Blog fatigue

Hey!  I haven't been around for a while, but there are a few reasons for that.  I have been having horrific headaches, and a couple of mood bobbles and when I have had the energy to blog, I blog on a support site for the crazies.

When I just feel like splatting words onto a page, as a writing exercise, I have been using 750words.com.  A great place to write garbage safely. I still fixate on myself, too much, I need to be more conscious of having an idea or topic upon which to riff.

So with all the writing I was doing here in December, followed by my spreading my writing efforts on other websites, and the headaches, I have been neglecting this blog.

Well, I hope to both get back into the "What I wore," and thrift shop finds. I do believe I haven't shown you some of my final finds before this total collapse of my health.  Not to mention general the discussions about body image and BP illness.  I can sense it will be coming soon....

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.

5 Minutes of Appreciation #reverb10

December 14 prompt:  Appreciate.  What is the one thing you have come to appreciate most in the past year? How do express gratitude for it? -Victoria Klein

December 15 prompt:  5 minutes. Imagine you will completely lose your memory of 2010 in 5 minutes.  Set the alarm for 5 minutes and capture the things you most want to remember about 2010? -Patti Digh


I once again have been having health problems, so I am combining some prompts, and may do so in a couple of days again.

I received the Dec. 14 prompt, and I was beginning to feel like I was being asked essentially the same thing over and over.  What did you like best about X?  What was the best thing you did?  Where did you have the most fun?  I know it isn't quite that simplistic, or overly gooey sweet.  I understand it must be hard to come up with prompts.  But I wonder if the authors aren't becoming too engrossed in making their prompt as "deep" as possible.  I can keep only mining that single, "deep" vein for so long.  I thought about skipping the prompt outright.

But then I received the December 15 prompt.  These kind of timed exercises have always helped me; as I have said, I do best with a line in the sand.  Plus, I felt like if I just started spewing memories, the things I appreciate might naturally rise to the surface.    So I set my smart phone's timer for 5 minutes, and these are the memories that "pushed through"
-
Oregon Country Fair-Avocado Dream Boats-The Ritz-spinach and cheese turnovers-glitter-Mount Shasta, the halfway point to Veneta-Driving near Corning for olives-Trip to Lassen Volcanic National Park-Mud Pots-Almost brain surgery-More and more seizures-More and more migraines-Violet and the root canal-mixed episode-hypo manic episode-Foot Surgery-Life on a scooter-DH gets new job-Quitting daycare-S, J and H-Emptying our savings-We end the year in the black-Making it through the tough times-growing closer-planning for our 10th anniversary-Job interview at a dispensary-coloring books-shopping for jewelry-Eni-thing-It's a Girl Thing-thrift shop hunting-starting to read again-learning cribbage-Happy 9th Anniversary-DH turns 40-Niece turns 3-"Sister3" turned 40-Oaksterdam University-Medical Cannabis-activism-Violet in the yard-riding a bike-car breakdowns-Crazyboards, and blogging-Blogger, and blogging-Told my mother to back off-My mother aged significantly-My father is sick
-
Now, I did corrects some spelling, and re-organize the list so it was a little more coherent to me.  Out of the 49 I quickly counted (which means the actual count could be anywhere between 47 and 51), 16 (about a third) of the memories I came up with had to do with my husband's and my health and finances.

You can see by the things I italicized what was going on in our personal lives:  Fears about health and money, surgeries, disappointment, and just overall stress.  I know a lot of marriages are pulled apart by money and health problems.  I have watched it happen to friends and enemies alike.  Maybe it is because we have both spent our lives since puberty struggling with illness.   Maybe it is because we both know what it is like to have negative worth, and that it is survivable:  At one point right before I met DH, my finances were so bad, the FDIC wouldn't allow me to have a bank account.  He had almost as bad a history.  We have worked hard to build up our savings in our marriage, because we are both late to the land of "financially responsible adulthood."

For 11 months, we watched our savings dwindle.  We actually were starting to think of selling parts of our 401k.  I hate money. Hate. it.

So when my husband was suddenly hired at the end of August, literally days before he was scheduled to have brain surgery, it blew a hole in our plans, and I hate when there is a change of plan.  Suddenly, there was not going to be brain surgery, but there was going to be income.

Much to my shock, I was torn.  I had spent the entire month of August being tended to my psychiatrist, preparing myself for my husband's surgery.  I wasn't intentionally trying to make it "all about me," but I just fell apart at the idea of something going wrong.

Yet when the surgery was postponed so he could take the job, I was angry at him for not doing the surgery instead.    Since then, the threat of surgery has reappeared, but I have come to accept I cannot make this decision for DH.  He will have it within the next year, it is just a matter of whether it is sooner or later.

So all of this depressing stuff has ironically made me appreciate my husband and my marriage more than ever.  I am bad at expressing gooey emotions towards my husband.   But we have had so much time together in 2010, that we were able to talk about our relationship and our marriage a lot, and no matter how difficult or thorny the topic.  It never seemed to take a negative turn.

So this is not exactly riveting, but I show my appreciation for my husband and my marriage by keeping the lines of communication open, and trying to be brave enough to say things I am nervous about saying.  So far, it is working.

Community: Mentally Interesting #reverb10

Prompt #7 Community.  Where have you discovered community, online or otherwise, in 2010?  What community would you like to join, create or more deeply connect with in 2011? -Cali Harris

Even I am getting tired of hearing myself say that 2010 was a difficult year for me.  Unfortunately, that doesn't change the fact that it was.

Along with my DH's unemployment, and my long term immobilization by surgery, I started to have mood swings, and was frankly mildly depressed through the part of the of the year when I was most immobile.

And like some other people with bipolar, with the changes in the season and the changes of light, come more mood swings.   In the spring, I become hypomanic.  In the summer, I tend to have a mixed episode.  Then hypomania returns sometime around Xmas (yes, I'm keeping an eye on it, but it can still creep up on you).  Solstices, in particular, do not tend to be happy times for me.

I began to worry that discussing every troubling thought that crossed my mind with my DH was not healthy for either our marriage or us.  But even if I wanted to go to therapy, which I did not, I was trapped in the house by my foot. I needed someone who could listen to some of my more crazy thoughts without freaking out.

So I turned to an online bulletin board on which I had lurked now and then, CrazyBoards.org. (CB) For the first time, I stopped lurking, and began to venture forth into the discussions, commenting, comparing, sharing my experience.  There are people with all types of illness, and all levels of suffering.  People living with anything from ADHD to psychoses (although I don't want to imply there is a hierarchy of mental illnesses).  I have mentioned I am bipolar, and have migraine.  My official diagnosis is Bipolar NOS, which is when the illness doesn't quite fit into either the Bipolar I or II compartments.

One of the great things about CB is that we don't have to play nice.  It is accepted that sometimes people are crazy, and other times, someone might need a stern talking to, to get help.  People don't hesitate to say what they think, however unpleasant.  The oft repeated mantra is "we don't have to walk on eggshells here."  That is in contrast to most of the other mental illness support boards.  Those boards will ban people for confrontation or being negative.  The average board for the mentally ill is a much more strictly moderated, polite, non-confrontational, warm and fuzzy place.

One of the first rules of CB's user agreement stipulates, "You won't find that your every post is responded to with feigned warm fuzziness and cyberhugs.  Frankly, we think cyberhugs suck."  Definitely the place for a mentally-ill cynic, who has dealt with too much shit in her life. 

For that reason the CB boards are considerably more real, helpful, genuine, and brutal than the average milquetoast site.  To be honest, it is a fascinating place.  The population is generally very bright, and the more idiotic people tend to get run off rather quickly.  The focus is on mental illness, and the forums are divided and sub-divided into conditions, or medications, but threads can and do take sharp detours.  We discuss our relationships.  We discuss our hobbies.  We fight, we form cliques.  And we confide and admit to each other our hallucinations and delusions.

My favorite feature of Crazyboards.org is the community blog.  One of the really bad, crazy things I do when I am hypo-manic, manic, or having a mixed-episode, is I post information that is very revealing about myself, but also about other people interacting with me during these frenzies.  I embarrass some people, and piss other people off to the point they break off friendships.  Sadly, this is often to my benefit, even when I handled the situations anywhere from poorly to thoughtlessly.  But until accidentally freeing myself from some of my relationships, I never realized how much I had been tamping down my personality, not to mention opinions, around people I considered friends.  It is only in retrospect that I see that those friendships were already fraying at the edges, and the biggest red flag should have been that I no longer felt like I could be myself around them.

CBs provides a safe place to blog.  One can control who can and cannot see with much more precision that one can on Blogger.  I feel like if I am indiscreet there, it is a little safer.  It is definitely a form of self-therapy.

Next year, I hope to dip my toes into the Medical Marijuana activist community.  I know from prior activism that that is going to mean inserting myself into the community of activists working on that problem.  My fellow dirty hippies.  2011 is definitely the year of Cannabis.

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.