You are obsessed with longevity and health span and the title of your novel is called The Forever Life.
She writes you emails, and almost every call ends with advice on how you — and your family — can live forever. Just open: jw.org, she beckons. As if the portal to eternal life is really that simple.
You send her emails with advice on how to eat keto and low-carb, knowing she once went all the way to China to a beauty hospital to have surgery to reduce the roundness around her waist. You know that she’s the one that buys soda in bulk, because “it’s on sale at Costco,” for your dad, her husband, who had recently returned from a surgery related to neuropathy, linked to the type 2 diabetes he’s been diagnosed with, begging for soda even while in the hospital recovering.
She reads the Watchtower and Awake magazines to your son whenever she babysits; he has memories of watching DVDs about Noah’s Ark and she constantly reminds him that we are living in the “Last Days” — any day now, Armeggedon is slated to arrive.
You watch her buy box after box of a special juice. She wants you to buy it too. It helps you lose weight. Helps you live a long life. She can sell it to you at a special discount. Your friend, she tells you, who has just suffered from back pain should use it too.
You tell her juice might as well be soda, as it spikes your insulin (because you have prediabetes and are keeping tabs on your HbA1c).
She looks aghast. How can Jehovah create abundant fruit for us yet have it hurt our health?
You tell her it’s not the fruit that’s necessarily bad but too much juice, especially processed. Processed foods, refined carbs like pasta, noodles, cake, cookies, bread and all the hyper-palatable foods out there designed to keep us hangry and hankering for more is what’s wrong. Insulin spiking affects our moods. It makes you fat and depressed. I tell her about autophagy and fasting, about ketosis and blood sugar control.
She hands you the bible. Jehovah’s wisdom is the most important knowledge. The truth will set you free. It is her gift to you before your travels on the road, since you’ve sold your house to live in a RV with your family. Always pray to Jehovah. I want you to live forever in paradise with me. Your whole family. Her eyes brim with tears.
You nod and take the small Bible, its tissue-thin pages gilded with gold. She has a smaller one for your son. You realize she doesn’t care about this life on this earth right now. It’s about the next one. The one where she’ll be forever young and free from any problem or any disease. Your eyes water as you just want her to live as long as possible here and now. In this life. Maybe not forever but as long as humanly possible.
I’ve been successful, more or less, tracking other areas in my life, especially related around eating keto (i.e., tracking my fasting glucose, ketones, GKI), exercise and meditation. So recently it dawned on me, why don’t I track my writing? Especially around the blogging? It’s something I’ve been kicking myself for not being able to maintain, out of fear and forgetfulness. There’s always been a little voice in the back of my head to start a daily blogging practice. So I created a Blogging Tracker for myself in my bulletjournal. I bookmark the page so I know to return to it day after day. It really is true that the act of tracking and checking off what you’ve done is in itself a reward (as mentioned in the book I finished recently, Atomic Habits by James Clear, realizing after reading it that habit tracking as a system was what I’ve already been doing for quite some time now).
I really like using a bulletjournal to create a monthly tracker to track my habits. (I also use Heads Up to digitally track and record my GKI, fasting glucose, ketones via Keto-Mojo, weight, HRV, HbA1c, thyroid, CRP, Deep Sleep via Oura, steps, extended fasts, cholesterol, and more, plus waist measurements–which I wrote about here, how I whittled down my waist size). So I can at anytime I desire, look back on my health history, to analyze what went well, what didn’t. Tracking keeps me accountable, and surprisingly, helps me with the practice of not being perfect. For someone with crippling perfectionism, the practice of not overreacting to the numbers is a practice in itself. And of course, there are times when I feel down, or get too busy, and don’t track at all. Those are times I get to practice self-compassion and forgiveness, and just remember not to let more than a few days go by before showing up for myself again. Thus, an act of remembering, resetting, and a re-commitment to my why.
Why I Track
Why am I doing all this? It may seem tedious and anal to track the way I do, and for some people, this doesn’t work for them, will never work. But for me, I’ve been slowly transforming my health, body, mind, and life toward a positive trajectory over the years, and when something works, you tend to want to return to it. And the main reason why I track is because I’m committed to being happy and healthy and doing the things I say I want to do, like writing. I want to be a better person to be around with my family and friends. I know how awful I once felt, looked and acted. And I don’t want to be residing in that space more often than not. In many ways, it’s a way of disease management. Eating a whole-foods version of keto (and sometimes carnivore) helps my physical and mental health (especially once diagnosed with prediabetes, ADHD, asthma, social anxiety and bipolar disorder type 2). And after watching how hard cancer hit my husband, I want to do my best to prevent it. Now without any prescription meds since 2011, including my once-daily asthma inhalers, I am light years away from how terrible I once felt, mentally and physically. In fact, at age 47, I feel and look better than I ever looked or felt in my 20s and 30s, a testament to epigenetics at work. Of course, I still have some lingering anxiety and depression from time to time, but it’s usually related to situational stuff or the lack of something related to these areas that I track around lifestyle: nutrition, sleep, exercise, meditation.
I’m also learning that the old me that showed up every once in a while — usually around New Year’s to set unachievable resolutions — often ended up flailing, wondering why things weren’t working, feeling like a failure, a loser. Ever since I started tracking back around 2015 or so, around the time my husband Darrell was battling cancer (and we religiously tracked his GKI/glucose: ketones index back then), I began tracking my own GKI, finding that I felt better when my GKI was under 9 (when you’re in ketosis). I feel even more amazing when it’s 3 or under, my mind buzzing with clarity and my moods completely even. Anyhow, I’ll write more in detail about this in another post one of these days. In the meantime, I did write a post for Heads Up a while back (where I work part-time) about how my husband used the GKI and the keto diet as an adjunct to conventional treatment for cancer. In 2020, he’ll have been in remission for five years, now feeling stronger and healthier than he’s ever been, mostly now these days eating nose-to-tail carnivore keto, Dr. Paul Saladino-style. Note: In 2015, he consulted briefly with Miriam Kalamian, who had an e-book out then on how to cook and eat keto for cancer. She now has an excellent updated book with more in-depth advice called Keto for Cancer, a book we still refer to at times.
Anyhow, back to the blogging tracker. My reason to use this new tracker I set up is to keep me accountable. And the act of actually creating the tracker by hand is immensely meditative and satisfying. It’s a wonder with all these so-called “disorders” I haven’t been diagnosed with OCD!
There’s a little hit of dopamine whenever I’m able to show up for myself, blog, and then return to ‘X’ out the day. Even if whatever I wrote felt like a hot mess of words, that feeling of finishing, of crossing yet another day off is rife with satisfaction. And as someone who is frightened of putting myself out there, of exposure, of worrying about what others think, dealing with imposter syndrome, the act of blogging helps me with just practicing how to show up and detach from the outcome, that my words are simply “good enough.”
I’ve been calling myself “a writer” and feeling like a liar because I really haven’t published much in my life, despite having gone to a MFA program in creative writing almost a decade ago. Well okay, it’s not a complete lie because the work that I often do for clients is heavily writing-related (copywriting, copyediting, ghostwriting, blogging, social media writing, etc). Also I’ve been showing up for my novel in bits and spurts for over a decade now. But I have been frightened for so long of sharing anything with anyone. There are half-written short stories, multiple versions of my novel, bits and pieces of a possible memoir, Medium article drafts, even a blog post I’d written back in January 2019 about my 7-Day extended fast for autophagy and cancer prevention — all languishing on my hard-drive. Quite frankly, I’m tired of it. I’m sick of being afraid. I have so much to say, and have already said a lot of it, and still have even more to add to the conversation out there in the world. The act of blogging, I’ve come to realize, is really a practice of being seen, of confidence. And hopefully, of sharing something that might be helpful to at least one person somewhere out in the world.
This quote by James Clear is another reason I track:
“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.”
I can’t wait to ‘X’ off Day 365 and see just how my writing life, and identity as a writer, will have changed since beginning this new practice. I suspect that things will have shifted by then!
I’ll be honest. I really didn’t feel like showing up today. At all. I almost talked myself out of blogging just now. But I had made a promise to myself to show up, whether or not anyone reads this or not. Because I had vowed to myself to take on a challenge to blog every day for 365 days (today happens to be ‘Day 9’; that’s 356 more days to go). Even if I don’t have anything to say, I had told myself I’d lay down a paragraph. A sentence, even.
So here I am. It’s almost 10pm Central Time and I’m here wondering what I should write about. I decided to title this “Showing Up.” Because showing up really is half the battle; at least, that’s what they say. The mere act of showing up for others, but more importantly for yourself, is crucial. As someone who battles with depression from time to time, this is even more so. Repeatedly breaking vows to yourself about starting a new habit can wear your spirits down. You begin to lose trust with yourself. Showing up is trusting yourself not to be perfect. And as a perpetual procrastinator and perfectionist, this is why I’ve struggled for so long to finish my novel, other writing, and all the other tasks and projects I’ve told myself I’d do. Thus, the cycle of shame, inadequacy and guilt. So this new practice of showing up on the page is a good thing. Even if I really don’t have anything pithy to say.
There are some soothing videos on YouTube I really like to watch to relax, usually related to cooking, minimalist bulletjournal planning, or knitting.
Well, Darrell just turned me onto this guy’s channel: Primitive Technology. Watching his videos is strangely soothing, hypnotic, making you want to go out into the wild and get your hands in wet mud to build your own kilns or tiles to build the roof of your hut — no modern tools whatsoever! Even in that survivalist show, Naked and Afraid, participants can bring one tool, such as a knife or cooking pan from home. Not this guy from Australia. Whether he’s weaving a basket, building a furnace, making a hut, or making flour he’s grown from arrowroot tubers, he’s doing this all by hand. This makes me wish, during our time living full-time in a RV, boondocking, traveling and staying in BLM land or forest roads in parts of the U.S., and then later for about six months in Baja North, Baja Sur, and then mainland Mexico, that we had done something like this.
My stepdaughter who is visiting us commented that these videos, especially the one where the guy actually makes iron, is a lot like playing Minecraft, the video game she plays with her little brother and dad.
Watch these videos for yourself to get inspired. Or at the very least, to soothe your nerves and activate your parasympathetic nervous system to rest and relax!
Just a quick little post here about accountability and how grateful I feel to have it. I met a poet/novelist/playwright/meditation professor back in 2016 in a writing workshop in San Francisco. Ever since then, I’ve been meeting with her on and off for most weeks, meeting via Skype on mornings, despite me living in California then and her living in Pennsylvania. We focused mostly on making progress with our novels, but oftentimes, it became time focused on our own work. She on her academic writing and me with my client work, mostly focused on copywriting and editing and other freelance-writing-type work. And even when I moved into a RV full-time with my family and stayed in areas where wifi was scant, we made it work, texting or emailing each other so we knew we were writing.
We met, and still meet, via Skype or FaceTime, most mornings and work using Pomodoros (25 minutes of focused work, followed by a 5 minute break). Soon, we introduced meditation into the equation and began almost every session with 5 to 30 minute meditation sessions. Since she also taught meditation to her students in her university, this felt like a mini-meditation class. This calmed our spirits and nervous system down so we could settle into whatever work we were about to do, whether creative or not.
Today we met up after not meeting since the holidays and I was glad when she reminded me the importance of not giving up on my novel, which I had honestly put on hiatus for the moment, only working on it when I felt like it. Instead, I told her, I was working on my blogging practice. What about the five minutes you used to do every day? she reminded me. She recalled how happy I had felt even after just five minutes, how often five minutes would turn into ten, and sometimes 20, and times when it was longer. Being in the revision stage of my novel has been scary, and many times, made me feel lethargic. I’d rather wash dishes than have to risk figuring out what to do next. After a few minutes of resisting with her, what she said actually resonated. I could feel it in my heart space, my gut. I’m beginning to realize how much my body has to come on board for me to know it’s the right thing to do. And in this case, I’m glad I listened to my body. My friend and I both agreed to just five minutes, and no more, to just work on our respective and neglected novels. I opened up my Scrivener file where I had last left off, freewriting about a knot I had to unravel with a few of the characters in my novel, in a certain scene in particular. And in just five minutes, I felt a little less lethargic, a little less scared. And even, dare I say, a little more excited about what was to come next.
And that, my friends, is the power of accountability. Oftentimes in life, you need someone else to remind you to keep going. To remind you of the important things you’ve almost forgotten. I must say, I feel immense gratitude that I have found a friend who gives me that accountability!
Today, while meditating, I began to fret. Worried about something I said, worried about how it was received. As sometimes happens during meditation, thought bubbles of worry floated through my head. I wished I could help a grieving friend and her kids more than I had been, wishing I could wave a magic wand and her loved one could come back to life. I worried about all the things I said I’d do for my writing, work, family, friends, but hadn’t. Like a snowball hurtling down a hill, these worry balloons became bigger with each breath.
But then this word appeared:
Detach.
I held onto it. That’s it! My clenched stomach began to settle. Detach from the outcome. And the more I thought about detaching, letting go, the more I realized that detachment is really the same as Trust. The two words are synonymous.
I don’t know what will happen in the future and how my words may have landed on others. I don’t know what will happen with my friend and others I love. I can future-trip about it and frighten myself into a frenzy of foolish panic. Or I can just trust. I can just detach. Even if the worst happens, I’ll figure it out. And trust that the people in my life and the decisions we all make will work out in some form or other, at least in the end. Detachment. It’s a form of surrender. It’s a form of trust. And ultimately, it’s a path toward ease and peace.
Living in a RV full-time forces you to live more simply
With only about 100 sq ft of living space, our family of three had to whittle down our belongings into what was truly needed. This meant clothes that were actually worn day after day, not just for special occasions. Clothes that matched the weather, the season. No winter clothes while traveling through blazing-hot Mazatlan weather in June. We had kept some stashed above our truck cab in weather-proof boxes. No longer did I carry unnecessary beauty products like tubes of hair gel or bottles of face toner. I never even used a hair dryer because I didn’t want to use too much electricity. Now even as we’ve recently moved from living full-time in the RV into a rented apartment, I have no desire to buy unnecessary beauty products I used to keep crammed inside my cabinets of my house like argan oil, hair creme, hairspray, a plethora of facial products. Now my beauty routine is simple: basic shampoo and conditioner for my hair, and facial cleanser and moisturizer. That’s it!
It’s easy to reset your circadian rhythm with Vitamin D-3 from the sun
Every morning, it was easy to open the front door of our RV and step out into nature for some easily accessible Vitamin D3 to flood the retinas of our eye sockets. This is a quick and easy way to reset your circadian rhythms, helping you to improve your sleep. This is something I miss but still try to apply every morning, making sure I raise the shades of my bedroom to greet the sun, get in an early walk out in the fresh air.
You don’t need that much stuff from Amazon (ex. clothes, books, cooking utensils)
Living in a RV, we rarely ever ordered from Amazon (exception: Kindle books). With a dearth of space, you begin to realize: Who really needs to order that much from Amazon anyway? Especially when you’d order a pen and have it arrive with a mess of plastic packaging in a giant cardboard box; what a waste! When we were living in a RV in Mexico for about five months, we never really stayed put long enough to order anything from Amazon. Besides, we couldn’t even figure out how to do it (although some friendly Canadians in Los Braillies, in B.C.S., Mx, told us there was a way). While in the States, we had delivered a few items from Amazon at one or two RV parks and used Amazon locker from time to time, but the longer we lived in the RV, we realized we could really do without the huge online retailer. Most things you could buy at your local store, wherever that may be.
It makes you realize that nothing is ever permanent
Even now living in an apartment we’re leasing for one year, we now have the mindset that if it doesn’t work out, we can always pick up and go somewhere else. Back to Mexico, or some place we had never lived. Somewhere like Malaysia or Taiwan, where my parents grew up and many of my relatives still live. Or anywhere in the world that isn’t crazy expensive. What we’re most happy about is that we got rid of being tied to the ball and chain of a mortgage and property taxes. Now we feel much more freedom to move as we please.
Spending time with family is time well-spent
The year we lived in a RV was the most time we’ve ever spent with our kid. Short of that first year of babyhood, we have never spent so much time as a family unit before, especially in such close proximity. In the past, when we lived in a house together, we were all in our separate spaces, almost separate lives. With us working outside of the house then, we’d only see each other as a cohesive family after work or on weekends. And when my 26-year-old stepdaughter, also a traveler, came to visit us from India, where she had lived for over six months, we had the best time out in Redinger, CA, not too far from Yosemite, as well as Chabot in Castro Valley, CA, the two siblings chatting and making videos together, laughing their hearts out. We’d watch the stars in the sky at night as we cooked dinner outdoors on the grill. During the day, we’d go for long hikes. When my dad had emergency spinal surgery last summer, we parked our RV in the hospital parking lot in San Leandro, CA and got to spend even more quality time with him as he recovered from surgery. Because my parents live in Livermore, CA, we parked our RV in Del Valle Regional Park and again, spent more time with my mom, dad and 80-something-year-old aunt than I ever did when we lived in a house only 40-ish minutes drive away from them. It’s funny how living in a RV can make you closer to your family!
You learn to conserve resources such as water
We showered less, washed hair less often
Wiped plates off into the garbage (even now in the apartment)
Use less water to run while brushing teeth, face, and hands
You’re less concerned with needing everything to be clean (including yourself!)
Before RV Life, I was highly-critical about public bathrooms and camping showers to be hotel-level clean. After RV Life, my standards have significantly lowered. Now my husband and I pride ourselves in being able to use the grossest bathroom. In one RV park in Mexico, we showered in a bathroom that had only cold water running with barely any water pressure, and mice poop on the wall shelves.
It gave us faith in humanity again — most people are good people (unlike what the media will tell you)
Whether in Montana or California, Mexico or the U.S., there were plenty of people we connected with. When we first began living in a RV and I was still trying to figure out this new life, there was no shortage of friendly folks who readily gave us useful advice on where to go and how to live when you live in a RV. We’d meet them while dumping sewage or at RV parks from Colorado to Utah, Idaho to Wyoming. In Texas, a woman with blonde hair streaked with gray came inside our RV and personally showed me how to roll up my clothes in the storage areas for better efficiency, also showing me her favorite maps. A man we met in Utah wrote down in my bullet journal all his favorite places to boondock on BLM land or Forest Roads all over the U.S. At each place we stayed at, we were given suggestions by our neighbors on where to go next, since we weren’t as destination focused, taking more of a slow travel approach. Boondocked next to a creek in Wyoming, shortly after visiting the Grand Tetons, we met a solo traveler from Switzerland on a motorcycle. Sharing wine, we gained insight about his almost two-year-long world travel, from Africa to Australia and beyond. He joked with us that the hardest border he faced of all the places he had gone so far in the world was entering the U.S. through Canada only days before. As he collected flag stickers from each country on his motorcycle, he made sure to scrape off the flag sticker from Iran, because he knew he could face difficulty. Headed for Mexico, we shared info we had learned at the Overland Expo we had attended where a panel gave advice for those traveling by motorcycle, van or RV to Mexico. While there at that panel, we had a chance to meet one of the two badass overlanding ladies, also a couple and authors of the book, I Can. Will. Women Overlanding the World. We had followed them on Instagram, inspired by their travels as a couple. In Mexico, I must have lost either my iPhone or wallet at least three times at a restaurant. But every single time, I found it where I had left it, nothing stolen. One time in Cabo, I left my phone in an Uber driver’s car. About an hour later, the driver showed up at the restaurant he had dropped us off in and brought back my cellphone. At the Overland Expo in Flagstaff, Arizona one year where we exhibited our RV with Blissmobil, we met an amazing guy from Colorado who had connected with my husband on Instagram before who showed up with fresh duck, chicken, even emu, eggs, plus bacon and meat. Another former ambulance driver in New Mexico bought us breakfast so he could meet us to chat about our RV. In Baja, we met up with another guy from Arizona who converted his ambulance into an expedition vehicle, who invited us for a potato bake on the beach and later showed us the best spots to boondock on the beach at La Ventana and El Sargento, bringing our family to enjoy a bike ride amid the abundant cacti. A Mexican mechanic from Guanajuato with a love for 4×4 trucks offered to help us with any mechanical problems, should we find ourselves in a bind. Via Instagram, he asked if we could meet up at the RV park and gave us abundant tips on where to go, where to eat. Another couple who had found my husband’s Instagram feed invited my husband and son to their home for a meal while I flew to San Miguel de Allende for a writer conference, later renting us their own stand up paddle boards to use while facing the Sea of Cortez. In Mazatlan, shortly after we left Baja Sur on a ferry to the mainland, we met a young YouTuber born and raised there who made a video of our RV. In Guadalajara my former neighbor in Oakland’s parents who grew up there insisted on having us over for drinks (they used to make and sell their own tequila) and taking us to their neighborhood restaurant to eat traditional Mexican meal. Our last time living in a RV while parked in Austin, TX this past summer searching for apartments so our kid could attend high school, we met a couple who is as into keto and carnivore as we are. We actually sat together chatting together like old friends for over FOUR hours! They have started a Keto Nomad group online for people who are into RV life and are also keto. Or at the very least, are interested in both for the future.
A surprise for us introverts: we experienced less social anxiety
Living in a RV, especially a unique expedition vehicle such as our Blissmobil, definitely pushes you out of your comfort zone. I used to live in a 3000 sq ft home, and even then, there were times I was reluctant to even go outside to get the mail, for fear of having to say hi to the neighbors, to bump into people. I’ve always been socially awkward, as an introvert pretending to be an extrovert. Time with people tends to suck the life force out of me. But surprisingly, I have never been as social this past year or so since we ventured out of our comfort zone to live and travel in a RV full-time. Every day, one of us would make conversations with total strangers. At gas stations, grocery stores, RV parks, park grounds, even while stopped in traffic. People of all backgrounds stopped to talk to us. And once we shared our story of how we decided to buy this Blissmobil/LMTV, stemming from my husband’s cancer, it was amazing how much of an ice-breaker and equalizer it was. Also much to our surprise, we met people from all over the world via Instagram, who because of our shared interests and love for RVlife, travel, expedition vehicles, or keto eating — many now feel like old friends!
Hanging out in nature catching Vitamin D3 with my family.
There is so much more I want to write about this, but my plan is to take some time to look at the multiple journals I kept while we were on the road. My husband wrote more extensively about traveling in an expedition vehicle/RV and some technical stuff too. We met so many awesome and kind-hearted people from his blog and both of our Instagram accounts. It really does give us faith in humanity!
With Thanksgiving this past week, I’ve been thinking about “Gratitude.” A friend of mine posted a writing exercise on her newsletter and I decided to open up a spread on my bullet journal notebook, write the word, GRATITUDE, in big green loopy cursive letters, then fill the space with whatever pops up in my head. Surprisingly, doing this writing exercise actually helped me on Thanksgiving Day feel even more gratitude than I have in a long time. It helped plant seeds in my heart. The very act of writing things down, especially by hand, helped me start to extrapolate the broad vague concepts, such as “my health” into specific details, such as “lower blood sugar.” At one point, I started writing down words like “air” and “nature.” I began appreciating the little things, realizing there was so much in life to be thankful for. I started the exercise feeling numb and ho hum. But by the end, I prickled with excitement about all the positive reasons to stay alive. As a result, I began appreciating all the elements that make up a life.
Last night, I drank a little too much pinot noir and accidentally spilled the glass all over my gratitude page. But the words blurred into black images mixed with burgundy red, and even then, I was again surprised by the beauty that happens when we mess up, whether in life or on the page. And you know what? It felt just fine. That’s all I have to say for now.
Have you ever climbed up 15 flights of stairs and told yourself: “It’s a HIIT workout; I’m working out my glutes!” When really, it was your way to avoid making chit-chat with others on the elevator?
I was officially diagnosed with “Social Anxiety” around 2008, shortly after I enrolled in graduate school, among a string of other diagnoses such as ADHD and Bipolar Disorder (Type 2). This did not come as a surprise for me, as I’ve always struggled being around others, especially large groups of people. Memories of hiding out in the library at recess and rushing to my car with my younger sister as soon as the meetings at the Kingdom Hall ended (we grew up with a Jehovah’s Witness mom) were never far from my mind.
Sometimes I’m surprised I’ve even made it this far in my life — having married, had kids (a biological son and a stepdaughter who I raised since a toddler), have friends — in fact, a large group of them, even got jobs. Made it through college and grad school. Was in a mom’s group and countless others. Volunteered, even.
I guess I want you to know that if you’ve ever struggled with something remotely like this, that you’re not alone. That you can be surrounded by friends and family yet still struggle with social anxiety. I’d love to share what I’ve learned along the way. What I want people to know is that you can come to peace with this, that there is something you can do. There are simple non-expensive and simple resources such as eating better, learning meditation, adding exercise into your life, and focusing on a sleep routine. And that therapy — good therapy, that is — is truly priceless.
CBT (cognitive behavorial therapy) can be especially helpful when you struggle with social anxiety. When I had a breakdown after I entered my MFA program in college, shortly after I had my son and still struggling with post-partum depression, I remember actually googling “Social Anxiety” and somehow stumbling onto a page that gave me hope. I read about CBT and how it can help people who get high anxiety around other people get through this. I still remember going to the counseling office at Mills College in Oakland, CA, and talking to a counselor who referred me to Dr. H in a little office on College Avenue in the Rockridge area. Even though my insurance covered 40% of my sessions, I still believe going out-of-network was worth every penny.
Some of the tips Dr. H had me do seemed silly at first. She had me learn some meditation and mindfulness tips. When I felt panicked, she had me focus on my five senses. What did the floor feel like beneath my bare feet? Was it hard? Cold? What colors did I notice around me? Green tiles? Red petals? What did I smell? What did I hear? What did I see? How did my body feel? I began learning, like Mr. Miyagi teaching Daniel-san in the movie I loved as a teenager, The Karate Kid, how to change the lenses–and habits– of our lives in order to live. I told her about my fears, how I worried people were judging me, were thinking the worst of me. Especially when sharing semi-autobiographical fiction in a MFA program and frightened about everyone’s opinions, fretting about the subtext beneath the written comments they had left on the hard copies of excerpts of my novel. I remember running to the bathroom after class ended reading my classmate’s comments, barely unable to breathe. So what? she asked. So what if they thought this about you. She had me do the “So What?” exercise. I had to write out what I believed they’d think about me after any particular event, such as a literary reading, for example. So what if they think I’m narcissistic? If they think I’m a loser? If they think an Asian woman of my age should not be thinking or saying this or that? That I’m a terrible writer that didn’t belong in the fiction writing program? So effing what? She would have me write until the “so what’s” didn’t make anymore sense, had lost their logical conclusions. That was one exercise.
Another one we practiced that helped immensely was the sticker exercise. One day, Dr. H had me put on a bright green dot sticker and adhere it to my forehead. She put a red one on hers and we walked out of her office into the bookstore next door. She asked me to predict how others would react. I told her they’d laugh. They’d point. They’d be disgusted. I mean, who in their right mind would go out into a public place with a sticker on their face. Right? She wrote down my predictions. Then we decided to head out to this hipster bookstore next door. There were like four customers browsing books on the shelves. One older man looked at me. But for just a few seconds. I met his eyes, but he quickly averted them. That was it. I was surprised! Dr. H then suggested that we go out onto the sidewalk, outside the bookstore, and wave at cars driving by. She suggested we jump up and down and even kick our feet up into the air. We were both Asian American women in our 30s then with primary color sticker dots from Avery and long dark hair walking down the street in an upscale neighborhood in Oakland, California, waving and smiling, drawing attention to ourselves unlike what we would normally do on any given weekday afternoon. But here we were, and nobody even so much as honked their horn. What I realized that day was that nobody gave an absolute shit about us. And Dr. H, I thought, was actually pretty! Later, Dr. H told me the story about how her skirt got caught in an escalator at the Rockridge BART station one evening during rush hour, and even though she was left standing in her underwear and pantyhose, no one really, in the end, gave a shit. It was an important lesson. It taught her that everyone, when it came down to it, was mostly focused on themselves. Not her. All this time, she had worried that people were thinking of her, were judging her, but when this most embarrassing moment of her life happened, she was largely ignored. It taught her a lesson that we don’t need to worry that much about what other people think about us. Because people really are more worried about themselves!
Doing that exercise that day was life-changing for me. I came to realize that there was no reason to be that frightened about what others think. Of course, it didn’t solve EVERYthing. But something in me shifted that day.
Later, when I became an adjunct professor at a community college teaching English in an Asian American learning community, I had my students do that same sticker exercise on campus and come back and write about what they discovered after doing it. We also did a pre-writing exercise where they predicted what others would think, say, and react. Like me, they discovered they were wrong.
Today is Day 2 of 365 days of my new self-imposed writing challenge of blogging daily. Of getting out of my comfort zone. Even though I’ve been doing a Morning Pages practice for years, writing and journaling something almost every day, I’ve been a little too precious with my words. I’ve decided to blog daily as a way to manifest writing being an important value, an important part of my life. It’s always been important, but I’m hoarding these words of mine like Gollum, so precious. So afraid of losing these words. I need to trust that my words being out there, shared with others, even if no one ever reads them, is safe. It’s a safe act. And it doesn’t really matter what anyone thinks about what I write and how I write. Even if the grammar is off. Even if the prose is gross. I just don’t care. At least, in theory. But that’s the practice. The more I put stuff out there regularly, consistently, the more I’ll be less precious. A less precious practice. Perhaps I’ll even become more patient with myself.
The very act of getting out of my comfort zone, I’ve realized, is how I can grow as a human being. As someone who has battled depression and anxiety much of my life, I’m beginning to realize that staying too comfortable, being afraid to try new things, to fear having to shake my life upside down like a Christmas snow globe, is how I will stagnate as a person, only to grow stale and numb to the beauty of life. Staying too comfortable, in my mind, is a recipe for complacency–and often times, a straight path to the depths of depression.
The more I think about it, a large part of my life IS about getting out of the comfort zone. And a large part of this is seeing it as a series of experiments.
Some examples:
Selling our 3,500 sq ft house of ten years in the Bay Area to move into a 100 sq ft expedition vehicle/adventure RV for over a year with our son, six months of it in Mexico.
Leaving my steady-ish job teaching English at a community college to becoming a freelancing virtual assistant (which made it possible to live and work remotely, becoming location-independent; this transition was less scary with the help of this empowering lady.)
Leaving California and all my friends and family to live full-time in a RV traveling to other states such as Utah, Montana, Wyoming, Texas and then Mexico, where we considered becoming ex-pats in Guadalajara or San Miguel de Allende.
Leaving the life of always moving to suddenly not. Full-time RV-life to apartment life. Once an homeowner to renting. California to Texas. A shit ton of friends to zero.
Taking the leap to ramp off all meds since 2011 for depression, anxiety and ADHD to choose food as medicine–first no flour and no sugar, gluten-free, then Paleo/Primal, then keto, followed by carnivore.
Sharing with others publicly about my diagnosis of bipolar disorder and how eating healthy and ketosis has helped me feel and look better in my late 40s than my 20s and 30s. Also the very act of sharing a photo of myself to others is radically scary.
Trying keto as an adjunct to conventional chemo and radiation when my husband got cancer in 2014.
Taking the leap to homeschool/unschool our kid for a few years instead of blind faith to a certain kind of education we once believed in.
Extended 7-day fasts without food (just water) for autophagy and cancer prevention.
Trying psychedelics for healing (something I’m planning to write about in more depth).
Attending MAPS’ first Psychedelic Science Summit in Austin, TX to learn more about how it can help with PTSD, depression, mental health and healing trauma.
Lately, I’ve been feeling a little down, now about three months into living in a semi-permanent place in Austin, TX, where we’ve settled after the excitement of full-time RV life, now living in a rented apartment. Our son is now thriving in his new high school, happy. That’s the most important thing to witness as a parent, is to watch your kid thrive. He’s even working out, spending time in the gym, running around the lake with friends. But for me, I’ve found myself a little stagnated. It’s crazy how easy it is to get into a rut. So I’m shaking up that snow globe again by trying another experiment.
I’m curious to see where a year of writing will take me…
