Chaos, Coffee, and Confessions: Finding my way back to mental health

Probably one of the biggest things I miss is feeling good enough to just go do something. When I felt good, I was up for anything. Before I started writing, I was a runner, and I was running 5-10 miles four or five times a week. I was at the height of my health. I was eating well, had energy, slept well. I could get a million things done and still be up for doing something else. Case in point, this popped up on my Facebook timeline the other day, and I added my response to it. One of my biggest mistakes was stopping running when I started writing. Even though my job is flexible and if it's not busy (a rarity these days) I'm allowed to read or do something else, I stopped running completely and began writing every free second I had. I should never have done that, finding that elusive balance to keep both in my life instead. But I jumped into writing head first, and like a diver who mistakenly dives into a kiddie pool, I slammed my head on the floor of the pool. My health never q...

If there's one thing I've learned over the past four and a half years, it's that no one will guard your mental health more than you. You know your own mind, you know your triggers. You know what you can tolerate and you know what will set you off. You know you can't get into a car with out feeling claustrophobic, you know that a doctor's appointment causes anxiety to the point you're crying in the waiting room. You know that if someone doesn't care how you feel, it can hurt more than the health issue you're dealing with.  I also know that protecting your mental health is hard. You're already going through a lot and you have to go through even more to keep what little positive mental health you have left.  Sometimes you have to be the garbageman. And yeah, sometimes their job sucks shit. Before the appointment at the Mayo Clinic in February of this year (2024) that changed my life, I had been friends with a co-worker for years. We met at work, got to ...