mental well being

Funky

This morning, as I went through my usual routines, it occurred to me that I might be in a funk. It’s funny how these things sneak up on you. It’s like being in a store and realizing they are playing Christmas music, then running, screaming, from the store.

Well, maybe not quite like that.

I’m no funkologist and my self-diagnosis could be off, but I think it’s a combo of factors:

  • Stress from various sources has been accruing.
  • My diet (re: snacking) has deteriorated as I seek comfort in delicious calories.
  • The urge to pursue creative stuff (drawing, writing–such as on this blog) has waned in favour of more passive pursuits–not exactly doomscrolling, but maybe things adjacent to that.
  • I have missed a few runs due to circumstances, but yesterday I just did not go. This is probably the biggest warning sign. Running is a very Zen pursuit for me, so deliberately avoiding it is a good signal that something is amiss1Not counting not wanting to run in torrential rain, which has happened a few times lately.

I don’t think I can pin the start on any one thing, but perhaps a tipping point may have been when I chatted with the cardiothoracic surgeon and got confirmation that surgery is in my future, barring some imminent breakthrough in medical technology. I think it has rattled me, because it’s made me start going through various “What if?” scenarios where the harmless little blob to be removed may be less than harmless. Or more broadly, it’s possibly set off subconscious thoughts about mortality in general. I’m not sure. The brain is a strange place.

But being aware is the start of making changes for the better, so here I am writing, even if it’s just to acknowledge the thing, hopefully with more helpful changes to come. And I promise not to buy Pop-Tarts, even if they are on sale.

In conclusion, writing cat:

Now and zen

If I was a musician and Robert Plant hadn’t already used it, I would totally make an album called “Now and Zen.”

Here are some things I find that produce a zen-like quality for me, where I lose myself in the activity, and my mind can unlock to drift and ponder and take me away from the world for a while.

  • Running. That runner’s high thing you hear about is real. Also, this can vary a bit based on conditions. If the terrain is slippery due to ice and whatnot, it’s harder to find zen because I’m concerned about face-planting. But generally, running is very calming to my brain.
  • Drawing. Especially when I do bird art, which is almost like colouring in a colouring book. The application of colour is very soothing.
  • Writing. Even on this blog, sometimes! The quote at the top of this site is accurate, but a lot of writers forget how it feels to get in the proverbial zone. You are taken, briefly, to another place, and it’s great. When you leave, it’s almost like a memory wipe occurs, so writing becomes a “chore” again, instead of a secret delight.
  • Picking up litter with a picker and bucket. This requires a certain amount of hand-eye coordination because grabbing cigarette butts off the ground can be trickier than you’d think. But the activity is so mellow and gentle, it’s nice just to slowly move around the condo complex and surrounding area and plink away at the occasional bits of litter.

The “who cares” era

A blog post by Dan Sinker: The Who Cares Era

Relevant quote, but read the whole thing, I think it captures a lot of what is happening now in 2025 and predates the whole AI craze, though that same craze is making it worse:

Earlier this week, it was discovered that the Chicago Sun-Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer had both published an externally-produced “special supplement” that contained facts, experts, and book titles entirely made up by an AI chatbot.

…

It’s so emblematic of the moment we’re in, the Who Cares Era, where completely disposable things are shoddily produced for people to mostly ignore.

I know people who play YouTube videos at 2x speed. The idea of watching a video in real time is unthinkable to them. Or they play the same videos while reading a web article or doing something else, constantly looking for ways to keep themselves overstimulated, where the idea of just being quiet and alone with your thoughts is alien and unacceptable. It’s weird. I feel the pull, too, but I force myself to focus. It is impossible to do creative work if I am distracted. Sometimes even background music is too much.

And AI slop, now flooding the web, is making these distractions not just worse, but far more pervasive. It’s part of why I’m checking out small blogs again. Not just to escape corporate control and influence, but to actually read real content, however imperfect it may be.

And I give it my attention. You should, too.

Here’s an AI-generated image of my soapbox:

(just kidding)

My brain is complicated and is thinking on its own (I think)

As I’ve reported before, my trusty Garmin Forerunner 255 has been reporting that I have been under a great deal of stress, experiencing high stress while sleeping and generally having Very Stressful days for about two months now. At first, I thought it was misinterpreting my kidney infection as stress and acted accordingly. But I’ve been off the antibiotics for a few weeks now and haven’t seen any return of symptoms, yet the Very Stressful reports persist.

So, I thought, maybe it’s something else. What else has coincided with the infection over the past few months?

  • I have basically stopped running. This isn’t permanent, I took a break after tripping and hurting my hands on my last run on December 30, then got hit with resurgent infection, finally seemed to recover from that and now there is snow on the ground. But I will run again.
  • Dealing with the infection and aftermath (there are more tests forthcoming for other things discovered that may be innocuous or could be more serious).
  • I have done little in the way of creativity: few drawings, no work on the game. I have been writing, but it’s mainly been the nonsense you’re reading on this blog right now.
  • Dealing with condo/strata stuff, as we restarted our efforts to shed the current council and management company (the latter of which specifically started harassing us last summer).

So, that’s a lot of stuff. Some I can deal with easily. I can fix not running by running. I can fix not drawing by drawing. The health stuff I just need to put aside for now. I feel fine and there’s nothing else to be done at the moment.

But the condo stuff, this got my attention this morning when I realized something: My mind wanders over to it constantly. When I say constantly, I am not engaging in hyperbole, or even just regular bole. Multiple times this morning, I caught myself thinking about condo stuff. It just comes up, unbidden, in my mind. Really, it’s kind of weird. It’s like my brain has adapted to just slotting in thoughts about the condo/strata whenever I’m not focused on anything else.

I think this may be a large part of my Very Stressful days.

Now, I do and will have to deal with strata stuff for at least a few more months, so there is no escaping it. But I don’t need to be constantly thinking about it. So my goal is to somehow train my mind to not think about it or if I do, to quickly divert to some other thought, such as:

  • Kittens
  • Puppies
  • Pop Tarts (just thinking, not eating)
  • Grassy meadows
  • Summer
  • A nice relaxing bubble bath
  • Walking alone among sequoias
  • Etc.

Basically, anything that will focus me away from strata and onto something relaxing.

I’ll see how it goes and report my findings soon, in the name of science and possibly my sanity.

How much can a person change?

I have been thinking about this. When I apply it to myself, I think of things like:

  • Weighing in at 187.5 pounds and resolving to lose weight by changing what I eat. I lost over 40 pounds over the following six months (this particular one is a war, not a battle, and it goes on forever).
  • Deciding (well, being told) I need exercise, so I started running in 2009. I have now tracked over 6,140 km of running.
  • I pretty much gave up on drawing something like 20 years ago, then started again and now have hundreds of sketches, comics, doodlings and art to show for it.
  • I didn’t want to stay single, so I started dating again. I’m now 14 years into a relationship.

I could go on, but you get the idea–these are all self-improvement type things. I did change by getting slimmer, healthier, and all that. But as an actual person, the stuff that makes me me, have I changed? Like, if I was always horribly mean to, I don’t know, boll weevils1I am not, nor have I ever been, horribly mean to boll weevils, am I still horribly mean to them today? If I was, could I change that?

It’s one thing to say, “I will no longer consider donuts a food group”, it’s another to vow to be kinder, nicer, or even just mellower. I could achieve some of this more ephemeral stuff through certain techniques–yoga and meditation come to mind–but even those would require a change first. Meditation requires you to be still, to quiet your mind. My mind doesn’t like being quiet. It blares all the time. My brain has opinions on everything that passes through it and shares all of them with me all the time. But if I really dedicated myself, could I break through the noise and find the quiet? And if I did, would there be add-on effects? Would I become more focused? Would I feel calmer? Appear more thoughtful? Stop asking so many questions?

I don’t know.

But I do know that I want to try.

Take this post from February 4th, An airplane up in the sky. It seems innocuous. It’s exactly what it says on the tin–a photo of a plane I took flying overhead. What you don’t know is that the original version of this post was completely different–a short, snarky comment about how we didn’t have enough reports on Apple’s Vision Pro headset2For those reading in the far future, the Vision Pro had just been released and was getting a lot of coverage. I included the modified Apple press image I made (which, to be honest, still amuses me). I hit the ol’ Publish button in WordPress and sent it out to the world.

Then I thought, “What does this bit of snark bring to the world? Is it especially clever or cutting? Will it make people laugh? Will it make people roll their eyes? What would someone do to a boll weevil after reading this?” And I decided it was just a piece of negativity that added nothing and had no reason to be. I could have deleted the post, but felt it would be better, or more fitting, to take a recycling approach to it, and keep it, but change the title, the content and the image. So, everything. And I felt better when the plane went up in its place.

I want to be the person who posts planes before snark. Can I be that person?

I’ll try.

Efforts on this will be documented here later as either inspirational pieces or object lessons in what not to do.

10 Things I Want to Learn

Stolen from Austin Kleon‘s Steal Like an Artist Journal. I mean, I had to.

The idea (and first prompt in the above-mentioned book) is simple: Write down 10 things you want to learn. Here’s the list Kleon came up with in the heady, pre-pandemic days of 2017:

Now, I love lists, so this is my bag. But I haven’t given a lot of thought to 10 things, which may not seem like a lot, but really is, so going off the top of my head, I may not have 10 right away. Here goes my initial attempt.

10 Things I Want to Learn (2023)

  1. Discipline
  2. How to create a song (with vocals) in Garage Band (or other music software)
  3. How to Stretch
  4. How to consistently draw Gum Gum People
  5. Meditation
  6. My camera’s ins and outs (Canon EOS M50)
  7. Unity (the game engine, not the concept)
  8. Blender (3D animation program)
  9. ???
  10. ???

All right, I have a list to start, and I think it’s a decent beginning, but I will need to ponder a bit and come back to round out the list.

Despair not!

Are you a fan of doomscrolling? Can anyone be said to be a fan of doomscrolling? When I was a kid, I had to wait for the nightly news or go read a newspaper (the kind printed on actual newsprint) to catch the latest doom and its pal, gloom.

And believe me, there was plenty of doom to be had. I grew up during the Cold War (well, the first one, anyway) and the specter of actual nuclear war was always there in the background. There were also concerns over the environment (the Careers board game, which I loved, added Ecology as a career path. It’s probably been replaced by Entrepreneur or something now) and pollution, and wars and terrorism across the world were pretty common.

But at least we didn’t have any pandemics, and climate change didn’t yet feel like an existential crisis.

However, this post isn’t about doom. It’s about not despairing, just like it says in the title. For all the horrible things in the world, remember that we still have:

  • Kittens
  • Puppies
  • Baby ducks
  • Pancakes
  • Bicycles
  • Friends
  • People who can make words and/or pictures sing
  • Modern medicine, which is pretty nifty when you think about it
  • Smart people still working hard to help make the world better
  • Sunrises and sunsets
  • And Voyager I and II, launched in 1977, are still transmitting data!

It is breathtakingly easy to fill yourself full of bad news if you have a working internet connection, and that’s just not good for the mind. I don’t think we’ve evolved (or may ever evolve) to where we can subject ourselves to near-constant negativity and remain mentally and emotionally healthy. So I’m willing to do my tiny part in making the world better. I recycle. I treat the environment with respect. I adore kittens.

And I don’t doomscroll. Despair not!

Daily activities for 2022 and beyond: Day 1 results

Let’s have a look at how I did on my first day (a recap in case you arrived at this post directly):

  • Draw one thing (when lacking a specific subject, I will grab a prompt and limit myself to 5 minutes total time to get this done) DONE
  • Record a journal entry (using Diarium, which has a somewhat unfortunate name, but is cross-platform) DONE
  • Write a blog entry DONE
  • Take a photo of something. It doesn’t have to be good or even interesting, just a photo…of something. DONE
  • Exercise: Walk outside, walk on the treadmill, run on the treadmill or run outside. Or ride my bike, skip rope or something that can actually be considered exercise and isn’t like, “I lifted the TV remote 20 times today!” DONE
  • Spend time learning more of the software I use to become a professional expert of impressive knowledge or something. This includes:
    • Unity
    • Affinity Designer
    • Affinity Photo
    • Procreate
    • DaVinci Resolve
    • Blender
    • Visual Studio/C#
    • Obsidian
    • Various other 2D animation and other art programs DONE
  • Work in some way on my snazzy newsletter DONE

Yes, I went 7 for 7 on my first day. I gave myself an imaginary medal! I did better on some of these than others, but hey, I did it.

Now let’s see if I can maintain momentum for two entire days in a row.

Things I will do every day, starting…tomorrow. Absolutely tomorrow.

I am feeling revitalized for reasons unknown and feel it’s time to exercise some discipline, make things happen and other assorted clichés.

Here’s my list of things I will be doing every day. Note: I have excluded essential things for healthy living or just living, period, like eating, sleeping, breathing and pooping.

Daily activities for 2022 and beyond™

  • Draw one thing (when lacking a specific subject, I will grab a prompt and limit myself to 5 minutes total time to get this done)
  • Record a journal entry (using Diarium, which has a somewhat unfortunate name, but is cross-platform)
  • Write a blog entry
  • Take a photo of something. It doesn’t have to be good or even interesting, just a photo…of something.
  • Exercise: Walk outside, walk on the treadmill, run on the treadmill or run outside. Or ride my bike, skip rope or something that can actually be considered exercise and isn’t like, “I lifted the TV remote 20 times today!”
  • Spend time learning more of the software I use to become a professional expert of impressive knowledge or something. This includes:
    • Unity
    • Affinity Designer
    • Affinity Photo
    • Procreate
    • DaVinci Resolve
    • Blender
    • Visual Studio/C#
    • Obsidian
    • Various other 2D animation and other art programs
  • Work in some way on my snazzy newsletter

I think that’s enough for now. Let’s see how well I do tomorrow, ho ho.

Pleading guilty in the court of fatty foods

This week Pop Tarts went on sale, but I remained strong when I went grocery shopping, gliding right past them in the breakfast aisle.

Actually, no, I didn’t. I bought a box of Frosted Blueberry Pop Tarts and ate all of them in two days. That’s eight of them at 185 calories each, for a total of 1,480 calories spread (ho ho) over those two days.

This morning I stepped on the scale and was:

180 pounds

At least I can still see my feet when I look down. For now.

I’d love to blame work and in fact that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Everything has been off the rails since I returned from my leave and I’m not going to hide the fact that I find work an awful ball of unfun. Now I just need to find the drive (I already have the motivation) to come up with an escape plan.

File this under physical and mental health.

With five days left in the month my new weight loss goal for April is now to get back under 180 pounds. It’s about as modest a goal there is, but if I hit it, I will be…modestly pleased.

Filing up the tank

I had a virtual appointment with my doctor today (yay, global pandemic, but on the other hand, yay not having to travel to the office) and he confirmed that a lot of people are feeling extra stress right now due to the various effects of the pandemic.

No surprise there. I am one of those people and have been experiencing a lot more stress over the last few months. My doctor advised me that to stay stress-free and healthy, that it was important to keep the following five “tanks” full or as close to full as possible:

  • Exercise (4)
  • Diet regime (5)
  • Sleep hygiene (6)
  • Social relationships (6)
  • Hobbies (3)

I have offered a number beside each tank to indicate how full they are, with 0 being empty and 10 being full to overflowing.

As you can see, there are no 10s. I’m averaging what would be the grade equivalent of a C or D. This is not optimal. It is bad.

My doctor suggested focusing on a few to start, setting goals for improving each, and making the goals at least 70% achievable. This means starting out with something I think I can reasonably complete, and if I can’t, I simply scale back until I can. Easy peasy-ish.

Since I’ve all but stopped running, I’m going to start there and try sticking to my previous goal of 30 minutes of exercise per day while also insuring that three of those days are runs outside (or on the treadmill if it’s snowing/raining molten rock).

The next I’m going to improve is the one I’m doing right now–writing! But more of a fictional variety. I also have a few drawing ideas I want to pursue and now is a good time to set modest goals to pursue them.

We’ll see how it goes. I have a lot of room for improvement, but I have challenged myself to complete seemingly impossible tasks in the past and succeeded.

Next post: Discussing the other three tanks and my success or lack thereof in keeping them full.

Dear Diary (no, just kidding)

I occasionally toy with the idea of starting a journal again. While this blog mostly serves that purpose, there are things that I don’t really want or need to discuss publicly (ie. here), but might be helpful to write down somewhere. It’s kind of like how I make shopping lists, but wouldn’t post them publicly because who cares about my shopping lists?

Shopping lists will suddenly become a thing now.

I have the Day One app and despite some quibbles with it, it functions fine as an actual journal, yet I’ve only written in it a few times. Maybe committing to it on a daily basis would help my overall writing, as well as my state of mind, especially in these nutty pandemic times.

For example, a few days ago I wrote on the board on the fridge: Do something positive or productive every day. I wrote this for myself and my partner, thinking it would help us find something good in every day, even if the overall day was a bit poo. These positive or productive things would be good for recording in a journal. Today’s entry would be something like: Um…I was kind of lazy today, actually. I offered advice. I helped my partner with a technical issue on the iPad. I put away the clean dishes and loaded the dishwasher with the dirty ones. Okay, I guess I wasn’t totally lazy. But I could look back on this in a journal and nod at how I always put the dishes away, because I’m highly organized or something.

Hmm. I will have to ponder this journal thing. It seems like a positive step, with no real downsides, so I don’t have a good reason to say no to it.

We shall see.