Bookwork Entry 10 – Frustration and Setbacks Plus Unfathomable Optimism

A month has passed since I last updated my journal. I'm afraid progress has been in short supply, but understanding my obstacles and deciding how to surmount them has made this writing process invaluable. Reach out to me on Facebook or Twitter if you've got something to say about what I've written.

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25 OCTOBER 2022
BOOKWORK 10: It’s been a month since I last checked in. How have I been doing? The website project has come to a stop. I need to fiddle with some settings with my ISP, something I haven’t done to this extent before, so instead of charging in, I sit down and read a book. More on that later.

WaiMin has been stuck in revisions, but that isn’t a bad thing. Co-writing has been challenging, and story problems I would have worked out on my own before have become obstacles. It doesn’t help that Post-COVID has made everything take four times longer than usual. Let’s bookmark that for later as well.

The one major success in Bookwork has been my blogging. I’ve been consistently blogging weekly since August. This is a massive win. The second phase will be to blog every Thursday. The third phase will be to blog weekly while finishing my visual Todos book. If only I wasn’t so tired all the time.

Post Exertion Malaise has been the single most ruinous, most destructive, aspect of Post-COVID Syndrome. Its effect on my productivity has been disastrous! Even as I write this, I keep falling asleep. The toll I pay for thinking too hard is complete and total exhaustion. I understand physical exhaustion, but mental fatigue on this scale is brand new to me. I don’t know how to overcome it yet.

The Post-CoVID brain fog is a pain, but something I am accustomed to. It is worse than ADHD, but similar enough that my years of coping strategies help me function. The hyperactive part of my ADHD isn’t making an appearance, however. I’m used to boundless energy, not dropping dead in the middle of the day like a depleted iPhone.

I don’t want blogging to be the only thing on my list completed, but I’ll take it. Some success is better than none. Meanwhile, I’ve set up an appointment for cognitive therapy for next month. I’m hoping for mental exercises to build my stamina along with a new metric to chart my progress.

I’ve moved beyond discouraged to irritated. I can’t progress unless I biuld up my mental & physical stamina, but they’ve told me there is no cure for Post-COVID Syndrome.

Meanwhile, I am not shirking my full-time dad duties. They are taking all my energy—something I don’t regret, but I do wish I had energy to spare to improve my lot in life a little faster.

Despite all my goals, however, some days are spent in a stupor. I read a lot of books, I watch a lot of TV, but I don’t make a lot of progress. If I try to push through the stupor, or brain fog, I end up with writings that are dreadful. It takes days to edit bad writing into good as opposed to waiting and writing when I have my wits about me again.

This is the state my life is at. I wish I could explain it better. So I write in this journal in the hopes that my writing returns to its former level. I write to organize my mind. I write in defiance of my sickly, disabled fate.

I don’t continue to blog to find the readers that I have lost. I write to find myself.

What is next then?

• I will post this journal entry and begin phase two of my blog: writing early and scheduling posts for weekly publication.
• I will fix my home web server.
• I will finish the WaiMin revisions.

 

Bookwork Entry 8

After meeting with a care manager at the University of Utah's COVID Long Hauler clinic, I gained some new information that explained what I've been going through this year. I've been needlessly hard on myself for not getting over something that has impacted me greatly and will continue to impact me greatly for months to come.

I also point out recent successes, which shows me that this was a good project to undertake. I will overcome this illness. I will make my goals. This journal is helping me analzye things that have been overwhelming me for some time as well as allowing me to rethink overly agressive goals that may be fun or challenging, but don't get me published.

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17 SEPTEMBER 2022
Bookwork 8: I now have a name for my greatest stumbling block:

Post Exertion Malaise

Common with other viral fatigue syndromes, Post-COVID has the symptom of taking you down after physical or mental exertion. Isn't that neat? There is nothing I can do about it. There is no "cure". Just months and months of convalescence. At the very least, I should stop calling myself lazy when I have to take a nap after blogging, which happened to me last week.

As of last week, I have blogged two weeks in a row. If I can blog again today, that will be three weeks in a row. I haven't even been able to blog monthly at this point, so I consider this a big win. The Post-COVID brain fog has been debilitating.

I still have to solve the third domain hosting issue on my rPi. I simply cannot fathom what I have misconfigured. It's driving me nuts. I was also hoping to work on WaiMin tonight. However, I've had two back physical therapy sessions, one knee PT session, and daily exercise homework. I'm pooped. We'll have to see how the day goes. but I remain hopeful.

Lastly, I've been rethinking choosing now to illustrate graphics for my Splintered Mind blog. It is true that I miss drawing, and the tic-which-shan't-be-named no longer interferes, but anything other than a simple graphic is a distraction from my WaiMin project. No more animated GIFs. They are fun, but take up too much time at this point.

With my health so severely impacted, I need to rein in my ADHD whims just as severely.

 

Written on a Kobo Elipsa eReader.

Bookwork Entry 7

This process may seem dull, but it works extremely well for me, especially since I'm dealing with Post-COVID brain fog. Writing slowly by hand is helping me sort out my thoughts. In this entry, I decided the fate of the second novel. It's nice to imagine that I can simultaneously write two novels while blogging weekly while juggling Great White sharks and chainsaws on a unicycle, but I have to be honest with myself.

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24 AUGUST 2022
Bookwork 7: Family visits and fatigue have halted the geeky server work. I hope to get back on track soon.

Tonight I'm contemplating my second novel. I don't believe it has a ghost of a chance to see the light. I can't even handle my current workload. Why add more?

Because, unlike WaiMin, this is purely my story. Because the story is nagging me to give it life. Because it will be easier to consult with myself over story ideas. Because I'm bored.

Speaking of consulting with myself, both of us have agreed to put off writing this story until:

1. I am blogging weekly for a month.
2. I am writing WaiMin weekly for a month.
3. I have sketched Bethsi, my female lead, and am drawing weekly.
4. I have finished reading all the ghost reference books.

This will not be an easy list to complete. I have effectively shelved the project.

Now I have to get back on track with the website work.

 

Written on a Kobo Elipsa eReader.

Bookwork Entries 3-4

These tech-heavy entries focus on the nuts & bolts of hosting a blog. It's not exciting reading, but I needed to resolve this problem if I wanted full focus moving forward. Sometimes our most passionate goals require us to sludge through drudgery before we can attain what we seek. In this case, I want to host my blog on my home server, but have been putting off the grunt work because it's frightfully boring.

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11 AUGUST 2022
Bookwork 3: Blogger.com feels like abandon ware; comments have been broken for years; apps that support Blogger.com become abandonware; and what Google giveth, Google can taketh away. I'll probably be happier running blog software on my own server.

It's time to move off my current server anyway. Even though I set it up and paid for it for years, I've shared an account with my daughter since 2005. She's paid for my services, too–often accidentally–and now her husband is on it as well. It's time for daddy to be put out to pasture.

But migration is a lot of work, and I've been putting it off for years. Sickness. Disabilities. Raising a disabled daughter. There are bona fide reasons why I haven't jumped on this.

Do I love blogging enough to invest time and money on the backend? Google's service may have its issues, but it's free.

Alright. I'll bite the bullet. Tonight I will learn how to host two domains on my Raspberry Pi (rPi). I'm already hosting my family website on it. Then tomorrow I will back up my blog content in preparation for its new home.

All of this is extremely boring, however.

 

11 AUGUST 2022
Bookwork 4: Torture! Absolute torture! I spent hours tonight configuring my rPi to host two websites. Linux is just enough different from Unix to send me down the wrong path over and over again. And there I was wondering,"Gee, why have I been procrastinating this project again?"

A better question would be, "What does any of this have to do with writing a book?"

Well, the second site is for my pen name. There's not much content there. It's a great test case before migrating NINE HUNDRED blog entries from my main blog.

Stop whining, Douglas, and just get it done. The DC website works locally, but not outside of my network. You've obviously misconfigured something. All ports are open.

 

This is a journal I am writing on my Kobo Elipsa eReader.

Bookwork Entries 1-2

While I was sick from October 2021 to April 2022, I allowed myself to pile on new projects as a coping strategy. It worked very well. Having new plans helped keep me focused forward when the present was bleak and discouraging. Now that my health has taken a turn for the better, however, I need to stop letting ADHD spin wildly and spend my time wisely instead. It's time to rid myself of cruft, and focus on the most important projects.

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10 AUGUST 2022
Bookwork 1: Despite all the sickness and setbacks I have experienced over the past year, I still want to write and publish a new book. But which one?

I wrote down all the book plans that I made while I was ill, and I was shocked, but not surprised, at the massive project goals that I had accumulated.

• Update my Pokémon book
• Finish one of ten new mental health books
• simultaneously write TWO fantasy books
• Blog weekly

Have I mentioned before that I have been sick with a high fever multiple times since last October? I was clearly delirious when I created all those projects.

I was to accomplish all of those projects while dealing with Post COVID. Of course! Never mind pruning my storage unit by selling everything and raising a disabled daughter with her copious medical issues.

What is sad to me is that there is a part of me that sincerely believes that not only should I be able to do all the things, but that I'm supposed to.

Then again, by setting BIG goals I can achieve more than I might otherwise. Shoot for the stars, for at the very least, I'll land on the moon, right⸮

Perhaps.

It's more likely that I'll become paralyzed with indecision because I'm trying to accomplish too much at the same time.

Speaking of too much, here's what I hope to accomplish with this journal:

1. Printing practice. My printing letter forms have grown too sloppy.
2. Overcome depression
3. To organize my thoughts & goals so that as my health improves, I am working only on the best, most focused, projects.
4. Decide which projects I can realistically hope to accomplish and how. First up? Blogging.

 

10 AUGUST 2022
Bookwork 2: Since the pandemic, I haven't been blogging much, but I've missed it. That contradiction is my first problem. My second problem is that I don't enjoy the blogger.com platform very much. Moving to another platform, then streamlining blog creation and publication, is the third. The topics I blog about might be my fourth problem, though this might also be the reason for the first problem. All of that is a bit much to deal with while also dealing with disabilities and illness, so I keep kicking the can down the road.

It feels great to spell all that out.

Normally, I would go for a walk to work out issues that overwhelm me, but I'm sick and lack the stamina for a walk, so I'll walk my thoughts out here.

Why blogging? It's hardly a steady stream of income. Facebook took care of that. However, I have had successes. I wrote and published a book. I've been paid to attend conferences. I was a paid blogger for regular gigs throughout the years. I've made dear friendships. All of that was due to blogging. Why not continue?

I've been blogging for seventeen years and I'm bored?

Well, that accounts for some of the times. I mostly worry that I am expending writing energy on blogging instead of writing my novel. If neither are guaranteed to earn sign ificantly, then why spend time writing what bores me?

Now that health concerns forced me to take a lengthy break, however, I realize that I miss blogging. I enjoy it. I plan on doing more of it for years to come.

First problem solved.

 

This is a journal I started keeping on my Kobo Elipsa eReader.

When Does Research Become a Fixation?

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?

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?

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

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

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:.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.

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1. 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

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

© Alan Watson Featherstone

 

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

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.

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

People Read What I Write? Who Knew‽

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 twice¹. 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.

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1. 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

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:

1. I miss writing about ADHD & Depression.
2. I don’t schedule time for my blog book projects.
3. 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…

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:

Of Awards, eBooks, and Depression

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.

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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

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.

Life Usually Has Other Plans

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.

The Best-Laid Schemes

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

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New blog posting later tonight.

Worry Is a Waste of Imagination