October Mottos

• Enjoy the now. It’s a little hard with Christmas trees in craft stores and every department store pushing the holidays upon us. Why can’t we just enjoy this time of year? If I had a dictionary, I would define October as “in between” It falls between  my birthday and Halloween. Let’s pay due diligence to October by picking out Halloween costume parties, hosting horror movie marathons, admiring the changing of leaves and taking in lungfuls of air to enjoy the scent of woodburning stove (one of  my favorite smells in the world. It always reminds me of leaving my dorm for my 8 o’clock in the crisp fall air). The now won’t be there forever. Soon the radiant red and yellow leaves that litter the ground will fade to a dull brittle brown. Catch it while it’s there.

• Don’t compare your story with someone else’s story; you don’t know their story. Sometimes we think we know someone and what they are going through. How can we? Unless that person sits us down and walks us through their day to day, their triumphs, their flaws, their hopes, their failings, we have no way to know our stories and how similar they are. You learn this quickly in the psych ward. Someone might have the same disorder as you but a completely different manifestation or different symptoms. This is why stereotypes of mental illnesses are often false.

• A song can jolt you out of a bad mood. I mean not just any song. If you were going to listen to “Adam’s Song” you’d probably sink further into depression. But there are plenty  of cheerful, upbeat  songs that usually pull me out of low spirits. I  have listed some below.

- “Black Magic” by Little Mix

- “Band on the Run” by Paul McCartney and the Wings

- “Power of Love” by Huey Lewis and the News

- “Uptown Funk” by Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars

-”Crush” by Strange Neighbors (this is a local band I know personally. Very talented)

- “Levitating” by Dua Lipa

-” On the Floor” Jennifer Lopez and Pitbull

-”High Hopes” by Panic! At the Disco

-”Time of Our Lives” by Pitbull 

-”International Love” by Pitbull (I like Pitbull)

-”Take Me For a Ride” by Bad City

-”Espresso” by Sabrina Carpenter

-”Hot 2 Go” by Chappell Roan

• Choose fish. I am trying to eat healthier. This means choosing sushi over fried rice and fried noodles when we go to my favorite restaurant. Tomorrow Justin is taking me to a restaurant with an extensive menu. I chose the fish (salmon which is my favorite). And not just because it comes with risotto (I’m a rice kind of girl. Rice move over for fish)

• When using Sharpies open the damn window. I’ve been working on some projects with Sharpie markers (the really thick ones) and I was getting lightheaded. I also had a headache. It occurred to me that it could be the fumes from the markers I had been using for over three hours in an  enclosed room. I opened a window.

• Don’t underestimate the pull of bad habits. I was able to quit alcohol very easily compared to the struggle some people have with it. But I have not been able to kick my caffeine habit. I’ve tried many times but I’m a caffeine junkie. I consume even when it leaves me strung out, exhausted, but I will always go back for more until people look at me with concern, when I’m wasting so much money, consuming so many calories. I depend on it. It’s just a drink. But so much more.

• You can always shell out gas money. I don’t drive and I most likely never will. That really has never bothered me. I have no shortage of friends who can drive and are more than generous to pick me up and drop me off. When they can’t, my dad and Justin often do. But something I’ve learned is that I can always pitch in by throwing gas money at the driver. Justin lives an hour away from me. When we stay at his place, that’s two hours of driving every Friday night. So yeah he is owed some gas money. Have you seen the price of gas these days?

• Scrolling isn’t always bad. As long as it’s not all you do. I don’t really go on Instagram to see the lives of friends. I follow about 770 people on Instagram. Only a small fraction of them are people I actually know. I love collecting photos and quotes from accounts I don’t know. I like it this way. I don’t get FOMO. I don’t feel like my life is more boring than the lives of my friends. I don’t feel less than. I actually learn things. And my favorite images I use in collages. I only do this for a small part of the day. It doesn’t consume my day. 

• If you can’t get into one book, get into five. This is weird but I read five books at a time. When I can’t get into one of them, I push myself a little harder and then take a break and read one of the other books that I like better. I am also trying to convince myself that you don’t have to read books you don’t like. This is a hard concept for  me to grasp but apparently some people have no problem with it.

• Grief flareups aren’t uncommon. Now that it’s fall, black cats are everywhere and on everything. It’s dumb to be sad when I see black cats but of course it reminds me of my dear cat Scout. He loved the fall. He loved chasing leaves. He loved chasing butterflies. He loved “checking the signposts” and seeing what other animals had gone by. Any other cats? Before Scout, we also had Susie. I remember she passed away when we were on vacation. I  had gone outside and glanced out over the lake. Justin had called me but I remembered I didn’t even want to talk. Such is grief.

• Prayers do work. Don’t be afraid of them. For a while a friend of mine was very worried when their mother developed cancer in their neck on the heels of recovering from breast cancer. They asked  me to pray for them and I prayed fervently, knowing they were doing the same. Today they told me the tumor had actually been discovered to be benign with less than a 3% chance of being cancerous. God does not always listen to us because he knows best. But sometimes he does list. So pray. Pray hard. Don’t be afraid.

• Keep in touch. You’ll be glad you did. I had a best friend in college who showed me what kindness, loyalty and faith were. Before I met Emily I never had a friend like that. I will always remember certain things about Emily. Her birthday. Her affinity for chocolate cookies and plaid and milk. That she had convictions and stuck to them. How she wasn’t afraid to speak her mind. How she could stick by her friends. How she valued people even ones who couldn’t do anything for her. How I feel apart from her and I really hope someday we see each other again.

• Take care of yourself. Respect your body. This means alot of things like not cutting up your body when you are angry to making sure you don’t contract STDS from an older tool who thinks he’s God’s gift to women to not attempting the fire challenge (see yesterday’s post). Also drink water. They tell me that’s good too.

• Seek to understand but don’t excuse bad behavior. I have talked a thousand times about my backstabbing roommate. I don’t excuse her behavior (which was more unhinged than I was) but I understand that living with someone going through extreme mental illness couldn’t be easy. I also think she was jealous. This makes me sound vain but in my day I was actually very very pretty. I had friends,  I had a boyfriend and before the bipolar got too bad I was fairly sure of myself. I played sports and wrote for the paper and I was confident. I don’t blame her for envying me; I blame her actions.