Strategy of a "Mad" Man

I've been spending a lot of time deciding exactly what direction I wanted to take this blog in since my last entry. One of the issues with my personal brand of anxiety is that I need to have some sort of structure laid out in order to stay on course with any particular long term task.  That being said, this is a project of self improvement, and this blog should therefore be used as a means for holding myself accountable for change.  There can be no more excuses or delays in kicking things off, so let's start by examining the current state of things.

I don't know exactly how other people classify "rock bottom". It's one of those completely subjective terms that can't be assigned a measurable value, but we hear about people reaching that particular state of being constantly. Let's just jump to the point and say that I hope that I've reached rock bottom.  That's such a strange thing to say, but it couldn't be more true for a person who constantly worries.  

As of the date of this posting, my finances are in a shambles.  My personal checking account currently has a negative balance in the hundreds of dollars. I'm not sure of the exact balance as I'm afraid to actually log in to online banking to check the balance.  I have past due utility bills, and no means with which to pay them.  My wife and I have accumulated just shy of $20,000.00 in debt over the course of two years the total of which does not include the mortgage that we just signed in September of 2018.  All of that being said, my family made it through Christmas without imploding.

I have spent the last few weeks fretting, crying, panicking, and generally losing my collective shit (pardon the profanity). However, something that I realized is that none of this helped improve my situation which leads me back to the sentiment of hoping that I've finally reached rock bottom.  Even though things seem terribly desperate right now, none of the circumstances that I've laid out are beyond my ability to repair.  It's with that sentiment that I realized that I'm finally ready to make the changes needed to help myself and my family.

That is what I hope to document on this blog. Any financial strategies that I try, or any self help methods that I explore will be laid out here for all to see. Eventually I'd like to be able to look back on these posts to see the progress that I had made, and what avenues I had to take in order to find success.    

Armed with this newfound motivation, I took myself down to my county library this afternoon and looked up a couple of books about anxiety that I'd like to read.  One is entitled Overcoming the Fear of Fear by Margo C. Watt and Sherry H. Stewart.  The description sets this book up as a manual for helping address the behaviors that make people more sensitive to particular situations which feed into and anxiety reaction.  The second book I picked is My Age of Anxiety by Scott Stossel which seems to be more of the author's account of his own personal struggles with anxiety along with his own research findings about how has been diagnosed and treated throughout time.

I hope to read through both and give my opinions about each on the blog once I've had time to digest them.  This entry has been a bit all over the place, but my brain has been as well. I'll still post it because it reflects how I've been feeling recently. I'll try to upload some vlogs in the coming weeks as well, and I'll work on doing outlines for blog posts in the future to keep them more coherent.  Until next time, I wish the best mental health for anyone who may find this blog.