I love coding. I love writing. I love writing about coding, as evidenced by the archives of this blog and the multiple tech books I have written.
I’ve always prided myself on being able to explain things clearly. I have a unique ability to identify the order in which to teach concepts. I have enough five star reviews on my books to know that there are plenty of readers out there who agree with me.
2020 has been one of my best years ever.
I know, right?
Ten years ago, I spent the Christmas season at “5 North”; Medicine Hat’s psychiatric ward. The stay started with placing my signature on a piece of paper asserting that I would not try to kill myself for 24 hours.
They asked for three days. I couldn’t promise that much time.
As near as I can figure, I had been suicidal since I was eight years old.
A friend suffering from perfectionism has caused difficult interference in their life. I developed a technique that might be useful to others who have to deal with the negative aspects of perfectionism.
(contains amazon affiliate links)
I have had repetitive stress injury (RSI) flareups on and off for many years. I’ve kept them under control mostly through use of a Kinesis Advantage ergonomic keyboard that I’ve had for fifteen years. However, several months ago, I was diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome and instructed to avoid typing if at all possible.
I make my living programming and writing. My hobbies are programming and writing.
I am not a productivity coach. I don’t even like the concept of a productivity coach. I’m also not a mental health coach, although I am successfully managing mental illness, and I assure anyone dealing with depression, mania, or anxiety right now, that you matter. Things can and will get better.
I haven’t written much about mental health since I rebooted my blog. Today, I want to talk about how goals affect our state of mind.
Back in 2012, I wrote a book called Hacking Happy. It was my first self-published work, and I was actually surprised by how well it did without a publisher or marketing behind it. I had plenty of positive feedback including more than one hopefully exaggerated, “This book saved my life.” Most of the feedback was a bit more sedate, but I received a lot of private messages thanking me for writing it.
