Love and Spontaneity #reverb10

Dec. 16 Prompt: Friendship. How has a friend changed you or your perspective on the world this year? Was this change gradual, or a sudden burst? -Martha Mihalik

Dec. 17 Prompt: Lesson learned. What was the best thing you learned about yourself this past year? And how will you apply that lesson going forward? -Tara Weaver

Perfect.  Just as I sit down to write this, another headache is coming slamming in.  The barometer is changing, and like many migraneurs, barometer changes can give me headaches.  More often than not they do.  But I had gotten away with the first 24 hours of this storm, so I had hoped maybe I would be spared.  Sigh.

I couldn't decide how to approach the friendship prompt.  I feel like I have endured a lot this year, but most of it was spent in our duplex, just my husband and myself.   It was much more a year of physical and emotional stress than it was of perspective change.  I know that stress and mayhem are supposed to build character, but my character can only be built up so much before it topples me with its weightiness.  I know how to get through shitty times, because so much of my life has been shitty.  That sounds awful, and I should make it clear I am very happy.   But that is almost entirely because of my marriage.  This is not to disparage my friends.   And perhaps it is just a way of pointing out how dear of a friend my husband is to me.  But he was the person's whose shoulder I sobbed when it all became too much.   And vice versa, frankly.  

We have become better friends this year.  We both talk about it a lot:  It is as if we have just met each other again, 10 years later.  Again, a horrible year in terms of events, a fantastic year in terms of my marriage.  Our family is mostly on the East Coast.  I have a sister in Dallas, and a sister in Australia.  We are a pretty self-contained unit, and both being shy introverts, we aren't the most social people, so we really rely on each other.  I actually am more of a social person than he, which is almost scary.  

Although I do think my sociability would be enhanced if I felt I could confidently accept invitations in advance.  But I always risk being sick the day of.  Which cleverly segues into my lesson learned in 2010.  Heh.

It is hard to get me to do things at the spur of the moment.  Yet I have more "memorable" moments when I say "Fuck it, let's do it," than when I try to plan ahead.   I mentioned in an earlier post that I plan compulsively, and while I do not have OCD, it is considered something I need to pay attention to as part of my overall mental health.  Of course, keeping an eye on over-planning is kind of a Catch-22 for me, but I do as best I can.

Whenever I say, "Okay, let's do it," I have fun.  Always.  Whether it is to run to a restaurant at the last minute, or catch a movie, stuff that may not seem very bold to you.   But I can't even be sure I will be functional the next day, so planning for things is no good.   In fact, I know I use the obsessive planning as a defense mechanism for my lack of control over my health.  

And I also have a tendency to "hoard" the hours I am not in pain.  Sometimes I just enjoy hanging out doing not much, when I am feeling all right.  Add that time to the times I am down with headaches, and that leaves not many opportunities for spontaneity.  

Spontaneity for me could mean deciding on the spur of the moment to order a fun dinner from Whole Foods for New Year's Eve.  Then ordering it two weeks ahead of time.  But hey, I ordered it as soon as I thought of it!  And some of the joy I do find in planning comes from exactly this type of anticipation, so I actually was not being as much of a freak as usual.

But it can also mean moments of truly plunging in, and challenging myself, such as sharing the communal showers at the Oregon Country Fair, and overcoming just a little bit of my body-hatred.  It also meant I decided to go to a class on the Medical Cannabis Industry.  And at the moment, I am annoyed, because I had another great example of when taking a chance did something positive, and the migraine has knocked it out of my head.  Grrr.  Planning does have its place, I guess.

I will never be able to stop planning entirely.  I see the same behavior in other family members!  But I am trying to take risks, however tame they may seem to others.  

In fact, I just decided to let my hair grow out its natural color (with plenty of gray), and made the hair appointment for early next week!   And earlier that same day, I am going to stop off at my favorite tattoo shop to discuss my next tattoo.  Wheeee!

Baby steps, people.

Writing and Mindfulness, #reverb10

I forgot to include December 1st's prompt for my first blog post of #reverb10.   But here is the prompt for Day 2/December 2nd:


"What do you do each day that doesn't contribute to your writing -and can you eliminate it?" (Author: Leo Babauta)

As I suspect it will be for many people, this was a really hard question for me to answer.  Damn you, #reverb10, for throwing a curve ball so early!  As punishment, this is going to be more of a process post, and less reflective.

When I began to ruminate on this question, I realized it was very difficult for me to come up with something I did daily that interfered with my writing.  But I had absolutely no problem thinking of all the things I don't do every day, all the mind loops and stall tactics that I use to excuse the quality of my writing, or not writing at all.  These are some of the things I thought of, when I tried to think of something I did daily:

• I don't focus enough on my formal, non-blog writing, which harms my development as a writer, and therefore the quality of my blog.  
• I don't set aside a time, or set a timer at some point during the day, to just bang out whatever comes into my head.  I know this is a good exercise if I want to get serious about writing, but I never seem to just start doing it.
• I never write down ideas when they pop into my head, even just a few words on the back of an envelope. By the time I sit down later, the ideas are lost.  
• I haven't sought an outlet for my writing.  I am one of those people who needs a deadline to really get anything polished.  I can't bring myself to complete anything I start, without that line in the sand.  

I have so many half written short stories, articles, and yes, even ideas for a novel, all tucked away in a large wooden keepsake box.  It also holds reprints of the very few things I have actually published, as talismans.  As if the fact of their completion will magically rub off, or positively influence my enormous collection of half-thoughts, and stories ending mid-paragraph.

By the same token, I never pull anything out of the big wooden keepsake box to revise or rethink, or insert into other, longer, writings.  It is like that wooden box is a coffin for my writing.  A coffin stuffed with notebooks, half used; journals with bi-annual posts; copies of legal briefs; and the few articles I have published.  I should be pulling them out, dissecting them, and cannibalizing them for new, and hopefully better, pieces.  It is as if they were lost to the mists of time.

That my approach to this prompt was immediately negative is not surprising to me.  I have a very negative approach to my entire life, I am pensive, intense, and not a very sweet person.  This makes my writing seem very self-indulgent, and inward looking, or at least that is how it reads to me.   Part of what concerns me is that my writing is always memoir-ish, but makes no real attempt to make my experiences seem universal.

How do I turn myself around?  How do I start to feel positive about what I write, and have written?   How do I take my intensity and self-indulgence, and use it to write, instead of angrily ruminate?

One therapy to which I have been subjected is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).  I didn't really enjoy it, or the other people in my group. I was enrolled in the sessions as part of my course of treatment for bipolar illness, although it has since been found that CBT is of zero benefit to those who are bipolar.  Nonetheless, it was helpful for anxiety, and to some extent, compulsive behaviors.  But the most important thing I learned about was the quasi-Buddhist theory of mindfulness.

In my life, being mindful means living in the now, and listening to my thoughts, and what questions they raise.  It is about finding the patterns of flawed and negative thinking, and being able to say: "I see I am beginning to follow my old negative thought pattern.  I need to change my orientation."  It is hard to do at first.  No, I take that back, it is always hard to do.  Mindfulness requires a lot of work, and it forces self-knowledge, whether you want it or not.

I am hoping this year to begin to obliterate the negative thought loops that hold me back from writing.  My only weapon may be mindfulness.  But it is a strong one.

Crazy with a Conscious

Once, a little over 10 years ago, we received a catalog (we still shopped with catalogs in the 20th century). It was kind of a yuppy faux-eco clothing catalog.  This was just at the start of Green being equated with being "hip."

One of the items they sold was cashmere sweaters. But these sweaters were special:  The animals (and even the herd's people!) were treated extra super-duper carefully, and fed delicious things. We could feel good about wearing these cashmere sweaters, they were grown on such happy, healthy, ecologically sound goats. Scrawled across the page of the magazine, in huge, italic type, was "Sweaters with a conscious...." Once we picked ourselves up off the floor, we went around begging friends and neighbors for their copies of the catalogs, so we could each have a copy, and distribute them to a few key friends.

What led me to reminiscing about this story is a pretty good example of manic thought processes, so let's see if I can write my day out, so you can see what a disordered/disorganized thought process looks like.

Last night, I decided to record a three part series on a subject, that while often discussed on my blog and various places where I go by my real name, is still controversial.   I am sure you can guess what about.  I already recorded the three part series, a mini-course on medical cannabis for patients, and blue-toothed them over to my computer.  I spent all morning working on them, arranging materials, thinking through what I was going to say, running rough dress rehearsals.  I even changed my clothes, and made my hair look reasonably nice (one more day, tomorrow it needs to be washed).  I had also looked over the third segment, and decided it needed to be redone, and started pondering what I felt could be improved upon.  

I had awoken with a migraine, but that is almost par for the course these days, and this was SUCH A VERY GOOD IDEA!  It pushed the pain into the background.  In the first part, I discuss what medical cannabis is, why I use it, and how to go about getting a recommendation (nothing illegal).  I also go over civil rights, going over a few different scenarios where knowing your rights is important.  I even almost manage to hide my name while demonstrating what different documents looked like.  Almost.

Not that it is would be hard to trace it back to me, the real person:  Those of you coming from Facebook and Twitter either know me, or are following me because I use medical cannabis.  And anyone randomly coming across the blog wouldn't be able to identify me without at least affirmatively searching.  Plus, all my in laws are blocked on every social network to which  I belong (nice, I know.  I never said I was a sweet person).

Now, the second video goes over methods of ingestion.  Yes, with full on display of paraphernalia.  One accumulates a great deal of it when one has consumed cannabis for over two-thirds of her life (oh, yes).  I actually demonstrate one type.  Yes, with the real medication.

The third segment was showing different types of cannabis, some I have, some I have containers from when I had last had it, so I could explain types I didn't happen to have.  And of course, the real stuff.  Several strains, and some hash.   All on tape.

I was excited about it.  I planned to put it up right away, but decided to wait until tonight.  I'd wait until DH went to sleep.

Then the duvet from Nordstrom, the one about which I had been so excited, arrived.  I opened the first box, which was one of the shams.  It was so beautiful!  I excitedly opened the other box, but wait a second:  That wasn't the duvet I ordered, was it?  I hurried back to the bookmarked site.  SHIT!  What I had thought was the duvet was a coverlet, and I had assumed the actual duvet was a set of sheets; it was SO different than the shams and coverlet.  I didn't even really like this duvet.  Plus, it is ivory.  I have a stinky little dog, who has light brown hair.   We had already eliminated black as an option, just at the thought of her fur woven through each stitch of fabric.  This would show dirt as well.  I was back to square one, plus I was 100% in love with the shams. Shams!  Who would think?

Now I had to have something as close to what I had expected as possible.  Those shams, I wanted those shams.  I started doing frantic google searches. I got angry, then furious.  I was so angry at that stupid duvet, I felt personally affronted by it.  Now I was too upset to re-tape the third part of my series, and my head was killing me, all the "pain relief" of focusing on my narration was gone.   I had to go lie down, the continuity of the series was going to be totally fucked up.  Maybe I should start the whole thing over tomorrow?  I went to take a nap for a few hours.

DH called, and told me someone had been hit by a train, so he didn't know when he would be getting in.  As morbid as that is, it gave me time to calm down.  I woke up completely, and realized my head felt much better.  Maybe I could tape the last part over after DH went to bed.  I started to actually dress up, he had said at lunchtime that he would love to go out for dinner, if my head cleared up.

....DH wouldn't like that I was going to broadcast this at all, so better to tape it when he was out, or asleep, and post it, and never let him see it....

That was kind of weird.  I don't really keep things secret from DH.  Yes, I am hesitant about keeping him up to date about my spending, but frankly, he looks at our bank account every day, he sees what is going out (hence his recent expression of displeasure). I pushed my concern to the back of my mind, but it did niggle.

DH came home, and we spent about hour giggling and hanging out.  I was having "outbursts" of silly, but also weirdly hostile.  I genuinely thought I was joking as the words flew out of my mouth, but once they were out, I would think, "Geez, that was mean!" And  I would apologize.  But DH thought I was a laff-riot.  Still,  I felt uncomfortable, it was as if a filter were gone.   I might still have made those jokes if I weren't all at sixes and sevens emotionally, but I would have had the extra two seconds to think about what was about to come barreling out of my mouth, and stop it, if I thought it was unwise.

Those of you who know DH knows he has a very bizarre sense of humor.  I am lucky.

We went to dinner at an Italian restaurant as close to around the corner as you can get with a Jersey barrier down the center of our major thoroughfare.  We had never been before, but Yelp said really good things pretty consistently.  It was so close I couldn't believe we hadn't tried it, although I am picky about Italian.  Amilia's is a lovely mid-range Italian restaurant, that also sells a rather extensive list of more American-style sandwiches.

We wanted wine with dinner, so we shared a platter of bruschetta to start.  Now the reviews of their bruschetta had been raves, and I had thought, "Really?  Bruschetta?"  I mean, I have eaten a great deal of bruschetta in my day, inside Italy and out.  But holy shit, this may have been some of the best bruschetta I have ever eaten!  Nomnomnom.  Then I had a chicken penne dish with a cream sauce, spinach, mushrooms, fresh tomato, crisp pancetta, cubes of chicken breast, and perfect al dente pasta.  I was shocked at how good it was.  DH had Chicken Parm, and was also very pleased.  We each had a glass of Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc, from New Zealand.  DH ate all his chicken, but couldn't eat the side of fettucine, or all his veggies.  I got through less than half of mine, but brought it home.  A yummy lunch (or more evilly, perhaps, a yummy midnight snack.  Hell, a midnight gorge, there is a lot).  


We came home, happy and full, and chattering away.  DH was happy, because he could tell he was going to get lucky.  I was happy because for once a migraine hadn't ruined a weekend evening out, for the first time in at least a month.  Thing went as DH hoped.  But I had a lot of trouble concentrating, and staying focused (you might not think that could even be an issue, but my mind is going a million miles an hour).  It was actually somewhere mid-fuck (sorry) that I began to really start to think about what I was planning on posting on the Internet.

But it was informative and instructive!  Everything I did was legal under California law, and de facto legal under Obama's administration!  I want to be a cannabis activist!  I have committed felonies on behalf of causes before (syringe exchange was a felony, can you believe it?)!

But this was all pre-Internet.  Not to mention pre-DH.  There is someone else to take into consideration.

No Fair.  Why do I have to change my approach?

Wait a second.   Haven't I been saying I am labile and manic?  I have been cleaning a lot, but today I was so busy taping, I didn't get any cleaning done.  In other words, I was still in a frenzy, it just didn't happen to involve cleaning.

And isn't one the classic symptoms of mania lack of self-awareness?  Maybe I am being a little hasty.  I can always post new, better, videos when I am feeling better, right?  I am too embarrassed now to even run the idea by DH.  I know it is the mania.  This is mania, not hypo-mania.  I don't know what to do.

So my conscious kicked in.   Cashmere goats may be raised so you can wear a sweater in good conscience, but what really matters is I got my self-consciousness back.

Even crazy people can be conscious.