mental health

A Good Life Lived

/ francesmihulec / Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What are the most important things needed to live a good life?
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One of my special interests is genealogy, which is a much broader hobby than I think people realize. Anyone involved with historical recreation of any stripe is probably already nodding along. The family tree is only the baseline beginning. You’re an explorer and a detective, trying to find the story behind the names and dates. You become an expert in local and global history to understand what was happening politically and culturally in the area where your ancestors lived. Unexpected surname changes and choices for given names (unique or not) can reveal quite a bit about your family. Frances/Francis is one of, if not the, most common names in my entire family tree.

We are people who highly value personal freedom. Many of my emigrating ancestors came to the United States because they liked keeping their heads attached. I have some historical evidence that my occasional inability to keep my mouth shut is one I come by honestly. I have also seen evidence that we’re generally willing to die if necessary to live our lives as they deserve to be lived.

I think a good life requires refusing to play the games that make everyone else so miserable. It requires being authentically yourself and figuring out what that means within the broader scope of your communities: family or found family, your neighborhood, your relevant cultural groups, etc. The way of life in the Siksika Nation, part of the Northern Blackfoot Confederacy, gave Maslow the basis for his hierarchy of needs. That entire pyramid is the bare minimum and the base level for building a supportive and peaceful life and community. For the unfamiliar, the big takeaway from Maslow is that we aren’t happy or fulfilled as people if we’re always scrambling for resources and acceptance.

We know what the basics are to survive, but to thrive, you need to appropriately value yourself and your community (multiple communities for many of us). It’s about showing up and celebrating each other every day. It’s making sure everyone’s cup is full as best you can, including your own. I personally found that creating a good life involved rejecting old societal beliefs and moving away from what everyone “has” to do. I am showing up where I want to be with people whose opinions and needs matter to me. You know your life is good when you can genuinely say, “I have what I need and I am fulfilled.”

Eight Months Later

/ francesmihulec / Leave a comment

I realize I’ve not been the best with keeping up with this blog after I started it to be a writing portfolio (of sorts). I’m still not sure where I’m going with Dead Cat Bounce ultimately, but here’s the run down of how the bulk of my first year in Seattle has gone:

I had three weeks of panic upon my first arrival here, because my spouse had lost the job that had gotten us through the move and into an apartment on my first day in the city. I took the first job that I was offered, grateful, albeit a little daunted, but it turned out to be the best decision I’ve made in a long time. I was promoted to an assistant manager position after six months.

My mental and physical health had taken a dive back in Kansas and it had worsened since I wound up in a position of shouldering the bulk of the household expenses in a city notorious for its high cost of living. Enter company health insurance and actually taking care of my own health for the first time in probably twenty years. For the first time in a long time, I’m living with a thought on the future, instead of bare-bones survival running on nothing but adrenaline, caffeine, top-notch fiction, and cheap whiskey. At the end of this journey, I hope to ease the nightmares and start to appreciate myself as a person, as well as hopefully survive my next decade without wearing down my organs anymore than is necessary.

In short, I stopped writing and creating for a while. I no longer had a taste for it, so this is a move back toward making art (or something in that general direction) and growing as a person. I’m not sticking to a regular writing schedule yet, but it is happening again. I’ve been working on my programming skills and I have a game concept that I’ve been poking at when inspiration strikes. Baby steps, as they say.

At this point, I can’t honestly promise I’ll keep up with the site like I originally intended, or that it won’t take on a new direction in the future, but thanks for popping in on occasion to read! I hope to have more to share in the coming weeks. Let me know in the comments if you have any places in Seattle you want me to review, photograph, and/or mention. Or anything that strikes your mind on what you’d like see next on readcatbounce.