Where I've Been

It’s been a month since I last updated this site. I didn’t mean for a month to go by, but then again, no one ever plans on things going wrong. I took a break from writing on this blog due to a few factors. There’s the normal “it’s cold and gray and that makes me not feel motivated” feeling that I get every year. This year, I also had a few unexpected events and stressors in my personal life that gave me zero motivation to do anything. The combination of these factors made me feel incredibly depressed for a number of weeks. To be perfectly honest, I still feel somewhat depressed, but I believe it's getting better.

Rather than gloss over the way I’ve been feeling, or pretending that I didn’t go on an unexpected hiatus, I want to talk about it. The situation, while far from ideal, gives me a reason to talk a bit more about my mental health, and mental health in general. Because depression is a bad word to some people. Others think it's synonymous with “sadness” which we all know is not the case. Going outside isn’t going to cure my depression. Telling me i need to eat organic won’t “fix” me either. I put fix in quotation marks because I don’t like words like that because “fix” implies something is broken or wrong. Depression isn’t unnatural. It’s one of the most common mental illnesses in the adult population.

When I began feeling this way, I pulled back from doing things I enjoyed. That’s one of the more well-known symptoms of depression, loss of interest in things that you used to enjoy. At one point, I spent an entire day on Youtube watching video after video about the latest drama in the make-up community because I couldn’t do anything else. I can’t really pinpoint where the turning point was for me or what made me realize I needed to make some changes, but it was around this time. So, instead of pulling back from everything, I took a step back and re-evaluated. Was I trying to deal with too much at once? Where could I make changes? What were small things I could do that made me feel like I’d accomplished something? It’s a slow process, it’s still ongoing and I doubt there will be an end date, but I’m getting better. I’m feeling better and that’s what matters to me.

I’m not a psychologist or therapist. I’m aware of the fact that I’m not qualified, at all, to give advice about dealing with depression. Everyone’s different, what works for everyone is different. There’s a reason why some people who are diagnosed with depression decide to take antidepressants while others choose to see a therapist and still others do neither. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. I started writing this post mostly because I wanted to talk about what I’ve been going through. I apologize if that seems selfish.

So, I Got A Crockpot

Photo by Sarah Brown on Unsplash

About two weeks prior to me writing this, it was my birthday. (Happy Birthday Me!) One of the gifts I received was a slow cooker and I finally got a chance to try it out. So, I went online, searched for some recipes and got started.

The recipe I decided to try out was for "Slow Cooker Chicken Parmesan Tortellini".

Ingredients
1 jar (24ish oz) of tomato basil pasta sauce
2 cups of chicken broth
1.5 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 20oz package of cheese-filled tortellini
1 cup of shredded mozzarella cheese or 4 oz of non-shredded mozzarella
1 teaspoon of salt

Directions

1. Spray 5-quart slow cooker with cooking spray.
2. Mix pasta sauce, chicken broth and salt in cooker
3. Add chicken breasts to slow cooker and cover.
4. Cook on low setting for 3 to 4 hours (or until juice of chicken is clear when cut)
5. Remove chicken from slow cooker and transfer to cutting board.
6. Stir tortellini into cooker. Cover and cook on Low for 15 minutes
7. While pasta cooks, cut chicken into strips or chunks (you can also shred it with a fork, if you want)
8. Top tortellini with chicken and then over chicken with mozzarella cheese.
9. Cover and cook for 15 minutes, or until cheese is melted.

Verdict

I picked this dish because it sounded like something easy to make. While I've used a slow cooker before, I hadn't used this model before, which has different features than my mother's which is about 15 years old. This was also my first time cooking chicken in a slow cooker and I'm very paranoid about accidentally giving myself salmonella. 

All of that being said, this recipe was a pretty good choice as a "I need to test this out" recipe. I did put a little bit too much chicken stock in, because I wasn't paying attention, but overall, it tasted good. Will I make it again? I'm not sure, but at least I know how to use this device.

Here is a picture of the tasty fruits of my labors:

(While this was a post about cooking, I'm not going to suddenly turn into a cooking blog. I might post some cooking/food related content in the future, but it won't be on a regular basis. I just wanted to talk about my slow cooker adventure.) 

What's your opinion about slow cookers? Are there any recipes you'd recommend?

A Few Ways to Handle Stress

Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash

Would you like to know what one of my least favorite sentences of all time is? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s any variation of the sentence “you don’t need to stress about that”. At best, it sounds like an empty platitude I hear because the person doesn’t know what else to say. At worst, its entirely dismissive of what I’m feeling and shows no interest in being helpful. Stress is part of being human, everyone experiences it. It’s the feeling of a situation demanding more from you believe you’re able to provide.

So, today, instead of telling you why you shouldn’t stress, I’d like to name a few ways I deal with stress. These are tactics and activities that work for me, and I hope they work for you. I know not everyone reacts to stress the same way. These aren’t in any particular order as they’ve all worked for me, albeit in different situations.

• Yoga-  This is an activity that I do when I feel stressed but can’t immediately figure out what the cause is. Often time, there are several factors causing me to stress out and this helps me clear my mind of everything and focus on just breathing and yoga poses. You don’t necessarily even need to do yoga poses. There have been times where I just sit on my yoga mat and do some breathing exercises as a way to calm down.
• Walk away- Let’s say you’re stressed about a school assignment or project at work. Sometimes, you just need to walk away and be away from your work for a little bit. Take a walk around the block. Go eat some lunch or a snack (away from your computer). Switch to a completely different task for a little bit, just to take some time away from the project you’re getting stressed about.
• Make Art- Sometimes, you just need to get creative. Not everyone can draw or paint, but anyone can color. Studies have shown that coloring can reduce anxiety levels, meaning its ideal for stress reduction. Adult coloring books have become popular for a reason, they cause you to focus on a single activity, coloring, which has effects similar to meditating.
• Blog (or write) about it- Sometimes, I find myself getting stressed because I feel like I don’t have an outlet to talk about things that I’m feeling. I get stressed, I feel like I can’t discuss my stress and that causes me more stress. Part of the reason why I started blogging was to deal with my stress. There are a number of posts that I’ve written that I didn’t publish because I just needed to get all of my frustrations and feelings out. This has also helped me figure out what things seem to be stressing me out on a regular basis
• Get physical- Sometimes, stress is from restless energy we have. Or our minds overthinking things. One thing I started doing when I was looking for jobs was going for runs or going to the gym. The exercise tired me out, which let me get out a lot of the frustration I was feeling that was causing me stress. It doesn’t need to be vigorous exercise, just enough to tire you out a little bit and release some pent-up energy.
• Take A Nap- Sometimes, I stress about thing I can’t control in the slightest. And sometimes, the things I stress about are of the Wait-and-See variety. Or other tactics don’t prove useful in this case. So, I take a nap, or at least try to. Even if I don’t actually manage to fall asleep, laying there, in the dark without my phone or computer in front of me helps me unwind. Sometimes, saying “I’m going to bed, I’ll finish this tomorrow” is the best thing you can do for your own mental health.

Those are a handful of stress-relieving techniques I use. Not every technique fits every situation and the effectiveness varies depending on what exactly the problem is and how much it's upsetting me. Still, at least one has worked every time I've needed to relieve some stress. Since I've started dealing with stress instead of trying to ignore it or power through it, I've found myself happier as a whole.

That's how I deal with stress, how do you handle it?