Please don't stop taking care of your mental health

On April 26th, so a little more than 2 weeks ago, I tweeted the following: I have decided to adapt into my "international" blog the more personal texts I wrote in my original blog (in Portuguese) about my mental issues that lead to a serious burnout (and more) because #MentalHealthMatters.
And today I finally completed the adaptation (I use this verb because it is not a simple translation of word by word, I need to adapt expressions and styles) of the 7 texts I published last year on my mental struggle experience.
There was another reason I wasn't fully certain yet when I tweeted my decision; that I struggled still until very recently even though last year I thought I was fine, and being aware of the issues and have tools to fight back, I still felt bad again after some weeks of vacation in Portugal.

Music is a balm

Today by the end of the day (Wednesday, 26 of May) I was felling more cranky that in the previous days. It's true that I am falling behind my own personal goals and doing less work than I plan to when I wake up in the morning, being it due to non-work related commitments, or due to the constant messaging and chatting throughout the day, questions and emails that deviate my attention from the main tasks and I end up losing to much time with that. It has always been like that and I myself have always been like that.

But there's something else that was a probable source for more irritation and bad mood: today, and ulike most days in the last couple of weeks, I didn't listen to music during my activities, both domestically and work related ones.

So what's my diagnosis or condition/disorder anyway?

Around 3 weeks ago I'd already done a very little introduction for this text and saved it as draft. The image on top was already chosen (and edited cause I had to search and then combine the 2 separate ones) and the title was also set. But without writing more content, and with other ideas in mind, I used Facebook to make a survey on what my next dissertation theme should be. I was surprised since the post was shared in a group of people from my home town (Sever do Vouga, in Portugal) and because liking the post  was the reaction to cast a vote on this one, I counted 16 votes from different people. The little synopsis I used to describe what this text would be was: how I think I have one thing (ADHD), one psychologist thinks I'm a sociopath, another that I have Asperger's and finally a third one thinks it's just intellectual giftedness.

But before moving onto these different diagnosis, and provide more insight on the latest, I think I must tell the story from the beginning, so if you may, please click on the link before this. But if you're only interested in the process I went through for the diagnosis, that I'm still not sure when it will be final, you may continue reading the following paragraphs.

The Phantom Menace

This record that you'll read next was supposed to be a long expression of my feelings, and part of my ongoing therapy, a record where I open the book and describe the bad moments that I've gone through in the last 2 years. But I wasn't planning on sharing this now but while writing another chronicle regarding my psychic diagnosis I started telling the story since the beginning of this "situation" and I was already a few paragraphs long. So I used the Separate & Clarify technique and since this is the last day of Star Wars Week (the 10th still counts) here it goes:

Indicators of my state of mind

My plan since the beginning of March was to finally start with the thread of chronicle-dissertations about the months when I was sick (the burnout but not only) describing my condition/disorder/syndrome that has affected me since ever and will continue to affect forever. This was because after some months in therapy I was finally going to go through a neuropsychological evaluation with the objective of confirming my suspicions.

But the therapist responsible for that, that I can say is my favourite therapist, not because she's the one that advises me the nest but because she is less than 30 yo and those who know me are aware that I love talking with young people, in particular women (and if they're good looking...), has yet to conclude our discussion on the report and so I still don't know what are the next proposed steps (and I need to convince her that I should go through additional evaluations).

So for this reason here's another text that demonstrates how is it possible to check in what state I am by simply checking my activity online, on the social media (and those who keep closer in touch, can better confirm).

I sincerely wish you go f**k yourselves

It's probably the third time I use this image in social media posts, and I know I used it in blog post before. This time the gesture is dedicated to a trio of people that were part of my life (mostly the work aspect of it) in 2019-20. That trio was referenced before in my other blog, when I was blowing up some steam (here, last paragraph and also here) and has it happens frequently when I start writting something, I was convinced that I had already shared my opinions and frustrations in a more direct and thorough way, but now I can't find any of that; or I shared that in a different social network or in direct talks with someone (and that it's for sure, and I even believe it was with more than one person).

But now I'm going to be blunt: the middle fingers are for the three stooges that pushed me down with lies, that made my doubt my own capabilities, that in spite the nice words and the company values (that I know were followed by most of the people that worked there) didn't give me one chance let alone a second one, to show my worth, even though I did show it in the second half of my tenure...

Using an expression an old colleague from Portugal taught me: I sincerely wish you go fuck yourselves!

Annus horribilis in XII imaginibus

2020 was the appropriate year to use the Latin expression annus horribilis, since it was a shitty year for almost everyone, something we didn't have for a very long time. Of course the jury's still out in regards to 2021 but we're only now completing the first quarter...

The truth is that in spite of COVID-19 appearing in the of 2019, the SARS-CoV-2 virus sequencing only occurred in January 2020, it was also during January that it spreaded all over the world and by the end of that month it reached Europe (at least officially; there are reports of people dying from a very similar disease before but only confirmed later when they analysed again the samples collected and stored back then). In February it was also the time I started writing about the epidemic (it wasn't a pandemic at the time), when it started to "explode" in Italy, when the first official COVID death occurred in Europe and when it arrived here in The Netherlands. And in March it arrived in Portugal (my homeland), the first person died here in The Netherlands and when it all began for me and for real, the whole trifecta of pandemic/isolation/quarantine.

A Whole New World

Today was a Spring day here. With temperature reaching 15°C (59°F), I didn't wear a warm coat, actually spent a lot of time outside  in the patio with no coat at all. We cycled to, and from, scouting, I washed the motorcycle, took out the side wheels from Amélia's bike (now it's hers), although she quickly gave up on trying to cycle without 'em, we cleaned and we played.

Since I washed the motorbike, I decided it was time to start it up and it's a good thing I kept the old battery, and charged, from last year. It's been several months the bike was left abandoned and not only because it was Winter. Since the bike's engine was running I put outside on the public parking area behind the house to minimize the gasoline smell in our patio. .And once it was already outside, with the pleasant Spring weather, having cycled in the morning, hearing motorbikes revving in the distance but all around me, I had to go for a spin.