Category Archives: Depression

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If I Had $55 Million

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Who remembers the hit song “If I Had A Million Dollars” by the Barenaked Ladies? When that song was released back in 1988, a million bucks was a lot of dough. One line says “If I had a million dollars, I’d buy you a house.”

Yep, not these days. You’d be lucky to get a 5th wheel for that now.

I seriously think the only way my children will ever be able to buy a house is if I win the lottery. Or if I die soon so they can have MY house. I do play the B.C. Lottery every now and then just for fun, but my pension will only stretch so far.

A lot of us dream of winning the lottery, like local Scott Gurney did recently. We think about what we’d buy, where we’d travel, who else we’d share it with. But I think reality might not quite live up to the dream. (Although I wouldn’t be adverse to testing that theory…just to be sure.)

I did win $90 once. And my husband won $900. But when you add up what we must have spent on tickets up to that point…well, I think the lottery corporation came out ahead.

I knew someone many years ago who won the lottery at the tender age of 19. $100,000 was a lot of money back then and he was pretty excited. Needless to say, he learned a lot from that experience.

All kinds of new “friends” came out of the word work. He was buying everyone dinner and drinks all the time, blowing all kinds of money on whatever came to mind. And he eventually ended up bankrupt.

Nineteen is too young an age to really understand what money is or does. It’s one thing to grow up financially privileged, another to suddenly become the richest kid on the block.

But age doesn’t even matter.

The fact is that a LOT of people who win the lottery end up in dire straits. In the U.S., for instance, one third of people who win lotteries end up bankrupt after 3 to 5 years. And many lottery winners struggle with depression and suicide, or end up divorced.

We just don’t know how to deal with a big stack of cash.

I’m convinced that coming into a lot of money all of a sudden does something to the brain. Not just yours, but everyone else you know too. Some of the people around you become needy or greedy. You have to learn to say “no”, and that’s not easy.

Not only that, but when you win the lottery, your face gets splashed all over the place, complete with the giant cheque and the confetti. Everyone finds out who you are, so there’s no way you can just take your winnings and quietly slip away somewhere.

So, out come the scammers. There have already been a number of fake Facebook accounts set up pretending to be Scott Gurney, trying to swindle people out of their money one way or another. It’s disgusting.

I do wish him well and hope that, for the most part, he’s able to enjoy his winnings.

I’ve decided that I don’t really need to win the lottery. It seems like a lot more trouble than it’s worth, and I’m doing just fine, thank you very much.

What’s money anyway? There are some things you really can’t put a price on, like family, good health, great friends. A sunny day. What more could a person possibly need?

I’m already a winner!

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How’d You Sleep?

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So how did you sleep last night? Wouldn’t you know, I lost sleep thinking about this post, and how to write it.

Apparently, it’s common for Boomers to ask each other how well they slept. I don’t know if it’s a generational thing, but I would imagine many of us are struggling to get a good night’s sleep these days.

Sleep is everything, isn’t it? After a great sleep, you wake up refreshed and ready to tackle whatever comes your way. It’s so much easier to deal with everything physical, emotional, and mental when your body is well rested.

A bad sleep ruins it all. All of it.

What’s worse is when you’re exhausted and you STILL can’t sleep. It just doesn’t make sense! But sometimes it’s a sign that your circadian rhythm is off. You know, your body clock. People who do shift work can often have issues with their circadian rhythm because we’re hard wired to be up and around during the day, and asleep at night.

But the inability to sleep can be caused by many things. Stress and anxiety are top of the list. I’d venture to guess a lot of us are dealing with that right now.

Bad habits before bedtime don’t help.

Reading your Twitter feed before bed can be a sleep disturber. Actually, reading Twitter ANYTIME can be disturbing. But it’s about that light from your device, or so they say.

I like reading my e-book at night just before bed. Yes, it’s a murder mystery, so what?

Just as there are many causes for lack of sleep, there are dozens of “cures” for it. Pills and home remedies, different routines, audio recordings and even YouTube videos, are just some of the options out there.

Since I’ve heard too many horror stories about sleep medications, I won’t even try that.

A hot bath helps. I’ve tried different teas, especially ginger tea. As long as it’s not caffeinated, tea is comforting and cozy just before bed.

People I know swear that listening to soothing sounds or even white noise, helps them to sleep.

Getting enough physical activity during the day helps. I walk most days, and often twice in a day. When I walk I try not to think about anything. I just try to listen to the sounds around me, the birds, the conversations, my footsteps.

It doesn’t always work, but when I succeed, it puts me in a much better state of mind.

There are a gazillion websites out there with tips for getting a better sleep.

Something that helps me a lot lately when I roll over to sleep, is a little story I tell myself. You might call it a bedtime story. I close my eyes and start repeating it, same story every night.

It’s just something I made up. I repeat the details to myself as if I were telling it to someone else. Sometimes I have to start over again a few times, but I always tell it the same way.

Eventually, I drift off. Who’d a thought a bedtime story would actually work?? At my age??

Then there are those nights when you get to sleep okay, but you wake up at 2 or 3am. It might be a dream that jolts you awake, or a sudden snort from your partner.

If you’re lucky, you roll over and sleep finds you again. But sometimes you’re not.

If I get on that crazy train of thought, I’m in trouble. You know the one I’m talking about. You think one thing and that leads to another, and another, and another.

The next thing you know, you’re imagining every possible disaster that could ever happen. World War Three, the Big Shake, the Apocalypse. Heat domes, heart attacks, what’s that damn noise in my car?

On and on and….ahhhhh!

Sorry. Please don’t read this just before bed.

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Has It Been A Year Already?

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Well, happy anniversary everyone! We are now officially past the year mark since the W.H.O. declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. And it’s been a year like no other.

Back on March 11, 2020, we couldn’t have imagined what we were in for. COVID-19 was a mystery, and we had no idea what to expect. The phrase “new normal” suddenly became popular.

Our initial reaction to the big shut down was positive, sometimes comical. We can DO this! We hoarded toilet paper. We baked bread, made Quarantinis, and we stood outside every evening at 6pm and banged our pots and pans to honour our health care workers. We laughingly wore pajama pants during video calls. We put hearts and signs of support in our windows for our front line workers, and donated money to local charities like Rapid Relief.

Businesses that sold them, ran out of hot tubs. Gardens flourished, home renovations abounded. We found heroes in people like Dr. Bonnie Henry, whose calm and compassion gave us much comfort. A global pandemic wasn’t going to keep US down!

Then reality kicked at us a little harder. The novelty began to wear off. Day after day we somberly donned our masks, washed our hands, and kept our distance from each other. Well some of us did. Others screamed in protest. Tempers flared. And all the while, more and more people were getting sick or dying.

Our hair grew long, beards became unruly. Zoom calls that started out as great fun, began to wear on us. Living and working and learning at home got more and more boring and intolerable for many. Not being able to see or hug our family and friends was depressing us. In fact, anxiety and depression was on the rise in all age groups, but especially in young people. We were exhausted. And all of this happened before winter had even hit.

As we said goodbye with great relief to 2020, COVID continued its ominous advance. New cases and new variants sprang up everywhere when a second wave hit. Long, dark days with no end to this pandemic in sight, left us mourning and miserable.

But there were some small hints of hope. Pharmaceutical companies around the world who had been working around the clock to come up with a vaccine, started to have some success. A few countries that were initially hit hard by the pandemic, were beginning to see their COVID numbers level off, or even come down as a result of shut downs. There was just a little bit of light appearing at the end of that very long tunnel.

And now spring is almost here. As of March 12th, almost 3 million vaccines have been administered in Canada. We have, most of us, adapted to this new reality, to the shut downs, the social distancing, and the masks. Handwashing and sanitizing is more habitual. But we are so looking forward to the day when we can actually spend time together in person again, and that day comes ever closer. Still, as the expression goes, the last few miles of a marathon are the hardest.

I know, I know. Kilometers.

So what have we learned from this past year so far? I would venture to guess it will take a long time to completely assess that. Businesses, governments and communities will gather their list of lessons learned. As individuals, we will each write our own epilogues. Ultimately, you might say that we are forever changed.

But in spite of it all, babies were still being born and people were still marking milestones. All this time, life was forging ahead and hopeful. And now, here on the west coast, the trees are starting to burst new buds, robins are laying their eggs, and cherry blossoms are blooming.

And vaccines are here. At long last. Ah, spring.