Thanks for the comments, this thread had been very helpful with sorting out my own feelings and ideas.

I changed my signature image just now to a Mobius strip, as a symbol of my adjustments to success-triggered mania. Which I once endured, but am determined to never experience again. Goodbye super highs; so long follow-on crashes, as well.

Something I do that practices optimism is play with rewriting quotes. For some reason a quote or saying gets my attention. To make it really mine I look at every word and explore what additional meanings or deeper associations arise.

For example. I read a quote in an article about the owner of the Trouble coffee shop in SF CA. She said someone asked her: "What useful skills did she have in a tangible situation?"

This is a great question to start off with. It's as open-ended as several lifetimes. It connects usefulness, skills, and tangible situations. Useful means of service to self or others, skills are my gifts to the situation, and tangible means sensible, touchable, out there in outer reality and not just in my dreams and imagination.

For my rewrites, today, I have a specific situation I'm recovering from. I suffer losses as anyone alive knows we all do, and my own reactions have been to stay engaged in most areas of my living yet feel a deep numbing in the area of loss. Right now, I'm calling off the numbness and restoring feelings and awareness.

What useful skills? Posed as a question and just stopping after 3 words tripped a bit of shock. Numbing parts of myself while the rest of me can act I know can be very useful in the direct emergency situations. I get my physical body or other resources out of harms way, and I need to move quickly to do that in some dire circumstances. Therefore ...

What under appreciated but life saving skills do I have ...

This thing is odd, because I sometimes just keep recycling through my skills with myself (writing only in my journal, making pyramidal paper designs that illuminate my struggles, moan about my problems to anyone with ears, etc.) and really wallow in it. It's safe inside or alone playing with the rolling marbles in my head.

What under appreciated but life saving skills can I deliberately use in a tangible situation?
Tangible? Touch? Contact? It was contact that shocked me into numbness? I have to get back out there? Back in the saddle? Back into living with all the attendant risks? Somewhere I saw a quote found on a tombstone: "It is a fearful thing to love what death can touch."

Don't ask how I made this association, but a knife is safest when sharp, because you don't need to hack away to cut through.

Rewrite: "Former losses will never stop my living and loving even if l Death plays for keeps."

Okay, back to first quote: What under appreciated but life saving skills can I deliberately use to restore my joie de vivre to 'weller than well'?

The little bits at the end jumped the line of my thinking. Joie de vivre suggests this is different now, a new territory to explore because it's all a foreign language. And weller than well I think is a quote from one of the medical clinics. If you know the source please share.

Enough for now, thanks if you managed to get this far. Revu2