Do you have a plan? Some of you have heard this in the bad way. When you are in a crisis.
But ask yourself when you are not in a crisis. What am I making plans for right now?
Right now, I am making plans for the future. I cannot stop planning my future.
Before, I was making bad plans. Before, I would have said “I cannot stop planning the end of it all.”
Random Journal Bits From May
Cartoonists and dogs.
Need to make plans for cartoonists and dogs to do something helpful.
Some days are snapshot days.
Take a snapshot.
Because everything will look different to you soon.
And you can’t figure out how it will look different even though after it looks different it will look like a puzzle that was only missing once piece.
And if you don’t like the way your life looks today, it’s the BEST DAY to take a snapshot
Because if you take a snapshot you will be committing yourself to moving in the right direction of hoping everything will look different to you soon
Let it be funny.
Let it. be fun.
Let it be fun. And funny. Just try seeing it the funny way. It’s easier to see if that way.
Change up the question from time to time if you already know the answer.
Instead of “How are you feeling?” try “What are you doing?”
Instead of “How are you doing?” try “What’s going on on?”
That is the answer
No more homework
All action items now
Do I understand that?
Just updated Journal
#OCD #TMS
Lizzie and Drew are better as friends. I don’t think they’re good for each other anymore.
There. I said it. Since nobody else was going to say it, I said it.
Or maybe they just need a break. Some time apart.
Or maybe a getaway. Maybe they need to get away to the beach.
So now I have to do something about it and I don’t know what to do. I’m thinking about having them continue to live together because they really do love each other. Then they could just date other people until something else sparks and causes a situation. Is that an awful thing to suggest?
I’m scared to break them up, but I’m scared to keep them together.
Were You a Carrie, Samantha, Miranda or the other one? The one whose name I can’t remember is actually the one I relate to the most. But maybe that wasn’t true when the show was on. I can’t remember now.
Harry married her. Charlotte. That’s it.
Yes, I relate to Charlotte. Except I am probably half Charlotte and half Harry. Actually, I would really enjoy hanging out with Charlotte and Harry. That would be fun.
Anyway, I remembered this weekend that we used to ask which one we were. And I recalled thinking I wasn’t really any of them. And the reason I realized it was because a movie was playing with Diane Keaton and I realized I’ve become Diane Keaton. And that’s pretty cool because I like Diane Keaton.
So that’s it. In Sex and the City, I play the Diane Keaton character.
Okay.
And that is the end of the entertainment. Below there is a very un-entertaining journal entry. It’s only for the die hards so get out while you can. : )
Happy Monday.
It’s not too late to make it start heading in a different direction.
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What do you do to have fun?
How do you make yourself feel good? Â Some people clean. Some people organize. Some people make lists.
Some people get outside. Or work out. Or play a few rounds of something with small hard balls or rubbery bouncing balls.
Some people shop. Or eat. Or socialize. We all have our thing.
I have fun thinking of business ideas. It’s because I grew up in a house run by entrepreneurs. To me, everything sounds like the idea for a business. So I run with everything.
Basically, I think of business ideas and then start planning the businesses. Then I send emails or messages to a few people who don’t mind getting my crazy “I have an amazing idea” emails. Then I lament the fact that nobody is free to go all the way with me on these businesses because everybody is too busy doing other things.
Now I know why I always hated dating and therapy! Because they both involved leaving the sofa.
I didn’t mind leaving the sofa for work because work was fun. I had friends there and there were good snacks and we had a pretty good time, generally speaking.
But you can’t bring your friends and your snacks with you on a date or to therapy. Well, I guess you could, but you would look insane.
I realized I couldn’t commit to getting off of my sofa for therapy when the new really nice therapist confirmed he only provides therapy in his office.
Boo. : (
Oh well. He’s just not that into virtual CBT.
And I apparently am only into virtual CBT.
I need a Pop Up Coffee Hang Out Thing.
Not a hug, cry, or bitch-and-moan sesh, nothing like that.
Just a quick get together at a coffee shop where I can just say what’s going on and get it out.
Just a quick vent.
But it’s midday and midweek. It’s not exactly hang out and have coffee time in Washington, DC where we keep our heads down a lot of the time.
And I represent DC. well. I have deadlines upon deadlines. And projects. So many projects.
But for now, I just need to vent. So you guys are my Pop Up Coffee.
Remember back to the olden days, when you spent the entire night redialing to get a ring instead of a busy signal?
Back then, in school, when we were finished our assignment, test or quiz, teachers allowed us to “put your head down on your desk.”
Being the little know-nothings we were, we would place our cute little heads on top of our cute crossed arms, not realizing how stupid we looked.
I was a fast finisher so I always got to lay my head down on my arms.
But back then, the school desks only got washed once a grading period, if I recall correctly. I need to remember to tell that to my nieces and nephew. They all carry hand sanitizer.
I’m doing it, baby. I’m writing dialogue. And boy is it fresh……… Or ripe. Or raw .
Or whatever you call dialogue that may possibly jump off the page.
It’s probably awful. Â Or worse, it’s just kind of meh.
I guess I won’t really know until someone reads it.
Sometimes you just feel alone in this world. Because sometimes there’s just too much of life going on and you can hardly keep up, much less remain whole, much less be there for everybody else the way you wish you could be.
I always hope I can be there for the people I love, but I had to kiss that ability goodbye at the end of April. I just ended up running out of whatever energy and abilities it took to do that.
April was my third round of TMS. Each cycle is 30 treatments.
So for thirty days, every weekday, I went to the hospital and received a TMS treatment. And then I came home and went back to work. So life could be as uninterrupted as possible while I was totally changing my brain.
But the thing is that you can’t expect life to be ‘as uninterrupted as possible’ when you are totally changing a key part of it.
CBT stands for Cognitive Behaviorial Therapy. But those three words are not very inspiring to me.
I need words that literally tell me what to do. Â Because sometimes my mind is so messed up, especially IN THE MOMENT, when I MOST NEED HELP, that I need CBT to stand for something that instructs me precisely as to what my actions should be.
I need a WORKING acronym.
So the way I remember CBT is Come Back To…
I can almost always be snapped back into the present moment by Come Back To…
COME BACK TO R.E.A.L.I.T.Y.
CBTReality
ORÂ Come Back To Reasonable Thinking – CBTReasonableThinking – or whatever works for you. Come Back To The Moment. Come Back To Now. Come Back To Your Breath. Come Back to Your Sane Place.
Come Back To whatever is closest to reality at the moment. Because, as you know, the mind goes to other places so easily. And, for some of us, the mind can go to places that are not helpful. Not helpful at all.
I think a lot about age these days. I think the age I’m at is probably a pretty good age. I’ve definitely paid my dues and earned my keep. I feel like I have paid my dues plus some, to be honest, Â I feel like I have lost a lot. Relatively speaking. But there’s still time to have adventures. Â So I’m focused on the adventures.
And that sums up my life.
I don’t mean for that to sound so brash or generic, but I’m taking a scriptwriting course and I’m learning to recognize and summarize stories.
It sounds weird to say I’m learning to recognize stories, because we think stories are obvious, but they actually aren’t always. Â Stories are not always plain to the eye because your eye is used to seeing what it’s used to looking for. If that makes any sense. And yes, that is science you just heard me summarize. The science-y kind.
Over the years, when I’ve needed a lift or a charge or a jump, I’ve assigned myself homework. I’ve had all sorts of stupid assignments, from “engage with three people” to “find ten out-loud laughs.”  Those assignments are per day, by the way. Not anything completely insane like per hour.
I’m just reasonably and partially insane, not completely insane.
Engaging with three people, for me, is not too difficult if I really focus on it. Â It usually means delivering Compliments or Well-Wishes (CoWWs). Â #AcronymAlert
Delivering CoWWs is actually really fun once you get over the initial paralyzing social anxiety. Once you realize the person is unlikely to totally go off on you, you can relax. And when you do say something nice to the person, you will usually see pretty quickly that others enjoy hearing nice things like compliments and well-wishes. Usually you get back a lot more than it took to get it out.
I’m looking for people who are going through something. But not just anything. Something significant. A shift.
Because I’m going through a shift and I need to talk about it.
And my therapist retires in two weeks.
And honestly, she was only available for an hour a week, so really, how helpful was she going to be?
But I’m going through a major shift because TMS is changing my brain.
When I think of a great book title, it means I’m straying from task.
And I think of great book titles all day long.
Then I type them into my daily journal. Then I debate whether to add them to my list of possible book titles or possible chapters for my book, which will never be finished if I keep adding titles and chapters.
Then I consider using the new book title on the website for ‘Current Project.’ Â I change my ‘Current Project’ every few days to see if any project in particular grabs anybody’s eye. When I get some readers besides my three loyals (hi, guys!), I’ll let you know how that works out.
So today’s great book title is “100 Great Comebacks.”
Since I have scenes in my head when I’m on deadline, instead of working on my deadline, I play all the roles in those scenes to their hilt, to their highly dramatic ends. To their beautiful, logical, perfect comebacks.
Sometimes you have to just go through it.
Find as many buffers as you can.
Get through it without making it worse than whatever it originally was.
You don’t have to add torture to torture. Or frustration to frustration. Or difficulty to difficulty.
You can choose to go through it and skip the extra layers of hard work that make it all seem impossible.
So this time go through it prepared. Prepare to go through it. Because you can get through it.
When I began cartooning in 2007, I was still ten years away from an official OCD diagnosis. Â But I was definitely “a little bit” OCD. (i.e., raging) Â Now, thirteen years later, I wish I had discovered cartooning when I was a child. Or anything as highly detailed and super-focused like cartooning. Because cartooning provided a perfect vehicle for letting my brain over-focus and burn off all the crazy without me having to actually do anything crazy.
Point blank.
It’s so obvious that OCD was relieved by and soothed by cartooning. It enabled me to manage my brain during a particularly rough time in my life when I needed something I could rely on. I needed an activity to be waiting for me each day after work – to distract me from the messaging I was receiving from my brain.
And cartooning was there for me each day. From day one – the first cartoon I drew – I “had to” produce a cartoon. It’s just the way my OCD and creative brain works. If I do something, it has to be maniacally. So cartooning became daily.
Eventually I became syndicated. So cartooning officially became daily per contract.
It’s the first day of April and the first official day of ‘Do Something Different.’
April has 30 days to try doing something different. You can try one thing different and do it for thirty days.
Or you can do thirty different things, one per day. Or any of the variations, of course. But pick fun things! Pick things you want to do or you won’t do them. It’s not 30 days of punishment. It’s 30 days of “Maybe Something Cool will Happen!”
In the Summer of 2008 I tried something different. I was a lawyer at the time and I was writing a book I was sick of writing. Â I needed to mix it up creatively so I tried Improv.
Okay, folks. April starts in TWO DAYS. That’s just two sleeps. Let’s do things different in April. Let’s do something different every day.
For those of you ALREADY raising your hands, yes, you can do the same different thing several days in a row if you want. But don’t just do the same different thing for the entire thirty days and then try nothing else. Then you’re just boring. Try a few different things. Or thirty different things. It’s fun and surprising.
And, BTW, this is a great time to start a journal or blog habit, for those of you who need a simple blog prompt. You could just write what you did. If you’re fancy, write the time and date. If you’re deep, write about how you breathed, if you did, in fact, breathe.
So now, I have gotten a head start on you and have already been do this and I LOVE IT.
Doing something different pays off fast if you pick something easy. And pick something you will like. Remember, this is not a form of torture just because it’s an activity.
I posted this question on Dr. Andrew Huberman’s Ask Me Anything today. I hope someone else is interested too.
Is it possible obsessive or intrusive thoughts (esp of harm or violence) are easily misdiagnosed as MDD or BPD and not diagnosed/treated as OCD?
Could doctors be perceiving periods marked by higher incidence or severity of the individualâs obsessive or intrusive thoughts as mood swings and therefore evidence of BiPolar Disorder or Major Depressive Disorder (MDD)â and therefore treating the individual primarily for depression instead of OCD (where OCD treatment might be more effective)?
While we’re on the subject, I’m also curious as to whether they are they diagnosed more quickly in boys than girls? Are they diagnosed more quickly these days in the younger kids?
I’m dying to know. Pun intended.
Actually, I’m not dying to know.. My obsessions about dying are on hold now from TMSÂ – on hold for now, and hopefully for a long time.
Now let’s help other people get rid of theirs!!
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xoxoxo, d (and bella)
