It is a fine line between being careful and showing a mental illness symptom called anxiety. I can never tell, whether it is just my personality trait or am I exhibiting a symptom. I have found lately that I over-analyze myself. I see every worry as mental instability. Often people tell me stories in a way, which clearly shows, that they worry about the described situation. I try to comfort them: “Don’t worry.” Most of them answer: “I am not worried. I just described my situation.” In my opinion, they do not feel the worry, because they want to hide it. It is supposed to show weakness. Well,...

I have been thinking about proofreading lately.  About correcting friends’ and relatives’ final theses: bachelor’s and master’s theses, doctoral dissertations, which I have always said Yes to in the past, when asked. I am talking about proofreading in my mother tongue – Slovenian. I knew my friend was working on her master’s thesis. I was leaning towards saying No. Proofreading has been getting too difficult with time, since I started to forget the grammar and style rules. I learned the rules in college over 20 years ago and was only using them once every five or so years in the last...

We had planned a nature walk up the Zadnjica valley from 645 meters above sea level to 980 m a.s.l. the day before. Both numbers are written on signs by the walking path. It is a slow ascent from 2116 to 3215 feet. After all, it is a valley and as such cannot rise up too steeply. We had not set the alarm clock, but somehow we had set our “inner-clocks” and woke up at 7:30, when we had originally planned. I was so sleepy that I wanted to tell my husband to cancel the trip, but I got up anyway. An inner voice told me to move my buttocks. Eventually we got up early enough and set foot early enough to...

While I was writing my story about mental illness in form of a book later titled Balancing the Beast, I was also blogging and chatting on several mental health sites. Thus I befriended other mental health consumers like me. I remember a social site for this kind of people, where I was daily conversing with two men and two women. Both women were suicidal and the two guys and I were consoling them. I remember waking up every morning in fear they might have committed suicide. It was agony. Fortunately, after a few months, the site was restructured and I lost contact with the two suicidal women. It was...