The New Year is here.

This year 2018 offers new hope for all of us to move closer to what we want to get in our lives.

My literary agent will soon pitch to editors a second nonfiction book.

Stayed tune for information about this in early February.

Over the last 3 weeks I’ve been writing fiction. I would like to publish this first novel within 3 years along with the second nonfiction book.

Three weeks ago the novel was only 60 pages and today it is 225 pages.

Yes–it’s true–I haven’t ever had writer’s block. Alas, I often get in “the flow” of inspiration. At all hours of the day and night images and sentences and dialogue come into my head quickly and freely.

It can be eleven o’clock at night and I’ll be struck with inspiration and have to get everything written on paper.

The idea of being in “the flow” state as has been described in the literature is a myth.

Getting struck by inspiration at all hours of the day and night is actually akin to being locked in a cage unable to get out.

You don’t know when this “flow” of ideas is ever going to stop.

You get your trusty pen and hardbound journal. You start writing one sentence and then another sentence. Then you’re writing other sentences and this madness doesn’t stop until three o’clock in the morning.

For someone possessed with this kind of gift “the muse” commands you to keep writing and not stopping.

You write and write at all hours of the day and night.

That is how I have come to start writing my first novel.

That is how I have come to have written a second nonfiction book.

My goal is to publish the second nonfiction book this October 2018 which is Disability Employment Awareness Month.

The book is a school and career handbook for mental health peers.

I will tell you more about this book in early February.

In the coming weeks I will talk again about setting goals and resolutions.

Happy New Year!

I want to write about the holiday season.

At my Left of the Dial blog you can read about my experience with the United States Postal Service.

In here I want to talk about how the holidays are often hell-idays for a lot of us living with a diagnosis.

I lost my father in January 2016. I lost a beloved aunt in March of this year.

You are not alone if you are actually depressed at this time of year and not in a good mood during the festivities.

What can help us feel better when we’ve lost our loved ones or otherwise don’t feel like celebrating?

A modest amount of retail therapy could help. Doing a bout of spring cleaning now might seem counter-intuitive yet it might help too. Helping others by volunteering at a soup kitchen could help you.

My friend who is a soul mate to me I really think he is told me:

“Just be a good person and do good.”

That was his advice for helping yourself overcome having a hard time.

Just be a good person and do good is what I urge my loyal blog readers to adopt as a life ethic.

When all else fails, strive to get at least 7 hours of sleep straight through every night as often as you can.

I will end this blog entry by thanking you for reading this blog.

I’ve reached 5,000 visitors so far which is a great thing.

Gracias. Merci. Grazie.

A million thanks.

It’s a beautiful day here.

Sunny and warm.

I’m testing the WordPress app.

There’s nothing better than plein air typing.

Van Gogh liked to paint outdoors because of the curative effect of the air.

I urge everyone to go outside in the sunny weather.

Being near water also has a curative effect.

Do wear sunscreen though.

Have a beautiful day!

I’ve taken this blog entry from my Left of the Dial blog. I’ve posted it in both places.

The Republicans are set to vote into law today the gutting of mental health services enacted under the Affordable Care Act while President Obama was in office.

The Republicans are set to roll back progress by eliminating mental health treatment and charging higher premiums for fewer kinds of mental health service.

The Republicans are set to deny mental health constituents coverage for addiction treatment.

It will become illegal to have an abortion. Yet when your fetus turns 18 and develops schizophrenia or another mental illness or a drug addiction there will now be no treatment available for them. Write your elected officials and thank them for this.

Makes sense right? Makes sense to have voted into power the people who are voting today to eliminate funding for mental health services for the very people who need it.

Cue the sarcasm. Is there an emoji for sarcasm? You know where I stand.

If you live in New York State here are the telephone numbers of the elected officials you can call to tell them to vote NO for the MacArthur Amendment that denies citizens treatment for mental health.

• The American Health Care Act would leave millions of Americans without mental health coverage and strip Medicaid funding.
• The recently-introduced “MacArthur Amendment” would let states get waivers allowing health insurance plans to not cover mental health and substance use treatment and charge people with mental illness more.
• It’s outrageous to even suggest that mental health coverage is optional and to charge people more because they have a mental health condition.
• Medicaid coverage is also under threat. It covers important mental health services that help people with mental illness get better and stay better.
• Please tell Representative_______ to keep what works for mental health and REJECT the American Health Care Act and the MacArthur Amendment. Thank you.

I telephoned my guy in Washington. The line was busy. I’ll call again to try to get through.

I’m posting this same blog entry in the Left of the Dial blog.

I will return to posting blog entries this coming week.

A year later I’m losing another loved one and have been preoccupied.

Will return on Monday.

We should each of us love each other and protect each other and our planet.

It’s because I care about everyone living on earth that I implore readers of my blog to resist the urge to start smoking cigarettes.

I’ve always detested cigarette smoking. From the time I was a young kid–easily only nine years old or so–I’ve detested cigarette smoking.

My mother and my aunts–her sisters–smoked two packs a day for forty years. No surprise–they now sleep and travel everywhere with oxygen tanks and use inhalers.

I judge no one living on earth. Good people often make the choice to start smoking cigarettes. Illness doesn’t discriminate–it strikes good people as well as evil people.

You will become disabled if you smoke cigarettes.

You’ll have to sleep and travel with an oxygen tank. If you care about vanity, and choose to smoke, you’ll get wrinkled early and lose your looks and have yellow teeth. Chances are, you’ll lose your teeth at some point and need false teeth.

If you do only one positive thing in your life and nothing else quit smoking if you’ve already started. Only doing this–quitting smoking–is the best thing you could ever do.

I’m losing my aunt now after losing my father to colon cancer in 2015. It’s unimaginable yet true–a good person taken out because she smoked cigarettes for 40 years.

You’ll think it’s over if you’re 60 and quit smoking yet you’ll remain in compromised health forever. Fare better to quite smoking at 30 than to smoke for your whole life. Yet I implore you to quit now even if you’re 60.

I don’t take this lightly. I don’t care if a person wants to stay at home watching TV all day. I don’t care if a person chooses jealousy or hate over love. I don’t care how anyone else lives their life.

I do care about health. I care that everyone living on earth has the chance to be healthy. I care that good people make bad choices.

It’s because I’ve seen the perils in my own family of smoking cigarettes that I implore readers now: resist the urge to start smoking cigarettes.

You don’t deserve to be hooked up to tubes, comatose, and barely breathing after you have an operation.

You don’t deserve to have limited romantic choices because no one wants to date a smoker.

You don’t deserve to add a smoking-related disability to the mental health disability you already have.

You deserve to have a long, healthy, prosperous life.

You deserve to meet the man or woman of your dreams.

You deserve to save money on your healthcare.

After all, why not make yourself rich instead of making Phillip Morris rich?

It’s something to think about dear readers.

If you smoke, the people who care about you are living in pain watching you make yourself ill. You’re not the only one you’re hurting by making yourself ill. Those of us who watch you light up are in agony too.

We care a lot.

I care and I haven’t even met you.

I’ll end here with the hope that you can read what I’ve written and take it seriously.

Numerous options exist for helping you quit.

You might not stay quit and it could take a couple of times.

Yet now is the right time to try.

I’m rooting for you dear readers.

I watched a Suze Orman DVD a couple of years ago.

One guy she singled out had gone to school to get a degree so he could have a better career. He couldn’t find a job and might have incurred student loan debt.

He had been a waiter. Suze Orman berated him. She told him he could’ve had a perfectly fine life if he continued to wait tables.

After she was done trussing him up it looked like the guy was about to cry. His eyes were wet. She had publicly humiliated him.

Frankly, that’s not how I want an “expert” to treat me.

I’m confident we’ve all felt guilty and ashamed when we’ve tried to live by an expert’s rules and failed.

The kicker is: I went back to school when I was unemployed so that I could get a degree that would enable me to have a better career.

Suze Orman is against people doing what I did: going back to school instead of immediately looking for a replacement job.

Yes: I do think we need to trust our intuition more.

We need to pay attention to how our bodies feel and what our bodies are telling us.

Plenty of peers get college degrees. Not everyone uses their degree on the job they have. Yet educating yourself is not ever a waste of time or money if you ask me.

I’ll talk about this in future blog entries: why I think and will always think it’s no crime to want to do what you love and earn a livable wage or salary from it.

Telling a person that he should be content to wait tables when that is not what his soul calls out for him to do is a mistake.

Better: tell him that if he can’t find another job he can wait tables and do something else on the side that brings him more happiness.

Using our intuition to decide what’s the right thing to do makes sense.

Maybe the waiter convinced himself to purse the career-of-the-moment instead of listening to what the still voice inside him told him he was passionate about.

Maybe he could’ve done volunteer work in the new field to put on his resume when he did start to look for a new job.

Maybe he realized in the end that it wasn’t where his heart was after all.

In my blog I’ll talk about what I think is practical to do and what is possible to achieve.

My goal is to be a cheerleader not a naysayer.

You can decide for yourself if what I write makes sense.

I don’t think shaming people or making them feel guilty is pretty.