- Joined
- Apr 26, 2007
- Messages
- 8,087
... I''m approaching 30, and I''m suddenly making changes to my life that have me slapping myself in the head that I didn''t do them ages ago. Some of them are silly and jejune (seriously, now that I''ve tried waxing and dental bleaching, I am shocked that anybody bothers more than once), and some of them are serious enough/far-reaching enough that I just wish I could shout them to the sky without coming off like a fanatic. Sooooooooo ... what better forum than this forum?
Two pieces of advice I wish I could give the world:
1) Question your meds. I''ve been on birth control since I was 19, and I figured that whatever moodiness surrounded my cycle was completely natural. Except, when I got the husband''s outside perspective on how utterly predictable my worst moods were and tried switching pills, I went from being near-clinically depressed for one week out of each month to being ... fine. Absolutely, totally fine. How incredibly disheartening it is to realize that I was doing it to myself!
2) On a very similar note: question your dependencies. I''ve been a smoker for nearly as long as I''ve been on the Pill (nice juxtaposition, right?), and while I''ve thought about quitting many a time, going cold turkey did not work for me at all, and the patch and the gum scared me silly after I saw a couple of friends try them, keep smoking out of habit, and basically twitch themselves into palpitations. So, for years I kept telling myself I''d stop when I lacked stress ... and then my husband left me an article on electronic cigarettes. I tried them on a whim, and, hot damn! Three days without tobacco, and I''m ... okay. Better than okay, when you consider that the bizarre little cough that I spent the last year attributing to allergies has just flat-out disappeared.
Overall, I guess the one thing I wish I could tell people/that I wish someone had told me was, question your circumstances. So, what''s the one thing you wish you could tell people/wish someone had told you?
Two pieces of advice I wish I could give the world:
1) Question your meds. I''ve been on birth control since I was 19, and I figured that whatever moodiness surrounded my cycle was completely natural. Except, when I got the husband''s outside perspective on how utterly predictable my worst moods were and tried switching pills, I went from being near-clinically depressed for one week out of each month to being ... fine. Absolutely, totally fine. How incredibly disheartening it is to realize that I was doing it to myself!
2) On a very similar note: question your dependencies. I''ve been a smoker for nearly as long as I''ve been on the Pill (nice juxtaposition, right?), and while I''ve thought about quitting many a time, going cold turkey did not work for me at all, and the patch and the gum scared me silly after I saw a couple of friends try them, keep smoking out of habit, and basically twitch themselves into palpitations. So, for years I kept telling myself I''d stop when I lacked stress ... and then my husband left me an article on electronic cigarettes. I tried them on a whim, and, hot damn! Three days without tobacco, and I''m ... okay. Better than okay, when you consider that the bizarre little cough that I spent the last year attributing to allergies has just flat-out disappeared.
Overall, I guess the one thing I wish I could tell people/that I wish someone had told me was, question your circumstances. So, what''s the one thing you wish you could tell people/wish someone had told you?