 Invest in WordPress by investing in yourself. So I don't know if any of you saw the opening remarks where Cathy said, hey, go find Rich if you're interested in contributing back to the community. There's a big push because the WordPress project, and it is a project, is made up of you, you, you, me, all of you both there, the core developers that live all around the world, the different teams that help out all the different, with accessibility and documentation. The project is made of us. So we have to invest in WordPress to continue to make it grow. But one of the things I'm saying is that, and I'm saying this, a lot of you might not be on Twitter, but I'm on Twitter, I know a lot of circles, a lot of people, and I see people struggling and they're not realizing they're struggling and they're hurting. I've been in the corporate world for 20 years. I'm recognized. I feel it. I'm going through myself. I suffer from depression. I hate the job. So, yeah, I know. There we go. I don't have to hate it much longer. There we go. Find my... So, for those of you that deal with design, your funding developer, your designer, and, you know, trying to get that one pixel in the perfect spot, that's stressful. And you can spend hours trying to get the one box, anything, to move to right where you want it. You'll never get it. And, you know, the wonders of CSS, this is an old one, you know, CSS, we don't use CSS anymore, but ultimately it's all still the fundamentals of design that go into making the website. So, you know, if you do any kind of content creation, if you do any kind of, whether it's blogging, you're a food blogger, or you run an agency that is based on content creation, you're in marketing, and you're sitting there pounding the coffee, trying to get those few more words, you get the perfect words out there. You're so close. Same thing, that pixel that ever was a pixel for the designer. Same thing. You struggle and you struggle to get those last few words out so you can just publish. So, you're a lead developer at a small agency, and you've got a couple of junior developers that you're really trying to build up their skill sets. So, you're trying to figure out, okay, who should I give that project to? So, you're the lead developer, and you ask your two developers, okay, who wants it? Well, you know. So, as a lead developer, stress, this gets old, and you're not sure what their skill sets are there. So, it's hard. Say you own your own shop, or your freelancer by yourself, you're a project manager. Are there any clients in here? Anybody that is here? Because you're from the client perspective? Good. So, those clients, you kind of get them to understand exactly why you should be doing something, and no matter how hard you try, remember to angle it. Will you come up here? No. There's no woman up here for you. You and I at the same stage. It's hard. It's stress. It's not, you know, all of these things, all of these things lead to the same dilemma. You know, it doesn't matter what you do, it doesn't matter who you are in the work-class community. And this is just your day job. This is just the stuff you're doing during the day to make a living. Whether you're panicking freaking out, phone-safe, whatever it is, it's still the same struggle. And we're all in that struggle. And honestly, it's not work-class-specific. It's not tech-specific. It's life, and work's gotten harder over the years. As companies have shrunk, and you have to do more with less time. So it's not just work-class, but especially this community. This one's not good. This slide, I don't know, and I know it doesn't make you out well. I'm good friends with Corey Miller. He owns iThemes, and he's one of my motivations to speak about mental health. And he does a great job talking about mental health. Corey Miller and Chris Lomar, they're my idols because they talk about stuff like this that no one else is talking about. So this slide is something that he presented at Pressonomics a couple weeks ago. A business-based conference in Phoenix. Corey's gone through a lot of mental health issues. He's struggled. He and I have talked. It's been a challenge. It's taken a long time for him to get to a good place. And what this is, is this is an iceberg. Now, you might follow this person on Twitter or you might know this person, you see them in the meet-up. Whatever it is, normally what this slide is saying is the iceberg of their career, their life, all you see is the top of the iceberg, what's above water. That's all you end up seeing is what's above it. Usually it looks like sunshine and success. Everything's awesome. What you're not seeing is the 90% of the iceberg that's below the water. So you take all those little scenarios that you're painting for you, no matter what your role is in the community. We all have this iceberg. Struggle and suffering, insecurity, fear, doubt, hurt, suffering, pain, pressure. Those are all the words Corey Miller published. Now, let's get to it. So, that's the reality of life, isn't it? I mean, what job have you ever had that you didn't have some of these things? So, life is hard. Work is hard. And we get through it. In the WordPress community, we, okay, let me first of all put my disclaimer here. Why does this matter? Well, first of all, I am just like you. I'm not a trained mental health professional. Although I'm looking to get some training and we'll talk about that at the end, right? But we are, everybody in this word camp is the same. We're all equal. Nobody's better than anybody else. Nobody is better than anybody else. And while one person might know more than the other, we're here to learn and share. So, what makes WordPress challenging? Oh, sorry, since I don't have any notes I'm going to cheat a little bit. So, I've done a couple of quotes that I want to get into before I talk about why WordPress makes it even harder. I'm sorry when you can't see your slide. World Health Organization defines health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. That means health isn't so simply that my nose isn't running. It's that you feel good, which doesn't mean you're not sick. You're healthy. Webster defines wellness as the quality or state of being in good health. Especially as an actively sought goal. Here's where we're crossing the line. Actively sought goal. You have to want to be well. That's something that we struggle at in this community. I'll explain why. There's eight dimensions of wellness. So much for my notes. Spiritual is not religious spiritual. It's understanding our sense of meaning and life and where we are from a big picture. There's occupational. Personal satisfaction and enrichment derived from one's work. Liking your job. There's physical. Physical activity, diet, sleep, nutrition. I know a lot of people in this room especially this weekend haven't been achieving that. Intellectual. Recognizing your abilities and finding ways to expand them and to grow them to cultivate them. Environmental. Situation. Whether it's home or your neighborhood or any workplace that feels comfortable and supports your well-being. Emotional. Coping effectively with life. How you deal with challenges of day to day. And then finally the big one that you always hear about financial. Being satisfied with your current situation financially. Your head. We all struggle with that. But all of these things all of these pieces of the pie this is what makes them wellness and you have to actively seek these things out. So spiritual, intellectual, physical, occupational, environmental, social, financial and emotional. How many people in here would say they would put a check mark if they had to say that they have achieved wellness in all eight? How about seven? No, no takers. Six. At the same time or just in general? You can have four in one day to one in the other. Six. No, six. Keep your hand up. First one. Five. Keep your hands up. Keep your hands up. I want to say four. Three. Two. One. Okay. It's alarming, but it's reality of wellness. Human creature. This is who we are. And we struggle. Mika, I'm so happy you have six. I hand to you. I put my job in the bank. Yeah. And I just quit mine. So I got three. What makes this hard for WordPress is I don't know how many of you know who that guy is. Is that Matt Mullenweg guy that created WordPress. And, you know, he's he is WordPress from a leadership point of view. Well, Matt Mullenweg at WorkCamp Europe in 2014 challenged the WordPress community. This is how this all ties in. Challenge the community to give back more to WordPress. Call it five for the future. And it was more aimed at agencies. But from what I could I could tell my personal opinion is it translated down to the individual. You should give five percent of your time back to the project. It doesn't mean you're getting paid for it. For an agency, you might pay a lead developer, you know, 40 hours a week. Well, five percent of his time should be contributing back to WordPress and it's not like you could build WordPress. You can't build a foundation. Five for the future. So come to like 10 up. 120 people. That would be the equivalent of saying seven other people should work full time just on the project. And Drew James is one of the past release leads for 4.2 of WordPress. And he was a huge person in all restaurants getting WordPress to be better. He just quit 10 up because he couldn't take contributing 100 percent. He wanted to go back to being a developer. With Pip and Williamson He was a great little company. And he's such a great influence in the community. In fact, Pip and Corey Miller had a podcast this week talking to Carrie Dills. I know I'm throwing all these games out. And I forgot to even incorporate that into my slides, which I will publish when I can fix things. The podcast this past week Corey and Pip were talking about mental health and wellness. And it's hard. So somebody like Drew left 10 up as one of them. 100% contributed to the project because he burned out so many times last year. It's hard. So this project is hard. And Matt Molenway for good reasons is pushing all of us to get back more. So for those of you when I asked where the camera started is this your first word came from your new word because you might not feel that because you're not in that mode, but you heard in my page earlier that if you wanted to give back more to the community, come see me. We need to give back more to the project, but we're not stopping and thinking along the way. What's the impact of it? And I see from my role in the community where I'm very active on Twitter and somebody told me I spent an amazing amount of time reading tweets on Twitter, but I'm watching and part of my role as what I consider a caretaker for you guys is that that some of these people are expressing, it's 8pm, I didn't eat breakfast yet. Crap, I better eat. It happens a lot more. And if you're not active in social media and you're not part of that whole section of work, you're not saying it, but trust me. You're probably doing the same thing. You're probably having the same issues. You're not like hey, this is my 5%. I paid for my own airfare. I spent the whole weekend here away from my wife who's home sick because I love giving back to the community. This is my problem. Probably more like 10%, although now that I'm going to have a job, it's 100%. Yeah, all the goals. So, giving back to the project, we need to. This was this is out on the table out there. There's a little chart that talks about all the different teams. The WordPress, there's support, documentation, training, community, speaking, share, video, themes, plugins, meta, core, accessibility, and polyglots. And I'm not here to tell you what all of them are because you can go to makewordpress.org and see where you can grab the little flyers. But what it is, is we as a community, the organizers of this word camp, the organizers of every word camp, every media, we're all doing this because we love WordPress and we wanted to grow. 26% of the web, that's huge. To get to 27 takes a lot of work, to 28. So, it needs as effort from all of you, but at the same time I'm begging all of you, please stop for a moment. Even if you're not giving back to the project with anything extra, you know, giving back comes at a price that's going to be selfish. Before you spend too much time giving back to the community, make sure you're giving back to yourself. Make sure you're taking care of yourself. And sometimes that I give back to myself actually by coming to these events, because I love my WordPress family, that I love, and I love seeing some of the same things, you know, that's a great part of it. I have friends, but even the people I don't know that have just come up to me and just started talking to me and that, and I'm shy and I have a few posture symptoms. I don't go up to a lot of people, but these interactions, I thrive on this. I love this. So this is actually for my wellness. My wellness is going to be great at least until I go back to work, or I guess I don't have that issue. But why I'm here talking about this is here's the part that Heidi makes. Now, I don't know any of you who have ever heard of Kim Parsell. If you're having Google, WP Mom, Kim Parsell, P-A-R-S-E-L-L. This is my friend Kim. She died a year and a half ago about me. She was WP Mom. She was really one of the only people that spent a good chunk of her day reminding people hey, you didn't eat breakfast or shit, did you? No, you know, I have to start getting on Mico over there, because she was saying the other day how you know, she didn't eat the other night, she didn't feel good. Kim would have done that. Kim as WP Mom would have made sure. And I miss because Kim was such a good influence on all of us and reminded all of us in the community. And she went to a lot of word camps. Whenever she could she was a hugger. She was a tiny little thing. She came up to me and she grabbed her arms around me and was looking like, oh hi Kim. And it was great. Kim was awesome at spreading the love for the community. That's my inspiration. Come around here and spread the love. I miss Kim. I miss her impact in the community. For those of you that didn't know her, and this is why when I gave this talk to word camp you guys, there were a lot of people there that know her personally, I had to move crying. I don't want that here, but what I'm trying to say my personal opinion is Kim might not have died if she would have taken better care of herself. She was so busy trying to help everybody else. And that's why I like I'm going to go home from this and I'm going to go home and rest because I'm exhausted. I'm trying to do all this as part. I try to coach. My buddies that are speaking and I try to make sure their talk is the best possible talk because it's valuable. It takes so much out. And I don't want to be like Kim, but I want to be like Kim. I want to make sure that my message going out there is to sit back and invest in yourself. Make sure you eat. Make sure you sleep. Step away from the computer. Step away from the screen. Go for a walk. You know, go call a friend. Do something. And then think of somebody you know that might be having issues and might be depressed. Reach out to them. Make sure they're okay. But only after you know. Invest in yourself first because if you're not okay you can't do anything for anybody else. It's kind of like when you're in an airplane and they say put it on yourself before you put it on your kids. It's the same kind of thing. You're no good if you're not okay. But take care of others after you take care of yourself. But don't forget to take care of others because this investing in yourself as part of the workers community and yes, all of you are part of this community. We might not be friends on Twitter. You might not be a core developer just for all the same. We're all here for one reason. To use and benefit from WordPress to grow to have successful careers for wellness. To get out of hate. Maybe you're close. You've got to work on it. But to achieve that state of mind and it will never happen and I'm not foolish enough to think that anybody could ever get out of hate is an idealistic extreme. I'm a two. Maybe three. I'd love to hit more than that. And that's my own doing and I know that. And this is my therapy and it helps me deal with my depression and my imposter syndrome and my fears. And because I love all of you guys no matter whether I know you or not it's not about who you're here as part of this community and if you're here as part of this community you care. So please, care for yourself care for some of the people caring for WordPress. We need you to give more to WordPress. Yes, you're going to hear requests never, never going to grovel with it. You know, please help. If you can help and get back to WordPress, please do. Don't forget to look in the mirror to care for yourself. You have to step away from WordPress for five minutes and just do it one way. Come back and give more. I know it sounds like I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth, but it's the only way WordPress will become even better. And if you're in this room, if you're in this conference in some way WordPress has made your life better let's keep that girl calm. So remember if you like Kim every day take a few minutes to do what WP Mom would have reminded you to do for yourself. Eat, walk, sleep take a few minutes to do it for somebody else. If you're on Twitter tweet about it with Kim's hashtag. Hashtag WP Mom. I said that at WordCamp US in December and it lasted for about a month and then it fell off and I'm too depressed to do it. I can't take care of everybody all the time and I have friends that will occasionally do it and I'm just one person talking to 35 people. I don't expect you to change the world. But if you make little efforts and what why I'm saying tweet if you're on Twitter and I know a lot of you probably aren't, but if you are somebody else sees that, I follow the hashtag so I'll see if there's a tweet in the world with WP Mom hashtag I will see it. I will odds are at least I will fade it or like it they're calling it out. So just make a little effort to take care of your fellow man especially WordPress fellow WordPresser. So be like Kim every day take care of your child, take care of yourselves if you need help there are resources as I go down these rabbit holes and try and prepare for these talks as I talk to Corey Miller I just talked to anybody I'm going to cry here I had a situation a couple weeks ago where I was in a meeting with a group of people these are people I know pretty well and they know who I am, they know I'm Coach Rich, you know hey if you want to talk you can talk to Rich so one of them admitted to me and I had suspicions that he had tried to commit suicide a couple months before and I asked I asked you one thing are you going to try to kill yourself tonight? and you said no and why'd you lie because I would have come over he got through it and went to the hospital he saved himself, he was by himself he was upset about a relationship ending so he feels very alone and he keeps deflecting help I did the same thing I was talking to Scott about that earlier I deflect help, I'm not good at taking help and I'm not good at asking for it and I think about my buddy and then at that same meeting my family, this is part of this group 100,000, a million strong women in the world and another person had admitted to me and she came into the meeting her head was shaved and she's like do you like my new dude? and I had just seen her a couple days before so it was fresh she's kind of a kind of a freak D1 I'm not surprised that she would shave her head but she just got diagnosed with breast cancer that day and that was her reaction and she came up to me she goes I did this for good as I know it's going to happen I'm going to have to lose my hair eventually but you could tell I have cancer that was a hard press meetup oh my god it's hard to take care of others but you know how hard it had to be for these two people to reach out and I'm not saying we're going to have a thing where we're all going to be mentally perfect and everything just trying to tell you to recognize what's around you and if you can help yourself and help others please do and there are resources out there I'm going I'm actually trying to find a class and I'll post this mentalhealthfirstaid.org it's actually mental health first aid training you know first aid CPR whatever it is so you know how to react to a crisis for a physical helmet or mental health crisis training it's just that so I had a friend of mine tell me he was going to commit suicide I actually am not going to just be waiting I'm going to kind of know instead of yelling like dude what do you have why did you do that no I'll have a little bit better response although that's the human response so mentalhealthfirstaid.org and I found out about this by a gentleman named Ed Finkler Funkertron you know and he started something called open source mental health health.org osmi.osmihealth.org yes I will I will post all this so don't worry about it but and in case you didn't know WordPress is open source it's open source community so Ed is a php developer and he struggles with depression I've watched a few of his talks dying of echem he struggles with depression he's had so many issues his whole life and this goes back to chocolate and he's talking openly about it and he's pushing the message out the way I'm doing it he's doing something he's doing an amazing job and he's talking about this and open source is right for mental health issues and wellness issues because we all just give to the projects doesn't have to be WordPress if you're a developer there's something called devpressed.com d-e-v-p-r-e-s-s-e-d devpressed.com it's an online support for developers developer depressed, dev pressed I've looked at it I've not logged into it but from what I've heard it's amazing and it's a place for people to share their pain and their experiences trying to help each other and then there's mentalhealthprompt.org these are tech based companies or efforts so they're trying to help people in the tech community yes you could be a blogger but if you're here if you're part of the tech community you could be just into marketing and brand identity you're still part of the tech community if you're part of using technology so please don't let yourself go if you don't belong I have a list that I couldn't put it on the slide before I post this or in addition I will try to share whether it goes on the WordCamp website or if I just tweet it out it is I have to put it on my blog I also started a website that because I've been so lonely that I haven't done anything with it's called WP Ambassador I want to be the ambassador to the WP community I've only written two posts I haven't done much with it because my imposters are talking about the word preaching that I'm doing right here but if you have any ideas for things you want to see me write about that website I don't make any money off it just we want it to the community it's to embrace wellness and camaraderie in the community you can only appear you can have met some people then you're going to go home I'm not sure what you got in that person's number or talk it's an online community a lot of us work from home we never see anybody so this is a great chance to be social my intent with that and whether I do it or somebody else doesn't or you do it try to find a way to reach out to others here it doesn't mean you can all exchange business cards but don't leave here and be isolated and be by yourself because that's not healthy and this is not about my personal life you know I'm married my wife I mean she watches me suffer I know at first hand because in my own demons I'm depressed I'm by myself and I isolate myself some of you that know me know you've seen me sitting in corners this is hard this is life it's not just WordPress but I'm telling you that you have a community around you that will help you and will help the project and will all be better for it I could ramble on for another hour but that's what I wanted to say it's not really Q&A but like does anybody have any thoughts on like whether it's some of those little websites or mental health I mean I don't want to turn this into a crisis session where people hmm there you go yes Mika it's okay to be on medication for your problems you're shaming it and you shouldn't be shaming it and that's something I'm coming to terms with and I'm trying to make the appointment to see somebody to help me I've been on medication before and hated the way it made me feel but I know I was on some 15 years ago and you know it's different now it's better it's a trial and error I have been I have seen an effective surgeon on other things and I've been medicated now for we've gone five years and it helped me get out of the it helped me get to six because without taking care of myself but listen to your family members when they tell you you might want to talk to someone about getting help they do love you yeah I think this is like an important conversation because like our profession I don't think we realize how much it attracts depression you know the fact that sometimes we face up and down incomes isolation and like sometimes when you get out of a big advantage it just feels like you're ever willing to you just want to go back to your computer so I think we have to be super hyper aware because I'm glad you get to talk about the reason for that I'll find more to this I have an app on my iPhone that I don't know what it's called I'm not supposed to call it your phone but I'll just do this it's called air and it's supposed again I don't believe I worthy of you know belonging in this hike honestly the first word to tell you you are damn well worthy everybody in this room is worthy so imposter syndrome I've given talks on imposter syndrome I have imposter syndrome I don't think I'm worthy I think I'm a fraud so that's a whole separate talk yes you are worthy so and once again I'm a small screen but you can create an account as somebody that lives with the mental health condition where you are a family member or caregiver of somebody that is and it's called anonymous inspiring relatable air and the I'll post a link for it it's company name is NAMI and I don't see what NAMI means but NAMI that's it I knew that but I couldn't it's a safe community driven space for you anonymously find comfort give support and hear your feelings and how mental illness affects you mental illness kind of like Mika said it has those words seem so dirty but you being depressed that's mental illness it's okay and there's nothing wrong with that so you know mental illness makes it sound like well you're one flu of the cuckoo's nest crazy no maybe but that's personal but it's okay to feel that way and in my journey to try to figure out how to help myself I'm trying to help all of you guys and so I'm not saying that any of you are going to go speak in an event next week and spread the word just remember some of this and just remember that if you feel these ways you're not alone and just talk to somebody I'm on Twitter you can find yeah I didn't get to show you my Twitter my many of my stuff there rcoffy if you're on Twitter and you want to connect with me I'll listen I don't tweet a lot but if you want to reach out and you want to talk you can reach me there when I post my slides you'll see my website my email address Amanda oh I was just going to say so you guys Rich mentioned the WNOM hashtag and you can use that to wow I actually mentioned but the thing is like if you need help with something it isn't even necessarily code related but if you need help from others oh I'm having a really bad day there's a bunch of us that are watching that hashtag myself and then Rich and then Andrew and Rennie so if you hit that hashtag and you're just like oh look I'm having a really bad day that page is that I wanted to sit in the window not sitting in the window and I'm not really liking it you know there's something more serious I'm joking around but you know something that's whatever hit that hashtag and one of us will get back to you and try to either try to help you on Twitter or even just try to joke around with you try to I've struggled with depression for as long as I can remember and I'm not young so that's a long time I've taken medication faithfully for 15 years and I mean I'm not dead I haven't killed myself so I guess it's helping but I still feel depressed I'm here largely it's not a perfect cure it'll just help you I mean I'll be the first to say I've done a lot of reading about antidepressants there are some new types of drugs in the pipeline but the drugs that are out there now don't help everybody just a couple comments one thing I think the isolation that being at a computer all day can create and being a freelancer is a serious threat to your mental health sometimes I would encourage people to reach out to one another and the other thing I'd like to say is if you're not a person who's been really depressed it might be hard to understand this but we can't snap out of it sometimes you can't think your way out of it I mean all the therapy in the world is not going to help you I mean I firmly believe that for some people medication or electro convulsive therapy, ECT you know or there's some other modalities that are in development like there's this thing where you sit under a big magnet it's transcranial magnetic stimulation that's in the pipeline I mean depression changes your brain I mean and sometimes the best thing you can do to help a person who's depressed is just to sit there and be with them and let them be depressed with you because a lot of people are very uncomfortable being around people who are depressed which is understandable but you know I mean I think like my husband especially he has maybe it's more of a guy thing why they feel like they're supposed to be fixing it and he's like oh come on you're great you're wonderful and I let the lady here who's I mean we are I know that was a very good statement I mean you know we are all worthy we are all great but it just it doesn't register you're depressed and I do know that I've been having people like that and it never hurts to keep saying it but just people like me need to keep hearing it and you don't realize it and it's hard it's hard and it's harder for some than others I want to finish with April Plano we got to get out there and wrap up the weekend I just wanted to suggest that we not dismiss or minimize how helpful we are to meet up on a regular basis because if you make a non-negotiable deal with yourself that you will go no matter what at least one a month and you keep that commitment to yourself those relationships will help you so much as we we all have relationships here and they're varying strengths and when you see people more and more I'll be at work camp at Atlanta next year and the relationships I've built this weekend the only person I knew was Kathy the relationships I've built this weekend will be there next year so thank you thank you for being at work camp this weekend and the community had here thank you for attending this event please come to work camp next year if there's work camps in other cities that you can get to go, they're great events and different speakers, different sessions different themes but it's all part of the community