Wed Sparrow came over and helped me do my laundry. Things that have been on the floor for over a year are not clean.

Over the day, I got to see how I handle things. I would start to get ansty and have a hard time breathing/thinking/moving. I know, if I was alone, to avoid getting to this point, I would have crawled into bed and dug up the computer or turned on the TV or pulled out a book. Anything to divert my attention and remain calm-ish. Because I had someone else here to catch me if things got out of hand, I would start breathing deep and focus on being calm and just getting through it without collapsing. Sparrow told me she could see me physically pull my self back down.

I don’t seem to be able to do that pulling down when I am alone. The fear is too great. I think what I am afraid of is a cascade. That if I stay with the feeling and work to calm it down, it could trigger a cascade where things get worse and then worse and then worse. When others are around it feels like I have something I can use as balance. Like when I am unstable and I reach out and touch the wall.I don’t need the wall to hold you up, I just need it for a point of reference. After I have that contact, I can take care of myself.

When I am alone, I start to panic. It feels like there are no walls around me for reference and the ground is tilting and I will fall and when that happens there is no bottom. This is terrifying so the best way to deal, the only way I know how to deal when I am alone is to not get into that position.

I have found that I am either full of lots of energy or I am collapsed. I am working on the middle ground but it is a long process. To avoid getting into that terrifying position of panic, I collapse before I get there. This is why I end up sleeping and hiding at home. Sometimes the terrifying point is getting dressed and ready to leave the house. For the most point, I have avoided that position. It was working with Sparrow and needing to pull myself back from going over the edge numerous times that illustrated what has been scaring me. I feel it is like being afraid of monsters in the closet without knowing you believe in monsters and thinking your closet is only a place for clothes.

Learning something new all the time.

Laundry and errands took up all of Wed. The clothes still need to be put away. That is one of the things Thursday was for. I found I couldn’t get out of bed. And it wasn’t even just thinking of the clothes and what needed to be done. I was wiped and wanted to hide. I think if I had someone over, it would have been fine but I couldn’t even work on getting someone over. Between Wed night and Thursday night, I watched 10.5 hours of shows from my TiVo. There was also sleeping and reading and fighting with the modem. About 7pm, I managed to cover my body enough to get over to the library and check my internet life. I was amazed that I was able to get moving because it was such a long haul all day. I ate leftovers from Wed, which I am very grateful for. I am not sure what I would have eaten if they weren’t there.

Still trying to figure out what to learn out of this beyond a down day follows a big day.

Today was a little bit of a hard started. Dorothy called and needs stuff from me and that motivated me to move. I called tech support for my modem and am not attached to the internet again. I have showered and started to collect witch dr stuff and zombie make up and dress clothes. I paused to write this out before I blow it off and never get around to it.

I was feeling itchy after being set to my tasks by Dorothy. I could feel the panic coming on. I plugged in music and it seems to keep things calmed a little. Sort of like creating interference so that a pattern lock can’t be established. Talking to people does that really well for me.

Now on to continuing to get ready and maybe food.

My eyes are bugging me again. They are shaking and not in the normal way. It keeps coming and going quickly. Like within half seconds to minutes. I know that I can see clearly more often than not clearly but it feels like the not clearly it ready to cross the halfway point. Probably because I don’t notice when I can see and really notice when details get blurred. The little push of pressure in my head doesn’t help. It makes me feel wrongly.

I didn’t notice it yesterday when I was feeling great and was super busy. I don’t know if that is because I was distracted or if it really didn’t show up often. It is back in full force today. It seems to be triggering off changing my focus this time around. Whenever one of these things starts up again it seems to be close to overwhelming at the beginning and then settles to just annoying after awhile. Maybe this is the start of a new version of the same old shit and it will become less of a problem later.

I did notice that I have started to try to read things through the bottom of my eyes when I am having difficulty seeing them. Like I have bifocals on which is weird. I know that you can’t use the center of your eye at night because there are only cones in the center and they need lots of light to trigger so you use the side of your eyes to read or see details in the dark. I don’t think there is anything special about the bottom of the eye (which is really the top since the image in inverted by the mechanical process of the eyeball and flipped in the brain). I am wondering if maybe the bottom of my vision doesn’t shake as much as the center. If I can remember and catch when I do it, I might try to see if using the top of my vision would yield similar results. I love being a scientist.

I really dislike it when I do everything correctly and I still crash. I don’t have any reason to feel this crappy today. I ate/drank my breakfast, I had a hamburger and fries at 1pm. I sat in a court room (I was supporting a friend) from 2-5. I had a dried fruit snack after getting out of court. On the way home I stopped at Grocery Outlet and did some shopping. While shopping I really started feeling crappy. I was overheating and starting to sweat. While waiting in line, I started to get confused if I was hot or cold. I felt somewhat nauseous and really had to focus on “I feel fine” to finish shopping. All I wanted to do when I got home was lay down.

When I got home, I peeled out of my clothes because I was so hot. The internal temp at home was 68 degrees F according to my thermometer. I ate a fudgesicle to cool off and focus on something other than how I felt. I read for a little bit and then just wanted to zone out. A little while later, I got cold and pulled a blanket over me. Now everything feels cool.

The back of my neck is tense. I have a feeling this is where the problem lies. I have been skirting a headache for days and I am sure the tension in my neck is the source for that symptom. I am pretty sure I am clenching my teeth.

After resting for two hours, I am feeling better enough to consider eating but am still a little sensitive to light. This sort of stuff is normal for when I abuse my body by pushing it hard at a con or by not eating. I really hate to think I hurt like this because I got up at 11am and spent the afternoon hanging out in a courtroom. I listened and learned what other people’s lives were like, I worked on ideas for my portfolio and read my book. It was warm when we started but by the end it was fine. (The judge did note during his opening statements that he hadn’t seen a fan in a long time and it looked very Victorian. I wasn’t trying to be noticed, I just carry a small hand fan with me when I don’t know what type of environment I will be stuck in.)

It could be a food issue, I haven’t had the greatest of food intake but I have had just as bad or worse many times before and it didn’t go this way.

It could be the neck tension. I am trying to relax and let it loose. There isn’t much I can do about my stress, it is at a normal level. Not much is going on, I am pushing myself to move in a better direction, I have a hard time finding ways to get myself up and out of the house, I sleep too much.

It could be the heat. It was warmer today and I was in Marin. But it hasn’t been that much warmer and it is no where near as bad as it will get.

It could be my environment. The courtroom seemed to be ok and the grocery store seemed to be ok. It is very sad if this is the source because it means I am getting more fragile.

I am already feeling badly about what type of work I am looking for. Some of the people today made $80 in a week, stand on a street corner looking for manual labor work, tried retail and fast food locations with no luck. I noticed that KFC is hiring and I imagined working in that greasy smell again for a very low wage and I am not sure I could. I have gotten soft with a 9-5 office job where I sit all day.

For the record, my eyes have been bad lately. It seems I am constantly needing to readjust for not being able to see clearly because things are blurry due to the movement or because they don’t want to focus. It isn’t too much trouble for large object but things like text is a little harder. It is sort of funny (ironic?) that my main skill set is using a computer to do graphic arts and I need to be able to manipulate details.

Some of this is to just whine, some is to record, some of this is because it is really bothering me that I don’t feel good and I don’t have a reason/source. I handle things so much better when I know where they are coming from.

I feel like I am teetering on the edge of being defeated. I had an ambitious idea around getting a group of friends together for an event and it was shot down from every direction. It was so clearly shot down that it looks like the Universe is saying NO, you can’t have that right now. I got the message.

I can see what I am being told no to but I feel I can see what I am being told yes to. I don’t know what direction is the one where the flow is.

When things go well, I am loaded with energy. When things are blocked, I feel like I leak air and go flat. I am feeling pretty flat. I am also aware that by putting more energy into a leaking situation, it goes flat faster. And when flat, it is harder to see where to go to catch the flow.

Don’t worry, this all makes sense in Gina Logic.

I am working on internal structures so that I don’t need outside people for motivation and movement. But I am not there yet. I still need external contact. But it has to be the right contact. If I show up somewhere I don’t feel like I fit, then it ends up costing me more than I would have gotten out of it.

I am feeling confused and frustrated and like the things I have learned so far are not applicable here.

It doesn’t help much that I was called for 1-2 hours of off site work yesterday and poked to find out today that the job was put on pause and I wasn’t told. I have a feeling this is something that happens a lot. But the client was impressed by me. There seems to be a lot of the impressed but no work thing going on. Yay, impressed.

Last week wasn’t so good. A number of plans fell through and I ended up in pissy mood. Part of this was body chemistry. Friday, a friend and I got together for breakfast. I had about 2 hours of sleep and I felt great. Life wasn’t bad anymore. It wasn’t good but I could appreciate the not badness around me and I felt ok about engaging with my environment. After I got home, things went down a little but not to the same level of ick that was the days before. Around 8pm, another friend that I handn’t heard from called and I enjoyed talking to him. It was enough to motivate me to make myself dinner (breakfast and dinner were most of the food I had that day). It was nice to be able to smile again.

I got together with a dear friend on Sat and it was like a switch was thrown. I was cheerful, happy, laughing. I enjoyed the day outside (and didn’t resent the clowdless sky exposing me to the big ball of burning gaseous evil beating down on me), walked a goodly distance and was excited by things. It was so nice to have myself back.

Sunday I was suppose to meet up with a new friend. When I woke up, I was bursting with energy and ideas and zeal. I was in top form. I made it there a little late (10 min) and far as I can tell, he never showed. He didn’t answer his phone and never returned the messages I left. I haven’t heard from him via email either. I handled it really well. I waited an hour and didn’t feel hurt or blown off, not really all that annoyed. It bugs me and I want to know what happened but other than that I am ok. I choose to go to downtown Berkeley because I knew going home would result in my crashing and being taken over by a bad attitude. I had a great idea about getting people together the way we used to and I put that into play while at the library.

Happily I picked up the entire set of A Distant Soil from the library yesterday and stayed up all night reading it to find out …. that the last book hasn’t been written yet. Arrgggggg!!!! The reason this is sort of a big deal is that I started reading A Distant Soil (aka Faraway Dirt) in the 80s. I loved it and was impressed by it enough that I still remember the storyline two decades later. It is an art style that I was seeped in when I started really drawing and I really resonate to it even as I know it is very dated to the 80s look. I decided to drop it back then because there were problems getting it published. The story went so far, then nothing and then it would show up again with a different publisher and started at the beginning again. I felt jerked around and very frustrated. I could see that any more investment in it would result in more disappointment and more frustration. I decided to wait to see if it ever finished and then I would invest in it again. At the library, there were 4 graphic novels and it I had only read up to partway through the second one. It looked like it finished in the fourth one. It could have easily finished at the end of the second but plans fell through for our heroes and there was more plot. Well, I have managed to find out there is only one more book. I have searched the internet and I can’t find what issue the comic is on to find out how close the story is to being finished. The last book was published in 2006, the one prior was published in 2001.

So here I am after getting no sleep facing the climax of the story that has haunted me for 25 years and then no idea if there is more (at least the author is still alive and producing). My wonderful big plan for getting a group even is not getting support (for good reason but that doesn’t stop it from being disappointing). My visit with the new friend is still poking at me as to why the lack of communication and I am working to hold that in the realm of reasonable instead of dissolving into drama. I have a couple of other places where I am not hearing from friends that should be contacting me and I am trying to hold that out of the drama-dip as well. I am facing a week with nothing scheduled but a therapy appointment. I am not sure but I think I don’t have anything ahead on my schedule, this week, the weekend, the week after. I refuse to look too far. There is a baycon coming up and that is a load of mixed emotions and issues to deal with.

I am too agitated to sleep and too exhausted to be active. My mood is sitting on the edge of a cascade of badness. I don’t feel I can even let it go and have a pity party. It either feels like there just isn’t anything to be more than mildly annoyed at or like it is too big and my self-preservation instincts won’t let go because I would fall too far.

I don’t feel I can reach out because I don’t feel like I can take adding another disappointment/frustration of a plan not working. I get so much energy when things work and lose so much energy when things don’t. I know I have the power to make things work for me but right now I feel like I am so out of tune that I will be stumbling over my own feet. I may get something moved forward but if anything doesn’t work, it will take the rug out from under me. I could follow someone else’s lead but I don’t think I can afford to drive right now.

So, I sit, alone, at home, again. Not daring to look into the future of even a few hours. And the way I used to get past times like this was to grab onto something in the future and plan it out. I need new tools. I am not doing badly (the typical scale goes a lot lower than where I am right now) but I sure as hell am not doing well. I want Sat and Sun morning back.

It is interesting to watch myself get upset when I am being jerked around by someone else but don’t respect myself enough to do anything for myself. I can get really angry and have loads of energy when I feel like someone else is messing with me and treating me poorly. But when it is just me, myself, and I, I don’t move or lift a finger in ways that would improve my situation.

I know better and I do try. I just don’t get anywhere with it. I start and then feel like I am facing a clif that is leaning over my head ready to crumble down on me and it is best if I don’t do anything to mess up the precarious balance of the system and I should just shut down until something from outside of me demands my attention again.

I have been focusing on helping others to help myself but that isn’t working out so well. And the part that isn’t working is not what I thought it would be. I am great when helping others but the others aren’t working out. I try to set things up and things keep coming apart. I admit there is a certain balance that works for me to help, a narrow band, so if something doesn’t work then there aren’t too many other options.

I have energy for others but no energy for myself. I am not sure why. I am at a point where I know that I am good and great and all that but I don’t like myself and I don’t like where or what I am. When I am with others, my natural defense structure automatically takes over and I am pushing energy out of me and having a good time. When I am by myself, the energy doesn’t move. It pools at the lowest point and gets stuck. Enthusiasm is the only thing that provides motivation and I am running out of any kind of enthusiasm.

I am pissed at a friend of mine because he is flaking and including me in his flake. I wouldn’t be pleased with him flaking but I would make room for it because that is what he needs right now. I am really angry over him projecting his issues onto me. It makes me feel like he doesn’t have a clue who I am and I don’t see options on how to work with him to make things better. My old self would have just cut and run by now. My current self wishes I could too. So I have all this energy when I think of him, I want to yell at him, sit down and talk things out, find out where this stuff is coming from and understand him better…all this stuff is all in relationship to him and us being in connection during the process.

So I think, why don’t I use all this energy for myself since he is flaking out on me. I had plans to take advantage of the day and they came to naught. I am sitting up now looking around and everything looks too hard to even start. It is sort of like that feeling of staring at a blank piece of paper and knowing you have to write/draw/paint/show something but have no idea what or even where to start. Everything is a starting point and everything is overwhelming. I feel a vague sense of what to do but nothing firm enough to act on. The computer is the only thing that seems to be able to get me moving. Even writing this was hard to start but I felt I had a thread so I started tugging on it.

I am missing the threads to tug on in the rest of my life. I don’t want or don’t like any of them and there isn’t anything to keep me occupied/distracted enough to just start working on something.

Yeah, I don’t like me much today. I don’t like my life and I know it is within my ability to change it but I don’t know what I want to change it into. I am full of I don’t wants right now and I don’t see an end to them. I am aware that there are moments when they aren’t there but I feel like I am sinking into the quicksand of them right now and I don’t have anyone I can trust to get me out. It would be easier to just detach from everyone and stop caring. Then I wouldn’t be so vulnerable to the quicksand. Again, I know that isn’t true but it feels like the truth.

I am so sick and tired of my drama and melancholy and shit. I wish I could just quit it but there is something in here that I need and I don’t dare let go. I wish there was a drug for that.

I do a better job at handling disappointment now than I used to but it is still not all that great. I think I get mesmerized by the face-plant I see myself falling towards and am not able to look sideways once I start down that track. I seem to be able to limit the despair/depression to the actual problems at hand even if I can’t see anything outside those problems. At least I have gotten to the point where I don’t end up coloring everything else in my life with the same brush. I just tend to have a hard time seeing the other things in my life.

In the past, it was imperative to distract myself from whatever could go wrong before I saw how bad it could be. And to make sure I wasn’t in a position to have any kind of disappointments. In order to work against the need to keep the risks minimal I would get worked up into a frenzy every time I stuck my neck out. This is how I dealt with finding jobs. Lately, I have been amazed at how easy it has been to write a cover letter and send in a resume and samples. This, and the low level job process of filling out applications, would fill me with such dread and since I had to do it to get a job, my energy levels afterwards would be at a frantic level. I had so much undirected energy at those times I had to things I couldn’t normally do just to drain it off. And it felt horrible. Once I got to the interview stage, I was fine. It was a weird quirk of mine.

Today I have been avoiding making contact with the people I met yesterday because I was suppose to hear from them yesterday afternoon about the two week job. I have known exactly what I was going to say and I also wanted to just hide my head and let it pass and do the non-confrontational assumption of “they didn’t pick me” because they blew me off. After 3 hours of watching TV and really wanting to just fast forward it all so I could get the story without all the pauses, I decided to bite the bullet and call. I knew that I felt miserable and it was just going to continue and therefore what is the worse that can happen? Since I would feel better even if they told me that I was a lousy fit for something I know I would be great at, it could only get better.

Turns out that someone who has done the work before that they thought was unavailable is available and is doing the job. They said they liked me and thanked me for waiting and would keep my info. I don’t know how true all that is. I would like to work with/for them in the future so if it is true, at least it is an open door. If it isn’t true, I haven’t lost anything and I can put it behind me.

I do know what would be good for me. Going out for a bike ride would help. Getting any kind of exercise/movement would be good. Getting involved with other people would be good. Going shopping would be good. But I am still stuck in my ways enough that I am not moving in that direction. My legs hurt from the walking yesterday (I think it is because I had the heels replaced on my dress shoes and that really stretched my calves) and this is the same pain I had after taking the bike out once. I don’t want to try and reach out to anyone because that is opening the door to more rejection and hurt. I don’t feel protected enough to put myself into that vulnerable position. Yeah, going outside could be good but there is the fear of what if it isn’t. Then I wouldn’t have any back-up plans that I can use as an excuse to why things aren’t better.

I am bull headed enough to follow up on some emails that are risk taking. There is a sense of distance when it is people you don’t know and it is via email. I need to be careful not to look too closely to the possibilities in that arena or I will collapse under the weight. One of the ways I deal with my troubles is by planning the future out. Well, since this is a risk and I am feeling like I need to be overly cautious, that planning would show me all the ways this could hurt and then I wouldn’t move at all. This is one way I have managed to change my process to the better.

Disappointment has had most of my life to be a habit of derailing me. So it still does. I just have to remind myself it isn’t as bad as it used to be and a result of the work I already am doing on myself, it has the possibility of having less of a pull on my mood.

Baby steps.

I have spent a lot of days alone in this last week. On monday, I tried reaching out and no one was available. People started showing up on Tuesday which I already had covered. It was really weird.

I don’t feel very competent and I can feel my shaking down to the bone. I don’t want to be around people because I have a hard time talking and getting my ideas across. Therapy was really good last night. We hit some meaningful stuff and I am wondering if this is part of that stuff. I wonder if I give into what I am feeling if I will be taking care of myself and get better or if I will just let it run away with me and get worse. I really wish I came with a diagnostics system that is better defined.

Saturday, I met someone that is a 7w6 like I am. Usually when I meet people that I know are 7s, we seem to slide off each other. I like them but there doesn’t seem to be much traction. This guy was different. It was so weird to have my methods of thinking reflected back to me but in a different form. I think he is enough like me to be on the same wavelength but different enough to be interesting. Or some mix of that.

I got notice for a job for the next two weeks which is about a brand that was launched when I worked at BGI. I did a good job writing the cover letter and modifying my resume. I am sure I could rip apart how well I did (and there are voices in the back of my head urging to do just that) but all of me concedes that it is better than I could have done in the past. I am surprised by how different the process feels now from how it used to. Hmmmm maybe that is where some of this shakiness is coming from. I used to be a basket case when doing the job hunt/paperwork thing. Once I am to the interview stage, I am much better. Now I feel like I won’t be able to do the interview part as well as I should.

It is good that I am having dinner with friends tonight. I cooked up an entire roast and have been trying to get the carrots and potatoes to cook but they just aren’t. I think I need to come up with a salad because the meat is very oily and something needs to break up the clogs. Bread will help soak it up but won’t do anything to unclog it. These words aren’t the right words for what I am trying to describe but they sort of pass on the idea. I just know what would work and what wouldn’t work with this food by instinct.

I am not feeling overly depressed but I am not feeling good. It seems like it would be really easy for me to slide right into depression. In some ways, I am wanting to crawl out of my skin. It would be good for me to have a physical activity that I enjoyed. I think it would help.

A Conversational Dinner Party #3. Actual quotes from the evening in order (mostly).
Many quotes were missed from A Conversational Dinner Party #1, a recording that has gone nowhere was made of A Conversational Dinner Party #2. Less people were broken by laughter at this event than previous ones but brokenness was achieved. Yay!

Injia!

Brownies = Dessert
Brownies = Fey creatures
Brownies = young Girl Scouts

We use sex toys with our wine.

Chicks dig scars.
(someone else, tipping head forward to show top of head) Check out my brain scars.

…. aaannnd then Paul made Ammy Happy.
Ammy: Do it again! Do it again!

I was at work and I got this email….

We said that 4 times so she is writing it down.

Don’t be That Guy.

We need a sacrificial That Guy.

Don’t Fuck with the English Majors.

A troll?!?………..Ooo Essays!

A snake eating its tail. Or rather eating That Guy’s balls.

Oh, the things you used to be able to get away with in Church.

She is the Betty White of Sci Fi Cons.

Release the Kracken!

Did they make a Hamlet sandwich? (to the idea of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are women)

We filled out the Sistine Chapel of spreadsheets. (to which they asked for Death and instead got Cake.)

…with the sneakers
…in the front room

Want to hear something scary? I have started drinking coffee.

HARDCORE!

Aw, Steampunk. Introducing brown to all those little goths.

Gears….Wrench…Googles…STEAM!

I feel completely worn out. I have been running full tilt Mon Tue and Wed. All this after weeks of high drama and pushing myself to be my best self. I was suppose to work either today or tomorrow so I was shoehorning into the other day what I could of this weeks plans and not making any new plans.

Well, work canceled out so now I am facing a completely free day today and tomorrow. I think this weekend is clear as is all of next week other than my weekly appt. I am standing at the beginning of a huge empty space after having everything crunched into such a tight space there was no room for things I wanted and no room to make plans to fill the empty spaces ahead of me.

I have been trying to help a friend of mine with some accounting stuff. I have wanted to do it because it was work that I felt I could do easily, help him out of a crunch which would make me feel good and might even make the stuff I have that is similar easier for me to face. But I think he is hiding from it which means I am having it taken away from me too. This hurts. It is so much easier for me to care and to do other people’s work rather than my own. I invest in it so it is hard when it is taken away from me without involving me. What makes it easier for me to tackle is also what makes me so vulnerable to it. C’est La Gina.

I really wanted to keep up the regular schedule that the last few days have pushed on me. Things were getting better for me. But here it is, almost 3pm, and I still haven’t gotten up. I have been fighting to stay awake and not just drop off to sleep again which deep in my bones I want to do.

I have watched TV, I have read some of my book. I have downed a hearty juice drink and eaten a tub of pasta noodles. Every thought towards eating involves “making” food and that feels too big. I don’t have any motivation to actually do something physical and that is just what I need to get me out of the zone where sleep can just steal over me and take me back under. This is why I make plans with people. That seems to be able to override this ability of mine to draw myself back to sleep for massive portions of the day.

I have a hard time going to sleep but if I have been asleep, usually it is easy to drift back into it. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how long I have been awake, a few minutes, a few hours. Doing something really awake, maybe something physical, something where I am interacting with the outside, something that sparks stuff inside of me (which is what having other people around does) is what assures me being awake. And then I get to face the other end when it is time to go to sleep and that spark needs to be dampened. I haven’t figured out how to make that easier.

Currently I find I would rather be asleep than awake. I can’t think of a time when that wasn’t true but it is really easy for me not to see things from other time periods in my life right now so I don’t know if this has been different outside of the last couple of years or not. The main reason I don’t sleep all the time is that I feel so ill when I have slept a lot and then am awake. Right now I feel like crap and I know I need to get up and move around and get out of the house and I really don’t want to. My body is telling me that I will feel better if I go back to sleep. And I will, until I wake up that is.

Enthusiasm is the only thing I know that overcomes my typical lack of motivation for me to get myself moving. This is why I set myself up using other people and tying myself to plans outside of myself. I can dismantle anything I create where I am the only stakeholder. If I am excited by it, then I sometimes can avoid taking my plans apart.

I need to get out of here and move.

I have been on the move for days. By stopping all of a sudden, I fall down and hurt. I would rather slow down in a controlled way, but right now I don’t feel I have that choice.

This is just another day in the life of The Gina.