Color Your Way to Mental Health the Nathan Rabin Way!

Being the depressive father of two Neurodivergent children, the son of a deeply depressed father in a nursing home, the owner of a cranky old dog dying of Cancer and a pop culture freelancer whose fragile livelihood is largely dependent on self-publishing royalties and monetizing blogging is difficult in the best of times. 

Let’s just say that you don’t write multiple memoirs about your battles with mental illness, as I have (The Big Rewind and You Don’t Know Me But You Don’t Like Me), by not being mentally ill.

Life is hard, man! I’m not complaining. I don’t expect life not to be hard. That’s how I’ve managed to just barely hold onto my sanity. I don’t expect life to be easy. I expect it to be hard. And it is. I have come to embrace the everyday struggle because otherwise it can crush you. 

That’s why I need this place, this Happy, Happy Place.

But over the course of the last month or so the difficulty level of my life has gone from “exceedingly hard” to “damn near impossible.” It seems like every day there has been a major shock to the system. It’s been unrelenting. Life just keeps hurling one boulder after another in my family’s path and it’s been a challenge not to give into hopelessness and despair. 

I pleaded with my psychiatrist to give Ativan for the times when it feels like I can’t go on, like I’m on the precipice of a full-blown panic attack, but she keeps prescribing the same damn thing instead: going to see the great clown Pagliacci. It doesn’t work, and to be honest, Pagliacci seems depressed, which takes away from the whole experience.

Thankfully I have had some help when it comes to holding onto my mental health, beyond weekly appointments with my online therapist and anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication, in the form of The Weird A-Coloring to Al, the “Weird Al” Yankovic-themed coloring book I created with Felipe Sobreiro that is extremely available for purchase on this here website and also Amazon. 

It’s doing way better on Amazon, sales-wise, than it is in the Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place store, leading me to believe that in the grand scheme of things, Jeff Bezos may be a better businessman than myself and also have more money.

For the last three weeks or so one of my favorites parts of the day has been when I sit down with my seven year old son Declan at our kitchen table at night and he furiously draws a kinetic tableau involving The Nightmare Before Christmas or Marvel in a mad frenzy, markers dropping perpetually on the floor, resulting in a percussive tap, tap, tap rhythm as they fall helplessly to the ground, while I color in an image or two from my book. 

I tell my wife that I’m coloring in the images so that I can post them on Instagram and Twitter to help promote my latest literary endeavor but the truth is that I’ve been coloring in The Weird A-Coloring to Al for pleasure more than business. 

I’m a forty-five year old neophyte when it comes to coloring books but I haven taken to the medium with my trademark obsessive enthusiasm. I love coloring The Weird A-Coloring to Al. It’s relaxing. It’s soothing. But it’s more than that. It’s therapeutic as well. 

When I’m coloring, I’m not thinking about my problems. I’m not checking my phone compulsively or seeing where The Weird A-Coloring to Al is ranking on Amazon or whether there are any new reviews or not. 

Coloring The Weird A-Coloring to Al has helped me not obsess about how the book is doing every waking moment of my life. It’s allowed me to live in the moment, to concentrate on the weirdly satisfying act of coloring rather than the many things in my life that stress me the fuck out. One of the many wonderful things about coloring books is that you can make something beautiful without having any talent whatsoever because my brilliant illustrator Felipe did all the hard, demanding work, leaving the world the lazy pleasure of coloring in his extraordinary creations.

I’ve devoted a good half hour or forty five minutes to coloring every day and I’m still only up to the Polka Party! section That’s because it takes time to color in each image so you end up getting incredible value for your 9.99 or ten dollars and fifty cents. 

My book will make you think about spatulas—but that’s not all!

One of the accidental themes of my career as an author has been finding adult pleasures that re-connect me with the joyful innocence of childhood. That’s a big part of the appeal of The Gathering of the Juggalos. It’s also what attracts me to Phish shows: the opportunity to escape the dreary tyranny of the adult world for a couple of hours and be my truest, grooviest, most unashamedly, unabashedly joyful self. 

That’s doubly true of The Weird A-Coloring to Al. Coloring Felipe’s artwork transports you back to where you were when you first heard each song but also to the long-ago joy of coloring as a child.

I haven’t just enjoyed coloring The Weird A-Coloring to Al: I’ve needed it. It’s helped keep me sane during a uniquely challenging time when my psychiatrist won’t give me the Ativan I DESPERATELY need to help all with the dread and soul-consuming anxiety 

So if you are anything like me I similarly encourage you to color your way to Mental Health the Nathan Rabin Way. It’s cheaper than therapy and less addictive than Benzos but pretty damn addictive all the same. 

Buy signed copies ofThe Weird Accordion to Al and The Weird A-Coloring to Al  directly from me here: https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop or from Amazon here Please! It would mean a lot to me.

Pre-order The Joy of Trash, the Happy Place’s upcoming book about the very best of the very worst and get instant access to all of the original pieces I’m writing for them AS I write them (there are NINE so far, including Shasta McNasty and the first and second seasons of Baywatch Nights) AND, as a bonus, monthly write-ups of the first season Baywatch Nights you can’t get anywhere else (other than my Patreon feed) at https://the-joy-of-trash.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

Missed out on the Kickstarter campaign for The Weird A-Coloring to Al/The Weird A-Coloring to Al-Colored In Edition? You’re in luck, because you can still pre-order the books, and get all manner of nifty exclusives, by pledging over at https://the-weird-a-coloring-to-al-coloring-colored-in-books.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

AND of course you can also pledge to this site and help keep the lights on at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace