Category: carpe bucko

The Dodgers won the World Series and my friend won his election to local office. So why am I not giddy with delight?

I wonder if this shitshow we call 2020 could have anything to do with that?

Mindfulness is about learning to focus attention purposefully, not like a dog dragged around by a leash. Learning to be with a small irritation like an itch is an unpleasant but useful way to learn how to also be with anxiety, fear, and such. The funny thing is: it works!

Mental healthiness isn’t a quick project. It can happen so slowly, you don’t even know you’re doing it.

Mindfulness meditation involves a lot of being unmindfully distracted. It’s a normal thing. The key isn’t to stop being distracted but to acknowledge when it happens and return attention where you intend it to be. Gently, kindly.

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 look at the world, and the …

Life is hard, then you die. So what? Man up & deal with it.

If only it were that easy.

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

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 weekly (via phone thanks to Covid-19), I’m slowly …

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 later, second grade I think, I …