Bibliosphere

 Heya, so, I know I don't have a huge following, but I'm asking for some help for an organization near and dear to my heart. You see, childhood cancer is not the only cause that I am passionate about, though it is up there. Mental health is also super important in my life, as the main thing that I seem to shape my life around. NAMI Utah is in a financial situation, and they need help. It's hard enough for an organization to be in that position, harder still to admit that to all of the people it serves (in a series of emails sent throughout today). I feel a huge amount of empathy and respect for any organization that can admit this. So, if you are so inclined, a donation would be greatly appreciated: https://www.namiut.org/get-involved/donate-to-nami-utah. NAMI Utah is a 501c3 nonprofit and donations are tax deductible.

 I never know the right way to start a post. Hello? No intro, just go? Greetings to the 4 consistent readers that I'm probably mostly related to? Anyway, I'm here. I don't know if I'm back, but I'm here right now. My summer has been probably the toughest I've ever had. And that includes both 2020 and the summer I was camp director, both exceedingly difficult summers. But I truly think this one was worse. Everything has been a mess, personally, professionally, health... ally? I don't want to get into specifics for a number of reasons, but I'm going to be picking up pieces of my life for a while still. I've got a very difficult decision to make soon. Difficult indeed. And I'm hopeful for the future, but I'm not looking forward to pulling the trigger on this decision, because there are things that I will have to pay for in any way I go. And also because of a great deal of uncertainty surrounding it. In picking up my life again, I am trying some ...

 So, as the title says, I have been going on walks when it's 95 degrees out. Yes, 95. We had a couple of heat waves here, reaching record breaking 106 F. But, except for the very hottest of days, I have still been going on my walks, for the most part.  I have had a rough go this spring and summer due to a medication change and further issues with that. My life has been unbalanced, but I'm working on getting it back in shape. I do a lot of goal setting, managing a lot of the care items that people can just do, on their own, without a bunch of reminders. Or maybe things they don't even need, but I do.  I have a great support system, I really do. My friends are wonderful, continuing to invite me out when I've said no, texting encouragement. I love them all. I'm doing my best and it's going to get better. In other news, I spend a lot of time reading, surfing the internet, and, of course, working. I am running my first bilingual council program (an overnight, no less...

 I feel like this has been said many times, but as someone who has struggled with mental illness for years, it's so important to have things to do with your hands, things that are not online. I know that the internet and technology are safe spaces for many of us, places you have a home in. I'm not denying that.  But, if you are struggling, I am gently suggesting... hobbies. I love my hobbies, but sometimes put them down and forget to pick them back up. But recently I've been trying to pick them up again. I am big on visual art, but I also knit, sew, and garden. I will go to the library for craft night, and have made many a creation, just like I did for hours in my bedroom as a tween.  Mental health is complex, and it's hard to get into hobbies, especially with perhaps some shame of having put them down (I have struggled with this). But they're so worth it. And you're worth it too.

 I want a sign on my door at work that reads: "I'm trying my best, please be gentle with me." I want people to know that, even though my best no longer looks like it once did, it's still my best, and the best that I can do right now. Because I am suffering some of the worst symptoms of burnout I ever have. I am exhausted, emotionally and physically, and my executive function is trashed. I actually tossed out the idea of autistic burnout about a month ago, to my therapist. She said that it sounded plausible, or we agreed that it did. Autistic burnout is different though, from my burnout now, although honestly it's probably a combination at this point.  My brain does not work like other brains. All of my mental health conditions, my neurodiversity, make extra challenges in my work and life. The extra stress is extremely difficult, and I struggle with it on a daily basis. But it's invisible. I show up to work (most days) and I make an effort. I am accomplishing a...

 One of the things I've come to learn as I've dealt with years of mental health conditions (and I learned this more recently then I care to admit) is that I sometimes have to redefine what a "good day" is. Because I have what's in my head as a "good day" that I aspire to. Something along the lines of, wake up, enjoy a full breakfast, go on a hike, draw, spend time with a friend, delicious food, hot shower, fresh sheets at the end of the day with a good book.  Ok, that's the ideal day, not just a good day. But recently I've had to think about what's really a good day. What is really important to achieve, and what really matters. So here's some of the things that have made a day good recently: I had a good conversation with my boss and felt understood. I had enough energy after work to cook. I made it through the whole day at the office without coming home. I was able to use my tools to manage my mental health. I was honest with someone abo...

 Let's be honest: every month is a mental health month for me. I live with a mental health condition, a pretty impactful one (though they're all impactful), and spend lots of time caring for it. I'm currently going through a big medication change. It's been very challenging and overwhelming. I haven't been able to focus on caring for myself as much as I would like due to work and other commitments. I do believe that it's very important to talk about mental health, including mental illness. There is still a lot of stigma in our world. For example, I feel like it would go over better at work if I was outed as gay, as opposed to being outed as having mental health conditions. There's just a lot of misunderstanding and a lack of education, especially for some of the seemingly more complex mental illnesses and conditions. Mental illnesses affect 1 in 5 adults every year. That's a lot of people. Mental health is for everyone, and together we can defeat stigma....

 April is Autism Acceptance Month. You read that right, acceptance, not awareness. I know very few people who aren't at least somewhat aware of autism. Most people know someone on the spectrum (usually a child) as well. Quite a few adults are autistic themselves, more than we think. This includes me. I was diagnosed at 13 and re-diagnosed twice more as an adult. There's no denying it, I'm on the spectrum. Autism Acceptance Month is twelve years old. I know that a lot of people think that it's all about puzzle pieces and "Light it up Blue." But the truth is that Autism Speaks, the organization that is the most vocal and prominent, is considered a hate group by most autistic adults. The idea that autistic people need a cure, rather than accommodations and support, is ableist at it's core. We're not broken and we're not sick. It's not a disease, it's a neurotype. And neurotypes aren't curable. So that's why it's about acceptance. T...

 I wrote this for my other blog, but I wanted to add it here, because I think that this is so relevant to what this blog means and to my life as a whole. So here you go, my thoughts on advocacy. The older I get, the more I realize that it is perfectly acceptable and normal to have one or just a few causes that are "your cause." You know, the one you could stand up and do a TED Talk on right this minute. The one you feel so strongly in your bones that things must change for it. So anyway, I have a few. Empowering younger girls and women is one of them, probably The One if I had to pick (yes, this is why I work at Girl Scouts). Childhood cancer research advocacy is another one I'd stake a lot on, but it's come and gone over the years. Mental health is breaking through as one that's really important for me that I'm actually willing to do work on, but I've been involved tangentially in for a long time. For a while I felt guilty. I felt guilty that I was un- or...

 I have a number of mental health conditions, and probably more that aren't diagnosed if I'm being honest (I have no interest in more diagnoses if there isn't a treatment I can do that I can't get now). However, one that has been present for years, in various forms and severities, is anxiety. I'm officially diagnosed with both generalized anxiety and social anxiety, so there's a lot of anxiety in my brain in pretty much all situations. It's gotten a lot better in the past year or so, but it's still a challenge. Coping with anxiety comes in various forms, and sometimes it's more successful than others. Currently my anxiety is higher, mostly due to work. I was explaining this to my friend, that I always have anxiety, but when I'm stressed it gets worse. We had this conversation because I am worrying about a lot of things, including the people in my life, which can be tough to deal with (I understand this, and usually hide it pretty well).  I wanted...

 Before you assume based on the title, it is not that I have issues with my friends. I love my friends dearly. But, if you have some sort of chronic illness or disability (including mental illnesses), there is a process when you get a new friend that they have to learn about it first hand. You can tell them about what it's like for you, but until they see what you go through, that's when it really sinks in. I've been autistic my entire life. I always will be. And I've had an assortment of mental illnesses for well over a decade now too. Not the same as if I had a physical disability, but it's still something that flares up and effects me in deep and painful ways. The worst part is that sometimes it kicks up when I least want it to, in ways that make others feel like it's their fault. But it's not. It's mostly genetic, a bad luck before I was even born. It's not something I'll overcome permanently, even if I have long periods of recovery. I know p...

 So here's the deal. I used to go home in middle and early high school and sit at my desk and just creative. I made jewelry and painted things and played with wax molds and printing kits and all sorts of things I'd found at Goodwill and yardsales. I continued to create later on in high school and into college, but it dwindled as I got older. Grad school and mental illness took a lot out of me, and getting back into the arts, even just drawing, felt like a huge task. But, slowly, I've gotten back into crafting. I started easy, drawing. I did a few Inktobers (drawing challenge in the month of October), I started getting into visual journaling, and slowly began to get creative juices again. It was different than what I'd grown up with though. I was trained classically in drawing at the arts high school, drawing only from observation in many classes (although I branched out at home and in classes with a loose format). But I started drawing from memory, and it's mostly l...

 I finished this book in early November and I found it quite inspiring. I read a lot of self help books, and some are better than others. This one is definitely in the better category. I thought it was a really great look at gratitude and practicing it. There were quite a few things I really liked. For one, it wasn't just memoir style and it wasn't just research style, there were a mix of interviews with experts and personal experiences. I also liked that it talked about putting gratitude actually into practice and how it effected those around her. It did inspire me to set an additional time for reflection in my gratitude app, as well as to try my best to find positives, and to mention them to others. It is a challenge to balance positive vibes with toxic positivity, but I'm sure I'll find the balance as time goes on. It has definitely gotten easier to pick out things during the day of, oh, I'm grateful for this, that feeling, however subtle, is gratitude. I'm e...

 So recently I got a workbook that aims to increase self compassion. Self compassion is about the way your treat yourself in the face of failure, stress, or in times of difficulty ( x ). It is about treating yourself with kindness, humanity, and mindfulness. I wanted to learn more and work on this with myself because of a book I read on intuitive eating. You can take a short quiz here to see where you fall in self compassion.

 I've been practicing mindfulness for years now, on and off. I usually just meditate silently, maybe a YouTube video here or there, but recently I've started using an app to lead meditations. It's called Smiling Minds, put together by an Australian nonprofit (so bonus all the narrations are with an Australian accent). It's completely free, although they do occasionally ask for donations. It has tons of meditation options, ranging from 2-3 minutes up to 30.  I've come to thoroughly enjoy my time with Smiling Minds. I look forward to trying a new meditation or listening to a familiar one guide me through breathing, reflection, and more. I generally meditate 1-2 times a day, but sometimes will do my own version throughout the day. I would offer it as a free alternative to other popular apps.

 Recently I read a book that was less self help and more about the concept of self help - Help Me: My Perfectly Disastrous Journey through the World of Self-Help, by Marianne Power. Overall I found the book interesting, but there were definitely points where I went, do I need to keep reading this? The summary is that Marianne goes through a self help book a month (sort of) and write about it, creating this book. In practice it got messy and she went through a lot of trials with it. I sometimes cringed at what she was doing, because while I would consider myself a pretty regular reader of self help, these books she was using were out there. Obviously they have a following, so some people ascribe to them, but Marianne really did. It was written really well, even if I didn't like all of the content. It was conversational and engaging, and fairly fast-paced. Overall a decent book. 3.5/5.

 So normally, I do a drawing of my New Year's resolutions, and it's usually basic stuff like taking care of myself and having hobbies. This year I decided to do a little different resolution. Rather than have a bunch of little resolutions, I decideded to have one big one: Have better work-life balance. Now, this is something I ' ve struggled with for years. It's very easy in a profession with nights and weekends, as an exempt staff, to be working just constantly. Checking your phone, checking email, making to dos. It's all part of work and it never seems to end. While I'm not perfect, I've certainly improved this year. I set a boundary about when I will and won't check my phone and email, and I mostly stick to it. I try to not come home only to work more, when I can help it. I manage my hours so that I don't have a ton of 50 hour weeks. And I work on practicing good self care so that work doesn't take it's heavy toll on me like it has in the ...

 I posted a few weeks ago about reading some new books on mindfulness and meditation: Start Here Now by Susan Piver and Start Here, Start Now by Buhante Gunaratana. Both were short and small, making them fast reads. Indeed, I finished the first one two days after picking it up, probably a new record for my adult life.  Overall, I found them both interesting, but not entirely relevant. I don't intend to get into Buddhism meditation in a strict way, so the first one was a nice intro to one specific kind of meditation, it wasn't really what I was looking for. The second was a littler more generalized and I found it more useful. It wasn't as strict, but still incorporated a lot of aspects of Buddhist meditation. I enjoyed some of the helpful hints to improve meditation. Overall, I'd like to continue to develop my meditation. Both of these books talked about longer periods of meditation than I usually do (I'm at about 5 minutes a day), and one even had the outline of a w...

One of my "hobbies," if we can call it that, is watching TED talks. I'm a sucker for an inspirational, science-based bit of knowledge. I watch a lot about mental health because that's a major interest area for me. I was watching the other night and after a talk about strengthening brains, the algorithm that has seen me watch TED talk after TED talk about psychology and the mind fed me this one:     The Power of Mindfulness: What You Practice Grows Stronger | Shauna Shapiro | TEDxWashingtonSquare I often pull a little tid bit from each TED talk, and in this one the overall lesson stood out was, "What you practice grows stronger," from the title. Basically the premise is that by practicing the sort of kind and loving attention you have during mindfulness, you are strengthening that portion of your brain, that particular pathway. It culminated in self love, beginning your day with, "Good morning, I love you," to just yourself.

I have a mental illness (a couple) and in the last few years I've taken up mindfulness and meditation to help, mostly with the anxiety, but also with everything else. I take medication too, but mindfulness makes a big difference for me, and it was a pretty fast change. I never really considered mindfulness as a valid treatment option. I thought it wouldn't work for me because the kind of meditation I had tried as a teen had been difficult and not helpful. But I read the book "The Tao of Bipolar" and it really changed the way I looked at mindfulness and meditation. My mindfulness routine is pretty simple. I try to meditate before bed for 5-10 minutes, or do another mindfulness exercise, like grounding, patterned breathing, or a body scan. I find it helps relax me before bed. On work days, I usually do a "mindfulness moment" in the afternoon, just a little bit of time to reset and refocus before I continue by day. I also sometimes start meetings with a mindful...