Yearning for natural light

At the moment, I'm considering a job change.  One of the factors I have to make peace with is that instead of walking six blocks to work, many of the opportunities right now involve traveling.  Quite a bit of traveling over many miles in a car. 

Yesterday I had one interview and I drove about three hours through the country-side to meet with the interviewer, a midpoint between our hometowns.  I was prepared, but I accidentally left my list of questions at home.  Today I found them, along with many pieces of writing, some of which I just published.  A notebook tossed aside in my clothes-closet, until now.  And in this notebook is a very interesting piece to me, today. Transcribing here...

     She could feel it, a gentle breeze on her soul whenever she drove by a field.  A meadow.  Some trees on the edge, deep shade, a few bees, wildflowers: purple clover, yellow black-eyed susans, white (?) that spilled behind that rusty mailbox. Those soybeans are a brilliant lemon-yellow, then rusty copper, then soft brown.
     She sat in her cubicle with the stale air, no natural light, only light from artificial sources -- an overhead fluorescent bulb, under-storage bin desk light and a small lamp from home.  Endeavoring to recreate the feeling and mood of natural light.  Endeavoring to make the best of a ill-fitting, square-peg-round-hole thing.  Making the best of it is what she excels at.

OK, gets a little sarcastic from here, but interesting that my musings from maybe 18 months ago are answering a question I have today.  I don't recall writing it, but it is all about how I don't like working in a cubicle and wish I could get out in the natural light more.  Hmmm.... interesting. Universe? 

And I do love, love, love the road-side weeds.  I have often wanted to find out who is responsible for the natural plantings on the interstates in Illinois, in the gulley between the cars driving in opposite directions.  To thank them for not mowing but sowing. The natural wave of purple, and blends of gold and beige have seemed like a painting to me more than once.  I've never met another weed-lover but there must be one out there.  It actually endangers my driving abilities as I stare at the ever-changing, never the same combinations nature has planted.  Traveling might have its perks.

I wasn't brilliant enough to stop and take a picture yesterday, but this is the idea, courtesy of google images. Your weeds are my art...

Part 2 -- Walmart
As you pull it the parking lot it looks pretty much exactly like any other Walmart.  Except I'm not at home.  So I will not bump into anyone from high school or church or work or the neighborhood.  I can wander from 17cent spiral notebooks (too flimsy, I like hard backing) to $5 pajamas to $22 phone chargers that are out of stock.  I can browse every book in the book section.  I can buy deodorant and get back to my car without revealing anything. To anyone.

I am relieved to get outside my head for 35 minutes and to sit in the parking lot writing for five more.

Babies, young adults, flip flops, electric scooter, heavy white Velcro tennis shoes.  Fifteen SUV type vehicles of approximately similar shades of gray are in my site.  Am I the only person who doesn't own one?

An elderly man gets out of his shiny red junker, all four windows down, shirtless.  He grabs a  shirt from the back seat and finishes dressing.  Slowly, casually, like he's done this before.  He saunters inside looking suitable. A bright orange shirt with black writing on it.

Someone pulls over just to remove a flier for a local fundraiser from their windshield.  A retiree in a mint-green golf shorts and a Hawaiian shirt places his cart is the cart farm cautiously.

Lots of top knots of messy hair. It is 3pm on a Wednesday.  Why are they all here?  Why aren't they stuck in a windowless cubicle?

Places I go to get away from myself (A four-part series)

Part One -- Why?

Don't you ever get tired of yourself?  You want to take a vacation and leave 'her' behind for a bit?  A few hours, a few days.  It isn't like I wouldn't come back, I just want to get away from me.
I want to get away from over-thinking, under-thinking, and just-right thinking.  Away from the reflective substance on the lining of my brain that keeps the same thoughts bouncing around, back and forth over and over, like a pinball that hits a bonus ring.
Ping.  Ping.  Ping.    Ping ping ping pa-ping.

I want to get away from my own sighs, my breathing, my skin, my eyes,.  I want to see the world from a fresh new perspective of someone else's skin. It is the opposite of "Cheers".  I want to go where "not anybody knows my name."  Oblivion? No. Anonymity is a better word.  No one knows me.  I'm just me.  I can be anyone.

Sometimes I want to get away from my goals, my fatigue, my boring bad habits, my lack of resolve.  I spend a lot of time letting life happen.  Flow.  Chill.  No worries. No aim. No fire.  Too much fire.
I also get stressed out and overcome.  How can I be bored and overwhelmed in the same mind, body and soul? How do I get away from myself?

Sanity escapes me

Today I love the title of my blog. 

A lot has happened in the last 9 days since I last posted.

I sort of realized I wasn't so much depressed as just that life kind of sucks right now.  Good to know. 

I reached a level of stress that went beyond my reserves, beyond, those backup storage reserves, and entered damaging to my health territory.  None of my usual techniques has fixed it.

I fell and cracked my head hard on the cement walk in front of my house.  I could have died.  Like my neighbor Ray did.  Like other people do.  Walking to the car. Dead.  So that happened.  So far? Still alive.

We sold our flip house, which until the burden leaves you, you don't realize how it has been there waiting, while you soldier on, refusing to give in to worry and stress.  It is a huge relief, but now all the worry I had bottled up is released.

A low level anxiety exists for a writing day I'm going to in December, with my idol author, and it is just giving me mild yet continuous waves of insecurity and ever stronger feelings that my stupid idea of being a fiction writer is so so ridunkulous.  Labeling what I'm  not good at is so easy.

I don't want to waste time here on my work stress.  Let's just sum it up this way: my team went from 14 to 8 in the last  2 months time.  We are still attempting to carry on work as usual down 40% of our FTEs. One of those losses was to unexpected, young death.  Two left for career reasons, and three were 'downsized' out of the blue. 

It is surely more than the sum of these few items that has my typical solid and ready attitude to battle any crisis in the toilet.  Instead I feel like I'm made of tissue paper.

But wait, there is good news.

So last night I curled up in bed with my ear buds and my super-sized box of Nutty bars and watched the most depressing movie, and it left me feeling so much better.  It is 'Cake' and was (unlike its title) about a woman with chronic, severe pain. Twenty-four-seven.  I don't know how I ended up with it, as I was looking for a 'feel good, stress-relieving' kind of movie.  After this I watched a really bad tv Christmas romance. 

But it made me realize for the 147th time that people have it worse than me.  That most of those things I listed above are actually GOOD, like really good things, I'm just in a fragile state.

I also used technology to my advantage, found a cool meditation app (more another day), read my bible, called in to work today which in and of itself is a luxury that I'm sure 98% of the world's population can't afford to do.  But while in the shower just now, a light shown from above and hit my palms. (I was trying to be in the moment)  Through the soft-focus of the water hitting my palms I had a major realization:  "The palms of my hands don't look any older than they did in high school."

Wow.  Life-changing that?  Yes.  I don't even worry about aging much, wrinkles, spots, sags.  But something in me said, 'There is a silver lining moment.  You should share.'  So I'm sharing.  And I'm taking it a step further.  I'm going to try to find as many silver-lining moments as I can every day between now and Thanksgiving which happens to be a month from today.  I promise it won't be every day, I'm too ditzy to remember. 

Learn by teaching?  Feel better by making others feel better?  Laugh at yourself?  I'm sure those are all on posters somewhere.

p.s. friends who got this far, feel free to share one of your silver lining moments as all writing is basically stealing being inspired by others.

One Way. Or Another...

I tend to re-read my own blogs in the day or two after I write them, as people send me comments, and I have to admit, last week's I kept wincing at the last couple sentences.  Because I sound flippant, like ALL you need to CURE depression is a pill and a plan.  I should have spent a little more time on the ending before I clicked 'submit'.

Yes. Sometimes, when I have a difficult week, and the Prozac isn't enough, having something to look forward to is what makes the difference between living life and giving in to symptoms.  But I do realize there are dozens of levels of depression.  I know many people try five or six meds without any of them making a dent.  I know some people kill themselves, and some people think crying at sad commercials is depression. My goal was to share about my own experience, so that I can contribute to it being less of a taboo subject in general.  The more people talk and share their own experiences, the less square-peg-in-a-round-hole I feel, and hopefully you feel.  Admitting my imperfections, failings, human-ness is not so much scary, or bad at all, but stabilizing.  

I don't know the cause or cure for depression, just coping mechanisms I've learned.  But I do know a huge contributing factor in my case, is my brain not shutting up for one second.  You must all be like this right? Where one minute you are writing a swim team event on the calendar and then suddenly ten minutes has passed and you realize your blood pressure is high because your brain went from swim meet to coach to lack of communication, to that time last fall when you volunteered and no one showed up, to those other parents....  You get the idea.  My brain left to its own resources heads down a darker, more prickly corridor than it needs to.  I imagine some people just write 'Swim Meet 5:00 pm home' and then they move on to the next thing they need to do.  Do they?  Well I'd like to try going 24 hours without letting my brain take the reins.  Every single time I look at the pile of mail, I don't start thinking of insurance bills, and then taxes and then my checking account balance and then...  When I see a pile of dirty dishes I don't think 'Should have, could have, why didn't I?'  but just 'Dirty dishes, let me wash them.'  I can't imagine being successful at this for even an hour.  Also part of me thinks, well this is my creative mind at work.  If I stop being creative will I still be a writer?  If I stop being creative will I turn into a boring robot? 

Things at work are at a stress level of 9 out of 10 right now, and yet someone told me this week 'Yes, but you are always happy.' and it caught me off-guard.  That is how I appear?  I was surprised.  It reminded me of more than once taking one of those surveys that says 'If you have five or more of these symptoms of depression, seek medical help.'  And I would have 17 of 20.  Yet my co-workers think I'm happy. All the time.

Which leads me to the conclusion that happiness and depression are not mutually exclusive in the same person, or for me, even in the same day.  Or another conclusion might be that I'm good at acting happy even when I don't feel it.  Certainly you hear many comedians are depressed in real life, and I do spend an unusual amount of time trying to make people (and myself) laugh. 

But then, my supersonic brain can be a pleasure. Sometimes I look back at my 20s and think 'Oh I wish I could live that over again.' but mostly I appreciate the perspective another 30 years gives a person.  It is clichéd but true to say my life is much richer now.  I try to look at things and really see them.  In my 20s I was distracted by having enough quarters to do the 7 loads of laundry I had, how to get the cat to the vet, or being late to catch the train.  I rushed from one thing to another, never fast enough, always wanting more, more of everything.  Now I can sit and marvel at the sunlight hitting our leaded glass window, making rainbows on the old carpet.  I can sit at the high school and instead of wishing she would hurry up and get out here so I can _____, I'm thinking 'take your time, the radio is on, the window is down so I'm breathing fresh air, I can sit and think for a while.'  When I look at a child, I see her pigtails, and her mis-matched socks, and the marker on her hand.  I don't just look at them, I see them, and I think about what she was doing earlier, and wonder if she likes getting her hair put into pigtails, or if she cries. 

These two ideas, are at cross purposes.  On the one hand my loose-cannon thinking contributes towards my depression, but on the other hand my color-palette thinking makes life so much more flavorful, interesting, more of an adventure in the every day.  Over-thinking is like a thorn in your shoe, it never feels good, but not thinking at all?  That is like never going outside, so you don't need shoes.  I'm not willing to sacrifice that much.  I guess my experiment should not be to spend 24 hours not thinking, but to spend 24 hours asking myself every five minutes 'dark path or light path' and trying to go back and take the other fork in my road of thoughts.  Maybe there's a Fitbit for that?

 

 

Something to look, forward, to...

The title is meant to be sung to the tune of 'Someone to Watch over Me' from that famous Gershwin melody .  Why?  Because I love Mr. Holland's Opus, and because having something to look forward to is a theme that deserves something special like a musical hug. 

I'm a little down today, and in a certain mood, and random music lyrics are flying through my head. "When you're down, and troubled.." James Taylor. From my year obsessed with Les Mis soundtrack: Do You Hear The People Sing and I believe this entire movie and beloved (by me) soundtrack, with titles like 'Javert's Suicide' is one long depressing but enthralling score.  It is my heart's desire our marching band would do a Les Mis theme, but alas, I'm not in charge.   "Seasons in the Sun" by Terry Jacks because I listened to it on my little 45 record player, in the fifth grade, and contemplated life's shortness for the first time.  I was ridiculed by some older girls who said it was the worst song ever written.  Obviously I've forgotten their cruel derisive laughter from the edge of the skating rink, WHILE I was trying to perform my solo for the instructor. 

I do as they say 'suffer from depression'.  I've been on and off anti-depressants over the years.  Mostly on, like now.  But I still have days here and there, like everyone does, that remind me of life without medication.  Enough stress can do it.  Bingeing on sugar products and/or alcohol.  Sometimes I feel my body is programmed to have days like this every 79th day or something, like clockwork.  And having song lyrics fight for attention in my head, drowning out intelligent thought, is one way I know it is here. 

I say thank God, praise be to God, for Prozac.  It has been my life-saver.  I've never tried to hide the fact that it gets me on an even keel so that I can be a productive human who can look outside her inner windows to the real world.  I first was prescribed it in 1991. I recommend it.  I refuse to read all the stories about America's over-medicated moods because for me, it is freedom.  I remember after 911 I went off of it for a few years.  Somehow, I thought, with things like that going on in the world, you can overcome a little depression without pills.  Look at those people jumping from the skyscraper and grow up and get over it. 

But, the flaw in that logic is, it isn't a problem that only affects me.  It affects my spouse and my children, especially.  They suffer when I'm losing my temper three times a day.  When I'm refusing to leave the house or yelling at them just for slamming a door.  And so at some point ten years ago or so I finally went back on my anti-depressant and stayed on it and am very happy that I have.

So back to the title, something to look forward to.  Because a pill doesn't fix it all.  Having something to look forward to is the #1 thing that helps me when I feel depression creeping in.  I put something enjoyable on the calendar.  I talk about it.  I daydream about it.  Right now I'm looking forward to my husband and I closing on our flip house in a couple weeks, a shopping trip with my sister in November, and attending an amazing writing workshop with my favorite author, Elizabeth Berg, who you've patiently read about in earlier posts.  I wanted to share a link, just in case any of you want to give yourself this same Christmas gift that Chuck and I are giving me ;)  Here is the description of the day she has planned: One-Day Writing Workshop for Women with Elizabeth Berg

But as deliciously anticipatory as I feel about this upcoming event, you don't have to go that extravagant to have something to look forward to.  It can be, on a Thursday morning, I remind myself that Project Runway is on that night.  It might be buying a new planner but not opening it yet, so that you know, when you need it you can go open that box and start writing and scheduling perfectly, just like Carol Brady.  For me anticipating any kind of travel is guaranteed good vibe material, so I'm already weighing options for next June.

I love my Sunday School class.  They are a group of encouragers who want nothing more than to improve your day, with as little drama as possible.  Love that hour of the week.  I love my book club, because, duh, its about BOOKS which are the best thing ever, and a group of ladies who continue to show up to talk with me, even though they know me well.  After ? years I still keep waiting for them to pat me on the head and tell me they are tired of humoring me and they have better things to do with their time than pick apart the relationships in The Help for instance. These two appointments are examples of what I've built into my schedule so I can grab that balloon before it flies away and tie it to me.  I can look up and say, aha, something to look forward to this week.  

Sometimes I have to dredge down to the smallest things.  Some days it is a dentist appointment that gets me out of work in time to see the sunshine.  Yeah, I know. Or just knowing when I get paid that Friday, I get to buy mums, or pumpkins or (this week) some new black socks. 

I know I may have lost many of you by now, but if you are someone who has dealt with depression, I think you are still with me.  Because part of the treatment, is just knowing others have the same issue, they survived, and you will too. Everybody's story is different, but this is what works for me. A pill plus a plan.

And my best advice--don't make any major life decisions while in a low plateau.  Stick to the socks choices.  You're welcome.

All you need is a pencil stub and one old envelope

 Today's post is to participate in the writing exercise:  How writing has positively influenced my life. Hosted by Positive Writer.

So many roles we all shoulder in this life.  Daughter, sister, student, friend, girlfriend, wife, co-worker, mother.  But when are you ‘me’?  For me it is when I’m writing.

I’m the me who counted the cracks in the sidewalk from my house to the corner convenience store because it seemed like something to do.  I’m the me that carefully closed my bedroom door so I could stay up long past my bedtime to finish reading the latest Judy Blume.  I’m the me who hid 'supplies' in a hollowed out log near some railroad tracks in the woods that only one other person knew about.  The me that rode her bicycle across town to the McDonald’s with 35 cents in her pocket to get a hamburger and a cup of ice water all by herself.  The one who sat on the quad in college soaking up the sun while people walked by, a redbird flew overhead, and I had no where I had to be in the for-seeable future (which was about 4 hours at that time, the future).

When I’m writing I feel the other precious roles in life, those I’m lucky to call my own, float away.  Dropping to the ground.  Waiting outside the doorway of my writing room. I look around in my own brain and say ‘What are you thinking about writing today?  Yes, you.  The one who lives in this body?”

I can feel the sidewalk under my roller skates.  I can smell the lilacs on the bush on my walk home from second  grade.  I hear my breath coming in and out of the lungs of the same girl who would run down the street for Mr. Softy with her dime.  Almost all of my true ‘me’ feelings are in childhood.  As soon as the older years come into play, I was trying to be someone.  Trying to be the student my father longed for.  Trying to have a career that seemed important.  Trying to take care of my laundry and decorate my first apartment like the Good Housekeeping magazine covers.  Even at 22 I was already trying to form my life the way a good solid life should be.  But the key word there is ‘trying’.  When I’m me, I’m not trying.  I just am.  Writing allows me to stop trying and just feel, breath, be, myself.  All those people studying and searching the world to find themselves?  I find myself every time I sit down to write. 

I Like Now

When it is bedtime I don't want to get in bed. I want to stay awake and make the free time of evening last longer. When I wake up the next morning in my cocoon of a bed, I don't want to get out and start my new day. 

 When I'm drinking my morning coffee, I put off getting in the shower because it feels like life ends there and work begins.  When I am in the shower, I want to stay there for an hour at least.

 When I am home in the mornings, I don't want to leave for work and will dawdle terribly.  When my work day is at end, and I’m in the middle of some tantalizing investigation, I don't want to leave for home and will dawdle terribly. 

I live in the NOW.  Isn't that what all the experts tell you to do?  Wherever I am, I like being.  I am Procrastinator Girl. I am a study in paradox. Indecision is my middle name.

Joy in the Possibility

Since becoming a mother some years ago: First I stayed home for six months, then I worked part-time, then I stayed home and worked part-time in different sequences, eventually having my second and then third child. Then I worked full-time for three years, had yet another baby, worked part-time for seven years and since then have worked full-time for the last nine years.  I've done it all with one to four to one kids in the house depending on which year on that timeline you select.

In the early 90's it wasn't cool to be a 'Stay at Home Mom' (SAHM).  My intelligent salutatorian self told me it was the exact right place to be (or at least I imagine that now) but as they say, society didn't value the idea.  I found a magazine called Welcome Home that I clung to, and then found a national group called Hearts at Home which I considered my professional annual conference for a good ten years, getting involved to support their cause.. 

Now I am old(er) and I miss those days.  I'm not career-oriented like I 'should' be.  I try to wear both hats, but I like sipping my coffee while the laundry spins and I have a new book next to me to read.