I was meant to have my bi-monthly treatment today but because I am down with a flu and my fever is too high, they decided not to treat me. So, instead I will treat myself and have a quiet coffee and write in a café. I am way too often sick over the last year for someone who used to get a troublesome flu every few years an I guess I am just run down and need a little rest.
Note: the fire alarm just went off and an auto-announcement in 4 languages is on repeat very loudly... distraction.
I just read a post by 
The art you see here on a regular basis; behind the scenes here, that's all I'm doing. Working myself to death, and I don't want to die yet. I'm not even being dramatic. From the time I wake up to the hour I crash, there isn't a moment where I'm not working on something for this blog.
I understand. Some people here spend a massive amount of time developing their content, learning, educating, developing, engaging, reading, building and all the things a good Steem user should be doing. Even though it isn't a job, doesn't mean it isn't work. Some make high amounts of reward, some get a little and many get, none. Still, work. It isn't just about the reward for many people here.
As a teenager, I wrote because it was a way for me to get what was inside my head OUT of there. Although I had no conscious sense of what I was doing, by writing my troubling ideas out I somehow felt able to "no longer worry about them," because I could always revisit them in my journal.
Perhaps, if more people had spent time exploring their issues through writing in their youth, less people would be carrying around mountains of unnecessary baggage that drives their behaviors now.
And in a frank talk on depression with a view I agree with, 
And that is really the main issue here. Much like with a swollen wound, we are trying to treat depression with pills, therapy or lead a life that completely avoids it. We are not treating it as something that is naturally a part of our life.
He calls it an unpopular opinion and it may be, but it is one that I have held for a very long time. People work on a process of avoidance, they want a quick fix, no discomfort, safety, security and the solutions to always be painless. They are fooling themselves, avoidance of pain is about fear and what one occupies the mind and body with an illusion more potent than most prescription drugs.
This life is full of ups and downs, full of conflicts between past, present and future events, desires, expectations and a whole range of experience that is going to clash with how we see ourselves. It is easy to feel victimized when one doesn't get what is wanted from this life.
We are hardwired to over-weigh the negative events and our nervous system is wired to hold on to them as learning to protect from similar in the future. It is wired for physical protection though, not emotional but, the brain hijacks the circuitry and extends the body out into the ego and says, we are the same, protect the ego as if it is real.
It is not, it is an illusion too but, it feels all so real as our emotions work to wire it into our bodily reactions. Words taken as offence can create the most strong of bodily actions but, nothing was hurt, there was no real pain caused, just words. It is easy to see because if those same words were said in a language not spoken, there would not be the same physical reaction. It is only through the identification of the words that that a slight is felt, that pain surfaces.
There are many reasons to write at Steem, but if you aren't exploring who you are and how you can use that to improve your experience in this life, you are missing an opportunity of the grandest scale. The opportunity of freedom from the constraints you have placed yourself in oh so many thousands of ways.
Every time you sit down at the keyboard and begin, know that going forward is an opportunity to give yourself a little bit of space, to let go, to discover and, to learn who you are in this world. If you are unsure of where to begin, stop consuming the noise of the world until you know.
Turn off the TV, switch off the music, become quiet and, face yourself. Stop looking for a magic pill or person to save you because unless your body is under threat, you were never in danger.
People can argue, people can get offended, people can throw up their hands and say You just don't know what I have been through...
So, tell me. Perhaps then you will let it go and move on in life.
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]
The alarm announcement stopped. My coffee is cold.