Category: wisdom

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In Ancient Times

I cleared out more files yesterday and found these two gems. I figured I could combine them for a two-fer: Bow Tie o’ the Day and Tie o’ the Day. I must say I have no clue why I was attempting to climb into DHS through a classroom window. Nor do I have a clue who was there to take a photo of me doing it. But seriously, who breaks IN to high school? And look at the minuscule amount of weight I was lifting in P.E. How in the world could lifting that not-heavy amount of weight make my armpit sweaty? It’s a mystery.

The neckwear thing was merely a sometimes passion during my years at DHS, but that can be explained by the fact that teenagers are, by definition, not so bright. Teenagers’ brains haven’t caught up with their growing bodies. I was too stoopid to know I was in love with neckwear. I remember I usually wore clip-on bow ties on my baseball shirts to play church softball, but other than that, the wearin’ o’ the neckwear at events was sporadic for me. Still, it’s obvious the whim-seed was there and maturing right along with the rest of me.

Most people mature. They grow up. They learn to think beyond the next two hours. Some people do not. I remember there was a time I was young enough to know all the answers. I’m glad I grew out of being confident I was right all the time, before I did irreparable damage to my life. People who know everything haven’t matured, and often their knowing everything causes them to screw up their lives– and sometimes others’ lives. (Add examples from your own life here.) Successful, content human beings can admit to being wrong and making mistakes. They can admit they will always have much to learn from others and from continuing to participate in new experiences.

As I grow older, I can admit I know less and less about everything. And it’s a tremendous blessing. The pressure is off. I can roll with the world as it is, and I can also try to make it a more loving place in ways I believe in– knowing I don’t have to be right. “Right” lives next door to “perfect,” and I am not perfect.

Being intelligent is one thing. But deluding yourself that you, and only you, know all the right answers for every problem and every human being on the planet is a bigly, arrogant burden for a person to bear. Knowing the right questions to ask oneself and others– and to be content to wrestle with those unanswerable questions– is one of the secrets of living in joy.

Of course, I don’t know all the answers, so I could be wrong about everything I just wrote.

End of Sabbath sermon.

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A Hairsy Disappointment: They Still Ain’t Cut

Sometimes I become impatient with being patient, to the point that I become impatient with myself for being impatient. Even with a kids’ Tie o’ the Day to pal around with, my patience with my head fur has worn deli-sliced thin.

I trust only Miss Tiffany with my hairs, but I am not pleased that Great Clips does not take appointments. On Saturday, June 1st, I called Great Clips to find out if Miss Tiffany was working. She was not, and the manager told me she’d be working today from 2 to 9. This afternoon, I put on my glee and made sure my butt was sitting in the Great Clips reception area by 1:50 PM. NO MISS TIFFANY! Alas, her schedule had been changed. She worked from 9-1 today, and then she works from 6-9 this evening. I coulda been sittin’ in that hairs chair at 9 this morning, if I had been able to read Great Clip’s mind. Frustrating, I tell you!

I was already on an impatience overload. I am soooo hankering to wear some head hairs that make sense. It was all I could do to survive from Saturday until this afternoon. It’s killing me. After months of being ready for the hairs to be cut, you’d think a couple of days more– and then a few more hours– wouldn’t matter. It does. It’s driving me nuts, which means I’m driving myself nuts. It’s not Miss Tiffany who’s making me impatient. I am choosing to drive myself batty over a minor thing.

We are an impatient species, and I don’t know why. There is so much for our brains to appreciate and take stalk of right where we are– no matter where we find ourselves. But no, we gotta have something more, something different, something bigly-er than whoever it is we think we’re in competition with. Life can be fun, but it is not a game. There is no “winning.” Getting there first (wherever “there” is) is not the point. We should spend less time worrying about “winning” and more time helping others get where they’re headed.

I deeply believe we are here to be happy. And I also believe our happiness is individual to us. Mine doesn’t look like yours. In fact, it doesn’t look exactly like anyone else’s. You’re unique, so your happiness will be unique to you. I also believe our happiness is our own responsibility. You’ll get what you create. So you better be careful exactly what it is you’re creating for yourself.

HINT: Never, ever hide your “happy.” Share your happy, even with those who don’t understand it. Happy longs to be shared, spread, and even spilled. Sharing is the finest way to get your own happy to grow.

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“Cost” And “Worth” Are Two Different Things

Yesterday I went to an appointment to check in with one of my crazy head docs. I see Dr. Day sporadically, for meds maintenance and talk therapy. I see her probably a half-dozen times per year. My last appointment with her was a couple of months ago, before I began the TMS. In fact, she is the one who told me– months ago– about a number of brain therapies for bipolar drepression which I might want to check into, one of which was TMS. She hasn’t been involved in any aspect of the TMS itself.

Anyhoo… The last time I visited with Dr. Day, I was flat and affectless as could be. Of course, that’s the reason she brought up TMS in the first place. But yesterday, before I could sit my butt down on the couch in her office, she said, “You have some life in you today! You’re looking alive!” I said, “I only have two TMS sessions left.” And then she said, “Oh my gosh! I forgot you went forward with the TMS. Do you feel like it’s helping?” It must be working if she noticed a difference in me. That was exactly what I needed to hear.

The truth is I haven’t been sure TMS is working. I don’t know how I’m supposed to be feeling while I’m going through the treatments. I do know that whatever’s going on (or isn’t going on) is happening gradually. It’s like that pesky ten pounds that somehow makes its way to your gut: It creeps on. You don’t see every tiny blob of fat as it decides to make its home on you, but one day you go to button your shorts and you finally notice ten pounds somehow showed up under your very eyes.

My potential brain change, however, would be a welcome change. But mostly, I think I’m too close to my situation to really notice TMS effects. I’m with me 24/7. I’m looking so closely at every little thing I do, every thought I have, and every hint of emotion that I don’t know if I’ve improved or not. Is my depression really improving? Am I starting to feel authentic things deeply? Or is it just my wishful thinking that I see some progress?

But Dr. Day’s reaction to my simply walking into her office yesterday eased my worries of TMS failure immensely. Her reaction makes it pretty clear to me that I’m probably doing noticeably better than I was before the TMS.

When Suzanne and I first discussed the possibility of me trying TMS to combat my evil bipolar depression, one of the minuses of going ahead with treatment was the high cost. Insurance covers only a wee bit of it, and that’s after the Treatment Resistant Mood Disorder Clinic @ UNI did much begging with the insurance company on my behalf. I think I’ve been trying to see more bang for my buck, so to speak. If I’m payin’ bigly bucks, I expect to see bigly positive change. But I’ve decided it’s kinda selfish and demanding of me to think that way. The desired outcome would be one enormous emotional change, but I’m thinking the non-flashy, simpler, thousands of tiny changes might add up to a longer-lasting, more thorough mental change.

If you think about it, you’ll see that’s how most change happens. Need a cinderblock fence around your yard? That’ll happen one cinderblock at a time. Teaching your kid how to walk? That’ll be one step at a time. Teaching someone to drive a car? That’ll be one driving skill upon another. Need a doctor to hack out 2/3 of your stoopid pancreas? The hours-long surgery officially begins with one cut. And then the next thing happens, and then the next, next thing happens. And so on.

It’ll probably take some time for me to truly analyze how effective the TMS has been. Patience is better than fretting about it. Since Suzanne is the person I’m around most, she’s the one whose opinion on the treatment’s success or failure is most crucial. She’s not ready to offer up her vote yet.

When we talked about cost and time commitment for the required 36 TMS treatments, I asked Suzanne, “If, after the boatloads of money and eons of time spent, TMS ends up helping my loony head improve only 1 percent, will it be worth it to you that it cost us our emergency fund?”

Suzanne is famous for being silent while she completely thinks through every word of her answers to even the simplest questions before she speaks. (Sometimes it’s annoying.) But she wasn’t silent at all after I asked her that question. Her head cogs didn’t turn. They didn’t even creak. She just immediately said, “Yes. It’ll be worth it.”

See why I agreed to give it a try?

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Try, Try, Try

Paw prints are almost as fashionably interesting as paisley or polka dots. Stick ’em on a jumbo Bow Tie o’ the Day and the dapper-ness is undeniable.

This morning, Bow Tie was yet another hit at the TMS clinic. I guess my neckwear has been the talk of the clinic. My treatment is at 7AM, and at 6:55 some of the nurses, technicians, and office assistants make a beeline to the waiting room to see what neckwear I’ve got going on. One technician told me I am not allowed to ever be finished with my TMS treatments, unless I promise to stop in daily to show off the neckwear I’m wearing that day. I’ve said it time and time again: Bow ties make people jolly up a bit. It’s my purpose in life to wear the neck happiness.

Bow Tie and I talked it over. We were so disappointed about the non-dying o’ the hairs yesterday, and we just couldn’t let it go. We got ourselves so worked up about the whole thing that we decided it was our obligation to try to color the hairs again. That’s what we did this morning after I got back from TMS. Let me just say this: The second time was not the charm.

It’s true that my sideburn hairs took a bit of the VIXEN VIOLET. But overall, our trying was for naught. I’m still glad I tried dying my hairs a second time though. Trying and failing, and then trying again– those are valuable actions. I recommend we all do more of that, with both bigly and insignificant things. Find your passions– bigly and small– and grab ’em. Hold on to your passions like they’re your children. They kind of are. You’ll succeed. You’ll fail. Again and again. But only if you keep trying.

Except for the dozen or so sorta purple hairs, I’m stuck with my stoopid hairs and their natural color. I don’t have an opinion about whether I like my natural hairs hues, but I like my patches and streaks of gray. I will honestly be pleased if/when I am all gray. I think gray hair is gorgeous. I think it’s quite becoming to most faces. I’ve earned my gray hairs anyway, and I’m not alone. Just sayin’.

BTW I don’t know why I’ve been sermon-ing lately. Has TMS turned me into a priestess whose goal is to pontificate? Well, I doubt that. I’m probably just in a bossy mood.

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My Saddle Purse Is Not Bipolar

Bow Tie o’ the Day and I stole Suzanne’s lunch hour by invading her office to do our usual off-the-wall routine. Just because we’re there, it doesn’t always mean Suzanne ceases working. On this day, not even The Saddle Purse could make her look away from the three computers sitting on her desk. She thinks she’s so important that the entire Utah public education system will fall apart if she stops to eat some yogurt and string cheese for ten minutes. She might be right.

I decided I should add something I didn’t include in yesterday’s post about depression and the depression side of bipolarity. It’s important for people to understand that a devastating depression does not generally correlate to the quality of a clinically depressed person’s life. [There is something called “situational depression,” which can occur when someone’s life is in tatters. But it tends to be not very deep and it goes away when the situation improves.]

Real depression doesn’t care about the quality of your life. It just shows up, like any illness. Take me, for example. I’ve experienced bouts of depression since I was a kid, and yet I’ve had a relatively tragedy-free, love-filled, opportunity-filled life. My life has been rich, and peopled with decent characters wherever I’ve been. All of that didn’t keep me from being bipolar though.

At this point in my life, I have the freedom to write all day. I live in a swell house. I’ve got a few bucks in The Saddle Purse. I get to travel quite a bit. I have a fine family, fine in-laws, and Suzanne. Skitter’s sleeping head is snoring on my lap even as I write this post. The evil parts of my pancreas got hacked out, and the pain they caused has mostly disappeared. I’m even satisfied that Mom is in the absolute best place for her to be for the last chapter of her life. As far as I’m concerned, I have everything. Not only does my cup runneth over, I’ve got more cups than I can count and they all runneth over.

But none of the gifts my life contains has kept me from being bipolar. None of it has kept this swamp of depression away. Mental illness does what it wants. All I can do is try to manage it. Meds help. Talk therapy helps. Practicing mindfulness helps. Writing about it helps. I hope TMS will help. Each of these things helps a little bit. At least, they help ME. I know they do not help everyone who is bipolar or depressed. See, my life is lucky even where that’s concerned: There are things that help me manage my bipolar head– and still this deep depression shows up whenever it wants.

I don’t get cocky about how well I have been able to manage my bipolarity throughout my life. I don’t get complacent that I have access to things that help me. All I can say is that I’ve managed to make it to this day. I can’t afford to act like I will still be able to manage it tomorrow. So far, so good.

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It’s Impossible To Visit A Newborn Empty-handed

A new baby doesn’t yet have the remotest clue it needs material items. It doesn’t own anything, and it doesn’t care to. A baby doesn’t even know it is bereft of stuff. For some reason though, we can’t stand that babies have nothing. We lather on the gifts– the toys, the clothes, the books, the furniture, etc..

Infants aren’t much aware of material objects, and they certainly don’t yet know the concept of “ownership.” Give ’em a couple of years, and one of the few words they will know– and will use annoyingly often– is “mine.” But right in the beginning of their baby lives, they seek only a few basic body feelings: a full tummy, warm skin, and a dry butt. We provide the objects that aid in the creation of these feelings for them: formula/milk, blankies, and diapers and Butt Paste.

So what absolute material baby-need comes next after Butt Paste? Neckwear o’ the Day, of course. There it is, up there in Grace Anne Blackwelder’s Kardashian-esque closet. Center of closet, top shelf. The box says “Dad & Daughter” and contains a Tie o’ the Day for Dad, and a matching Bow Tie Headband o’ the Day for Grace. I guarantee this initial foray into daddy-daughter neckwear will be life-changing– in the best of ways– for both Bishop Travis and his daughter. Oh, the power o’ neckwear to bring us close!

It is so important to pass along family traditions of all kinds. I’m part of Gracie’s family, and part of my contribution to the positive traditions she’ll benefit from learning about is my bow ties and ties, and all things clash fashion. Over time, I hope Gracie and I will connect by experiencing all kinds of silly and serious family traditions together. Ultimately, connection is the bigly purpose of learning and sharing traditions. Connection is kinda the point of our entire journey. It is its own tradition.

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Mom Gets More Than One Day

Bow Tie o’ the Day is providing Mom with some early Mother’s Day flowers. We’re starting to honor the Queen Bee Mother a couple of days early, just because we want to.

I’m guessing this portrait of Mom was taken around 45 years ago, in the early 70’s. Her hair has the “height” she always said she needed it to have. She probably wants extremely high hair now that she’s shrinking. I don’t care how much she shrinks, she’s still the Big Helen. At 88, she’s still larger than life.

I’ve spent my conscious life hearing, from those in and out of the family, about things they’ve witnessed Mom do. I’ve heard about food she made; jokes she played; quilts she made; what she said that left the crowd in laughter; opinions she expressed, whether anyone wanted to know what she thought or not; etc. She’s a wild woman with a wild heart. She’s generous and kind. Of course, if you know Mom, you already know that.

More than once in my life, friends– some of whom haven’t even met Mom in person– jealously commented to me about Mom. I’ve heard, “I wish my mother would send home-baked cookies across the country to me.” And I’ve heard, “I wish my mother talked to me like your mom talks to you.” One of my more envious friends even said about Mom, “I wish my mother loved me like your mother loves you.”

I feel sad some of my friends didn’t have what I’ve always had. I think everybody should be loved like Mom loves me.

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What Did You Mean By That?

Mustache Bow Tie o’ the Day presents another story of my overthinking.

Since my TMS treatments are weekdays at 7 AM, I make sure to be up by 5. When I was younger, rising at 5 AM was no problem. But now that I am near-ancient, it’s a tough task. It takes me over an hour to get enough Diet Coke in me to open my eyes wide enough to drive the car safely. (A shower would help me wake up, but I prefer to shower AFTER the TMS session.) I need to be up by 5 to make sure I’m ready to drive to SLC at 6:30. You might chuckle at that, but I swear it’s true.

Before I go to bed before a treatment morning, I grab the clothes I’m gonna wear the next day and throw them in a pile so I don’t have to do any thinking when I first get out of bed. I can find my pile o’ clothes in the dark, so I don’t have to wake Suzanne by turning on the light. Well, yesterday morning I got dressed and all the way downstairs to the kitchen before I realized my pants felt funny. Sure enough, I had pulled them on backwards. Maybe you’ll remember from a previous post that I have no butt. I don’t have to unzip/unbutton to get my pants on. I just slide them on– ready for a day of having to make sure my pants don’t fall down cuz I have no butt. That’s why it took me a few minutes to notice something was not right in the jeans department. I thought briefly of wearing them backwards as just another part of the day’s clash fashion statement. But they were actually quite uncomfortable so I shed them and then re-pulled them up the correct way.

Today is Saturday, so I have no TMS. Of course, I woke up promptly at 5AM, wide awake. It wasn’t difficult to get out of bed at all, since I had no reason to. I mark it down to a cruel joke from the sleep gods. In the dark, I pulled on a t-shirt. I knew from the first moment I put it on that it was backwards.

You know me. I am always on a quest for meaning. Just a few days ago, I posted about getting a sign from the heavens because the car next to mine in a parking lot at my TMS clinic was the same weird color as the shoes I was wearing. And now this! Putting at least one piece of clothing on backwards two days in a row is a bigly coincidence– especially when I haven’t accidentally put on something backwards since I was a wee leprechaun.

And so, of course, I got right to ponderin’ about what the possible meaning of the alignment of these two backward clothing stars could mean. Is the universe trying to tell me I need to start walking backwards cuz some sort of dangerous unicorn is following me and will do me harm if I don’t see it and slay it first? Is it trying to say my clothes are hideous and I should go shopping for a new wardrobe?Did the universe prank me by putting a silly coincidence in my face– knowing I’d waste hours searching for the meaning of life in a backwards pair of Levis and an equally backwards t-shirt. (The gods must have a good laugh on me constantly.)

Or is the universe trying to say a cosmic thing to me about how I need to reverse my life’s course? You know what I finally decided? The message is this: I must sleep in my next day’s clothes! Or just get dressed in another room, with lights a’blazing.

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Here’s My Fave Wood Mustache Bow Tie

Bow Tie o’ the Day and I are preparing to iron our fancy shirts this morning, as is evidenced by the iron atop the ironing board beside me in this photo.

Although Bow Tie sports the same style of mustache as the bow tie I wore yesterday, the design is interestingly different. This is one humongous bow tie– taller and wider than the usual bow tie by more than an inch. Also, I think the detail of paired up, in-line bow ties on the bow tie itself is a fabulous touch.

Bow Tie was designed and created by a dude I found in Kearns whose hobby is making wood bow ties. He designed this one in honor of his elderly neighbor named MAX, who has worn a bow tie every day for decades. (Sound familiar?) Feeble Max has a collection of hundreds of bow ties, but his collection does not even come close to rivaling mine. I didn’t tell him that though. I thought it would be kind of me to let the dapper, ancient Max think he’s assembled the most populous bow tie collection on the continent. Kindness rules!

BTW   19 TMS treatments down, 17 to go.

 

 

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I Joke, Therefore I Am

I take my mental health seriously, as we all should. But part of what allows me to keep trudging along through my bipolarity issues is poking fun at myself and my “crazy head.” If I can’t laugh about it daily, no matter how precarious or smooth my state of mind, I can’t survive it. In fact, my ability to joke and snark about almost any hard time in life is a great comfort to me. Being playful with words helps me be patient and firm with whatever is at hand. Humor is one of my self-defense tactics. I’ve been told my vaudeville act has helped others keep their heads healthy on occasion. I hope so.

Anyhoo… To be silly for my TMS technician this morning, I put together a hypnotic, googly-eyed Bow Tie o’ the Day (complete with matching Cufflinks o’ the Day) and a googly Shirt o’ the Day. (I did the best I could with the hat. Paisley will have to do.) My attire symbolizes my dizzy, goofy, insane, wacko, loony, mesmerizing “crazy head.” When I use these words– and others like them– in my quest to be comedic about my bipolar travels, my purpose is to take away any power they might have to mock mental illness. I own the words, so they don’t own me. I work to transform them into my zaniness.

Hey, it works for me.

15 TMS treatments down, 21 to go.