Month: March 2016

Snags have been reached.

The vacuum is wounded.  If not mortally, it is no longer able to function at its primary job of carpet suckage.

And thus all the world is ending in a terrible tidal wave of futility and despair.

I might be exaggerating.

But the bedroom floor is definitely looking worse than it did before I started vacuuming.  So futility is on menu.

And despair is a close cousin when I attempt to wrestle with this damn vacuum. I thought I fixed the wound but it continues to be nearly useless at doing anything but redistributing the things it is attempting to suck up.

I am going to shoot it and be done with it.

Its not a great vacuum.  Taking it to vacuum doctor will cost as much as a new vacuum of the same quality.

This is annoying for a lot of reasons.  The first is that I have very little desire to spend my hard earned money on a vacuum.  The second is that I will have to go to Walmart: House of Shame.

Mostly, I just don’t want to go to Walmart.  Its big and overwhelming and I will likely get there and they won’t have the one I want and I will consider another version but will feel like I should just try another walmart and …

Sigh.  Journey to Walmart:  The Challenge is on the list now.

How I get things done with depression/anxiety.

I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.

~John Keats

That is what depression is for me at its worst.  Its apathy of the greatest and most destructive sort and when its manageable its a fight to gain enough traction to move.

When its manageable, I have to set up systems or I won’t win.  These are methods, tricks, processes I use to get myself to do the simple everyday tasks that you do without much thought.

The best systems are habits.  For example, my morning routine includes things that are habit.  I clean the kitty litter every morning before I leave for work.  I take out the trash when I leave the apartment.  They just happen without much thought.  And once the habit is there, it has to be a very bad day indeed to stop the habit.

But some things are just not tasks you can turn into a habit.  For example, I’m not going to vacuum my house daily.

So I set up a list of tasks that I will do.  The items on the list are not huge.  It does not say for example:  Clean the Bathroom.   It says clean the sink.  Clean the toilet.  Sweep the floor.  Mop the floor.  Clean the tub.

Then I set up a timer.  The timer is set for 45 minutes or an hour.  When it goes off I do a task for 5 minutes or until its done, whichever is first.  Then I reset the timer.  If I don’t finish the task, it has to be finished when the timer goes off next.

When I do that all day, I get a clean apartment, clean clothing, etc.

The thing is that nothing on the list is overwhelming.  And nothing on the list takes more than 5 minutes in normal circumstances.

Another thing I do is time how long it takes me to do onerous tasks.  Cleaning kitty litter used to be a bugaboo of mine.  I used to put huge blocks in my mind around it.  So one day I timed how long it took.  45 seconds.  It stopped being onerous when I realized it took less than a minute of my life.  Sometimes my brain creates disproportional views of things – and taking a simple step like timing it creates an objective ruler to break into my misconception.

I want to create more habits.  Routines that get done daily.  However starting and sustaining a routine for long enough to become a habit is hard.  My attempts have been failures so far.

Depression is not a static thing.  It changes daily and even hourly.  Its on a continuum.  Sometimes I just don’t move.  Stillness.  I can’t even get out of bed to go to work.  I’m nonfunctional.  There is no hope at all to exercise willpower.  Its not even in my list of options.

Sometimes I’m functional.  And if I pull out the mental whip and beat myself with it I can get some basic things done like going to work.  Its a weird terribly unhealthy way to get myself to move.

Sometimes I functional and hopeful.  And in those days I work with systems and goals..

Today I’m functional and hopeful.  Today is a good day.

Good Morning from Lily & I

lily computerI had lots of exciting plans for this weekend…

OK.  Exciting might possibly be hyperbole. I had plans.  To organize and clean and cook.

And now the lifesucking weekend is here and I can already feel it is going to be a battle.

I may be the only person in the world who does not like weekends.  Or to be more precise – days off.

I need days off.  But when they arrive I stop moving.  And all productive things happen only if all the stars align, if I implement a process of timers and lists and and my brain isn’t using the ONE RING* to ruin my life.

My life is a strange dichotomy.  At work, I’m very productive.  I do things both required and not required.  But when I leave work, it all falls apart.  I want so much to transfer the way I am at work to the rest of my life.  But I have yet to figure out the way to do that.

To be clear – depression/anxiety doesn’t disappear at work.  I still struggle with focus and make ridiculous mistakes because of it.  I have elaborate quality check processes because of this.

I still isolate at work.  I keep my back to the room, and don’t socialize much when I’m at work.  People will talk to me and I will respond with my back to them.  I’m not acting like a normal person there.

But I do get things done.  And I mostly don’t get stuff done at home.  I sit in bed all day, playing on the internet or reading.

Anyway, I’m going to begin the battle to make things happen today.  First the list.

*ONE RING: Used to “rule them all” or to ruin my life with Anxiety/Depression.

 

How To Control Your Craving – with your BRAIN.

Apparently, if you imagine eating the thing you crave it helps.  Well.  You can’t imagine eating it once.  You have to imagine eating it 30 times.

Yup. 30 times.  You have to close your eyes and walk through the process of eating and savoring and enjoying your food of choice.  30 times in a row.

WHY ISN’T ANYTHING EASY?????

I mean who can just stop what they are doing to imagine eating a piece of cake over and over 30 times?  It takes less than 5 minutes to eat cake, which I can do while working – it would probably take 15 to create the fantasy.

In my life, I would spend at least 12 hours of my day with my eyes closed snarfing my way down a Hogwarts style dining table.  At some point, my employer is going to get annoyed with my constant war against the craving and just shove a piece of cake down my throat.

 

How very irrational I am.

This morning I stopped at traffic light and saw a series of Trump lawn signs.  After I got over my overwhelming urge to thwart the free election process and pull the signs, I realized I was partly offended by their existence because they surprised me.

They surprised me???

I’m seeing Trump everywhere online, why was surprised?  Because my brain separates my real world from my online world.  And so when I saw Trump signs in my real world it was REAL.  It was more offensive because it is Real World.

I think that some part of my brain equates my online world with fantasy.  Online is all just happening in my head, I can’t touch you guys, I can only read you and that means all of my interactions are just thoughts inside my head.   Its ultimately not that different than my daydreams.  Just stuff that happens in my brain.

The only tangible thing that makes my online experience different than my daydreams is this computer.  But the computer’s physical existence is apparently a very transparent veneer – because I was surprised to see Trump signs.

And I’m irrational.

The continuing theme from Syrian refugees is education for their children.  It is a refrain from the children as well.  12 year old children who ask only to go to school.  These children are losing the crucial years for education.

They came from a country that with an infrastructure for educating all children and now they will likely get barely enough to subsist.

There is so much tragedy in this crisis.  The dehumanizing of people is huge – but the long term economic poverty that is going to be thrust upon this generation of Syrians is tragic.  They will not be saved when they move out of the refugee camps.  They will be then have to face the handicap of a lack of education in a world that has zoomed along technologically without them.  They will not own the skills necessary to live in the modern world as adults.

“I don’t trust fanatics.”

My mother told me that when I came home from church talking about a sermon.  The preacher was condemning pornography in mainstream movies.  He and several church elders had gone to see Porkies as a ‘research project’ and were “appalled” at its content. (yes, I was a teenager when Porkies came out.)

I had been inclined to self flagellation because I saw Porkies and thought it was hilarious and had not been all that worried about its over the top nudity and sexual situations.

“I don’t trust fanatics.” That was all my mother said.  But it made me wonder about whether the dear reverend was a fanatic.  I wasn’t sure.  I always assumed he must be good because he was, after all, standing up there preaching.

Fanatics.  Extremists.  They paint narrow lines of conduct, often conduct that is against our very nature.  They define right and wrong and do not admit that sometimes its neither or both.  They don’t care about people, they care about ideas.  They talk about love, and act on hate.  They aren’t about helping, they are about proving their point.

I think there are lots of fanatics in the world.  Folks like my old pastor, who go looking for things to condemn.  They hurt people in many ways.  They create social and legal barricades against people who aren’t like them.  They promote hate and fear.  They do it all in the guise of morality.

When the belief gets strong enough, they blow up buildings and shoot children.  When it is strong enough and supported, they send armies out to war.  And they think its OK.  Because they believe in something.

They are standing next to you.

 

Funny Story…

I used to be VERY VERY fat.  400lbs.

I wore dresses to work, but not pantyhose because being that fat and putting on pantyhose is similar in effort to walking up Everest.

I had a drawer full of underwear.  And I hated to do laundry.  I didn’t do the laundry until I had no underwear left to wear.  I never threw out underwear.  And so toward the end of the cycle I would be down to the “emergency” underwear.  Underwear with little or no elastic at the waist and legs.  Ugly, Granny underwear.  Giant Ugly Granny Underwear. Probably with at least one hole.

One day, I wore my emergency underwear to work, with a dress.  All day long the underwear slowly slid down my body.  I would find subtle ways to hold it up while walking, by keeping my hand on my hip. But mostly I focused on holding my legs together as much as possible when walking, so that even if the waist fell down and was hanging below my crotch, I still had the damn underwear on.

Several times a day I would go into the bathroom to correct the upside down Giant Granny Underwear situation.

After work, I stopped by the grocery store and then drove home.   I lived in a small uptown area.  The streets are lined with Mercedes, Range Rovers, the occasional Rolls.  Lots of upscale restaurants and boutiques.  People would stroll the sidewalks and socialize.

I parked my car across the street and down the block from my building.  The Giant Grannies had slowly crept downward while I was shopping.  But when I got out of the car, my hands filled with grocery bags, I could feel it was pretty bad.  Emergency Giant Ugly Granny Undies were moving into the upside down position.

I walked carefully, with my thighs clenched together, my hands too full of groceries to try and hold them up. Then I had to cross the street.  I stepped off the curb without incident.   I still had the Ugly Grannies held up at the crotch, but the waist was hanging down half way to my knees.

I reached the other side, stepped up on the curb, my legs parted and that was the end of it.  Giant Granny Underwear floated down to my ankles.

I stepped out of them and left them in the gutter, without a backward glance.  Like nothing had happened.

It was a defining moment in my life.

The next morning they were gone.  Someone picked up my Emergency Giant Ugly Granny Undies and took them home.