Page Turner's Blog, page 59

It’s a Blessing & a Curse to Be Easily Satisfied

It’s a blessing — and a curse — to be satisfied with so little.

A blessing because it makes it relatively easy for me to be happy. I can thrive in environments that other people would suffer in. When I was taking medical classes back in the day, I used to joke that I was basically Helicobacter pylori.  » Read more

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What Is Allostatic Load?

Man, the pandemic… it’s… ugh… it’s a bad time.

Regardless of who you are, whether you’ve got your feet on the ground and are looking at peer-reviewed data or have decided to don some manner of tinfoil hat (of any shape or size), these times are difficult and frustrating.

If you’re one of those folks who think this whole thing is no big deal re: public health (for purposes of disclosure,  » Read more

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I Wish I Could Send Feelings to You When I Have Them

You can do a lot with words, that’s for sure, but they’re not enough. No matter how hard you try to be careful about what you say, no matter how carefully you select your words, it’s so easy for them to hit the person you’re talking to the wrong way.

For them to be misinterpreted.  » Read more

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It Matters Even More Now That I’m a Klutz. Thanks, Pandemic.

I haven’t written about this much, but I’ll say it now: I’m a klutz.

When I was a little kid, I was always falling down and skinning my knees. Now, I did eventually become a runner, first a sprinter in elementary school and later a cross country runner in middle school (before puberty came along and made it impossible to compete like I had before,  » Read more

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If Disappointment Fills Your Heart & No One Wants to Hear It, Does It Make a Sound?

I’ve known so many people over the years who really seem to all believe one thing: As long as you don’t complain about something aloud, you aren’t really upset about it. And because you’re not really upset about it, nothing will happen.

And most importantly, they won’t have to deal with the fact that you were upset.  » Read more

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A Lot of Behavior Generally Pleases Reasonable People But Only Manages Difficult People

It is always happening whenever I talk to my mother.

She’ll say something petty and ungrateful. Someone will have done something nice for her. Something that was clearly well intended. Came from a good place. But because the gesture wasn’t perfect, wasn’t what she would have envisioned in the best of all possible worlds,  » Read more

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If You Want Better Relationships, Test Yourself More & Test Your Partner Less

“I liked your piece about testing self-beliefs instead of accepting or rejecting them outright,” she says.

“Thanks,” I say. “It’s something that’s always been hard for me to articulate, but it was really the only way to move through my divorce without steering off too hard in either direction. I had to learn moderation more intentionally;  » Read more

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Going to Bed Angry Has Never Been the Problem

I used to be a big believer in a cardinal relationship rule: Never go to bed angry.

The idea of this was that if you get into a relationship argument, no matter the time of day, you should resolve your disagreement before you and your loved one retire for the night.

Depending on the time of day,  » Read more

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The Middle Path Between Accepting or Rejecting a Difficult Self-Belief Outright Is Testing It

There are lots of important things I was never told about relationships. Not told by popular depictions of course, which are really a strange way to learn about what relationships are like (although a lot of us do learn primarily this way).

But also not told by my parents. Or anyone else, really.  » Read more

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The People We Can Say “Do Over” To Are the Best

It’s funny the things we tend to romanticize. A lot of folks romanticize danger. Living on the edge. The thrill of hunting something precarious. Finding someone who’s hard to get. Hard to keep.

There’s a rush in the conquest, they want us to believe.

And for a long while, I thought that was where it was at.  » Read more

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