Men's Mental Health Month 2024
This is the biggest social media like I've received in a long while. So many times my millennial generation has sought satisfaction and endorphins through social media likes from people, often times this rush of excitement of receiving attention clouds our judgement and focus on what is important and what is not important. The Likes, The posts, the Love from social media is not real life, just as this website is not my real life. This website hardly gets sales, hardly ever gets any attention, it is not my life, but I share my experience, thoughts, feelings, and emotions on it because that's the stuff that makes life important. The strength, determination, stubbornness, and belief that I am right about what I write about is what keeps this business going despite every reason for me to just shut it down.
I spent over 20 years of my life living next to Travis AFB so close where I could here the engines at night, the alarms and drills go off during the day, the National Anthem every morning and every evening, and the planes flying so close to my house I can read the tail numbers on the planes with my horrendous vision.
One life lesson I picked up from living that close to Travis AFB all those years was simply... There is always a battle to fight tomorrow, which is a reason to keep going.
Habits have the nasty habit of also being depressing at times. Doing the same thing, every day, day after day, month after month, year after year can lead to a feeling that life is not about changing, and not about improvement and growth. Even though life is about the habits we choose and the habits we don't choose, if life simply becomes doing the same thing over and over again without any different results it can become mentally ill and depressing.
The military is all about schedules, habits, training, and routines. The mental health benefits of living a life like this are far greater than the potential mental health risks. Many times people suffer in silence and never talk about it.
For me and my personal battle with depression at times, having good habits is what keeps me going. I wake up, do something everyday to improve my life, walk, work out, cook, help my Dad who is retired and my sister who suffers from a severe mental illness that makes me feeling depressed feel silly. Habits are what keeps people sane.
Another thing I learned from living near Travis AFB is that the world's problems are the world's problems. Even though Travis will answer the call to any number of world problems, from Katrina, to Haiti to Afghanistan they do it because it is their job as service men and women. And the perform those jobs with the upmost professionalism.
But political problems and world problems are not their concern.
After 9/11 Travis AFB went to war along with the rest of the military, but after Trump's election the planes still did their drills the same time on similar days as they did the day after Obama got elected, and when Trump got impeached they went about their job, and when January 6th happened, they went about their job. It does not matter what bs happens in the news.
There is a battle to fight tomorrow, which is a reason to get up every single damn day.
Check out the link below to read about Men's Mental Health Month. Hopefully the CA State Legislature will not forget to recognize it this time around.
https://www.mhanational.org/infographic-mental-health-men