Corner of Bourbon & Division

The panic hasn't set in yet. I'm moving in two weeks, have got absolutely nothing done, and am fighting against a rising tide of mystery tired. The panic is supposed to trigger adrenaline which in turn will lead to packing, but right now all I've managed to do is go to work, sleep, and put food in my body. I haven't even been eating particularly healthy lately, because I haven't had the wherewithal to cook. I'm not eating absolute junk, but there's been a lot of frozen meals and snack foods.

I don't know if the current amount of tired I'm feeling is the remnants of Covid, or the result of working a fuckton of shifts in a row including evenings, weekends, and now nights, or the result of being stressed and out of shape, or if I'm just one of the unlucky people who don't ever get to feel better when using a CPAP. Or an unholy combination of any or all of it.

*screams into the void*

Yes, I am being melodramatic. It will pass, I promise. ;) Right now, though, all of my feelings are "Woe, and darkness, and teh sad." I really, really wish that my brain's reaction to stress wasn't to go directly into overwhelm and shutdown. It would be so  nice if I had socially acceptable dysfunctional coping mechanisms, you know? I could be a compulsive cleaner, or a compulsive exerciser, but noooooo. I stress eat and procrastinate and doomscroll or play video games. The closest I've come to a "productive" coping mechanism is occasionally baking cookies or making soup.

*lies on the floor*

*screams into the void some more*

I had my meeting with the two M&C folks today, and they were so nice and so sweet to me, and even suggested that I have a "packing party" to get the house packed up. I will see how I get on with packing until the end of next week, and if I'm still in as much trouble as I think I'm in now, I will put up a plea for help on Facebook.

I think part of it is that I haven't had enough sleep this week. I got no sleep on Monday, then only six hours of sleep on Tuesday, and barely scraped together five non-consecutive hours yesterday (because of the aforementioned meeting). I am going to sleep as much as I can today because I have to get up early again tomorrow to go to the credit union. It has also been ungodly hot the past few days, thank you climate change. 

I had one of my relatively rare bouts of insomnia last night. I woke up at 4:45 (after going to bed at half past midnight after my evening shift), and my brain and I had the following conversation:

Brain: "TIME TO BE AWAKE NOW!"

Me: "Um, no. It's not even 5am and my alarm is set for 8:30. I have groceries to get and a therapy appointment at 10:00. I need to sleep so I'm not exhausted for my shift."

Brain: "WAKEY WAKEY EGGS AND BACEY! YOU ARE AWAAAAAAAKE!"

Me: "Like I said--"

Brain: "--AWAAAAAAAAAAAKE!"

Me: *sigh* "Fine, maybe I'll check my phon--"

Brain: "TIME FOR INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS! HAVE YOU CONSIDERED WHAT YOU WOULD DO IF KK DIED SUDDENLY? HAVE YOU MADE CONTINGENCY PLANS?"

Me: "What? NO! That is a new intrusive thought, and it was very much not invited!"

Brain: "HAVE YOU CONSIDERED IT?"

Me: "Don't be ridiculous. There's no need for--okay, fine, yes, we have sort of talked on a very high level about estate planning and powers of attorney and stuff, but that's totally normal. You didn't need to wake me up before 5am for this."

Brain: "I NEED YOU TO CONSIDER THESE FIFTEEN OTHER RELATIVELY TRIVIAL THINGS THAT I HAVE JUST DECIDED WE NEED TO THINK ABOUT."

Me: "Do we have to? Are you feeling anxious? Because we can use the tools from our anxiety toolkit to--"

Brain: "NOPE NOT ANXIOUS JUST HYPERFIXATING. MAKE PLANS!"

Me: "What if we took a shower instead?"

Brain: "ACCEPTABLE."


I thought I might be able to sneak in a nap after my therapy appointment, but then I made a mistake in the form of deciding to call to cancel my insurance plan. KK switched us over to a more inexpensive provider with theoretically the same coverage as I have now, and I don't want to pay for two policies. In fact, I think that might be insurance fraud, or something like it. I spent forever on hold, and then the actual cancellation took a good half an hour to complete by the customer service representative who sounded like he was on death's door with some sort of upper respiratory illness. 

I also booked a follow-up with the naturopath about my blood test results, since I haven't heard back from her. I assumed I'd get a call from her office to follow up, but nope, apparently I gotta do it myself. I booked online and she was full-up until almost May, but luckily I snagged an opening on March 27th, and for an online consultation no less, which is much more my speed than having to drive out there and back during my night shifts when I'd much rather be sleeping.

Coincidentally, speaking of the Mystery Tired, I did get a call back from the sleep clinic today too, and now have a follow-up appointment booked for April 14th, nearly a month to the day after my sleep test. I was actually not expecting to hear back from them for a month, so this feels very promising! I really hope they found something that will explain the Mystery Tired and also provide a relatively easy fix. If they don't find anything I have no idea what to do next. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, I guess.

At least work has been keeping me busy enough that I'm not falling asleep at my desk. We're getting into the busy season for the Marine desk, so I've been pumping out notifications almost since I came in five and half hours ago. (I've been writing this post for about three hours on and off, whenever I get a few minutes of reprieve).

Okay. Time to call it and maybe have some dinner. Catch you on the flip side, friends!

Today is Day 1 of taking only my prescribed blood pressure medication and none of the wacky supplements I've been trying in the desperate hopes that they will do something about my crushing levels of fatigue. I also didn't take any melatonin last night, which I started a while back as a way to encourage myself not to go to sleep stupidly late. I am still taking my iron supplement and Vitamin C in the evening (because low iron is not something to fuck around with), and a multivitamin in the morning, but that's it. I've cut out everything else, and there is an embarrassing amount of  it, quite frankly.

I did go to bed late, but still within acceptable parameters (around 23:30), especially given that I'm working evenings this week, so I'll actually be getting to bed after 01:00 until Saturday, since my shift ends at midnight. Back when I worked for Boomerang I really liked the evening shift, but it was 14:00 to 22:00 rather than 16:00 to 24:00, and I find that finishing at midnight really throws me off my game. However, this morning I had an appointment at 08:00 to get my car rust-proofed (past!Phnee thought this was a perfectly reasonable time to schedule things, curse her). I was pleasantly surprised at how little time it took, and a little unpleasantly surprised at the price, although I encountered that surprise many weeks ago when I was first researching rust-proofing. I also caught sight of two tiny rust spots starting on my car already, and I am deeply annoyed. I will have to contact Steve the Wonder Mechanic and arrange to have him do a hopefully itty-bitty cosmetic job come the spring. I doubt it will be like the nearly-two-month ordeal from October/November, because these two tiny spots have only just appeared and haven't been festering for, oh, six or seven years the way the previous one had been. I'm hoping it will just be a question of a bit of sanding and re-painting.

Peggy's 11:15 appointment to get her bum squished went just fine. Poor thing, she did have one impacted anal gland, and it's really quite painful to have it all cleaned out, but she was a trooper and got lots and lots of treats out of it. Our favourite vet tech is pregnant and will be going on maternity leave in a month, and we are going to miss her dearly while she's away, but we're very excited for her, as this is her first baby! I should make a note to get her a card before she leaves.

I managed to be even a little productive when I got home, which is kind of unusual for me. I cleared the kitchen sink, ran the dishwasher, and gathered up all the recycling to put in the bins outside. It's kind of depressing that this is what counts as "being productive" for me these days, but I will take even the smallest of wins these days. Then I packed up a lunch and a snack for work, crated the dogs (much to their dismay), and managed to get to work on time! Frankly, it's something of a miracle that everything got done and on time today, given my track record.

There is still no word about my composting worms. I am very disappointed. On the other hand, I wouldn't have had time to pick them up today, so I suppose that's okay. Tomorrow or even Wednesday is probably better, because I only have one commitment on those days outside of work. Thursday I theoretically only have one appointment too, but it's likely to take longer than the others, and Friday's M&C meeting could take an hour or it could take three, it kind of depends on a bunch of factors. Anyway, I guess we'll see. I will be following up by email tomorrow to see what's going on with the worms. Maybe they needed an extra business day to scoop the worms out of wherever they keep them, I don't know. Maybe they're growing a new batch of worms from scratch. ;)

KK asked me yesterday if it was still okay to call worms "hermaphrodites," since that word is considered insulting by the intersex community, and while the question was hilarious I am happy she thought about it, because I had honestly not given it any thought at all. We talked about it and landed on the conclusion that it was probably fine because worms aren't intersex the way people are, they truly do have the full sexual characteristics of each sex and are capable of reproduction both ways. But yeah, discussing the appropriate way to gender worms was not on my Bingo card for this weekend!

In the meantime, I took a few days "off" listening to audiobooks, and am back in the saddle today. What's a tiny bit frustrating is that there don't appear to be available copies of the books I'd like to listen to at my local library. As in, they don't have any copies, not that they've all been checked out. So if I want to listen to them, I think I may be forced to acquire them through Audible. BLECH. If you all have any suggestions for audiobook resources that aren't Audible/Amazon, I am all ears! Pun fully intended.

I think that's it for today. I'm going to settle in for my evening shift with my latest audiobook and hope things go smoothly.

I keep being told that perfection isn't attainable, but I keep being mad at myself for not being perfect anyway. Intellectually I know that it's a waste of energy and probably counter-productive to boot, but it's very difficult to convince my brain to not fall into patterns of telling me just how much I suck for every single thing I do wrong, for every single thing I say I'll do and then don't, for every thought that goes through my mind that I don't like. Yes, my brain is mean to me about my own brain. It's a whole thing.

I stayed way too late at work today finishing up stuff. Part of me is glad I did because I did get things done, but getting home past 7:30pm on a Friday is not really my idea of fun. Cue my brain being mean to me about taking too long to do one of the work projects I had for this week because I should have just buckled down and powered through it, and then because I didn't it took me until the end of my normal work day. Then I had to write my end-of-week report

Anyway, I'm going to try to do nice things this weekend. I'm going to KK's house tomorrow to help out, but I also want to take Peggy for a long overdue run in the fields. I'm thinking of hitting up a garden centre too, if I can find one that's actually open, and picking up a bunch of nice things to plant in the garden for the summer, and maybe also some plastic fencing of some kind to keep Peggy and Lidan in the back yard over the summer without requiring tie-outs. I haven't quite worked out how to do that yet without it costing an arm and a leg, but I will see if inspiration strikes while I'm looking at materials.

I'm also going to shop around for the start of my indoor planting project, I think. Maybe start with a single mini greenhouse and go from there. And now, for bed.

LJ is a public platform, and that necessarily drags a whole slew of problems in its wake. Where does one draw the line between the private and the public sphere? It's a delicate balance.

I've had this LJ for 12 years now, give or take, and I've mostly kept my entries public. Very few people read this, and most of them are people I know in real life. The rest are online friends I've had for what feels like forever. They are people whom I trust with my thoughts, with much of my inner life. Of course, a lot of that has changed since I stopped being single. I've carried on mostly the way I did before, though I try to remain circumspect about what enters the very public sphere of the internet. I have dropped the ball on a few notable occasions, it must be said, but I do try to keep a lid on things.

( Hyperbole And A Half and other things under the cut )

I have come lately to the conclusion that I suck at mindfulness. I'm not sure how people manage it at all, to be honest.

Experienced practitioners of mindfulness (or whatever else you want to call it), speak of it being effortless. You're not meant to think about it, just to be aware of what you're doing and the consequences of your actions, and to be aware of your feelings.

I am not so much aware of any of these things. I get distracted extraordinarily easy. I don't generally pause to consider my feelings. When I do realise I was feeling something potentially harmful to myself, it's hours or days later. "Gee, I probably could have handled that better if I'd been mindful of my emotions." So, not helpful.

I've read quite a few books on mindfulness and related topics, and they always seem like a really good idea at the time. Except that they require me to put these things into practice, and I can never seem to remember to actually do it at the time. I don't know, does anyone have a good way to work around this? I'm curious to know.

When I was sitting in class yesterday, I worked out in my head (after the fact), that these days I can properly focus my attention for about 20 minutes when I am rested (more or less). In the morning I was able to pay attention in class for 20 minute chunks, then I'd realise at the half-hour mark that I'd lost track and have to scramble to figure out what was going on. By the afternoon, that number had dwindled to 5-7 minutes before my brain would shut down and meander along other avenues of thought. Or worse, it would shut down and not think of anything.

In the last hour of the course I tried to force myself to focus completely on the course, and my mind revolted. I stared at the projector screen and listened intently to the teacher as she spoke and... nothing happened. I did not process a single goddamned piece of information in that last hour. Today I can't even tell you what that last hour was about. I think it might have been about graphs. Possibly. It's not even that my mind wandered, because I was making an effort to be present and to watch and listen. It was like someone had erected a barrier that repelled all learning in my head.

It's really fucking depressing, is what it is.

Fifteen years ago I was an honours student who was able to memorise hundreds of pages of poetry and quote literature/movies/songs at will. Now? I can't even remember the content of a beginner-level word processing class that took place yesterday. I just turned 35. By the time I'm 45 will I have so little brainpower left that I'll forget that it's a bad idea not to turn on the hair dryer while I'm in the tub? Cripes.

I promise not all my entries will be about procrastination and the iProcrastinate podcast. However, today is not the day I won't be talking about that. Double negatives for the win!

I've been thinking about time, and procrastination, and what I'm doing with my life. Time is the one resource all humans have that is truly finite. It was Bob Dylan who sang that "he not busy being born is busy dying," and that rings very true. It's why laziness and sloth seem to be universally considered a grave sin—it's the waste of our most precious commodity.

So the question I've been asking myself is what I want to do with the time I have. I never seem to have enough, and yet I procrastinate on a lot of things, most of them work-related, but some of them life things that I need to deal with (usually government stuff, or things like organising my paperwork—always tasks that I usually find aversive).

The guilt we feel when we procrastinate, according to Pychyl, stems from the fact that we are not being authentic to ourselves. We know we ought to be doing whatever it is we planned, but instead we're doing something else to avoid the task we currently find aversive. In order to mitigate the dissonance we're experiencing, we lie to ourselves about why we're procrastinating.

In my case, 90% of my procrastination stems from anxiety, usually because I'm convinced I won't do it properly. This ranges from my translation work all the way to filling out official forms. Yes, I know it's not rational. With forms I'm always convinced that after I send them in I'll end up with irritated government officials landing (metaphorically) on my doorstep to tell me I've done it all wrong and now they're going to take away all my things as punishment. I'll lose the house, or the car, or my job, or whatever. IDK, I did say it wasn't rational, right?

It's what my father always called la pensée magique. If I don't do it at all, then I can't do it wrong. What could possibly go wrong with that plan? ;)

So the order of the day is to make use of all the time I have. This is not a prescriptive thing, per se. There will be no melodramatic declarations of never spending time in front of the TV again when I could be outside climbing mountains or white water rafting, or whatever. I just want to make sure that I spend my time doing the stuff I actually planned to be doing. If I'm watching television, I want it to be because I want to watch television at that moment, and not because I'm putting off filing my taxes or avoiding my writing because it's stressful. If I'm surfing the internet, it's because that's what I want and planned to do, and not because I don't want to be shovelling the balcony.

In short, I want to try to use the few hours I have to myself every month to do things that I find useful and/or fulfilling. I don't want to be one of those people who finishes life with a boatload of regrets concerning things I never got around to doing.

( Unrelated planning stuff under the cut )

Stay tuned for more posts later. I want to do one on weight and body image and health and What It All Means to me. Right now, though, I have writing to do. I have a little under an hour and a half before it's nap time.

With my apologies to M. Proust for taking liberties with his title… ;)

I mentioned in my post yesterday that my memory is for shit these days. It's been this way for a while, actually, at least a year if not more, but it's been getting worse as time goes by. I'm talking specifically about my short-term memory. My long-term memory seems to be mostly unaffected, but my short-term memory has degraded at what I feel is an alarming rate.

I didn't notice how badly my memory and my attention span had deteriorated until pdaughter moved in. We started jokingly calling them "Peanut Butter Moments," after an incident in which I was helping to reorganise the pantry. I looked up to see a jar of peanut butter on a shelf where it didn't belong, and asked "What's that doing there?" The answer, of course, was that I had moved it there not five minutes before. To this day, I have no memory whatsoever of moving that jar of peanut butter. There was no, "Oh, right, how silly of me!" moment. I truly don't recall doing it.

That's the funny part of this problem. Unfortunately, it's mostly not all that funny. I can't hold numbers in my head, I forget entire conversations, and I end up doing a lot of things two or three times instead of once because I can't remember if I've done them or not.

It's especially frustrating for pdaughter (and other people), because I ask the same questions over and over again, or forget stuff they've told me not 24 hours ago. It's not quite like living with someone with Alzheimer's or the onset of senility, but I imagine it's like a watered-down version of that. It gives people the impression that I don't listen when they're talking to me, and I can understand why that would make them feel frustrated and unappreciated and ignored.

"But I just told you that yesterday!"

It truly must appear that I'm in bad faith, when in fact, as a rule, I simply forgot. From one moment to the next, my brain no longer retains information. Writing things down helps, but isn't a guarantee I will remember. In fact, sometimes I write things down and then forget where I wrote them (unless I put it in the small notebook I always carry with me). Sometimes I write things down and forget I wrote them down. "I should write that down!" I think, and then after I open my notebook I find that I've already done so.

It's incredibly frustrating for everyone involved. It affects every aspect of my life, from family and housekeeping all the way to work. My new job is highly dependent on remembering all the standard operating procedures in place. I'm lucky enough that I'm a good note taker and have written down about 80% of what I need, but every time something unusual comes up that I know we've covered but that I haven't written down, my recall fails me.

In short, my brain is a pile of mush, it's getting worse rather than better, and this is making everything hard. /o\

:::sparked by a comment I made to luvenditti:::

Ever have a problem shutting up?

I don't mean when you're talking at length and intelligently on a topic that may or may not interest your listeners. That happens to most people at any given time. All the other person can do at that point is roll their eyes (inwardly, anyway) and wait for you to finish if they don't give a rat's ass about your topic.

I'm talking about the kind of non-stop babbling that makes your listeners wonder what the fuck you've been smoking. The kind of situation in which you can hear yourself talking and cringe at what's coming out of your mouth, and yet instead of sensibly shutting your mouth and salvaging what's left of the situation, you keep talking, and there's nothing you can do about it.

There's nothing quite as awful as sitting there and listening to your mouth continue to talk, and all you can think is: "Oh God, oh God, shut up. Please shut up. Stop talking. Can you hear yourself? Stop. Stop now. Stop while you still have some shreds of dignity left. You can still salvage this if you stop talking. Shut up. Please please please shut up. Oh God, I can't believe you just said that. For the love of all that's good and holy, shut UP!"

This happens to me all the freaking time. I also happen to have a freakishly good memory, and that means I can remember all the hideously embarassing things that have come out of my mouth in the past twenty-three years or so that have passed since I learned to form complete sentences and interact with others.

I think part of it has to do with the fact that I didn't talk much until I was in my late teens and early twenties, and thus never really learned how to censor what comes out of my mouth. It was either be silent or else talk the other person's ear off. No middle ground.

It can't be only that, though. I know a few people who have the same problem, and they certainly weren't wallflowers when they were in high school. So I have no real explanation for what it might be.

The net result, though, is that I've spent most of my life with the uncomfortable feeling that most people view me as a complete nitwit with no self-control whatsoever. Or at the very least a little weird and creepy.

It's like they say: You can dress her up, but you can't take her out.

I know. Snowshoes. Ice fishing. Camping in the snow. All things to look forward to, once there's enough snow and the lakes are properly frozen over.

I like winter. It's my favourite season of the year. I don't like it when it's too warm outside, even though summer is beautiful. I enjoy spring and autumn for their colours and because I like transitions, but in terms of stark, uncompromising beauty, I love winter best of all.

Unfortunately, my brain doesn't agree with me on this point. It doesn't like the fact that there's less sun, and that I spend 90% of daylight hours indoors. Starting in October and going until about February or March, my brain goes all goth on me: it dresses in dark clothes with intricate lace patterns, puts on thick black eyeliner, and writes angsty poetry about death.

November sucked in various ways this year, the way it often does. Yet I've only lately started feeling the full effects of what I guess might be called SAD, although that isn't what it is in my case. I don't have SAD, I simply have bipolar disorder with a seasonal aspect. "Simply." Heh. I don't stop cycling in winter, I just feel the "downs" more sharply than in summer, when I feel the "highs" more. In winter I generally get more mixed episodes as well.

Attendant to all this come the secondary effects, which in a way are far more frustrating than the actual illness. I get more forgetful, and the aphasia comes back in full force. Even simple words elude me in conversation, while people patiently wait for me to finish my thought, or else just talk over me because they can't be bothered to wait. Sometimes they helpfully try to supply the word I'm looking for. No matter what, I end up frustrated and angry because I feel as though I'm wasting their time and my own.

Have I mentioned that I get more forgetful? I have a reputation as a flake, and that's not accidental. I constantly forget important dates and events. I double-book myself even when I write things down. I can mitigate most of the effects by keeping a detailed datebook, but even then I still manage to screw things up on a regular basis.

Have you ever heard that memory is associated with feeling? That when you're happy you can only remember happy memories and that when you're angry you remember negative experiences? That when you're sad only unhappy memories come back to you? Well, I've found that it's true for states of mind as well: I remember different things according to whether I'm hypomanic or depressed, or dysthimic or just having a reasonably good day. That's usually when the double-booking happens, because from one day to the next I don't remember exactly what I've committed to.

Fun, eh?

Anyway, I'm not posting this for any reason other than for my own benefit. Sometimes writing these things down helps me to sort them out in my head (and procrastinate at work, too :P). Also, it might serve as an explanation for why I'm more flaky than usual around this time of year. Crazy + holidays + extra seasonal crazy = unreliable Phnee.

A more cheerful update will follow later today.