Day 10 - Reach Out to Someone You Admire

I reached out, but the person I had in mind was occupied. Thwarted but undeterred, I contacted another friend/referee/mentor/teacher/fantasy-fiction nerd and spent time catching up. It is a simple delight to share your day with a fellow human being that you care about and who cares about you.

No, “what project are you doing at work” questions or other inquiries into the banalities of adult life. Instead, we talked about what our better halves were up to, how the dogs were, and made tentative plans to get everyone together in a weekend or two. Simple. Far more simple than gifs, or emojis, or pithy memes. Just a conversation where we got to hear the voice of a friend, and share the parts of our lives that most folks only know from a distance.

Day 11 - Pick One Habit to Quit

This was exquisitely difficult. So much so that I put the decision off until 9:30pm last night. While driving home from a date, I got stuck between two different roadside constructions. One that blocked the right lane, and another a few hundred yards ahead that blocked the left lane.

Driving tends to be a pleasant endeavor for me, but I was tired and I wanted to be in my bed - not sitting in gridlock while hundreds of lights pulsated around me. I had a sudden craving for an entire box of Snickers Ice Cream Bars and an indeterminate amount of Goldfish crackers.

Goldfish are my Kryptonite, and I can never eat just one Snickers Ice Cream Bar. Plus, I knew I could hit up a convenience store and buy my way into short-term junk-food decadence.

Then I remembered the challenge for today.

Then I remembered how much I like Goldfish and Snickers Ice Cream Bars.

Then I said out loud: “Your are going to feel like crap tomorrow if you binge eat tonight.” I may have used stronger language, sometimes good self-talk does not need to be polite.

Construction traffic eased, and I made my way home. No Goldfish. No Snickers Ice Cream Bars. Though my future self did feel good about my decision.

I am FINALLY awake before 5AM on a weekday. Since Vistaril, my anti-anxiety medication, is on backorder until August and has been since February, I agreed to bump my Seroquel dose from 75mg to 100mg per day to compensate.

Certainly, that tiny increase can’t have that much of an effect, right? Wrong! There is a reason we have the term “minimum effective dose.” Seroquel works great for me at 75mg, no real need to go to 100mg. I learned that because we, my psychiatrist and I, decided to try 100mg as I was transitioning onto that medication three years ago. That lasted less than a week because at 100mg I cannot get out of bed.

This is not a depression kind of stuck in bed - this is a I’m put into such a deep sleep that I remain unconscious through the six alarms sprinkled across my bedroom stuck in bed. It has been just over a week since the dose increase and I feel I am settling into it. I am looking forward to when I get Vistaril back and I can decrease the Seroquel to the level I prefer.

Today’s challenge is to plan and live the last day of my life. Sounds ominous, but there are still nine days left in this Stoic Challenge so I feel safe assuming that today will not be the last day of my life, inshahallah.

Credit to @OrionPhilosophy for the image going with my post this morning.