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.
