Predicting the future

Badly, as usual. I've realized that one reason I tend to fall so easily into despair is that I expect the rest of my life to be all downhill from here. I can't imagine taking on a new responsibility because i feel certain that in the future I'll only be more tired, more anxious, more achy, less physically able and thus less mentally or emotionally capable.

I don't want any of my problems to have anything to do with my father, but I think maybe they do. I have two wonderful parents, but growing up with a parent that has a debilitating degenerative disease will do things to your head.

Apparently it's that time again

I wish I wanted to post here more. It seems like I always find myself wanting to look back on something that I feel I must have written about, and then find that I didn't.


Things have been okay. I've been dreaming a lot--daydreaming sometimes about this idea I've had for a while about becoming a counselor, and daydreaming a lot more about designing and building and sometimes even living in tiny houses of the variety that can fit on an 8x20' trailer, and be hauled around the country. I have such a love of efficient design, and of the idea of efficient living--living without the unnecessary accumulation of the mounds of stuff that perversely ensnare our affections and weigh down our lives without enriching them at all. More recently this has expanded to include the desire for a small, high mpg car. I'm tired of using up gas to lug around all this car that I'm not even using. I'm using the driver's seat and maybe the passenger's seat too, and yet I'm pulling the weight of both back seats and a trunk halfway full of crap that was left there by the family members who drove the car before it came into my hands.

Anyway, I've been funding the daydreaming by still working part time at that daycare I thought I had quit back in the spring, and doing some odd jobs for various people, mostly extended family members. I am tired of this, and I want to find doorways into something new, but I don't know where they are. And I don't know how to stop being afraid of committing to a plan.


And I love Christmas, and it's my favorite holiday, but I am tired, so tired of getting depressed every Christmas season. Back when I was with David (Oh Lord, his name is still like honey. Will that ever fade?) I thought that my issues at Christmastime were due to strife--some new one each year--within our relationship, but it doesn't seem to have changed. Or maybe it did, and maybe I am just in another doomed relationship and I can somehow feel it and it is hurting. I don't know. Was I sad like this last year? The year before? I can't remember. Lately I feel like I can't remember anything. And sometimes that's okay. Sometimes I feel like I just live in the present, I just am where I am, and maybe that's okay. But sometimes I feel this void where memories should be, and I feel like I am surrounded by nothingness, and it's a frightening thing. Obviously I don't exactly have alzheimer's, but I was listening to this radio special last night, and a man from Ireland was talking about his childhood Christmases, citing memory after memory after memory, and it was lovely--but I don't have that. I have a handful, but for the most part it's all a haze. Everything runs together. Why? Does that happen for everyone? Does everyone's mind feel like a chalkboard in the rain?


I admitted to myself tonight that I've been unhappy. It's been going on a while--weeks? Some months?--but I have not been seeing it. But sobbing on the floor (apparently that is my red flag of choice this past year or so) is difficult to ignore. So. Now what.

What's Going On

I may not have mentioned that I've moved into this place with my best friend. Most days I love it. I love having my own space, I love having a washer/dryer literally inches from my bedroom door, I love having a kitchen stocked with things that I bought, etc. I love that we're walking distance from the river, and I love that some nights when I drive home, the air is swimming with fireflies.

I thing I have mentioned that I've been working at this daycare-type place, but it isn't really for me. I've told them that I want to leave, but have not officially put in my two weeks' notice. I don't have another job yet. Some moments this seems incredibly reckless and misdirected; other moments it seems reasonable and necessary. I am not the person they want or need for the program, though I know that better than they do. They are not a program I want or need to be a part of. It plays up my weaknesses and does not utilize my strengths, and possibly more importantly, it does not help or encourage me to move toward my goal, which is to be a counselor/therapist. I will miss the children, though.

I didn't get enough sleep last night, and I woke up feeling discouraged and somewhat depressed. Floundering a bit, where earlier in the week I felt confident. I need to remember how important it is for me to make sure that I don't blow off my sleep schedule, as has been my habit for almost my entire life. When I do, my performance and my mental health suffer. And my attitude suffers. And attitude is everything.

I was browsing Pinterest a week or two ago and saw a link to a video of a commencement speech delivered by Neil Gaiman, who is one of my favorite authors. He's a rock star in my book, and he seems like a pretty wise guy. Toward the end of the speech he said that a woman he knew had called him once, and asked how he thought she should go about doing something that she considered to be quite difficult. He told her to pretend that she was a person who was capable of accomplishing her goal. It can be difficult for me to remember to pretend that way, and it can take some energy, but honestly, this is some of the best advice I have ever heard, and it has been helping me greatly. Attitude is everything.

About Ian: he's not perfect, we don't always see eye-to-eye, and like just about every other relationship I've ever been in I'm not 100% sold, but he is pretty awesome in a lot of ways. He is caring and funny and sarcastic, complimentary and generous, forgiving and flirtatious and attentive. And I really appreciate those things.


But back to the job issue: probably tutoring would be wise for me to get back into. I'm also looking for flexible hourly positions that would make it somewhat easier to a) hold multiple jobs, should I so choose, and b) take classes. Not that I know what I'm doing AT ALL when it comes to researching and applying to graduate schools. So if anyone knows of good companies to work for, or if anyone has any advice re: higher education, feel free to let me know.

Reasons

I think a part of the reason that I have been (sometimes consciously, sometimes not) avoiding writing lately is that I've been pointedly ignoring this little existential crisis I've been having. It is totally unlike anything anybody else in the world has ever experienced and it goes something like this: what's the point of all this? I don't see a point. I mean, life is kind of nice sometimes I guess, but it doesn't really seem worth it. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow and (assuming I didn't end up having to live on in extreme pain/disability) I'd probably be okay with it.


It should go without saying (or at least, I tell myself that it should) that I probably wouldn't be all that okay with it (or at least, I tell myself I wouldn't), but that's how I've been feeling about all this lately. Just don't really feel like doing it. Like doing any of it. So I haven't been writing.

Probably this is all the result of some minor depression, dysthymia I guess, that is sapping my will to live and write and listen to music, or possibly it's related to my paralyzing fear of decision-making and the accruement of additional debt and the idea that I will never figure out what to do with my life, never find the motivation to just, for God's sake, do something that will pay the bills, never again find the will to really live, and so on. I know that some days a beautiful flower is enough to keep me going, but other days, and all of them lately, it seems like nothing is enough.

It occurs to me that this might be remedied if I did x or y or z--if I went back to school and became a counselor, or if I fell in love, or if I have children someday--but I wonder whether any of that is actually true; whether any of it would actually work. Whether this all feels pointless because I am doing nothing that has any real purpose, or whether it feels pointless because the days are getting shorter, or because my brain or hormones are somehow otherwise unbalanced, and I need to correct the imbalance with some kind of dietary change or sleep schedule or scintillating, brilliant conversation (Anna, are you free?) or self-talk or therapy. This kind of depression can be difficult to address via emotional bootstrapping, which (in addition to the wait-it-out method) is the way I have handled just about every other depressive episode I have ever encountered, because it's just a general feeling of malaise. There are very few specific thought patterns to address, very few negative thought habits to replace with positive ones, and so on.

Or maybe I just need to look harder.

On Priorities

I started training for a swim instructor job this week, having told them originally that I could probably only do 2 days a week and then thinking, temporarily, that I could do 4. Tuesday I realized that 4 was not going to work out after all, as the later times weren't working for one of my tutoring clients, and finally was able to get in touch with a manager of the swim school today. Unfortunately, honoring my prior commitments makes me a liability--and goodbye swim school. I have to admit that while I am really pretty disappointed by this, I'm also a little bit relieved. Losing the prospective source of income is sucky, but this frees up my summer quite a bit. Now I can make my own plans, be they tutoring or Camp or private swim lessons, or, dare I say it, vacation.


I totally had other things to say, but I can't remember them at all. Here is one though that I am making up:

Tutoring: SO AWESOME.

Also, I really like NPR. Like, a lot.

And on the way to work tonight I had the thought or feeling that I was finding my stride and rhythm in life. I think I do have these feelings periodically, but that doesn't make them any less awesome. And I had this vision of my future life, just a flash, imagining what it might be like. I can never remember these things clearly, and they're mostly just feelings of adultness and awesomeness I think, but it was nice. And I imagined a piece of advice for a youngish female: "Just find your beat, baby girl."


I don't know why I like the "baby" word to be inserted into phrases when I'm emotional. I have no explanation for that.