How servicing my car made me rethink mental health

In partnership with

Happy Sunday & thank you for opening this week’s #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter! Can I just say - you guys really listened and have been CLICKING THOSE AD LINKS in the past few newsletters! I’m so grateful for every click, because as we say in Jamaica, "every mikkle mek a mukkle”!

In other news, I’m currently in NYC 🍎 , visiting some friends and taking my first trip away from Miami since resigning. It’s funny to me because last weekend I shared that I became a PADI certified Open Water Scuba Diver and this weekend all I really wanted to do was go dive again, but I’ve found myself in New York instead 😆 . I’ll definitely be finding my way back underwater some time soon!

Servicing my Volkswagen for the first time

As I’m writing this, I’m actually sitting at the Volkswagen dealership in Miami, waiting in their lounge as my car is being serviced (it’s been 3 hours now, and this man told me it would take an hour and a half, but of course that wasn’t true). I have my car on a lease, and it’s finally hit 10,000 miles so it’s due for a service.

Sitting here, I know that it should be serviced once a year, but I can’t help but think that it’s some sort of a scam to have me bring in my car once a year and pay hundreds of dollars to service it, when to me, it seems like it’s working just fine.

It drives well, none of the dashboard [Christmas] lights are on 🤣 , and the tires seem to be okay to me. The only thing that might be a small problem is that I keep getting a notification that “Oil Change Service” is required in 500 miles or so, but other than that my car drives perfectly fine! To me, and probably everyone else around me, it shows no sign of needing to be serviced.

Diving and the peace of mind it brings

Last week, when I went scuba diving off the coast of Key Largo for the first time, I wrote about how doing that was me conquering a fear of mine by swimming out in the ocean. Now that I’ve scuba dived in the ocean, I want to share a bit of what my first dive actually felt like for me, and why it’s important for our conversation today.

On my dive, it felt like I was visiting a new city, except all the people in that city were aquatic animals, and all the buildings were coral. Sounds plausible enough, right? The longer I stayed underwater, the less I felt like a visitor and the more I felt like a part of it all. I felt more and more connected to nature. There was something so human about being immersed in that environment.

You would think that my primary emotion would’ve been fear, especially as someone who has felt some level of fear of swimming in the deep ocean for my whole life. But it wasn’t. It was a feeling of peace and curiosity.

That feeling of peace is possible because diving is such an individual hobby. While they typically require you to dive with a buddy for air-sharing reasons, once you’re underwater, the only communication is with your hands or body language. There’s no verbal communication (because your mouth is pre-occupied with breathing) and so the experience underwater is all in your own mind, with no outside sounds to really interfere.

Feeling that was really important, because I think about how it forces me to tune into myself, controlling my breathing, my motion through the water and my emotions as I experience the different sights of the aquatic world. It really is an experience that makes me remember that if I don’t take care of myself, there can be serious consequences.

A quick word from today’s sponsor (and your signal to click the link to support!)

These cannabis gummies keep selling out in 2023

If you've ever struggled to enjoy cannabis due to the harshness of smoking or vaping, you're not alone. That’s why these new cannabis gummies caught our eye.

Mood is an online dispensary that has invented a “joint within a gummy” that’s extremely potent yet federally-legal. Their gummies are formulated to tap into the human body’s endocannabinoid system.

Although this system was discovered in the 1990’s, farmers and scientists at Mood were among the first to figure out how to tap into it with cannabis gummies. Just 1 of their rapid onset THC gummies can get you feeling right within 5 minutes!

Order Now

How scuba diving and servicing my car relate to each other for me

Sitting at the Volkswagen dealership, thinking about tuning up my car (even when I don’t see any clear signs to do so) and simultaneously reflecting on my scuba dive, there’s a small connection that stuck out to me - this relationship to mental health.

If you didn’t know, September is National Suicide Prevention Month.

As someone that has worked through mild depression in the recent past and felt this weight of having to keep up appearances to everyone around me, I think it’s so important to highlight this month as a time to check in on your loved ones.

In the same way that my car didn’t show any signs of needing to be serviced, the people around us often don’t show signs of needing help, love and support either. It’s so easy to get caught up in our own world and forget about the people that we love, so to me, relationships have to be intentional. I make it a priority to randomly check in on my friends every now and again, because if not, it’s way too easy to lose touch with people and forget to check in.

It’s easy to assume that people have other people checking in on them, but that’s not always true. Not everyone has someone who is genuinely concerned about their wellbeing, and not everyone is even necessarily concerned about their own wellbeing.

Conclusion

The lights won’t always go off when something’s wrong. What’s the cost of checking-in with your friends, whether once every few months or even once a year? Nothing near to servicing your car once a year, I’m sure.

In the same vein, it doesn’t take a scuba dive to learn that it’s important to tune into your own feelings and take responsibility for your own wellbeing.

In this suicide prevention month, check-in with someone. Check in with someone who you think is doing okay. Check in with someone who you think is going through a rough time.

And lastly, check in with yourself. In fact, checking in with someone you love is a great way to take care of yourself too.

So this week, service the vehicles of happiness in your life - check in on the people around you that make your life worth living, and be intentional about how you take care of the relationships in your life too.

Until next Sunday,
Justin