It has a cosmopolitan feel and an extensive Chinese population, so the food is good. It has a little bit of a counter-culture feel, another plus. Because of its location on the seashore, it’s in Zone 7 USDA, so the weather is nicer than here. Politically, it’s Canada, and if I got my citizenship there, I would be covered by national health insurance.
The thing that’s stopping me is money. It takes a good chunk of money (or a high-demand, high income job) to become a Canadian. Otherwise, I would be convincing my husband to retire there. I think if we won the lottery, it would be only a matter of time before we moved to Vancouver.
On this day in 2023, I wrote about my “road warrior” setup for writing on the go. At that time, I had an iPad Air, a Logitech keyboard and mouse, all in a cozy leather bag. It functioned as well as a laptop in most cases, and not as heavy. I have updated the setup and I feel like I’ve now got the road warrior gear optimized.
I upgraded my iPad a couple years ago for a M4 iPad Pro. It’s a bit heavier, but performance wise I can’t complain. I still can’t complain to this day. I do some Photoshop and Canva on the setup, and I have never had a performance complaint. I wish I cared enough about shooting and editing video to really push it, but I have no talent for video.
I decided I wanted a laptop form factor, because the one problem with an iPad and keyboard is that you can’t just put it on your lap and use it. I missed that from hauling around my Surface. I bought a Zagg Rugged Book, which is an all-in-one keyboard and iPad case. Again, I traded a bit of weight for more functionality. I still think it’s lighter than a laptop, especially the Galaxy Ultra that is my computer at home. And my iPad is PROTECTED with this case.
The rest of my upgrade was a trackball rather than a mouse. I prefer trackballs to mice, especially since some surfaces are not suitable (too small, too glossy) to run an optical mouse. I found the Elecom Bitra with its small footprint a good, but not cheap, solution.
If I want more screen space, I have a portable screen I can hook up to my iPad using Duet, a pairing program. This would necessitate me moving to a bigger bag and would definitely add more weight, which is why I haven’t done it yet. I like traveling better without it, which could change with the tasks I’m doing. I’m glad I have the option for now.
So I’ve upped my road game at the cost of a little weight. I’m still hauling my equipment in a small bag and feel like I can handle the burden. All in all, good choices for a computer substitute.
Sleep is very important to me. As someone with bipolar disorder, lack of sleep is both a problem in maintaining my mood and a symptom of a hypomanic attack. So I am very careful about sleep.
I have a set bedtime, and I spend some time lying in bed resting (not reading on the phone) before I drift off. I use a sleep mask to make the room dark, especially as my husband often stays up later so needs the light on. I maintain a comfortable temperature. Sometimes I play relaxing music, which seems to keep me from having nightmares.
Sometimes I have to take sleeping meds, and I take them particularly when I have restless thoughts. They don’t knock me out; they just seem to lessen the restless thoughts. I don’t take Ambien, because I once cooked some candied walnuts in my sleep while on it. I burned them and threw them in the garbage, then reseasoned the pan. In my sleep.
Sometimes, still, I have a night where I can’t sleep. My psychiatrist is not alarmed by occasional sleepless nights, but says if I have four in a row and still feel energetic in the morning, we need to talk. I generally do not feel energetic after a sleepless night; I feel lightheaded and groggy, a good sign that I am indeed not hypomanic.
I am very careful about sleep because I have to be. I don’t want a return to mood swings, even if hypomania is fun at first. It doesn’t end up being fun when strung out on sleeplessness and anxiety.
Some negative thoughts just flow through you — you think them and then let them go. Sometimes, however, they get stuck and you ruminate over them. Those are the negative thoughts you have to deal with.
Very often, the negative thoughts we ruminate on are thoughts whose negativity we amplify by cognitive distortions — unhelpful ways we frame the thought to “deal with it”. It’s not really dealing with the thought, however. Cognitive distortions are ways to manage the thought and get control over it, but often the thought is getting control of us because our rationale is itself negative.
For example, when the stressor of a job interview comes up, some people tell themselves that they “always fail job interviews” or they will “never get the job”. These rationales are two different cognitive distortions — in the former case, what my therapist called ‘awfulizing’ and the second ‘fortune telling’. Reality tells us that we can’t have that certainty about the outcomes. Uncertainty is scary, and some people manage it by projecting a negative outcome.
There are several categories of cognitive distortion. A few are (Therapistaid.com, 2023):
Awfulizing (the official name is catastrophising, but I like my word better)
Fortune-telling (predicting the future)
All or nothing
Overgeneralization (‘always’ and ‘never’)
Mind reading
Labeling
Shoulds
Emotional reasoning
We are trained to cognitive distortions, largely by family of origin.
Cognitive journaling is a way out of cognitive distortions. It consists of examining the triggering event and the thoughts that come up. In the thoughts, there will be clues as to the cognitive distortions there. Contradicting the cognitive distortions with more reasonable thoughts is the next step. (Brooklyn Center for Psychotherapy, 2026)
Understanding that one’s automatic thoughts aren’t reality can train your mind out of automatically giving in to cognitive distortions. That can help us to stay positive rather than ruminating on the negative.
I don’t know why I believed this, but it is breathtakingly stupid. I used to believe all dogs were male and all cats female. I was pretty young when I believed this.
Photo by Helena Jankoviu010dovu00e1 Kovu00e1u010dovu00e1 on Pexels.com
Maybe it’s understandable, because all the cats my family ever had were female. This was because my mother believed all male cats sprayed urine. They do, if they are not neutered young, but my mother wasn’t taking any chances. So I had never had a male cat till a few years ago.
I remember exactly when I was disabused of this notion. I was in the car with my parents and sister, and my mother laughed at me when I told her this. I don’t blame her — my belief fell into the category of ‘strange things little kids believe’, and it is funny.
Daily writing prompt
What do you love now, that you hated when you were younger?
I hated vegetables as a child. All of them. (Except potatoes, and I don’t really consider potatoes vegetables. They’re a starch, like bread. I liked bread.)
I couldn’t bring myself to eat veggies. It was almost as if I thought them poison, which I probably did. I had a phobia about being poisoned as a kid, and vegetables were plants. Like mushrooms and poison hemlock.
Then when I was in high school, everything reversed. I craved vegetables, especially mushrooms. I ate vegetables raw, steamed, sauteed, juiced. I don’t think there was a single vegetable I didn’t like. My diet became more colorful and healthier as well.
To this very day, I’ve noticed a pattern. When I eat fatty foods or fried foods or lots of desserts, I don’t crave vegetables. When I eat healthy, I crave vegetables. This blog is making me hungry for a pile of broccoli.
I have taught positive psychology for several years. Positive Psychology is often called “Happiness Studies” because it’s all about how we live a fulfilling life, how we find happiness.
One of the things you find out when you look at positive psychology is that the adage “You can’t buy happiness” is mostly true. Mostly.
Consumption of goods — buying, possessing, and using — only promotes happiness in the short run. Consumption produces positive emotion, and then the person gets used to having the item and returns to their base level of happiness. To reach that higher level of happiness again, they can choose to buy and consume more — but again, it is temporary. This process is known as the hedonic treadmill.
Enduring happiness comes from things like having meaning in one’s life, accomplishments, relationships, and engaging in life. This is not my idea; it comes from Martin Seligman’s work in positive psychology.
Remember I said that money mostly doesn’t buy happiness. There is an exception. Although money spent on goods doesn’t buy happiness, people who spend money on experiences report being happier. This is likely because experience can directly add to engagement in life, and indirectly to things like relationships and meaning.
So the new car will give your mood a boost for a while, then all will go back to normal. But a trip to Disney World may give you a longer-lasting boost if you’re into that kind of experience.
The prompt says “One skill”. Just one? I would like to be skilled at a lot of things. For example, things having to do with my writing. I would like to be more skilled at writing and definitely more skilled at promoting. And many other things as well — I would like to be more skilled at athletic things (and as I’m starting at zero, there’s no place to go but up.)
But here’s one skill I’d like to have that seems to be out of nowhere — carpentry. I would love to be instantly skilled at carpentry. I am so far away from skilled at carpentry that my friends keep me away from power tools because I might injure myself. This is not an exaggeration — I had three friends yell “No!” When I asked if I could use the chain saw. I took a shop class in high school and the boys in the class did all the bandsaw and sander and router work for me. I was allowed to varnish. That’s it. I have profound hand-eye coordination problems and everyone who has met me instinctively notices this. Probably in the way I can’t walk a straight line when sober.
But I really admire carpentry. To be able to build something that stays together and is useful? Yes, please! I would love to have that power. Christmas presents would be easy from that point on. Everyone needs boxes, and carpentry is based on building boxes, even if some of them actually look like chairs. Or tables.
Of course, if I could do carpentry, I would need lots of equipment to do it. Expensive equipment. Of course I would need it, because when I get a hobby I go all out with it. And then I get bored with it. Writing is probably the only hobby I haven’t abandoned after a couple of years, and even so sometimes I get bored with it. Maybe it’s a good idea I can’t do carpentry. It’s an expensive hobby.
I do not believe in soulmates. At least I don’t believe that everyone has exactly one soulmate who they are fated to meet and marry.
First of all, it seems cruel. What if you never find your soulmate because they died? What if your soulmate is abusive? No second chances with another soulmate?
Second, we grow and change. Is my soulmate at age 16 going to be my soulmate at 60? Maybe, maybe not. I was convinced the guy I was dating in my early 20s was my soulmate. He was not, nor was the person I dated in my mid-30s. The guy I’ve been married to for 19 years is probably my soulmate. Or a soulmate.
I think we have more than one soulmate. We have different alignments with different soulmates. One might be the one you marry; another may be someone you do crossword puzzles with, or gossip with, or play Spades with.
So I don’t believe I have a soulmate. I believe I have several, but I haven’t met them all yet. And I’m certainly not going to get romantically involved with all of them (one spouse is enough).
