So What's Been Goin' On?

Well, I've been thinking. I've been zoning out. I've been getting very few  hours of sleep a night — still — and wondering why. And the past couple of days I've been playing with the cool new toy Sabine bought me: an iPad mini. She said we all needed tablets, so she bought Griffin an android tablet of his choice and now she's seeing what about each of ours she likes so she can decide among all the choices for herself.

I also applied for six jobs yesterday. They say you need to apply for 100 jobs to find one. If I do, say, 5 a day for the rest of the month, I'll be set! Of course, I missed today. And I get very distracted by my housemates sometimes, especially since Sabine has retired.

I made a schedule of my daily routine needs. It will work, if I can get to sleep by 11, stay asleep all night, and get up at 7. Big 'ifs'.

My creativity seems to be in the bottom of the sink right now. I've been crocheting my brains out and showing some creativity there, but then I look at stuff people have made up that's on Pinterest or Ravelry and think "why don't I do that? I'm so dull!" The crocheting has left no time for other creative work (writing, drawing) or reading. But it is satisfying because I am creating tangible, useful, beautiful things for other people and that is one of my languages of love. Actually, two I guess: gifts and service.

I talked with my therapist about the rebound effect I experienced for the couple of days following my last post. We talked a bit about it being one of my patterns and how it seems related to how I withdraw after feeling a strong emotion — for example, after I have a cry or even a big emotional event, I then pull back and am distant and detached for a while, hours to days. I think maybe that's what I've supposed to have been thinking about and working on since Wednesday, but I forgot and it's upstairs in my journal and I don't feel like going up and checking it out. Right now I'm not feeling amazing and I don't feel like I'm doing Great Things, but I at least still believe I am and I can, even if not right now.

Turn Around and Walk Forward

Caution: A long post with complex sentence structure, complicated punctuation, and many, many different metaphors. Not for the faint-hearted.

The best path isn't always the straightest

That's my motto for the year. The last post was all about traumas of the past and how they have affected me and my life. Within the gentle and supportive comments ran a particular thread: perhaps I need to simply accept my past and look to the present and future.

This is not the first time this concept has been suggested to me. A previous therapist became quite frustrated with me for continuing to talk about the past. A couple of friends have suggested that I cling to the past — suggested with increasing frustration and decreasing gentleness. I appreciate the gentle directness of my commenters.

It's true: I do cling to and look to the past. When I was talking to my therapist on Tuesday of this week, I had this vivid flash of me walking backward, taking my cues on which way to turn from what I saw before my eyes. That way leads to missteps and even falling off cliffs. It was a powerful and stirring image. I resolved right then to turn around and use my present, and my visions and desires, to guide me into the future.

Of course, I asked Michele her opinion of, well, everything. What I said in the blog. The idea that I cling to and pay too much attention to the past. Some other stuff. It frustrated me that she didn't respond directly and completely refrained from answering my questions. I'm probably going to push her on that next week.

However, it is ultimately me who has the choice and power to turn around and move forward. I chose the term "walk forward" to indicate activity; I have been almost completely motionless since Mom died, and that was almost three and a half years ago; I wonder how many years that has taken off my life? So "walk forward" tells me to move my body and to participate in my life much more actively than I have been. "Look forward" would have been way too passive.

Therapy Hangover

Sometimes, when going through therapy, a person can experience what some call a "therapy hangover." This feeling can occur from extreme emotions experienced during therapy, from reaching a deep place during therapy, and from intense realizations or epiphanies reached during therapy. Usually this feeling doesn't come during or right after the therapy session, but a little while later.

I think that today I experienced a therapy hangover.

Today's therapy was good. I was feeling disappointed with myself for not achieving the goals I set at last week's session. I've been feeling disappointed in myself for not putting more time toward my freelance job and being behind in reaching my deadline. Those were the feelings we started off the session discussing. Fairly simple and normal stuff.

I tend to approach my sessions in a freestyle, stream-of-conscious style. I lose track of original points as some new thought or memory comes to mind and I chase after that. I've told my previous therapist and my current therapist about this tendency and given them permission to control the session more, but both of them have basically let me follow my paths and tangents.

Today, in particular, I think this tactic was useful. I went from being disappointed in my not reaching my goal for the week to disappointment in myself regarding work to having developed the feeling over years that I'm going to disappoint my employer eventually, so I might as well get it over with right away. (I tend to feel this with friends, too, but forgot to bring this up during therapy.) So I tend to do something that will disappoint: I take a sick day early in my employment, I change plans suddenly (such as not coming in on a day I was scheduled to be in the office, saying I'll work at home instead), and I don't always work as hard as I feel I should and can. I'm not just in the process of disappointing others — I'm disappointing myself.

Ideas and memories and feelings kept coming to mind as I spoke, such as my parents' insistence on straight A's, even though they couldn't do the work I was doing in school and they had no understanding for how hard math was for me, for example. I told my therapist that I'd tried not to internalize that mindset, but that I had anyway. Perfection is hard to live up to.

The Powers of Choice

Had a therapy-by-phone session with my therapist this week and the main topic was "choice". I acknowledged that I have been choosing avoidance, distraction, and motionlessness rather than living fully, actively, and with purpose. I have been choosing naps over doing the things I need — and want! — to do.

Choice has many powers. Making a choice is powerful because it is an action and action is powerful. But when you make choice to be passive and powerless, that too is powerful because it increases the passivity and powerlessness, as well as any mental health issues associated with them, such as depression and anxiety such as I have. So I am in effect choosing to give my power over to oppression.

I truly do want to be more active and doing the things on my list and that I need and want to do: I can feel it! I feel urges toward movement and activity; I feel desires to walk and do exercises. But I squash them with the choices I make away from them. It's like choosing to kill the better part of yourself. I feel as if I've been killing the better part of myself for decades, now that I acknowledge that I have had choices. But for a long time, I didn't realize I could choose or that I had options. I felt powerless against my feelings. Now I know differently.

But changing the choices I make is not as easy as snapping my fingers and saying "Hey! I can make different choices!" It's going to require effort on my part due to the inertia involved and the habit involved and the weight of many years of making the other choices. I keep making the mistake of thinking that making changes will be easy, causing me to fall prey to falling back into what is easy. I haven't yet embraced the feeling of power that comes with doing what is difficult yet right.

I think I need to return to using contingent activities and rewards. I have better rewards now! I have a whole library of books to choose from here at the house (inhabited by two book-lovers, one of whom is a librarian). I have a niece and nephew who want to spend time with me and do the things I want to do as I re-explore Seattle and surroundings and re-experience my favorite things. I also need to again enlist select friends to nudge me along my way to making the habit of choosing the better options.

And I need to work some more on my thinking. I have my rubber band to remind me to think of the cognitive-behavioral tools I have (my housemate left me one in the bathroom we share the morning after he read my blog!). My therapist and I decided that the next major step in my therapy would probably be working on "growing up": i.e., self-actualization, letting go of the need for parental approval and validation (especially given that my last remaining one is now gone), strengthening my sense of self, however you want to define it. It's a process I haven't finished and I need to in order to be a fully functioning adult human. So time to dig in and find my next therapist. I now have a few names offered to me by my former practitioner in this area; next week will involve calling them and seeing if any are taking new patients. (I've heard that finding a mental health practitioner in this area is very difficult these days; must be a whole lot of over-stressed and "crazy" people around here; I blame the coffee!)

So making choices seems to be my next step, and one that I very strongly want to take. I can't wait for the blog post where I tell you all about how well it is going!

Stumbling Again

I spent most of last week in my pjs, without showering, watching Phineas and Ferb cartoons on Netflix. I felt anxious and overwhelmed and failing and all I wanted to do was escape and distract myself. So I did.

Then I had therapy. I had great difficulty even articulating my thoughts and feelings to my wonderful therapist. She was bewildered by the fact that I was succumbing in ways I haven't in months, seeming to have lost the progress she's seen me make.

I really wasn't feeling good.

But my therapist and I talked about how I have moved many times, always successfully. We talked about how I have the skills to overcome this feeling of being a victim of my emotions and thoughts, and of feeling smaller than my circumstances.

In addition, Deb and Sierra are participating by holding me accountable and checking in with me every day or two. And giving me pep talks and suggestions. My BFF says he'll help remind me that I can do this and have done it many times. 

I basically need all the cheerleading I can get because my confidence collapsed big time, another thing that baffled my therapist. But I think I know partially why. This is my first move where there wasn't this background safety net of my mother, and the first where there is literally no one here to come help me from time to time. So until I get Sierra down here near the end to help me with the final major packing, it's all on me. I'm still not strong in the "depend upon only myself" department. I suppose that this move will help me with that.

Where Was I?

So much has happened since my last post, written that innocent day in mid-August when life seemed so much simpler. Full of work to do, yes, but not as complicated as it was to become. I'm very glad I didn't know the future!

Where do I start? I added a week to my two-week stay so I could finish all the tasks I needed to finish. Two days before I was due to fly back to Houston, I had an emergency appendectomy. Luckily for me, I finished all the main things I needed to finish and had sequestered my own things in one place. Sure, a few small things went missing after that, but I hadn't gotten around to sequestering them, and who needs more than one copy of the key to the lock on the storage unit? Only those of us with OCD issues about losing the remaining key.

So I had surgery. And no home to return to: it was being readied for the estate sale. But people offered to let me stay with them, and I was and remain grateful to them for this. My realtor/friend was more nurturing than my mom's friend, so it's good I stayed with my realtor first. Plus, she had no animals, which made my time there very peaceful. I entertained her and her husband, even when I wasn't looped out on Percocet; later on she told me that, during a rather uneventful visit by her nephew, she and her husband looked at each other and said, "I miss Skye!" Aww. They want me to stay with them the next time I visit.

But there went another week and a couple of days before my doctor said I could travel.

Then my friend Steve from Seattle drove down and took me back to Seattle for a much-needed visit. Not only was I not entirely recuperated enough to be sent home, I needed to be with my friends there to distract me from the anniversary of my mother's death. (Actually, I think I did my grieving as I lay in pre-op, realizing that my mom couldn't be there for me then and wouldn't be there for me afterward.)

Finally, five weeks and two days after I left Houston, I returned home. My car, parked under cover at the Park n Fly lot, started right off. For only the second time since surgery, I drove; I got home fine, but I was exhausted and my tummy was sore. And the apartment was just as messy as it was when I left it, unfortunately. Where are those house-elves when you need them?

I've rested a lot since I got home — I can only go so long before I simply fall over, and so long isn't that long. I gave myself the first three days to lie around in my pjs and do nothing. 

I've accomplished things, I've left the apartment, and yet the place is still virtually as messy as before. Tomorrow, my mom's — now my — RAV4 arrives in Houston, driven by a couple of very generous friends. Soon thereafter, they drive away in my Subaru, taking it to its new home. Change, change, change, change. Dammit.

I have projects promised, I have been offered an insane work proposition, and I have a lot of people to reconnect with. But I'm taking it slowly, because my tummy still hurts and my mind is still swirling from the point when everything flew apart and I just haven't landed yet.

I have some posts started when I was still in Oregon that I'll finish and post, later. But I wanted to catch up to the present, before reaching back into the past. I have so much to do, and so much I want to do, that I wanted to at least settle onto the hard-packed earth of right now. I lost my footing. I need to ground myself so I can go on.

So here I am: crazy and tired and swirly and wanting to work and so much less sure of things than I expected to be at this point. I keep reminding myself: this is not my true natural state; this is an artifact of the way my life has been for over a year. Slowly perhaps, I will make my way back to the focused, fun, highly capable, and cheerful person that is me. My current state is transitional and temporary and I'll sweep it out the door just as quickly as I can.

With that, I bid you good night.

Positivity and Mental Noise

Yesterday (and actually several times recently), Julie has pointed out to me that I am not being positive and that I'm not even acknowledging that there is anything positive in my posts. I'll point out all the ways I've failed, and she'll point out the things I succeeded at during that same time, things I won't even have considered.

I guess this means my next task (I should just write them down on a long list) is to pay more attention to the positives, the successes in my days and not dwell so much on the negatives and failures. Heck, I probably shouldn't even refer to "failures": they are "learning experiences" or somesuch!

I agree to do this. It will fit well with my mindfulness and awareness practice, which is going quite well in certain areas.

For example, most of the time, there is noise in my head. It might be music (usually popular songs, but not the whole song), it might be conversations I'm having with other people (that actually never happen) or arguments with other people (that never happen). Or it might just be me counting or talking to myself or providing commentary. But my mind isn't quiet and all that noise distracts me. With all that going on in my head, if I don't pay very specific attention, I'll forget whether or not I locked my apartment door and have to come back to check; same with the car door. I can forget to set the timer for my tea or forget to put tea in the tea strainer (makes for awfully weak tea!). When I allow all this unfiltered activity to inhabit my mind, I can lose whole days and whole weeks of time because I'm not paying attention. I also break things when I'm just following along with the activity. (I broke things a lot as a kid.)

A few weeks ago I began developing the habit of washing my dishes after every meal. It's easy enough right now because I don't cook particularly. And when I wash them, I am reminded of a passage in Thich Nhat Hanh's The Miracle of Mindfulness where he allows a friend to wash the dinner dishes, but only if he washes them "correctly." To wash dishes correctly, you must be paying attention to the dishes. You must be washing them to wash them, not washing them so you can rejoin friends in conversation or go watch television or some other activity. You must wash the dishes to wash them.

When I wash my dishes, I make myself slow down. I don't think about what I'm going to do next. As I wash each dish, I notice how it looks and how feels in my hand. I feel grateful for having it and appreciate its aesthetics. I carefully wash and rinse each piece, then dry each piece, paying close attention the entire time. Focusing. I find that I have enjoyed washing those dishes. Plus, they aren't cluttering up my counter or sink (other things are, but I will get to them). And I feel more relaxed.

I can add being more positive to this mindfulness and awareness practice, because I'll need to pay attention to note the positive things I do or that occur.

When I pay attention, when I focus, my mind is quiet. When I am washing a bowl, the only noises I allow in my head are the sounds of the dishcloth and soap and water squeaking against the bowl, the sounds of the refrigerator compressor (which runs too often) and the air conditioner — only what is occurring right now. My mind feels less cluttered, more open and airy, and much quieter. Perhaps in the evening, when I am assessing my day, I will achieve a similar quiet as I pay attention to the positive parts of my day, and reframe the ones that were less than positive.

Winging It

I don't plan my life out: not my days, my weeks, my years. I have some barely defined goals or desires in my mind, but no defined stepping stones for how to reach them.

I used to define goals. I was an awesome project manager at various jobs in the past: if I said I'd hit a deadline, then as long as nothing major like a complete set of new features or a new product module got in the way of it, I hit that deadline with a quality product. I wrote out all the steps required to meet the goal, all dependencies and other resources needed, and could sync of my schedules in my project management software with the schedules of other people. I had one of those personal and professional organizational systems with all the pages for purpose, personal mission statement, and so on.

Then I burnt out of my industry and my career. None of my goals and schedules and mission statements contained burn-out as an action item, nor did they leave room for it. Suddenly, none of that mattered.

After I moved to Oregon and slowly got over being ill and burnt-out, I chose to free myself from goals and organizers. I managed without them (except for when I needed them to remodel the house I bought) for several years. 

When I moved again, this time to Houston and to beginning a new phase in my life, and found myself in the position of needing to perhaps return to my old career — certainly I was in a continuing trajectory of unemployment and willing to do whatever would pay me good money — I began setting goals and creating mission statements and defining my purpose all over again. I bought an organizer and all the internal components. As someone who adores papers — stationary, specialty papers, notebooks, and even nice printer paper — organizer packages are a bit like crack cocaine: sparkly, desirable, and ultimately my downfall. Because defining my purpose in life and creating a mission statement have always "blocked" me from getting completely into an organizational system. How can you ensure that your tasks and objectives are in line with your purpose and mission if you don't know what they are? I'm neither a product nor a corporation.

I don't think that goals and purposes and missions (oh my!) got me the work I had last year before I had to go take care of my mom. No goals would have included "return home to care for Mom with cancer," although doing so is within my values, just not specifically stated in any mission or purpose statement.

One of my favorite blog authors, Leo Babauta, who writes zenhabits, wrote a post on "achieving, without goals." It makes sense to me, to do and pursue what you are passionate about, what makes you happy (which, hopefully, is more than TV and beer), without creating goals and objectives and tasks on how to get there.

Babauta wrote: "Goals keep you focused on something in the future, instead of being present and enjoying what you’re doing right now. Goals keep you fixed on one path, which might not be the best path in a week or a month or a year." And goals don't take into account changes you might choose to make regarding direction or simply giving up that goal entirely. 

Outside of my phases of over-organization in both my professional and personal lives, I have done what Babauta suggested in his post and pursued what I was passionate about. True, a lot of what I did was externally decided upon — go to school, work some kind of job to have money, etc. — but if something I was doing made me unhappy, or even better, if I spotted something that I wanted, something that lit a spark in me, then even if I couldn't pursue it immediately, it kept calling me. It was sparks like these that swayed me away from teaching, for the good of generations of children, and toward the career I followed for over two decades.

Nowadays, I am winging it. I've been working on becoming clearer about my core values and what creates my center, what grounds me in my life (especially as I had made my mother those things). I'm opening myself back up to my passions. I'm giving myself permission to pursue what I'm passionate about, rather than what others might think I should pursue. 

I'm not pursuing my old career in my old industry (even though at this point I wouldn't turn it down because I do need an income Right. Now.). Other work strikes my passions: the volunteer work I'm doing (which has brought me into a chairmanship in the overseeing committee!); the smaller, more varied, and infrequent freelance gigs I'm doing for very small businesspeople; and the ideas and work that those I've been working with and for have been encouraging me to do, such as teaching writing seminars to teachers and possibly schoolkids (but not in such a way that will damage their school experience for decades to come). 

Not having a defined and concrete path laid out in front of me instead leaves me with an entire world to explore, from horizon to horizon. I'll probably end up at the dead end of paths from time to time, but I'll have learned a lot on my way there and I won't feel guilty for not being able to continue on a specific path toward a specific goal. I'm perfectly able to pursue my passions without a roadmap, thus allowing myself to be caught by "oooh, shiny!" Turns out, "oooh, shiny!" feeds creativity, or is at least associated with the creative mind. None of the pages in my organizers had a bullet item for "oooh, shiny!"

Now I'm flying and floating and running and skipping my way through and toward my desires and passions. Already it feels better than the three-piece Goals suit I used to wear. I feel almost like a kid again, in tee shirt and shorts, creating detective-kits out of flour and paintbrushes and making up my own stories complete with illustrations and cover art, reading in trees and painting with color combinations not considered compatible by most other people. I've earned my wings and I'm not giving them up, ever again. 

Anyone have a barbecue grill or an outdoor fireplace? I have some pages I need to burn.

All Whacked Out

Not in the right place. My bad. Let's just say I had an annoying day full of too much caffeine and too little sleep. I fell asleep over my laptop and woke with a mind and body that just didn't want to function or work together.

Mindful Awareness

Today I began a experiment in Mindfulness and Awareness. It will take practice and more practice, but the idea is to pay attention to exactly what I am doing right now, such as typing, without also thinking about what is on TV in a little while, having an internal dialogue with someone else, worrying about my joblessness, and etc., all at once. 

At the same time as I’m focussing on specific actions, endeavoring to be aware of my surroundings and activities. I managed this off and on for most of 25 minutes on the way to an appointment this afternoon. I kept pulling myself back from various contemplations to enjoy the trees and to keep from rear-ending the jerky driver in front of me; I paid attention to the physicality of driving, doing all the correct stuff such as looking into the mirrors regularly and feeling my hands on the steering wheel. 

For those moments when I achieved both goals, I was not anxious at all. So that’s how I’m going to handle change and comfort my anxieties. Mindful Awareness. Can’t hurt.