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!

The Wrong Life

Sometimes in therapy I learn something about myself that seems so new, or I get a brilliant new perspective or I see something I hadn't seen clearly before. I guess that's why going to therapy remains worth it. (Besides that whole life ring while I'm drowning in depression thing, of course.) Moments like that bring into sharp focus how for quite a few years I learned nothing new in therapy.

In my mind, I sometimes try to "re-do" my past, think that I can somehow "fix" things. I know it isn't rational: I'm not going to be able to make my family be alive again or change any of a number of other past traumas. But emotionally I feel as if I can do so if only I do it right.

People define themselves differently. In many places in the world, people define themselves by their place within their community. The Navaho people define themselves by their family connections. LIke the Navaho, so did I. Without my family, I feel cut off, I feel like there are huge gaping holes inside me that nothing can fill.

This is not how my life should be. I wanted to marry and have children: I would have made a terrific wife and mother. I am nurturing and loving and giving. The fact that no one ever wanted to marry me has long made me feel there is something wrong with me. I see so many people who have lifelong relationships, people who don't seem to have the qualities I have, people who are takers or who are high-maintenance, and I have to wonder what is wrong with me that no one wanted what I have to give.

My brother was supposed to be my friend when we grew up. He was supposed to be here with me after our parents died. Our children would have been friends and we would have spent a lot of time together.

From a Place of Fear

While lying in bed, trying to make myself get out of bed, I spent some time musing about why I am at such a low place in my life. I have less than $3000 in the bank. I still need to find work. I generally stay in bed until noon or 1. I take a shower about every 5 days or so (I often lose track). I haven't finished my initial read-through on my novel; I read over half of it about a week ago and haven't touched it since. I don't exercise. I don't go for walks. My diet is crap.

Why? I, who have done so many different things in my life and who have made major changes and gone on to success, am stuck and passive. I am afraid. It all comes down to fear.

Detailing each individual fear connected to each individual lack is no longer useful: I believe it's all fused into one solid, darkly shining ball of fear and either it has overwhelmed me past my ability to cope or I have surrendered to it or both. Even that doesn't matter anymore. What matters is that virtually everything I do comes from or passes through a place of fear; fear controls me.

Inside, I want someone to save me. I want someone to take my hand and lead me out of bed early in the morning, lead me through exercise, make sure I eat fruit and vegetables, sit with me while I go through my novel, help me look for work (actually, I want someone to either hand me a job or tell me exactly the right work I should be doing right now), and make sure I go to bed early enough at night.

I don't think I've ever been this passive before in my life, no matter what trials and traumas I've faced. I feel ashamed.

I want to be active. I want to be in control of my own life. I want to make my choices from a positive place. I want to be strong and happy and healthy. I want abundance in all good things. I want to have enough money for all that I need and want, including enough so I can live on my own again, independently and comfortably. This doesn't seem like too much to want.

It's Not Raining

I've heard from my friends that they have been worried about me and I don't blame them. I haven't been this deep in the Abyss for a while. I wondered if I was stuck there for good this time: each time it seems as if it will be forever.

Then Deb and I chatted on IM the other day. Deb supports me, cheers me on, gives me pep talks, and when she feels necessary, gives me come-to-Goddess talks. Using examples from her own life as well as her exquisite personal wisdom, she talked me through a point — out of a bubble? past a barrier? around and over a ledge on a vertical rock face? — and somehow into a better frame of mind.

I am not well, but I am better than I was last week, and that's enough for now. I am standing between rain storms and enjoying the white stratus clouds and wispy blue sky. And I am thinking about Deb's description of how to get out of the Abyss: a spoonful of dirt at a time.

I saw my psych on Wednesday. I wish I could see her every week, but because she is not covered by my new insurance I have to pay her myself so I've backed down to every other week. She liked the "spoonful of dirt" analogy and nodded her head sympathetically when I told her I was hoping it would be more like a dramatic breakthrough.

Michele gave me three things to do:

1. Engage with myself. When I am distracting myself or escaping, as in playing a game or reading in lieu of being aware or acting, re-engage in the moment and really be there. Don't escape. Don't distract.
2. What do I need? What do I want? I am very clear about what I don't need or want — I tell myself and others all the time. I don't want to keep living with my friends. I don't want to work on the Eastside. I don't want to change careers. In fiction, those are all considered "negative goals" and considered poor goals to set for your character. It's better to have positive goals, something to move toward rather than something to move away from.
3. I forgot. Of course this one is getting away from me. I'll remember it. Eventually.

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.

Feeling, Detaching, Continuing

I haven't written in wow — 10 days! I know I usually write about my therapy, but last week, I just couldn't.

Last week's therapy ended up being very emotional and very raw. We started talking about what I wrote about in my last post and pursued it far into my mind and my feelings to see what is behind this desire to reconnect with my past. At the very base of the vortex, we found abandonment and being completely alone. Intellectually, I know that my family did not abandon me and I am not completely alone (besides that fact that we are all basically one on one level). I have people who love me, both locally and scattered across the country. But, at the heart of the matter, those are what I feel.

I cried some. Not as bad as most of the times I cried in Karen's office, but the first time I've cried in Michele's, and the first time I've cried in a while. I really don't like to cry, for numerous reasons. Even more, I don't like to cry in front of someone else. It exhausts me. And when I experience a strong emotion, afterward I detach from emotion for some amount of time.

We ended the hour with a long imaging session. Imaging, visualization, creative imaging: whatever you want to call it. Michele led me and helped me find my way through it and discover things. I'm not going to describe it because it's intensely personal and there are very few people I would be comfortable sharing it with. Hell, I'm barely comfortable sharing it with myself!

Thus, whenever I thought about writing for the blog, I kept thinking about writing about the session, then about how I didn't want to write about the session. So I didn't write, and I didn't write.

I had therapy again today, and after I finished chattering, I told Michele about how I didn't write about last week's session and why. Which in turn led to my emotion/detachment pattern.

I don't want to have this pattern. Last week, on the way home, I left the radio off so I could stay with the feelings from the session and the imaging work. I wanted to ride that emotional wave to the end, the way Michele encouraged me to do. And I did ride it, all the way home. Then, exhausted, I took a long nap. Afterward, I didn't return to thinking about the therapy session or my feelings or the work we'd done and ended with. I didn't do so again until today's therapy.

Why I Don't Return There

Long drives lead me to long thoughts. Sometimes, they even lead to epiphanies. My recent drive down to Oregon lead me to a surprising one.

I have never been to a class reunion with the class I graduated with. In fact, since my mom moved away from there in '91, I have been back exactly once, for the wedding of my step-niece. I spent my last two years of high school and three summers between college sessions in that town, but have had no contact with my old friends since college, except for a very brief moment in the "greeting" line at my little brother's funeral.

I even looked them all up in Facebook a little while back. I think I mentioned that in a post not long after. Part of me felt an instant compulsion to get in touch with them all, to reignite old friendships if possible. And immediately upon the heels of that came a feeling of revulsion and anxiety so severe it was almost a panic attack and it gave me a pain deep in my abdomen. So I didn't do it.

Still, on occasion, the compulsion comes back. Put up a FB page in your old name, it says. Get in touch. But I ignore it.

The idea wandered again into my mind during my drive down to Oregon and I opened my mind to it so I could explore it. I don't remember why or how I lost contact with the last of my high school friends. I do remember a feeling of anger. After I broke up with my boyfriend, he was all nice to me about it, but managed to turn people against me behind my back. (And I'm sure he never told any of them about how he would call me — collect — from the base after he went into the service, crying about how much he hated it.) I was left with a couple of girlfriends with whom I spent my summers when we all returned home between college sessions. But for some reason, that ended and I don't know why. I don't remember.

So why do I always say no when an old high school (and post-college) friend gets in touch (via a mutual friend) to ask if I want to be found by the reunion search committee? Why the revulsion and the anxiety? I wanted to know.

It boils down to the fact that I hate that place. I hated that we moved there, away from the place and people I'd known all my life. I hated the pitiful excuse for a high school. My cat was shot a few months after we moved there, and I'm sure I know which of the neighborhood boys did it. My dad died of a heart attack in our backyard. My little brother is buried in a cemetery less than a mile from our old house. Even when we first moved there, I hated the house: I could barely stand being alone in it, even in the daytime. It felt bad in that house. I was gloriously happy when my mom and her husband moved away from that house and that town.

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!

Stuck to Unstuck? My New Journey

Oh, how badly I've been stuck. I've been exhausted. My brain has felt clogged and slow. I've taken naps for hours almost every day. I have done virtually nothing to further my plans or contribute to the household. I have been a lump since arriving in Seattle.

Luckily for me, my hosts have been very understanding of my exhaustion and have asked little of me so far. Friends have supported my need for sleep and rest. It's just been me who has had higher expectations.

I have a comprehensive list of things I need to do: catch up with people online and over the phone; contact professional connections; get in touch with local contracting agencies; join professional organizations and meetups and attend meetings and events; unpack what I brought to the house; and begin revising my novel.

I don't expect myself to do everything every day or all at once. I have date ranges for everything in my list. Of course, I'm behind on probably half the list so far. But maybe that's due to my unreasonable expectations in the face of unexpected setbacks. Like needing to sleep all the time.

I have a long history of overindulging myself. In response to what seemed to me a lifetime of excessive and unreasonable expectations and a lack of understanding of my needs, I began to allow myself to slack off on things, which started small and gradually grew to encompass everything in my life.

Well, I've completely changed my life again and this, too, must change. There are things I want to do and things I need to do and blowing them off is not acceptable to me any longer. Blowing off these things does not lead to the life I want to live. And that's the important point: there is a life I want to live and I have to put in the time and effort to create it. Always before, I've waited for it to happen. No more.

When I was younger, I pursued my life more actively, so I know I can do it. There are many things I did and was when I was younger: I cleaned frequently and regularly; I wrote and drew and painted on virtually a daily basis; I did physical activities that I enjoyed; and I didn't dwell on my mostly solitary state. And I daydreamed. I played. I imagined. Those are important things in anybody's life, but particularly in the life of a creative person.

So I'm going to relearn old good habits and discard current bad ones. I'm going to be healthier in ways that I can enjoy. I'm going to rediscover my true self and let her out of the various boxes and closets where I've hidden her and all her wonderful, brilliant aspects. I'm going to love for love's sake, I'm going to love and value myself, and I'm going to live a full and rich life for as long as I possibly can.

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.

But What Do I Want?

What do I want from friends and friendship, in general and in specific? That could tell me what I feel I'm missing in my life, and it could inform my casual search for friends. (I don't intend to make an impassioned, active search for friends right now, partly because it sounds kinda scary and stalkerish and partly because it sounds like it would involve the part of me that probably scared off potential friends in the past.)

I already have some of what I want; I'm just listing all my wants, even if I have some of them. And hopefully there is or will be overlap among these friends.

• I want close friends with whom I can talk about anything and everything. Someone to share the good and bad times with. Someone I could cry on (and let me tell you, I don't cry in front of people easily) and who would cry on me if necessary.


• I want friends to do things with, to have fun with. Someone to go to a museum or the zoo with, someone to play card games and board games with, even the twisted games like Cards Against Humanity. Friends who have time for me and like to spend time with me.


• I want friends who get my sense of humor and at least some of my references, including the role-playing-game and H.P. Lovecraft references. I make jokes that include these things with some frequency and it would be nice to not get the blank look. I want friends who will sincerely laugh at my jokes.


• I want friends who will accept the less-acceptable side of me, the side that I don't talk about even on this blog, the darker side of me, I guess.


• I want a two-way street: give and take in both directions. Friends who will let me do things for them when they need it and who will do things for me when I need it.

That seems pretty comprehensive to me. Isn't this what most people want from friends? Or is my list oddly different from other people's? How is your list of friends you have or want different from mine? How is it the same?

Falling In and Out of Love

My love affair with Houston has been waning, as many of you reading my blog have already surmised. I don't have many friends here and none of them are close friends. I don't have work. And it gets too hot and humid for too long for my taste in the summer. And it has giant roaches.

That being said, I have a terrific therapist and psychiatrist. I am involved with an interesting non-profit for which I do both volunteer and paid work. Rarely is there snow and ice in the winter.

I know that the friends part is due largely because I haven't gotten involved in a lot of things. I have gone to professional meetings and networking lunches and met a couple of women there, but they have drifted away. I'm involved with the non-profit and enjoy the people I know through there, but only a couple of them socialize with me and that is rarely. So I guess I have tried.

I think I'm noticing this more since my trip to Oregon. I got to see several friends (and was perhaps busier than was necessary for a vacation). I got to see the ocean again, which I love. I even imagined the sound of gulls my first morning back in Houston. 

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! 

Me and James Dean

What could I possibly have in common with James Dean, you might wonder? Simple: a restless and rebellious spirit. For some reason, I was not a rebellious teen. I argued with my parents, but not just for the sake of argument; I wanted answers. I raced my car fast a couple of times, but just to see what it could do, then I stopped. I made out with my boyfriends. But none of it was because I was rebelling.

Even the fact that my very nature was antithetical to my parents social and political beliefs wasn't about being rebellious. It was about being me.

Since I've been a grown up, say, since my early 30s, I've been rebellious. I don't like taking orders: I want to know why before I do something. If I tell myself "no sugar" because I'm trying to be healthy, the next thing you know I have an empty box of cookies on my kitchen counter. When the folks at work said "no more 'creative' hair colors," the first thing I wanted to do was put a rainbow in my hair.

I didn't. But I'm going to keep wearing 'creative' fingernail polish and brightly colored and patterned socks. I cannot give in completely.

Be Like Julie

For the next 28 days, I am striving to be like my friend Julie, she who comments here regularly. Julie is the most positive and most zen person I've ever known and I could use a lot of that in my life. So I am going to follow her ways of thinking and believing and, in part, behaving (I had frosting today, Julie!), to see what effects they have on me and my moods, my world view, and my blood sugar.

These are the things that most come to mind as I approach this month (hope you don't mind, J):

1. assume the Universe is a friendly, positive place
2. assume that my Spirit chose this life and these lessons, and that my life IS about lessons
3. believe in visitations, psychic phenomena, and magick
4. be zen and don't want what I don't have, refrain from envy and jealousy 
5. be unabashedly me ... er ... her ... us ... 
6. give voice to my true self, rather than being afraid of what others might think
7. smile a lot, laugh a lot (Julie, can I borrow Dan so I can, um, ... a lot? LOL)
8. and I'm going to eat frosting

There are probably some other things I need to consider, and I'm expecting her to remind me, but the first one is probably the most important and the fourth one is probably next most important. My life does seem to be strongly affected by seeing the Universe as a frightening, malign place (hey, I have my reasons!), and by wanting so much that I do not have, cannot have in the near future, probably cannot ever have. Always wanting. So other than a couple of things I honestly need (a dresser, a vacuum that works, curtain rods so I can put up some curtains, and possibly a simple, inexpensive sewing machine so I can do a couple of inexpensive decorating things to make the place more homey), I have everything I want. (Thank goodness I ordered that LEGO before I made this crazy decision!) I might have to stop reading catalogs and decorating magazines for the month, however!

But I honestly want to learn some of the ways Julie approaches life, with her positivity, happiness, and her zen quality of "enough." She seems much happier than I am. Of course, I'm sure that has nothing to do with our almost completely opposite approaches to life and our world views.  

Therefore, I declare June (and part of July) Be Like Julie Month. C'mon and join me!