Category: Uncategorized

Six questions: Interview with Heidi Ayarbe, Author of Compulsion

Hello, everyone! Another day, another author interview. This one is with Heidi Ayarbe, who wrote Compulsion, a multi-layered story of OCD in a young adult. From the blurb:

Today has to be perfect.
Magic.
I look at the clock.
10:14 AM.

Ten fourteen. One plus one is two plus four is six plus ten is sixteen minus one is fifteen minus two is thirteen. OK.

I turn from the clock and walk into the hallway. “Ready.”

Saturday will be the third state soccer champion­ship in a row for Jake Martin. Three. A good number. Prime. With Jake on the field, Carson City High can’t lose because Jake has the magic: a self-created protection generated by his obsession with prime numbers. It’s the magic that has every top soccer university recruiting Jake, the magic that keeps his family safe, and the magic that suppresses his anxiety attacks. But the magic is Jake’s prison, because sustaining it means his compulsions take over nearly every aspect of his life.

Jake’s convinced the magic will be permanent after Saturday, the perfect day, when every prime has converged. Once the game is over, he won’t have to rely on his sister to concoct excuses for his odd rituals. His dad will stop treating him like he is some freak. Maybe he’ll even make a friend other than Luc.

But what if the magic doesn’t stay?

What if the numbers never leave?

Acclaimed author Heidi Ayarbe has created an honest and riveting portrait of a teen struggling with obsessive compulsive disorder in this breathtaking and courageous novel.

—
1) Is your book based on personal experiences, and how did your life experiences inform your description of OCD?
I do not have OCD, though I do deal with anxiety. A friend of mine has severe anxiety and OCD. I spent a lot of time with her, sharing scenes, asking how she’d react in certain situations. Naturally, every person with anxiety doesn’t react the same. Having her as a sounding board and sensitivity reader made all the difference in this novel. The climactic scene, in which Jake physically can’t go help his sister, mirrors a similar situation in her life in which she couldn’t help her daughter. That is how crippling it is. And so often I’ve seen OCD and anxiety represented as a punchline for someone’s character in a story or TV show when it’s anything but funny. And so so hard to understand.
 
2) Your book deals with the mental and physical aspects of OCD. How difficult was it to describe what these felt like?
I think anybody who has experienced a panic attack can appreciate how out-of-body and uncontrolled you feel during that moment. It’s terrifying. And, yes, I really think it’s hard to describe that moment when everything feels electric and fuzzy at the same time. And the pre-moment, when you know it’s going to happen. It’s like a tidal wave taking over your body, and you just have to brace yourself for it. During those scenes, I just tried to express how I felt during a panic attack. I haven’t had many, but they leave an imprint on you.
 
3) How did you balance the need to make this book broadly appealing to an audience at large and a desire to make it speak specifically to those who have been affected by OCD?
Honestly, I only thought about Jake’s story and being true to him. Certainly, as an author, our job is to connect with readers. That said, I think telling our truth, and finding the truth in our characters, is primordial, or it can come off as contrived. So, honestly, I was only thinking about Jake’s story. It really was important to me. And by being honest and vulnerable, I hope that it appealed to readers.
 
4) In the book, you describe a character driving to the moment when the “magic” will stay and everything will be alright in Jake’s life – were you intentionally trying to use this concept to make the book more relatable to all readers? That’s how I read this aspect, but I could be wrong.
Anxiety disorders (specific phobias, social anxiety disorder, agoraphobia, and OCD among others) don’t make sense in a “rational world.” So I tried to create a reasoning that Jake could hold onto to make sense of the disorder himself. If we think about anxiety disorders, and approaching them from an outside-looking-in, Jake, too, was trying to make sense of his own disorder. He used sports and “magic” to do so. So I used this idea more for Jake. How would he justify what was happening to him? Again, it’s his story.
 
5) Why prime numbers?
When I was researching OCD, so many different forms exist. Though the jury is out on whether anxiety disorders are hereditary or social, or, most likely, a combination of both, no two people deal with anxiety the same way. So they can be unrecognizable to each other. Like Jake’s mom suffers from scrupulosity. He definitely doesn’t see himself mirrored in her, at all. They don’t connect, though they both suffer. Most characters I’ve seen portrayed with OCD focus on germs, cleanliness, having everything perfectly organized etc. I guess it’s easier to address something like that visually. As novelists, though, we get to use the mind!  I was thinking about athletes and an athlete mentality. A friend of mine’s son used to count words. All of his sentences had to have an odd number of words. So I started to consider numbers, prime, and how Jake could relate them to sports. This seemed more natural to me. And I know some readers found it frustrating, even difficult, dealing with the constant adding, subtracting, searching through numbers in Jake’s mind. Imagine living that, though.
 
6) Can you talk a little about the impact this book had on readers? Did you hear from anyone who said that your writing helped them get help or recognize OCD in themselves/others?
This is one of those questions I’d love to say, “I simply don’t have time to address the endless e-mails that flood my inbox.” I get more of a desert drizzle of mails from readers (which means not many). That said, Compulsion was on Taysha’s list and received a lot of good reviews, even starred. Perhaps, by focusing so much on Jake I didn’t connect to readers as I’d hoped? I’m not sure. It’s a weird job. I love Jake. I love his story. And I tried my hardest to be honest. I think, as authors, that’s what we owe our readers (all five of them!) teehee!!
—
If you enjoy books about young adults and mental health, then I encourage you to check out my upcoming novel, Redemption, which will be out on June 5 but is available for pre-order at a discounted price today. Redemption is a young adult/sci-fi thriller about depression, anxiety and saving the world.

Finding light in the darkness

I’m going to write about two things that personally motivated me to deal with my own demons in a very public way. The short-term inspiration for this is me rereading the acknowledgements section of Redemption. The longer-term inspiration for this is a public tragedy and a low period in my life.

Okay, first, here’s a small section of the acknowledgements in Redemption:

To Robin Williams. Yours was a life well lived, and I hope to be part of a positive story of those influenced by how it ended.

Let me go backwards. Robin Williams completed suicide on August 11, 2014. He had long suffered from a slew of mental health challenges, including depression and substance abuse. However, Williams was suffering from “diffuse Lewy body dementia,” which ultimately contributed heavily to his suicide.

William’s suicide ultimately inspired me to go public with my story. That started when some idiot on Facebook decided to spout off shortly after Williams’ death by saying something along the lines of, “So sad Robin Williams committed suicide. He just needed to pray to Jesus more!”

No, you schmuck, that’s not how it works, and that ignorant comment got me so damn fired up that I wrote an op-ed in my local paper, detailing my own struggles with depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation. That, in turn, set my career in motion in a very different way, making me become much louder about mental health issues. I’ve spoken at events detailing my own struggles, cofounded a mental health caucus, appeared in PSAs and introduced legislation designed to help those who are suffering from mental health challenges. I know that the work I’ve done in this realm has helped people – and I know I have a lot more to do to help more.

It also inspired this speech, the most difficult one I have ever made:

Fast forward about seven or eight months, and I’m struggling, in the midst of one of the most depressed periods of my life. I’m struggling at work, my wife is struggling at work, and life just generally sucks at the moment. I go back to see my therapist. I increase my medication. And then I realize something else: I desperately need an outlet. Something to help get me through everything I am suffering from. I decide to start writing again – I wrote fiction as a kid and had published the non-fiction book I wrote, Tweets and Consequences.

And I remember this goofy plot idea I had as a kid, twenty years ago, about kids getting trapped on a spaceship. And I realize something: That’s not a bad plot. But what if I could make it more? What if I could fold in a mental health message as well?

And thus, Redemption is born.

For what it’s worth: I have a character named Robin in Redemption. In all fairness though, that’s also my daughter’s middle name, so let’s call that character’s naming a 50% tribute to Williams and 50% tribute to my daughter.

The death of Robin Williams helped me and countless others find their voice and seek help. I know that this may be cold comfort to those he loved and those who loved him. But I sincerely hope that they can take some solace in knowing that Williams’ life and death helped so many, including me. His was a life well lived – and, as I said above, I hope to be a small part of that story.

You can always find light in the darkness. Pain makes us great, and with time and therapy, you can turn the most agonizing periods of your own life into something incredible.

As long as you breathe, there is hope. The trick is just finding it sometimes.

The first review is in for Redemption!

Okay, this made me really happy. G.S. Jennsen, author of STARSHINE, was kind enough to review Redemption. The review below and it’s…well, it’s good, and that’s awesome. 🙂 I’m glad she enjoyed it, and I hope you will too.

As a reminder, Redemption comes out on June 5. You can pre-order a print copy now for just $3.99.

Review below:

“A moving, hopeful tale of personal struggle and unlikely heroism masquerading as an adrenaline-fueled sci-fi action thriller of a novel.

Like the characters onboard the Redemption, we as readers are thrown into the middle of a crisis on page one; like those characters, we have absolutely NO IDEA what’s going on. Thus begin the dual journeys of the reader and the Redemption crew—journeys that travel through terror, shock, anger, despondency and renewed hope. Several times.

In the early pages of the book, I wasn’t sure that Ash Maddox, a young man thrust into the role of captain of a spaceship under the worst possible circumstances, was going to be able to successfully carry the mantle of leadership or of primary protagonist. In fairness, Ash wasn’t sure, either. But he surprised us both. As much as Redemption is a pulse-pounding action tale of the race to retrieve a cure for an alien virus and save Earth from a deadly epidemic, it’s a thoughtful, inspiring tale of a group of people fighting through adversity, fear and their own personal demons—not to mention mysterious enemies frequently shooting at them—to rise above their circumstances, come together and become, yes, heroes.

Of course, it isn’t quite that simple or straightforward; in good stories it never is. But the Ash we leave at the end of the book is not the same man we met on page one. Other characters evolve as well, but it’s Ash’s journey that truly matters here. After all, he is the captain.”

Author Interview: Catherine Price, How To Break Up With Your Phone

Frequently readers of this blog will note that I have repeatedly discussed the extremely damaging effects that technology, social media and overuse on your smartphone can have on your mental health. Last week, in a blog entry entitled “Put Down The Damn Phone,” I suggested that you…well, put down the damn phone. That entry was largely inspired by Catherine Price’s book How To Break Up With Your Phone, a devastating look at the problems our over reliance on technology have wrought, and a step by step path forward.

I reached out to Catherine to answer a few questions, and she was kind enough to provide her insight into technology, phone use, and mental health. Enjoy! And yeah, buy her book. REALLY, buy her book.

—

You discuss the addiction to telephones and how it negatively affects…well, pretty much everything. Can you talk specifically about the connection between depression and phone use?

I can’t speak to that precisely because I am not an expert in depression and don’t get much into depression in particular in the book. With that said, you might want to look at the work of Jean Twenge and, in particular, her book iGen, because she did a lot of research on the mental health effects of lots of phone time. Her article in the Atlantic, titled “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” also shows charts of depression rates rising (I am not sure if they are self-reported) starting around the same time as the launch of the first iPhone. My suspicion would be that social media would be the biggest problem when it comes to phone use and depression, and that there are probably three groups (at least) of people being affected: those who are already depressed and then become more so upon getting sucked into social media spirals, those who numb themselves/try to escape their emotions by zoning out on their phone (and are unable to motivate to stop) and those who are borderline depressed and become more so upon spending tons of time on their phones/looking at instagram and social media feeds of other people’s idealized (and unrealistic) representations of their lives. Again, I am not a medical expert, so please clarify that this is purely my personal hypothesis.

What’s the direction of the relationship between depression and phone use? Which one causes which, or is it more complicated than that?

As mentioned above, I can’t really comment on that because I am not an expert in depression. With that said, I would suspect that—as is true in many circumstances—the relationship goes both ways. Sometimes the phone might trigger depression; other times, depression might trigger the excessive phone use.

One of the most frightening components of your book was discussing how phones can affect developing minds. Can you expand upon that a little bit?

Our brains are “plastic”—meaning malleable—by nature; it’s how we learn things. We are spending an average of four hours a day on our screens. Put those facts together and you can see why our current habits are worrisome for everyone, adults and children alike. With that said, children and teenagers are particularly vulnerable because their brains are still in the process of developing for first time—and the brain regions associated with self control and judgment are not yet well developed. Also, if you spend your childhood experiencing life on a screen, you are missing out on, well, life. I don’t think we know yet the long term effects that phone time is having/will have on our children, but I highly recommend to new parents that they limit screen time as much as possible. Drawing something on an iPad is not the same as drawing something on pen and paper.  Taking care of a virtual pet is not the same as a real dog. Etc. Our goal should be to help our children experience the world through all 5 of their senses.

Phone addiction seems to be real – but, how often is real therapy required to break it?

I’m not a mental health expert so I don’t know. I can say, though, that many therapists report seeing clients with addictions—or, at very least, problematic relationships with their devices. I recommend Victoria Dunckley’s book Reset Your Child’s Brain and Nicholas Kardaras’s Glow Kids for more information from psychiatrists’ point of view on device addiction and kids in particular.  There’s also the Center for Internet and Technology Addiction. My non-professional take is that there are some cases in which you may well need the help of an addiction expert, especially if you’re already also suffering from another condition, such as depression. But for most of us, we have the ability to create healthier relationships on our own—it requires being more aware of your own experiences, prioritizing your time, and making concrete changes to your phone and environment to cultivate new, healthier habits. It’s hard, but it’s possible.

What’s your best advice for people who are depressed but spend too much time on their phones?

If you are truly depressed and spending too much time on your phone, my advice—again, not as a medical expert—would first be to seek therapy for the depression.  It’s very hard to make changes when you’re depressed. With that said, one relatively simple thing to do would be to try to notice how you feel when you use your phone (or any other activity that you are concerned/curious about). Does it alleviate your depression? Does it make you feel slightly better while you’re on it but worse after? Don’t judge yourself for these answers; you’re just trying to get in touch with how what you do makes you feel. If you begin to notice that your phone consistently worsens your symptoms, then you can use that insight as a motivation to use your phone less. But don’t forget: the point isn’t to arbitrarily restrict your phone time; it’s to get back in touch with your priorities in life. So if you are able, try to think about some of the things/activities that bring you joy. Then create an actual mission statement for yourself—something like, “I want to spend less time on Instagram so that I can spend more time on my garden.” And make a change to your physical environment to make that easier—leave your gardening shoes and sun hat by the door, for example. Any time you try to change a habit you need to be sure to identify a new habit that you want to cultivate—otherwise you’re restricting yourself with no purpose. Again, your ability to make these changes might depend on your level of depression, which is why it is important, in serious cases, to enlist the help of a professional.

Talk to the kids: Why you should tell your mental health story

This past Friday, as part of the real job, I had the pleasure of attending career day at one of my local elementary schools. During that time, I spoke with about 70 5th graders about what it’s like to be a State Representative, what I do, what my issues are, etc. In doing so, did what I always did: I spoke about mental health. I also made sure to be very clear – no euphemisms, and no sugar-coating. I spoke about having depression and anxiety disorders – what that means – and how I see a therapist as needed and take medication on a daily basis.

I make this part of an overall anti-stigma conversation. If I’m talking to younger kids, I broach the subject like this:

“Okay, let’s say you’re riding you’re bike, and you fall off and your arm is hanging at a funny angle.” (imagine me holding my arm at a funny angle) “What’s the first thing you are going to do?”

“Cry!”

“Yes, well, there’s that, but AFTER that.”

“Call 911!”

“Right! Exactly! You’ll call 911! And you would’t even think about it, right? You wouldn’t be embarrassed. Well, imagine having a mental illness….”

And I take it from there.

Sometimes, the kids ask me questions about this stuff. Other times, they delve into other areas of my career. In two of the three classes I had, the mental illness did come up. I was asked questions about it, and they were strikingly perceptive. Two that stick out in my mind:

  • Is suicide a mental illness?
  • Is it a mental illness if you do drugs?

And then a few kids opened up and discussed their own experiences – or that of their family – with mental illness. I know no one would be able to identify them from this, but I’d still rather not say what they said. Suffice to say – it struck me. It left a mark. And it reminded me of one of the many reasons I always discuss my mental illness, but particularly with kids: It can give them a little bit of hope. As many of you unquestionably know, one of mental illness’ greatest challenges is the way it warps your mind, makes you feel like you are alone. I want all of these kids to know that they aren’t alone.

This leads me back to my main point: Tell your story. Please understand I say this not to toot my own horn, but the smartest decision I have ever made in my life was to publicly discuss my own struggles with depression and anxiety. The experience has become astonishingly positive, and has helped me help other people. According to research, a contact-oriented strategy, one in which regular people share their own struggles with mental illness, can be invaluable towards fighting the stigma that keeps people locked in shame and out of treatment. Telling your story can provide incalculable hope to others who need it.

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts and perspective. Have you “gone public” with your struggles? What has your experience been like?

“So, what are you going to do about it?”

One of the most impactful memories of my life occurred somewhere in the late summer of 2012. At the time I was +220 pounds, and I’m about six feet tall, so this was way up on where I should have been. I had just eaten a ton and had the misfortune of standing on the scale, thus depressing myself more than usual.

Anyway, I was in my living room with my wife, sitting on the couch. My wife had completed her own significant weight loss journey a few years prior, dropping fifty pounds, so I knew she would understand my sadness over my weight and where I was.

So, there I sat, complaining to my wife about my weight. She was silent, nodding, as I listed how upset I felt at what I had allowed myself to do to my body. And then, finally, she asked me this question:

“So, what are you going to do about it?”

That was the question that changed my life. I mean, there I was, complaining about how miserable I was, and I hadn’t done a damn thing to make it better. That wasn’t fair and it wasn’t right. How dare I complain when I hadn’t even tried to improve? So, right then and there, I decided to do something.

In terms of weight loss, I got lucky in that my body was more amenable to losing weight than that of many others. I downloaded a calorie tracker from Livestrong and used that, and exercise, to shift my mindset. Staying in my allocated calories became like a game. And, over time, it worked. I dropped thirty pounds and kept them off. I’m in better shape now than I was in my 20s.

Now, that being said, in writing my blog entry earlier this week, I remembered this question and how it applies to mental health as well. That entry dealt mainly with what I wish every “support person” knew about depression and mental illness, and one of the items mentioned was that none of us really want to be depressed, and we’d all love to get better.

Allow me to propose this question then, support people. It’s the question that you may want to ask when the depressed/anxious person that you love is in pain. You may want to ask it in the most non-judgmental, softest way possible. You also may want to ask it in a tough love sort of style, as my wife did to me:

“So, what are you going to do about it?”

Depression sucks. It does. And it’s taken me years and years to realize that it’s not a weakness and not my fault. Indeed, it’s not the fault of anyone who has it. But there is a big difference between not my fault and not my responsibility. All of us who suffer from some sort of mental illness have an obligation to do something about it. That may mean doing little things on our own time, like exercise or meditation. It may mean seeing a therapist or psychiatrist to discuss medication. But above all else, it means managing our disease.

Support people, here’s where you can come in. Ask us this question. If the depressed person you love truly wants to get better, they’ll need an answer. They’ll need to do something about it in order to get better or get through the rough patch they are in. It is a question I have to ask myself from time to time when things get bad. Sometimes the answer may be, “Wait a week and see if I’m this miserable still – if I am, I’m going to see my therapist.” Sometimes the answer may be, “I’m making a call now!” But above all else, there needs to be a real answer.

And, as always, I’d love to hear your thoughts! How do you ask your loved one or yourself this question. What has your experience with this been like? Let us know in the comments below!

Redemption: Coming out on June 5, and now available for pre-order

Alrighty. I mentioned this one in an earlier blog entry, but some fun personal news to report: Redemption, my young adult, science fiction novel that features a character with depression and anxiety, will be available on June 5. Even better, you can pre-order it for the Kindle here. For more information, check out my website.

Summary below. And more later, or sure. For now, I’m gonna bask in the glow of this one. I worked really hard to make this happen. And I’m so excited that you will all get to read this story soon.

—

Twenty young people wake aboard the spaceship Redemption with no memory how they got there.

Asher Maddox went to sleep a college dropout with clinical depression and anxiety. He wakes one hundred sixty years in the future to assume the role as captain aboard a spaceship he knows nothing about, with a crew as in the dark as he is.

Yanked from their everyday lives, the crew learns that Earth has been ravaged by the Spades virus – a deadly disease planted by aliens. They are tasked with obtaining the vaccine that will save humanity, while forced to hide from an unidentified, but highly advanced enemy.

Half a galaxy away from Earth, the crew sets out to complete the quest against impossible odds. As the enemy draws closer, they learn to run the ship despite their own flaws and rivalries. But they have another enemy . . . time. And it’s running out.

A presentation: Social Media & Depression

I had the pleasure of giving a presentation on Social Media & Depression for the Interlace Cultural y Desarollo Integral Mexicano de Lehigh Valley, a Mexican cultural group in my hometown. In the presentation, I talk about the frighteningly strong connections between Social Media & Depression.

The actual presentation is below. But here are the highlights:

  • As you can imagine, social media and teenagers and incredibly linked.
  • The networks that teenagers use are constantly changing, but at the moment, Snapchat and Instagram are the preferred networks.
  • The Hispanic community, as a whole, is overrepresentated on social media compared to other demographics.
  • Social media does make people depressed and social media use is correlated with higher levels of depression.
  • Social media depression can be combated by a change of mindset and by primarily remembering this: Social media is not the real world.

The Lost Connections by Johann Hari

I mentioned this book in my entry the other day and I really wanted to discuss it more.  Hari is a journalist who openly discusses his own battles with depression and anxiety as a young man.  He, like many of us, was put on anti-depressants.  Like many of us, he found success with anti-depressants, only to find their effectiveness waning.  He goes on to discuss nine different types of depression and anxiety, ways to reconnect and the various social causes of psychological illness.  This book opened my eyes in a lot of ways.  Much of what was said rang completely true.  At the same time, I found myself incredibly angry at some of the arguments Hari makes.

Let me do the angry part first, because I think that made more of an impact, at least in my mind, because it’s more dangerous.

Hari basically argues that anti-depressants are effective only in the short-term, and only then for a placebo effect.  This argument is partially – but only partially – supported by science.  I will say that it really made me do some research and I was dismayed at what I found. The record of anti-depressants in terms of long-term effectiveness is not a positive one.  The link above is actually for a Google search, not a specific article, and I’d encourage you to do your own research.

What’s my problem, then?  Easy: Hari completely dismisses the biological causes of depression, issues that legitimately may require depression to address.  While much research needs to be done on the specific biological components of depression, it is clear that there is a biological component. To dismiss that – and to thus dismiss biologically based treatments – is problematic and pseudo-scientific.  I have real issues with that, and I think that Hari is being disingenuous at best – and dangerous at worst – with this type of advocacy.

But.

Hari makes other, very persuasive arguments – ones that ring true, in my mind.  The one that hit me the most was these: The social element of mental illness.  Hari goes through a series of arguments about how our society is making us sicker: We have lost our connections to each other as we are busier and get more absorbed in our various electronic devices.  We are bombarded by “junk values,” that encourage materialism over intrinsic values and real connection to people.  We live in a sick world – last week’s news from Parkland is a great example – that make us depressed.

This much really made sense to me, and if this advice was taken by all of us, could be transformative.  Society’s obligation to deal with the mentally ill has to do with much more than just treating biological and psychological causes of mental illness – we have to address the social ones as well.

Anyway, is the book worth the read? In my opinion, yeah.  I think you have to read it with an entire shaker of salt, and keep in mind that some of what Hari says isn’t supported by science.  But much of it is, and hopefully, you can read between the lines, find the things that work for you and go from there.

The struggle with blogging

Hello again!

I have kicked myself – repeatedly – for not blogging over the past couple of months.  As I’ve mulled it over, I’ve come to this conclusion: Blogging is hard if you aren’t quite sure what to say, or if you are afraid of running out of things to say.  I tried to get myself to blog twice a week but struggled with it, as there wasn’t always something good out there.  My readership numbers weren’t as high as I wish they were, so I sort of let this go by the wayside.

So, what changed my mind?

Well, a couple of things.  First, over a few days I had a few people say to me that they really appreciated what I wrote and that it helped them – or their family members – with their own struggles.  That really touched me.  I also finished reading a book – The Lost Connections by Johann Hari – that really fired me up and made me want to say a few things, both in a good and bad way.  And last is self-interest: I’m getting progressively closer to the release of my fiction book, Redemption.  So, all of those things combined set me off and hopefully kick-started my desire to write again.  I don’t know how often I’m going to do this, but I do know I want to do it more often than I am right now…which, okay, is never!  So yes, I’m on that!

I sincerely hope I can produce some interesting content for those of you who have been kind enough to read.  I can’t say it’s all going to be related to mental health/depression/anxiety, and to some extent, I think that was part of my problem – I limited myself too much.  That’s a broad topic, but it is not at all completely who I am.  I’m a mental health advocate, for sure, but there’s so much more out there, and I want to talk about more of that as well.

So, more later!  For now, I’m in the throws of campaigning (the full time job) and enjoying it greatly, but let me conclude by saying thank you.  I really appreciate all of you who have read the blog and gotten something out of it.

See you soon!
Mike