Hopping along - Hoppy's journal

[Hoppy]

I never really thought about it but very true.

 

[Hoppy]

Another forum I frequent has a short discussion on depression posted a long time ago and I've saved it, because I felt it had merit and the ring of truth. Especially the bit about hate for humanity. I've found that helps me a lot on occasion.

I've edited it to remove most of the cursewords.

I've had this most of my life and I've found a few simple ways to avoid some of the symptoms.

exercise, I ride bikes and lift weights. I usually go on long trips by myself or with friends, a whole day will be taken up with long exploratory excursions, I feel free during these hours. Keeping active and healthy really does give you a mood boost.

company, being around friends or family helps you by not being left alone with your brain that never shuts the f*** up. You are distracted.

hobbies, I play games, read, watch movies and I like to write. These activities keep me focused on something other than the horrible way I feel for no ****ing reason.

misanthropy, I know this is gonna sound a little odd, but fostering a healthy and general hate for the rest of humanity means you are less likeley to be bothered by any bull they give you that your brain then turns into a rollercoaster ride of self analysis and loathing.

reason, never allow your emotions to rule you thoughts. Always take control with your mind and use reason to face what is usually the bald faced obviousness of any situation that is worrying you.... 'it does not f'ing matter.....move along'.

time, the longer the gaps between you dwelling on bull or torturing your self with the horse dung running through your mind, the easier it gets.

Never allow your self to fall into a rut. You know when you are in one when you are stuck indoors alone feeling the anxiety and your mind is racing... When you feel this, screw the lazyness or what the weather is like out side and go for a walk. Spend that time thinking about something interesting or philosophical as you walk about because its a track away from the intrusive thoughts and your depression. Your brain will learn behaviour and that includes depressive thoughts and or possitive thoughts.... Train your brain, by never giving it the chance to spend time in a rut.

talking, it helps to talk to people who deal with the same ****. You are not alone.

 

[Hoppy]

Nancy Lublin: Texting that saves lives - YouTube

 

[Hoppy]

5 Regrets of the dying

 

[coyote]

5 Regrets of the dying

very moving and powerful

i hope everyone here reads that article

thanks for posting it

 

[Hoppy]

My dearest, she means more to me than most of the people I've met in my life. She has been my constant companion for the past 12 years, and is lying at this moment behind my chair.

I got her when she was six weeks old, she sleeps in my bedroom, go to work with me almost every day, has been in every hardware store in town and has dragged me on countless walks.

 

[Boby]

5 Regrets of the dying

I read it all,very moving and inspirational.Thx for posting the link.

 

[Hoppy]

Real Achievement is an inside job.

Your life can be divided in three acts:
Act 1 : The launch and the dream
Act 2 : Facing the truth that the dream didn't go very far
Act 3 : All the time after that.

The most important question for Act 2 in your life is Now what?

Everyone has an Act 2, not everyone moves succesfully from Act 2 to Act 3. In the theatre of life all the action is in Act 3. Anybody can be happy in Act 1, anybody can be miserable mired in Act 2, mourning all the great expectations of the past that shows no signs of being achieved, but Act 3 is where the courage, the wisdom and the greatness is.

To really pass life's achievement test, you need to start asking the right questions:

• How many times did I refuse to quit?
• How many times did I learn from my mistakes?
• How many times did I make a comeback?
• How many times did I let someone else have all the glory?
• How many times did I take criticism gracefully?
• Howe many times did I make someone's day?

(Adapted from How far has your bottle gone? by Ernest Stair)

Go forward, never back. It is important not to spend all your time regretting the regret, like so many on this forum do, but to look forward, and have something to look forward to. And this being SPW, most of you will know when I say that having something to look forward to is one of the most difficult things in the world, expecting energy you don't have. But try anyway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ysh7ZxWew-M

 

[Gaucho]

hi hoppy, i like your posts, very interesting, and always much truth in them

Damn, this really gives me hope, and maybe even energy. thanks for posting it hoppy

 

[Hoppy]

It hasn't been a good night so far, and it feels as I have gone backwards a lot and my energy is gone.

I've been looking for a specific book and google let me end up at Living with depression, and it hit me, and made me wonder: What is my reason for going on after all these years?

And the flip and silly answer is: Maybe this time I'll win

Liza Minnelli - Cabaret - Maybe This Time - YouTube

On a completely unrelated note, I saw that this little journal of mine has hit a thousand views last night, and that made me wonder which of my 2 readers were responsible for the most views.

 

[Hoppy]

Rory Sutherland: Perspective is everything - YouTube

 

[Hoppy]

I get emails from Ittybiz on running a small business every now and then and tonight I was deleting old emails and I found this little gem.

Every now and again, in life and in business, you will suck at
stuff.

Not just like, you'll do it colossally wrong one time.

No, sometimes, you systemically and repeatedly suck at the same
damn thing, over and over again.

Sometimes it's laundry. Sometimes it's Facebook. And sometimes it's
newsletters.

(Sometimes I suck at writing this newsletter. There. I said it.)

Occasionally, things fall through the cracks. You can't get to it
in time.

You know (because you read all the right books and magazines and
blogs) that you should have a system in place, and if you put it in
place properly, the sucking would never happen again.

Everything would be daisies and pansies and fields of prancing
kittens.

This is completely true. (Especially the kittens part.)

The only teensy tiny problem is that you don't have the systems NOW
and, honestly, you're not 100% sure when you will have them.

Right now, on the topic of The Thing You're Sucking At, you're
doing one of three things:

* you're blithely ignoring it
* you're snapping at people who bring it up
* or, most likely, you're beating yourself up about it and getting
drunk and maudlin.

Bad plan, dude.

In my many years of experience at sucking at stuff, I have
determined that there are three potential solutions to the sucking
problem, and today, dear reader, I will reveal them to you.

Option One: Stop doing the thing you suck at.

Sometimes it doesn't even need to be done. Sometimes you can give
up, right now, forever, COMPLETELY WITHOUT INCIDENT.

If this is true, do this one.

This is also a nice choice when you absolutely, completely HATE the
thing you're sucking at. If you hate Facebook, just quit it, for
God's sake. Tell your social media guru that Naomi and Dave said it
was okay.

Send them over here and they can fight it out at our place. We have
a whole department devoted to fighting with your 24-year-old social
media guru on your behalf.

Option Two: Stop sucking at it.

This is for when you're being a big baby. You know you need to stop
sucking and you know the way to stop sucking is to STOP SUCKING.

This is a good choice for when you know there's no good reason
you're screwing something up, and fixing it will take virtually no
time, and it's not like you're doing something better this
afternoon anyway.

Suck it up, put the damn system in place, and get on with your
life. Just do it. Properly.

Do what it takes and stop being such a whiner.

(This is generally not my favorite option, but sometimes it's time
for the big girl panties, you know?)

Option Three: Do your best for now, and revisit later.

When it's mayhem, it's mayhem. When you don't have any room on your
plate for a legitimately important activity, do your best and fix
it later.

Yes, if you have devoted a lot of time in the past to building up
your Facebook fan page, you probably SHOULD be doing something with
all those fans. But your mother just broke her hip and you got a
big rash of new clients and your daughter's pregnant.

Again.

It's fine. You won't die.

(OK, if the thing you're sucking at is going to see your doctor
about those chest pains, then yes, you could die. Other than that,
you're fine.)

Relax. Take a deep breath. Accept that you are doing your best, and
promise yourself you'll revisit the issue later.

However!

In order to accomplish this option properly, YOU HAVE TO STOP
BEATING YOURSELF UP RIGHT NOW.

"Revisit later" means revisit later. If you're beating yourself up
about it, you're not revisiting it later, you're visiting it now.

Stop thinking about it. Completely.

Go do your other stuff and come back to this in a week or a month
or a year.

Things to reflect upon when you feel like you suck:

First of all, it's okay to suck at stuff. It's not okay because
it's okay, it's okay because YOU ARE HUMAN.

Humans sometimes suck at stuff. Even the big "successful" humans
with their slick videos and giant Twitter followings and no visible
signs of sucking. (Sometimes the sucking goes on behind the
scenes.)

We're all human, and we all have stuff we suck at. IT'S OKAY.

Secondly, you have options. You don't have to try and create a
perfect everything-in-every-area to avoid feeling like a failure.

You can stop the thing you suck at and let it go. You can figure
out how to stop sucking at it soon. Or you can just decide to cut
yourself some slack and fix it later.

But stop beating yourself up because you're not perfect. You're
doing pretty damned good so far.

Do what you can with where you're at.

Take care of yourself. That's the important part.

And remember it will all work out eventually.

In the meantime, remember that sucking at something doesn't mean
YOU suck.

You're just human, and that's okay. (Mandatory, in fact.)

xx
Naomi

 

[Hoppy]

And yesterday I socialised!!

Went to a club meeting and talked to people, took part in conversations and asked questions and everything, just like a real human.

We were at an Art foundry and got a demonstration in bronze casting, so after reading a lot about it and trying to do it on my own I finally got around to see how the experts got to do it.

And on peering into the crucible while they were loading it a bit of wetness caused a steam explosion and sent molten bronze just past my head. I only got scared afterwards.

In spite of everything I started to feel awkward, and when the first people started leaving I decided I will leave as well, and are happy with that decision.

So I went to the movies and watched The Avengers, and enjoyed it very much.

 

[coyote]

^very cool

i took 3 or 4 semesters of foundry in art college - learning to cast sculpture

it was a great experience

 

[1BlackSheep]

Hoppy - just read all of your journal and enjoyed the posts very much! Lots of great links and advice!

One tip for your plantar fasciitis that I learned from a co-worker who has it (and I think I might have it too): do calf stretches many times throughout the day!

Calf Stretch
Stand facing a wall with your hands on the wall at about eye level. Put the leg you want to stretch about a step behind your other leg. Keeping your back heel on the floor, bend your front knee until you feel a stretch in the back leg.
Hold the stretch for 15 to 20 seconds.

 

[Hoppy]

do calf stretches many times throughout the day!

I did that, but the thing that finally helped me the most was a night splint. It is used to keep the foot upright while sleeping so that the tendon is stretched. I cobbled up one from socks, velcro and a piece of aluminium. And I got new shoes and stopped wearing safety boots.

So I had a very boring day. Made some components for products. We always make a few extra because it is more cost effective that way but I went a bit overboard and made enough to last for 5 years at the present rate of sales. Oh well, the material isn't that expensive.

I have been going through a lot of anxiety in the last few weeks, and are now reaching the end of my tranquillisers. I dislike drinking pills, and the previous presciption that was valid for 6 months I managed now to stretch to almost 2 years, and I probably have to go back to the doctor again.

I'm not sure I want to get the anti-depressants again, I've never really felt that it work for me, but the anxiety stuff really works. One of the signals I get that I have to drink pills is when the back of my hands start to sweat.

And I got a small order to make things. It isn't much, but it is the biggest order so far for these products. I'm halfway finished with a batch and will be finished by Monday. And I will get cash so the money will be going straight into my escape fund.

 

[Hoppy]

I had some problems this morning at work trying to decide what to do, but after a while I got going and as I was doing some mindless task I remembered this little diagram

1. The not urgent and the not important stuff normally doesn't get done, except for stuff like lying on the coach watching TV or reading.

2. The urgent but not important stuff tend to get done, normally from pressure from outside. "I have to pay the bills today" or the boss telling you to do something.

3. The urgent and important stuff gets done. It has to be done today, the deadline is close and we are closing so it's a rush job.

4. The not urgent and important stuff is where everybody tends to drop the ball. These are the things you have to do that nobody forces you to do, like exercising, keeping up relationships, studying for the exams that is a month away. These things are normally centred in yourself and is almost always the things that will make your life better and more fulfilling.

So it is good to think about what a certain task means to you, and in which quadrant you are going to put it, and how you're going to act on it.

 

[Hoppy]

And after giving myself the pep-talk yesterday, I ended up today doing the not important and not urgent job instead of the things I should have done. I stripped down an old machine to get the spare parts just to get it out of the way. And once I realised what I was doing it was too late to stop and I had to finish the job.

So now I am upset with myself, a day behind on the stuff that must be finished by this weekend and trying not to berate myself too much, but the anger has overtaken me and I ended up screaming in the shower.

Oh bugger.

And a little cartoon from the Washington post, I think it is funny and true.

And my favoutire quote for the day by Tavi Gevinson: "Women are complicated, women are multifaceted, not because women are crazy, but because people are crazy and women happen to be people."

 

[Hoppy]

He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

-William Butler Yeats

 

[persianfan247]

And my favoutire quote for the day by Tavi Gevinson: "Women are complicated, women are multifaceted, not because women are crazy, but because people are crazy and women happen to be people."

This is true people always make generalisations about the opposite sex while not realising that it is also true of their own sex. I guess it has something to do with their interest in that sex. I wonder of gay people think their own sex is crazy and complicated.