Recipes for Disaster: an anarchist cookbook

One more thing about reintegration: if you work, try to find a job that allows you to be outside using your body. Those of us who were brought up middle-class have been conditioned to believe that mental work is for the evolved and physical work is for the underlings. In addition to perpetuating class oppression, this belief encourages us to be even less present in our bodies. You can build trails for the parks department; you can do freelance construction or painting or landscaping; you can work at organic farms or be a migrant laborer. You'll learn your body's limits?believe it or not, most people never do!?and you'll exhaust yourself, which can feel really good. Even if you have to be out in the cold and the rain, it can feel more fiilfiUing than waiting tables, or making fancy coffee Mental Health d^nks for rude yuppies, or selling your plasma. Please don't sell your plasma. What a 268 grotesque example of an exploitative industry literally sucking the life out of the poor!

I have only recently discovered the power of lists. Most people I have talked to about Lists managing depression have a really hard time just taking care of day-to-day tasks. Making a hst of things I have to take care of really helps everything seem less ovenvhelming. Get one of those little writing pads and carry it with you wherever you go. Make a "to do" list each week. When you finish an item on the list, put a line through it?this is so gratifying. If you don't get everything on your hst taken care of, just transfer the leftovers to the next list, but take the time to make a fresh list every week. If I look too much at a list I can never seem to finish, it makes me feel more depressed. It reinforces my belief that I can't ever get my act together, and then, of course, that belief manifests itself in reality. The notepad itself is a great tool. You can also use it to write down those crazy ideas and fleeting fantasies you dream up when you're gardening or working or walking around in the rain. You can use it to vmte haikus about that suicidal squirrel that always waits until a car is about to come before it darts across the street with an acorn in its mouth. You can draw little sketches of all the weird people on the bus. After a while it becomes a really familiar and reliable way to interact with your environment and be present in your lived experience.

More on fists: write down everything you can think of that is beautifiil, that makes you feel alive, or that you simply like. It's so easy for us to forget these things when we're in our lows, and just naming them can help bring them back into our lives. Here are a few of the things on my list: moments of total silence on a city street; freshly opened lilacs; the smell of old books; drinking water when I'm really thirsty; cobalt blue glass; really good letters; the color of my skin under a fijll moon; wind; the color green, deep, deep green; cool velvet on my ears and cheeks; the smell of sheep; fresh, clean socks. This is the comfort food of my life and I had more or less forgotten about it, all of it, until I wrote it all down.

In addition to the list of things to live for, compose a list of actions you know will help Mental Health to pull you out if you're in a bad way. This could include anything from taking a walk }6g

around your neighborhood to eating a good meal or spending time with your dog. Give copies of this hst to your close friends, so they have some idea of how to help you when you're in trouble. Another good tool to give to trusted allies is a list of warning signs that you're having a hard time. These could be subtle, like circles around your eyes from lack of sleep, or they could be blatant, such as not leaving your bedroom for days. Even if these symptoms seem obvious to you, it's important that you identify them to your friends, so they'll know to come to your aid when they first start to appear.

There is one more list that you cannot do without: a list of the people you will contact when you are having a hard time. Compose this list when you're in a relatively level headspace; if you try to do it when panic is asphyxiating you or you're paralyzed by depression, you will have a very hard time thinking of anyone, and this will make you feel ten times worse. Keep this list accessible?laminate it with packing tape and stick it to your phone or bathroom mirror, make a few copies in case you lose one. Even if it doesn't sound important now, believe me, it will be.