I Just Spent Two Hours Trying to Make a Decision

It is 8:50 p.m. here San Francisco and I’ve just spent the better part of the last couple hours trying to decide what to do for the evening. At first I wanted to write an article for HubPages. A couple days ago I downloaded a few thousand private label rights articles on various topics and I as I was going through all the folders I got lost.

I got lost because I couldn’t decide on which article to rewrite!  So I debated a little about trying to find an ebook to rewrite to post on Amazon’s Kindle Publishing platform.  After about an hour of going back and forth on the Amazon idea, I gave up and started looking for free blogger templates so I could change the design of this blog.

Oh my God!  I decided I couldn’t look for blogger templates yet because my wifi account on T-Mobile had already reached its 7 gigabyte limit and I had already spent an extra $20 purchasing more air time.  Jeez.

Now I am writing this article.

I had a pretty good day today.  I bought a book on Amazon about how to publish ebooks on Amazon and make money.  My account on HireWriters was frozen probably because I had a dispute with a client and he ‘ratted’ on me.

At any rate, it’s going to be a good thing whatever happens.  If HireWriters doesn’t reinstate my account, I’ll simply open another one.  I already signed up for another account but I don’t know if they will be able to tell the new account request came from this computer. 

I know I’m just rambling!  I just don’t know what to do today.  Maybe I’m screwed up today because of HireWriters freezing my account.  I’m sure everything will be better tomorrow.

To be honest, I’m really not worried because I always find a way to make money.  Even if it is just a couple of bucks, I always make money.  I’m just hardwired that way. 

I’ve been making money for myself since I was 11 years old and started a paper route.  There I go again rambling.  I’m sorry.

Where was I?  I was talking about HireWriters banning my account.  Oh yeah, I know what I’ll do now.  I’m going to find a place that’ll let me write for money like HireWriters.

Thanks for the idea!

Live Better by Avoiding Stress in Your Life

A recent study has proven that stress is a killer.  That study was unnecessary because doctors have known that stress isn’t healthy for more than five decades.  Money problems, relationship issues and issues in the work place all cause stress.  While you can’t always avoid stress, you can take a number of steps that will help you deal with it a lot better and maybe even eliminate from your life entirely.

One of the best things you can do right now is to make a list of all the things that are causing stress in your life now.  Writing a list is incredibly helpful because by looking at the things that upset you, or stress you out, you can begin to avoid unnecessary people and places that are the causes of some of your stress.

When you finish the list take a look at whether or not there are ways to avoid them.  For example, if going to a certain store causes you stress because of the employees or a bad experience, you can begin to avoid that store.  You should also begin to avoid people that cause you stress even if they are your relatives.  

Stress Can Affect Your Attitude and Behavior

Stress affects the way you think and act, and it can even damage your body, so it’s something you should take seriously.   Key things that can help you avoid stress include learning to manage your time by setting a better schedule, finding more time to relax, and cutting out some unnecessary stressful activities.

Some of the short term effects of stress on your body include:

• A faster heartbeat
•  Headaches
•  Stiff muscles and shoulders
•   Back pain
•   Faster breathing
•   Sweating
•   Upset stomach and nausea
•  Diarrhea

The list above doesn’t include the mental effects of stress.  Stress can change the way you think about situations and other people, and it can make you angry for no reason at all.  It can also make it harder for you to concentrate at work or at simple tasks at home such as cooking.

The longer you carry excess stress, the worse the effects become.  In fact, long term stress can compromise the immune system and make it harder to stay healthy.  Stress can be very harmful to your heart, causing high blood pressure and an abnormal heartbeat as well as blood clots. 

Ulcers and other stomach problems can be caused or made worse by stress. This is only a short list of the effects stress can have on your body. 

Exercises You Can Perform Every Day to Lessen Stress

So, now that you know what can happen if you don't deal with your stress, how do you deal with it?  There are a number of ways you can deal with stress.  Listed below you’ll find the best methods for dealing with stress you can begin using today.  This list was compiled by WebMD:

http://www.webmd.com/balance/guide/blissing-out-10-relaxation-techniques-reduce-stress-spot

A Few Exercises to Help You Deal with Every Day Stress

Breathe Deeply

Take a 5-minute break and focus on your breathing. Sit up straight, eyes closed, with a hand on your belly. Slowly inhale through your nose, feeling the breath start in your abdomen and work its way to the top of your head. Reverse the process as you exhale through your mouth.

“Deep breathing counters the effects of stress by slowing the heart rate and lowering blood pressure,” psychologist Judith Tutin, PhD, says. She's a certified life coach in Rome, GA.

Be Present

Slow down.  “Take 5 minutes and focus on only one behavior with awareness,” Tutin says. Notice how the air feels on your face when you’re walking and how your feet feel hitting the ground. Enjoy the texture and taste of each bite of food.

When you spend time in the moment and focus on your senses, you should feel less tense.

Reach Out

Your social network is one of your best tools for handling stress. Talk to others -- preferably face to face, or at least on the phone. Share what's going on. You can get a fresh perspective while keeping your connection strong.

Tune In to Your Body

Mentally scan your body to get a sense of how stress affects it each day. Lie on your back, or sit with your feet on the floor. Start at your toes and work your way up to your scalp, noticing how your body feels.

“Simply be aware of places you feel tight or loose without trying to change anything,” Tutin says. For 1 to 2 minutes, imagine each deep breath flowing to that body part. Repeat this process as you move your focus up your body, paying close attention to sensations you feel in each body part. 

Thanks for reading my Trying to Change My Life blog.  Please post a comment to let us know how you deal with stress in your life.  If you have something that works very well on stress, we’d love to hear about it.

I Just Joined Bloglovin Blog Network

Hello Peeps,

I just joined the Bloglovin network of blogs.  The site helps people organize all the blogs they enjoy reading.

You can read all your favorite blogs in one place which can be a time saver for people like me.  Plus, it helps me get inspiration for articles I want to write to post here.

At any rate, I'm excited :-) >>>Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Important Steps You Can Take to Prevent Dementia Today and Tomorrow

I think I've written on this blog before that I subscribe to a website named the Daily Challenge.  Today the site present me with this article How to Avoid Dementia.  And it's so important I thought I'd pass it along.

It's a quick read so it'll only take a moment of your time.  It can help you learn how to avoid other stuff when you reach your golden years.  Take a moment and invest in your future self and as always, thanks for reading my Trying to Change My Life blog.

Click on the link below to read:

Five Steps You Can Take to Prevent Dementia - Well-Being Wire - Daily Challenge - MeYou Health:


'via Blog this'

After you're done reading that, come back here and read about how to improve your life and be happy by writing a journal.

Becoming Upset Over the Little Things and People Who Talk Too Much

I don't know what's wrong with me lately. I am becoming upset more easily by staff, and clients who talk too much. There are several people who are in this rehab that simply enjoy talking. The problem is they talk too much! And they never shut up.

Right now as I write this there are two people in the dining room with me and they are talking.  These are two of the people who enjoy talking way too much.

One of them really gets under my skin.  The sound of his voice irritates me and most of us here consider him to be a snitch.  He claims he’s been an IT manager in a corporate environment and that he used to sell meth amphetamine.  He does’t have the personality to be a dope dealer and he certainly doesn’t have the skills to have been a manager in a corporate setting.

I know because I’ve been a supervisor before.  It takes a certain kind of person to be able to supervise other people and he doesn’t have that. Why does he feel that he has to lie to us about his background. We are in a drug rehab facility and we’re all fucked up. If we weren’t messed up we wouldn’t need to be here!

I'm angry.  Leave me alone.

There’s another guy here who claims that he’s a lawyer.  We all know he’s lying but we let him have his imaginary life.  Most of here have been in trouble with the law and we know how a lawyer talks.  I used to date a lawyer and she enjoyed talking in pictures.  Every time she talked she’d try to paint a picture in my head so that I could understand her and grasp what she was saying.

At any rate, I’m no longer angry at the world.  I’m especially not angry at the people here.  The staff are great people.  They are very patient and they have been through what we’re currently going through so they know how to keep us in check.

I wrote the below text in a forum at pyschcentral.com.

I was really going through it these last couple days. Thankfully I knew that it was my addiction talking to me because I am trying to change my life. I saw everything that was bad about this drug program and everything that was bad with the counselor's here.

I was very mean with my counselor and I yelled at the assistant director. I was hopping they'd kick me out. They didn't because I told them a few weeks ago that when I get like that it is my addiction talking.

I was even angry at the woman that's helping me find a place to live when I leave treatment. I even wrote a blog post about it called My Housing Case Manager isn't Doing her Job.

Life can be funny. I am glad that I've learned when my addiction is talking because recently:

My addiction told me:

• Leave treatment!
• This place sucks!
• You don't need these people!
• These people are idiots!
• You'll do ok on the streets!

Today I woke up and the world looked totally different. I felt better and I was appreciative that I have a place to live and that I'll soon be graduating this program.

As addicts we have to be careful. We have to learn to recognize when our addiction is talking to us and when it isn't.

I'm glad I stayed here. And I'm glad I'm still sober. I know that I'll be living on the streets again if I ever pick up a crack pipe again. I simply cannot control what happens to me when I smoke crack. It is too powerful. It is too strong.

I GIVE UP! I can't beat crack. I SURRENDER!

I can't control it and I can't control how much money I spend when I smoke the stuff. Crack won. I give up.

Thanks for visiting my blog.  If you haven’t yet, please read the article, How to Change Your Life and Be Happy.  And please be sure to post a comment with a link to your blog so I can visit J

The Daily Challenge and Self-Compassion Letter to Dear John

Recently I joined a website named the Daily Challenge. I joined it because I know I need help if I want to improve my life and be happy. I also joined because I’m going to be moving out of the rehab I’m in now in about four weeks and I want to establish some kind of support network online.

At any rate, the Daily Challenge website sends its members a challenge every day.  The challenges are designed to help us grow both spiritually and emotionally.  A few days ago I received a challenge which was to write a letter to a friend that has an issue playing the same problems over and over in his head. 

Writing the letter is an exercise in self-compassion which is something I’ve been practicing for a few months.  Self-compassion is a great way to slowly change the inner dialogue in our head and to stop the endless negative chatter that calls us stupid.

I have this problem so I jumped at the chance to perform this daily challenge.  I wrote the letter below to my friend to help him let go of thinking about the same problems over and over.  I couldn’t think of a name fast enough so I choose the name John, as in ‘Dear John’. 

Dear John,

I know you had some issues with Monica and Mary Beth and you yelled at them.  You were only trying to protect yourself because you know what’s going to happen if you move to the Granada.

Go easy on yourself because you’re supposed to support yourself.  You were only doing what comes naturally.  Try to be cognizant of the fact that you are human and you make mistakes on a daily basis.

Think about only the good things in your life and you’ll experience only good things.  When you dwell on the bad, you get only more of that and you’ll never change your life for the better.

Thank for reading this Trying to Change My Life blog.  If you haven't read the post, How to Change Your Life and Be Happy follow the link in this sentence.

Please be sure to post a message below and insert a link back to your blog so I can check it out J

Running on Little Sleep

I slept only 4 hours last night and I have a lot of work to do today.  We had a bad day here at Ferguson Place.  One of the clients told staff th he smelled weed in our room and they searched another client's belongings.

They didn't find anything.  If they would've found drugs in his locker  they would have asked him to leave the program.  He's lucky he had the weed in his pants pocket.

How to Improve Your Life and Be Happy by Writing a Journal

If you want to learn how to improve your life and be happy you should consider writing a journal. You can teach yourself to be happy by reading what you wrote a week ago, or even a year ago. While I was in a rehab facility called Walden House, one of the counselors there told me that all of the answers I need to improve my life are inside me.

I didn’t know what that counselor meant until I started writing a journal every day.  Not only is journal writing a good way to learn from yourself, you can also make things happen in your life simply by writing about them.  Use a journal to write what you want and pretty soon, it’ll manifest in your life.

To give you an example of what I mean when I say you can create what you want by writing it in a journal, I have to go back to 2005 when I first started journaling.  I was in another rehab then as well and one of the things I wrote a lot in that journal was, “I am a lucky guy.”  After a few weeks of writing those words in the journal, I won a game that was hosted by management and I found a 20 dollar bill on the floor.  I turned the money in and my counselor said if no one claimed it I could keep it.

Well, no one claimed the $20 and soon after that something else happened that proved to me the power of journaling.  If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that I started journaling again in an effort to change my life and be happy.  This time I write about having good days and I still write about being lucky.

The text below is a journal entry I wrote on Saturday, August 2, 2014. 

Learn How to Improve Your Life and Be Happy by Writing Positive Things

I had a good day today.  I’m so lucky; I always have a good day.  I understand that everything that happens to me happens for my own good.  In other words, everything that happens has a good outcome when it’s all said and done if I am patient and look for the good in everything.

Today I went to 16th and Mission to buy a ½ pound of tobacco.  I went with Rex, another client here at Ferguson Place.  Rex has been a good friend since I arrived here.  He helped me by giving me cigarettes and loaning me money when I needed it the most.  He is from a poor family in Washington State and he looks a lot like Hugh Hefner.  Rex is about 55 years old and he’s about 5 feet 8 inches tall. 

After I returned from 16th and Mission, I went to the library and spent about two hours there sending emails and performing research for the business I want to start.  I’m going to be successful this time and I’m not going to relapse. 

Getting a Hotspot so I can Make My Life Better here at Ferguson Place

I called my mom earlier today to talk about the WiFi hotspot she wants to buy for me.  She wants to get a T-Mobile hotspot.  I asked her to purchase a hotspot from http://mykarma.com but she insists on going with T-Mobile. 

My counselor asked for my weekly schedule today.  He approved some of my requests and said that I could spend one hour alone at the library or two hours with a buddy.  The counselors here at Ferguson Place don’t like clients in Phase 1 to go out alone because it’s too easy for us to relapse.  They do it for our own good and to keep us safe from outside influence.  

When I returned from the library I took a one hour nap and I felt a lot better.  I slept only 3 hours last night because I kept getting up to use the bathroom.  At one point I got up and smoked a cigarette on the front steps of the house, then I went back to sleep till nine a.m.

My chore in the house for this week is to clean the dining room which entails putting the chairs up on the tables and sweeping and mopping the floor.  I put up the chairs but I didn’t sweep or mop.  I’ll do that tomorrow.  I have too much work to do before I launch my new website business.

I worked until 11:15 today.  I read a lot of stuff on business and personal development.  It was a good learning session and I plan to use what I learned today in my business.

Thanks for reading my blog Trying to Change My Life.  Please be sure to share this article on Facebook and Twitter and please post a comment with your website’s link so I can visit your site.

Labor Day in San Francisco Rehab Facility

It is 8:50 p.m. here in San Francisco on Labor Day. We had a great time here at the rehab facility I’m living in. Every one of the residents pitched in and the festivities began at 3 o’clock as scheduled. Actually, I’m the one that said, “Let’s start eating!” at 3 o’clock and everyone followed my lead.

The text below is another journal entry.  This entry was written here at the rehab.  I don’t have very many of these old entries remaining.  After those are published on this blog, I’ll simply begin writing about my days here at the facility.  My discharge date from here is October 5^th so I have only five weeks remaining.

My counselor at the Scattered Site Housing program hasn’t answered my email about sending me her supervisor’s contact information.  I’m not surprised because I sent her the email last Friday at 4:30 p.m. and it was a long weekend because of the holiday.  I’m having problems with her because she is supposed to find an apartment for me to move-in to after I complete treatment and so far she’s offered me only a hotel room as permanent housing.  I wrote about it here:  My Housing Case Manager is not doing Her Job.

Here is my journal entry for last month on Friday, August 1, 2014

I had a pretty good day today.  I went to the Salvation Army’s office in downtown San Francisco to see a woman named Ms. Davis to get two clothing vouchers at $30 apiece.  I don’t have any decent clothes to wear so my case manager at the Community Living Fund wrote a referral for me to see Ms. Davis who is a tall black woman with a nice personality.

When I arrived at the Salvation Army’s office a woman at the receptionist’s desk told me to go inside Ms. Davis’s office.  But when I entered her office, she became upset and told me to wait outside.  I thought, “Oh my God, I hope she doesn’t have a bad attitude.”  There was nothing to worry about as she was a very nice woman and she gave me three pairs of socks and told me to come back the next day because she didn’t have any more clothing vouchers.

I mistreated my case manager Mary Beth today.  I was short with her and I ended our weekly meeting extra quickly.  We didn’t spend more than ten minutes together when historically, we’ve spent a least a half-hour together every time we met.  I treated her that way because I thought her and my counselor here at the rehab were talking about me.

I had told my counselor at the rehab that Mary Beth was judgmental and that I didn’t like her anymore.  I also told him that I was going to stick it out with her to see what would happen.  She was very nice to me in our last meeting and she was nice in an email she sent me.  I figured that my counselor had spoken to her and told her what I thought about her, and that that’s why she was so nice to me.

I buddied a trans-sexual named Crystal to Popeye’s Chicken and she deviated by going to a friend’s apartment which was around the corner from the restaurant.  She told on herself to staff when we arrived back at the rehab and made me look like a liar.  Crystal is a piece of work.

She likes to talk so much she ratted on herself to the counselors just to have something to say to them.  I told her not to ask me to buddy her anywhere anymore.  She’s an idiot and I wish I didn’t have to talk to her.  She’s rude and likes to talk too much.

Thanks for reading my blog and being a part of my recovery as I try to change my life.  I'm not a very good writer, but I try to do my best.  Please be sure to post a comment below and insert a link back to your blog so I can read it :-)