31 Days of Mood Tracking

Over the past month, I've taken mental health with a more serious tone. I've had mood swings throughout my adult life, but I've recently had days where my mood swings worse than it used to, and I wanted to get a feel for what's actually going on. I'm lucky to find an app that helps me journal and track my mood through the day, and I wanted to share results for the first 31 days.

Note that nothing in here is a sponsorship or endorsement - this is strictly my own opinion.

Enter Daylio

Daylio (https://daylio.net) has been my go-to daily app for tracking my mood throughout the day as well as giving me a small journal to document items of note. It's absolutely fantastic, and for those who fight depression, mood swings, or are just interested in how their mood changes day-to-day, this app is amazing and I'd highly recommend using it. Check out the stats below if you're curious about how the app shows the data you put in.

Statistics

Mood Chart

Things of note:

• September 28th was the first and only time I recorded a very low mood - this was due to having the news that my oldest son was diagnosed positive with COVID.
• October 11th was the first and only time I recorded a very high mood - this was due to quarantine ending and a sense of normalcy returning.

Average Daily Mood

Things of note:

• Admittedly I'm surprised that Fridays are, statistically, my worst days for mood.
• Sundays and Tuesdays are very close to me for being, statistically, my best days for mood.

Mental Health Awareness

I just want to throw out there that mental health is serious, especially during the COVID-era. Over the past year, we've all experienced some sort of disruption to what we consider normal everyday life, and not everyone experiences change the same way. While others preferred staying at home and riding everything out, others reveled in day-to-day communication in person. Not everyone is the same, but everyone should be treated the same.

Stay in touch with your friends, family, and loved ones - make sure everyone is healthy, even mentally. Not everyone has an outlet, a way to de-stress, a method to relax, so here's some suggestions that may help:

• Write! That's what I'm doing now, and every now and then it works wonders. It's significantly easier to write out things rather than overthink them, so write them out of your head. You can always revisit it if/when needed, share, distribute, or delete whenever.
• Call your friends, family, loved ones - I'm pretty guilty of not calling my family enough, but it does help. Reach out to someone and just ask them how they're doing. Sometimes people just need an ear, and if you're able, be that ear.
• Take a walk, go outside, get out of your normalcy. It sounds like the opposite of de-stressing, but a walk can help mentally clear your head.

Mental health is a serious thing. Take care of yourself.