Last week as I was preparing supper I discovered a non-problem that I was making a problem. And the realization has become something of an obsession in the days since. You see, I had most of a nice meal planned. Some nice pork chops, a solid macaroni and cheese and... what for a vegetable? This is where I made a problem where there wasn't any.
You see, I had a big bag of carrots in the fridge that I knew I needed to use up. But there's this little gremlin in my brain - placed there in my youth - that says, "You can't make cooked carrots." Don't get me wrong here. I like cooked carrots just fine and the recipe I had in mind would pair quite well with the rest of the meal. But Dad didn't (and still doesn't) like cooked carrots when I was growing up so there's this weird GOTO routine that just goes around cooked carrots when the option is right in front of me. To make a long story short - I made the cooked carrots, they were excellent and I need to make them again.
Re-examining some of these old rules and misconceptions has been a pretty big trend for me lately. I talked a few weeks ago about how I'd convinced myself I couldn't go solo, couldn't be a lead singer or that I couldn't finish a song. As soon as I challenged those conclusions, it became clear they weren't founded.
There are a few others there that have been important too. I always thought I needed to write my lyrics in a nice notebook with a pen. No sir I do not. In fact, lyric writing is very fast when I do it on my phone. I don't need a studio or expensive equipment to demo songs or record ideas. Again, my phone has been invaluable. In fact, as an overall music career tool, my smartphone has been an enormous efficiency. I've recorded videos, researched venues, kept track of my goals and managed my emails all through one device.
In response to last week's mental health struggles, I visited my counsellor for a chat. Again, the misconceptions came up. For most of them, it was more "It's not that this didn't work - it just didn't work yet or it didn't work this time." I also found that while I was dismissing some conclusions about my own behaviour, I was finding out very quickly that maybe I should look at that closer. At the end of the session, we talked a bit about journaling. I mentioned how writing out what I wanted to talk to her about helped me put everything in perspective. The counsellor gave me some tips on journalling like how it could be one line. Like, "I feel depressed."
But for me, the real epiphany was - it doesn't need to be in a notebook. Like with songwriting, I've convinced myself these important thoughts should be on pen and paper. Maybe some of that is my age, when I learned to write songs and journal - you did that on paper. As the internet reared its head, I moved journalling into this humble blog. But that proved to be very public and when you're writing a new song or talking about your depression, sometimes you don't want that public. So since last Thursday, I've just added to the original document I wrote with my discussion checklist and done exactly as suggested: Friday: "K made me feel anxious," Sunday: "Feeling depressed," and so on. The challenges for that will be to keep it up, occasionally journal the good things and include my body health stuff too. Rhonda has been trying to get me to journal my gout attacks and other health complaints. I can use the same document.
The counsellor and I discussed the "seasons of life" at our session - how sometimes things start to change, we change and we need to adjust our behaviour accordingly. It's given me a lot of food for thought and I have about 3 weeks before our next session to ponder that, figure out what I want to make of it and then execute on that. But until then, I think I'm just going to spend time challenging myself whenever I say no. But also - I'm going to challenge myself when I say yes. Because there have been more than a few bad situations over the last decade that could have been avoided with a "no."