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Sanity Savers
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All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review, without the written permission of the publisher.
Copyright © 2015 Peter Mulraney
ISBN: 978-0-9924269-8-9
Created with Vellum
Introduction
Reading
Writing
Learning a new skill
Exercising
Growing things
Serving
Having fun
Staying connected
Befriending yourself
Summary
A note from Peter
Also by Peter Mulraney
Being on your own, following the end of a long-term relationship, can be quite daunting. It often presents challenges, like boredom and loneliness.
My intention, in writing this book, is to introduce you to some strategies that will help you keep your sanity intact.
In what follows, I share seven strategies for finding constructive or interesting ways to use your alone time, and two personal growth and development strategies you can use to stay connected with the world, and to explore some of life's more intriguing questions.
These strategies will remind you that there are things you can do, things you can learn, places you can visit, and friends you can make. They also highlight the value of making commitments to your personal growth and engaging with others.
Over the last several years I have spent a fair amount of time on my own. My long-term relationship may not have ended when my wife accepted a position in another country, but it certainly changed form.
Since finding myself on my own for months at a time, I have employed the strategies I am sharing with you to write several books, focus on my spiritual journey, establish a blog, and stay connected to my extended family. I've also acquired a set of new skills, related to self-publishing and online marketing, had a lot of fun, met some interesting people, and travelled.
To be honest, I haven't had the time to feel bored or lonely.
I recommend that you explore some of the activities suggested in the first seven strategies. Discover which ones work for you and make the most of what they have to offer.
I encourage you to embrace strategies eight and nine: staying connected and befriending yourself. I believe these are essential for the ongoing sanity of anyone living alone.
You're reading this book, so I guess it's safe to assume you already know something about the value of reading. I know a lot of guys who read the paper, well at least the sports pages, and think that's all there is to reading. We're going a bit further than that.
In my experience, reading is one of the more enjoyable pastimes for someone living alone. It's not expensive, it can be done almost anywhere, and it's more active and engaging than watching TV, which the neuroscientists describe as a passive activity. If you want to keep your brain active and increase your chances of not getting dementia, reading is a better choice than TV, simply because you need to use active imagination when you read. If you're not quite sure what that means, consider that what you see on the TV is always someone else's visual interpretation of the story - whether you're watching the history channel or the news. When you're reading the story in words, you get to dream up your own visual interpretation or mental pictures of the words, based on your unique perspective of the world. That's the bit that exercises your brain cells.
Reading is an activity that can be done for several different reasons, which we'll explore in the following sections.
Reading for entertainment
This is the world of fiction or storytelling. There is an ever-increasing supply of stories for you to choose from, so you'll never run out of books to read. There are books for every imaginable interest.
Go to any brick and mortar or online bookstore and just look at the list of categories. Okay, you might not be into romance or erotica or that vampire paranormal stuff, but there are stacks of other categories to choose from: crime, mysteries, thrillers, action-hero, espionage, historical-fiction, fantasy, science-fiction, war stories and literary masterpieces to name a few. And, they all have sub-genres or sub-categories with thousands of authors to choose from.
I'd also include biographies and autobiographies in this section, not that I am suggesting that they are works of fiction, but because we read them more for their entertainment value than for any other reason - a form of voyeurism.
If you haven't ventured beyond the papers or the self-help section in recent years, do yourself a favour, and buy yourself a novel, or go to your local library and borrow one or two.
If you need a place to start, try one of my Inspector West novels, a Chief Inspector Gamache novel by Louise Penny, or a Roy Grace novel by Peter James.
Reading for information
Another reason to read is to find information. This is the world of non-fiction, where you can go to get help or find out about those things that interest you. This book is in this category.
This is where you find the history books and the how [...]