Gnomegarden

Mon amour,  Clancy Frankenbacon , tagged me as it for this thing called a meme– it’s like a mind-virus…

A meme is any unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.Wikipedia.

I think I am supposed to infect you all– so here goes–

We’ve heard that five servings of fruits and veggies every day keeps us healthy.  But, what about our mental health?

Andy Gibson has started a meme asking bloggers about their five-a-day to staying mentally healthy as part of the Mindapples Five-A-Day Campaign:  Mindapples is a social movement to promote individual self-management of mental wellbeing. The original “5-a-day” campaign encouraged people to take care of their physical health through simple daily activities, and we want to do the same thing for mental health. We aim to create a stigma-free public debate about mental wellbeing, simply by asking everybody the question: “What’s your five-a-day?”

It gives me great pleasure to invite you to join the Mindapples project and tell the world, what’s your five a day?

Here’s how it works:

• Write a post telling your readers five things you do that help keep you mentally well (and answer any of the other survey questions too if you like)
• Link to the Mindapples site www.mindapples.org
• Invite five blog-friends to do the same (if you want to)

And that’s it.

So, what are my top five things to do every day, or every week to stay mentally healthy?

This is making a huge assumption that I AM mentally healthy, which I am expecting a prickly and hysterical rash of comments on….

( Me, In my mind today.  Erm, most days, actually.)

Here are my five daily goals/strategies (at the moment). Please be aware that this is a sliver of what a perfect life is for me– not my state of grace on a daily basis!!

1. Stay connected. In every way I can.  I have a bit of a “floating off into the ether” issue–( I think there was a fairie in the woodpile somewhere along the line) so I work each day to stay connected to friends, family, my husband, reality, the present .  I am a bit of a wacko worrier, so I try to remind myself to just “be here now”.  This has gotten easier with aging, but still something I have to remember to do.  My kids and family are great saviors in this area as well.  When I am not being swept away with parenting frustration and annoyance–

( HA!  Never miss a moment for a great  Twilight quote–  Edward: “You’re awfully small to be so hugely irritating.” — Breaking Dawn  )

the 2 poppets have the power to amaze me and fill me with so much love and adoration as to make me ache or spontaneously combust. When I am dazzled by a moment of their pure innocence or intense love, or raw observation– it yanks me right into what is truly essential and valuable in life.

2.  Do something.  Again with the ether.  I get distracted. I procrastinate.  I make a LOT  of lists.  Nevertheless I need to fight the compulsion to float around and instead, CREATE.  Art, handwork, crafts, cooking, reading, gardening, photography…. Any of these will do.  All about living an ART-FULL life, artfully.  That’s the thing… whatever the thing is you do– to do it artfully and be engaged.  I suppose I could and should try to translate this more to the mundanity of life– cleaning etc. But THAT’S and whole ‘nutha mind virus.

3. Be HOPEFUL. I swing a schizophrenic arc between blissfully positive and positively Eyore. If and when I notice the swing towards irritable and dour, I try to make myself jump ( or crawl) on over to the sunnier side of the street.  Or take a nap.  Both help.  Nothing good comes of depression and negativity.  Ever.  Well it has been responsible for some brilliant writing and art through the years… but in general, for me, not so much. Along with this goes LAUGHTER.  I do enjoy me some laughter. I am blessed with quite a few people in my life who can get me laughing so that I am hissing like a Mugsy.  They are bawdy, irreverent and at times shocking.  JIm and the 2 Erins are on the top of this heap. I am thankful for you all.

4. Put a stone in the soup. You remember the beloved book from childhood right?  Life needs a little garnish to improve the flavor.  I try to find inspiration each day– I get this through noticing the gorgeous world and life around me, reading books/blogs/enjoying the internet and it’s great resources, talking to others about interesting things, experimenting, exploring and ponderance of all-of-it.  This usually leads me to fits of my own creativity and….

5.  LOVE. Love. love. All of it and everyone.

I am going to tag  some lady energy.   Women that I very much admire - some from up close and some from afar- because I am really very interested in your answers.   Respondez vous s’il vous plait These are some people/blogs of wonder, which inspire me.  I am tagging more than 5, because well, I am greedy like that.

ERIN @ Quadruple Lutz, Chas. and C.S. Jewell (PLEASE!)@ Angryelvis, Lexi@ Pluckyfluff,   Lizz@ red dirt mother and Margie@resurrectionfern, Rachel Marie @ KnittyDirtygirl, Sarah @ the Homestead, Adrian @ Hello Yarn , and Jacki @ YarnZombie, Jacey @ Insubordiknit, ANd last but not least Lynn the  YarnWench

This entry was posted on Friday, December 12th, 2008 at 1:13 pm and is filed under home & family, knitting, memememeeeeee, snippings, wisps for the penseive. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.