Driving to Cluj from Tinca on a snowy day
This week I had to go to a town here in Romania called Cluj. It is a beautiful city with so much history to be found around almost every corner. Just the 3 hour drive there is amazing, and I drove to Cluj on the first bright, sunny, and mostly warm day we have had here this year. As you can see from my photos, the last time I drove there it was snowy and the peaks all around me were covered. I really love whenever I get to come to this city; over the 16 years that I have lived in Romania there have been many moments when I have needed to come here for medical visits, picking up friends and family from the airport and if I’m honest, getting Indian food from the only Indian restaurant I have found so far this side of Bucharest! It also used to have the only Starbucks near me (needed those Chai Lattes every so often!), but thankfully we now have a Starbucks near us in Oradea. This time, I had to come for a medical consultation with my ENT, but that is not what I want to write about today. It is actually the secondary mission I embarked on after this consultation that brings me to my computer to write today; I went to buy a typewriter. As in, a manual typewriter with those amazing sounds of the keys clacking and the bell dinging as the carriage moves!
Buying a typewriter & making new friends
You might read this and wonder why I would be taking time out of my day to drive another 40 minutes outside of Cluj to another beautiful town, Turda to pick this typewriter up? Those of you who know me well, won’t be surprised at all that I went on an errand like this. It’s probably the ADHD in me, but I am well known for getting into new hobbies often, and usually they will be something that are gadget/electronics or vintage related. I have many different collections ranging from fountain pens, various antiques, pipes, retro gaming and pretty much everything in between. Safe to say, if it is quirky or vintage, I’ve probably collected it. So this brings me to Monday, and walking out of my consultation to drive to Turda. This town is also very well known in Romania, as it is home to a large salt mine. This is an underground mine that is pretty much a city with restaurants, shops and even play parks. But its main feature is the salt in the mine that is known for its health benefits especially for the respiratory system. You can read more about this salt mine below:
Ninaway Li
Turda Salt Mine, Romania
So I made my way into the center of Turda. I had found an incredible typewriter on the Romanian website OLX which is pretty similar to eBay. This typewriter is the Royal Model 10, and this specific one I bought is from 1933. Most amazing of all is it was in such good condition and was fully functional and ready to use. I spent a great hour or two visiting with the seller and his family; a very friendly and helpful fellow expat (from Chile). We spent a long time chatting about typewriters and life living in Romania, it was an awesome conversation, with us using a mix of English, Romanian (and the 3 words I knew in Spanish!) to talk. I couldn’t wait to get the typewriter back home and to try it out! It was an amazing day, and the only downside was I didn’t get to spend some time hanging out with my amazing friends Sarah and Leah, Americans living in Cluj, who were out of town that day. I have known Sarah for almost the whole 16 years I have been in Romania, and Leah for the past few years, so I was super disappointed we didn’t get to meet up. We have made definite plans to get Indian food and hang out together soon!
My new (to me!) 1933 Royal Model 10 typewriter
Why am I sharing this today?
Beyond sharing my love of collecting and the fun day I had, you might also be wondering why I am sharing with you about buying this typewriter. It is again the ADHD in me that leads me to answering this question. In the past few years since I was diagnosed with ADHD I have been learning a LOT about myself and about how I function. I have discovered a lot about how I approach life, and things I needed and still need to work on. I will be sharing more in future articles, about my journey with ADHD, so I won’t go into too much detail now. I have found ADHD to be very difficult and debilitating at times, and I have recently been learning that some of my ADHD symptoms may actually be related to the trauma’s I have experienced. You can read my recent article where I started to share about my trauma journey below:
Dave Truss
I have recently been learning that some of my ADHD symptoms may actually be related to the trauma’s I have experienced
One thing I am very aware of is how prone I am to distraction and to then be drawn in by those distractions. I could tell you lots about the times I have set off to do something and ended up doing 5 other different things. Only remembering later that I never even completed the first task I went off to do. I find the same thing when I am on my computer, that every time I get onto it, I am usually taken off course by the notifications I get, the website I had left open or finding an unfinished job open and finishing that, while forgetting the reason why I got on my computer in the first place!
So I have spent the past few years trying to reduce distractions in my life, to simplify things and to try to be more intentional in what I set my heart and mind to day to day. I have learned I am much more productive if I set just a few realistic goals for each day, and I have tried to focus more on the essential, important things I am working towards in my life. I have also tried to learn not to beat myself up so much with the things I don’t manage to accomplish. I’ll be honest; self contempt and condemnation are a huge part of my mental health that I am having to work on. So I am trying to learn to keep myself accountable without condemning myself in the process. I am definitely a work in progress on this front.
When I shared recently about confronting trauma in my life, I described how journaling has become a very important part of my daily routine. Journalling has helped me so much with my mental health, by giving me a space to write down and process what I am feeling. It helps me to figure out what I am even feeling when I’m not quite sure. Often solutions or next steps for the situations I am working through become clearer as I write. Not only this, but I have learned through my college course in mental health that I am studying at the moment, that journalling has a whole wide host of benefits for us. From improving mental health to physically, journalling is such a useful tool we can all use to improve our wellbeing in every way. It can reduce anxiety, depression, and can even help to reduce blood pressure and heart rate through calming and reducing stress hormones. I could write a whole set of articles just on the benefits of journalling that I have discovered through my research.
From improving mental health to physically, journalling is such a useful tool we can all use to improve our wellbeing in every way
I have also found that journalling gives me a way to look back and to see where I used to be and where I have got to now. I quite often feel like I am making little to no progress in working through my mental health struggles, in fact, it was something I was sharing about recently with my therapist, Ryan. In those moments when I feel like I’m not getting anywhere, it encourages me so much to look back at my journals and to see the many situations I was in over the years that I didn’t know how I was going to be able to step forward in or work through, while the emotions and issues I was dealing with at those times felt so overwhelming and are now part of my past. One example is when I suffered a stroke in 2020 (I plan to share more about this part of my life in the future). I found as I started to recover physically, that PTSD symptoms started to appear. One of them was anxiety when I was in public situations like being in a store. At that time I could barely go into a shop, and often would leave a full cart of shopping in the entrance having had to leave because the anxiety got so much. I would get outside to my car and be physically shaking, sweating and dizzy. I remember often in those moments that I wondered if my life was over, and how could I hope to do anything in life if I couldn’t even do something so simple as going shopping for groceries? I spent a year in therapy working through PTSD related to this stroke and working on coping mechanisms for my ‘stuck points’* as they are known. I was looking through my journals of that period and remembering how bad it got at times, and it is so encouraging for me, to look back and see where I was. Even though I know that still now sometimes I can feel that anxiety and the PTSD symptoms start to appear, I am now able to recognise them and work through them. They don’t stop me from doing the things in life I want to, like even the basics like grocery shopping.
My encouragement for you, for us all.
This journey of reducing distractions and trying to be more focused, was part of why I decided to go to Turda to buy a typewriter. With the aim of giving me a distraction free space to write my journals, blog posts, college course assignments and anything else I am writing about. And if I’m honest I also love how it looks and using something that is almost a hundred years old!
I hope as you have read this, if like me you struggle with distractions in your life, that we can both work on reducing those distractions. I know I have a long way to go, but this process has helped me so much and I have much more clarity and focus day to day the more I remove those distractions.
If you are a journal writer like me I hope it was affirming to read this, and if you aren’t, I hope it might encourage you to try journalling to help with your mental health. Writing a journal can be anything you need it to be; it can be writing a daily record of your day to day life and how you felt during that day. If that is too overwhelming, it can be occasionally recording events and moments (good and hard) that you experience to help you process them. There are also specific journals you can use if you are confronting something difficult or painful in your life, like a trauma, anxiety or stress journal. It is also really helpful to keep a gratitude journal, to hold onto and keep in our minds the good things we can celebrate in life. If you don't enjoy writing, there are many other ways you can journal; sketching and drawing what you are feeling or places you visit or that represent situations you are in, would all be a good way to start visually journalling.
To help with your journalling, I have created 2 journal templates that you can download for free using the links below. They have sections for gratitude and mental health tracking among others and I hope they will help be a good starting point for you. Especially if you are in the midst of a harder time with your mental health, or situations around you are stressful, I hope that these journals will give you the space to process what you are feeling. Feel free to download and print or use them on your tablet.
The first journal is a daily journal you can use everyday, or whenever you would like. The second is an additional journal that I created for those reading who are a Christian like me, with some space to journal on your spiritual walk.
Let me know in the comments any journaling or distraction removing tips you have or anything else you want to share.
As always, no matter where you are in life and what you might be experiencing in your mental health as you read this, I am rooting for you!
Dave
Daily Journal Templates:
Christian Journal Templates:
Stuck points are beliefs you have about yourself, other people or situations that might be out of proportion and often are formed by a traumatic experience(s). These stuck points are often found in people suffering from PTSD or anxiety. They are an obstacle to healing and recovery and could be a trigger for anxiety, panic and panic attacks.
