Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
New and Improved
Have you noticed the feature I recently added that is now available in the margin on the right? “Previous Somethings” allows you to more quickly navigate to archived posts. I’ve needed to avail myself of the option more and more lately as my number of posts climbs and I strive to remember if I have already written on a topic or not. Often times, as I pause to consider what title for a post will materialize in my mind, the words that arrive seem too familiar, as if I’d already used them. Heaven forbid that I use the same title more than once. You’d notice right away if I did such a thing, wouldn’t you? Do you have a sense of deja vu over the subject?
Regular readers of Relative Something might recall I wrote about the same problem of fretting over duplication just a week and a half ago, except I was more focused on the entire topic of whole posts. (You can use the “select month” pull-down menu to reach it! It was July 28th.)
That whole post was about forgetting, and on that subject, I have something to report! But it’s not about forgetting. I was going to write that it is about remembering, but that’s not entirely correct, either. I didn’t actually remember where some of my lost things had been left, but I have recovered three items in the last few days! It is a whirlwind of returned treasures. I am going to focus now on how often I find lost items and see if it keeps happening to me over and over. I must have developed some special power or something!
On Saturday, up at the lake, we were out for a walk to explore the grounds with guests and when we arrived at the tennis court to check on the eagle’s nest, (when did I last write about that?) there, lying amid the tossed balls and scattered driveway chalk, was the long-lost favorite water bottle from my bike. It is possible that it got left when I was down there playing tennis with Julian so long ago. I’m more inclined to believe that I left it somewhere at the cabin, because there should actually be two bottles, and then someone else borrowed it to use down at the courts. It doesn’t matter. I’m just happy to have it back, and I’m enjoying the surprise of finding it.
Then on Sunday, my eyes fell upon the missing nail file that I got from my mother many, many years ago. It was just waiting to be found in a rather logical place that entirely defies my ability to understand, having missed it many times in earlier searches. Maybe it, too, had been moved by someone other than me in the intervening time.
Lastly, just last night, I learned where my missing bike lock had been. I had left it in Gary’s car at the end of the June bike trip. I wracked my brain over finding where I misplaced that item. Searched high and low in all the possible places around the house and garage, multiple times. No wonder I didn’t find it. When I got home, I set it precisely in the place that I first looked for it on that day I discovered it missing.
It brings about a good feeling. It resembles the reward you feel when you snap that jigsaw puzzle piece into place to fill a void you’ve been laboring over for some time. Now I find myself eagerly waiting to discover what item I’m going to find next!
Taking a Pounding
Last night at the lake place, we received some pretty intense rainfall. A spectacular show of lightning kept us entertained just after sunset. The power went off briefly, but recovered and has been stable since. When we started to hear the pangs and clanks of hail, there was a hurried effort to rearrange vehicles to clear a spot in the second stall of the garage under cabin 3 so our friend, Rogie, could get his special car out of harm’s way. That is all it took to stop the hail. Never heard another whack after that.
One particularly dramatic moment came when someone spotted what looked like smoke coming from one of the landscape lights. We all squinted through the wet windows to clarify what we were seeing, and my first impression was that it didn’t look like steam from the hot bulb, as would be expected. It really looked like smoke! One opinion fed another and soon Cyndie was reporting that she saw sparks. A moment later, I was sure that I saw flame. Could it be that some part of the wiring was short circuiting out there in the rain?
Cyndie jumped when she heard ‘flame’ and ran to do something; I didn’t know what. I walked out the door into the rain and over toward the light to investigate. Just like Mike said, it wasn’t sparks or flame, it was the rain drops hitting the light and splashing up. The “smoke” was actually steam, after all. Just goes to show the power of the mind to perceive what it expects to see. I was so sure I had just seen flames from inside looking out.
Then I looked up, still in the falling rain, to realize that Cyndie had run through the cabin to the basement door, out to grab the garden hose, and had arrived to put water on it. In the rain. I thought that was pretty funny. She was just as convinced as me that we had a burning landscape light on our hands.
The whole place took quite a pounding last night from the heavy thunderstorm. So did the accuracy of my perceptions. It serves as a convenient reminder that things may not always turn out to be exactly as they might appear.
Me and Alcohol
Long ago in my life, so long that it’s embarrassing to admit, I discovered I don’t care for alcohol one bit. There was a brief period where I figured I should learn to like it, seeing how it was such a large part of people’s lives and a pretty significant expectation in which to imbibe upon attaining legal drinking age. But my better sense overcame that idea, aided nicely by my ongoing dislike of the taste of alcohol in all its forms. Among the multiple reasons I’m grateful for that, the most significant is that it tends to be the number one drug of choice for people with depression, and I would have likely complicated my experience of seeking a remedy for that mental struggle –and more likely than not, made a bigger mess of things up to that point.
At the time I was making my decision to just do without alcohol entirely, I was struck by the presence of the drug in 100% of the conflicts and life-dramas I was witnessing. It also seemed to be present in every violent crime, auto death, and domestic dispute I was reading about in the paper or hearing of in the news. I figured I was improving my odds greatly by avoiding it altogether.
Still, it has never been far off. Nothing is more difficult for me than the role it plays in the lives of people close to me. How I have wished to just have them make the same decision I did and abstain entirely. It frustrates me that there is no definitive point clarifying that intangible transition from unimpaired to intoxicated. How much is too much? How long is too long? I’m afraid, as patient a man as I am, I have no patience for enduring the period of increased drinking, and the associated consequences, that must eventually build up to earning a justifiable intervention.
It all seems so unnecessary and entirely avoidable.
I suffer the fact that even though I am able to completely eliminate my intake of alcohol, I remain under the influence of its impact, through the experiences of people around me.
Everything and Nothing
There can’t be anything more intense than the intensity of absolutely everything this world presents, packed into one microscopic morsel of a moment that presses smack-dab up against another moment which is chock-full to the brim with more of absolutely everything this world presents –overstuffed, really– and then finding that that moment is also wedged against even more moments which all seem to be lined up and approaching, one after another, with no discernible end in sight. At the very same time that all this intensity is radiating over and through us, there occurs some mysterious phenomenon which allows us to simultaneously sense absolutely nothing at all. We take in nothing but a monochrome blur, absent of image or sound, and in reflection, project a hollow stare devoid of any detectable emotion. Everything is there, and nothing is there, all at the same time.
My depressed mind would seem to amplify every possible thing I could think of and then compress it all into an overwhelming tangled concern to be dealt with all at once. It may be that there was a cause and effect relationship, but it was doubly difficult to manage all the issues my dysfunctional mind collected because at the same time there was a gray fog enveloping all the mental processing I was trying to accomplish.
Unraveling it all is no easy task, but it is relatively simple. Even small progress in the direction of healthy thinking will provide changes that tend to pave the way to further improvement. All you need to do is choose to go down that road. And it really helps if you go so far down that road that when you look back, you can no longer see the dysfunctional thinking that you’ve left behind.
Seeking Initiative
I am wondering about something. And part of me is considering the possibility there is no answer to what is on my mind.
Is there a moment when someone experiencing mental health challenges will make a definitive decision to seek a solution? I expect it is not so clear-cut as to be one specific moment. In my case, I tend to refer to the morning I lived up to a promise I made to myself to call for help if I ever experienced another shutdown from depression. I can’t really identify what brought me to even make that promise. I think it is funny that I didn’t feel it worthy of making a call right then and there, at the time I deduced I might have a problem deserving professional intervention, but that it could wait for some future incident of difficulty.
As I continue to come upon the difficult stories posted in depression forums by suffering people, I am moved to come up with something to say that might inspire a seed of initiative for them to choose to change. It is sad to witness the pain people endure while they avoid facing the reality of their situations. The pain of depression is familiar to sufferers, and, in a dysfunctional way, more comfortable than the unknowns of healthy thought process. We unconsciously harbor fears which our minds then put a lot of creative energy into defending, even when those fears are unfounded.
What is it that finally causes a person to decide they have had enough of the old struggles? What rouses us to choose to take a step in the direction of optimal health and seek help from mental health professionals? If there were a single answer, we could bottle it and send it out to all the hurting people of the world.
Instead, there are a lot of people suffering, figuratively banging their heads against the same problems over and over. I wonder if it is possible to help them find that moment in which they discover an inspiration to take action toward better mental health.
Manic Mix
Real or imagined, my mind is a manic mix of mayhem, most recently triggered by an ill-timed –as if there was ever a good time– high ankle sprain that occurred on Friday morning during my regular indoor soccer workout. We had been surprised with a forced relocation to the children’s gym due to some basketball special event requiring both wood courts. I didn’t adapt well to the plastic tile sport-court surface and turned my left ankle while desperately trying to maintain a defensive position between our goal and the attacking player, Ranses, who was expertly keeping ball possession and gaining ground, despite my efforts.
I was barely able to drive back home afterward and then decided I needed to take the day off work. However, later that day, we were headed to Mille Lacs Lake for the Hays family reunion weekend. That turned out to be a whirlwind of fun, food, laughter, and silliness. Unfortunately, I didn’t end up maximizing the focus of my treatment of the ankle and neglected to bring my cold packs or my bottle of ibuprofen, and even neglected to appropriately rest it. Getting out for some bocce ball, catch with a Foxtail and then football, and even going for a little walk, were all a little premature activity so soon after the sprain.
I don’t think the bowling on the Wii was all that harmful, but watching some of the X-game performances sure made me tense it up more that I wanted to. I think I hurt myself just watching others risk their limbs to the degree those athletes do. 
I did take advantage of the hydro-therapy available in the big lake when a small number of us walked over to play along the shore. While others were off exploring the Kathio State Park, I got in a little rock balancing while soaking my sprain in the cool waters of Mille Lacs.
The weekend seems to fly by before we even get around to spending quality time with everyone present, but I did get some good attention from Drew as he helped me take apart and rebuild the spherical jigsaw puzzle I brought along.
Yesterday, when we finally landed back home again, I worked on getting into a rhythm of regularly icing of my ankle, taking ibuprofen, and elevating my foot while resting. It gave me a chance to catch up a bit on the ‘virtual’ friends I’ve made in my online community, where I was sad to read of the difficulties one person was having with his recently diagnosed depression.
It has been on my mind since I first read about it last week and I have been struck by the level of influence it has had on my attention. The struggle this person describes in posts to our ‘walled’ community is incredibly familiar to me and I feel very sympathetic to their plight. I’m starting to notice that while they are struggling with things, it feels as if I am impacted as well, and I anxiously await news of a break in the suffering.
I think I’m ready to return to the routine of a work day. Unfortunately, it will not be entirely routine until I am able to return to my morning soccer matches with a fully healed ankle to get my head-clearing exercise. And what can you say to that but, “and how!”
Leave a Message
Have you seen the Lance Armstrong commercial for Radio Shack about leaving phone messages?
How often have you called me and left a message? Uh huh, just as I thought. I don’t check the messages. They are almost never meant for me. I think it’s funny how that creates something of an inconvenient dilemma out of the brilliant technology of voicemail. As logically helpful as the answering machine is, if it is rarely used, it becomes easy to neglect, which leads to the potential for missed messages. Pretty much defeats the whole purpose for having it.
I realize we could just update our setup to allow callers to indicate who they are leaving a message for and then have it signal me when appropriate. Otherwise, I’m wading through charity organizations, political fundraisers, telemarketers or someone wanting Cyndie.
In the mean time, you could always text me. Or email. Or comment here.
Don’t make me get off the bike.
Simple Impact
There is a simple phrase that is on my mind today… “If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything at all.” Think a moment, about the power of negative feedback. It is by no means limited to our words.
It really struck home for me the other day during my morning soccer. I play in a group that includes a variety of ages and abilities, gathering three times a week for recreational pick-up games. We accomplish a wide range of successes and failures in our attempts to enact the artistry of the sport. Nobody that I know intentionally fails. But failure happens, and it’s tough enough for individuals to accept it about themselves –people usually judges themselves much more harshly than they ever would others. There is no constructive benefit from expressing consternation and distress over another player’s mistakes.
Yes, it’s personal experience speaking here. I will admit to being oversensitive, but regardless, yesterday I gained new insight about the power that such a negative gesture holds. For reasons that defy sensible logic, I felt an immense surge of inadequacy when, after my errant kick sailed uselessly out of play, my teammate dropped his shoulders, brought his chin to his chest, and rocked his head side to side in a gesture of the verbal, “no.” My reaction was visceral, immediate, and I’m sure appeared entirely out of proportion in relation to his involuntary behavior that my blunder had triggered. I apologized to him, loudly and directly (twice) as play continued without me. Then I asked for a sub and walked off the floor.
There is a side lesson that deserves to be recognized in explanation for what appears to be an inordinate level of upset over such a simple and obvious reaction from a teammate. It involves taking into account the time-weighted average dose of similar demonstrations of dissatisfaction that I have been experiencing from this same individual. The first time it happens, it is no big deal. A teammate becoming frustration is a pretty natural reaction. This same teammate is wonderfully vocal during play, directing and offering advice for our activity. I’m pretty sure his being vocal contributes to my feeling bad when I am unable to live up to the direction, but again, that isn’t anything out of the ordinary. But over and over, as my ability to fail continues to accompany my successes, his visible frustrations tend to accumulate in my head. It breaks my heart to let him down, it truly does. By yesterday’s session, I guess I reached a breaking point.
The real lesson for me however, involves how a negative response impacts everyone else around. Quite simply, the important fact that it does have impact and there is nothing positive about it. Here’s another way to look at it: consider what making that response positive would be like. What if my failure was met by a smile of recognition, noting that we all miss-hit the ball at times? What if I heard calls of assurance indicating that I’d get it right next time? What if he said, “Don’t let it get you down, John. Keep at it!”? Seriously. He doesn’t even need to mean what he says. It would make a world of difference in my disposition.
As it was, I composed myself on the side for a few minutes and then returned to the game with my attitude reset. In the ensuing play I was treated to a bit of karmic justice, as my friend finished the morning with several of his own failures, one after another. I didn’t exactly shower him with supportive chatter, but it wasn’t hard at all to not hang my head in disgust each time, either. It was simple. I know what kind of negative message that gesture sends.
Forgetting to Remember
I sure enjoy poking fun at things. Maybe sometimes at the expense of appropriateness. For example, I have recently noticed the development of a pattern of forgetfulness that has led me to blurt out a series of comments about alzheimer’s that were meant to be humorous. What if it actually were a memory disease causing my problem? What if someone I was with at the time, had a family member so afflicted? Doesn’t seem like something to joke about.
One of the things that I have trouble keeping track of is, which topics I’ve written about and posted here in Relative Something. Have you ever noticed that you can pretty quickly recognize when you have read something before? Unfortunately, I can’t remember which of my stories I’ve already told here. Of course, the longer I do this blog thing, the higher the odds there will eventually be repetition.
I have lost enough things lately, uncharacteristically of me, that it appears to be a pattern. So what’s the natural reaction? I start unconsciously living up to my fears and losing track of more things. Each new item or issue quickly adds evidence to my expectation and soon I’m convinced it’s getting worse. It must be a disease, no?
Mention to someone that you find yourself losing things and they will immediately be able to share a similar number of ways they are experiencing the same thing. It’s not uncommon. Becoming fixated on it is a classic case of how we create the very situations we expect to see. We all probably lose track of things at a similar rate over time, yet if we put our focus on it, the rate can appear to be excessive.
So, I will dismiss any such pattern, until a time when it truly exceeds typical human foibles. How do I know when that is? Oh, never mind.
Actually, it should be easy to dismiss the pattern, because I will probably just forget that I was keeping track of how often I am losing things. Get it?
Like I said, it’s not that funny.
Natural Gourmet
con•trar•i•an 
noun
a person who opposes or rejects popular opinion
adjective
going against current practice
I don’t know exactly why I developed an inclination to go against the grain, but more often than not, the first thing that pops into my mind is in direct opposition to the statements I hear. I think one offshoot of that tendency is my reaction when I become aware of a pattern in my behavior. When I discovered that my trip journals centered on the food served at every meal, it resulted in a period of specifically avoiding mentioning food at all. But we are what we eat! I no longer resort to entirely neglecting mention of the things on which I dine.
Even some of my eating habits have developed from conscious decisions to go against current practice. Soda pop is one of the big ones. Even before pop became an injection of high fructose corn syrup, I had rejected it for the potential ill effects of the carbon dioxide. It pleased me to be moving away from drinking soda pop while so many others seemed to be making it an increasing habit. 
After my father’s first heart attack, and subsequent diet changes, I aligned very quickly with his move toward avoiding salt. After I gave my palate time to adjust, I found I actually preferred popcorn without butter or salt. It tastes like corn! Same thing with potatoes. There are so many different flavors of potato. Now I have discovered an unsalted potato chip that has won my favor. Michael Season’s sells a great unsalted version of potato chips.
I’m lucky that my avoidance of many current main stream food options has enabled me to steer clear of the less healthy choices, but more than that, I consider it luckiest of all that I enjoy the tastes of the less popular foods even more!
