The BLS

New tool from therapy, yay!

I started doing the Bilateral Stimulation in one of my more recent sessions, and it's intense, but effective. It's tones in headphones and pulses from devices held in the hands that alternate left and right at whatever speed, intensity, and volume feels comfortable while recalling the initial traumatic event. (Obviously, there is a lot more that goes into these sessions, but those are the basics.) Last night, we were planning on working with another target, but other situations came up that needed more attention, so my therapist gave me another tool to use when I start getting into one particular OCD-like behavior: mentally punishing myself by remembering and then obsessing over mistakes or events that have been resolved.

It's simple enough in execution, and yet requires a lot of discipline to use it repeatedly to the point that it becomes beneficial long term. When some obsessive thought surfaces and becomes too difficult to deal with or get rid of, all I have to do is start tapping (I chose tapping the lateral sides of my knees with my fingers), alternating the taps just like the BLS, and once I feel like I've tapped long enough, I end with one of my other tools, my Safe Place, to reestablish the state of mind I would like to have. I've already started using it, and it's already proving effective, and hopefully more so the longer I practice it. As I was about to fall asleep, I kept beating myself up with one particular thought, and since I was so snuggled under my blankets, all I could reach (without moving my arms and losing precious warmth) was my head, so I started gently tapping at my temples, and sure enough, after a minute or so, I felt much better.

This will take sooooo much practice, as I learned (incorrectly) over many years that if I have a memory or a thought I can't let go, I deserve to be reminded of it and be punished by it and feel absolutely miserable for not being able to stop what my brain does to me. During last night's session, I found myself repeatedly talking about how, in my logic brain, I know that things take time to unlearn and the relearn, and that practicing is the only way to get better at things that I may not feel confident doing now, but all that sensible talk doesn't always hit home with me when I'm in an emotional place that feeds all the worst I believe about myself. Now that we're doing some genuine heavy lifting in our sessions (like we weren't doing that before...), it's going to take consistency on my part, but I know I'm capable of doing that.

I Just Decided To

I'm beyond exhausted with the amount of bad news and bullshit I am exposed to everyday (the fucking nonsense with Starbucks cups pushing me over the edge), so much so that there is no word for the level I have reached.

So I'm volunteering at Boys & Girls Club, starting tonight.

I miss the kids I was working with at Big T when I was doing their Fun Club program, of course, but to be fair, a lot of them are now in middle school, and I don't get done with work until 4:00pm which is when they would need to start, and until someone invents teleportation, I can't make it a half hour across town to make that happen. So now, I am going to be working with K-12 kids again, teaching theater and improv basics, maybe even doing something with vocal music in the future if my schedule will allow it (the county-wide coordinator is making a huge push for more performing arts activities, and the Loveland branch needs people for both theater and music), and I cannot wait!

It's easy to be sad and angry at everything, with depression or without. It's also easy to feel better. Don't get me wrong, I've been working my ASS off with my therapist to make it easier for me to feel good, and that's in addition to all the work I've put in since I was 14, but one thing I had to learn and work on is the concept that being happy can be easier than I believed it would be. And what makes it easier is helping other people. If you're fun and sincere and doing what you can to help, other people, especially kids, don't care about your faults. They don't know about your (perceived) failures, they don't hear all of the horrible things you say to or think about yourself, they don't worry about all of the drama in your own head. What matters to them is if you care enough to be there and are interested in their lives. Hell, most of the teachers I loved when I was growing up were the ones that made me laugh, or got me interested in something, or showed me how easy something was that at first glance seemed to be daunting, or made me excel in the areas I was already gifted. I know I have the ability to do that for other kids (said the 30 year old that still identifies herself as someone that needs adult supervision), and I have the opportunity and time to do that now that I have settled into a job with a comfortable routine to it. So if there are going to be depressing things in the world that just refuse to be resolved, then I am going to do what I can to make my corner of it happier.

The rest of the afternoon is going to be reviewing what I'd like to cover in my first class with 9-12th grade kids. I haven't worked with that age group in years, so I don't quite know what to expect, but I'm really hopeful that they'll pick things up quickly, and I won't have to spend most of my time feeling like I'm herding cats (which can happen with younger kids very easily).

Anxiety Is Just So Damn Stupid

November, and a quiet weekend for Halloween, and that's all very appreciated, especially yesterday, a day that was devoted to eating a lot while lounging in my pajamas and watching a NatGeo marathon of Cosmos, then ending by doing yoga for the first time in months (new yoga mat, as my old one was getting pretty torn up, and it never felt very stable, even after washing it several times to get a better grip). But then... the morning comes.

Let it be known that I actually don't mind Mondays. It's Tuesdays that are the real bitch of the week, because by this time, you've committed to your week, but you still have most of the week to get through, making the most previous weekend seem much further away without the hope of the coming weekend to soften the blow. But this morning, for a few different reasons, I was having a very hard time getting to work and then beginning what needed to get done right away. Why? Because I'm coming up to the end of the hours I was contracted for through the temp agency, meaning that I will soon be in a position to be hired by this company and keep the job I've had since July, something that has been enormously beneficial and stable for me, or I will not be hired and have to go back to square one looking for a new job. The biggest reason behind the anxiety is that while I've had some complaints, I've also had a lot of compliments and have been making changes to ensure that I don't get the same complaints coming up again. Beyond that, there is little I can do to influence the people that are making the decision of keeping me on staff. So that bothers me. I don't want to be an alarmist and call my rep at the temp agency and say "we need to start looking for new stuff right now so I don't lose any time or money", but wouldn't it be a good dose of caution to do that, just to give myself some peace of mind knowing that I've covered my bases? Thing is, that forces me to confront the possibility of a difficult next few months (especially around the rapidly approaching winter and holiday season) at a time when I want to stay in the groove that I'm in because I know it's leading to some good results and, if I stay on track, will allow me a lot of opportunities this coming summer, when I'm looking to move to Cleveland and start working towards my next career goal(s). I don't want to deviate from something that is stable. That's taking a sledgehammer to the base of my hierarchy of needs and not only knocking it out of place, but proceeding to smash it into little teeny tiny pieces.

Here are some good things: I've been taking on more responsibilities, like checking and answering voice mails, filling backorders, sorting through paperwork for new customers, and mailing out invoices every morning. Logically, that tells me that I fit in well, and since I'm doing all of these things well, that lets my bosses know I can take on more tasks and complete them well too. We have another person answering phones, and he's doing a good job, and I've been able to help him, knowing that he is taking a lot of burden off of me. The higher ups are hiring a new accountant for the office, too, which will also make things easier for me, and reduce the likeliness of me being so stressed that I make the same mistakes that piss off people on the phone.

Here are the bad things: I have no confidence that I'm considered valuable here, mostly because I've been in work situations before where I was not valued and instead was considered disposable, and lost the job. Because I have made some mistakes that I couldn't correct right away, coming from customers rather than from coworkers that could then help me, I don't know if that's going to count against me or not, and I am spooked. Customers have gotten me fired before. Not to mention that they're looking to hire a new full time accountant, which is probably a bigger cost for them, so why would they also want to hire another person? I don't exactly know or understand how their agreement with temp agencies works, but what if this becomes a factor, that hiring a more important position full time affects whether or not they'll be able to afford me too?

After a crazy morning (the good crazy, the busy crazy that distracts me and focuses me and allows me to demonstrate how good I've become at this job), I now have the potential for a slower afternoon, and hopefully I'll be able to read or Colorfy off and on for the next few hours and stay in a good head space. By the end of the week, though, I may be pulling out my hair.

Getting Dangerously Close To "Hulk Smash" Mode

Lately, everywhere I turn, I see something that makes me angry on a profound level. Believe me when I say that I do not like feeling angry, because in my experience, it leads to feelings of frustration and idleness and impotence, and those are all soooooo much worse than anger by itself. It's everything from personal issues to political issues (AFP is trying to buy the local school board election here, and it's making this town a little crazy) to moral issues, and I'm starting to feel like my entire day is marinating in anger.

I don't have a problem with anger if it motivates one to do something good in response. It's a helpful tool when it's used correctly. But that's not what's happening here. It's mostly leading to me sitting and stewing and not getting any better. (Side note: after looking at what I had written, I decided to take a little timeout and look at the Boys & Girls Club that is right down the street from my house, and within a half hour, I checked out the programs they have, the volunteering options, and sent an email to the coordinator asking a few questions about the hours they'd have available. Suck it, Crap Feelings!)

So. How to deal with the remaining anger that centers around the ever present issue of not being able to change things I would really like to change, and in many cases, believe I can and should change. Last night, after a rough afternoon at work coupled with a fifteen minute drive home that took me a half hour on a full bladder, I was sooooo tempted to go to the liquor store and buy a massive bottle of wine with which to drown my sorrows, but that impulse was fleeting, and easy to dismiss once I realized that my problems would still be there once I had finished a drink, only now there would be an additional worry of whether or not I was developing an addiction-- using a substance to drown out a problem is never healthy, no matter the substance. I got home and vented a little, and then voluntarily secluded myself to get a little quiet in my head and in my surroundings. After a few hours of reading and a mug of warm coconut milk, I felt much better, and was less likely to look around for insignificant things to break with my hands to release frustration, a trick I used for moments of extreme distress. Those candlesticks never knew what killed 'em.

Today, with cool and damp weather, and better sleep the night before, I am going all out in terms of comfort. Warm fleece, hot tea, a book, a journal entry, beef stew for lunch, payday this morning, and a slow day means I can be comfortable and quiet, and enjoy being in my head rather than wishing I could either drain away the painful thoughts or else extract my brain from its surrounding mess. It's a daily exercise, to remind myself of what I have (physically and otherwise) to work with, and what I don't need to keep in the foreground, but it's one that is getting easier after months, hell, years of practice. And the methods I have now for leveling out don't feel like putting a band-aid on a broken leg, or like a patronizing adult talking to an upset three year old.

I'm going to go back to reading for a bit, maybe even lose time in my Colorfy app. Need for venting, fulfilled.

Quick Scribble Of Anxiety

Friday afternoon, as the work day was drawing to a close, I was convinced I would not have a job on Monday (today). During the week, I'd made a few errors and had another rude customer complain, though she at least had the courtesy to complain to me and not call back later and complain about me. I told my boss about all of these issues and took responsibility for them, but I still felt like I was on thin ice, so the whole of this weekend was me trying everything to keep my mind from worrying about things I couldn't influence at the time, and most importantly, trying to keep my thought patterns from escalating into the classics I have indulged for far too long: I am such a screw up; if I can't hold down a stupid job that doesn't fulfill me on all fronts then how will I be able to get the career I want when it's go time; I don't have any way of changing my situation or my environment and I should just give up rather than soldier on for another 60-70 years; how did I get like this?!

Looking at my weekend, I did a decent job of staying at a healthy level of concern, but as Sunday night approached and then shifted into Monday early morning, I felt my nerves ratchet right up. I woke myself up about five times last night/this morning because of dreams that were about to turn into nightmares, and when I sensed them coming on, I forced myself into waking up so I didn't have to record more awful memories of feeling frightened and/or powerless. As it was, the dreams I had were intense, and not at all what I was expecting, given that much of my weekend was devoted to full Harry Potter immersion; I mean, a nice romp through the Forbidden Forrest would not have been the worst dream ever, and would certainly have topped stealing a mob boss's golden Lab via air extraction and stripping the shells off of baby bird eggs. So I am tired this morning, and that doesn't help me maintain a feeling of confidence or calm.

I'm planning on using my container a lot today, reminding myself that I have a right to tuck away the things that are causing me distress and focus on the good, and I hope that by the end of the day, I'll have reason to think of the container technique in the future and know that it helps. It would be nice to associate these techniques with evidence of healing.

Monday

Working out again. Finally. I think it's been around a month since I've done anything active at all, and I've been noticing how different things feel when I'm not even doing a round or two of Tabata. I mean, come on, that's about 4-8 minutes out of my 24 hours, I should be able to sneak that in once a day... but with a handful of different factors in play, I can certainly understand why I haven't wanted to do anything for so long. So it was a round of ab work followed by another round of full body, all body weight resistance exercises so I wouldn't have to use a leaking sandbag on my freshly vacuumed carpet. My goal this week is to do something every single day, and not to push myself, but to get back into a habit. By the end of four weeks, I would like to have lost about 4-5 pounds (which is completely reasonable and doable), and would like many of my clothes to fit better-- I was putting away summer things last night, and have so many cute thermals and sweaters that would fit better if I wasn't carrying extra weight I don't need. I'm most comfortable somewhere around the mid 130s, and that's going to take some time to get back to, but it should be a fun process-- it is so satisfying getting stronger and leaner and faster and better, and it will pay off in the mental health department, too.

Still doing some target formation with therapy, laying groundwork for the more intensive portion of EMDR coming up. We hit the motherload in my last session, and combining the emotional effort it took to get through it with the mental fatigue from an early appointment on a Saturday after a long week, I was wiped out at the end of one hour. Fortunately, I had literally nothing that needed to get done that day, so when I finished my usual grocery shopping and got laundry done, I felt way ahead of the curve. My sleep schedule is getting back to normal without taking melatonin, and it helps that I have a finite amount of time for sleep five days a week, so it's keeping me going to bed (maybe not falling asleep, but committing to the time) consistently. I've changed my alarm to 6:00am so I have an extra fifteen minutes to squeeze in a workout, and once the weather starts including... *gulps* snow... I'll still have time to get my car cleaned off and warmed up and ready to go without being late.

It got nutsy busy in here for about an hour, and it'll get busier in a few minutes, so I'm gonna call this one. I'll end by saying that I am practicing all of the techniques we've been working on in my sessions, and they're helping so much. My therapist was saying that a good judge of how well they're working is the emotional turn-around time. Mostly, I've been in the five-ten minute range, and compared to hours, days, weeks, even months of getting stuck in a funk, that is HUGE improvement for me. I like the idea of having a turn-around time that is so fast (with the proviso that it is healthy for me) that I don't even recognize it as being a situation that could have generated a funk. Something to work towards.

*A Scream Of Frustration*

I really have no idea why I'm choosing to write now, because it's been so batshit crazy at work that getting started on an entry is only going to lead to more frustration since I won't be able to get through this quickly at all without being interrupted... phone call... and I don't know if not being able to focus on one thing is going to help me feel any better. It's becoming more and more obvious that the tempo at this job has changed since I was hired in the middle of the summer... phone call... and another phone call... and we are in desperate need of more help. Three people are covering the tasks one person had, and it's forcing everyone to change what they have to do during the day. There are times I can't even ask a question because everyone is so swamped... phone call... plus a few more for 20 minutes... and another... and another three... see? This is what it's been like for too long, and while I'm used to writing an entry over the course of a couple hours (I read and reread and read it some more before I save), this is nutsy. Anyway, finishing my thought... phone call FUCK!!!!... I can't ask questions sometimes because no one is able to answer me, making it harder for me to finish things with customers when they're on the phone and pressed for time too. And then I get even more frustrated, and that's not good for anybody.

That one paragraph took me over an hour to write. That's how crazy things are here. And they don't need to be. We need at least one more person, either to answer phones with me, or to take over the accounting department so three other people are freed up a little more. I don't know why it's taking so long to get someone hired, and I'm sure there are a multitude of reasons, but we're all losing it, and the faster we can get someone, the better.

I started writing because I was feeling a panic attack on a very low simmer for a while... phone call... (mercifully, a short one that goes to someone else)... and did not want to keep it fueled. Even with all the interruptions, this did help, because at the very least, it's nice to see a record of the chaos at work that's causing my anxiety. I'm not feeling blech without cause, and that's good to know, especially since I'm prone to feeling blech for no fucking reason at all.

It's just about lunch time and I need food like a son-of-a-bitch, so done here and off to eat.

Wait... one more thing... today's music in the office is Muzak versions of crap, so right now, I'm listening to an even worse version of a song by Chicago. I think I'll pass on lunch and just eat my own ears instead.

Covered In Fog

Today is the kind of day that makes me want to call in sick (she writes while sitting at her desk at work), snuggle up with a down comforter, a warm puppy or two, a mug of tea, and watch movies all day after sleeping in for another two hours. If only sleeping was a safe place for my brain at the moment.

I've had nightmares for three or four days now, and they're incredibly vivid, ranging from things seeping or bursting out of my skin to being abused to life and death decisions. I don't know why exactly they're clumping up on me at the moment, because even though there's certainly a lot of frustration in my life right now, I feel like I am dealing with it more efficiently than I usually do. The tricks I've learned from my therapy sessions and have been incorporating into my day are helpful, and I have more stability than I've had in years. Of course, I'm still having the random shit day, which is to be expected after nearly three decades of learning particular behaviors and the discomfort (putting it mildly) of trying to unlearn them. So it doesn't really make sense to me, having this random bout of nightmares, especially ones that involve so much physical harm.

Anyway. Looking forward to my therapy session this weekend, and planning to be a little frivolous and pull a double feature at the movies afterwards; "The Martian" and "Steve Jobs" have been on my list for months, and if I can finagle it, I'm going to see them back to back on Saturday. We're getting into award-worthy movie months, and there's a lot of material worth seeing. I'm particularly excited about "Steve Jobs", true Sorkinophiliac that I am, even though I don't really see Michael Fassbender fitting the Steve Jobs look or persona. Don't get me wrong... he fi-ine, but I don't really see "tech magnate" when I look at him... I see "fine-ass pimp, looking all 70s in X-Men"... sorry, wiping away drool. I will be happy to be proven wrong after seeing the movie, but for now, I have a difficult time looking at Fassbender and seeing anything other than Magneto.

Fingers are crossed for a calmer day at work-- we've all been running on fumes, and it would be great if we could all get through a day where half of us didn't want to quite by the end of it. (That one sentence took my four times as long to write because I kept having to stop for phone calls. Yes, that's my job, but who the hell needs to conduct so much business before 9:00am? We sell supplements, we're not doing any stock trading here!)

Tuesdays Suck

Yay. I'm getting complaints at work.

Apparently, I've been letting my frustration show when it comes to certain customers, because they've been sharing their unhappiness with me with my boss. And I've been in this situation before, where customer complaints have cost me my job. I'm not in a position to lose this job at all, and I really don't want to keep having this mistake bite me in the ass. So how do I move on from it?

First of all, I am not sugary sweet, and in fact, in the times I am, I get just as many complaints because people think I'm not sincere. I do wear my heart on my sleeve; it's the sometimes unfortunate byproduct of growing up as an actor. And combine that with depression and anxiety, and that makes for a volatile mix. I completely admit that. I know I'm a pain in the ass, and can be unyielding at the wrong times, and I know exactly where it comes from. If I feel like I don't know something and I should, or I feel like I don't know something and no one can help me, then I get angry at myself and the people not helping me, and some customers will think that it's directed at them. Yes, I'm an actor and can become different characters, but when I'm just me, I have a much harder time dictating my emotions.

Secondly, I've been in abusive relationships. Granted, they've not been destructive romantic relationships, but they have been every other kind: friendships, familial, business relationships. They've come up because I have a hard time standing up for myself. By default, I feel like everything is my fault or my mistake, and I have had people take advantage of that, effectively convincing me just how stupid I am and how badly I've screwed up or hurt them. I live my life on the defensive, and that's not healthy. Rather than try to think objectively about what I've done and if it did cause problems, I assume they're right and I am the mother of all failures and/or assholes. So now that I've been conditioned to be weak, when I try to stand up for myself, I can't do it very successfully. Instead of getting people to back off and admit that they're treating my unfairly, I put them in a position to feel victimized in return, and they take it from there. I'm also the lowest on the totem pole, and have pretty much no authority, so if the person I'm talking to isn't happy, there's always someone else for them to complain to. (This can be a good thing, in that if I can't keep myself calm, I can pass them along to someone else so I don't have to screw it up and it can be someone else's problem, but that's not been the atmosphere here because of how busy we've been.)

Third, we've been swamped here. I mean, crazy busy and short staffed and still trying to get this fucking system to stop being so buggy, and that has taken its toll on all of us. I am by no means the "rudest" person here, and in fact, I'm amazed I haven't heard customers complain about one person in particular, because she is hardly ever nice or polite to me, and hearing her conversations on the phone sometimes are just... whoa. The powers that be are looking for more help, especially for the one job that three people are trying to cover after the other person retired a few months ago. It's been months of trying to get all of our 4000+ customers to accept the fact that the way they're used to things being done for the last 15 years has changed, and when I have to repeat myself to the same person 4 or 5 times before they get it, I get so immensely frustrated. I like being able to fix things and finish things, and when I can't, I feel like I've done something wrong.

Fourth, and probably most important, I hate being misheard or not heard at all. I made a list after the first month here of all the names people thought were mine, and it was something like 10 different names that had only a passing similarity to my name. I have struggled with this issue (not being heard) in so many different areas of my life, and I have yet to figure out how to resolve it in any of them. I don't need to be the center of attention at all times, and if I was, I would not be able to deal with that very well. I do, however, need other people to acknowledge me as someone that matters. I have imbalanced self-esteem, and rely on the perceptions of others when I can't tell if I'm being fair with myself or not. I have a strong sense of self, am more self-aware than most, celebrate my strengths, and have rarely if ever given in to negative peer pressure. At the same time, I constantly battle feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness, and have a hard time identifying my faults in a constructive way where I'd be able to make changes for the better. So when I'm expressing myself in any way and am met with silence or ignored completely or run over, I lose it. This has been happening a lot at work, with customers that don't listen to me until they hear what they want to hear. That drives me absolutely bonkers, because it means I can't do my job, and they're even more unhappy, and I'm the one in trouble.

Most of the morning is over now, and I did make some changes to my tone and how I deal with some of the more complicated customers, but I still am scared because I have no control over how other react to me, and I can still get the fuzzy end of the lollipop if they decided to complain. I hate being in this position, feeling like I'm in a professional limbo, because in the past it has gotten out of control very quickly and ended very badly, and I don't want to have to go through that again if I know I can avoid it. I guess I'll have a lot to work on with my therapist this weekend.

Having A Bit Of A Day

Work has been a full week of eight hour insanity per day. After the big event a couple weekends ago, things settled down some, but this week was the end of the billing cycle, and that meant a lot of hustle trying to get all our information right before we asked people for money. This led to some small amount of chaos, and it didn't help that we were short-staffed for the first three days of the week, so there was a lot of work for fewer people to do. This is probably the first time in a while that I've had both the time and the desire to write out some of the crap that's also been circulating in my brain, giving this week an extra personal level of blech.

Lately, I've been recognizing beliefs and learned behaviors that are tied to old events and people, things that are not only bad for me, but flat out wrong. It's a big part of this new phase of treatment that my therapist and I are entering, and it's something I've been working towards and excited about getting to for a while now. That does mean, however, that we're stirring the pot, and the things that have been happily living on the sides are now entering the rest of the soup, and now... I have to deal with them. I'm noticing things I haven't really paid attention to for a long time, and they'll creep up randomly throughout the day, usually when I'm already stressed by work, sometimes when I'm relaxed and not really thinking about or doing anything. That's to be expected, sure, and it's a great opportunity to use these crisis management techniques (like the container and the safe place imagery and a few others), but it's also a bit wearing to feel like I have to be devoting some extra focus to my state of mind all the time, lest these stupid blips pop up and smack me into a bad place when my guard is down.

The biggest one, the one that is affecting me more than almost any other right now, is the belief that I have to do everything myself. That I am the only person that impacts the course of my life in any way. That if I fail, it is entirely my fault, and it is in no way a reflection of the actions (or lack thereof) of the people around me. That I should be helping others too, because I am inherently a selfish and bad person, and am only redeemable if other people say so. And it's exhausting, having to take point on all things. It would be one thing if I actually had that superpower of omniscience and would then be slightly more justified for believing I was responsible, not only for my well-being, but the well-being of others, but (as I have to keep reminding myself), I am not that influential. And that doesn't always help. What should be a reassuring statement gets twisted into something brutal and damaging: I have no power. I can't do anything, for me or for others, and I should really stop trying 'cause now it's getting a bit embarrassing. I am small, and weak, and insignificant, and may as well be standing under Niagara Falls and asking for it to go up for all the impact I have. It's amazing that one thing, the amount of power I have, can be so dramatically out of balance, and influence so much of who I am.

Alright. Work is almost over, and I really need to get some things done before I head home, so this'll be it for today. Thank god I have a therapy session on Saturday-- it is much needed.

Oh, By The Way, I'm Thirty

Yeah, that happened. Last week, in fact; I've been thirty for a whole seven days now. And for now, I will keep that topic on the back burner, since it was not exactly what I would call a "good experience".

So then why I am writing? ... now that I think about it, that's a marvelous question, because it would seem I don't really have anything to say, and yet I feel a huge compulsion to write this morning, which is a bit stupid as it's Monday and usually the busiest morning of the week for me, and I will likely be pulled off here to do real work (or least, what I'm paid to do for work) in less than an hour, so I won't have much time to devote to writing. And still, I write. Ramble, more like. I guess this is an exercise in stream of consciousness. That could escalate into something intense very quickly.

I've been struggling a lot lately with my weight, or rather, how much extra padding I've put on in the last two weeks with a lot of self-indulgent behavior, especially when it comes to sugar. I was doing really well with sugar cravings until last summer, when I started working a new job in a garage, and was already surrounded with so many fumes and chemicals that I figured adding an extra bit of sugar wouldn't be the worst thing going into my system during my average work day. Then it became, "well, I'm already eating more sugar, so why not be a little stupid and have some more for this one time?" So now, being the sugar addict that I am (and I'm using that term with only a small amount of humor), I am yet again in a position to ween myself off of something I know to be causing many of my current health concerns-- skin, fatigue, weight gain, depression-- and will have to make some big lifestyle changes to make this work. It's mostly at the end of the day, when I'm done with dinner, that I start craving what starts out as dessert and ends up being The Entire Week's Stock of Chocolate And/Or Ice Cream that I purchased in one go so I would see how much I have and view it as something that should take me a long time to consume. Lately, I've just been chowing down whatever I have, and then go out to get more. Really stupid behavior. I spent most of the summer trying to supplement with exercise any time I had a sugar craving, which was such an admirable goal, and I did do well in getting rid of about 8-9 lbs in flab, but with the end of the season approaching and the snowball effect of having so much sugar that my adrenals are fried and my need for sleep has gone way up so that I'm trading off the time I would use for a quick morning workout for an extra 15 minutes of snooze, some of the pounds came back, and I feel very blech. Just... blech. It's not a good feeling in the slightest.

To jumpstart my goals for the autumn, I'm celebrating my birthday a little late with a few acupuncture sessions. My first one is this evening after work, and it will be the first session I've had in over four years. I used to get acupuncture much more regularly, and always responded well to it, but things changed (as they are wont to do) and I fell out of the routine. I am soooooo excited for my session tonight, and I have two more sessions that I paid for already that I will need to schedule, so that should help get the rest of September on the right track, and with some other changes, this fall will be a lot better than the last one.

I'm so much in "get-it-done" mode now, trying to save up money and get my ducks in a row before I make any big life changes, that I feel like I'm shutting other parts of me down to do this. At times, I can appreciate what I'm doing, because if it gets me what I want, then it's worth it. Every once in a while, though, I feel like I'm giving up some short term relief for long term wants that may not come through, and it's hard to remind myself that no one has the art of prediction down cold, so I don't need to hate myself for not knowing what's in store and what efforts from today will pay off next year.

Work is about to be at its busiest, so this is the end for today. Writing urge fulfilled, so I guess I can take it easier on myself; I got what I needed to out of my head and into a journal.

Phone ringing! Gotta go!

Force Of Will, Dammit!

I am in a funk this morning, and for semi-justifiable reasons... but I really don't want to be so much of a crabby-pants, especially if it makes me start to feel like I'm creating more problems for myself than I need.

For starters, I spent most of the weekend trying to fix my Mac, culminating in nearly 6 hours on the phone with 4 different tech supports. Positives: it did get fixed, and for no charge since it took them so long to get it figured out. Negatives: that took 6 hours out of a Sunday I was hoping to use for other things, and it's never fun when one has a mini breakdown on the phone with a complete stranger. Because my Mac didn't start genuinely working until about 9:30 at night, it threw off everything I needed to finish before going to sleep, resulting in a bedtime of somewhere around 1:45am. And I woke up twice during the night, so I did not sleep well at all. I was very tempted to load up on yerba mate this morning and try to perk up some, but the inevitable caffeine crash would have destroyed me this afternoon.

The other thing that is causing me some mental blech is the number of immensely rude people I've had in the last 2+ days on the phone at work. I can tolerate some rudeness without problems; I have to remind myself that other people are going through their own things, and that sometimes me being a little extra nice is enough to change their tone and make them not only easier to talk to, but hopefully a little more cheerful for everyone else in their lives for the rest of the day. That's worth it for me. But I got an ass-chewing last Friday morning by someone who I'm fairly certain, based on my limited interaction with her, is a troll that lives under a bridge and steals children that pass by on the surface... or possibly a banshee that found a new frequency for her vocal chords to use to get her way without destroying the listener's eardrums. (She really was quite a heinous person to talk to.) After such an insane week with most of the bullpen staff taking personal days for some pretty intense emergencies (funerals and ER visits and lingering colds, none of them related) and only being staffed with half of the usual crowd to get through the same amount of work, and after spending a week with my computer rebooting at all hours of the day and night (especially night) and me being drastically sleep deprived, I was hoping that Friday would have been much more of a laid back, carefree day. The afternoon eventually settled down, but I was amazed I made it through, being so tired that I could barely blink without feeling the weight of my eyelids increase to about 1000 pounds. Then this morning, my very first call of the day was a totally different grumpy pants children's book villain, perhaps an ogre that crushes the bones of her victims for her morning protein shake. I expect Monday's to be busier days based on common sense and past experience, and I am completely aware that most people hate Mondays with the heat of a thousand suns, but I do not need to have some total ass-hat complaining to me as my first call of the day/week.

Of course, now that I am starting feel like this job is a good fit for me and I am expecting to stay here for at least one year before I reevaluate and execute my next step, and of course, now that I am enjoying regular money coming in and am able to pay off a lot of things and get caught up on so many basic needs I've put off for years, I am developing so many of my previous job-related neuroses again. It's fear-based stuff that really fucked with me in the last two or three jobs I had that I had cared about, and it's really hard to let go of it or attempt to retrain my brain to deal with it more effectively. There's also some unavoidable workplace drama that's starting to make me grumble about a couple of coworkers when they're together. So that made my early morning difficult, knowing that there was a TON of stuff that was affecting me more than a typical Monday morning. Of course, a few hours have passed since I started writing, and I have gotten through what is usually the most traffic-heavy time of the day without incident. I am tuning out the Pick-A-Little going on behind me since it is not about me and I don't really care that damned much, and I can't do much of anything to stop it if it ever does become about me except continuing to treat them the way I would like to be treated by them. For the rest of the day, I am going to get through the difficult stuff as it comes up, and most importantly, not dwell on when that could be, or obsess after it's happened to make myself worry if I could have done anything differently or better. I am comfortable trying to make my time here more pleasant with less anxiety, and I am going to make big efforts to release the old and "bad" behavior I used to use in previous jobs. Force of will, dammit!

Clearing My Head

I'm going to take time this morning and figure out why I'm feeling so blue before 9:00am.

1. I've had two dreams in two days about separating from a parent, and it's been heartbreaking both times. First, this person turned into a ghost, but could still call me and my brothers, and that was one of the only ways we could stay in contact. The second dream was this morning, and it was painful enough that while I could recall it after I woke up, it's two hours later, and I can't remember anything about it except that I made the connection (once I was awake) that this was the second time I've had this theme surface in a dream. Apparently, I scrubbed it from my mind when I was brushing my teeth.
2. It's another parent's birthday today, and I could not give any less of a fuck.
3. I checked the news this morning (big mistake) and the very first thing I saw was the mini crisis (for now) with the stock market, and then I figured that wasn't disturbing enough, so I should read more news. When will I ever learn. I swear, one of the only categories I can ever trust to be neutral and sometimes uplifting when I search for news is Space. We discovered this, we proved that, we are working on a new thing, we got data back from our current thing, and these people are badass.
4. One of the women I work with is taking today off, and while I enjoy the other two that work in the bullpen with me, and while I have learned that they are both fine on their own, when they're together, I start to hum "Pick-A-Little, Talk-A-Little" from The Music Man. They feed off of each other's martyrdom and become very gossipy, something I abhor, and it's something that I don't notice as much if I've got the woman who is out for today on the other side of my desk. She tends to stay much more positive, even when things are crazy (as they have been for most of the month), and that helps me feel like I'm doing a good job and can get things accomplished, and not like I need to stay quiet and keep my nose clean and my head down.
5. I. Am. Tired. I caught up on sleep over the weekend, but my computer, which is what I normally use for my alarm clock, is working out a bug after getting a new update, and it keeps rebooting if I put it into sleep mode, so I've been using another device for my alarm, but I keep psyching myself out in my sleep, thinking I am going to miss the alarm... which means I don't really get any rest. I woke up at least twice in the course of about 5 hours, and when that's the only amount of time you have for sleep, every minute of it is precious and essential. I desperately wanted one more hour once my alarm did go off, and was tempted to play tag with my snooze button, but in my hazy brain, I knew I would never get out of bed if I did that. A trick I have developed is to hook the anchor to my suspension trainer over my bathroom door so that first thing, before I can do anything else in the morning, I have to use it. I knocked out one quick round of Tabata for my back and shoulders, which did help me feel more alert, and went about with my regular routine. I'll probably do a longer workout when I get home and really try to tire myself out, and I'll be amazed if I make it to 11:00pm tonight.

Now that it's after 10:30 and I've identified what's causing some blech in my head, I feel a little bit better. I think I might spend some of my downtime on a writing project today; I had a big stumble last week when I asked for my birthday off from work and couldn't get the day because it is going to be too busy and that date was already denied when someone else asked for it. It triggered the wave of emotions I have in me involving this birthday, and I felt it all come rushing out at the end of that day, and I started some of what I refer to as "emotional cutting", wallowing in all the things that are crap in my life. The project I had in mind for today was to make a detailed account of what I love about my life, and the things or features or traits about me that are exclusively mine or have defined me in the best way for almost 30 years. It's going to be a rather big undertaking, and it's going to require some discipline, so it may be something that takes more like the rest of the week, but if I can devote some sincerity to it, I feel like it might really pay off.

Gotta stay on the phones now. It's already a busy day.

A Quiet Wednesday Morning

Suspension training is fuuuun!

Now that I have a job again and have gotten caught up on some outstanding bills, I've been looking at some goodies on Amazon that I've been meaning to get for over a year. One of those goodies was a suspension trainer, something I've been wanting to add to my workout equipment collection since 2012, when I was working out with a trainer friend a couple times a week, and he had me try inverted rows. It's such an awesome piece of equipment, but ridiculously overpriced when it's one particular brand, and for a long time, I was debating making one myself with materials from a hardware store-- really, it's high-quality straps with handles and an anchor, how hard could that be-- but miracle of miracles, I found a different brand that sold theirs for what it would have cost me to make my own, and I got free shipping. (The Gift of Stellar Shopping is one I use only for good, never for evil. I am sworn by my mother and her mother before her; it is a Gift passed down through generations.) I'm already doing a lot more lats, pecs, and shoulder work, and feeling great now that I can correct some old shoulder problems and clean up my posture, especially now that I'm sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day and noticing times when I'm slumping at my chest and feeling it in my upper back. It doesn't help that my chair is built for someone about two inches taller than me, so when I try to relax into it, I have to take my feet off the floor if I want to include my upper back. I keep meaning to bring in a pillow or cushion to make this chair better for me, but really I should just check the rest of the offices for a different chair.

Wow. Boring entry so far. I mean, it's nice to have the time in the morning at work to write for a while, but there isn't anything gigantic that I absolutely need to get out of my system by typing furiously on my keyboard, so that leaves me with some routine kind of things. Between the craziness from the billing fuck-up earlier this month at work finally calming down and noticing the benefits of the techniques my therapist has been teaching me for managing stress and staying mindful of my environment and emotions, I am happy to be a little boring. Besides, there is a strong possibility for more craziness in a few weeks, since my 30th birthday is coming up, and I am so very much not prepared for it.

What else, what else, what else... okay, I guess the theme of today is "therapies". This is why I adore my iPad: grown-up coloring books. It is one of the most soothing and fun things to do for hours at a time. Seriously, I've been coloring on this thing for something like two months now, and any time they add new pages or colors, I buy them up right away. I'm thisclose to getting some printed books, but the thing I like most about having them on the iPad is that I can recolor the same design as many times as I want, and save the pictures so I can look at preeeeeeety earlier versions. And it is sooo therapeutic. When you have time to devote to nothing but choosing an interesting color combination for a mandala design, it's amazing how quickly every other distraction, whatever size it might be, completely fades away. It's a meditative activity without being something that makes you think "I'm meditating, I should be relaxed to the point of falling asleep". In fact, if the afternoon slows down the way I hope it should for a Wednesday, I fully intend on coloring away.

Alright. Have to finish a few things before I regress to a happy 6 year old with my coloring app.

Roller Coaster! Of Emotions! (Say What?)

Haven't written in a while, and I know exactly why: the new software we use at work threw us a low and dirty curveball that we then took a big swing at, and for the last two weeks, we've been experiencing a certain amount of chaos while trying to get the bookkeeping caught up to date for all of our thousands of clients. And this was within the first month of working here! Fortunately, everyone is very reassuring when they say that this chaos is not the norm and that we're getting much more of this system worked out as we go.

Today has taken me all over the place with emotions because, while it is Friday and therefore the slowest day of our week at work, I've had some strange conversations with some strange (and rude) customers. This is at the end of a very long week of snippy people on the phone who seem to think that they are the only customer for any business in the world, and that we are deliberately set on sticking it to them. So having a few more hours of mean people passive aggressively taking out all of their frustrations on someone who is attempting to help them (and the seven other people waiting on hold) was not something I was expecting for the end of my week. I'm still a bit tired, even though I've been adjusting fairly well to having to get up around 6am again, but today, I've been yawning a lot and my throat and voice feel ragged from so much talking, or rather, from so much talking and not being heard. With the chunks of time where no one is calling in and I have a few moments to relax, I remind myself to stay present and mindful of what's happening within me and around me: I am doing the best I can, and my best includes admitting when I do not know something or fixing a mistake I have made; the people on the phone are not people I have to deal with in any other capacity in any other place in my life, so their opinions do not matter to me; my coworkers are helping me through the times when I don't feel like I know what I'm doing, and they are all struggling with the craziness here as well; it is the end of the work week and I got paid, so I can enjoy myself tonight and this weekend; the remainder of the day should be much more predictable, and that includes time to read or write more; I'm getting back into some old stuff for working out and doing some IM fasting, which will mean a few days of discomfort while I adjust; so all in all, a lot happening in my brain.

Speaking of IM fasting...

One of those oddly profound thoughts bubbled up last night while in the shower. Fasting is about not putting anything in while your system still works on processing what it already has stored. It's the dietary equivalent of holding your breath... for 16 hours. That made me think of how much of my breathing is actually not breathing, but holding a vacuum. I tend to take very deep breaths in and exhale slowly, so when I get to the end of my exhale, I hold that for a few moments before I breathe in again. It's part of a singing exercise to train yourself to get as much air in as part of as silent an inhale as possible. That made me wonder how much of my breathing is actually not breathing, but holding a vacuum. And then I went through the looking glass.

Why is the concept of existing in a vacuum something most people are uncomfortable with? Seriously. Look at how much of your own day is spent putting something in or taking something out. Put this in your system to feel better. Detoxify to take out this out to feel better. This fear of vacuum is not limited to tangible things. It includes experiences or thought processes. Go on this spiritual retreat to add it to your lexicon of how to make your life perfect. Remove this toxic person from your life to be happier.

I am not saying that constantly living in the space between breaths is good and all you should ever need to do, nor am I saying that adding or subtracting things or people or experiences in your life is bad. It seems to me, though, that those moments of simply existing without wanting or needing anything are a lot less frightening than you might think they would be. It's the goal of almost every practice of meditation, to allow for space in your being, to allow for the processes that are starting or finishing to run their courses, and to give yourself a break from constantly doing doing doing. It is also, as I have found, a consistent method of combating depression symptoms, and sometimes, even the causes.

This entry took me about 3-4 hours to finish, and I only have a couple hours left for work today, and I am already fantasizing about my calm weekend, so I think for the rest of my time here, I am going to take it easy.

I Can't Spell The Sound Of Frustration Coming Out Of My Head

Ooooooooh, am I in a mood today. An odd confluence of details and circumstances makes for a grungy feeling morning, and while I think I'm getting through it fairly well, it's definitely taking more effort than I was expecting I would need.

First off, an acquaintance of mine is treating me like a moron because I shared my opinion on a political issue. It's not so much the content of the issue that's bothering me-- I studied political science and case law and competed in a national competition centered on knowledge of the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and other supporting documents that laid the groundwork for our system in other examples of government, and I know how to debate with facts and data, and I'm comfortable talking about the role of government, which is what this issues is centered around-- as it is the way he's talking to me, like he's a talking head on Fox News. He's a fire-starter, and loves getting people so worked up that they start yelling and screaming. I've seen him do it to other people, and in that scenario, I just walk away; I don't get involved with people looking to pick a fight or prove how they're right with the caveat that everyone else is wrong. But he jumped on something I said that was not directed at him, and has spent an inordinate amount of time trying to bait me into a screaming match. My dilemma is that I know I can present facts, craft an argument that displays the merits of my position, and can understand the opposition's arguments enough to give counterpoints when I have them, and concede when I can agree; I also want to be done with this ridiculous experience, and for that to happen, I have to keep quiet, because anything I say will only stir the pot. I can be right, or I can be finished, and neither one of those options is good enough, so I have to choose which one I can stomach.

Secondly, and most importantly right now, work has been fucknuts batshit crazy! I started only a few weeks after they switched to a new computer system, so I have been learning just slightly behind them, and I feel like, for the most part, I'm picking it up alright. And then yesterday happened. Yesterday. The End of The Month Statements. We had some error between the old and new systems, and not all of the billing information for customers ended up in the right place, so when we sent out a mass email letting everyone know their balances, our phone lines exploded. Last night, with eight minutes to closing, we had about 15-20 people call the three phones here about their bills and we didn't have any answers for them, so I knew that today was going to suuuuuuuuck, but holy hell in a hula hoop! We had absolutely non-stop calls for FIVE HOURS and only three people instead of six answering phones. And we couldn't even really answer! We didn't know what the hell was going on, so how can we tell everyone else how we're going to fix it?! (Give you an example of how bad it was here: this paragraph took me two fucking hours to write!)

I've kept this entry open today because in the few minutes of downtime I've had, I've needed to get the frustration out of my head so I don't start lashing out at coworkers, or more likely, customers. I'm glad I've had it up-- I type fast anyway-- but I have to end it for now because I'm supposed to leave in about an hour so I can get an adjustment and then home to play with my nephew.

Resolving Anger Without Turning Green

Family time!

My brother, sister-in-law, and little chunker of a 6-month-old nephew are here, and I love it! The little guy made it through a two day road trip with no problems, something his parents are very proud of, and rightfully so; I get fussy driving my car for longer than an hour. We caught up yesterday evening, sitting on the patio and enjoying watching the dogs lick Toby's toes, and laughing at the variety of faces this little guy's made in his six months. He looks so much like his dad, it is astounding, especially when we started comparing his baby pictures to Toby now. He really is a sweet lil' dude, and it's pretty cute to watch him, as his dad puts it, giggle-fuss.

The downside is that I stayed up way too late last night, chatting and laughing away; each time I checked my watch and told myself to call it a night in five minutes was followed by pushing that five minute deadline another five minutes, so I didn't get to sleep until 1:00am, which did not give me enough time to sleep before I had to get up at 6:15am. I went through my new routine of a couple rounds of Tabata the moment I got out of bed, got dressed for work, made some yerba mate so I could get a little bit of caffeine to clear my head, and was doing great for the first three hours of being awake. Now, even though I've had some protein to munch on while at my desk, I'm starting to feel a dip. The yawns are creeping up on me, something that I hate not so much for the physical sensation of feeling my face contort to something out of horror film, but for the mental affirmation that I am tired, mostly because I woke up at one point during the night with my arm so numb that I could have used it as a club and never felt the impact. That's hard to sleep through.

Within the last three or four days, I've been working through some intense anger issues, mostly centered around acquaintances that surprised me with some extreme behavior (condescension from one, sexism form another), or the asinine drivers that should not surprise me with their god-awful driving as much as they do, and it's been a challenge to come to a resolution that left me feeling like I could let go of that anger without invalidating how it felt at the time. Anger is such a difficult issue with me because it requires quite a balancing act, and I don't often feel like I do that successfully. Anger is a perfectly valid emotion (I have to remind myself), and it can be helpful when used correctly, like if my anger is motivation to effect a good change in my life or the life of someone I care about. (It can be very satisfying to stand up for myself without feeling like I'm becoming She-Hulk, and it's a relief to see anger lead to a good result.) But for a long time, my reaction to feeling anger was so painful that it only caused more problems and created more situations where things could not be resolved in a good way, if at all. To get through anger now, I have a short conversation in my head (or even out loud if my head is not a safe place), asking myself if I can use this anger for anything positive. If I can, I take the next step, whatever that may be. If I can't, I ask what I can do with this uncomfortable emotion. If the answer is 'nothing', then I give myself permission to let go of it so it doesn't sit and fester like it used to. Obviously, there is some grey area in between the 'yes' and 'no', and that can keep the anger on a simmer, but being able to talk myself through the event is invaluable; it saves me from feeling useless and frustrated, and it sometimes points out that I can take more action than I might have initially believed. That's empowering, and I will always say yes to more of that.

Work has gotten busier, and having to keep up with the call traffic perked me up some more. I have a lunch of smoked salmon and spinach waiting for me, and it just took me three tries to spell 'spinach' correctly, so I think it's time to take a break from the computer and get my food. A few more hours, and I get to play with my nephew again! Yay!

It Must Be Dumb-Ass Driver Friday

Up to a few minutes ago, I was having a bit of a morning. Two different people on two different streets cut me off when I was the only other driver on the road, and my drive to work is only about 15 minutes. My car is small and silver, but it does have mass, and it does not have a cloaking mechanism, so if you hit me, it will have physical results, and I mean that in the physics sense of the word! Newtonian physics! Look 'em up, and stay the shit in your lane!

Fortunately, after being at work for a bit and having some tea and laughing with coworkers about yellow squash that looked eerily like trucker balls, I started feeling better, and I am grateful. I really didn't want to be in a mood because of one or two little things. A trick that my therapist has been suggesting for helping me alter my brain chemistry is to do a few semi-smiles. Apparently, you can trick you brain into believing it's happy if you use the muscles in your face to go though the actions of what you would be doing if you were happy already. The good thing it doesn't have to be a big, gigantic, fake-as-shit SMILE! It can be a little cutesy grin, going up to the muscles around the eyes. That triggers chemical releases, and after doing a few of these, like doing sit-ups for your face, you'll feel better. I think I'm going to try this a lot today and see if it changes things.

Today was also my first payday, and even though there was an error with how many hours got submitted, most of my paycheck is accurate, and that means I can get some grocery shopping done tomorrow and start to restore my Paleo pantry. My agent at the temp agency is awesome, and is already working on getting the rest of my hours submitted. So I can officially go into money-saving-mode and work towards having enough money to move in the next year or two. The moment I start thinking about this move, though, my anxiety kicks into high gear, and I have to remind myself to take things one step at a time. What do I need to do right now? I need to catch up on bills and save some money. That's what I need to focus on, and not on the overwhelming possibilities of The Future. I do not have to do everything all at once for me to be successful, and trying to get all of my plans fulfilled immediately is what causes problems. And, more importantly, one bag of super yummy smoked salmon is not going to completely derail my plans! (And, most importantly, as of today, I'm going to start submitting my time cards online, so that error likely won't happen again! Self-five for fixing a mistake! *self-five Barney Stinson style*)

I am sooooo sleeping in tomorrow. Maybe a glass of wine before bed tonight, too. Who knows, I might go crazy and watch "Waiting For Guffman" and snuggle with my puppy. Do I know how to live it up on a Friday night or what! As for the rest of tomorrow, if the remainder of my paycheck is restored, I might get a long-overdue haircut. I'm starting to look like Chewbacca, but since I don't have access to the Millennium Falcon and I don't have the shiny cross-torso belt, I should pay for a little grooming. I do not cut my own hair because I am not an uber-pretentious art student or an East German in the 80s, so I do not need to look like I am either of those things.

I'm Already Dreaming About My New Job

A slow tempo at work so far this morning. I appreciate that, since I didn't sleep great last night; my body isn't used to the new routine yet, and while I've been unsuccessful at falling asleep earlier, I've been too successful at waking up earlier... as in, "I've slept for a few hours, it must be time to get up now!... at 4:52am... crap..." I'll get back into a good sleep pattern, but it'll take some time, and until that happens, I'm going to feel a bit zombie-ish in the mornings. But it is funny to wake up during a dream about my new job of answering phones and placing orders; I was asking a dream customer if they needed Product A or the subset of Product A when my alarm went off, and I giggled that I've been working on my pronunciation of these products in my sleep.

My brother and his fiance and their 6-month-old Toby are visiting for a few days next week. A 16 hour drive from Indiana with a baby. That's commitment. This will be the first time I get to meet the little chubber, and I am so excited that I actually can't put it into words. He's my youngest nephew, and so far, this brother's only kid, and they've been traveling a bit now that Toby's eating solid foods and working on toofers, meeting family members that don't live nearby... which is all of us, really. The cousins have met, and the pictures were adorable. I'm excited to see how my dogs, particularly my new girl, will like Toby, especially since Alice is only slightly bigger than him!

I knew a long time ago that I would need to experience some extraordinary circumstances for me to have my own kids. I completely adore kids, and have been told by people that I trust that I would be an excellent parent, but have never been in a position as an adult to take care of kids the way I think they deserve. I have either been struggling with income and my career, or depression and health issues, or a total lack of a love life (which, for me, is a non-negotiable piece if I would ever have kids; no fucking way I'm going to be a mom and feel like I can pull it off without the father being a partner in it all-- it's not fair to me, and it's not fair to these hypothetical kids). This makes visiting with my brothers' kids a loaded situation. On one hand, I am excited to be their Crazy Aunt, the aunt that teaches them how to belch loudly and properly when they're old enough, or will take them to funky exhibits at a science museum, or gets them rare copies of their favorite books to celebrate a random Tuesday. Being two times zones away from them and not being able to afford regular visits to them makes a lot of this impossible right now, but that's why I'm working my booty off, to get some financial security so I can make them a bigger part of my life. On the other hand, I occasionally see my brothers' kids as reminders of how disparate my idea of who I want to be for them and who I actually am for them are. I've not had great time being an adult (... understatement), and in so many ways, I still feel like a kid that needs someone else to do the heavy lifting. How am I supposed to be the aunt I want to be if I can't accomplish other things I would consider to be essential to my identity? This line of thinking takes me down the rabbit hole with lead weights strapped to my ankles, and who would want that emotional baggage attached to their niece and nephews?

During my last session with my therapist, I found myself saying how disappointed I am that I need money to be happy. I will admit that money allows for independence and freedom and opportunity, and those are things I am happy to have in my life. I also don't see myself searching for other methods of getting independence and freedom and opportunity outside of money; I'm not that brave, and I'm not that willing to live in a van. But then, talking it out, I realized that I would feel this same disappointment if I was so dependent on something other than money. If I had to rely on friends, for example, to the same degree that I rely on money, and if that reliance impacted every part of my life with the same intensity, then I would be upset that I needed other people to make me happy. So I guess I'm not as materialistic as I thought, a trait that I'm generally disapproving of. Things or people or concepts tied into my basic security are difficult to accept, because for as much as I would love and have worked to be an independent and self-reliant person, and for as much as I value that trait, I know that it's unrealistic to believe I am an island unto myself. I believe strongly in the fact that what makes Life on Earth function is the cooperation between all things, and the awareness and respect of how other people influence your daily life, however remotely or immediately that may be, is crucial. It's a huge part of my philosophical and political makeup. But apparently, that belief applies to every except me. I should be judged separately. And having that in my head, even if its volume is turned waaaaaay down, causes me problems.

Tricky stuff, this whole "being alive" business.

How I Learned To Love (Okay, Tolerate) 7:00 AM

My new job starts at 8:00am, a time of day of which I have never been particularly fond. So that means I have to wake up around 6:15am, and if 8:00 sucked, then 6:15 is the devil's ass-crack-of-dawn. I am not a morning person, unless by morning, you mean the last-ditch effort of waking up by 11:30am, and I usually don't fall asleep until midnight on an early night, so getting back into a routine of getting up only a few hours after I would prefer to fall asleep takes some serious discipline. Routine, for me, can be as confining as being wrapped in a straight-jacket. It can also be the only thing that gets me through good and bad times. And for as much as I would love to live a more bohemian lifestyle, setting my sail to take me wherever the wind may blow and all that other crunchy/groovy/I-live-in-a-van crap, I know that a reliable way of combating effects of depression is to keep myself doing good things with consistency. Taking supplements, working out, eating well, allowing for some down time for a movie or a book, these are all things I try to fit in at least every day, and now that I have to change my daily schedule to allow for a job that takes 8 hour out of what had been a laissez faire kind of existence for a few months, I have been doing things at completely different times.

For two days now, I've been back to working out first thing in morning, as in, the first thing I do after turning off my alarm clock and getting out of bed. I prefer quick and intense workouts anyway, so squeezing two rounds of Tabata clears my head and gets me functional faster than anything else at, again, the devil's ass-crack-of-dawn. I'm hoping to make this a regular thing every workday morning, since it's hard for me to burn out on short workouts, and I always work different muscles groups and incorporate different moves or weights with every round, keeping my system fresh and constantly recovering. Exercise has been something that has been in the far background of my mind for so long that it became a significant source of failure, and therefore, stress. Why "failure"? Because if I didn't get a workout into my day when I know for a fact that I had the time, energy, and opportunity to do so, I feel like I let myself down and begin berating myself, reminding myself that I will never succeed in anything if I don't make efforts to follow through when I should. You would think that I could find a way to make this language motivational instead of completely damaging, but that is not what I have learned in my almost 30 years on Earth. I learned that if I could and didn't then I am wrong and a failure. That's proving to be a difficult lesson to unlearn, but that isn't too surprising, since I took nearly 30 years to learn it in the first place!

Early today, I had an extra adjustment with a different chiropractor, and later today, I have my session with my therapist, so I certainly recognize that I am taking good care of myself physically. (This is on top of morning workouts and some better food choices now that I have a source of income again.) I've been learning new things and feel confident that even when I make a mistake, I am fixing it and learning how to prevent it again, so that's a good boost for my self-esteem and mental health. My oldest brother and his family are taking a road trip out to Colorado, so I get to meet my newest nephew this Sunday, and that certainly satisfies my emotional needs. So right now, I feel like things are clicking along very well. I know that it is an evolutionary thing to have that voice in my head that keeps me warned about how things may go wrong in the future, because then my brain can go into problem-solving-mode and hopefully keep myself alive if that ever happens, maybe even keep it from happening at all. I completely get that. I just wish that I could go for a long period of time without feeling like I need to engage in some superstitious behavior to keep myself in the good graces of The Whatever From High Atop The Thing. Why does it ever have to be difficult to allow for good moments to become the norm? Sometimes I'm concerned that I'm the only one who feels like this, but I wonder if this is a universal human trait. I'm not a pessimist at heart; I like to believe in the best of things and circumstances and people, even if they don't give me reason to. But I have also been in a crouch for so long that it's been much easier to assume that things will go wrong at the whims of The Whatever, and I don't like believing in that. I don't like who that makes me become, and if I can change that, I will.

Life Is Going On

I have been blessedly busy, which has kept me from dwelling on things I know would only send me down a rabbit hole lined with razor blades. The new job is going well so far, and it is something I can see myself doing for a year or two while I figure out my next move(s). Everyone in the office is nice, calm, patient, and helpful, and I don't yet have any tasks that are so impossible that I take endless blows to my slowly rebuilding self-esteem while I try and fail to figure out how to complete them. For the first time this year, things feel like they're calming down on the job front, perhaps settling into a steady rhythm that, instead of making me feel like I am trapped and going nowhere, give me a sense of much needed security and a chance to repair some confidence that has been leaking from me. I still have time in my day to take care of myself, and time to pursue projects that could take me where I've always wanted to be. The trick is reminding myself that things come to fruition when they do, and the moments when I feel like a failure may not always be accurate, especially if those moments only make me regress.

Rita has been gone for a few days. Well, gone and yet not, because we got her ashes back from the crematorium along with an impression of her paw print in plaster. Her paws had been riddled with cysts and sores for months, and they hurt her so badly that she hadn't been able to do much walking or standing by the end, which made her other health issues run rampant. The vet techs cleaned off one of the paws that hadn't been as affected for the paw print, but there was one small hair of hers that got stuck in the plaster. I had been crying, seeing the box that had the urn the held her remains, and then a little more when I saw the impression, until I noticed the hair. Something about fur, maybe because it gets everywhere, makes me laugh a bit. I've had that experience with other dogs that have lived out the length of their time on Earth, finding fur of theirs in random places after they've gone, and it always brings up a rush of emotions: loss of a friend, happiness that something of theirs is still around, and weird amusement that even if when they're gone, they're still managing to shed enough fur that it ends up in my shoes. What has been telling is that, even though I miss her so much and the house is not quite the same without her, I don't find myself so absorbed in loss that I can't stop crying. That means that, hard as it was, it was also the right choice; she had been in so much pain, and was so old that pouring money into treatment and drugs into her system would not mean much chance of recovery, and letting her go was the responsible, but more importantly, the kind thing to do.

And so life goes on. The differences between last week (where I spent an afternoon feeling every second that ticked by as a punch to the gut while in such a raw emotional state that I'm amazed I am still alive) to now (where I am sitting at a desk on a slow morning and sipping tea and feeling more at ease knowing that I don't have to worry about how to make a car insurance payment, a phone payment, buy gas, and still be able to eat at least once a day) are staggering. What bothers me is that, regardless of the events of my life being helpful or harmful, I still feel like I'm defining God as someone more like Santa Claus or some perverted idea of a Mythical Accountant, someone who is always watching me, evaluating my behavior and my choices, and deciding my future for me based on the results. I feel like I have to provide proof of my worth, rather than feeling like I'm worth the breath in my lungs by default. It's tiring to constantly feel like I have to fight for the simple moments of peace.

Bye, Rita

So much has happened today, and I don't have the mental energy to write well about all of it, so this is going to be a bit bullet-point-y, and will be returned to in the next couple of days for more attention.

Sunday night, I knew I had two things coming for me: a job interview (which could really save my bacon), and a tough decision to make about my dog Rita. Knowing that this potential high and probable low were going to be part of my day helped me prepare for it. When my alarm went off, I took about fifteen minutes to meditate before committing to getting up and ready. I chose to get through one thing at a time and not obsess about everything that was beyond my control. And here's how the day turned out:

• I got the job, which is full time and pays fairly well, and means I can still squeeze in time for my chiropractor and my therapist... and I start tomorrow
• I got a refund check back from a company (which, for legal reasons, will be unnamed) that did not deliver on the services they promised in their contract, and that whole matter is now officially finished, which is a huge weight off my mind
• Rita, after 11+ years of being an adorable goofball and hilarious Wookie-impersonator, had to be put to sleep-- she had been dramatically ill, lost 8 pounds in a little more than a week, could barely stand or walk, and even the vet said that their wasn't anything that could be done to pull her through

Today was the first day in a long time where I felt like people were connected to me. I had many friends and family share in my relief of finally having money coming back in and my hurt of having to say goodbye to a friend that had saved my life on more than one occasion. My oldest brother, who loved Rita so very much, had a hard time hearing about the news over the phone (he lives in Indiana), and for a little sister, hearing your big brother cry is scary stuff.

Since I have to be up early for my new job tomorrow, I need to wrap it up here and get ready for bed. After so much crying, falling asleep should be easier than it was last night, where I had some massive unknowns ticking through my head, keeping me grinding my teeth for much longer than I expected.

Rita? You know how much I love you, and always will.

My last shot of my Rita, a puppy to the very, very end

Suicide

What a stupid week.

I somehow managed to keep myself from going completely crazy Monday night after my first job interview in months. No, I kept the crazy at bay until Tuesday, when I found out the job that a monkey could do went to someone else with more experience, and I went from feeling nervous excitement at the prospect of starting something new and getting some security back into my life, to feeling like the biggest failure in the history of the world because I couldn't get a full time job taking pictures... of hats. Not even artistic pictures of hats hand-stitched by grandmas who are selling their crafts as a way of raising money for children affected by type one diabetes. I'm talking about pictures to catalog baseball caps of different sports teams for different distributors. And when it came down to me and one other person, it went to the one other person. So I crashed. Hard.

I have never been flippant about suicide, because it is difficult to imagine a more soul-sucking position to be in than wanting to take action to end your own life, and the toll it takes on the living is unbearable. I've spent a staggering amount of time wanting to have never been born, or thinking the atoms that currently make up me would be better used almost anywhere else. But I've also been so low that I've planned how I was going to do it. I've gone through the actions of withdrawing from life, saying my goodbyes, getting some of my affairs in order, and figured out exactly what I was going to use to kill myself. And here's the twisted part: I've thought about it for so long that I realized I don't want certain kinds of death because they might hurt someone else or they might be too painful or take too long or require too much bravery to go through with it, so that leaves me with pills... and I'm a health nut, so I don't have any pills in my house! I actually berate myself for not being able to go through with the suicide I would want, or thinking that if I hurt someone else in the process, I'd lose some cosmic points!

There have been four times in my life that I have been a breath away from making an attempt. I've held the contents of an entire bottle of aspirin in my hand. I've nearly driven my car off a cliff and into a river 50 feet below. I've been checked into an outpatient facility for a 72-hour psych hold. And this week, after hearing that I didn't get the job, I felt like the entire world and any force that is responsible for making it go on had turned its back on me, and I came close to taking my last remaining dollars and buying a bottle of pills.

And right when I wanted nothing more than to stop breathing and be done with it, a little piece of my brain took control of my fingers, grabbed my phone, and called my therapist to check if I could move my appointment from Wednesday to that evening. He had two spots open due to some cancellations, and I had to keep it together for five hours before going to see him, so I put on a guilty pleasure movie (hello, "Big Bird in China") and let myself take a nap until then. I wish I could say it was my survival instinct that will fight no matter what, a part of my identity that is as hardened and badass as Chuck Norris. I wish I could say it was the voice of the Divine, giving me a drop of hope to get me through the worst of it, and giving me belief that things will get better soon. But what it actually was... was me depressing myself out of it. I somehow used my depression to tell myself to keep going. I gave up on being miserable, and figured I might as well talk about it to someone who could help.

After my session, I drove over to the lake and sat on the rocks on one side of the shore. For ten minutes or so, I just sat there and watched the small waves ease in and out, not thinking about anything in the slightest. I managed to close all of the programs usually running in my head, and focus on watching and listening to the water. Then, when I felt sore from sitting, I got up and walked around the shore, looking for a small stone or two to take with me. When I was a kid, I lived close to either a Great Lake or the Atlantic Ocean, and used to collect stones from the beaches. It's soothing to shut down all systems and do one simple task for a little while. I found two about the same size and color, and made the walk back to my car and drove home. I ate some scrambled eggs and had some tea and took a shower and read for a bit and went to sleep, and woke up the next morning after sleeping pretty well. I gave myself a day of staying in pajamas and playing with dogs and watching some cooking shows. I didn't bully myself into feeling better, or force myself to be grateful for anything, or remind myself of how badly things felt the day before and conclude that I should stay as  miserable as possible because getting better wouldn't be worth the trouble. I just existed.

I've done this exercise many times, keeping myself in a place where I simply exist. It has saved my life more times than I can probably recall. I don't know how it has worked for me and can't explain why I feel better when I do this, but I highly recommend it. There are no spiritual overtones to it, even though it resembles mindfulness, which is certainly is a huge part of many Eastern philosophies. The closest thing I can compare it to is walking with no destination. Nothing competitive about it, like walking on a treadmill to hopefully get in some exercise. No music or self-talk to distract from the action. No active searching for anything, either in the mind or in the world. Just putting one foot down at a time at the tempo that feels best.

There is an eclectic fraternity of those that deal firsthand with suicide. It's comprised of people you wouldn't automatically assume would be in the group, and it is not glamorous in the slightest. This is not a club you want to be part of. And there are too many in it, and too many new additions. If you have read this, please remember that you can look at a human being and never know all that happens in their heads, and maybe consider being a bit more gentle with them. You do not know what it's taken for them to still be here.

I have made it through this week, and I already know next week is going to have some pretty extreme highs and lows. What will get me through is reminding myself that all I have to do is exist, and nothing more, and I will be okay.

Superstition: Great Song, But Stupid Way of Life

I had a job interview this morning for a company that needs a photo coordinator. It would be full time, which would be great right about now. I've gone on many job interviews and auditions, and once I'm actually in the process of the interview or the monologue or cold read or whatever, I'm at ease. It's the getting to and returning from that wig me the hell out.

One of the first things I find myself doing is planning what my life would be like with a new job or a new play. It might seem proactive, or the trait of someone with a positive attitude and plenty of confidence, but it's covering up a huge wad of anxiety. "This will surely be The Thing that changes my life in all the right ways, and here are all the things that will be different because of this one new Thing!" I start memorizing the route to the building, start thinking about where I'll go for lunch, start wondering if I can get the same parking space every day. Pretty soon, I associate all of that nervous energy with the drive itself, or the music I'm listening to on the way there, or what I was wearing, and if things go badly, I disassociate from those things immediately. (I actually have a bit of a shit-list of music I can't listen to anymore for fear of triggering some cosmic force of smite and wrath that will actively seek out the parts of my life that don't suck and destroy them with lightning and misery.) Then, on the way back home, I repeat the whole process... in the few moments when I'm not obsessively nit-picking over every nuance of the interview or audition.

You would think that the solution would be to down-play the whole ordeal. "This is simply a job interview/an audition, and does not completely define the rest of your life. It is one moment, and will be a constructive process no matter the outcome; it is by practicing uneasy moments that they become easier." Yeeeeeeeah, nooooooooo. I downplay things, and it only makes things worse, because by the time I realize I've been playing it cool, I have also realized how desperate I am and how much I needed something and how badly I was counting on The Thing to help me out of the miserable goop of depression and fear and stress that feels like it's slowly absorbing my being.

Why does any of this thinking matter? It matters because it becomes behavior that actively shapes the choices I make and the direction my life is going. I get too caught up in the subtleties of a moment, and dwell on them so long that they lose perspective and become twisted with new meaning, like, "You crossed your hands on the desk, which probably made you look too severe and judgmental, so you should never do that again", or, "You went to the grocery store afterwards but before you heard if you got the job or not, so if you don't get the job, you can never go there again." (See a pattern developing?) I even put off writing about all this because I won't hear about this job until later this evening or even tomorrow, and that's several hours of me going slightly insane, during which I will likely do something that I will associate with a good or bad outcome after I find out if I have a job or not.

I am a believer in the idea that your external world is a reflection of your internal status, and that your thoughts have a measurable impact on your surroundings. It might seem a bit magical, but it's also part of human nature... wanting to matter, wanting to feel like one little thing has more power than it probably does because it helps you get through the day. It's also an idea that can get me into trouble quickly. Objectively, I know I was professional and engaging and a good candidate for this job, but that gets tucked away into a dusty box in the bottom drawer of a far-removed filing cabinet in an unused office that smells faintly of sawdust and mold so that I have plenty of room to go crazy.

Just yesterday, I found myself saying that I feel like I'm being punished for taking a chance a few months earlier and quitting a steady job (even though it was horrible) to pursue my lifelong dream of becoming a professional actor and singer, because now I am in a worse position than I have been in a long time. I feel like I'm either being completely ignored by the one Being that could help me, or I am being picked on by the one Being that could help me because I made a mistake. That is a shitty way to live, and I would really really really like some proof that I'm wrong about this.

More Sleep and No Nightmares

Okay. Gave myself a break, and let myself catch up on sleep, and things sorted themselves out some.

The morning after I wrote my last entry (which started making me beat up my fragile ego like a gang goes after a nerd in a deserted alley so I stopped writing it as quickly as I could), I heard from the temp agency about an interesting job opportunity. They're looking for full time, for enthusiasm, and if we fit there is a bonus and benefits. I have an interview set up with them on Monday morning, and if it doesn't go great, I plan on stopping by a retail store on my way home and picking up an application. Knowing that I have more options than I thought I did the day before helped pull me out of the hole, and having a reason to leave the house looking put together and professional is very much needed.

With my career (or lack thereof) in such a shoddy state, I've been stress eating far too much in the way of ice cream and chocolate. I adopted a Paleo lifestyle years ago, but have always had an exception or two, especially depending on my income. Grains and legumes were surprisingly easy to give up, and adding more nuts and veggies was a snap, and I had already weened myself off most dairy, and I was already someone that looked at ingredient lists on anything that was boxed or bagged, so that behavior certainly aided my new eating habits. Thing is, I looooooooove ice cream and chocolate. I can't always afford the stuff I should eat when I want an indulgence, stuff that doesn't have tons of sugar and soya or soy lecithin or whey in it, so I cave and get crap, and I'm seeing the result: an extra twenty pounds added over 7 months. I've always had a solid build with most of me comprised of muscle, and plenty of fat where, as a lady type, I would need it. But with the sugar and the dairy and the sneaky bits of soy, I have gained too much fat, and lost the tone and endurance I used to have because I've had a tough time with injuries (foot, sacrum, shoulder/neck). Something I want to get back into more is running, or I should say, sprints, since running distance has never been appealing to me despite years of trying to make it a form of stress relief. I went to a local track and gave suicides a go, but after 8-9 right on top of each other, I actually hurt my foot so badly, I was limping for three days. Lesson learned. There's a track that's closer to my home with bleachers and a better section of grass, and I was able to do three different Tabata rounds of sprints there, so I will be making that a bigger part of my routine. Once I get some money coming in again (fingers crossed for Monday!), I plan on getting a couple of new workout tools: a suspension trainer and a tire/tube for more bodyweight and actual weight exercises. I've used suspension trainers before, and was considering making my own, but found one on Amazon that would be perfect. I also found inflatable rubber tubes at a local drugstore for about $12 apiece, and know that I could fill one with sand or water and voila!, instant workout toy. That'll be a good addition, since I can control how much weight goes into it, so I have something adaptable.

I feel better today, and that comes from things I've been working on coming to fruition. This is something I want to see in my life much much more. Too much of my time feels like I'm killing myself for something I want without making a damn dent. I want some success!

Working

I'm looking for a job yet again, the fourth this year. That brings out baaaaaaad traits in me, because I am now opperating out of a place of depseration, and I feel terrible making any choices when I'm this frightened about my future. After talking to an agent at a temp agency this morning and hearing how bleak my prospects are, I've spent most of the day in bed and wrapped up in pounds of blankets. (This is also after a poor night of sleep, and drizzly weather for the last three days.)

Money and I have a bad relationship. At no point in my adult life have I ever been capable of making all my ends meet longer than 6 or 7 months. I do not live extravagantly by any means; I've had one job that paid my enough to be above the poverty line, but I was in bad shape while I had that job; all this means I'm nearly 30 and haven't been able to live in my own place, and have spent about 28 years living with my mom, which has not been good for either of us. I like work, but by this point in my life, I would have hoped to have been working towards what I really want, and not working to stay alive.

I actually have to stop writing now because I'm triggering a panic attack. Short entry, I know, but the longer I look at what I've written, the more I feel like I want to completely give up.