Squish

I gained more insight into my attitudes toward strength, bravery, and resilience this week. It comes down to stress balls and Silly Putty.

I still have difficulties seeing myself as strong, brave, or resilient. For example, throughout my life I have been victimized, bullied, and abused in some way or another. Bullies, predators, and people who need to diminish someone else in order to feel bigger have found me and made it their purpose to squash me. Other children, adults, coworkers, bosses, even friends: people of all sorts have seen me as weaker than them and gone on to prove it.

My fight or flight reflex? Permanently set to flight. When the group of friends I hung out with in my 20s would get too overbearing and downright mean, instead of standing up for myself, I would take a break from them until I felt recovered. One of them even went so far as to tell me I was like a soft, furry bunny — and he didn't mean it as a cute thing but as a nonthreatening prey object. (BTW: I stopped hanging out with those folks regularly in my late 20s.)

Even some of my well-meaning friends have diminished me. Because I ask other people's opinion, many of my friends and even my mother sometimes treated me as if I were unable to make my own decisions, as if I were not quite a responsible adult. Really, because I have been single and lived alone most of my adult life, I like to get second opinions and bounce my own off of other people from time to time. Some of my male friends think of me as delicate or fragile.

Epic

Gods, I'm still swimming through murk. Maybe I need to write or immerse myself in an epic fantasy where the heroine has to fight her way through unbelievable darkness before breaking into and winning the light. I am still in Mirkwood, or Mordor or something. I don't have a magical ring or a fellowship or a Gandalf. All I have is my little, barely functioning, broken self. I do have friends, but they aren't on this journey with me and I don't know how they can help.

What tools do I have? My ability to write: this blog, my novel, my journal, anything else that comes to mind. My ability to draw: sketch, color, illustrate whatever I see or think of. Cognitive therapy skills: I'm not sure how to use them on this, but this uncertainty could simply be a symptom of the depression, not letting me see how to use a powerful tool. Exercise: which I haven't been doing but which could change my brain chemistry at least for 15 minutes at a time. Medication: I really don't want to meddle with my meds right now.

What other resources do I have? I'm persistent like a kid sister. I'm brave, when I remember to be or don't notice. I'm stronger than I think. I'm smart, or used to be at any rate. I'm imaginative, creative, and articulate, which are the swords that cut in both directions. I have an intelligent and creative therapist. I have a stable home.

What are my hindrances? Years of being depressed and anxious. Years of being sedentary to the point of motionlessness. The helplessness that comes from long-term unemployment. Lethargy. Fear. Crumbling self-confidence. Years of giving in to the depression, lethargy, and shyness. The habit of hiding. I'm so the broken hero!

In an epic, I'd have to overcome all my personal hindrances, while battling the monsters as well, to get through the dark places and win the day. The unemployment is like the thousand-foot cataract: I have no control over the people who decide whether or not to pursue me after reading my resume. I can try to paddle to shore before the water falls over the cliff; I can grab onto a passing giant bird; I can hastily manufacture a parachute. Or I can simply go over the edge in my bark canoe and hope I don't drown or smash against the rocks at the bottom.

I like metaphors. I know this sort of thing doesn't work for everyone, but my imagination has in the past helped me through difficulties in my life. Maybe my not using it much for too many years has contributed to this morass I currently inhabit.

Perhaps I have my magic sword, my wand, my string of charms, my book of spells. Now I just need to figure out how to use it, whatever it is.

Damn, Damn, Damn Depression!

I'm sunk in the stupid pit again. Why? Hell if I know. And it's not just depression, although that is an overriding emotion. I'm crabby and antisocial. I'm terrifically stressed and anxious, to the tune of taking an extra 1 mg of Xanax each of the last two days. (So far today I haven't taken any extra.) I took a four-hour nap yesterday and still slept for 9.5 hours last night … and still didn't want to get up this morning.

I'm really tired of being "the sick one", the one people have to ask "how are you doing today?" I have no idea what I'm doing wrong or what I'm not doing right that keeps dumping me back into this debilitating space. "Functional" might as well be at the top of the highest glacier on Mt. Rainier, it seems to impossible to reach.

You can't get there from here.

I'm trying. But I've been sleeping so late (thanks to this great melatonin-based supplement my psych recommended) that I feel if I don't get up NOW then the day is fucking OVER, so I haven't been journaling or trying to meditate or visualize. And when I do try to meditate or visualize, I haven't been able to achieve the levels I was at back before I tried the Abilify (which I've been off of all this month).

In therapy yesterday, Michele asked why I feel I have to get up and start my day as soon as I wake up. What will happen if I put it off for another half an hour while I journal or meditate or something? If I stay in bed even later, I feel as if the entire day is over, wasted. I feel like a complete failure for the day. I feel judged and judging.

We also talked about writing. And drawing. About how I used to do them all the time virtually every day, from the time I was quite young. How somewhere in my 20s, I stopped doing them much and they became fraught with difficulties and issues. And yet, I need to do them. Writing and drawing are parts of me that need attention. When I do them I feel better. I feel like myself.

Death and Life

It is a matter worth noting that not once that I can remember this last week did I wish I were dead or dying. This fact is both happy and sad: happy because, hey, I didn't want to be dead, and sad because, wow, during enough other weeks I have?

Here's what I posted on the ReFab blog about this:

Some weeks, just getting through the week without having even random thoughts of how it would be easier if the Universe just casually bumped me off is a good thing. It’s not that things are rotten, just that they are hard and I’m still unemployed and I feel afraid about my future, never mind my present. So, I’m counting it as a win for this past week that I didn’t even wish I were dead, even for a moment.

Why have I felt different this past week? I have no idea. Could be we are getting somewhere in therapy (but I'm not aware of it; however, wouldn't be the first time). Could be due to the slight medication change (but we didn't start that until Wednesday and the past few days I've been kinda dizzy when I got up, so maybe the med isn't such a great thing for me). Could be the full moon (full moons make me happy). Could be, as was pointed out by responders to my comment, I know there are people who would miss me and be in pain if I died. I might as well flip a coin to decide what factor has made a change. Unless it's just a mental hiccup and I go back to occasionally thinking about how much it wouldn't hurt if I weren't alive. (Yeah, a bit of pessimism and wariness, plus discomfort about change even if it's for the better …)

Just FYI: NO! I am NOT thinking of hurting myself. Just want to be clear on that point so no one worries.

Who Am I?

Just got back from therapy a little while ago, a session that was basically a rambling, tangled talk about how I no longer feel as if I know who and what my authentic self even is, much less how to find her.

I articulated my ideas about self (well, at least I tried), and Michele provided some other ways to view self. I rambled over how much I hate that I am still in therapy, almost 30 years later; how I am afraid to "follow my dreams", not even being sure what they are anymore and being afraid of following them and being poor and insecure; about choices I've made in the way of relationships with men that where less than beneficial for me and why I might have made those choices; about feeling so many emotions and how they affect me physically and how I wonder if all my meds are messing me up and I wish I could go off them …. It was a turgid, tangled mess.

Sometimes I wonder if therapy is even helping me anymore, if I'm beyond the point where it could help. I wonder if I can every be functional again, or if I am now stuck in this mental and emotional tangle forever.

In therapy, I posited that we all have a basic (right now I'd say "essential') self — the person we are when we are born. The core of our personality, perhaps. And that we gain layers as we grow, and maybe we get twisted around our core self, or get too many layers between our authentic self and the self we have become, obscuring our authentic self. In this schema, I no longer know who I am when I'm authentic, what my core self is like. Is it the child I remember? The woman in her early 30s who went to Britain alone for a month, who published a story, who applied to and was accepted into a competitive six-week writing workshop?

Or am I the pleaser, the one who has a puppy-like need to make others like me, who makes herself as "normal" and non-threatening as possible, who doesn't make waves?

Michele's concept is that we have a central personality who is the kind of overseer of the sub-personalities. Our sub-personalities — the rebel, the responsible adult, whoever else one may have tucked in there — are kind of like board members of a corporation or organization. And that I, as the central personality, can have dialogues with the various sub-personalities of me. This concept has intriguing possibilities. However, it doesn't answer the questions of who am I? What is my authentic self like? And how do I know what my "dreams" are that I should follow?

I pointed out to her that she didn't give me what I wanted, which was a clear, pure answer. She was understandably amused.

Confidence Falls

Y'know, when I first set out to move back to Seattle, I was full of confidence about finding work back in high tech. I had a long history of high tech and I'd done a lot of extreme editing of scientific materials and I'd broadened the types of writing I've done with my various projects in Houston. Fantastic, right?

So now I am in Seattle and I've settled in and begun networking and looking for work. I've joined meetup groups in Content Strategy, Information Architecture/User Experience (IA/UX), general technology, and so on. I've gone to their meetup events. And my confidence has been pouring out of me like blood from an open arterial.

For example, last night I went to a Content Strategy meetup with my friend. The first presentation was fairly basic and I didn't really find it that informative or interesting, but the presenter was pretty excited about it so that made it okay. The second presentation was exciting, entertaining, and … confusing. I may have taken in about 10% of what the guy was talking about. The fellow to my right, an engineer and writer, had the opinion that the presentation was fairly content-free. I felt like I was too stupid to understand it, because everyone else seemed to really like the presentation. On the way home, I expressed my feeling and the other guy's opinion to my friend and he asked me what points I was confused about or what questions I had because maybe he could answer them. I only had one basic question because the rest of the presentation didn't make enough sense to me for me to even have questions I could articulate. I know I've been out of the high-tech biz for a while, and that things that used to be just what tech writers did are now their own professional niches with their own jargon, but I expected to be able to understand a hell of a lot more than what I did last night!

Secondly, I am not getting responses to job applications, other than the one where a friend submitted me via his company's employment referral system, probably because I've been out of high-tech for so long. There's a lot of jobs I'm not even applying for because of not having a few of their Required qualifications: specific programming languages, specific tools. I'm very happy to be here, but maybe I'm too out-of-date, too old. But if I'm not writing and editing, I don't know what else I can do. And honestly, I need to be working a professional job in high tech to be able to afford a decent apartment now and a decent house someday in this area. Besides all the other typical living expenses.

Yes, I have found a part-time freelance job, or rather, it found me. But it's taken me three weeks (okay, three part-time weeks, but still) to truly get up to speed on the information and how they want it presented for this first project and I've just been revising the existing stories written by someone else. I haven't even begun to write original text yet and I'm as nervous as my housemates' cat about doing so. What if I can't do this anymore? What if my work sucks?

Stumbling on the Road

So my January 1 post was positive and optimistic and forward-looking. That's a very good thing. Unfortunately, I have not been positive and optimistic. Since I've gotten home from my trip to Seattle, I've been kind of depressed, kind of blue.

At first I thought it was just the fatigue that comes from traveling and being with people 24/7, but it hasn't gone away. My sleep is messed up. I've only exercised once (although I think I overdid it and I still am very sore from it). I'm not eating well. And I'm not doing anything but surfing the web and going to appointments and doing necessary errands.

So I pondered what could be causing it. Well, it's been gray at home since I've been back, and cold, and rainy for much of it. It was that way in Seattle, too, but there my friends had lots of windows so that even gray light seemed like light. And I didn't even have my light box. At home, I live in a cave for all intents. I live on the first floor and cannot open my blinds all the way because then people could see in. If it's sunny outside, I can at least turn the blinds all the way so the light comes in and no one can see in because it's darker inside than outside. But on gray days I have all my lights on and it's lighter inside than outside so it would be just like being in a fish bowl. So I don't have windows letting in the natural, if gray, light.

I miss my friends in Seattle. I remind myself that I would not be living with any of them if I moved up there, but I would see them with some regularity and frequency (but not every weekend, most likely). And here I have only seen the people in my apartment office, briefly, the people at the dermatological surgeons' office, and my psych, briefly. And the brief contact with the people at the pharmacy and grocery store. No real connections.

Being home, reality sets in. I am still unemployed and I feel rather listless and unmotivated about looking for work given how unsuccessful I've been. I feel more motivated (slightly) about looking for work in Seattle. I've got to write that manual for my volunteer thing but I'm unmotivated because I find myself not caring as much. I haven't been treated the same since my 2011 breakdown. Plus, I totally forgot to do an editing project for them: I blame my worry about the skin cancer possibilities because it was for that week. So I'm going to sit myself down for a couple of days and write the damned thing and get it out for review.

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."

Irrational Thinking, the Scarcity Mindset, and Cognitive Therapy

I am afraid. I'm afraid of many things, few of them rational. Some of them even have names. One of the things that most occupies my fear at the moment is that I'm going to run out of money and have no options. This is called a Scarcity Mindset. It's a little rational to think that I'll run out of money because I'm not working and the inheritance will last for only so long. But it's not rational to the extent that I fear it. I'm almost paralyzed with it.

It doesn't help that, for almost two years, I've been almost incapable of holding down a job. I worked at that contract job and called in sick way too often, just out of the stress of working and commuting when I was still recovering from my grief.

I'm capable of working a regular job now. I'd rather work freelance, but I think I can work something more normal. It would be best if it could be on a contract so I could get paid by the hour and extra for more than 40 hours a week; I don't want to work all those extra hours without extra pay anymore. I'm too old for that shit.

So here I am, looking for work on craigslist and the freelancer's association job list and LinkedIn and not finding anything or at least not getting even any messages back and I'm thinking maybe I need to find an office job (not like there aren't already enough office workers looking for work out there) or a retail job or something just so I can earn some money. I need to find work. I need an income. And I'm terrified that I won't find work and that I'll end up stone-broke. 

But this is something that cognitive therapy is designed to work with.

Wasting Away in Anxiety-ville

In the 90s there was a movie called Tremors about gigantic worm-like monsters living under the ground. You knew they were around when you felt earthquake-like tremors and they knew you were around because the could feel the tremors of your walking or of the sound of your voice. They ate anything animal, as far as could be discerned. When one of these monsters (christened "graboids") came around, everyone froze and became silent. 

My anxiety, which is mostly generalized anxiety disorder probably, is a lot like the graboids. As it grows, I feel interior tremors as well as exterior ones: I feel fear and I freeze first; then I fidget, my feet move, it seems as if there are little bugs crawling on my skin.

My anxiety even reaches out to my media consumption. If something is more suspenseful than some internal threshold indicates, I can't watch it or read it without lots of breaks. If then. This aspect makes watching Leverage very difficult. I think I got 20 minutes in, maybe 15, to the first episode of the 4th season. I had to read the end of Sue Grafton's V is for Vengeance before I could finish the final third of the book.

I can't take any more anti-anxiety meds: I'm maxed out. And therapy is slow. Doing my little cognitive exercises work on some things but not everything and they are time consuming as well. Just one more pill, I think to myself. Or maybe a nap (my naps are 2-4 hours long, more escapes than naps).

I got anxious watching the Olympics! 

Telling Stories

So, my therapist loved the two posts and all the comments and we talked about whether or not my perspective has changed ("not yet") because of telling my story from a stronger point of view. She also loved that Lora called me on using more passive verbs ("got through") rather than more active, stronger verbs. I'm working on that.

So this form of cognitive therapy seems right for me, because I am a story teller. Telling my stories with power and strength to overcome my feelings of powerlessness and weakness seems right up my alley.

My biggest problem is just that I am so anxious I don't think to do this. I don't think to do any of the other cognitive therapy I've learned. I don't think to do anything other than to hold onto myself so I don't fly apart into bits and hold onto the ground so I don't fly off into space. Because that is how I feel most of the time anymore.

I'm Rambling Blue Today

Today I have no umph. I don't care about much, I'm not particularly hungry but I was craving ice cream and cookies before lunch (peanut butter and butter on english muffins). There is a dark chocolate bar in the fridge but I don't have any real compulsion to go get it. I feel vague and kinda numb.

I'm feeling depressed.

Nothing specific I can think of, except that I am still struggling and needing therapy and meds (and the meds are probably forever, at least some of them). 

I even woke up feeling kinda good because my mom was in my dreams and it was her voice saying the kinds of things she would say (I think we were shopping). It felt nice waking up with her voice in my head.

But since then the day has gone downhill. I keep saying I'll go to the farmer's market on Thursdays (3pm to 7pm), but I don't want to today. I don't want contact with strangers. I want my mom, but that aside, I'd like to be with one of my close friends. Maybe they'd hold my hand and stroke my hair and tell me it's all going to be okay, because I feel like it's all going to be bad and just fall apart.

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. 

And the Decision Is ....

I backed out. I emailed my recruiter guy and said "this just isn't for me," then I emailed my two friends with whom the recruiter had set up "practice" meetings. One of them was so relieved; she said she knew this wasn't the right fit for me and understands how desperation can change how you look at things.

Sure, the recruiter guy called, but he didn't try to convince me to reconsider, he simply wanted to know why I changed my mind. I did not mention feeling that I had been tag-teamed; it didn't seem necessary and I'd rather not burn bridges. He did offer a couple of other ideas for "participating and making money", but basically it involved giving him names and phone numbers for someone else to use to contact potential clients, and I can't do that either. It doesn't feel right.

Now I need to continue to get things in order, such as LinkedIn, and I need to continue to ask friends to spread my name about (in the good way). I need to contact recruiters and people I spoke with before. I need to focus on what I need and want so I can get those, rather than accepting what randomly crosses my path. Actually, that would be a good way to live my life in general — what an intriguing concept!

Feel free to ask me about the progress I'm making; I need a bit of accountability.

I imagine you are all relieved by my decision, as am I. Thank you all for your input; it really helped.

TTFN!

Don't. Want. This.

I have agreed to go along toward a sales-type job because a) I don't have anything else going on, and b) I want to eat. The thing is, I really don't want this job. I don't have that "this is a bad idea" feeling in my gut, just butterflies. But I have such an aversion to it! Not only that, but I feel they basically manipulated me into giving up the names and phones numbers of some friends for me to "practice" on, and the person who arranged to meet with me to talk about this job was the person who called them to arrange it. (I also emailed these people to let them know why they would get a phone call and that it was only for practice, not for my really selling to them. At least that's how I view it.)

Maybe it's that "manipulate" thing. First it was "write the names of at least twenty-five people you know." Then it was "how many of them would you call if you had a flat tire?" Then it was "these are the people you are going to practice with as your first times out." Actually, what I got first was "only three? are you sure?" (As if I wouldn't be sure?) Well, most of the people on that list don't live anywhere near Houston, so that let's them right out. And he's asked me again to think if there is anyone else I could add to that list.

When I first talked to this guy, I got the impression there were several positions, and I thought that a financial services company might need writers and editors. Well, there don't seem to actually be several positions. In fact, it seems to just be a wholesale "hire lots of new agents" program. There were a bunch of people coming out of training as I was going in for a conversation.

Here I was, being talked to by first one and then two guys about this great company and how much money you can make working for it. And how much you can make if you only sign-up one new client a week! When my brain kicked in later, it said "and how the hell do I find that one new client a week?" By being a salesman and pursuing clients. This is not what I am meant to do in this life; if I am to be in sales, it's the kind of sales where people come to me and I get to sell something I'm completely passionate about, like Mac computers or Subaru cars.

I told both guys what my barrier was: the sales thing. They persuaded me  to try it out for 90 days. I'll go through training in life insurance in a couple of weeks, but so far this guy has lined up 2 of my 3 friends for practice this week, after an evening training (I think) session tomorrow night. Tomorrow night.

When you ask the Universe to help you find Mr. Right, you are obligated to date each one it sends you, but you are only obligated for one date. When you ask the Universe to help you find work so you can achieve solvency, you have to check out each one it sends you. What I'm wondering is: am I going too far just by deciding to train and attempt this? Or am I being a whiny baby?

I guess it comes down to two issues: a) I'm not a salesman, not at all; b) I feel manipulated and conned, and stupid for allowing myself to be manipulated and conned. It's so simple and subtle that in hindsight I can say "oh, there's where they set up the connection, then the reciprocity thing," etc. But should I back out just because of those things? Because there is still nothing else going on, and I still like to eat.

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.

The definition of family, part I

"Of all of these things, the greatest is love."

As everyone knows by now, my natal family is gone. I lost my dad in 1978, my little brother in 1983, and my mom last summer 2010. Yes, there are relatives, but none of them is as close to me as the most distant and lurk-ful of the Betties.

And therein lies the rub. My family believed in blood family but not in non-blood family (I think there were only two exceptions over the years). So I have no roadmap to follow. Simply learning to think "I still have a family" is no easy feat for me.

I have a friend I've known since I was 11, and we still communicate, but she has strong family bonds and her bonds to other friends are stronger than mine. Yet, when we are in contact it's like the intervening time — which might be years — didn't happen. Leah lives in Wisconsin.

My best friend is a man I've known since my junior year in college. We've been involved. We've been best friends. We've been furious with each other and said things that in most relationships would be unforgivable. And we've sat with each other thru death and grief. We've shared a house with another friend and an apartment between the two of us and for most of that time everyone thought we were an item, even tho' we had separate bedrooms. I didn't know that he was still in love with me until years later when he broke down after seeing me with the man I'd moved in with. (Stupidest decision ever, but that's another story.) Steve lives in Seattle.

Can't find it in the classifieds

Wanted: Help. 

Help with bringing order to my apartment. Help with finding work. Help with paying bills. Help with not getting so consumed with anxiety over these things that I simply pop.

I have a couple of small projects coming up, but not with anyone who can afford to pay me full price. Yes, I do have a sliding fee scale. Extremely small businesses and individuals get a break, because they have very little spare cash. And that's who I seem to be working for right now. When I work.

The money I had left from before, plus the money my mom gave me, plus some of the other is shrinking much too quickly. It was a lot of money, but between me and the estate, it's going, going. 

Health insurance is just about prohibitively expensive for me. If you take even one medicine routinely, you can't get individual health insurance; you have to buy it from the High Risk Pool. Which is far more expensive in Houston that it was in Oregon. And I have a much higher deductible. I'm thinking of doubling the deductible so I can lower the monthly cost. The cost went up significantly when I turned 50. Lucky me.

My rent is not cheap, but it certainly is not the most expensive around here. If I want to go significantly cheaper, I'd have to move into a unit that is too small for my stuff, or even for an actual dining table, or I'd have to move to places that I don't really want to live.  And rent is going up at the end of my lease in a couple of months.

I have credit card debt, because I've been unemployed for a long time, except for bit and pieces, and I've had expenses. 

If Mom's house doesn't sell soon, or if I don't get some real income soon, or if I don't win the lottery soon, I'm going to be hurting big time.

I am one scared kitty right now.

The Sincerest Form of Flattery

Today I am following the lead of ... copying, perhaps ... an author named Lani Diane Rich. She began a blog series under her Lucy March name to document her life and personal changes over the next 516 days, which is when she hits her 40th birthday.

In 1 year and 2 weeks, I will be 50. That is 54 weeks. Three hundred seventy-eight days. Wow. There is a lot I want to do with myself and my life by then. Some very real changes I want to make. And I want to blog about what I do and the changes I make, to share with my friends and family, most of whom are far away, to give myself regular writing practice that stretches both my skills and my creativity, and to give myself a record of all these things. These are the goals I originally set for this blog.

The Texas Skye in Summer

I'm living in the land of summer. The land of sunshine and heat. The land of warmth in temperature and warmth in people.

The land of tropical storms and hurricanes and killing levels of heat and humidity.

I worry about summer here. I worry about August and September, which are supposed to be the killer months, the months that could send me running for the PNW without so much as packing my bags.

I mean, it's not like the temps will faze me. I've been happily roasting (in limited amounts) in 97-degree weather (heat index 101-103). I walk outside from the extremely cold newspaper office, where I have to wear a sweater, and toast myself until I feel warm. Then I walk back into the ice cube of work. And about half the time, I don't turn on my AC in the car, preferring to warm myself as I drive (once the 140-degree heat leaks out thru the open windows, of course).

People are amazed by my tolerance and joy in the heat. They know where I've been. And I've dealt with 100+ degree weather in Eastern Washington (a LONG time ago) and occasionally in Seattle or in the Willamette Valley. Last year May, it hit 103 for a freak weather day in Lincoln City.

But the humidity: I worry about tolerating 110 degrees with 98% humidity for 2 months. I worry about the fact that I have things in my apartment that I want to keep. I worry about the fact that I bought a really nice couch last weekend (to be delivered next week) and would need to move that sucker if I fled.

Then there are the storms; it is now officially storm season.

I worry that maybe I can tolerate neither the NW nor the South, but I cannot afford the northern California coastal or near-coastal areas. (Because that would be the ideal climate for me.) I've made a couple of friends here. I might be on the way to making one or two more: this is so quick for me! :) What if I feel the need to leave?

I worry about money: unemployment ran out and I'm now living on my savings, which represents all the money I have in the world. Well, that and the bit of money I make at The Tribune, which pays for my health insurance, plus a little more. Maybe dinners out.

I don't mind being alone so much anymore. A friend from back "home" asked me how I was when I was a child, what did I do when I was alone. And I remembered that I was mostly solitary as a child, too.

So what did I do? Solitary things, things that occupied me; I rarely felt lonely. I read books. I wrote, I drew, I painted. I rode my bike around and around the cul de sac when my mom wouldn't let me ride out of it. I skated around and around, too. I played with my "dangerous" things: Fun Flowers when I was a child, a toy that could burn you pretty good and that I never had adult supervision when using, never hurt myself with; and my chemistry set when I was a little older, ditto for supervision and never hurting myself (even when I broke a test tube). I climbed a tree and I made my own detective kit to pretend with.

I guess it's time to let myself free of expectations. And just enjoy me, enjoy my life and the sunshine and the heat.

And to create: I've started a creative crochet project (picked up a couple of books); I have a painting sketched out and the supplies ready; I am working on not one, not two, but THREE novel ideas; I have a blog (obviously), and I have a website that desperately needs Search Engine Optimization (SEO) so that potential clients can find me---my site doesn't come up in the first two or three DOZEN pages when you search on "Houston writer/editor" or "Houston freelance writer" or "Houston technical writer." That has to change. And I need to add some other things to my site.

All and all, there is no reason for my solitude to be difficult.

Only the summer heat, and the summer humidity.

Only the expectations and fears floating around in the Texas Skye.