Since I started thebeanandseed.com, I’ve been posting about food, healthy body, and healthy mind. While I will still continue writing about all of these topics, I intend to include more regular posts on disc golf. With that in mind, this is now a blog about food, health, and disc golf! Read on to understand why this distinction is so important to me rather than my simply mentioning disc golf here and there.
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While watching any post-game interview, when the reporter asks, “what contributed to your success?”, you’ll often hear the athlete say, “coach had us prepared and we executed the plan”. Similar words could be shared by a student who did well on a test; they prepared; they were ready for whatever questions were thrown at them. Life is like this in general. The more prepared you are, the better you’re likely to do. Today, I’d like to talk about finishing out 2025 strong and getting ready to start 2026 even stronger. The thing is, right now, I think the biggest thing I need in order to be prepared… is rest.
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Historically, my family has really liked its soda. One of the comical disputes amongst us when I was growing up was Pepsi vs. Coke. Myself, I definitely prefer Coca-Cola. And when I say prefer, I mean I’d take anything else over Pepsi. With that said, I really started to dislike the feel of sugar in my teeth and switched to Coke Zero. At the time, I thought this was a healthier alternative. But the reality is that artificial sweeteners such as aspartame and sucralose are not “good” for us; they just aren’t sugar.
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Mental bandwidth; one’s cognitive and emotional capacity for processing information, making decisions, and dealing with demands. As stated in my “Redefining Normal” post, there are many things in life that eat away at our mental bandwidth and force us to make choices about what we can take on. Because of this, our bandwidth factors greatly in determining the manner in which we respond to life events. It is easy to draw a link between our mental bandwidth and our mental health. Increased anxiety can negatively impact our bandwidth and lead to degraded mental health. Decreased mental bandwidth can lead to even more anxiety and a vicious cycle begins. In today’s post, I want to share some thoughts on mental bandwidth and where I believe my issues with anxiety and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) began.
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Admittedly, this title is a little more grandiose than the post will be. Mostly, I just want to share some of my goals going into the holiday season. As an adult, holidays have always been a little rough for me. To put it bluntly, they aren’t what I remember from childhood. I wouldn’t say I’m just “getting through” these events, as I do enjoy them, but they can put a lot of pressure on us. With that said, here are some of the objectives I have for the season.
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Someone recently said of me, “You know that’s not normal, right?” What is normal? In this post, I’m going to be talking about what daily life looks like, what some of my mental health issues have been, and how I’ve come to deal with them. It is important to understand that what is “normal” for one person may not be so for another. What is considered normal is subjective based on factors such as life experience, beliefs, and the mental preferences that I talked about in part 1 of this series, “The Mind I Was Given“. Since normal is subjective in so many ways, it is also important to know that how we define it isn’t fixed; what we find to be normal today, we may feel differently about given time and further understanding. The most important take away from this entire mental health series is that we must keep moving forward. I hope that what I have to share here shows perseverance and determination; I hope that my will to survive and improve my situation, regardless of how small the wins sometimes are, can be seen through any “abnormal” behaviors. A win is a win, after all.
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As you can see from the open tabs in the screenshot above, I’m hard at work on part 3 of my ongoing series discussing my mental health journey. You can read part 1, “The Mind I Was Given” and part 2, “The Day the Switch Flipped” by following the links. With that said, part 3 is going to need some more time in the oven. Instead, this week I want to share about some other updates I’ve made around the blog!
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Last week, I started a new series on my mental health journey with a post titled, “The Mind I Was Given”. I discussed mental preferences, our comfort zones, and the patterns of behavior that led to me being classified as a “classic perfectionist”; a label I don’t disagree with. At length, I spoke to how our preferences, behaviors, and abilities are what make us who we are and that our minds are ours to understand, accept, and protect. The crux of my message was that who we are should not be confused with mental health issues such as anxiety and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). This week, I’d like to discuss how my fight with OCD began, and what I’ve identified as my “fear”. Additionally, I’d like to begin talking about mental balance.
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As we’re nearing the end of 2025, I want to send out a reminder to get out and take in the fall season. If you’re involved in a sport like Mary and I are in disc golf, then this could quite possibly be the best time of the year to enjoy the cool and the beauty of our natural surroundings. Additionally, if you’ve been getting out all summer long, it might be a good time to start thinking about the coming winter and ways in which to stay active during the cold months ahead.
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Back when I started thebeanandseed.com, I promised to talk about my mental health journey. Up to this point I’ve only touched upon it briefly. I suppose I’ve been hesitant to get into the subject; not because it’s hard for me to write about, but because of the potential for judgement. You see, I have come to learn that, for the most part, only those who have experienced similar hardships look at you from a fully sympathetic perspective. Sometimes, even those who have gone through similar situations will still criticise you because they believe you’re not approaching your issues in the appropriate manner. Well, I’ve decided I’m not going to worry about those opinions anymore; the potential for my experience to help someone else is more important than what a misinformed individual may or may not approach me with; maybe I can even provide some clarity for those who would judge. With that said, I believe we were given beautiful minds. We are capable of wonderful thought, creation, and an aptness for empathy beyond that which we can imagine. But the world is a harsh place. We are sometimes put against seemingly impossible odds. Survival instincts kick in. How, then, can we find balance and get the most out of the minds we were given? I look forward to sharing about my attempts to find balance in the future, but as someone suffering with anxiety and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), I want to start this series on my mental health journey by talking about our mental preferences and how they can be incorrectly labeled as compulsions. You may not be dealing with the exact issues, but I hope you will be able to glean valuable insight from what I have to share.
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The Bean & Seed 