Keep on moving
Posted by paulway on December 28th, 2009
I know when I’m feeling down because this little part of my brain starts questioning why I’m doing anything. Why go out and visit friends when I don’t really feel like it? Why do any exercise when I feel tired? Why get all dressed up to go to work? Why get up at all? Why…
Once I recognise this symptom it’s often difficult to fight. I have a somewhat philosophical nature and I like asking those big questions of “what is the right thing to do” and “where should we be going”. It’s easy to get a kind of choice paralysis when asking these questions, and if one is definitely staring down the barrel of a big question - should I disagree with someone I love, should I say something against a person that everyone else agrees with, should I complain about someone else’s misplaced generosity - then it can be really difficult to feel like you can move on. And that’s when you start questioning why you should get out of bed.
It took me a while to feel like I could just ignore some of those questions and move on. But I finally realised that I couldn’t let everything stall just because I can’t answer a question for which, almost by definition, there is no ‘right’ answer. By getting on with the things we do every day - eating, doing the chores, getting out, exercising - we actually give our brains space to process some of those hard questions. And in the process we almost invariably get some more input that adds valuable information.
By getting up and getting on with things, we are not stalling or putting off the question. We are adding to our perception and improving our ability to choose. Stalling is lying in bed doing nothing. And sometimes things will solve themselves naturally without our intervention. Most importantly, we keep to our comfortable routines, we keep on the move for new opportunities, and we don’t lose the energy and momentum to tackle life’s problems.
We sometimes need to walk around the problem and look at it from another angle, and we can only do that if we keep moving.
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Healthy eating (unprocessed foods)
Posted by arjen on November 6th, 2009
The following is from BBC News site: Depression link to processed food
After accounting for factors such as gender, age, education, physical activity, smoking habits and chronic diseases, they found a significant difference in future depression risk with the different diets.
Those who ate the most whole foods had a 26% lower risk of future depression than those who at the least whole foods.
By contrast people with a diet high in processed food had a 58% higher risk of depression than those who ate very few processed foods.
Not really surprising (to me, anyway) but interesting to see some research on this. And the difference is quite significant.
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MASH & Hawkeye
Posted by arjen on May 25th, 2009
Yea, as in the classic TV show with Alan Alda. Of course there’s reruns (again) and I’ve let my MythTV box record some. My favourite characters have always been Hawkeye and Col.Potter. Smart, funny, cynical, way with words.
Col.Potter was in WWI and WWII before Korea where MASH is situated, he’s seen it all before… but Hawkeye, he’s really just like that as a coping mechanism, isn’t he. I used to think he was cool, but with a bit more maturity I see that his attitude has to be seen in the context of the situation and definitely not as a general example of how to be.
Obvious, perhaps, but at the time a lesson for me anyhow. I too have used cynicism (and sarcasm) as a copying mechanism, particularly when I’m tired, stressed, sick, or (even worse!) any combination thereof. I try to catch myself now and consciously work to not behave like an ass in those situations. Hawkeye gets away with it, but I live in the real world…
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If you want BlueHackers stickers…
Posted by arjen on February 2nd, 2009
We’re seeing a lot requests for the stickers, which is great - we’re happy to post some, but we do need to optimise things a bit otherwise the logistics (and cost) won’t be practical. So here’s the deal for the currently remaining roll of approx 500 stickers.
If you are active for a local user group, conference or company, and want a sticker for yourself as well as some to hand out at your next meeting or just among your colleagues, send us an email at l i f e (at) b l u e h a c k e r s (dot) o r g with a brief note on what group/company/conference it is, your address of course, and how many stickers you need.
I think numbers of up to a couple of dozen are practical at this stage. Remember, we’ll be printing more stickers anyway so this is just to get things going and spread the word further. We’ll gather the emails and do a mailout about once a week, and of course we’ll reply to let you know when they’ve been posted, and how many you get. Okidoki?
By the way, if you’re on Facebook you can also join the BlueHackers cause, again to help make the issue more visible.
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Stickers at Linux.conf.au Tasmania
Posted by arjen on January 31st, 2009
Last week was linux.conf.au in Hobart, Tasmania. This seemed like an ideal opportunity to try the stickers idea. However, this being so soon after the summer holidays (yes xmas is in the summer when you live in the Southern hemisphere!) we weren’t particularly organised. Eek!
Luckily I got hold of a bright and helpful printers in Hobart who couldn’t do exactly what we needed but just arranged everything for us locally. We were pondering a few designs and sizes, but we decided on doing small stickers (of the “powered-by” shape and size) to mainly see put on laptops. Since they’re small, the chances of someone putting them on are increased. Yet the logo is so distinct that it will be spotted. Win! It’s just our logo with the url below, one colour print with gradient, and just paper (no vinyl nasties).
So what’s the objective? For as many people as possible to have these little stickers on their laptop; laptops travel around to conferences, user group meetings and work places. And thus other people get to see this quiet sign of understanding! So it’s not just a sticker to be used by people who have dealt with depression or related issues themselves, it’s for everybody wanting to show this form of support.
As we all know, the feeling of being alone with your problems is a very important aspect. The bluehackers stickers addresses this in a friendly non-intrusive way. Over 500 stickers were handed out during the last days of the conference, so they’re already travelling around the planet to be spotted elsewhere; various people also have strips of stickers with them to hand out to local user groups, colleagues, and others.
I did a lightning talk on the last day which got a fab response and triggered numerous interesting discussions afterwards. It’s clearly struck a chord, and so I guess another objective of BlueHackers is to make the topic more open or at least not taboo. Joe “Zonker” Brockmeier wrote up a very nice blog entry about us also (”Even Hackers get the Blues“). I have another roll of 500 stickers here, which I’ll send out in chunks to various people around the planet. And more things to come.
So who’s funding all this? Well, some of the best gestures cost little or nothing. Getting the stickers made cost me a few hundred dollars, and while the stickers were handed out for free donations came in and recouped the cost plus the same again (and we still have half the stickers left as well). It’s a matter of running low-cost, and sheer numbers. We’re pondering whether to do a paypal account, but that brings up the question of whether to become a registered non-profit as we don’t want any individual to get stuck with financial or other liabilities. We’ll work it out. Naturally all donations given so far go directly towards BlueHackers activities anyway.
Through the various discussions we’ve gained additional insight in what activities might be useful, and how to go about them. More to come! And remember, the best gestures are free or cheap. Small things can make a huge difference to a person, or perhaps even many.
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Happy New Year & Media Mentions
Posted by arjen on January 13th, 2009
Happy New Year everybody! We hope you got some well-deserved time off over the xmas/holiday period, with (gasp) perhaps even some time away from your computer?
We now have a mutual link with Working Well, after a kind message from someone there. Very useful.
And we hadn’t spotted it before, but ITwire wrote a nice article on us: Geeks seek to hack depression (16 Dec 08)
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Doing a little more
Posted by paulway on December 19th, 2008
Getting a bit of physical activity is often hard for hackers. We don’t want to sit around sweating in gyms, we often work late and hack later, and we may even be afraid of that old Rugby Jock image that has tyrannised some of us. But as mentioned in the HowTo, doing some physical work often makes it much easier to sleep and run our bodies normally. Here are a bunch of ideas that you can use to get a bit more exercise without making it a chore.
- Climb the stairs to work. If you work up fairly high in a building, see if you can get the lift from the third floor or get off two levels before your own.
- Walk around the block or the building at lunchtime.
- If you catch the train or bus, try getting off one stop before your work or home and walking the rest of the way.
- If you have one, take your music player and listen to some good podcasts while walking to make good use of the time.
- Some of us live close enough to work to cycle in - try to make one day a week when you cycle in. That way you can plan ahead for it.
- If you live too far out to ride all the way, see if you can take your bike part of the way, in a car or on a train.
- I used to take my rollerblades in to work in my bag and then change and blade home. This way I didn’t have to shower and change at work and still got some good exercise.
- See if there’s anyone else that you work with that wants to go for walks; it also gives you a good chance to talk about hacking and other fun stuff.
- Try standing up in the bus or train to work rather than sitting all the way.
- Try geocaching - it’s a great way to explore your area and places you visit, it gets you out and walking around, you get to traded neat small stuff with other people, and there’s the thrill of discovery and secret knowledge.
- Offer to do some gardening for a friend - you don’t have to have a green thumb if they do.
- If you do some kind of regular exercise, start tracking it. Set yourself regular goals - something you can achieve every week or so - and reward yourself when you get there.
- Grab a Chore Wars account for you and anyone you share with and see how many levels you can achieve.
I’d be really interested to hear other ideas on how to get a bit more activity in your day. The key lessons I’ve found are that it doesn’t have to be a lot of work or something that looks like ‘regular exercise’ to still stay active, that making small increments and keeping to them is more fun than trying for big goals, and that fitting things into your existing routine almost always works and changing your routine is much harder.
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Why me?
Posted by paulway on December 9th, 2008
Depression takes many forms and comes at different times. One thing that I took a while to learn was that depression also has many reasons. I thought that ‘real depression’ would only apply to people that had lost everything, or had everything go wrong, or had no prospects. It took me a while to realise that everything could seem fine but I could still feel depressed - and that this was normal. Sometimes even the fact that you theoretically have so much going for you can exacerbate the feeling of depression, making you feel even more out of touch.
My first step to dealing with these bouts of depression was to realise that I’m not unusual or abnormal for feeling depressed when other people aren’t. It’s perfectly acceptable to feel differently from other people, and to feel sad, or scared, or uneasy, at something that other people seem to take as normal. Accepting my feelings as normal has been a good way for me to move on from them.
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Hello, world!
Posted by admin on December 8th, 2008
‘nuf said.
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