A Little From Column A, a Little From Column B. It's All About the Little Things
This is me discussing my day and a few mental health tips I hope people find useful
Good day dear readers! I have just made it home from a long and arduous journey. There is much to say about it, but I thought first I should talk about what this substack is about, which is mental health.
I don’t often have a theme when I write these, I kind of like to just let my mind wander, almost like a journal. Years ago, when I was still a teenager, my mom kept a journal. My mom saw a psychiatrist (there was a lot more stigma back then about doing this) and he suggested that she start keeping a journal. Since then, I of course have kept journals, but more importantly perhaps, I have encouraged people I interact with who have mental health concerns to also do so. Just a few quick rules about a journal intended for mental health benefits. Find a good sized note book, mark on the inside front cover that it is a personal, private journal and is to be returned without intruding into privacy… yaddah yaddah yaddah. Sadly, if you are a young person and you pour your heart out on the page, with the artistic freedom of knowing no one but you will read it, a warning like this will only made siblings and peers want to read it more. I taught a woman about poetry in a class I instructed, and she would never keep a journal. She told me that her brother had found it and had used it as a way to torture her and reveal everything she kept secret to anyone who was mentioned. I don’t want to discourage anyone who is young and has younger brothers to not write a journal, but to just be careful with it. Some ways of doing this is to keep it on a computer only you know the password for, and make sure the password isn’t simple to learn or easy to guess, and that you change passwords as often as possible.
Your journal is intended for you to have a guide, a confidante. A place you can truly express yourself. If you do have a mental health condition, and you are seeing a psychiatrist, it may actually be safe (if you trust him/her/they) to share your journal with them, it could even help them to give you more effective care.
That being said, I think everyone should keep a journal, but especially people with mental health issues and writers. I consider myself a writer, and journals were among the first things I put onto a page. For a while, I kept three journals, one to write and express myself as motivated by a movie I just saw, another to write a practice book review, and a third for all my thoughts and feelings. Some of that is old hat to many of you though, and I am sure I have written about it before because it is just such a wonderful, powerful tool.
I was also thinking today about how much mental health relies on the little, simple rewards in life. Like a freshly washed hoodie that you sprayed a scent onto in the dryer which is still warm and oh so comfortable. Having some time without anyone around to do what you want, and coming across one of your favourite authors and you haven’t read the book before or can’t wait to read it again. There are so many things, and any one of them may not mean much, but (and I speak from experience) a lot of them together can really make life worth living. The cool thing is, you start to learn these facts naturally as you get older. When I was a teenager, I thought it was practically a sin to go a single Saturday Night without leaving the house, getting drunk, or joining friends for a movie. It took a long time to get over that whole paradigm of believing quality of life was quantity of liquor or amount of social accolades you receive through the jealousy of others. I have become very content and very respected as a person who will sit down without prompting and work for 4-6 hours on top of my other jobs and other commitments. Although I don’t see it as a big deal, the fact that I have written and published 12 books impresses some people. But it would be meaningless without the feeling of waking up, attending to basic hygiene needs, steeping a cup of English Breakfast tea, and being mentally and physically prepared to be kind to everyone I meet, to be generous to a flaw with my time, my money and my effort. I have had such wonderful good fortune to have a number of friends who have no end of compassion, not just when people do something that benefits them, but in even someone others may consider to be not worthy of anything life has to offer.
Another way I have grown over the past 34 years since I was a teenager, is that I have come to understand the vices I have in my life and have accepted that there is nothing wrong with going out and finding help in the form of therapy or support groups to control my less desirable personality traits.
So, I have been told that many of my blogs are a bit long. I just want to talk a little about how amazing my day has been. I got up early, after a fairly good but short time spent sleeping and with my house guest I travelled about 500 km in frigid temperatures, half of those km during a bad snowstorm on icy roads with poor visibility. I went because I needed to take someone to another city so they could avoid the high cost of groceries in the smaller town they live in. I would love it so much if they would move into the city, I consider both of them to be amazing people and good friends, but in a way it is kind of neat that they live in a very unique little town and I definitely enjoy travelling there. In the summer the drive is so incredibly beautiful, with rolling prairie hills, lakes, ponds, rivers, various coloured crops and ranches with horses or cattle. It isn’t quite the same in winter, but I still have a warm feeling in my chest from going there and spending time with them.
The funny thing is, taking long car rides is actually the one medicine that worked on me. I had a hard time growing up living with depression, and my dad would often take me for long drives when I felt badly. If anyone would like to read one of my dad’s last published words, I would encourage you to visit my author website at www.edmontonwriter.com and click on the photo of London’s Tower Bridge, which will take you to a totally free download page for a book titled, “Alert and Oriented x3.” There is no cost, no obligation, and no registration needed to read this work online or download it and read it at your leisure. I have some amazing segments in this book that I feel really can help people to better understand psychosis and its treatments.
Anyhow, I digress. Taking a long drive and spending time with close friends is such a gift. I recall my earlier days living alone when I could have never afforded even a short trip and had no car anyway. There was a time when I simply got sick of the incredible boredom that was wearing me down and took my rent money and a car I bought for $75 CAD and travelled all the way to Vancouver and back. I think they call it wanderlust, perhaps it is why I enjoy the book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” so much. The book is all about a journay across America the author takes, and it was the first book I ever came across that realistically and with brutal honesty and captivating intelligence, show the side of schizophrenia that I was once very ashamed of.
Wow, that is a lot of rambling. And I am sure much of it is information I have shared before. I encourage my readers to call me on it when I do this. Please become active chat members and let me know what you like or don’t like about my blogging. It would even be fantastic if people wrote in and wanted me to cover a specific topic in a blog entry. Anyone wishing to support my efforts to reduce stigma and increase awareness about mental illness, can do so first by pledging a small amount to keep this blog going, and possibly even growing. That isn’t totally necessary though, I would be just as happy if you went on Amazon and got one of my books and left a review. And if you can’t do that, which is completely understandable as I know books have gone out of style, there is the kindle versions, the smashwords versions, even Barnes and Noble versions. Really though, the essential thing has more to do with getting to know me and becoming a friend and ally, so if you can’t or simply don’t want to do any of those things, go and download “Alert and Oriented x3” give it a read, and either let me know what you thought, or leave a review on Goodreads. I do have many other books, including poetry, short story collections, and short novels to go with my 3 memoirs, I encourage my readers to get them in any format and if they feel they are helpful, recommend them to others who either have a mental illness or support someone who does. And above all, don’t just have a great day but HEY…. Let’s be careful out there!