Author Archives: lydias

An interesting thing happened to me a while ago. The weekend started out great, but by Sunday afternoon I was feeling anxious.

The first thing I do when this sort of thing happens is start going through a mental checklist of possible causes. Sometimes your mood can be affected by things that are easy to fix and don’t actually have anything to do with your mental state at all.

Was I hungry? No.

Thirsty? No.

Tired? No.

Lonely? No.

Had anything concerning happened recently? Not in the least. Life was good.

Had I been eating or drinking caffeinated products? YES! I’d had a couple of chocolate baked goods as well as caffeinated soda over the weekend.

Larger doses of caffeine make my heart race and my body feel jittery. I have several relatives who have mentioned having similar reactions, so I’m guessing that at least some of it is due to genetics. Even fairly small amounts of caffeine have been known to make me anxious because my tolerance for that drug is so low.

When I avoid every source of caffeine, I am a much calmer person.

This won’t work for everyone, of course. There are many causes of anxiety, and your ancestors may not have given you a lovely oversensitive-to-caffeine gene like mine did. Haha.

It is a simple thing to try if you’ve been struggling with anxious thoughts, though. Avoiding caffeine is pretty easy once you figure out where it likes to hide. The only sneaky place I’ve found it would be in some over-the-counter pain medicine. Certain brands include caffeine to make their medicine more effective.

Other than that, caffeine generally isn’t hidden in food or drinks. If it’s chocolate, coffee, or non-herbal tea, it probably has caffeine. If it isn’t, it probably doesn’t.  I’d recommend cutting it out of your diet for a week or two to see if it helps.

The worst thing you can discover is that it isn’t a trigger for you!

I’ve always liked piers.

It’s beautifully bizarre to stand on a solid surface but also hear water lapping the shore below your feet.

I like how piers connect the land and the water. Normally I wouldn’t step into the muddy or sandy edge of a body of water. This hesitation disappears when I have a dry and mostly clean place to walk.

This photograph reminds me of the piers I’ve known.

My grandfather used to have a nice, little one in the home where he spent some of his retirement. I liked standing on it and watching my brothers fish.

Toronto has several decent sized piers. Every time I visit them, I feel like I’ve stepped into an entirely new world. You don’t generally expect to smell fresh, sea air and hear seagulls scream in the middle of a city, but it happens here.

These were the things I thought about when I first saw this photograph. What did you think about?

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, photo essays, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Did Neanderthals Die Out Because of the Paleo Diet? Yes, the title is a little click-bait-y, but don’t you wish we could travel back in time and answer questions like this one for good? There are so many things I’d love to know about Neanderthals. When I was a kid, I used to fantasize about scientists finding a small tribe or two of them somewhere, figuring out how to communicate with them, and finding out all kinds of interesting stuff.

From Pack Kindness via TravelMomBreeze:

It’s time to gear up for your next adventure.  You break out the suitcase, find all of your travel documents, gas the car and you’re ready to take off on your journey! BUT WAIT, you forgot one very important thing…you need to pack kindness.

The Questions That Every State Googles the Most. Fair warning: some of these questions are not necessarily work- or kid-safe. We need a Canadian version of this, though.

Back to Brick Lane via RHTDaly. I share Ruth’s obsession with and love for street art. If you’re also a fan of this kind of art, go check out some of the amazing murals she’s found.

Why It’s Okay to Say Nice Things to Famous People. I regularly compliment the non-famous people I know, but I’ve only ever occasionally thought to do the same thing with famous people. Like the author, I’ve assumed that anyone who is even slightly well known already gets more than enough praise. What an interesting and thoughtful idea, though! I will start taking this guy’s recommendation.

Finding My Way Through the Maze to Reach a Milestone via KathyPooler. Who else is impatient when they’re sick? While I’ve never been as ill as Kathy was and is, I definitely sympathize with her frustrations. It can be difficult to remain cheerful when your body isn’t cooperating.

What have you been reading?

Gea, the main character, has been living a quiet existence for millions of years. She saves what little energy she has for creating the most important work of her career. Everything is moving smoothly until a greedy, robotic stranger shows up and tries to steal everything that she’s created.

This film was a little slow in the beginning. If the premise interests you in the least, though, give it time. The payoff in the end was well worth the wait.

I was also impressed by how everything was put together visually. It was beautiful even when Gea’s world was being destroyed. This was a real feast for my eyes.

Recently I decided to take a diabetes risk test for fun.

Let’s get a few things out of the way before I continue this post. Yes, this might be a slightly odd definition of the term fun. I am pretty good at amusing myself with stuff that most people wouldn’t immediately think of as entertaining. (I credit my years as a homeschooled child who had hours of glorious freedom after the daily schoolwork was finished for this ability. Ha!)

Yes, I’ve taken similar quizzes for other diseases and disorders out of curiosity as well. No, I’m not worried about being diagnosed with any of them. Sometimes I’m working on story ideas involving characters who may be less than perfectly healthy, for example.  I am also the kind of person who is irresistibly driven to complete quizzes and surveys of any kind. There is something fascinating about giving this kind of feedback even if I’m the only one who will know the results.

There were certain questions on the diabetes quiz that no one can change like your ethnicity, age, and family history of diabetes.

Many other risk factors can be tweaked, though. Exercising regularly and maintaining a healthy weight lowers the chances that someone will develop this disease. There were times when I played around with the questions and got wildly different responses based on whether on the hypothetical people I was answering for did these things.

It isn’t currently scientifically possible to prevent everyone from developing diabetes*, of course, but your choices still matter. There are small decisions we all make every day that have a big impact on our lives over time. For example, I’m slowly learning a new language. If you start taking brisk walks today, you could work your way up to running marathons in a few months.

*Although how we might manage to change this would be great fodder for a science fiction short story.

We can’t affect everything. It’s perfectly okay to admit that those limits exist. There may come a time when you can push past them. Then again, there may not.

We can affect a lot of things in life, though. The older I get, the more value I place on focusing on those things we do have control over and seeing exactly how much we can change them.

You decide where the line is and how you’ll react when someone else crosses it.

You decide whether, if, or how to forgive.

You decide if you’ll be looking down at the cigarette butts and broken glass in the gutter or up at that glorious sunset at the end of the street.

You decide whether to keep trying.

You decide when it’s time to give up and try something new.

You decide if you’ll exercise today.

You decide if you’ll take that second helping at dinner.

Life is full of choices. What choices will you be making today?

Happy Victoria Day long weekend to my Canadian readers! Here is this week’s list of poems, blog posts, videos, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Her Therapeutic Walks via CPCranes.The imagery in this poem was fantastic.

Perfectly Imperfect via eralbertson. I absolutely loved the message in this post. Perfectionism is something I’ve struggled and struggle with. It’s difficult to let go and accept that there’s no such thing as being perfect.

Why I Crave the Hermit’s Life via HMJonesWrites. There are days when I have these thoughts. It’s not something I’d want to do forever, but I can see how it would be peaceful to live the hermit’s life for a short time. How about you?

How Bad Biology Is Killing the Economy. What a thought-provoking theory. This is the kind of stuff I really enjoy reading about.

The Reductive Seduction of Other People’s Problems. Part of me hopes that young, bright-eyed people from other countries will start coming to where we live and trying to solve our problems. Turnabout is fair play and all.

This is a video my husband shared with me a while ago. It’s an honest look at all of the amazing advantages we have in 2016 and what future generations might think of how we (mis)used them.

What have you been reading?

http://juliemorgenlender.com/2016/05/16/5-simple-ways-stop-overspending/

I found this blog post a few days ago on Twitter while reading through the #MondayBlogs hashtag. I loved Julie’s ideas and wanted to add to her list.

These things won’t be quite as quick and easy as what she recommends, but they are incredibly effective over the long haul.

#1) Cut out as many advertisements from your daily life as possible.

It’s easier to be content with last year’s styles or models if you aren’t being bombarded with their replacements. The more often I watch advertisements, the more I find myself wanting to replace things that are still perfectly serviceable.

The simplest way to avoid this temptation is to be unaware of what they’re selling in the first place. If you have cable, mute the commercials and go stretch your legs or grab a snack for those few minutes. If you’re surfing the Internet, use an adblocker.

Once I saw someone cover up the entertainment screen in front of her with a piece of paper during a long flight because she was so tired of seeing silent commercials flickering on the screen. These are a few of the many ways you can reduce the number of times companies try to convince you to buy their products.

#2. Consolidate your trips.

When I could use a new spatula, I try to avoid visiting the kitchen supply store until there are a few other things on my list. I do the same thing with shopping trips for other non-perishable items as well whenever possible. There’s something to be said for waiting a few extra days weeks, or months to shop.

This won’t work for food or toilet paper, of course, but sometimes you discover that you don’t actually need that spatula right now after all. There might be another tool in your kitchen that works just as well, or a friend might turn out to have one that he no longer needs.

If it turns out that you do need it, consolidating trips means that you’ll spend less time being exposed to store jingles, sale flyers, cashier spiels, flashy displays at the ends of aisles, and all of the other sources of advertisement that are used to push products and services onto customers.

#3. Embrace minimalism.

As you might have already guessed, I am a proud minimalist. There is something incredibly freeing about only buying things that you will use regularly and that will bring you joy. A $200 waffle iron might be a good deal for someone who makes dozens of waffles for family and friends several times a week, but it’s probably not something you should be buying if you’re planning to make a few waffles once or twice a year.

Think long and hard before purchasing something. I own a pair of shoes and a pair of sandals. This amount of footwear is perfect for me. Your perfect number might be different, but you’ll save a lot of money if you pare down everything to the bare minimum and don’t replace it until you genuinely need to.

#4. Choose the right friends.

It’s easier to save money over the long haul if your friends share your values.

My favourite people in the world to hang out with are the ones who are content to share a picnic in the park, watch Netflix, or go for a hike. There’s nothing wrong with splurging once in a while, but I generally prefer cheap or free entertainment. The nice thing about living in a city as large as Toronto is that there’s almost always something fun going on that won’t break the bank.

This isn’t something that will happen overnight, of course, but I have been on a slow and steady quest to meet people who share my idea of a good time.

The title explains it all.

I had no idea that walnut leaf singing was a thing. Isn’t it amazing to see what creative things people come up with when they’re trying to amuse themselves?