I don’t know anything about it. Can you tell me about what you would want to do there and why?

I am not hopeful about our future. But something I came to terms with is that I am going to die. It might be in 40 years or it might be sooner, it could be next year. But it will happen. Also, it’s possible that I don’t just die but life becomes incredibly unpleasant. All the same to me in this current point in time, where I am able and I have means to do interesting things.

I know this is hand-wavy but I heard someone say something along the lines “we need to stop worrying about putting more years in our life, but work on putting more life in our years.”

This sort of mantra helps keep me grounded when I’m deciding what to do with myself and my family on a day to day basis.

I mostly use distractions as a way clearing my head.

The best thing to distract myself when I was really depressed was Geoguessr, it takes focus and is fun.

If you need a free alternative, look at Geotastic.

Life doesn’t come with a manual, but it does come with an author for its manual.

I like to keep a small size binder (I hate notebooks because I’m very fickle about organization). Like A5 size with some line ruled paper and some grid paper. I keep some in the back for random notes and extra fill. I use dividers, and the very front page I keep a to-do list of things that really need to happen now. The next page are to-dos that i don’t want to forget but aren’t really critical.

Then I have a section where I keep one page for any major problem in my life. I’ll try to do a root cause analysis. “Just keep asking why”. Then I’ll sort of journal some observations over time until I solve my problem.

These can be as simple as being flustered in the grocery store or as serious as co-parenting problems. You need to know what parts of your life you can control, and harmonize with the parts you cannot.

Then, I have a section of sort of “how-to’s”. Simple things can make a big difference, like what order works best for me to get myself ready in the morning… Like start the water kettle before I wash up and get dressed so I can have my coffee while I make breakfast. A lot of these pages will be written (or rewritten!) after I’m ready to throw away my problem solving pages from the other section.

But on a day by day and hour by hour basis, focus on triage. What can you do for yourself and your people that will have the most impact in the shortest amount of time? What can you do that will bring you a little joy, what can you do that will reduce a little irritation? Then do that.

Would you consider trying a meditation app? A medical professional recently recommended “insight timer”, which has guided meditations and somatic tracking programs and things.

Just a caution, if you do check it out, it will ask you to start a free 7-day trial for their “plus” version, you have to find the “skip” button, and avoid starting the trial so you don’t get charged. I can see how that bit might not be anxiety relieving! But otherwise she had a lot of praise for it. I haven’t tried it myself, but I have it ready to go. I’m in a pretty good place at the moment… I hope I remember it’s there when I need it.

Wow how do you normally deal with that?

Yuck! Did you you get it taken care of?