Well good morning, it's an incredibly beautiful day this morning and we've got some herons and other large birds flying around making some quite incredible sounds.



 It's about 20 degrees and it's Sunday, August the 25th and it's just around about sunrise time so we may get some beautiful red light from the dawn.



 So I know I've not posted a video for a week or two. I've been writing, there's a new book out on colitis, celiac and Crohn's disease with diabetes because they are all related. There is genetic links between all of them and there are people that suffer from both conditions diabetes and Crohn's colitis celiac, one of those three with diabetes. And that significantly complicates the issue of diet control, food control, intake of nutrients and I do not detail how the low carb diet, high fat, high protein diet that I've used to remain free of diabetes medication.



 I do not go into a lot of detail about how that diet works with a combination of diseases such as celiac and diabetes, Crohn's and diabetes, colitis and diabetes, that kind of thing. But just drawing a picture that if you are tested positive for diabetes which I was, it should be tested for markers for any of the other conditions.



 The new book also covers Stoicism, the philosophy of Stoicism, and there will be another book coming out in the next couple of months that goes into a lot more detail of Stoicism and



 how it can help with the help for me is a new discovery. I discovered Stoicism and I discovered its relevance to diabetes and in particular to diabetes burnout.



 Another subject in the book is journaling and this has been a theme of mine for quite a while, for several years, creating journals on my computer every morning, typing in a couple of paragraphs of things that seem to be relevant, but that has become less relevant



 this year, 2024, and instead I've been picking up on journaling, writing a physical journal.



 There are details in this video and in the book and in my newsletter that describe the tools that I'm using for journaling and where I journal and what basically my journal is.



 So let's dig into that a little bit more because having a dialogue or somewhere where you can write your impressions, your emotions, your thoughts, your feelings, anything that is pertinent to you is, I found it extremely beneficial.



 It's replaced with the much shorter computer-based journal as I mentioned and it's time that I give to journaling in the morning, first thing, and in the evening at the end of the day. So I journal for August the 25th, for example, we'll have a morning section in an evening or late afternoon section.



 So what would be a journal, for example? Well, first of all, it's pen and paper.



 It's not pencil. Pencils, comments or thoughts can be erased.



 And for me, the philosophy of journaling is that there's nothing that's erased.



 If I make a mistake, if I need to, I will write a comment or reply to what I, if I was writing in pencil, what I would erase. That is a dialogue between me and myself.



 I say me and myself because one is the intellectual ego and one is the spiritual self. And the dialogue between those two is recorded on the page and sometimes one supersedes the other on the page.



 Types of journals can be, well, first of all, there's where we are now, out in nature. I could have bought my journal with me and my pen and I could be writing here. That's physically writing in nature. And the other is more of a naturalist type of journal where they record place, temperature,



 conditions, what they saw, what behavior in the animals that they saw.



 And that is much more of a sort of factual recording rather than a dialogue between,



 between yourself and the page.



 There are prompt journals, journals where you have a list of words or short sentences and the themes that you want to continually explore. So each day you write something which explores that dialogue, that prompt.



 You can buy journal books where you write, but they include prompt words or short sentences and the idea is that that gets you going in writing your journal entry.



 There's a lot of other different types of journals that you can buy or that you can create for yourself. But I always use a notebook, a good quality paper, a Rodea notebook.



 And I always use a fountain pen, a Caran d'Ache 849 fountain pen, which is not hugely expensive. But the fountain pen slows me down.



 I do not, I do not speed write.



 It's a little bit more careful, more methodical. And also because it's, it's ink deposited on the page by the nib.



 This is much more relaxing to write with than say a fountain pen that requires a little bit of pressure to get the ink over the ball of the ball pen and onto the page. Of course you can also use felt tips and you can also use roller balls. But fountain pen is my mark and the Rodea paper, Rodea notebook is my chosen tools.



 And I usually, and I'll show this in my, in this video towards the end. I was right in a comfortable place where there is nature around me, but there are also people and things happening. And I have a latte and I have a breakfast cookie. So it's a very comfortable scene.



 Now how do I journal? Well, there's no prompts. The only thing that I enter that's a fact is the date, the month and day, because the journal itself is going to be marked for the year and it could be book one or book two or book three of 2024. I think this is going to be book one and then there'll be a book two for 2024 and probably into 2025. So that is put on the outside of the cover. So what is my journal? Well, my journal is about everything that is happening, emotions, what I see, what I hear, my feelings about certain things and my preference for certain things. Anything and everything is there. Colloquially it could be referred to as a vomit journal because everything goes into there and I don't break up paragraphs or I don't break up paragraph, break it up the entry in up into paragraphs for that day. It's just one continual block of text and the period for a sentence on a particular subject could be followed by another sentence or sentences on completely different subjects.



 So that is one of the other things that I for me works very well because I'm getting out my, working out my feelings. Some people might say, well, you could get a friend and you could have a coffee and you could talk to them, but you know, are you going to do that every day? Are you going to have a friend that listens and responds, but or someone who argues and tries to find a solution for you? The solution comes from within me and that goes down onto the page as well. And it's extremely useful, I find, to get your thoughts and feelings out on the paper diagnose your thoughts and feelings and write responses to them.



 Lots of people going out enjoying the lake today. There was a lot yesterday and yesterday morning when I was down here, there was a lot of boats already out on the lake. Some of them probably had been out on the lake overnight, which would be an extremely beautiful scene to have to be part of. We're just starting to see the sunrise coming up here. So how does this journaling affect me? As I said, I've been doing a lot of research on this. I've been doing a lot of research on this. So how does journaling affect me? As I said, I've been doing it for years on the computer banging away in the morning. And one of the things that that did, it allowed me to include photographs and things that I found on the internet or on Instagram or Facebook,



 and be able to comment and talk about them. Which is also a form of artistic journal, which when you look at YouTube and you're looking at the different types of journals,



 they're extremely colourful. There's a lot of artwork, there's a lot of time and attention put into the journal. And if that's your thing, go for it. It's not mine, as I said. So what is the relevance to diabetes? Well, it is this year, this July, actually, there's been almost a month-long instance of diabetes burnout.



 And in the past, the instances of diabetes burnout have been a lot shorter. They've been a few days or maybe a week at most. July this year, 2024, was a little bit different. It was a whole month-long episode. And I found very distinctly that journaling through this, working out my feelings, my frustrations, my thoughts about being diabetic and all the other things that were happening in my life, that there's a very distinct positive impact from being able to journal and get these slots out on paper and being able to recover my sense of balance as a result. Yes, journaling has been extremely useful in that regard.



 And it modified the impact of diabetes burnout. It was a lot milder than it has been in the past.



 And it's also allowed me to think a lot more about what it means to communicate about diabetes burnout and how it affects me.



 You could say, "Okay, the page has been my



 psychiatrist, my analyst." I guess in a sense you could say that, but I don't think that. I'm thinking that being able to express my frustrations, argue them on the page, and come to a resolution or a thought that I can follow to modify the burnout's feelings was extremely, extremely productive. So there's also going to be a book on journaling and it's really relevant to diabetes. So those two books are going to be coming out probably by the end of the year.



 And I highly recommend journaling as an aid, a helper, to getting you through diabetes burnout, feelings about diabetes, frustrations. And especially if you're in a situation where you're suffering from one of the other three conditions, Crohn's, colitis and celiac, along with your diabetes. Very, very useful strategy. And in that sense stoicism, the philosophy of stoicism has also been a remarkable eye opener and helper with diabetes. I'm just watching what I hadn't expected to see. It's a beaver. I didn't know that we had beavers in Lake Ontario. I guess we should have, but it's the first time I've ever seen one. So you could say, well, that's a naturalist observation. And that will go into my journal that I will write. So anyway, the sun is coming up. The sun has risen. And I hope that all those people that when we saw going out and the ones that are already out on the lake are enjoying themselves. It's a very, very nice, nice morning to be able to enjoy that. Thank you. So you go and have a good day and give thought to journaling. Think about how it would fit into your life and the impact that it would have on your life. And because it's had a significant impact on mine. So enjoy, have a great day. And I'll close off with a picture of the sun coming up.