Author Archives: alifeofmentalillness

Laughter as Therapy

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Over the last few days I’ve broken out of some of my old routines.  I have stopped spending much time on social media.  I have quit watching news videos on youtube and have even shut off my internet news feed.  I’m trying to break the cycle of sleeping so much.  And most importantly, I have taken the time to watch some comedy videos on youtube.

I think one of my biggest problems over the last several months was I wasn’t taking any time to unwind and relax.  I have been so focused on how unhappy and angry many people in my life have been that I forgot to relax.  I think that far too many people are wound up for too much of the time.  I think there really isn’t enough humor and laughter, at least not in recent months.  Too many people spend way too much time worrying about things they simply cannot control.  Are you worried about terrorism?  You’re much more apt to be killed by a drunk driver or die from falling in the shower than you are from a terrorist attack.  Are you worried about climate change?  There are probably hundreds of thousands of scientists and engineers working on practical solutions and alternatives to polluting energy while all you can probably do by yourself is drive less and recycle your aluminum cans.  Are you worried about some drug resistant super bug decimating our species?  Scientists and doctors all over the world are actually working on solutions while all you do is fret over the latest news reports.

In short, worry by itself is good for nothing.   That’s why I decided to stop watching current events type things and dystopian science fiction, which is most science fiction anymore, and find comedy videos on youtube.  Been watching a lot of Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks, Trevor Noah, Jon Stewart, and John Oliver the last several days.  I have also watched some old Penn and Teller shows.  I have found that I can handle some current events and news if mixed in with healthy doses of humor and satire.  And let’s face it, a lot of what has been going on the last several months looks like episode scripts that were too outlandish even for South Park.  And I doubt that I’m the only person who hasn’t resorted to humor to help deal with difficulty.  There are reasons that The Daily Show and Last Week Tonight are as popular, if not more so, than some news shows on traditional cable news networks.

And I think the renewed focus on humor and happiness is beginning to pay off.  I haven’t really felt depressed or irritable for a few days.  I’m not eating as much fast food.  I’m going to bed earlier.  And I’m not worrying about things and other people as much.  I just feel like I have a better quality of life overall these last few days.  And it’s mainly because I sought out reasons to laugh again.

Socializing One on One (We Are Not That Different)

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alifeofmentalillness's avatarA Life Of Mental Illness

I have been trying to figure out normal people for most of my life.  I have tried to find a basic statement to make sense of my fellow man, much like Einstein’s theory of relativity or the equation Force equals Mass multiplied by Acceleration.  The only real conclusion I have come to can be summed by Tommy Lee Jones in the first Men In Black movie when he said, “The individual is smart, but people as a group are stupid, panicky animals.”  Ever since I was a young child I have found taking my fellow humans one on one much easier and enriching than dealing with crowds, groups, or cliques.  I have always gotten along with most of my school mates and elders when working with them one on one.  Not so much when they were in large groups.  People have always seemed more civil and easy going if I…

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Thoughts on Socializing While At Work

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alifeofmentalillness's avatarA Life Of Mental Illness

I wanted to originally do this in one post.  But I had to break it into two smaller posts.  Consider this my buy one, get one free promotion. I do enjoy having good conversations one on one or with small groups.  But far too often we are kept apart from people on an individual basis.  We seldom have in depth conversations with our coworkers because there isn’t enough time during the work day to just sit down and chat with your coworkers.  And most people are usually too tired to spend time with coworkers at the end of a shift or they have family obligations.  We work with these people every day, sometimes for years at a time, yet we rarely get to really know them.  The irony about most jobs is that much of what is done during an eight hour work day is redundant busy work, especially in…

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My Thoughts On Working Life

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alifeofmentalillness's avatarA Life Of Mental Illness

It’s now been four years since I last held a regular job.  Even though I don’t need the money from a job as I am debt free, I do miss the daily structure that having a job gave.  I do not miss dealing with office politics.  It seemed that nothing I ever did at a job was good enough for bosses or coworkers.  I would ask questions and I’d get in trouble.  I wouldn’t ask questions and I’d get in trouble.  I would make mistakes because no one explained procedures and I’d get in trouble.  I dealt with coworkers who were in a foul mood most of the time because they hated their jobs.  I never had any kind of real training and then I’d get into trouble because I was doing things wrong.  I was fired from my first job at age seventeen because I wasn’t figuring things out…

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No News Can Be Good

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It’s been a rather quiet last several days for myself.  Besides running errands and seeing my psychiatrist earlier this week, I really haven’t done much besides sleep and stay out of other people’s business.  I’m finding myself just wanting to sleep a lot.  I probably sleep twelve hours a day anymore.  Not only do I sleep a lot, I am also not doing a lot of physical activity when I am awake.  My psych doctor is concerned and thinks I could have some underlying physical health symptoms.  So I imagine a trip to my family doctor is in order soon.

Haven’t been watching the news lately.  I don’t spend much time on social media either.  And I think I’m feeling better because of it.  I just had to unplug.  Knowing about every bit of bad news going on wasn’t helping me.

In short, no news can be good.  I guess I really don’t have much to report for this week.

Avoiding Social Problems and Long Lonely Nights

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With the exception of my parents and a couple close friends, I have essentially put most of my social interactions on hold for the last several days.  I have also avoided most social media.  Anymore I essentially sleep during most of the daylight hours, do my grocery and outside shopping at night, and stay awake during most of the overnight hours reading online articles, watching youtube videos, and reading.

As odd as my schedule is, it seems to be working.  I had some problems several days ago but fortunately they were short lived.  Unfortunately with my schizophrenia it can sometimes be weeks of calm stability mixed in with minutes of anxious crisis.  I am glad that my family and close friends can endure my breakdowns without taking them too personally.  I do have this nagging fear in the back of my mind that someday I’m going to end up having a psychotic breakdown in public someday and win up in prison or shot.  I hope this is just a symptom of the paranoia aspect of my illness and this never happens.

Been feeling pretty decent since the weekend overall.  I don’t really socialize with anyone in my apartment complex or even really in person much.  But as much as I’ve had to deal with rude, angry, and dumb people over the last several months, maybe a break from human interaction is in order.  Dealing with dumb and rude people is tiresome and tedious.  I don’t see how normal people can do it day after day, year after year.

As I’ll be up for the rest of the night, I’m going to make a trek to the all night deli and pick up some good Chinese.  If I can’t sleep regularly I just as well keep up healthy eating.

Relax

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Been kind of rough for me the last several days.  It’s been rough for a lot of people these days.  But that is not what this post is going to be about.  We all need a little cheering up.  For all my friends and family who keep posting good news about what else is going on around us, I thank you.  For my eccentric friends who post on science and technology, you have my thanks.  I saw in my newsfeed this afternoon a scientist in California is thinking about running for the U.S. Senate in 2018.  To which I say good.  We need more leaders who understand the positives and potential drawbacks to our rapidly advancing technology and science.  I see that just in the first month of 2017 alone, scientists have figured out how to use cultured stem cells to treat leukemia in babies.  I have seen that real life Iron Man Elon Musk is attempting to build his Hyperloop transport systems.  I have seen that scientists at Kansas State University have figured out how to mass produce graphene, which is much stronger, lighter, and more flexible than steel.  If this does pan out, graphene will prove to be to steel what steel was to iron or bronze was to stone tools.

I once wrote that regardless of who gets elected to public offices, science and tech advances won’t stop.  Science and tech keeps advancing, even if not as much in your home country as other places.  I should learn to relax.  We all should learn to relax.  We have violence and protesters now, we had violence and protesters back in the 1960s and even 1860s.  We got out of those messes.  We will get out our current mess.  It was said by a man much wiser than I am, “men go mad in mass but only come to their senses individually.”  People will come to their senses, maybe not as fast I would prefer.  But they will.  Relax.  The lights are still on, the water is still available, the internet is still up, and scientists and engineers are always solving problems.

Taking A Vacation From The Insanity

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I’ve been feeling more depressed and frustrated than usual the last few days.  I think it’s because I’m spending too much time on sites like Facebook, twitter, and youtube. I’ve decided I’m going to avoid most socializing for the next several days and see if I feel better then.  It saddens and angers me that I can’t even have a civil conversation with a friend without having to sort through angry posts and memes.  I really hope these people aren’t that mean and angry with people in real life.  I hope they aren’t but then again many people have messed up priorities.

I would love to know when my friends and my countrymen became so angry and divided.  And why do they feel like it’s a God given duty to spew that venom and hate for the whole world to see.  You don’t live in an echo chamber.  People who don’t agree with what you post see that stuff all the time.  We usually don’t comment or respond.  We certainly weren’t this divided in the months after 9/11.

I also don’t understand why my countrymen are so obsessed with politics.  People didn’t used to be nearly this obsessed, at least not that I can remember.  Believe it or not, there are other things going on in life than politics.  Politicians are not gods.  I will say that again, politicians are not gods.  Stop treating them as such.

I imagine my friends on Facebook get tired of me posting about science and technology.  I have only a handful of friends who post on science.  But almost all of them feel a duty to do posts complaining about politicians or complaining about  protesters or complaining about people who complain about protesters.  Protesting, if done properly, can lead to change.  Look at colonial America, Ghandi’s India, and the Civil Rights protests.  Too bad there weren’t more people protesting the actions of the governments early on in Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, etc.  I am especially disgusted with some states trying to pass laws for harsher penalties for protesters.  There wouldn’t be as many protests if the politicians were actually doing a good job.  You want to stop protests, listen to the people and quit doing stupid things.  Even Jesus protested the abuses and hypocrisy of the religious and political leaders of his time and place.

While I will be going underground and not socializing much for the next several days, I still will be doing research and writing blogs.  My critics aren’t getting rid of me that easy.  I just have to unplug from the insanity for a few days.  Most people need to unplug from the insanity for a few days and realize that someone who disagrees with them is not evil.

Rant about Politics, Education, Science, Technology (or PEST)

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It’s been a few days since I last wrote.  That’s because I’m beginning to feel some of the anxiety and depression I felt back in late summer and fall again.  I am convinced this is because of most of my friends wanting to only talk about politics.  I am sick of hearing about politics.  Most politicians know less about science and technology advances that are and will impact our world than even I do.  A politician can’t build a power plant or bring back jobs once automation has made those jobs redundant and pointless.  Politicians, at least here in the USA, can’t even update critical infrastructure or balance their own budgets.  And it saddens me that my country is getting to where we don’t lead the world in many areas of science and technology.  Who would have thought twenty years ago that China would be offering to lead the world on developing clean and renewable energy or artificial intelligence or genetics?  I am embarrassed by politicians of both major parties.

I don’t understand normal people.  I don’t understand how masses of people can look at facts and ignore them or even outright deny them because of the person stating said facts.  Facts don’t change because of beliefs.  You can ignore the reality all you want but eventually you won’t be able to ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.

I have been following politics since the late 1980s.  Since then I have heard the statistics that state that my country has one of the worst overall education systems in the developed world.  We have known this for over a generation.  Yet no major overhauls to the way children in the U.S. are educated has happened. We won’t even consider looking at what other countries do in their educational systems.  My country is going to have to radically overhaul education real soon because the information and automation revolutions will make many of the skills stressed in the current system useless.  We have seen these changes coming for years yet not even the current politicians in power seem too eager to update education for the realities of the 21st century. That’s why I, and many other people in my country, have resorted to self educating ourselves by the internet.  Learning is not boring.  It’s just presented that way in traditional education.

Too many people and politicians are ignorant when it comes to science and technology.  We have known for years about the risks of burning carbon based fuels in terms of climate change and unhealthy air to breathe.  Even if climate change isn’t happening, only a fool would deny that people are getting sick and dying from breathing the toxic fumes emitted by coal plants and gasoline powered automobiles.  That alone should have made people pour much more research money into developing alternatives.

I don’t understand some people’s love affair with oil.  Some people seem to think that we never will find anything better than oil and that we can keep using it for thousands of years.  Climate change or not, oil is a limited resource. And some people don’t acknowledge that science can and will find answers to replacing oil whether they like it or not.  I have to think had these people been born in the mid 1800s , they wouldn’t have wanted to give up their kerosene lamps for electric lights or their stagecoaches for railroads. Or if they were born during the Renaissance they wouldn’t have given up their swords for muskets or would have considered the printing press the work of the devil. But there are always going to be people who don’t want to change anything and some who are nostalgic about a past that wasn’t that great to begin with.  I guarantee that in the future there will be people who won’t want to colonize the moon or other planets just because they fear and hate technology.

I don’t understand normal people’s obsession with politics.  And I’m sure most people don’t understand my obsession with learning and science.  Science classes have always been my favorite classes.  I had to take a detour from my desired science career and studied business and economics while I was in college.  As it turned out this study of economics turned out to be a several year diversion from my true passions.  I don’t regret studying economics as it made me much better at budgeting limited money and resources.  But looking back on it I am glad I didn’t find a job in business or economics and especially banking.  I would have hated working in a cubicle and having to wear a suit every day to work.  As much as I enjoy what money can do, I also know that having a great deal of money wouldn’t mean much to me.  It wouldn’t make me feel successful or like more of a man.  Who defines what is a “real man” anyway?  Seems to  me that those goal posts are constantly shifting.  The only winning move seems to me is to not play at all.

If I suddenly had a couple million dollars, I’d probably move to Silicon Valley, rent a small apartment, try to get involved in some small start ups, hang out with really intelligent and science minded people, and essentially live off the interest of my low risk investments.  I wouldn’t buy a sports car, a large house, or even get married.  But I always thought Northern California would be a cool place to live.  Then again I don’t know.  It’s not like I fit in even with people I have lived with my entire life.

If there is a point to these rants I suppose it’s that I simply don’t understand normal people.  I don’t understand why normal fret and stress over things that are trivial but don’t care at all about potential serious problems or opportunities.  Straining at gnats but swallowing camels as far as I’m concerned.  But at this point in my life I am glad that I am not normal.  I don’t desire to be considered normal even if I am somehow cured of schizophrenia.  Normal doesn’t change the world for the better.  I want for my life anyway, for most people that encounter me and my works to be better off for it.  I don’t want to be some political hack or among unthinking crowds.

Health Routines In Winter With Mental Illness

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Weather has been nicer the last few days so I’ve been getting out a little more.  Got restocked in time for the next round of snow to come through.  I’ve been kind of lazy about writing more recently.  But that’s really because I haven’t had much to report.  I’ve been quite stable for a long time now.  This is the longest unbroken period of stability I’ve had in almost two years.  My mental health loves it but my writing routine is suffering because of the stability.

I’ve been eating less the last few weeks than usual.  But that is by design.  Even though I’m still not exercising very much, I am noticing small differences from the last few weeks.  I make it a point to leave my apartment and drive my car a little each day.  I used to go two to three days in a row without driving, especially early in the winter when it was so cold.

About the only real complaint I have is I sleep more than I would like.  I usually stay up quite late and then sleep most of the morning.  Some days I even sleep past noon.  Needless to say this messes with my routines and my socializing.  Since it still gets dark early I usually don’t get much sunlight.  Sure I can read and get a lot done in the overnight hours, but I don’t get to socialize much because of my odd sleep patterns.  I still get enough sleep and I keep mentally stable.  It’s too bad I have no one to share this stability with outside of the internet.