Tag: Making Happy

daily entry: January 30, 2015

Dear Internet,
HEY! My eBook is officially now live on Amazon:
TLC-Cover-Final

  • Morning ritual: Wake up, use the facilities, pop contacts in, take drugs, turn kettle on for tea, figure out breakfast. While the kettle is heating up, fill last nights Bopple and also the humidifier. With tea and breakfast in hand, check email, Facebook, Twitter. Respond as necessary
  • Planned on going to the gym and co-working space but ended up working close to three hours doing prep for so glad is my heart. (SUBMIT! Please.)
  • Showered and ran errands: Bank (quarters for laundry), Kohls/Macy’s/Penney’s/H&M (futile search for dress shirts for next week), Yankee Candle, LUSH, CVS, post office, dry cleaners. Took about three or so hours
  • Came home, depanted, lunched, and then napped
  • Worked on this entry and prepped Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes for January 31
  • Prepped for my trip to Toronto
  • Prepped the next issue of Skaldic Press Presents
  • Filed DMCA take down notice because some twat is stealing my work
  • Bed ritual: refilled humidifier, grab Bopple for the night, take contacts off and wash fash; use the facilities.
  • Read Fool by Christopher Moore before having a pretty good physical anxiety attack.

This is where the catch-22 comes in, right? I’m feeling not at all anxious, the anxiety hits as traveling pain that feels like I’m on the verge of having a heart attack. So then I actually start getting panicky and the pressure increases. None of my old tricks were working, so Klonopin it is! When I finally conked out, holding teddy of course, it was around 2AM. I then woke up at 4, 5, and 7. That part has been the same since October — waking up every couple of hours. I’m not dreaming because I’m not falling into REM sleep (not the band), but in the first few hours of my waking up for the day, I feel rested. Then I start to fall apart as the day progresses because I’m so tired.
xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2014, 2010, 1999

daily entry: January 29, 2015

Dear Internet,

  • Morning ritual: Wake up, use the facilities, pop contacts in, take drugs, turn kettle on for tea, figure out breakfast. While the kettle is heating up, fill last nights Bopple and also the humidifier. With tea and breakfast in hand, check email, Facebook, Twitter. Respond as necessary.
  • Showered and headed out for my errands of the day. First up was heading to The Factory to check out co-working space. Loved it, signed up for the monthly basic plan (2x a week, $75/month).
  • After The Factory, headed over to the YMCA and reactivated my membership. YAY.
  • Came home, depanted. The rest of my evening was floating around on the interwebs, researching markets to submit my work, and the like. Then I found out that I might have to be in Toronto this upcoming week, so I spent time researching flights and hotels.
  • Bed ritual: refilled humidifier, grab Bopple for the night, take contacts off and wash fash; use the facilities.
  • Read Clarkesworld and Apex magazines on my iPad. Started a short story in my notebook and pen! (How 20th century.)
  • Finally, turn the lights out, and curled around my iPad to watch some TV for a bit before finally falling asleep.

xoxo,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe: 1999

daily entry: January 28, 2015

Dear Internet,
Interestingly, the top posts on this site are either HOW TOs (whether about librarianship, packing, or whatever) and raw posts about an uncomfortable subject. With that in mind, and as part of ThePlan, I put together a list of things I need to do everyday, no matter how benign. Some I’ve been lackadaisical on, such as meditation, but others such as a single self-affirmation have been in play since I’ve been here.
One thing I wanted to do during this period was two fold: start a series of rituals I would do everyday to create a stable infrastructure and then journal about my day later. I need to see how I’m keeping time and if I need to either add or remove more structure.
To that end, I decided to keep the journal public, so hopefully these will be daily occurrences. This will not replace my usual written vomit on my feelings, but will supplement them.

  • Morning ritual: Wake up, use the facilities, pop contacts in, take drugs, turn kettle on for tea, figure out breakfast. While the kettle is heating up, fill last nights Bopple and also the humidifier. With tea and breakfast in hand, check email, Facebook, Twitter. Respond as necessary.
  • Today was divorce court day and there was a chance we would not have to go, but turns out we are. Get dressed (black fleece tights, grey skirt, chambray button down, black tshirt over the button down, brown ankle boots). I showered the night before so all I had to do was fluff hair, put on makeup, and clothes.
    • Hilarious story: The fleece tights didn’t stay up the last time I wore them, so I assumed it was because of the fabric of the dress I was wearing and that I was actually wearing underwear beneath them (I typically go commando in tights). Test drove them again around the apartment before leaving for court and they were staying up just fine. Except. Except. They started to fall as I was leaving court and by the time I got home, they were below my ass, taking my skirt with it. Good thing I was wearing a long coat.
  • Head to divorce court, meet lawyer. Turns out the referee agreed we didn’t have to meet but didn’t bother telling anyone, my or TSTBEH’s lawyers. Divorce lawyer and I talk about future steps (mediation, which will be easy peasy since TSTBEH and I are incredibly amicable about this whole process).
  • Head home and depant.
  • The rest of day flowed kind together. I worked on book #2 for awhile, read on marketing and promoting as an indie author; cleaned up and submitted a short story (and submitted a short story the day before as well). Applied for volunteer work at GRAM in their library. Eat lunch and dinner. Watched TV for awhile.
  • I ordered my print proof for my book! YAY!
  • Prepped for bed: refilled humidifier, grab Bopple for the night, take contacts off and wash fash; use the facilities, turn all the lights off, and hit the hay.

The second reason for this daily journal is also to let those I talk to daily via the intertubes is that I’m doing okay. I’m always talking or texting someone whether it is TSTBEH, TheBassist, Krazy Kate, or a host of other people. I don’t feel alone and I definitely don’t feel lonely. Sure I have bouts here and there, but most of that comes from the overwhelming sense of the enormity of the situation.
I lead a quiet life and I don’t miss the drama filled Lisa from July – December.
At all.
(Let us thank the drugs for that one.)
xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2011

year in review: 2014

Dear Internet,
Working at home today and getting supremely in the groove. Re-discovered that I used to do a round up, by month, of things that went on in the previous year as a year in review. This seems like a good idea to continue insofar as giving me a perspective for the year and helping me figure out what I need to improve or cut back on.
Previous years: 2000, 1997, 1996

Neil Gaiman’s New Year’s wish for 2015:

Be kind to yourself in the year ahead.

Remember to forgive yourself, and to forgive others. It’s too easy to be outraged these days, so much harder to change things, to reach out, to understand.

Try to make your time matter: minutes and hours and days and weeks can blow away like dead leaves, with nothing to show but time you spent not quite ever doing things, or time you spent waiting to begin.

Meet new people and talk to them. Make new things and show them to people who might enjoy them.

Hug too much. Smile too much. And, when you can, love.

It’s been a helluva a year. Here’s to 2015 being boring and slow.
xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2014, 2013, 1999

Year of the Spinning Mouse (or Lisa’s Grand Scheme of a Plan for Fighting Dragons)

Dear Internet,
Sunday night I had a mini-meltdown of sorts, which lead to feelings of depression and lots of tears. I rebounded, mostly, within a few hours and more or less righted again. Taking into consideration that was the first meltdown of any kind in over a month  compared to the almost daily meltdowns I was having before I became medicated, I felt pretty good about the recovery time.
While it wasn’t a pleasant thing to have happened, it was a giant kick in the ass to get back on working on ThePlan. I talked about ThePlan abstractly in this entry, so here it is in its glory. Blue marks items completed or in progress:

  • Mental
    • Continue seeing talking therapist (Dr. Parker)
    • Stay on drug regime / tweak meds to find a series that works
    • Find medicating therapist for drugs
    • Apply for ObamaCare
    • Meditate daily using headspace.com – Back on track as of 12/29/14
  • Exercise/Health
    • Take yoga classes at local place (Bethums approved http://www.fromtheheartyoga.com/)
      • Start with 2x a week and build up
    • Do planks daily
    • Walk more to things
    • Stop eating dairy in all forms
    • Stop randomly smoking
    • Stop eating out, prepare foods at home more
    • Prep to start walking competitively (5k walks, etc)
    • Drop some weight, start slow
  • Living
    • Find apartment in Grand Rapids to live solo and work – Lease signed 12/9/14 for one year, starting January 2015
  • Money/Jobs
    • After the house sells, I will have enough money to live for a year-ish
      • Car will be paid off
      • Rent will be paid in advance for the first year-ish
      • Car /rental insurance insurance will be paid for the year
    • All credit cards will be paid off when the house sells.
    • Only monthly costs will be car gas, utilities, phone, internet, storage locker, plus small utilities such as Hulu+ and Netflix.
    • Writing
      • Look for a co-working space
      • Write daily mood occurrences and things that happened
      • During this time, I will be actively working on my book and also working on making passive income via selling short stories, ebooks, etc
      • If I am not generating enough income within the first six months, then will start actively looking for a job in my field

Because things are always fluid, this plan has changed slightly from the one that I wrote up earlier in the month; but the crux of it remains the same. I get there are some days I don’t want to get out of bed and other days I cannot get to sleep.
I need to remember that by having the plan in place, it will allow me to function while I continue to get my mental health sorted out. It won’t be easy. It won’t be smooth, but, it will be of my own making.
xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2013, 2012, 2003

done consciously and intentionally

Dear Internet,
I’m at Philly international airport on my way to my final destination and I’m debating the merits of being a woman who is about to start menstruating. I know my breasts are firmer and more round. I also know I’m throwing off pheromones like no one’s business because I have a crowd of gentlemen clustered me in this otherwise empty section of the airport. It could be my charm and wit, or it could be the Lisa-puffs, but I’m betting it is pheromones.
Today will be a long day. I drove 2 hours to the airport to catch an early afternoon flight to the east coast and now I’m on my layover in Philly before the final leg. There were plans to be had this evening, but I’m betting once I make it to my final destination, head will hit pillow and the drool will come forth.
I made an observation this afternoon while I played Tetris on my iPad, in that if I played the game deliberately, I could easily get to level 9, which is nearly a 100 rows. If I do not play deliberately, I am dead within the first 10 rows. I found this to be interesting.
But being deliberate about the game also meant I had to be patient. It also meant I had to focus on the game and not on what was happening around my world. Not too surprising, the more I put my energy into paying attention to the game rather than my usual mashing of buttons, I did really, really well.
This is similar to how meditation works. You concentrate on the body and then you open yourself up to the world to let it wash over you. Then you learn how to reign the focus back into yourself while the world is awash, so you can find stillness in the chaos.
Since being a good Tetris player requires much of the same philosophy, it makes sense to me that once I started putting my meditation practice to work in the game, my game got increasingly better.
Imagine if this was applied to everything?!
Interesting hypothesis, yes?
xoxo,
Lisa

This Day In Lisa-Universe: 2013, 2012, 1998

Moving Part Deux


Dear Internet,
Well, here we are again: I’m moving. This time Two Men and a Truck put what I pillaged from Throbbing Manor (thanks to the generosity of TSTBEH) into storage for a month while I’m out on the east coast; then they will move me into Valkyrie Estates (name may change) in mid-January. Then, THEN, work will start on my book(s).
My pillaging helps TSTBEH out as he would have had to either donate, sell, or take with him the remaining furniture he decided he did not want after the split. With the exception of a bed, I’ve almost completely furnished Valkyrie Estates. I’ve got a list of smalls I need to pick up when I get back (like laundry soap and toliet paper), but really, that is it.
This manic last two months, easier to give it a simple explanation when the explanation is really much more complicated, has been financially AND mentally expensive. Truth be told, if I wasn’t counting on the settlement from the selling of the house to pay off my debts, I may have reigned the spending in but that’s an excuse for my own folly. I must accept the responsibility of what I have done financially.
It’s now mid-Sunday afternoon and I’m camped out at a hotel. Again. This time the only thing I’m running from is sleeping on an air mattress in a house that is freezing. Between the consignment shop swopping in on Thursday and my movers on Friday, all that is left until Monday is an air mattress, a 50″ TV and related stereo equipment, dining room table and chairs, TSTBEH’s boxes, and the art deco hutch. In 3200 sqft. We attempted to sleep on the air mattress every night until the closing of the house on Tuesday but I just couldn’t do it. I gave in to my inner diva, left late Friday night for a hotel, and here I am.
And yes, I’m keeping track and earning points with all of this hoteling, flying, and other travel.
My entire life is now split between two suitcases and my messenger bag of electronics. There are a few odds and ends in my trunk but my worldly possessions are now in those two suitcases; it’s a freeing feeling and an exhausting one. Now that my mind is finally clearing and I’m starting to put things into better perspective, I want to nest. Now.
I have to learn patience, I have to learn that waiting is okay and things will still be there when I’m done waiting. Not everything is gossamer and clouds but water and dirt. Things are tangible, holdable, and lovable.  These are things I need to remember and need to not forget ever again.
So let’s move on to something other than my mental geographical quandary.
Part of ThePlan is bundling the previous years entries into an ebook volume and publishing it on Kindle and other eRetailers.
Today I finished the first draft of volume 1 and it clocks in at roughly 114 pages.
The plan is to take previous years (beginning, well, at the beginning) of The Lisa Chronicles, bundle them by year into an eBook version and see if I could shill it on Amazon (and maybe Apple) to make some passive income.
The idea was pitched to me about four years ago when a library school friend offered to go through these entries, edit for clarity and grammar, and help me format them for the Kindle. I was a bit trepidatious at first, for I often do not find myself to be that fascinating, I just happen to get into fascinating circumstances. But apparently there is a market for this type of writing and I had oodles of it already written at my disposal.
But I stalled, as I do, on the project when I was working full time; I started nibbling at the idea again when I started planning for my sabbatical. The process seemed simple enough: get the back entries of The Lisa Chronicles up online on EPbaB for completist sake. Then move the content over to Word for formatting and editing. Find a cover. Set a price. Write a forward and a description. Upload and BOOM. Book is on the Amazons.
But it wasn’t that simple, rather, it was much more complex than my simple plan. Two things were happening in parallel. First being I had to set up as a business entity to help with writing off things related to my sabbatical AND to properly handle any income coming in from the sales of the eBooks. Second, that I had to find the content (easy enough as I kept multiple copies), get it on to EPbaB so the archives were complete, then move it to Word. I knew how prolific I am, so I figured I’d break it down by year and each year would be roughly 50 pages of formatted book text.
Did I mention that year one is at 114 rough pages? And only from April to December 1998? So I was obviously wrong in my page prediction.
I consider 1998 to be the very beginning for the sheer amount of content, though I have pieces that were published much earlier. I have gotten 1998 and 1999 into the EPbaB archives, so the first two volumes of the eBook project are going to be easy to do. I’ll have to work in tandem with getting the later content up and editing the current project and writing the fiction book.
I’m going to be a very busy girl.
Getting it up on Kindle was not that difficult: I opted out of the KDP Select option which means the work would have only been sold on Kindle and I opted out of having DRM on the eBooks. I was able to, with the help of TheBassist and cmmrb, figure out the cover design (Amazon has a free cover creator). I have my EIN and LLC name (Skaldic Press), so everything on the business side was ready to go. It was just a matter of getting the content up, formatted, and edited.
So basically the hard part.
You know where you can find me for the next month.
xoxo,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe: 2013, 2012, 1999, 1998

liège waffle

Dear Internet,
Right. New plan.
It began when I was muttering to myself in the ladies at the TA in Youngstown, OH. This was pre-coffee, post-medication. Mid-late afternoon last week.
I was muttering that if only Throbbing Cabin (which TheSoonToBeExHusband is keeping) was open and available for me to go live at during the winter (TSTBEH is a generous soul) while I did my individual thing. But we closed it for winter back in September; Leelanau County received 241″ of snow last year; heating would run millions since the heating infrastructure is absolute shit and lastly, I would be miles and miles away from the nearest town. I wanted to be alone, not Jack Torrance.
(It was a very long pee.)
Then the near perfection dawned on me: Get a studio in Grand Rapids! It’s cheaper than the east coast. TheBassist would be doing his thing on the east coast, TSTBEH would start his new life in Louisville. I get my payout from the selling of the house, pay off the cards, pay off Jeeves, pay rent for a year, pay car insurance for a year and I’d only have to worry about food, phone, and interwebs and write that blasted book I’ve been banging on about forever, plus a few other writing projects.
Fucking genius.
It’s all coming together.
As soon as I got into GR that early evening, after spending a cumulative 16 hours driving, I immediately launched into my plan with TSTBEH. He had told me, and I had forgotten apparently in the Asian land war of my brain, that I was only to show up on his door if I was serious about getting back together and yet here I was standing on his front door step telling him we were most definitely not getting back together.
He accepted my decision gracefully and I think, along with TheBassist, that something about my demeanor (or the drugs were stabilizing me) was different than before as both of them seemed more receptive to this plan over any other cockamamie schemes I had come up with in recent weeks. TheBassist requested, and I provided, a PLAN as a guide of what I’ll be doing in money/job, mental health, physical health, living, and relationships. I also gave a copy of the plan to the cabal that is CMMRB and they too, whom other than the two men in my life have been holding me up every step of the way, approved of the plan.
ThePlan, is more or less a check list of things to do in the upcoming year with a review at six months. I also added in a three year and five year addendum for shits and giggles. Each topic has a list of things that must continue (for example, under Mental I have a listing of continuing to see my talking therapist, Dr. P) and need to be done (get a referral for a local medicating therapist to monitor my drugs and seem them on a regular basis). Some of it is reminders (stop eating dairy) while others are nudges (walk more).
After that I said on Facebook,
It’s been almost two weeks since I’ve been on the Lamictal/Abilify drug mix and I will say this:
Pros

  • When I get a million “to do” items in my head, I immediately create a ToDo list and work on it. Follow through on said items has been great.
  • I am prioritizing the ToDo list better.
  • Appetite is down and I’m not over eating at meals.
  • Daily tasks, like meditation, I have been diligent on.
  • I feel pretty good when I commit to a thing, I’m sticking with it.
  • The need to smoke is decreasing. Yay!

Cons:

  • Sleep is broken. I went to bed at 10:30 last night and woke up at 2, 4:30, 5:45, and finally at 7:48.
  • I cannot take SSRIs because I am one of the rare cases I’ll get suicidal thoughts though when on SSRIs, I obviously did not follow through. Now, I am getting destructive behaviour thoughts like when driving across the bridges in Pennsylvania, I wondered what would happen when I swerved into the medians. Using mediation techniques, I accept them as thoughts and let them come and then go and do not fight them. But it’s still slightly scary.
  • I am getting some relief and I don’t feel as yo-yoing as before. I have a long way to go, but I do feel like this is small steps in the right direction.

The big thing to note here is the ability to prioritize and accomplish tasks which, as someone with adhd along with the other delightful gifts, is damned near difficult to follow through. But so far, not really a problem.
That Friday I made phone calls/emails to six property management companies and referrals I found on Craig’s List. As of a week later, none of the property management companies returned my calls, but the referrals via Craig’s List did. I set up appointments, starting on Saturday, and took the first place I visited because it was absolutely perfect. Not a studio, but a 600 sqft one bedroom located in a 145 year old house that used to be a hospital after the Civil War. There are five apartments in the building, mine is a second floor walk up, and the amenities are out of the world.

  • Heat (gas) and water included. This is gold in Michigan since my last apartment I rented in an old house ran me $400-500 for heat a month during the winter, which combined with my reasonable rent, made it crazy expensive
  • Trash/recycle / snow plowing / lawn maintenance
  • Off street parking
  • Locked front door entrance
  • Pets allowed
  • All original wood floors, paneling, and molding throughout the apartments and building
  • 10′ ceilings
  • Same area as Throbbing Manor, so damned near perfect location
  • Big windows
  • Bedroom oversees the city landscape since I’m on mid-hill
  • Owner is allowing me to pay a year in advance, with 5% discount, and option that if I end up leaving before the year, monies will be returned once the apartment is re-rented (which shouldn’t be an issue)
  • Coin operated laundry in the basement

I signed the lease and gave my deposit three days later. So now I have a place, a budget, and a plan.
Right, to make sure we’re all on the same page:

  • TSTBEH and I are divorcing, finalizing probably in February
  • The house closes on 12/16
  • He’s moving to Louisville
  • I’m staying in GR to live the bachelorette life in my own pad and get my writing done
  • I have a talking therapist here (Dr. P.) and soon, a medicating therapist. My GP will be regulating my drugs until then

Three or six months or a year later, who knows. But at least now I have ThePlan to follow.
xoxo,
Lisa

This Day In Lisa-Universe: 2013

in the wilds


Dear Internet,
Teddy has been to a lot of places for a stuffed bear. Grand Rapids. Toronto. San Francisco. Washington DC. Grand Rapids. Detroit. Grand Rapids. East coast.
And now back to Michigan.
TheBassist and I are on a pause.
I’m not sure how long of a pause – could be six months, could be six years. I’m currently in the wilds of the Poconos right now, holed up in a hotel cut into a mountain with a giant unidentifiable stain on the bedspread and in a smoking room. A sugar free RedBull is opened in one of the drink holders in Jeeves and I could queue up the manic to push through the 13 hour drive but I am not in my 20s and at times I can be a bit smart on how to handle things. Thus, with the weather turning from drizzle to sleet,  I pulled over for the night. My alarm goes off at 6AM and I hope to be on the road by 7, in Michigan by the end of the Thursday afternoon.
Last night I received word about the #teamharpy case and we’re allegedly going to trial in the spring. Between that, the cock-up my divorce is becoming (not at the fault of J.), joblessness and looking for a job, added with stress of moving, hemorrhaging money like mad, I was crumbling worse in the last month than the last six months I was in Grand Rapids.
It is not that I don’t love TheBassist. It is not because I don’t want to be with him. It is not that he did anything wrong or his family or friends wasn’t amazing to me while I was there. It is none of these things.
I am being chased by some very large demons, some whom would probably decimate most humans. My sword is only so sharp, my shield is only so penetrable. I had to choose which battles I could could fight to win the war.
This was not a decision I have taken lightly, as we all well know.
I took a big risk. I am proud of myself for taking that risk.
Some of you may not agree with me, but you are not me. The biggest thing I learned during this whole endeavor was, simply put, that I am human. I waffle. I fail. I succeed. I fight. I retract.
Letting me be human was the biggest gift TheBassist could give me.
For most of my conscious adult life, I’ve been very contentious of what the world thought and attempting to correct any short givings I perceived myself to have, to not follow the same paths I came from, that somewhere along the way, I projected myself as being a super woman.
I am not super woman. This has been a very hard lesson to not only learn, but to actually know. I can only do so much before it takes it toll. This is why I saw a medicating therapist last week; this is why I went back on the drugs. This is why I’ll continue taking the drugs, continue seeking therapy. Where I’ll put self-care as a top priority rather than something to deal with later. I’ve been trying to work on this for a long time.
This decision hurt a lot of people, not only myself or TheBassist. I get that. I accept that. Many of you will be angry at me or frustrated. But know this: I did not shift my life 1000 miles on a whim. TheBassist is one of two loves of my life. But the foundations I need in my life in order to have a life with him does not exist. He told me in the very beginning that if our houses were not in order before we came together, our relationship would suffer. He was right. He also understands this.
I did not leave because I don’t love him. Know this. Trust this.
So I head back to Michigan and I formulate another plan. I let the dust settle and come out stronger than ever.
In the interim, once this posts to my Facebook wall, I’ll be deactivating my Facebook account on Friday. I’m also deleting my Instagram account for all those photos of us together would be too painful to see. I am keeping my Twitter account as my primary methods of communication, though I have reigned it in. If you’re a friend of mine and you FB BFF TheBassist, you do not have to unfriend him. And vice versa if you’re a friend of his to me. We’re not asking people to take sides. We ARE asking people to be respectful while we grieve and to remember there is always more to the story than what meets the eye.
Our story is not yet done.
Darkest night, brightest days.
xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2013, 2013

headspace

Dear Internet,
I was gifted with a year long subscription to Headspace, a site that teaches you guided meditation in easy, bit sized chunks. In true Lisa fashion, I’m having panic attacks left and right during and after the exercises which sets off a whole slew of everything elses.
That surprised me. Aren’t you supposed to feel whole and unconflicted while doing your meditation and not a hot fucking mess? The answer is no: This is apparently a normal part of the process, as is sadness.
When I posted my experiences on Facebook, there were numerous comments from others that had similar feelings when practicing; hearing I was not alone was comforting. There are times when my own feelings seem to overrule so much of who I am, it is almost incomprehensible others may feel the same way or could fathom where these feelings themselves. Hearing related stories is helpful in addition to being comforting as it indicates no matter how much my brain tells me otherwise, I am not so alone in the world.
That is often very important bit of knowledge that I need to remember: I am not so alone in the world.
The big question Headspace asks is what do you intend to get out of the practice? I’ve been gnawing at this for the last five days as I’ve been working through my foundation pack and I realized the first thing I came up with was: I expected instant gratification and for all the emotional pain to just go away (which explains since I’m not getting instant gratification, I’m going into panic mode when I begin my session). That answer was not the direction I wanted to go in, so it helped for me to actual vocalize what and why I was thinking these thoughts so I can begin to formulate a healthier plan.
I’ve been in such an emotional free fall these last few months which has been amplified by the lack of a solid foundation that should have existed before making any big moves. I know people have got me, but I need to have myself and more often than not, I don’t.
While I find myself acting impulsively at times, mainly with money, I tend to catch myself before I’m entirely stupid. My thoughts are often racing. My verbal word retrieval, which is usually an indicator of how bad the racing thoughts are occurring, is fairly awful on most days. I often find myself attempting to panic on things that I cannot control, no matter how minute or out of my control they are or how ridiculous it would be to panic over that thing. Let’s say I need to do something in the next week. I’ll start the panic process on anything else related to that thing even if that thing is as benign on sorting items out to donate to the local Goodwill.
I have forgotten me in all of this. I have forgotten self-care.
Knowing that this feeling of panic is part of the process, that it is normal to feel this way, takes a bit of the sting out of the attack when it happens. While I’m still panicking during and after practicing, I know where the root of some of the panic comes from. I know that by bringing the focus back to the body more and less on attempting to follow my herringbone mind is totally okay and will get better with practice.
Headspace used the analogy sitting on the side of the road watching the cars go by, something I found I don’t really do at all. Often I’m so busy wanting TO BE the car I forget that I can just let the cars go by and not having to actually interact with them. Working on the meditation allows me to really see that sometimes these thoughts are really just that: thoughts and not concrete methods of decision making.
This was this week’s lesson learned: it’s okay to worry or have a panic thought, this is normal part of all the changes I’m going through. It’s okay to want to always begin with building your own foundation. Thus, for now, that’s what I want to get out of Headspace is the ability to make more mindful decisions, recognize thoughts are just thoughts, and to remind myself to be present in this world while building a solid foundation for myself as I do so.
xoxo,
Lisa

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