🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩
Not Over🎶
Power Restoration⚡
Checked Boxes✅
THE DAILY UPDATE
Three Little Things To Notice and Be Grateful For:
- Pork steaks, a Missourah delicacy.
- Magazines.
- Filled potholes.
Wordle 1,119 5/6
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
⬜🟩⬜⬜🟩
🟨🟩⬜⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Connections
Puzzle #397
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟦🟩🟪🟪
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟦🟦🟦🟦
The song in my head when I woke up today: It’s Not Over, by Daughtry
- July 11: “A Thousand Years,” by David Hodges
Favorite line from the song in my head when I woke up: I’ll try to do it right this time around
Working Tunes: A break from work involved listening to some episodes from the podcast Ransom. Wow. Evil people suck balls.
Something I’m looking forward to today: Poker night with the fellas.
Something I’m looking forward to in the next seven days: Work happy hour with colleagues next Tuesday.
Something I’m grateful for from yesterday: A great time with Boy the Elder and DIL, who came over for dinner. Pork steaks and a lot of laughter. It does the soul good.
What I’m writing: Yesterday’s two crappy pages involved writing an article for a Johnny Boy Marketing client about the importance of hip mobility for runners and exercises to promote hip flexibility.
What I’ve written: A press release I wrote as five days of power restoration efforts were wrapping up: Co-Mo Electric hoping to wrap up restoration efforts
The Holmes and Rahe Stress Test is a list of life events that, as the name might suggest, add stress. Not all things listed are bad things. Marriage, for example. A major accomplishment, for another. Of course, some are. The death of a family member. Divorce. Getting fired. Going to jail.
I took the test recently to see where things stand. The test tells you to think about the last two years and check yes or no on 43 indicators. As I progressed down the test, my one thought was, “My, my. I sure seem to be hitting that ‘Yes’ button an awful lot.”
When I hit “calculate,” it was as if alarm bells and flashing red lights started going off in my home office. I tallied 627 points, which is, evidently quite a helluva lot. Anything from 601 to 1,466 gives you, “You have a high or very high risk of becoming ill in the near future. The subject is described as high risk of illness, with 80% chances of a major health breakdown in the following 24 months.”
So I took the test again. Only this time, I thought about the two years before the previous two years. That was a 561. Now instead of “high or very high,” I only have a “high” risk of a major health breakdown in the following 24 months.
So I went back another two years and thought of those life events. That was a 608.
What the actual fuck, people?
I smartly talk with a therapist once every few weeks. For someone who feels as much stuff as strongly as I do, that’s probably very wise. Jamie is a great therapist. She doesn’t give me free passes on bullshit. She’s compassionate. She listens. That’s truthfully a lot of what she does — listens. I don’t have many people in my life who actually care to hang with me and just listen. To hear what I’m feeling and why I’m feeling it. To invest. And so I have to pay Jamie to do it. It’s not ideal, but it works.
She has been encouraging me to take this test. Why? Because when I tell her about the goings-on in my life, she somewhat commonly says, “John, you have to give yourself some grace and compassion. You’ve been facing a lot for a long time.” And she’s right. But I don’t like hearing it. I’m not a martyr and there are people who have it a lot worse. After all, that scale does into the 1,400s. I tend to not give myself any quarter just because shit happens. And I’m not unaware that some of the boxes checked on that list aren’t because shit happened but because I caused shit to happen. I take ownership of my mistakes and weaknesses and failures.
Jamie’s point is that a lot of stuff has, indeed, happened — whoever caused it — and that it can be dangerous if I don’t take care of myself. So I try. I do.
And I think … hope … that at some point, some of this shit has to let up. Right?
Would you please help a brutha out? I’ve created a weekly eNewsletter called News-B-Nuts in which I’ll be sending out news nuggets and witty commentary to subscribers. If you can, would you support this endeavor for just $5 a month via Patreon?
Leave a Reply