Category: mental health

(In)Frequently Asked Questions

“I don’t really like math for its own sake. What I love is that it lets you take some things that you know, and just by moving symbols around on a piece of paper, you find out something that you didn’t know that’s very surprising.” -Randall Munroe (“Comics that Ask ‘What If’” – Ted Talk)

“If you love science for science’s sake, teach college. If you really like science, but you really love to work with students, teach high school.” -Dr. Karen LaFever (in a conversation with me as I was picking my path to teach high school chemistry)

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Sabbatical, Step 4: Finding Career #2

“The vicissitudes of life usually teach an intelligent person what he can handle. It does help to have someone wise in the ways of candles to steady you as you grope toward the light.”

-Bill Bowerman

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Sabbatical, Step One: Catalysts and Enzymes

“If it’s all been said and done,
I did alright, I had my fun.
Let me walk, before they make me run.”
-The Glimmer Twins (a.k.a. Jagger/Richards)

 

2015-07-30 17.51.11
July 30, 2015. The last St. Louis Cardinals game we’ve been to. As I got stressed out, I lost my interest in baseball. If I had to bet, we probably don’t go to a game this year either. We’re all doing much better, but my interest in baseball is still fleeting.

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Scotch Tape (a.k.a. I Have an Idea About How Lucky I Am)

“Of all the bad and dangerous ideas in the world, perhaps none is worse and more dangerous than the idea that there is no such thing as luck.” -Kieran McCarthy

Of all the bad and dangerous ideas in the world, perhaps none is worse and more dangerous than the idea that there is no such thing as luck.

-Kieran McCarthy

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Heart Block

Rule of Life 72: if your mother calls for health advice, act fast. Case in point, about 5 years ago my mom called with a health question on a day where I just happened to be off work. She was dizzy, tired, and having a hard time breathing. After a brief conversation that ended in “I’ll be fine, I’ll just lie down for a bit,” I drove over to my parents house. As it turns out, you can get a Prius to go from zero to sixty in 2 seconds, you just have push down really, REALLY hard on the accelerator.

We all have roles in life. Some are conscious, others subconscious. Sometimes, we fall into old roles and habits around select groups of people. We have tendencies, all of us. It’s not always bad or good, but rather something that just IS.

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Going By Candlelight

What struck me this time, however, is that sometimes location does matter.

I’m not a travel writer. By most people’s assessment, our family doesn’t go any place that exotic. Someone did tell Sonia that we take interesting trips and I appreciated the sentiment. Sure, we do odd things, but we’re talking odd by “acceptable” standards. We weren’t drinking jack rabbit blood in the Mojave Desert or exploring the Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia.

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