you think has ruined your world. It’s time to take a deep breath and relax. Regardless of where on the political spectrum you fall, I suspect you and I aren’t that much different. We feel passionately about our political causes and get discouraged when others disparage them. We want to see the right people elected and feel down when we think the wrong people are elected. Aside from a political spectrum of ideologies, there is an emotional political spectrum, too. Most people don’t care much about politics. Othe...

Maybe you can relate to this: You can’t think straight. You’re easily distracted. You keep forgetting what you’re supposed to be doing. It’s ADHD, right? Despite the two surgeries I have had in the past three months, I’ve been unusually healthy. This is a delightful change for me. No bronchitis in Winter? Unheard of! I can go out into the wet cold and not spend the rest of the day coughing and sniffling in bed? Unbelievable! In fact, it’s been so long since I was last sick, the events leading to New Years Eve caught me off guard. As December 30th hurried along, I became less and less productive and doubly frustrated. I couldn’t remember things from one moment to the next. I would walk from room to room in a daze. I was strangely tired. I made careless mistakes. Now, to anybody who knows me, they’d likely wonder why I’m bothering to mention this. After all, aren’t I like this all the time? Well, thank you, imaginary straw f...

4:51 PM: I need to touch base today to let you know that some days are better than others. Also, some are worse. Today’s pretty bad for me. It’s a double crutch day. Ironically, I may not be able to attend the Tourette Syndrome support group tonight because I’m ticking too much to drive. We’ll see how the evening pans out. Today will mark the return to blogging on the 10th, 20th, and 30th of every month. I don’t mean this blog. I have another article planned for today. It will post later tonight. That should please many of you — at least, it is my hope that it will please many of you. I realize that people seeking writing articles are put off by my mental health articles; people seeking depression articles are often turned off by my writing and ADHD articles; and people interested in ADHD articles aren’t just disinterested in depression and writing articles, but they’ve already left the page by now. I seem to always be disappointing somebo...

2:32 AM: Yes! The holidays are over. I can feel life seeping back into my stressed limbs, but that’s just because I spent the last half week sick with a bug. I spent New Years Eve home, taking a nap of all things. How insulting to the cause of revelry and celebration. I nibbled cherry cordials by myself and hobbled around with a cane. Thank goodness that ordeal is over. I’ve actually been quite healthy this Fall. Except for the two surgeries, this is the first time I’ve been so sick in over a year. Although there was an infection, I’m recovering from my surgery, too. My days of convalescence are at an end. So pull out the map! We’ve got a whole year ahead of us to plan our trip together. I’ve got some new birthday goals to make, and I finally have a brain to put to use. Once I stopped feeling like Old Man Death, I started to work on promotion and web design. I still can’t figure out what on earth is wrong with comments. I disabled Blogger ...