This is just a status check. Doing better today than I was on Friday, I am still treading water but it doesn’t feel like I am going under as much.

I am in a land of grey. While I am here, I appreciate those that I know and the things that I have and do. I think they are worth the work and effort and I will keep on doing. But there isn’t anything I consider worth holding onto if I was given the option out. I have lost the link I had to an answer being something other than “yes” and I am tired of trying to continue to find it.

But I am here and I need to deal with that. I want to be entertained, to be stimulated, to get lost in something. To direct the energy flowing through me instead of digging for every single erg from my woefully lacking resources and after each is spent, starting the digging process again. I want to flow instead of fight for each single step. I get going, I get tired, I relax, and I find myself back at the beginning again needing to build up momentum to start moving again. It seems like I am always starting at scratch lately.

I am tired of being me. I am tired of being.

My company is conducting a survey for the Muir Woods Shuttle and finds themselves in need of some personable, presentable, energetic people Sat and Sun of Labor Day weekend. The announcement states that “The days are long, but the setting is lovely and the crew is usually top rate.” The pay is $15 an hour.

If anyone is interested, give me an email address and I will pass it on.

It is really being hit home today that while my editing/proofing skills are not good, I am really strong in pattern recognition.

I don’t actually read, I glance at words and suck the meaning out. When I get bored with the words, my eyes glaze and I no longer get any meaning. This means I am not very good at proofing written work. I have always known this. I hate editing, especially my own stuff.

The question came up today at work and I delight in the surprised look the woman had when I said I wasn’t very good at it. She was so happy to get a straight and honest answer so she wouldn’t be wasting time going down the wrong path. It makes me wonder how many others she has had to deal with that said they were good at something they weren’t. I like the fact about me that I own up to what my strengths and weakness are right up front.

While my proofing skills are not good and I don’t like it, I am formatting a document and found the phrase “as a whole” used 4 times in a 5 sentence paragraph and “productivity”/”productive” used 7 times in 6 sentence paragraph. It was the pattern that stood out for me and I couldn’t help but see it. I am guessing it is the same sort of feeling that people that can edit get.

Managed to get into work at 9:20am this morning.

I seem to have broken the part of me that gets scared straight into behaving when I get into trouble but I still managed to make something work this morning.

I had help from a friend calling me and only stayed in bed for half an hour after he hung up.

My alarm goes off at 6am. I have been trying to get up during the 7 o’clock hour and leave in the 8 o’clock hour so I can make it to work in the 9 o’clock hour. For the last couple of weeks, I have been getting into my car around 9:15am. All my tricks weren’t working. Today they worked a little better. I basically cranked everything up and had some help from my therapist last night.

I tried the soothing myself and saying I am ok, keeping my eyes closed until after I got up, my standard clocks set ahead, scaring myself into moving by getting in trouble with a person of authority, talking to a friend before getting up, my little exercises, breakfast waiting for me, aiming to be at work around 9am. I doubt this will work for long but maybe it will give me time to fix whatever is making this so bad.

I did manage to avoid eating any sugar yesterday and I need to work more on getting to bed sooner. I didn’t make it to bed until 11:15pm but I turned off the tv by 10:30 and curled up on the couch and started the slowing down process. When I went to bed, I turned off the lights as I went, shucked off my clothes and crawled in, and went to sleep. Yeah, I still had to wait for sleep to show up but I didn’t feel the need to read in bed prior to trying to sleep.

an email I received at work today from the owner of the company.

Gina,

B####

This is the second time she has told me this. The first was in a meeting in her office. I am screwing up and I need to fix this. But I don’t seem to be able to.

It is whole my issue and completely in my control, I know this. But I seem to keep making the same choices every morning. I am undermining myself and this is a sign that I am reaching the end of my leash. The stick isn’t working and I am lacking a carrot. I don’t have anything that looks like a carrot to use because I seem to be in a carrot-less point of my life. Not that there aren’t carrots, just that I am not seeing them as carrots. The only things that have even a vaguely carrot shape to me are not good for me.

I was looking through some old photos (the paper variety instead of the digital kind) searching for pics from an event from years ago. I remembered pretty much every one of the pictures once my memory had been refreshed. There were so many people that I cared about and so many events that I enjoyed so much. I have a lot of good memories tied to those pictures.

In the past, I will remember how fun something was and I want to recapture that fun. I would like to relive it but I know that isn’t possible. I will attempt to either do another event like it or set something else up that would be fun. This time I didn’t. I could remember how I enjoyed it at the time but I didn’t want to go back. I felt done with whatever was in the picture. I would see things like the Shakespeare in the Park that I did year after year and I have no desire to go again even though I really enjoyed them. I don’t want to deal with the crowds, I don’t want to organize it, I don’t think I would have fun. It would be something to do and something to put up with. Hot and noisy and unsatisfying.

I find a lot of my old activities are feeling unsatisfying.

I have been doing a lot of personal work on my inner landscape. It is surprising sometimes to remember a statement I made about something and realize I am completely different now. So much so, I can’t understand how it was back then if it wasn’t for the memory of at some point I detailed it all out. I just don’t have it inside of me anymore. I suppose it might be a good exercise to go through to list out some of those changes.

One is that I don’t live with the constant vibration of anxiety behind my breastbone anymore. I no longer panic when I don’t have things scheduled when I have a lot of free time on my hands. What I was afraid of has come to pass but it doesn’t bother me that much. I am willing to face pain and sit with it. I am willing to be hurt by my friends and be the one to approach them to fix the problem instead of run so very far away and just close down. I am willing to be still (sometimes, this one is still hard).

So here I am with a different inner landscape, that is still changing, and my old ideas of worthwhile activities no longer fit. Not all of my old activities don’t fit but a chunk of them are too short in the arm or too tight somewhere. I haven’t really been able to find things to replace them. I need a new wardrobe and don’t know where to shop.

I have been running over this post in my head for a day. I sort of don’t want to post it, I am a little concerned about the reaction of people to the post, but I figure that I am fighting sharing this info so I should go ahead and do it.

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