Thank You

I want to thank everyone who has read this blog over the years.

Thank you for buying Left of the Dial or for reading the memoir excerpts here if you didn’t buy the book.

I’m trying to line up a featured reader gig for the Italian American Writers Association (IAWA) in May. I will tell everyone the information about this if I’m able to get the green light to do this.

2016 is the 25th anniversary of IAWA.

Everyone should take pride in their heritage if you ask me. A few bad apples shouldn’t spoil it for everyone else in this ethnicity.

I once saw a young teen wear a hoodie with bold letters proclaiming: “Proud to be Muslim.” I would like to have a tee shirt that proclaims: “Proud to be Italian.”

You don’t have to be Italian. You can have a different ethnicity. Either way taking pride in where you come from matters if you ask me.

A lot of the customs have gotten lost in translation. I say there’s a beauty in keeping traditions alive.

I wrote years ago at HealthCentral about the recovery strategy of establishing a tradition. I’ll talk about this in detail on Thursday.

Enjoy your day.

Countdown to 2016

The end of the year can be blue for a lot of people who feel they have nothing to celebrate.

Again I’m reminded of the lyrics to the All-American Rejects song “Move Along.” It’s true that when it seems like all hope is gone a person has to just move along.

The future can be better. Today is what it is and tomorrow can be different. We do have the power to shift the needle to have an organic and balanced life. It might not all happen at once. It might happen in increments.

I firmly believe that we’re given only what we can carry. And that the goal is to carry our cross with dignity.

I align as a Christian. Though I don’t attend any church and I’m not a member of any organized religion: I align as a Christian.

Faith in a higher power can carry us through when we don’t have faith in our lives turning around any sooner.

In a book I wrote that I’m no longer going to publish I wrote that an act of faith can simply be walking in a park or around greenery and getting in tune with nature.

I was referred to the Greenpoint Church Hunger Program as a reputable non-profit so I donated money to this effort. The Greenpoint Reformed Church in Brooklyn, NY serves a weekly dinner to anyone who shows up and runs a food pantry with minimal requirements when you go to pick up the food.

Elsewhere I’ve written that buying organic produce and frequenting a food pantry makes sense for a lot of people living on a limited income. Or buying mostly fruits and vegetables and getting other food from a pantry.

One selling point when I was referred to this church was that two married women run it. As in married to each other. I told the person who referred me that I would’ve liked to become a priest if the Catholic Church allowed me to. She told me not to hold my breath.

I was born into a Catholic family and was the only one who attended church often until I went to college. After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 I turned away from organized religion for good.

Today I’m still not a fan of the bigotry and violence committed in the name of God or Allah. I don’t think any human being should be standing in judgment of another human being because you think they’ve sinned in the eyes of your God. Jesus loves everyone.

I tend not to judge people and I try my best to refrain from doing this. It’s true “all you need is love” and two people loving each other shouldn’t be looked down on.

There’s far too much hate and anger and violence and bigotry (including racism and discrimination) that’s still ongoing in the world.

I gave up wanting to be normal in a society where competing against other people in a “rat race” is the norm.

In this holiday season I say: be grateful for what you do have instead of bemoaning or being jealous of what you don’t have.

At HealthCentral years ago I wrote about the recovery strategy of establishing a tradition. So if you don’t have family to celebrate with do something on your own. Be kind to yourself.

Make a charitable donation if you’re able. Or in the New Year see about volunteering your time instead of money to a non-profit whose mission you endorse.

Thank you for reading this blog. I’m grateful for all the readers who tune in. I hope that in the end like the famous quote tells us you don’t think anything is impossible you think: “I’m Possible.”

Tablescapes

House Beautiful magazine features a page devoted to tablescapes with elegant place settings. It’s one of my favorite features of the magazine.

What resonates with me about this is that tablescapes are the perfect living metaphor for artistic expression.

It should come as no surprise that I’m also an Artist/Creative archetype. In the blog over the years I’ve talked about creativity and mental health. I’ve talked about my days as a disc jockey. I’ve talked about fashion and music.

I’ve long wanted to create things of beauty to give others. Those of us who are artists should be supported and encouraged to express ourselves through our chosen medium or media.

Too often artists are told to do what will earn us tons of money regardless of whether we’d be truly unhappy in a blue pinstripe suit life. My contention is that a person can have emotional riches even though they’re not financially well-off.

I want to tell all the artists and creative folk reading this blog that it’s OK to be who you are. Others in society might bow down before Kim Kardashian and people who get famous for being rich and beautiful.

I say: refrain from being snowballed.

According to Caroline Myss anyone with an Artist/Creative archetype will truly be successful in life only when they’re creating their art. So that it doesn’t matter if we have the adoration of millions or just ten followers or only do our art to please our soul.

She rightly states that a lot of Artist/Creatives might not ever get rich or become famous. Something as simple as creating a tablescape or decorating your apartment in style constitutes the true hallmark of this archetype.

I find this all so fascinating about archetypes.

Thus I want to support other artists and say: rock on!

Fall Dinner Party Theme – Missoni

Possibly this will inspire you to host your own elegant soiree.

Holiday Season-ings

I want to season the holiday time with good cheer for others.

The ending of the year could remind us of loved ones who are gone or unrealized dreams or unfinished business from the past.

I say: abandoning a goal that’s not supposed to be is a wise strategy. Years ago I wanted to get a diploma in image consulting from FIT. Somehow I was able to find out on the Internet that FIT offered a diploma in image consulting.

This goal didn’t ever happen. It’s why I contend that it’s wise to accept that some things aren’t supposed to be.

At this point in my life (I’m 50) I make the case for self-acceptance. I have famously stated in an earlier incarnation of the blog that I won’t ever shoot hoops for the Ladies Liberty because I’m only five feet tall.

Being realistic about what you can and cannot do is the first step. Next we can focus on what we CAN do and we CAN have.

I gave up after seven years of trying the myth that I could be an Executive archetype commanding power in the insurance field.

Sometimes we’re not aware of the disconnect because the goal is something we WANT to do at the time. As we go along it turns out to be a mistake.

I say: let’s lighten up and be realistic. The NAMI Peer Support guideline states: “We expect a better tomorrow in a realistic way.”

The holidays and the end of the year should be a time of reflection: to take stock of how far we’ve come, pat ourselves on the back for our efforts regardless of whether we achieved a certain goal, and set our intention for the New Year.

And hey: judicious retail therapy can’t hurt if you stick to a budget.

I was cheered that a denim jacket I bought fits perfectly and looks good.

Happy December to you!

Archetypes

I titled my memoir Left of the Dial to signal having an organic life where a person’s thoughts and feelings are in synch.

As a disc jockey, I read the VU meter to measure the level of sound intensity of the music. If the needle veered to the right in the red, it was too loud. If it was to the left of the dial the sound was in balance.

So too when your thoughts and feelings are noisy and chaotic–veering into the red–that could signal dis-ease. I co-opted the term left of the dial to connote that you can have a full and robust life doing what gives you joy. And that doing what you love is the way to achieve optimal mental health.

A book I’m reading corroborates what I’ve been writing about all along. The Carolyn Myss book Archetypes lists the features of the 10 primary archetypes. I’m all for honoring and nurturing everyone’s archetype(s) so that each of us can live a happy, healthy life.

Too often we convince ourselves to do or not do something and this could restrict us and make us ill. These are the “myths” the author talks about for each archetype. Failing to live up to your archetype can cause illness and dis-ease.

Not surprisingly I discovered I’m a Fashionista. For this archetype: “beauty and fashion carry projection of your journey of self-empowerment and inner growth to a degree unmatched in any other archetype.”

In Left of the Dial I documented this love of fashion. A couple of reviewers protested this. Yet scratch below the surface and how a person styles herself can be an act of freedom to be our authentic selves.

Myss rightly asserts that discovering your archetype(s) can free you to make the right choices in life–in a career, in a relationship, in how you live and act in the world.

I recommend that you go on the Archtypes website and take the quiz to determine your Top 3. Discovering them and living in tune with them could possibly help shift the needle to the left where everything is in harmony.

It’s a fascinating study and it appears eerily accurate just like the personality type quiz and other self-assessment measurements that are out there on the Internet–like the Kolbe A Index and the CareerMatchmaker I talked about in the Flourish blog.

I’m all for using these kinds of tools that can help a person in recovery live a balanced life of purpose and passion.

Flamed Out

Is it time to move beyond the concept of “difference” as a defining factor in a person’s life? Yes: I think now of celebrating the common like meeting at the Commons–a public park in Boston–where everyone shares space.

We all share space on Earth–on one hand we can embrace difference yet on the other I say isn’t it time to worship the invisible threads that connect human beings.

How most of us want to love and be loved; how all of us hurt and have pain; how we all experience joy.

I want to write about these invisible threads.

Why do so many of us feel like we’re different? Who else is the barometer of “normal” that we’re looking at and deeming ourselves to be different from?

Popular media glorifies same-ness. it celebrates what’s accepted and shuts out the individual.

I’ve championed going on over nine years in my blogging that a person does their own thing and does their own think.

We are individuals. It’s time to rejoice in our beauty.

The Saturday night entertainment at the educational conference was the band Flame. I bought their CD with the song “Someone Like You.”

One rain-haired woman danced and shook a musical stick.

The lead singer started off with “Brown-Eyed Girl.”

They are a professional band. I urge you to go on the Flame website and see and hear the beauty.

Telling Our Stories

The veteran in the video I link to at the bottom is quoted: “You served combat. Or not. You have a story. Tell it.”

Children are asked to sign a life-sized poster board thanking our veterans for serving our country. A bunch of us are conflicted when those brown-skinned children’s grandmothers’ houses in Syria are being bombed.

The two of us think we shouldn’t have started the failed endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yet joining the military is like taking a vow to become a priest: you might not be under oath yet it’s what you signed up for: serving our country.

We can argue that having blind allegiance regardless of the outcome (think: desecrating a Doctors Without Borders hospital) doesn’t solve anything. We can argue that the billions spent on these wars should’ve been spent on mental healthcare instead. We can argue that we could’ve taken the money spent on war and used it to fund the college education of kids who live in poverty.

Hold those thoughts.

I want to talk about veterans of all stripes now: those who pledged undying (and sometimes dying) loyalty to serve in our military. Those who’ve been through psychic wars. Soldiers fighting mental illness. Those of us battling discrimination because of our mental illness or because of our other perceived “difference.”

It might not be OK to lump all veterans together with our armed forces. Yet my point is that Joe Bruni is right: “You served combat. Or not. You have a story. Tell it.”

I dream a world where there’s no war of any kind. Where American soldiers are not sent into dubious battles programmed to kill. Where people with schizophrenia don’t have to do battle every day with their illness because they’ve gotten effective treatment as soon as they need it.

Where fighting for our rights as human beings is not necessary.

The message is: “Land of the Free Because of the Brave.”

In this regard: I raise a pint to every brave soul who has fought in a U.S. war. I raise a pint to every person who’s fighting some kind of battle in their lives.

We must never forget the lives of anyone who fights. Whether a person is fighting for our country or fighting for their rights or fighting for wellness inside of illness: we must never forget them and never abandon them.

Here’s the Tribute to Joe video on CNN:

Why I Detest Stereotypes

I abhor stereotyping people. As a writer, I wanted to publish a schizophrenia memoir where the illness was in a way almost secondary. I wanted to craft original characters that had real lives.

Long-term research indicates that about 15 percent of individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia have a refractory form of this illness: unremitting symptoms. And 10 to 15 percent commit suicide according to the long-term studies.

This causes doctors and family members to extrapolate from the minority of patients and loved ones that NO ONE with schizophrenia can have a normal life or a better life.

I understand how a person can feel when their loved one has a refractory illness. I make the case for better research and better treatment for schizophrenia for individuals who have a severe form. I make the case for seeing who the person is as a human being not a mental patient.

My contention is that stereotypes are lies. Viewing everyone the same way because you interacted with one person who behaved that way is stereotyping.

And often it’s the mothers and fathers who stereotype their loved ones by saying: “My son’s a schizophrenic.”

Stop that. Right now.

Jill Bolte Taylor in her brilliant memoir My Stroke of Insight wrote that she needed everyone to believe she would recover when she had a stroke that paralyzed her.

Believe that your son or daughter can recover. Believe that individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia can recover.

Know that you don’t have, I don’t have, no one has the right to judge another person. We don’t have the right to write the end of their story before it begins. Neither do we have the right to think: “You were supposed to become a brain surgeon and now that you work at Rite Aid I’m disappointed in you.”

I abhor stereotypes of any kind. I’m writing a novel with an African American character so I’m set to read books written by and about African Americans.

My point I’m getting at is that no one’s a cardboard character. To quote Jodi Picoult from a radio interview: “People are more than the sum total of their disability.”

It’s a choice: we can focus on illness or we can focus on the beauty inside as well as outside of a person. And I think sometimes only seeing the symptoms and focusing on the hell blinds others to that beauty.

What I’m saying is two-fold: we can’t view recovery as the total absence of illness. Yet we can’t view the illness as the person’s identity in life.

I’m a writer: I’m interested in the contradictions inherent in everyone’s personality.

I’m a person in recovery: I’m interested in destroying stereotypes by writing about real people not about pathology.

And yes, I salute cashiers who work in Rite Aid just like I salute people who have other careers.

I’ll quote the title of an earlier blog entry that quoted the X song title:

“See who we are.”

See possibility in our pain. Break bread with us. Get to know us as people first.

There’s a word for this.

It’s called dignity.

Cucina Povera

Abito una vita di cucina povera adesso. Soltanto mangio lentiche; pasta; verdure; dei pesce; e frutta. Aqua, aqua, aqua. Non bevande.

The Italian is elegant: cucina povera is literally “poor kitchen” or poverty food. It sounds beautiful in Italian though.

Years ago I told my shrink: “I want to lose weight.”

His automatic response: “Lay off the pasta”–giving me a Cheshire smile like he knew I was up to no good with the sauce.

Yet I think more psychiatrists should take an active role in having a dialogue with their patients about health, nutrition, and fitness. I think it’s foolish and could be unethical to merely write out a prescription and send the person on their way after a irresolute 15-minute chat.

I have decided that having a poor kitchen eating plan is better: for my wallet, my health, and for our planet.

We need to vote with our pocketbooks and not fork over our hard-earned money on food and drink that is going to make us sick while agribusinesses earn billions and billions of dollars.

Monsant-No! has polluted waterways with cancer-causing PCBs that have decimated inhabitants of a town and left it a ghost town. This company vociferously claimed its Agent Orange product would not harm human beings. Yes right we all know how that turned out.

Eating mostly fruits and vegetables is the way to go now. And I eat mostly organic fruits and vegetables. It’s better for the planet; it’s better for our plates. This is one instance where individual choices can benefit the world we live in beyond our bottom line–our waists and wallets.

I will return in here with cheap, simple recipes readers can cook or make.

I wrote in the Flourish blog about nutritional psychiatry. It’s high time and high tide that psychiatrists strive to treat the whole person: our bodies not just our heads.

Our shrinks must dialogue with us about our eating habits and refer us to a nutritionist if we have to consider this option. From 1990 to 1993 I met with an MD who had a private practice focused on nutrition and health. Dr. K. wrote on her prescription pad the RDAs of protein, calcium, and other vitamins I needed to have in my diet and what kinds of foods were the source of the RDAs.

I doubt it’s a coincidence that after I started seeing Dr. K I lost 20 pounds and kept it off until I was 40 and gained five pounds. Since taking up a weight lifting routine I lost those five pounds again.

There’s something to be said about judicious frugality like keeping a poor kitchen.

Returning to School

I did not think that the course work was hard when I attended graduate school. I simply thought it was a lot of labor. It took a lot of effort yet I obtained a 3.89/ out of a 4.0 GPA. I always think that those of us with broken brains become “school heads” and throw ourselves into our studies as a coping mechanism for the hard time we’re having.

I followed through with my goal of going back to school even though I was unemployed.

___________________________________________

Starting library school, I soldiered on in a purple mood: brave and sad. The insurance career may have failed, yet it was the only one I knew, so I wondered if maybe it was a mistake to go back to school. I felt like a tormented lover torn between staying with her sugar daddy because he was there and walking on to dare find a new love. I looked regretfully at the door that closed like a woman mourning the side of the bed where her love used to sleep.

The Pratt location in Manhattan was where I attended school.

An omen: I had to give a presentation for my Introduction to Libraries class, talking about an interview I conducted with the director of a library. My last name began with a B, so I was the second person to perform. I interviewed a librarian at the Jefferson Market branch in Manhattan.

After the class, a guy from the first row came up to me: “You had a booming voice. You were amazing.”

“Thanks.” I fobbed off this as a great feat even though I thought it was ordinary.

“Want to go for coffee at the Used Book Café?”

“Okay,” I dared say yes.

“I’m Adrian.” He led the way.

“Chris.” I slung my messenger bag over my shoulder. It was a Manhattan Portage canvas one whose red logo patch I removed when everyone in sight started carrying the same bag. I bought mine two years ago and wanted to be anonymous now.

The bookstore was on Crosby Street; you could get lost in the stacks. Oh, I was in heaven—the books, books, books were all cheap, and a lot were in new condition. Adrian ordered a latte. I chose the tomato soup. We sat at a table in the back. He was an Armani Exchange kind of guy who wore his dramatic clothes well. His own messenger bag was leather.

“I work as a reference assistant at Forrester Bean Tate Reilly,” he rattled off a law firm.

What could I say? I had two part-time jobs: I worked in the second floor administration office at Pratt, answering phones two days a week, and I temped at McKinsey, doing word processing two days to bring in money.

I asked him what a reference assistant did, and he told me.

“You need to learn online searching. That’s where the money is.”

“How could I do that?” I was curious.

“Take the online database courses in law and business. That’s where it’s at.”

“I’m considering doing that,” I told him.

Adrian’s last name started with a G, so he would give his talk in a couple of weeks.

“I’m going with the big guns: a PowerPoint presentation.”

“Marvelous.” I was in awe of him. Did I sound like a drip?

He told me I should join the student association that was meeting next week at one o’clock after our class. This intrigued me, and I decided to risk going. The other students were a multi-culti crowd from countries around the world. I welcomed the chance to rub elbows with them and hear their stories about how they came to be at Pratt.

Adrian stared at me throughout our conversation, and I felt uneasy. Did I give off an odd vibe, or was he just the kind of person who acted like he was always at a cocktail party making deals?

“I’d better get going. I have to take the train to the ferry and then the bus on the other side.” I gathered up my bowl to take back to the counter.

“See you later,” he chanted in a dark voice.

“Ciao.” I sailed out the door into rain.

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