Check It Out! - The Spoon Theory

My mom shared an awesome analogy she found on a website called "But You Don't Look Sick."  It's a website intended to support Lupus, and the Spoon Theory is an analogy for Lupus, but I could immediately apply it to my anxiety disorder.  Please visit www.butyoudon'tlooksick.com to read the full article and check out the rest of the website!

 

It can be difficult for "normal" people to understand the daily struggles a person with a mental disability faces everyday.  Even I, back in my self-righteous and pre-anxious days, couldn't understand why people would let their mental disabilities get them down.  Eventually, I developed an anxiety disorder as well (wow, talk about karma).  NOW I understood what it was like.  All of my self-righteous judgments melted away.  But it pained me to know that there were still people out there who, like my old self, judged those with mental disabilities.  There are some people who even have the nerve to think that mental disabilities aren't real.  How can I explain what it's like to truly live with anxiety?  The answer came with the Spoon Theory!  Please, I earnestly invite you to read the full article here, but I'd also like to give the short version of the Spoon Theory with you.

Image from www.butyoudontlooksick.com 

Christine (the woman who came up with the theory) was at a restaurant with her friend.  Even though they had been friends for a long time, her friend asked what it was like to live with Lupus.  Christine grabbed all of the available spoons from their table and other nearby tables, put them in her friends hands, and said, “Here you go, you have Lupus."  The spoons represented the energy and effort one could expend in a day.  Most people have infinite amount of spoons, but her friend only had twelve.  Christine then instructed her friend to go through a typical workday.  As her friend said, "Get out of bed," Christine took one of the spoons.  Her friend said, "Take a shower," and Christine took away a spoon.  Before she had even gotten to work, half of her spoons were gone.  How was she going to make it through the work day?  And once she was back home, how could she then have the energy to do chores, laundry, and cook dinner?  Through this analogy, Christine really demonstrated how carefully one must use their energy accordingly when they suffer from Lupus.

Now, I will apply my anxiety disorder to the Spoon Theory.  When I wake up, I know I have to spend a certain amount of my limited spoons on my job.  When I come home, I might be able to do some chores, but if I had an especially hard time at work, I just don't have the "spoons" to do so.  If I have an anxiety attack during the day, I may no longer have enough "spoons" to work on my book or go out with friends, because dealing with anxiety attacks requires a lot of "spoons."  I must try my best to plan ahead of time how I will use my spoons so I can get the most out of my day.  Therefore, if someone asks me to do a big, unexpected favor for them, I might have a mental breakdown because I don't have enough "spoons" to handle the extra work.  The Spoon Theory is a great way for people to understand what living with a mental disability is like.  Even now, my mom and I talk about how many "spoons" we have or need or used up, and smile knowingly at each other.

Once again, I urge you to read the original Spoon Theory, because I just don't do it justice.  You will be glad you did.  :)  Do you or someone you know suffer from Lupus, a mental disability, or something else that makes their life difficult?  Share this with them!  It will make them smile and nod in total understanding.  

Image from The "But You Don't Look Sick" Gift Shop

 

Meltdown!

About a month ago, I went off of my medicine in anticipation of getting pregnant.  I had learned enough anxiety-coping techniques to get by, right?  How wrong I was!  I could feel anxiety creeping back into my mind, and even with my coping techniques, it wasn't backing down.  The straw that broke the camel's back was when I went to take care of my tadpoles and saw two of them were dead!  Something had killed them!  I don't know exactly what happened, but I...SNAPPED!  I scooped the remaining tadpoles out of the tank and dumped out the water (I still don't know how that was supposed to help.)  I realized after the fact that I had no spring water to replace it with, so I rushed off to Walmart to buy some more, my mind abuzz with anxiety and irritability.  Walking through the store, I probably looked like this:

What people didn't see (and I'm sure glad they couldn't) was the internal conflict between my True Self and my Anxiety-Ridden Self:

"Get out of my way, dumb people!  My tadpoles - a summer's worth of sweat and tears - are dying as we speak!  Grrrrrr!  Get out of my way!"
 "Please, calm down!  You can't treat people like that.  Everything is going to be all right."
"Shut up, you!"

 
I was so angry about my tadpoles dying ("They can't die after all the hard work I put into them!") and distraught that they would all die ("See? I'm worthless at everything I do!") I proceeded to fill my cart with over $100 worth of fish supplies to start from scratch.  The internal conflict continued:

"What are you thinking?  Don't buy all that stuff!  You don't need it!  You are just being anxious."
"No, I have to buy this stuff NOW!  It's the only way to save my tadpoles!  Grrrrrrr!"

I then proceed to the checkout, like this:

The moment of truth had come.  I was just about to checkout and buy all this fish stuff that I didn't really need, fueled by anxiety and rage.  Finally, one thought rose above the others: "What will Ben (my husband) think when he sees all this stuff, and finds out how much money I spent?"  It was in that moment that I came to my senses.  I slowly looked down at all of the stuff in my cart, and said:

 "What am I doing?"

I slowly, and calmly, returned all of the fish supplies, bought the spring water I originally went for, and left Walmart.  I went home and refilled the tank and replaced the tadpoles.  The anxiety madness had passed, and left me feeling stupid and ashamed.  I shared the story with Ben and my mom, and they both thought it was pretty funny.  I realized that, really, it was.  Anxiety made it feel like such a big deal in the moment, but it was all very comical.  The next day, I could smile and laugh at my meltdown, and blog about it, too.  :)    Why am I sharing this?  Because maybe there's someone out there who has gone through a similar experience.  In my case, my meltdown was centered on my tadpoles, but it could have been anything.  Cleaning the house, exercising, remodeling, anything that could cause someone to rush off and spend lots of money to start over again.  If you have gone through something like this, please know that you are not alone.  Meltdowns are a part of life, and once survived, can give us a good laugh afterwards.

Save Me From the Internet!

I love the Internet.  Anytime I have a question about anything (and I mean ANYTHING), the Internet has the answer.  I mean, where else can you find out how to avoid razor burn, or why women open their mouths when they put on mascara?  Also, the infinite collection of opinions help me make smart decisions, like should I go see "Dark Shadows" in theaters?  (thank you, http://www.rottentomatoes.com!)  I can blog, browse amazing art, watch literally anything on YouTube, play games, stay connected with friends...  What can't the Internet do?  :D  There is, however, a downside to the Internet...

 

Yeah...I waste a lot of time on the Internet.  Now I'm a believer in the saying "Time you enjoyed wasting was not wasted," but there is still a line when it comes to the Internet, and I find myself crossing it all the time.  Everyone has their Achilles heel when it comes to time-wasting on the Internet.  For some, it's Facebook.  For others, its Tumblr.  It could be Blogger, Wikipedia, FarmVille, LOL Cats...the list goes on.  For me personally, it's Deviantart and Youtube.  For someone with anxiety, real life can be hard and cruel.  The Internet is an endless fairground of feel-goodness that is very easy to get addicted to.  Why face the world when you can watch America's Funniest Home videos instead?  Sometimes, the only time I really get productive things accomplished is when this happens...

Today, I am glad to say that I am less of an Internet addict than I used to be.  I am a wife, and soon to be a mother, so I can't afford to have my eyes glued to a computer screen all day.  That aside, I want to spend less time on the computer, anyway.  Part of my unschooling background is the focus on real, down-to-earth activities that are good and wholesome.  In a sense, these activities are still "wasting time," but they somehow feel more "good for me" than the Internet.  For example, I've picked up drawing and coloring again.  I'm also going to try my hand at painting sculputres with acrylic paint thanks to an awesome gift my husband got me for my birthday.  And just yesterday I took an hour long walk with my darling dog, just enjoying the fresh air and cool evening.  Life is hard, that's for sure, and it is easy to want to take refuge from it on the Internet.  But life is wonderful, too, and it can only be experienced when I shut off my computer.  Of course, I'll always love the Internet, and you'll see me on the ol' computer at least once or twice or thrice a day.  But I'll always be striving for balance between the real world and the Internet world.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to peruse iwastesomuchtime.com while I eat lunch.  ;)

I Love Frogs

Growing up, my favorite animal was the horse.  In terms of traditional pets, I like dogs and then cats.  But what is my favorite animal of all time?  The frog!  Specifically, the tree frog.

 Image by yourlilmunchie

It all started when I found tadpole eggs behind my house back in 2004.  I was fascinated by the delicate eggs, and horrified when I saw various water bugs eating them!  I tried to build a sort of barrier between the eggs and their attackers, but nothing worked.  In the end, I decided to just let nature run its course, and went home.  But to my surprise, one of the tadpole eggs had stuck to my wrist (due to the sticky, jelly-like substance surrounding them).  I put the egg in a cup of spring water, and 4 days later, a t-i-n-y tadpole hatched.  Days passed, my tiny tadpole grew into a tree frog, and I've been in love with them ever since. 

My darling Tasolen eating a tasty cricket.

With the ferocity of a lion and the personality of a human, these little guys are awesome!  They can be tamed and held, although it can take time and patience.  They don't carry dangerous diseases like reptiles do.  They are fairly easy to take care of, although they do require live insects for their meals, so you can't be afraid to handle crickets.  :)  My beloved Tasolen the gray tree frog died in 2009, but I now have two green tree frogs named Lemon and Lime, like this guy here:

 Image by boron

I'm currently raising gray tree frog tadpoles and hope to sell some of them to fellow frog lovers!  If you are interested in learning more about my interest of frogs, you can check out my frog blog at www.frogforum.net.  I also hope to create my own frog care pamphlet for those interested in owning a tree frog of their own.  This post is a little random, and totally all over the place, but I just want to tell the world that I love frogs!  :)

 Image by mdmayberry

An Anxiety Philosophy Is Born

I had an amazing surge of inspiration today while driving to work!  I have been dealing with anxiety for one and a half years now, and almost since day one, I wanted to create my own philosophy about it.  I wanted to create a structured way of explaining how anxiety works, how to combat it, and then share it with others.  Anxiety, however, is never straight forward, so working out a philosophy for it was always intimidating.  But that's what I had a power surge about today!  It's still just the "first draft," but here's an introduction to my anxiety philosophy...

Most likely, if you have anxiety or another mental disorder, you are right-brained or otherwise very creative.  These people have very strong emotions, but anxiety heightens their negative emotions to the point where they overshadow their positive emotions.  I believe these negative emotions can be organized into four different categories:

Fear 

 Image by Akirakirai

 

Other forms of fear: cynicism, distrust.

Sorrow

  Image by Caperuccita

Other forms of sorrow: depression, hopelessness.

Guilt

 

Other forms of guilt: shame, feeling undeserving.

Anger

Image by Tyshea 

 

Other forms of anger: frustration, irritability, bitterness.

To counter these four negative emotions that are heightened by anxiety, there are four positive emotions.  These emotions are a part of every human being, even ones suffering from anxiety or other mental disabilities, but they are often overshadowed by the out-of-control negative emotions.  There is a way to combat and control the negative emotions with these positive ones, but I'm still working out the details.  For now, here are the four positive emotions:

Trust

 Image by Ahmetorhan

 Other forms of trust: love, confidence, optimism, faith.

Counters fear.

Happiness

  Other forms of happiness: joy, fulfillment, contentment.

Counters sorrow.

Acceptance

 Image by Yumenonikki

Other forms of acceptance: forgiveness, self-love, peace.

Counters guilt.

Laughter

 Other forms of laughter: pleasure, loving life, excitement, passion.

Counter anger.

This is only the very beginning of my anxiety philosophy, but I'm excited to develop it further.  If you have any thoughts of additional emotion topics, please let me know! Thanks for reading!  

Planeswalker Abigale

My husband introduced me to the popular card game "Magic the Gathering" shortly after we got married.  I grew up playing Yu-Gi-Oh, another card game, so it didn't take me long to get fairly good at Magic.  I'm far from professional, but I have a lot of fun with it, and I love the Dungeon and Dragons feel to the card artwork: beautiful images depicting amazing creatures.  It didn't take long before I wanted to make some Magic cards of my own.  I found an awesome and free program online called "Magic Set Editor."  Click here to learn more about it.  NOTE: even though I haven't had any trouble with downloading this program, there is always a risk when you download content off the Internet.  Do so with caution!

I like animals more than I like people, so I wanted to create a set based off of nature and its creatures.  I'm calling my homemade set "Nature's Revolt."  All of Magic's sets have a back story of some kind, so the story behind Nature's Revolt is basically this:

"The major races of Innistrad have battled each other for centuries.  Humans, vampires, zombies, and wandering spirits...  The forces of Nature have always kept to themselves, patiently waiting out the blood and fires of war that wage all around them.  However, Nature's patience has finally run out.  The creatures of the wilderness are now a part of the war with the intention of destroying anything that gets in their way.  Nature has revolted."

 

"Overrun" by Carl Critchlow - MTG Core Set 2012

The first step to creating a homemade set of cards was to figure out how many cards I should include and how to divide all the different types.  I actually had to use (le gasp!) math to figure it out.  Here's a small glimpse into what I mean:

On average, from each color group, 50% are common, 25% are uncommon, 20% are rare, and 8% are mythic.  If I have 15 cards per color group, 9 should be creatures and 6 should be spells, divided by their rarity, etc.

It was definitely a stretch to work with numbers and fractions, but I'm proud to say I did it, and my set is neatly balanced because of it.  Another factor I had to keep in mind was to keep the power of my cards balanced.  Rares are going to be more powerful by default, but there's no point in creating my own cards if they are all ridiculously powerful and unsuitable to ever be used in a real deck.  Like this card by rockvillepictures on Deviantart:

 

After many hours scouring Deviantart and many more hours creating and editing original creatures and their abilities, I finished "Nature's Revolt" with exactly 100 cards in the set.  And here they are!  I put them in Google documents according to their color.  Enjoy!  And please, if you have any thoughts or ideas on how to make these cards better, please let me know!

 White   #1-15

 Blue   #16-30

 Black   #31-45

 Red  #46-60

Green  #61-75 

 Mixed Creatures, Artifacts, Land, and Tokens  #76-100

Some random thoughts about my project:

1. Deviantart.com is the best place to find awesome, super-talented, ultra realistic pictures of just about anything!  I included the artist's name on the bottom of each card so you can check out the original picture as well as more of their artwork.
2. The official Magic the Gathering website was a great resource to get ideas on different card functions and proper ability descriptions.  Each set includes a complete card list and other great info.  If you want to know more about Magic the Gathering, you definitely need to check it out!
3. I made two brand new abilities that are completely my own!  Look for Rabid and Scorch.
4. My favorite creatures to find and create were frogs and spirits.
5. Finding good images for black cards was SCARY!  I had to search through a lot of skulls, demons, and other creepy things to get what I wanted.  But it was worth it!
6. I printed all of these cards off on photo paper and put into a collector's album along with the other real Magic the Gathering sets.  This project was a lot of fun, but a lot of work!  Nature's Revolt will probably be my only homemade set I make.  :)
7. There are some split cards in this set.  The front and back are right next to each other, but you might not notice they belong together until you read "transform" in the descriptions.  Be on the lookout!
8.  I tried to make my cards as similar to the real cards as I could, but there is one spoof card that I couldn't help but make.  See if you can spot it.  ;) 

LDS Home Educators - My First Experience

For the first time ever, I attended the LDS Home Educators conference in Fredericksburg, Virginia.  And I can't help but wonder...why haven't I gone to this conference before now?  I had a positive experience with the conference and its people ever since my mom and I arrived at the Fredericksburg Expo and Conference Center, where the homeschool conference was taking place.

Image from ldshe.org

I was immediately impressed by the youth attending the conference.  I am so used to seeing the majority of homeschoolers being a little extreme in their clothing and accessories.  I am a conservative when it comes to appearances, so I usually stick out like a sore thumb at homeschool conferences.   Due to the LDS dress code, however, most of the young men and women at this conference looked - how should I put this - normal.  I admit, it made me feel more at home.  Beyond their appearance, however, the youth were just like the homeschoolers I'm used to: authentic, geeky, and totally awesome.

Image from ldshe.org

My mom, Cindy Gaddis, was also having a first-time experience alongside me.  In her case, she was running her first vendor booth, and I was her helper.  She was advertising her book, "The Right Side of Normal," which will be published this summer.  Click here for more info on her life-changing, revolutionary book!

I'm caught in a really awkward place between being too old for youth classes and being too young (and childless) for adult classes, so I volunteered to run the booth while my mom went to some of the classes.  To be honest, I was bored to tears, even with my DSi and Kindle Fire.  There was barely anyone wandering the halls, and the few people that were around weren't interested in my mom's booth.  For three hours I sat, impatiently waiting.

 Image from icanhascheezburger.com

After my mom gave her two classes, however, tending the booth wasn't boring anymore!  Tons of people showed up at our booth, asking questions and taking pamphlets.  Most of the people wanted to talk to my mom, but I also answered questions and/or explained what my mom's book was about.  It was fun, made me feel proud of my mom, and inspired me to have a book ready to sell for next year's conferences! 

As for me, I was on two different panels: "How to Be a Successful Homeschooler," and "College Prep 101."  I got to meet some really cool people who were also on the panel with me.  We all had different experiences with college and life, and gave different perspectives and advice.  I was a little bothered by some of the questions, or more like, the way some of the questions were worded.  The question "what do you wish you could have known in high school" bugged me because it implied that being a homeschooler disadvantaged me at college.  Sure, I had some weaknesses going into college due to being homeschooled, but I also had a lot of great strengths.  In fact, being homeschooled really made my college experience an amazing one.  Instead of answering the question, I challenged it by saying I could not have prepared for college anymore than I could have prepared myself for becoming a teen, or getting married, or one day having a baby.  You can't expect to study ahead and be perfectly prepared for anything in life.  The best thing (and basically the only thing) we can do is go forward and relish the experience of living.  I have no regrets about the way I prepared for college, or anything, because I could only learn and grow through doing.

Image from Freefallingforever on Deviantart

Don't get me wrong, though.  Just because I didn't like a choice of words in one or two questions does not mean I didn't enjoy myself on the panels.  On the contrary, I loved sharing my insights along with the other confident and wise individuals.  The youth who attended the panels were also respectful and interested in what we had to say.  Almost everyone had pen and paper in hand!  I didn't attend any of the adult classes, but I'm sure they were all wonderful, too.  Of course, my mom's classes were the best, but that goes without saying.  ;)

On a random note, there was a really cool grocery store within walking distance of the Frederickburg Conference Center called Wegmans.  It was really huge and really cool!  Not only did they have the variety of a Walmart, but they also had little restaurants in the store, including a sushi bar!  But what I was most impressed with was their customer service.  I only had a few items (i.e. Virginia peanuts, a request from my husband), and was stuck behind a mother with a huge cart full of food, so one of the managers took me to the customer service desk and checked me out on the spot.  I felt like a VIP!  I had a very positive experience with Wegmans, so I hope to shop at one again soon.

When the conference was over, I felt satisfied.  My mom and I both had great successes in our classes, the people were great, the atmosphere was pleasant, and our booth's debut went fantastically well.  I found myself wishing my mom had signed me up to go to the LDS Home Educators conference when I was a teen.  Now that I know how great it is, I hope to come back year after year.  And if it's still around when I'm a mother, I want to share the great experience with my children.  Hooray for LDS homeschoolers!

For more information about LDS Home Educators, please visit their website.  :)