Carpe Bucko - TABarnhart

more than healing

Carpe Bucko started as a blog project and has continued on sporadically. At this point, it’s meant to describe my mental health journey. (I need to update that logo; I’ve recently come to understand that anxiety and not depression has been my life-long challenge. Depression has just been a delightful side effect.)

the moon

2020-06-30 0

John Green, on discovering the moon: I suppose I’d known moonlight existed, but somehow I had made it to adulthood without ever having a personal experience of it. And there was the world, lit by something that cannot shine light but still finds a way to share light. I

despite that….

2020-06-16 0

Life is hard, then you die. So what? Man up & deal with it. If only it were that easy.

willingness and perseverance

2020-05-25 0

Running away and hiding is, of course, the exact opposite of willingness and perseverance.

value adding

2020-05-18 0

It’s not that I don’t have any values; I am simply unable to define them. Which means, for all practical purposes, I don’t have any functional values. This is a problem. Because I have been able to get consistent long-term mental health care through the VA, meeting

what i am

2020-02-14 0

When I was in kindergarten, I was sent to stand out in the hall for getting angry during some activity. I don’t believe I had a tantrum; I just got angry. Back then, a time-out was to be kicked-out. This is one of my earliest memories. A few years

something more

2020-01-28 0

As a former Christian turned atheist, I have a lot of stuff that continues to linger. Perhaps most useful, as compared to the crap dealing with being good, guilt, etc, is the question of spirituality. While I do believe that the universe is an entirely physical thing, not only are

nothing to apologize for

2020-01-20 0

A friend messaged me the other day to chastise me for not turning to them for help when my ex-housemate robbed me of a bunch of stuff, including my entire month’s SNAP allocation. My immediate response was to send a return message apologizing and explaining … but then I stopped,

befriending

2019-10-19 0

It began with this sentence from the book “The Nurturing Effect” by Anthony Biglan: In the first session, the parent consultant befriended the family and began to learn about how parents were …. And my immediate reaction was: Befriend? Seriously? You could almost see the sneer. But almost immediately, a different

happy accidents

2019-09-27 0

YouTube decided I needed to meet Jeremy Fielding. For once, YouTube was right. I did need to meet Jeremy. The algorithm was trying to make me into a source of income, of course, but, by this happy accident, I found something I needed at the exact moment I needed it.

wholeness

2019-06-26 0

When I was 14, I was a lonely person. My parents had divorced, I had one friend, no real social life. So when I was welcomed by the Wednesday night Bible study at my church one day, I fell into Christianity with the desperate need for something that we all feel

love. bleah.

2019-06-17 0

Love needs to go away. Here in Pride Month, the day after Portland’s annual gasm of proud pridery, the message is loud and clear: Feel the love. All this support! all this love! Isn’t it wonderful? Yes, it is; it is wonderful to see so many Oregonians getting