Been there- not doing that again!

On this much needed mental health day- i leave my puppy to fend for herself (i'm not good company today anyways), pack up my Mac Book and head to Town in Kaimuki for some "me time".  Alone with a great cup of coffee, i instantly find myself researching a cure for my sudden onset of the blahs. In times like these, logging on to TMZ or Perez Hilton typically does the trick. The constant oogling over such insignificant things like Michael Jackson's burial site, Lindsay Lohan losing her hair, and Jon Gosselin's newest flavor of the week pull me further from my own reality and have me obsessing about someone else's problems rather than my own. After 20 minutes, I had enough. Right now didn't seem like the time to be concerned about somebody else anyway, especially someone i didn't even know or care for. Hey, I've got my own ailments to worry about. 

So, in an effort to self medicate i switch from sleazy to self-help and check in with what Martha Beck might have to say about my symptoms.  She always seems to have a way of writing that gets through to me with her barrage of straight shooting reality checks and eye opening revelations. After 4 cups of Illy coffee, reading through 6 months worth of MB blogs, and a brief journal entry...i thanked God for whomever created mental health days to begin with. Then, an epiphany- if i took 20 minutes out of every day to worry about what celebutants and the NYC Prep retards were doing- then that meant i was depriving myself of 140 minutes to focus on myself.  In that time i could be reading (real books, that is), writing, working out, or hatching ways to improve my life. Perhaps this week, i paid way too much attention to office gossip and immersed  myself in volleyball politics. I allowed my mind to veer off course because the reality is, isn't it more fun to dissect someone else's problems rather than your own? Isn't reveling in someone else's failure easier than rectifying yours? And why do we spend so little time making things better only to look for more ways to make it worse? 

Been there, currently doing that, and now i'm DONE! Now i get it... 20 minutes, lots of writing, and 5 cups of coffee. That's my home remedy for combating the blahs...what's yours?