A Tangled Mess

I'm a mess. Much of my life is a mess. I'm spending so much energy distracting myself from my messes that I barely have enough energy left to breathe. I feel like I'm caught  in a mass of tangled yarn.

I'm reading obsessively, including books that I'm not normally interested in, as long as the books are light entertainment. And when I read, I skip over more and more of the text to just get to the main plot points. I'm not taking much enjoyment from the books. Books with greater emotional or mental content get set aside. I just purchased a new Tawna Fenske book and haven't been able to enjoy it. I love Tawna's work, but I'm anticipating the emotional and romantic complications and getting anxious about them. Anxious about fictional characters, people!

I'm not watching any TV series with my housemates anymore. Everything they watch has character arcs: I become invested in the characters and get stressed out when their lives are difficult. In general I've always had difficulty detaching from movies and TV, but it's a lot worse now.

There are people in my life I haven't contacted in months, some of them in over a year, and not because I don't like them. I don't read blogs much at all. I don't know why I've dropped contact with most people: I have no idea how doing so connects with how I'm feeling.

Right now, I'm in the middle of a two-week experiment proposed by my psych. For two weeks, I'm not going to try to go to bed earlier. I've been staying up until 3 am, but wanting to go to bed around 10 pm. I spend mental and emotional energy chastising myself for staying up so late. So for these two weeks, I'm just going to let myself stay up as late as I want to and sleep as late as I want to. No judgements.

As a corollary of this experiment, I'm setting aside all shoulds and should-nots. No judgement. No restrictions. Want to eat ice cream? Sure. As much as I want. Be a slug on the couch? Sure, as usual, but this time no judgements. Do it because I want to.

When I manage to quiet the shoulds and should-nots, I feel less stressed, more peaceful. It does take effort to quiet them. In addition, my housemates do NOT like this experiment. They think it's a bad idea. They disapprove. They disagree with my psych. Even though it's only for two weeks and I wasn't making any progress doing things the other way!

Claustrophobia and Freedom

"I'm feeling lousy," I told my therapist. "I'm not sure I can any longer tell if I'm feeling depressed or anxious or both. It's been so long and they are so mushed together."

I've been feeling like curling into myself. I want to hide, to be small, to wrap myself into a tight little package. I could feel the muscles in my neck pushing my head forward and the muscles in my chest pulling my arms inward. And I wanted Michele to fix it.

So we talked. Mostly, I talked and she listened. Then I would pause and she would ask a question or make a comment that would lead me in a particular direction or spark another idea that I then followed.

I ended up talking about my housemates and my living situation. (From now on, I'm going to give them non de plumes, to more gracefully refer to them. They shall be Griffin and Sabine, which suits her more than him.) About how while I am truly grateful to Sabine for not allowing me to pay room and board — I only have to pay my own personal bills — and for buying me things, like the sweaters and warm socks she's just purchased for me so I will be warm this autumn and winter, I hate being dependent. I hate not being able to provide myself with these things.

And, in a way, there is a price for these wonderful things. Nothing that is expected or demanded of me. No, it is a situational and emotional price. Because my housemates' issues unfortunately trigger my worst issues and are making me want to be invisible and making me want to hide. I'm caught up in their issues and the blacklash of my own, and it seems that the result is that I'm focused more on those dramas than on myself and my own needs.

For example, Sabine is super-sensitive to noise. She also has anger issues. So the other night, when I was trying to manipulate a hot dish from the microwave, one without handles, using silicone hot pads, I was making lots of glass-on-glass noise. Eventually, Sabine exploded, took the dish with her bare hands ("It's hot!" I said. "I know," she said.), removed the lid, and set the dish on a cutting board. She continued to be angry and everything inside of me shrank and shriveled, even as I kept repeating to myself "not my issue, not my issue". When she calmed down later, she apologized. But the damage was done for the day.

Feeling Blue

I'm feeling blue because I can't be blue. How does that make sense? Simple: I have to remove the blue streak in my hair for my job.

I always swore I wouldn't compromise myself for my job — my hair, my nails, my clothes (other than having to wear the level of professionalism required). But I've never been in a position where it was so hard to find work. It's harder to stand against such compromises when you are staring down the face of unemployment or continued severe underemployment.

No, they (my supervisors) didn't threaten to let me go. They just said, "we're giving you ownership of this job and you can't have the fun colors in your hair because the client is an oil and gas company and they are very conservative." Straightforward and to the point. And a bummer because I just got this particular streak put in my hair. 

On Simplifying My Life

I like reading about simplicity — there is always a new perspective or something new to learn. Because I don't have my favorite books with me, I've been cruising teh Interwebz and found a post on one of my favorite sites: zenhabits. This post is "Simple Living Manifesto: 72 Ideas to Simplify Your Life" by Leo Babauta, the author of the site. 

The post isn't about 72 things you must do in order to simplify your life. The 72 things are ideas and suggestions, things to think about. I am beginning with the first one, because it seems central to how to live my life in general, not just how to simplify it.

"I. Make a list of your top 4-5 important things." This list basically sets your priorities and the way you want to live your life. This is what I wrote:

1. Creating. Writing!, drawing & painting, crocheting.
2. Freedom. Being able to do what I want to do when I want to do it, not being tied to an 8 to 5, commuting, unsatisfying-job existence (and getting burnt-out, and getting sick — again). Being able to do work that I think is fun, being able to work wherever I want to work. Having time and energy for my important things.
3. Love & Friendship: having close friends to talk with, having friends to do things with, having people to love. (Having a "romantic" relationship would be nice, too.)
4. Compassion & Giving:  Things like volunteering for EcoBot and being the Vice-Chair for its committee, volunteering to do stuff here and there, and maybe volunteering to work with shelter cats and cats at adoption events. Giving my time.
5. My Health. Physical, emotional, mental. Getting the care I need and taking care of myself in every way.

It's not an exciting list: there is no lust for travel (not that I would turn it down, and the Freedom item would allow me to do so, but travel isn't important to me as a thing by itself). No building a hugely successful business (that wouldn't leave me very free). It's a list that feels good to me. It feels open; all of it feels "free" to me. I wasn't sure about 4 and 5, because they weren't exciting, but even though I'm not doing all I could be doing (possibly because I'm not free as I struggle with money and worry and grief), I am doing some and there is lots of room for growth.

I can see what I want here. I'm not sure how to get to all of it. And I need to just start writing: if I can write more than one blog on a regular basis, I can write a story. I can start a novel. I can work on any of a number of things I want to write. The blog seems different from "real" writing, but for goodness sakes, look at my weekly word count! That's real writing alright.

Who knows? As I pursue the things I can easily pursue now, maybe the others will simply come to me.

What are your top 4 or 5 things?