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.

Bedtime

When I was a child, bedtime was a pleasure I looked forward to. When it was time to go to bed, I went happily, looking forward to resting and dreaming. Even though I was prone to nightmares and night terrors that my parents didn't even know about, I still had more good dreams than bad and I looked forward to each new day.

Fast forward a few decades. The summer of 2007, I wasn't working and it was one of the most glorious summers ever on the Oregon Coast. Temperatures ranged from 75 to 85 most days, with sun and a bit of a breeze and I spent almost every day walking down the hill to the beach, walking up and down the beach, including into the breakers, and then walking back up the beach. I was in good condition, I was losing weight, and I was actually enjoying myself, but I wasn't going to bed until between 2 and 3 am every night. This was highly unusual for me: I hadn't pulled all-nighters or even super-late-nighters in college!

That summer, I was staying awake late because I had created an enormously detailed imaginary life and I stayed up every night into the wee hours living and creating that life. The people sharing that life with me were so real, with complete life histories and backstories. It was beautiful. Every night I would turn off all the lights in the house, turn on some music, light some candles all over my bedroom, and watch the moon wash across my bed and the floor in the room outside my door. And I would dream.

This imaginary life bothered my therapist. She was afraid I was hiding from reality within it. It wasn't until a conversation in mid-summer that she suddenly said "I get it now! Your mind needs to be occupied and it's so unused right now that you need to do something with it." And that was, in great part, why I stayed up late every night dreaming. Once I went back to doing some work and thinking about what I wanted to do next, the imaginary life just melted away.

Fast forward another few years. I've returned to Houston after getting things moving with my mom's estate. I'm miserable: lost, rudderless, and more alone than I've ever been in my life. My closest friend in Houston was rearranging things in his life, in particular his marriage, and he no longer made time to do things with me other than a few days in the Spring to go photograph birds and the occasional lunch. I spent my time — all day, every day — surfing the web. I stayed up far into the night more often than not, not because I had an imaginary life I loved but because I had a real life I despaired of and I stayed up late to put off having to begin another new day.

A Body at Rest Tends to Stay at Rest

Inertia. Newton's First Law: a body at rest tends to stay at rest, unless a force is acted upon it. And I haven't been enacting any force upon myself since I arrived in Seattle. Well, not much.

As a result, I've lost the muscle tone I'd gained by doing exercises in the apartment. I have barely blogged at all. I haven't even been doing my therapy work, and I did my therapy work in Houston even when I was at my least functional! I have disappointed myself. My confidence has ebbed even lower than when I was in Houston.

However, I've had one phone interview for a full-time job and have another scheduled for next week. (According to my friend who works there, they screen very thoroughly so they get people who will work well with the team.) I think I have a shot, as long as I can convince them I am technical enough.

I've also acquired a part-time freelance job! They contacted me out of the blue: they'd found my profile on LinkedIn, then through that found my web site, which was unfortunately unchanged since Houston and they could only access one link to my work, but they still contacted me and by the time we talked in a two-hour meeting, they had decided upon me. It pays lower than a for-profit company would pay, naturally, but the work is very meaningful, challenging, and varied. Not only can I feel good about my contribution to this organization and the work they do, but I will not be bored and I will be stretching myself. Just for your info, this organization facilitates collaborations between researchers at small to large companies and institutions with other institutions and large pharmaceutical companies to address neglected diseases in the developing worlds and poor populations the world over. These diseases are not high-ticket items in terms of money-making, so the big companies don't pursue them. But the big pharmaceutical companies who have joined this consortium are committed to providing information — even about their compounds — and expertise to other researchers in this sphere. It's amazing!

So, this week my new therapist and I addressed my inertia. She asks good questions, such as when did I live my life more like I wanted it, when was I happier, when was I more active. We went all the way back to childhood for the answers. Among the answers we found was that I need to create for my mental health. I used to write and draw and paint all the time as a child, and even in my 20s. It began to taper off in my 30s, especially as my depression worsened. I developed the thought that I needed to write toward publication, rather than simply write the stories I want to tell. After taking my Scientific Illustration courses and doing beautiful work, I seemed to feel that I could no longer just mess around with my drawing and painting like I did before, but that I had to create at that same high level, so I stopped drawing and painting at all. And I really haven't crocheted a lot since creating a very intricate and difficult doily for my Grandma (which I now have framed).

Slow Maelstrom

That silence you've heard for the past week and a half was me resting, sleeping, and surfing on the interwebz. You might have heard some snoring, too, from the sleeping. My mind has kind of been like that empty, static-filled screen you see in the middle of the night on some TV channels.

So I'm here, in the Seattle area, and it's kind of weird. I still feel like I'm visiting, even though I oversaw the movers when they put all my stuff in a storage unit. Part of that is because I'm staying in someone's guest room, I'm sure, and some of it is because those times when I have been here over the last dozen years I have been visiting. I need to change my mental framework.

I'm very glad I'm here. I'm also kind of weirded out by it. Many thoughts and feelings have been swirling around inside of me: happiness, exhaustion, stress, anxiety, surrealism, expectations, trying to not have expectations, positivity, fear, and today I'm having some fibromyalgia pain, which I think is partly a delayed reaction from all the stress I was experiencing just getting ready to move. Everything has been swirling slowly, probably due to the exhaustion, for which I am grateful. I couldn't handle vertigo too right now!

The weather has been quite a bit cooler than I am used to. Colder, really — in the 50s during the day. We had a lot of rain and gray days my first week, but we've been having some simply glorious days recently, with brilliant blue skies, puffy white clouds, spring greens, flowers and flowering trees in all colors. These are the days that almost make you forget about the rain and the gray.

I remember when I first moved to Houston: one of the habits I had to wean myself off from was always taking or wearing a jacket or at least an overshirt with me when I left the apartment. Well, I changed that habit and got very comfortable going outside in just a tank, shorts, and sandals. Now I'm in the position of having to reverse the process! I'm underestimating how much I need to wear to be warm enough, usually by a thin layer (think an undershirt or camisole). And I don't always bring a rain jacket when it looks like rain (which is often). I need more weather-appropriate shoes and probably another jacket or vest or two. My BFF says I can borrow his sweaters until I can buy more of my own, which is nice. I really need an income so I can buy these weather-appropriate clothing items. I'm just hoping that I can make enough of my Houston wardrobe work here in Seattle enough of the time so I don't have to buy an entirely new wardrobe, which is more or less what I did in Houston.

You Probably Want to Know

"So," you've probably been thinking. "How is Skye doing on her new program?"

Well, I'll tell you. I started out strong last week then completely stopped it when my period started and I just wasn't going to exercise. I don't exercise during "that time of the month" because it makes everything worse: heavier, more crampy, more bleah. I did accomplish my Tuesday task so was able to watch Castle, and I accomplished my next two tasks and watched both Project Runway and MythBusters. But the exercise went to hell.

Now I am back on with the exercise as of this morning, plus I walked in the park this afternoon. I have a task to do tomorrow and I have, thanks to the creative spark from Deb, created a chart with tasks prioritized and sorted, with different sets of contingents/rewards attached to each priority, and color-coded and printed so I can keep track without having to open the spreadsheet any time I need a reminder. 

The tasks I have to do for any given contingent or reward (yes, I put ice cream on there a couple of times, and yarn) are not difficult or even terribly time-consuming. Later, as I get better at this and am able to sustain greater efforts using self-discipline (or being less self-indulgent), I can pursue bigger tasks or sets of tasks.

My BFF commented on the previous post that it would be better to do these tasks due to rational cause-and-effect or cost-benefit analyses, but I'm not up to that level yet. I'm kind of at toddler or young child level when it comes to personal self-discipline (I'm still fine with professional self-discipline), so I have to start with what works. 

Bad Habit: Sleeping the Day Away

Bad habits are like kudzu or English ivy: easy to start and extremely difficult to get rid of. When having a flare up of the depression or anxiety, bad habits multiply for me like fruit flies on rotten fruit.

One of my current bad habits is that of taking a nap to circumvent part of the day. Sometimes I just see hours stretched out before me and nothing I feel I want to do with them and they look difficult to endure, so I take one of my hours-long naps and wallah! Afternoon is gone. (And I've allowed my emotions ("I don't feel like it") to manage me rather than the other way around.)

Also gone are the opportunities to work on my novel, to clean something, to draw, to read, to look for a good basic starter yoga routine, to exercise, and to do any number of other useful things, or things I enjoy doing or want to do.

While I am making progress and I am learning to manage my emotions, or at least learning to learn how to do so, I am still in difficult territory, surrounded by alligators and fish with sharp teeth and gigantic mosquitoes and roaches (I'm being metaphorical here, although it looks literal, given that I'm in Houston). I still have habits to beat into submission and mental routines to reroute. I can't just give in to bad habits, especially the one that makes me unconscious for 3 or 4 hours at a time.

In cognitive-behavioral therapy, we substitute rational language and thinking for that which is broken. For example, irrational and broken thinking and self-talk might be "I shouldn't be unemployed. I hate it! It's horrible! What am I going to do?" And then it just ramps up from there. Rational substitutions could be "I don't like be unemployed. I want to work. It's uncomfortable and I feel afraid. I'm going to go look for work now."

Stars

Stars. I never look at them anymore, but they actually are quite ... beautiful. –Men in Black

Do you ever find yourself so wrapped into a routine that you forget how you got there in the first place? When something you did because you enjoyed it becomes becomes habit?

For example: I spend a lot of time on my laptop. Nowadays, I surf the Internet for the most part. And even that has become a mindless task. I started spending all this time on the Mac writing for myself and doing work for others. When I surfed, I was looking for specific information, or discovering fun things, such as LOL cats and XKCD. But now I surf through and past these fun things, as a habit, forgetting to even pause long enough to enjoy them.

I read an article that suggested that the more time you spend in front of a screen — either computer or tv — the shorter your attention span becomes. And I think it's true, at least for me.

As a matter of fact, I'm finding it difficult to concentrate on writing this post.

Watching tv and surfing the web consume time, but  they seldom make you think.

The Internet contains amazing information, pictures, and people, a digital universe. And I hardly look at the stars any more.