Mental Health Matters - Time Management for success

Hello everybody, welcome to Mental Health Matters. Because why? Because 2 out of every 3 gun deaths we hear about are suicides. And if we talk about mental health and suicide prevention, we can help all of the people who are having challenges with not just the ones who choose to use a firearm. So anyway, I am having technical difficulties right now because I'm trying to get rid of a little screen that's just not going to help me get rid of a little screen. But anywho, uh, welcome to Saturday night. And why are we here? 3, right? Why else are we here? Because y'all are awesome and you pop in no matter what and support me., and I do love that. And I'm in my living room with the hubby, with the dog, with the daughter, all of that tonight. So Nadia's like, no, she's trying to get the dog up to her room because it's bedtime, but, uh, the dog is smarter. Well, sorry, this dog's being stubborn right now and, uh, must have his treats in order to actually go upstairs. Uh, So Nadia's acquiescing to the dog's desire for his snack. All right, threw up the link for this a couple days ago. It is December, and in December most of us get to that point of like, hmm, New Year's is just around the corner. And so often we use this as a reason to restart. So our days are shorter, darker, all of that. We're actually getting close up to the winter solstice. I don't know, whatever the shortest day of the year is, least amount of light, most amount of dark. And so because it's darker for longer amounts of time during this time of year, uh, people will be more reflective because they're home and they're inside and there's more downtime. Oh yes, and, uh, when DJ and I were talking at the very beginning of this, I did tell him I was— he asked me how my week was, or— and, uh, well, he and I talked sooner, but, um, so yesterday— so we're gonna talk about time management, and then DJ's gonna say hi to everybody, and then I'm gonna tell you all about yesterday because it was an adventure, because life is always an adventure, because That's just how it kind of goes. All right, so let's talk about time management, simply because most of us have lots of stuff to get done all of the time, and it can easily be overwhelming and challenging and a blessing and a curse all at the same time, depending on your management— time management schedule. So for me, right now, December, sometimes as early as November, because I'm not gonna lie, I kind of started this back in November. Look at what is important in life. Now, where is it? Oh, hold on, I have it. I don't have notes today. Instead, I have my phone, which, guess what I did? See that? See that black screen? That's me turning off the phone. The phone has been off for many hours. Because time management— when we start thinking about all of the time that we have, you and I have exactly the same 24 hours in every single day. You and I do not have the same schedule, however. Uh, I know when I talked to TJ not that long ago, uh, he had a very busy day, and I think that was Thursday, and— or a busy day for him. And I had a busy week because it's been what my girlfriend calls adventures in babysitting. We sent my mom off to California right now, actually. They should be partying in California for my uncle's 75th birthday. And so popped her off on a plane, she flew out there. There were some shenanigans that occurred, and so that made Monday and Tuesday interesting. So DJ got to hear me explain how my previous 48 hours or so, 72 hours, had been. So time and paying attention to our time— like I said, this started back in November. So here's my one question for you. Actually, it's probably multiple questions, but what do you spend your time on? Now, I am super happy that y'all share some of your time with me here right now. Whether you are watching this live or you're watching the replay, it doesn't matter. I appreciate you. Um, DJ's gotten me better about, you know, hey, don't forget to hit the like button, subscribe, thumbs up, all that good stuff. But the fact that you are here with us is awesome, and I appreciate you for all of that. And. But really think about it, because so often we are so busy, just go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. That we can forget to pay attention to. Where is all of our time going? You and I are 100% equal. Your 24 hours is the same as my 24 hours. The difference can be, however, is what do we do in that 24 hours? And just like when we talk about you are the one who talks to yourself the most, you are the one who can choose to pay attention to what your time is going to be. So like I said, back in November, I started thinking about this, and a friend of mine, Charles, said, you know, create your vivid vision because y'all, most of y'all here are shooters. And I'm sure you've all heard the thing, if you aim at nothing, you're sure to hit it. Well, when we start focusing on what we actually want, when we start focusing on what our goals actually are, hence something along the lines of a vivid vision, then we start paying attention to where is our time going. Now, I am pretty sure, I'm gonna try not to look at the comments, but I gotta look a little bit. I am pretty sure that I saw Mr. Gizzard Gary out there, and in the very beginning, and I know one of Gizzard Gary's favorite things to do is hang out with his grandkids and his kids. He likes his kids too, but like, that's something that makes him super happy. And Jamie loves going to church on Sundays and sharing the word on Friday nights, uh, with the Georgia Connection. And these are things that make your heart happy. So when we're looking at what is your goal, what do you want to do, what do you want to do more of, if you start defining what that is, that's aiming at something. And one of the things I'm aiming at for 2026 is I get to take more time with my mom as she gets further into dementia so that I get to take care of her more often. So because of that, I know that's one of my goals, and so I have to make adjustments accordingly. So when we're talking about our time, we have super important things to figure out. Number one, what is most important to us? What is the number one thing that we should be spending our time doing? Number 2, when someone else asks us for our time, asking ourselves, ready? So you asked me for time. I then have to ask myself, does this support my vivid vision? Does this support the things that are really near and dear to my heart? Now everyone's going to have a different answer. And it changes. It's not like, okay, this is my vision. I just can't wait to take care of my mom full-time. And so that's the only thing that matters. Well, we all know we've talked about this here. I can't just take care of my mom and I have to take care of myself first, take care of my family, which includes my mom. But first it's my family that's right here in my household. And then we get on to doing the rest of that. So that's what time management is about, is figuring out we're all equal, we all start in the same place, we all end the same place. Uh, 24 hours in a day. 2, start paying attention. Just like I say, pay attention to what we're thinking about and how we're thinking about stuff. It's how am I spending my time and what am I doing. And sorry, my And then 3, just remind yourself, say, hey, what's going on? What's most important? Is this serving me and my goals? So with all of that, Mr. DJ, I see you've started one thing, and I'm gonna click that up real quick. I spend my 10 words— spend my time protecting my mental and physical health. Virtually every move I make relates to one, the other, or both of those. And that is awesome, Viejo. I love that. And that's kind of like, kind of, that's my goal for 2026 and, and figuring out how to do that. All right, Mr. DJ, would you like to welcome everybody in?

Oh yeah. First one in the room tonight was Gizzard Gary, then Chasing Ghost arrived. Crabby Turtle was out there, the pink hand waving, checking in from East Coast. 2 Live Moo is in the room, so is Michael Ballard. Got Fiona Viejo and Abigail Sorcha Finnegan in the room with us tonight. Thanks for coming out, everybody.

Very nice, very nice. All right, um, yeah, Fiona's got 2 dogs, 2 kids, and a husband that love giving her a hard time. Um, that's what Fiona and I were talking about not that long ago. So, um, thanks everybody for coming in. So DJ, are you ready for why I have a purple toe? Yes.

Okay, tell us the tale of the toe.

Okay, here, here's the toe-mageddon story. I actually just, oh, I just posted up on Facebook. So legit, I am just going to read it from there because I had, I had stuff to do, like in the ER. So I wrote you all this thing, and if, um, yeah, so here it goes. Ready? The morning toe-pocalypse. Some days it is really wild what the human body can do. Some days it cooperates, other days— well, last night and this morning gave me a master class, and wow, I wish there were better safety settings on this thing. Last night at dinner, I chomped my cheek. You know, that spiral, one bite, it swells, then you keep biting it because the universe enjoys slapstick comedy. Now let's fast forward to this morning. I just finished making myself some protein pancakes because I'm trying to take care of that health thing. I put the plate on the table to sit. I sit down, I scooch the chair in, and apparently decided to sacrifice my toe next to my pinky, to the gods of pain and suffering. I placed that poor toe directly under the chair leg and then sat down with all of my 205 pounds of determination. My logical brain should have said, hey, stand up, free the toe, but my adrenaline said panic. So instead of removing the weight, I simply yanked my toe out while the chair was still on it. And results: a bloody toe, a full-body nerve revolt, and me having a very loud internal conversation consisting mostly of, "Ow. Yep, that really hurts. Brilliant." Then came the logistics phase. Elevation? Yes. Where? No idea. The chair? The table? Ice? Also yes. Ability to get ice? Debatable. So I finally hobbled to the couch, put my foot up, set my pancakes down for the dog. I wasn't going to be able to enjoy them at this point, and I managed one bite, one bite of the pancakes I had just worked on for the last half hour. At this point, I called my husband to fetch the ice pain meds while I lay there contemplating my life choices, my throbbing toe, and the fact that you cannot outrun pain when the pain is literally attached to you. So now I'm here on the couch, bruised, annoyed, amused, and riding the roller coaster of adrenaline helps you survive, but wow, it does nothing for decision-making. Honestly, I prefer to skip the emergency situations altogether, but here we are. Yes, it still hurts as I type this. Yes, the toe is already ugly. And yes, I'll survive comfy-ish, iced, medicated, and hopefully slightly wiser. Maybe next time I'll think before dragging a crushed toe out from under a chair, but probably not. Anyway, thanks for coming to my TED Talk on bodily sabotage and breakfast disasters. Life's a bowl of cherries. Don't forget the pits. So that's installment 1. I hope you enjoyed it.

Wow. For a moment there, I thought that you were going to be involved in a, you know, the death grip, uh, deadlock of trying to scooch and yank in opposite directions. But I'm glad the toe remained attached, at least to him.

It did, but I'm pretty sure I kind of stressed out my ankle and everything else as I yanked it from underneath all of my weight. So Um, but ready? So that's only part 1. You want to hear part 2?

Yes, I do. Part 2 inbound.

Let's hear it. All right, so now, uh, 10:15 is when I did this yesterday morning, and 10:30 is when I picked up the phone to call my husband and say, honey, do you have time? Could you come up to the house? And then that's when he came up and gave me my ice and, uh, drugs and all of that, painkillers. And so now it's like 1:30. Both my son and my husband are home. My foot is still on the back of this couch, which you currently see me at, and it is still throbbing a lot. And my husband looks at it and it's very, very, very, very purple. And, uh, I haven't moved since, you know, 10:30 that morning other than to adjust the ice. And sit up to take like Advil and stuff. So they finally talked me into going to the ER. And I go to the ER. And we're getting checked in. One girl's taking my, my blood pressure, the other girl is asking me what happened. So I gave her some version of what I just read to you. And I actually just handed her the thing that I wrote. I just said, here you go. You know, basically, you know, paragraph 2. And, um, so they're checking in and the nurse is like, where are we gonna put her? Oh, she deserves a room for what she just went through. So it started with the intake of, yeah, okay, you're gonna get your own room. So get to the room, doc comes in, asks what happened. I have a hard time not laughing at it because it's just It's so ridiculous what one can do to oneself. I get to X-ray the next thing and oh, X-raying little baby toes, not so awesome because you know what happens? They come out with a popsicle stick and you know what they have to do? They have to stick the popsicle stick between your toes and take that broken one to pull it away from all the rest of them so they get a picture of it. So the girl comes up to me, she starts to put it between my toes. I'm like, uh, excuse me, can I just do that for you? And she's like, yeah, look ahead. So she let me stick my popsicle stick in there. So now in order to get this little toe to come out, I have to take the popsicle stick under, push it all the way up, and then stick my baby toe on the end of the popsicle stick. And she's like, okay, let go. And it immediately pops out. And so I'm like, all right, can I have a piece of tape? Because she's already taped the top of it to my top toe, actually to the table. And, uh, so I'm like, just give me a little piece of tape so I think tape it to my pinky toe. They take the picture. The picture is not quite right. I'm sitting there with my poor little broken toe being squished against this lovely popsicle stick, and I'm doing my best to do the breathing and being calm while my purple bleeding toe is, uh, you know, getting its picture. So now the, the actual x-ray tech, the, you know, radiologist comes in, the doc, and she asked me again, so what happened? I'm like, well, I sat on my toe. And she looks at me, she's like, and what time did this happen? I'm like, 10:15 this morning. And she's like, and you waited till now to come in? And I'm like, Yeah, so I was able to amuse many healthcare workers yesterday as well. So that was my accomplishment for yesterday, DJ. That was kind of it. And oh yes, it is actually broken significantly, so there's that.

So, so do you have a tiny little cast on your tiny little toe?

No, no, no, no. If anything, they would do surgery to fix it, but right now it's It's got a Band-Aid on it just to stop it from bleeding everywhere. Um, and, uh, oh my gosh, it's like a little tiny place in your body that can contain very, very lots and lots of much pain. Um, so yeah, so I have a Band-Aid. I go see the— I get to see— I get— I will see a doc on Monday and a podiatrist specialist possibly later on next week. As well. But so today all I've done is sit on this couch. And oh, I had a meeting earlier with the family, like not this family, but like Zoom, my uncle and my brother and stuff, and we were chatting. And I made the mistake of flexing my toes. Oh yeah, not, not awesome.

So yeah, well, you know, it was really smart of you when you were speaking with staff to use the piece that you had written, because you had time to sit there. I mean, you were isolated, you were in one spot, you know, to compose that. And that was good. That was an excellent post. But it was smart, just like to turn this around instead of trying to get into it, a further explanation and be distracted by that. And then the pertinent popsicle stick placement, advocating for self. That's two really good examples. Your presence of mind that you advocated for yourself as a patient. And then something that I could relate to. I like to keep staff in good spirits. I crack jokes all the time when— well, not all the time, but one of my favorites was, and I've done this each time since the first surgery I had as an adult, is they were wheeling me, um, to the surgery theater, um, swing low sweet chariot. I just started singing swing low sweet chariot as they're like rolling the gurney into the OR, and that cracks some people up. I know that, uh, Yeah, making other people comfortable around you, reducing, you know, the kind of effect that the stress of just another new case might have on their day. You don't know where somebody else is coming from or what their last night was. And I would really like to have those who are charged with my care in the best spirits possible with the most smiling version of myself I can offer. I don't want to be a pain.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. No, it's like, as she started to put that Now my feet, my foot at this point. So like I said, happened at 10:15, got ice on it by about 10:30. We're now in the ER at, I don't know, 2:30 or something. But toes throbbing all day. And when she went towards me with that popsicle stick, I'm like, uh, could I do that? And by this time, oh, it was so weird because when I grabbed my toe it didn't feel like anything. It was like numb. It was like I'm squishing it, but I'm moving it, but it's, it's, it's so past actually having feeling other than the throbbing. And I was just like— but then when the popsicle stick had to stay there for an extended period of time, then it started hurting again. So, oh, it was weird. And it is quite the shade of purple currently.

So you're gonna do like accent colors with the toenail? Oh, if the toenail stays, yeah, no one's touching them for— yeah, all right. And actually, I had a vision of you when you said that you had your leg propped up on the back of that couch. I imagine those little foam toe separators that some people use when they're like painting toes, that you're like doing the ISO on it. Yeah, that's part of your first aid.

Oh yeah, and to make matters better, I'm in the ER, doc says, so How are you on the tetanus? And I'm like, I don't know, it's been a while. And she's gonna get one of those. And by the way, oh, um, for those of you who haven't had your tetanus shot in a while, they warn you your, your arm is going to be sore for like a couple days. So today in recovery here, the ice pack has gone from my toe to my arm, back to my toe because my entire arm is killing me from getting the tetanus shot yesterday.

So yeah, yeah, above and below, all sides. Well, check this out. Viejo says out there in the chat, toes and ribs are always difficult. I've busted lots of each. No fun at all.

Yeah, yeah. Um, the, the worst part about the ribs, I think— sorry, are— um, don't mean to Blair Witch you all to death, but, um, ribs are sucky. But this is also where our skiing training came in because they taught us how to breathe out of different parts of our body so that if you ever break a rib or you're crushed in an avalanche, you have different ways to do that. So, but yeah, um, I saw somebody else's too that I was gonna pop up there and now I don't remember who it was. But yeah, I did not know just how much pain I could be in over a single crush injury. Yeah, large clusters of nerve endings can be a double-edged sword for sure, without a doubt. And sorry, I'm still trying to get rid of that thing. Oh. What is that? What are those? It looks like a snowball fight. Anyway, um, yeah, toe pain is, is surprisingly intense. Like I said, today during my, uh, thing— oh yeah, it was even more fun, honestly, when we're in that, the x-ray tech, they're like, yeah, we're just trying to figure out if you're bleeding because your, your, your, your bone is sticking out of there, or if it's just a scrape. I'm like, okay, that's fun. So hence the tetanus. But, ah, actually, New Year Outcast, that was the one I was looking for. DJ, good job. Yes, this is a great reminder to appreciate not being injured when you're not, um, becoming— it sure sucks when you are. Yeah. Um, It is what it's— it's— yeah, be thankful for all of it. Now, to be fair, the good news is it wasn't my bone sticking up through my thing, through my toe, that was making it bleed. So another thing to be thankful for. And the fact that this family has been injured enough, we happen to have crutches, so it made it easier to get to the ER. Um, the fact that I had a husband and a son who talked me into going All right, last time I broke a toe, picked up a toilet, a box at Lowe's, and the box came open until it shattered on my big toe. You've made me relive that memory. I am sorry, hon. Uh, yeah, I'm not sure if I'm gonna be able to eat pancakes for a while. I'm like, wait, oh no, I will totally be able to eat pancakes, they're yummy. But, um, yeah, it was brilliant. So Anywho, here we are Saturday night. Time management is important. Having people around you that will take care of you, also spectacular and wonderful. Making people laugh and, um, you know, trying to make bad things entertaining is definitely something my family has always done. Um, and, and the worst part about this, Abigail, is even a stubbed toe makes you rethink your life choices. As of late, I've actually been talking about how in my house I have everything rounded, because when I was a kid, my dad had a horrible, um, very, very, very pointy square coffee table that I would always break my baby toe on. So, um, it's been a while since I broke a baby toe, and this is not the baby toe, it's the one right inside. Oh, not awesome. So anywho, all right, uh, any other comments, DJ, that I should try to look at? Because I— it keeps going by too fast, and I don't know why it's very small and hard to read today. Let's see. Don't forget metatarsal and knee injuries. Yeah, that's why I have a couple of pairs of crutches available. Yes. Yeah, between myself and my daughter is why we have the crutches. And what else? Ribs, you can't breathe. Toes, you can't— no, see, with ribs you can breathe, you just can't breathe deeply. You can't cough. And for the love of God, don't laugh. Uh, toes, on the other hand, you can hobble for the most part. Um, yeah, and no matter what you are in pain for, pain just kind of sucks. So there is that. All right, so here we go. It is 9:28. Y'all get to go check out Hillbilly at the top of the hour. Uh, DJ's gonna say goodbye to everybody. Uh, if you like the story, you can go over to the posts in YouTube, and it's actually on Facebook on my personal profile as well, if you want to reread that for entertainment. At some point, um, it might be a part 2, but we'll see what happens. All right, well, I'm gonna say Abigail 5'7" and Lucy 6'4". That's right, they're adjustable, and that 5'7" You're either at the very top of the shorter ones or at the very bottom of the tall ones. So if you got the tall ones, then you and Lucy can share. Although in general, don't share because, you know, it's better to not need them. All right, Mr. DJ, take it away.

Well, thanks for coming around, everybody. I hope that you come back next week and bring a friend. Also, if you could reload the stream when it ends and leave a comment that really helps the algorithm and the channel out. Uh, coming up next, as Brooke said, we got Hillbilly Up. Joining us this evening were Gizzard Gary, Chasing Ghost, Crabby Turtle, The Two Live Moo was out there, so is Michael Ballinger, Fiona Viejo, Abigail Sorcha Finnegan, New York Outcast joining from the Facebook side, and then checking in on the YouTube side was Jonathan Barbecue Burger. Good to see everybody out there tonight. So everybody, until we see each other again, be safe, Have fun, take care of yourself and your crew, and rock! We're out.