Writing as therapy....
As many of you may or may not know I suffer from depression. For the most part it is controlled by medication, but I'm searching for new ways to get off of the meds. I'm trying many different things like a new exercise regime (running hurts is my motto), writing down my thoughts, and working on feeling happier in general. I have recently picked up a copy of "The Feel Good Handbook" by David D. Burns. There are some exercises in this book about Self Talk and monitoring anxiety and depression through a series of questions. Another section deals with keeping a Daily Mood Log to counter Automatic Thoughts, Distortions, and Rational Responses to upsetting events in life. As I was creating some spreadsheets I could do all of these things on last night, it dawned on me that I should also look at other ways of writing out my thoughts. This place on the web is my home to do that.
If you find that you have highs followed by lows and times when you could not really care about life, seek professional help. After many self-destructive periods in my life and many manic highs and depressive lows, I finally realized that I needed to do something. Two long years later and many hours of Yahoo therapy and daily doses of Zoloft, I feel much better about life.
I have also realized that I'm a wanderer and searcher in life. There appears to be this force pulling me along in directions that I do not seem to control. There have been are decision points along the way and I've always had a choice, but there seems to be a mystical force pulling me in the right direction. Some may say it's God, others may say it's the Matrix, yet others of you out there may be thinking that I'm a Jedi Knight, but for me it is what has helped me be as fortunate in life as I've been with where I've ended up so far.
A few years back in one of my depressive lows and in searching for something to fill the perceived non-existent gap in my life I stumbled into the Yahoo! chat rooms. The magical force pulled me into a room with a lot of great people that I've remained friends with. I call it magical because believe it or not it was the first room I stumbled into, and have pretty much remained in. There I have met some folks that I have been able to share things I never thought I would share. It is amazing how easy it is for me to open up to complete strangers through a 2-dimensional medium like chat. I've shared things with people on Yahoo and other chat rooms that even my wife doesn't know. The whole experience for me has been a soul search of sorts and has allowed me to explore things with some relative safety. For this I think that the internet is a great place.
As my Yahoo addiction has grown and subsided and changed over the past couple of years, my room preferences have varied. I have spent a lot of time in what I affectionately call the Yahoo Underground. Did some of you know that there are rooms where you can act like a baby wearing diapers while your mommy spanks you? For the record, I didn't spend much time there.
Recently I've had the feeling that there is more to chat than just sitting in my first room and listening to the new breed of idiots from the past six months or so clutter up what used to be a great place to have some good discussions. For this reason, I've been exploring my darker side and had some crazy discussions with strangers who want to watch me sleep with their wives. Fascinating stuff.
You have to love the internet though. Where else can you see your neighbor naked on one page, and discussing car-pool options on the next? Where can you in one instant learn a complicated calculus formula and how to apply it to measuring the weight and surface area of the water in your kiddie pool, to playing sponge-bob games, to killing people, to gambling, to discussing politics, to seeing some stuff you never knew people could do with vegetables. I highly recommend taking a few hours and picking a topic to start and follow it to see where it leads you. It is amazing the things you can learn. I've learned about so many subcultures that I didn't even know existed before. Like I said earlier, Fascinating.
My question to leave you with from today's reading is what's the craziest thing you've learned about on the internet or in a chat room, and have you done it? Those of you who know me best know what that is for me....but there's always hope for crazier things to be done.
Affectionately yours. Gio
If you find that you have highs followed by lows and times when you could not really care about life, seek professional help. After many self-destructive periods in my life and many manic highs and depressive lows, I finally realized that I needed to do something. Two long years later and many hours of Yahoo therapy and daily doses of Zoloft, I feel much better about life.
I have also realized that I'm a wanderer and searcher in life. There appears to be this force pulling me along in directions that I do not seem to control. There have been are decision points along the way and I've always had a choice, but there seems to be a mystical force pulling me in the right direction. Some may say it's God, others may say it's the Matrix, yet others of you out there may be thinking that I'm a Jedi Knight, but for me it is what has helped me be as fortunate in life as I've been with where I've ended up so far.
A few years back in one of my depressive lows and in searching for something to fill the perceived non-existent gap in my life I stumbled into the Yahoo! chat rooms. The magical force pulled me into a room with a lot of great people that I've remained friends with. I call it magical because believe it or not it was the first room I stumbled into, and have pretty much remained in. There I have met some folks that I have been able to share things I never thought I would share. It is amazing how easy it is for me to open up to complete strangers through a 2-dimensional medium like chat. I've shared things with people on Yahoo and other chat rooms that even my wife doesn't know. The whole experience for me has been a soul search of sorts and has allowed me to explore things with some relative safety. For this I think that the internet is a great place.
As my Yahoo addiction has grown and subsided and changed over the past couple of years, my room preferences have varied. I have spent a lot of time in what I affectionately call the Yahoo Underground. Did some of you know that there are rooms where you can act like a baby wearing diapers while your mommy spanks you? For the record, I didn't spend much time there.
Recently I've had the feeling that there is more to chat than just sitting in my first room and listening to the new breed of idiots from the past six months or so clutter up what used to be a great place to have some good discussions. For this reason, I've been exploring my darker side and had some crazy discussions with strangers who want to watch me sleep with their wives. Fascinating stuff.
You have to love the internet though. Where else can you see your neighbor naked on one page, and discussing car-pool options on the next? Where can you in one instant learn a complicated calculus formula and how to apply it to measuring the weight and surface area of the water in your kiddie pool, to playing sponge-bob games, to killing people, to gambling, to discussing politics, to seeing some stuff you never knew people could do with vegetables. I highly recommend taking a few hours and picking a topic to start and follow it to see where it leads you. It is amazing the things you can learn. I've learned about so many subcultures that I didn't even know existed before. Like I said earlier, Fascinating.
My question to leave you with from today's reading is what's the craziest thing you've learned about on the internet or in a chat room, and have you done it? Those of you who know me best know what that is for me....but there's always hope for crazier things to be done.
Affectionately yours. Gio
posted by Juan Giovanni at 10:00 PM
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