I found some new tools for coping with bipolar disorder (I feel bad, I stumbled across them somehow, but can’t remember where, so if I stole these from you, let me know so I can credit!) Anyway, because my moods are fluctuating badly, and I think that I cycle about once a month, I decided to find a mood tracker online. I found an awesome one:
MoodTracker.com- Online tools for depression and bipolar disorder
It’s free, though you can upgrade to add additional features. You can give your caregivers, such as doctors or family or whatever, access to it so they can see how you’re doing. You can print out charts of your mood and varying factors that affect mood to take to doctor’s appointments. You can enter meds and everything about them ever. You can even give it your cell # and it will text you reminders to journal! I kinda can’t wait for more time to go by so I can see trends, but srsly I am such a chart nerd. I loved statistics class because I got to play with the data crunching and create charts in SPSS, which I bought because it was awesome, and I was even accidentally sent the professional version so I could add even more data! This program spits it out for you.
The other neat thing, that I didn’t honestly believe would work until I tried it, was this:
f.lux: software to make your life better”
What f.lux does, in a nutshell, is take the blue light out of your computer screen as the sun goes down, and adds it as the sun comes up, because blue light clues in the brain to be awake, and more yellow light tells the brain it’s time to sleep. I noticed immediately a decrease in how strained my eyes felt and how much it changed the brightness. I know that I have trouble sleeping when I first get off the computer, and while my original thought that it’s related to how active my brain was, probably still plays an important piece, the brightness of the screen can’t help. F.lux is completely free and really, really cool.
I’ll add these two to the toolbar over there. I’ve got to say, there are some fun tools out there on the intermawebs. Now to just actually, y’know, use them.
prozacinmycornflakes 