Category Archives: Mental Health

Taking the blue pill(placebo).

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I’ve had thoughts about a great many things this week, as is evident by this week’s output.

The main point that been floating in my brain is about how I’ve distorted the functions within.

How I deal with doubt, crisis, pain, loss, and what those emotions emit to the outside world.

That I have quit drinking isn’t the big thing, but that I have is a godsend to my writing and the interior functions between my ears.

I’m learning to trust myself in a way that I haven’t done before.

I’m trusting the writing process in ways I never have. This is had all led to a new perspective on my drinking.

Life as we know it is filled with all manner of decisions. Some we undertake willingly, others not so much.

But in undertaking these things we try to dull our senses. We do this so we don’t feel the pain.

We take our drugs, our alcohol or what have you and use it as a dulling agent.

But it’s only taking a placebo to the true problem. We choose not to deal with it because it’s too hard.

It’s ourselves that we don’t want to talk to. It’s ourselves that are the problem.

We have one choice, enter the real world or escape as we’ve always done.

Working through things.

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When you’re working through things it’s hard to get peace of mind.

I see it happening as I struggle to maintain sobriety this week.

It’s Sundance in Utah and as a bartender by trade I work it because it’s good money and fun.

Though when it comes to alcohol I’m on the program. It doesn’t interfere with my bartending but I do still want a drink.

I’m hoping that I won’t be doing this in a year. I want to be writing and get paid for it.

It won’t take much for that to happen. I only need to make a certain amount for my life to function properly.

But this week is difficult.

I went sober from July until October but this time feels different.

Then I focused on working out. This time my focus is distorted.

This time I’ll be throwing everything into writing, where it should’ve been.

I haven’t reached that moment but it’s coming.

There’s more to this but some things I need to keep close.

The Revelations…

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Each day I wake up, have my coffee, get my words done and read.

Some of those days are filled with swapping between writing and doing the outline for the project.

I’ll see the end point of the story, sometimes. But while I’m writing I’ve always had a notebook close by. It’s how I work and it works for me.

There are other days when I just write. I’ll make notes on characters, their issues, what’s going on in their heads, but those days are creating days.

They are the heavy lifting days.

As I’ve grown as a writer I continue to grow outside of the writing desk.

It feels weird to say it but quitting has been at the forefront of my mind lately.

It’s something that when I have those heavy lifting days occurs to me.

They are the work days. The hard ones where the words come slow and the coffee never hits the spot.

But I know I’ll keep writing as surely as I know I’ll continue to have depression issues for the rest of my life. I’m working through those.

It’s the writing and reading that give me peace. It’s the reading that gives me guidance when I have none.

The world comes at me harder than it seems to those outside my head. They oftentimes don’t understand but it does.

I’ll keep writing because I feel it’s the only thing I’m truly good at. When I stop for any length of time, my mind doesn’t work properly.

I know it’s rough and I know I’m getting better and that’s all that matters to me.

I write for me now, though I do throw a few bones to people in my writing.

For the most part I write what scares me, what troubles me.

Writing is difficult but as with anything else, the effort shows the results and I’ve been putting a lot of effort into stories.

I hope you’re having a good day and I’ll talk about something(not sure what) on Wednesday.

Coming to terms with addiction and finding my way.

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As I said on Wednesday, a game took away from my writing time.

Oddly enough, this initially happened when I went sober the end of July.

I swapped one addiction for another.

Instead of blinding myself with alcohol, I shut the world off and buried myself in leveling a character online.

This led me to taking up the bottle again the end of October.

I did this for many reasons but mainly because I have always needed to bury my emotions.

It’s been that way for as long as I can remember.

As a teenager, I would keep to myself, not wanting to let the world know how depressed I was. That led to issues with relationships in high school.

I wasn’t mature enough to handle a relationship with myself, much less another person.

Thankfully, as I got older, met my wife, who has kept me safe from my worst tendencies, I was able to understand a few of those things.

But there was always something to subvert, numb, or chasten myself with.

It was either drowning myself in a bottle, burying myself in the pages of a book, delving into online games. In my blindness to these things I kept myself safe from pain.

I was obliterated at times because of family problems.

The bottle has been there since my late teens.

The feeling that one thing gave me led me to run off the tracks and nearly destroyed my marriage.

I try to keep myself safe and I have a tendency to bury myself in things that aren’t as good for me as I would like them to be; the bottle, video games, and other distractions.

I feel it’s necessary to bury myself in one thing that will help me get through all of this. My writing.

Writing gives me a similar high as alcohol, without the side effects.

I have this tendency to latch onto something and it can control and affect my entire world.

I’ve chosen to latch onto my writing and work it for all I can.

I’m sober again and though I’ve fallen I got myself back up.

I pick up the pieces and find new things daily. This journey will lead me to better places and better states of mind. Both of which are needed.

I’ll do my best to write for myself and will continue to write this blog.

The words are important and the message is as well.

I hope you’ll continue to read, continue to follow me on other platforms, but this is where I intend to spend my time.

I have Twitter and Instagram, but I’d rather use this blog. It gives me a bigger space and on days like today I need that.

I let myself down.

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The last five months of 2019 I didn’t write as much or read as much as I should’ve.

My focus left me because of a game.

I don’t know why I let it control those last few months, but I did.

It took control of who I wanted to be. What I wanted to accomplish and I became detached from all of those things.

I realized that I had to do better for myself.

Besides my wife and kids, my writing is the most important thing in my life.

It’s changed how I deal with society. It’s caused me to reevaluate my depression. I no longer look at it with a singular moniker of, “depression.”

There are many subtle levels of depression and they take over parts of my writing and how I deal with the day-to-day machinations of it.

In the end we are at the mercy of what we focus on though I finished a novel during those five months–I’ve determined that it’s quite good–I also learned a lot about myself and why the littlest distractions can detour my writing as well as the balance within my brain.

I’m determined to get something out that can be read by everyone as well as to continue posting on here.

I still have queries out with three agents and when I hear something, good or not, I’ll let you know.

Happy writing and enjoy the rest of your week.