Category: Musings

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How to Dopamine Detox

VIDEO: How I tricked my brain to like doing hard things.

If you are feeling less motivated, part of your energy management strategy might be to curate where your dopamine fixes come from. A little dopamine detox might get your mojo back in gear and refresh your energies.

To boost your productivity, dare to give these strategies a try for a day. Let me know if it helps. And, hey, total honesty? I know this is hard. I had this video bookmarked for a couple of days before I got around to listening to it. That done, I think it makes a lot of sense.

Good luck!

 

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What good & bad people have in common

In research for several of my books, I’ve soaked in prepper culture. I warned in This Plague of Days that the apocalypse would be boring, especially at first. In This Plague of Days, Season One, I spent a lot of time on the effects of quarantine on an average American family. My zombie apocalypse wasn’t all about having a castle with unlimited ammo and shooting zees all day for fun and freedom.

Besides gathering food and whatnot, one of the Spencer family’s first trips is to a library to stock up on books to keep them entertained. (Jaimie’s father was a librarian so they really stock up!) The Spencers prepared for the siege pretty well. Turns out, some of prepper culture is full of shit. They enjoyed their paranoid fantasies and stocked up on guns and ammo but maybe not enough on toilet paper and seeds. After a short time in isolation, many are crying to be let out way too early. They may have lots of MREs, but no heart. (Buckle up, by the way. This pandemic is just getting started, but that’s a topic for another post.)

Protests versus terrorism

The people who are protesting that their states need to open up so they can get a haircut are horribly misguided. I would have more sympathy if they maintained physical distancing and wore masks while they screamed about house arrest.

(Hint: You’re not really under house arrest. You’re not being oppressed. The well-informed authorities are trying to save you from yourselves and protect us from you.) 

I know folks are hurting financially. Many do have genuine and valid concerns about how to get money coming in to feed their families. However, these armed Covidiots aren’t peacefully protesting to receive UBI, food relief, and governmental supports for healthcare efforts. They aren’t demanding moratoriums on rent and mortgage payments. Instead, murdering irony forever, they have “My body, my choice” on their signs and car windows.

Newsflash: You aren’t pro-life, after all. You’re pro-selfishness and all for short-term thinking that will result in a greater economic collapse and more mass graves.

Some even call the pandemic a hoax. Gee whiz, guys! If it’s a hoax, it’s the most elaborate one in history and I’m not sure what the aim might be. We all live in the same economy. No one wants to trash it. We all have at least a few loved ones we’d like to see survive. It takes heavy Alex Jones-level mental gymnastics to achieve that kind of confirmation bias. You do know Italy exists, right? No? How about New York? Did New Yorkers make up slammed hospitals because they’re a blue state? If so, damn, those ambulance sirens wailing all day and night sure were a nice touch to the massive deception.

The Defining Moment

The most pathetic thing I’ve seen in these armed terrorist gatherings is a big guy in a stare-down with a nurse. She’s in her mask and scrubs, arms crossed, not budging. He’s desperate to intimidate her. Dude, with the amount of death she witnesses in one shift, you aren’t going to scare her in your Army Surplus camo and beret. You’re emboldened by a president who tweets about “liberating” democratically elected states from the tyranny of saving lives. That nurse and all the healthcare professionals like her are trying to save civilization. If called upon, she’d even try to save your dumb ass. Screw you, Beret Guy. Go home. Stay home. If you have concerns, write a letter to your government officials while you still have a post office.

There’s the moral fulcrum: Beret Guy doesn’t care who dies as long as he gets to fire up the grinder of capitalism and enjoy him some waffles that ain’t take-out. Healthcare workers suffer in an attempt to stall death and end suffering.

If anyone’s having trouble identifying who’s who:

Beret Guy is a terrified terrorist.

The nurse standing her ground is the brave protester.

 

 

Closer to home

No one is immune to poor decision-making skills. I used to work in healthcare and still watch a professional forum where the issues of the day are discussed. In one thread, a manual therapist whose husband was in pain from tennis elbow asked about recommendations for a brace. Applying cross-fiber frictions to lateral epicondylitis isn’t that big a deal for professionals trained in assessment and treatment protocols. Isolate the tissue, treat, and follow up with hydrotherapy and remedial exercise. It takes just a few minutes and there is no great danger. The therapist only asked for an equipment recommendation. It shouldn’t have gone south. It sure did.

And then the Deluge

Self-styled gurus and pedants descended upon her, burning up the comment threads with the same bullying comments, over and over. “Treating your spouse is illegal!” they cried. “You could lose your license!”

Those colleagues valued appearing virtuous more than true empathy and compassion for people in pain. They may have technical skills, but I have a rule: Don’t consent to treatment from self-aggrandizing sociopaths. (That’s a good guideline for people to avoid when you vote, too.)

Consider the alternative for a moment: The therapist’s spouse is in pain. She can help him quickly, easily and safely or he can try to get an appointment at a clinic for a non-emergent issue. Good luck with that, sure, but if he succeeded, then what? He risks going to a doctor’s office, possibly getting infected with COVID-19 or bringing the virus to the office? In other words, these so-called experts would rather people risk death than defy a bad law in these extraordinary circumstances. Spoken as true healers, guys, Good job, you goddamn defects.

I am so glad I am retired from manual therapy so I can write for a living. I loved my patients, yes, but my provincial regulators and administrators couldn’t be trusted to exercise good judgment and discretion. The job didn’t pay enough for the stress headaches it gave me. I’m healthier now for having let that career go.

Guidelines for defiance

If you are desperate for income, I understand that all too well. Carrying guns, attempting to intimidate frontline workers, and opening up too soon is not the answer. Most people can’t make $1200 last ten weeks unless they’re already homeless and sleeping under a bridge. Demanding more of a federal response and societal supports would make sense.

Those screaming to be let out so they can freshen up their spray tan are a threat to themselves and many innocent people. If they were minorities acting like that, I fear the next response would come from the National Guard.

Don’t block ambulances. Don’t be a dick for a bad cause. I know you’re scared. We all are. Masking your fear by carrying an AR-15 to a protest doesn’t make you look braver. Your protest signs don’t tell me you are a patriot speaking truth to power. Your empty slogans advertise your disrespect for science and spelling. (I misspell sometimes, too. It’s no grave sin. Please don’t make it a way of life that defines your character.)

What do good and bad people have in common? Defying the law.

Bad people defy good laws designed for public safety because they’re criminals. They have bad wiring, lack skills and opportunity, are stupid and selfish (or a combination thereof).

Good people defy bad laws because sometimes laws defy reason. Why? Because we’re trying to have a civilization here! Let’s work together to survive and thrive in mutual respect and compassion.

I recommend changing bad laws by working peacefully from within the system. Vote. Run for office or campaign for your candidate. Demonstrate peacefully. If you must be a dick, dare to be a dick for a good cause. There are rare times when defying laws makes sense. When you do it, make sure it makes sense.

Make sure a reasonable person would suspect you’re one of the good guys.

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How to make your nervous system less nervous

This audio includes a short box breathing exercise and a mixture of the contract/relax technique and visualization to help you relieve stress.

Do not listen to this while you are driving or doing anything that requires your attention elsewhere.

Last week, I wrote about the 3A Triad of Stress Management. Today, I’d like to share a breathing and visualization exercise with the aim of:

  1. Staying in the moment to
  2. deepen breathing in order to
  3. boost body awareness to
  4. ease bodily tension
  5. and cue a more calm state of mind.

    With practice, you can consciously ease your stress and deepen relaxation.

    Your body is constantly listening in on your thoughts and reacts to those thoughts unconsciously. As you entertain stressful thoughts, the red-light reflex kicks in and your muscles tense up.

    Here’s the good news:

    Using time-tested mindfulness techniques, you can activate the green-light reflex. Your mind is listening to your body, too. By deepening your breathing and consciously easing muscle tension, your autonomic nervous system sends out a useful signal: “I am not being chased by a bear.”

    You can use box breathing anytime. Breathe in for 4, hold for 4, exhale for 4, hold for 4, repeat as necessary to increase calm in the face of stress.

    The rest of today’s audio exploration is meant to be performed on your bed, on a couch or on the floor if you can get comfortable. As long as you are comfortable and can take approximately 20 minutes to yourself without distractions, you can deepen this practice to ease your stress.

    This recording has been a Blanket Fort Production by Robert Chazz Chute of AllThatChazz.com, all rights reserved.

    For more stress management tips, check out Do The Thing by Robert Chazz Chute.

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Managing Pandemic Stress

Do The Thing SMALLER
To order: mybook.to/DoTheThing

Someone once asked me what my books were about. 

“What? You mean…all of them?”

“Yeah. Like, is there a central theme to all your work?”

That put me back on my heels for a moment, but I came up with something. It’s this:

Whether I’m writing science fiction, apocalyptic novels, or crime thrillers, it’s always about the drama of closing the space between how things are and how they ought to be.

This, my friends, is why fiction is better than non-fiction. Fiction has to make more sense than reality. Looking around, much of our new reality fails to make sense. The entire world is under quarantine and the economy is unplugged. Mismanagement abounds. Some policy failures seem indistinguishable from actively trying to kill the disenfranchised. Nope, not kidding. If you count yourself among the disadvantaged, you feel that punch in your heart, head, and guts.

Okay, okay! We get it, Rob! Things are bad. What’s your point?

My dad will turn 94 this year. He often says, “I’ve never seen anything like this.” I understand his culture shock, but our existential dread is not unique. The difference now is that more people face existential dread of the same thing simultaneously.

If you’ve ever waited by the phone for test results from a doctor, you recognize this awful sensation. If you’re feeling bored, unproductive, overstimulated, under-stimulated, sad, angry or depressed, you’re not alone. The poor or differently-abled often feel trapped and frustrated, much like this. Many people feel as you do and this is not new to them. Even under normal circumstances, many have difficulty leaving their homes and moving about freely for a variety of reasons. Want to take a ride just to get out of the house? Okay. Lots of people can’t afford cars. A ride on a bus, if there is public transport, can be dangerous.

My point is not that you shouldn’t complain.

Vent if you need to do so. Your feelings are valid. Your broken toe doesn’t feel better because someone else gets their leg amputated. I spread my sympathy around everywhere without holding back.

I want to make a more subtle point:


For all of us, each day dealing with COVID-19 is one more straw atop the camel’s back (and that poor camel’s knees are trembling). For me, it’s the helplessness that gets to me. If you aren’t classified as an essential worker, your job in the pandemic is to do nothing but stay home. Doing nothing is very much akin to helplessness. I want it fixed. I want to fix it. I want people to survive and thrive. I’m sure you do, too. For most of us, we are playing a waiting game. Failing to wait can be deadly, so this is a game we don’t want to lose. The stakes are high and, like you, I’m feeling that nervy pain daily.

So it’s time to revisit something from Do the Thing.

In stressful situations, we’re biologically programmed to flee, fight or freeze. Those could be more useful responses when our species was hunted by evil clowns riding Bengal tigers through primordial jungles.* That’s probably less helpful here.

To better cope with our stress, we want choices, not automatic and autonomic responses.

Here are your choices using 3A Stress Management

In any stressful situation, you choose from the Alter/Avoid/Accept Triad. 

  1. Alter: Change the frame and circumstance if and where you can. Make isolation more pleasant. Find helpful, happy and healthy distractions.

    And ask for support.

  2. Avoid: Get away from threats to your physical and mental health where possible (i.e. masks, physical distancing, isolation, etc.)

    And ask for support.

  3. Accept: Don’t try to control that which is beyond your control.

    And ask for support.

    I hope you find 3A stress management helpful. This is me, still trying to close the distance between an Ought and an Is, even in non-fiction. If you’re searching for more stress management ideas, check out Do the Thing.

Much love and be well!

Rob

* What? Nobody ever told you about the evil clowns riding Bengal tigers through primordial jungles? Jeez. Read a science book, will ya?!

Mental note: Silly jokes can help, too.

cropped-Photo-Credit-to-David-Redding.jpg

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My Movie Moments

I’ve been in isolation for weeks. To deal with a problem with a prescription, I had to go out yesterday. What a surreal trip. After writing extensively about what it was like to live in the middle of a pandemic, here I was, venturing out beyond the wall and into the Badlands, a voyage of three blocks.

I made a few paranoid purchases years ago. I had young kids and I worried for their safety. The main threat in my area is tornadoes. I stocked up on canned goods and got a portable toilet (really just the seat with a plastic bag under it). Gross, but that’s a luxury when you’ve lost everything and you’re waiting for an insurance adjuster to show up.

There were go-bags miscellaneous other items in my tickle trunk of disaster preparedness: a headlamp, batteries, glow sticks, tarps, waterproof matches, etc.,… I picked up most of my end-of-the-world gear from an Army Surplus store cheaply. Since I was also researching pandemics for a book (This Plague of Days) I got masks, too.

Because I used to own a clinic, I had latex gloves, Lysol wipes and masks, anyway. My special purchase was an N99 mask. Most medical masks you see are N95s. N99 is a step up from the norm (and one step down from a HAZMAT or SCUBA gear). With my medical history, I finally had to break out the N99 for the trip to the store. I am very glad to have it.

First movie moment: concrete blocks. The mall is closed and only the pharmacy is open. Concrete blocks were placed in front of the pharmacy’s windows at tight intervals so a vehicle couldn’t ram the place and loot it at night. Clever. Hadn’t thought of that wrinkle myself. Perhaps they did it because it did happen to the next nearest pharmacy a few years ago. That time, the window crash sale was to rob a bank machine. This time, it’s to stop anyone from getting any clever ideas about draining all the stock at midnight.

I found it a bit unnerving seeing the number of people who wore no protection. Especially strange to me was seeing the pharmacy staff with no masks. However, I get it. Maybe they don’t have the same health concerns I do as long as they keep two meters away. Hard to do in narrow store aisles, but any medico will tell you, wearing a mask all day is a pain in the ass. My sister-in-law served as a hospital pharmacist during Toronto’s horrific SARS outbreak. She drank more coffee then than ever because it was a break from the heat and claustrophobia of wearing a mask for hours on end. I had to go to the ER as a patient during SARS and everyone was great. Then I spotted four nurses in a huddle pulling down their masks for a quick consult. [Insert heavy sigh here.]

A staffer in a safety vest greeted me at the door to the pharmacy. She didn’t seem to have much to do but kept an eye on me. Perhaps the mask threw her. She couldn’t see my winning smile. When I spoke to the pharmacist, she asked me how I was. “Peachy!” I said. “How could things be any better!” I got a laugh.

With the nosepiece in place, the N99 is tight and hot. It makes it a little harder to breathe and I began to sweat. I got through my purchases as quickly as I could. dodging those confident bastards who wore no masks. They were a danger to me and to each other in the narrow aisles but we’re Canadian. Except for the young staffer stocking shelves, everybody kept their distance quite well.

Second movie moment: I felt like I was in the movie Contagion. As I buzzed down the aisles, a calm recorded voice reminded everyone about social distancing to keep everyone safe. Several signs were posted warning that we couldn’t buy cigarettes and the lottery was canceled. Oh, also, guy in the N99 mask with the cart? Don’t buy more than you need. I didn’t.

Third movie moment: I picked up a bottle of Dawn dish detergent. As I placed it in the cart, my glove broke open. I’ve got big hands. The latex was stretched tight and I cut it on the side of the bottle cap. I froze for a moment. I don’t have that many gloves so I didn’t double up as if I was going down into the bio-weapons vault in AFTER Life. Still, I had to chuckle. Was this a scene from Outbreak?

Yes, I know. Ultimately, hand-washing is more important than masks. It’s just that over the course of isolation, my OCD tendencies have intensified. I wash my hands constantly and use paper towels and Lysol wipes to avoid cross-contamination. Upon my return from the Badlands, I discovered I’d got She Who Must Be Obeyed conditioner instead of shampoo. Shit! While SWMBO used Lysol wipes on my purchases on the front step, I headed straight to the shower.

Before I left, I’d laid out fresh clothes in the bathroom. A towel and a plastic bag for the clothing I wore on my trip was also ready. After a thorough scrubbing, getting everything in order feels like trying to get out of an escape room. Have I wiped down everything I’ve touched? Did I accidentally touch my jacket again when I picked up the bag with the outside clothes? Wash the hands again. I got a box of pop. When I picked it up by its little handle, did I accidentally touch a can I’d soon be drinking from? Wipe the can, wash the can, wash my hands again, double-check and do it again. You see the hygiene ouroboros into which I twisted myself?

Not everyone understands that I’m especially vulnerable to COVID-19. Yes, I know I look ridiculous driving back from the store alone with my mask on. My next-door neighbor seemed to find my paranoia amusing. However, my gloves were soiled and I couldn’t get out of the tight N99 without touching it. It is reusable, so I left it on until I could wash my hands first.

I’m back in the blanket bunker now. It’s where I belong for the next twelve to eighteen months, depending on when Vaccination Day arrives. Let’s all hope it comes sooner than later.

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Preparing for a post-pandemic world

As I researched This Plague of Days, I immersed myself in prepper culture. I read a lot about what to do when shit hits the fan. Immunologists warned us we were long overdue for a major pandemic. Many ignored those warnings because it was cheaper and convenient to roll the dice on our safety. Too many times, we have lived as if there are no consequences, as if “it hasn’t happened yet,” meant “it won’t ever happen.” Too much short-term thinking, too little clarity.

We’ve had many warnings and instructions on how to prepare, but I don’t think anyone is ready for the consequences we face. We remain unprepared for the next steps, after this crisis has finally passed. It feels like we’ve been asleep, doesn’t it? We’ve taken so much for granted, confident that things will go on as they have.

Several times I’ve heard people say, “I’ve never seen anything like this.” Unless you’re a nigh-immortal who witnessed the devastation of the Spanish Flu, this is all new territory.

There are new twists. Listening to podcasts from New York, the sound of wailing sirens in the background is a haunting reminder of horrors many are now experiencing. Connected through social media, we can bear witness to those horrors even as we wait behind our walls.

I suspect that if I survive, I’ll spend less, save more, and make more conscious choices. I hope we all refuse to settle for less. We might be more willing to weed out that which does not serve us. We’ll think more about where food comes from, for instance. We should better understand the connections and services that make a civilization run.

This experience will forever change most of us. However, I’m not an optimist. I suspect many people will be so relieved that the pandemic is over that we will rush back to sleep. People in power, eager for our praise and gratitude, will be eager to forget their failures to lead and protect us. We will not prosecute greed and profiteering as we should. Leaders who failed us will attempt to secure their positions, no matter how little they deserve their wealth and power. Short-term thinking will prevail because they’ll tell us we can’t afford long-term solutions.

I hope when we emerge from this crisis, we won’t settle for mundane normality. There is often a great gap between who we think we should be and who we are. Reaching for something better could make for a wonderful tomorrow that would honor today’s sacrifices.

Stay as safe as you can. We are all in this together. Don’t forget that once you feel safe again.

~ Robert Chazz Chute writes apocalyptic epics and killer crime thrillers from his basement bunker.cropped-Photo-Credit-to-David-Redding.jpg

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Your limit for today

I just left the following message with a friend. Then I thought I should share it here, as well.

Good evening. This is your mental health and morale officer checking in. This is to remind you that your limit on the number of times you can scream at someone today is five. As the situation evolves, that number may be reevaluated and adjusted upward. For today, your number is five.*

Cry all you want as necessary so the steam pressure doesn’t blow a gasket.

Much love to you all and have a good day.

*Please note: Less screaming is better.