I've had a fan going out in ye olde laptop all summer. I've still got it on the little cooling table, but one of those fans is going out, too. I've been supplementing with an awesome face fan Scott found and it worked great for about a week, but slowly over the last few days my keyboard has been reaching melting point in fewer and fewer minutes until startup itself has become a nuclear risk. Time for a date with the Geek Squad.
Did you know that the Black Tie service means you never sit on hold on the phone? It's not the same plan as your hardware protection. Some people get that mixed up. I also have a specific protection plan on my Toshiba that means it gets a free ride to wherever it gets worked on, free parts and labor, free replacement (I think) if something terrible happens to it. Like car insurance for my mobile office, lol. I know this sounds extravagant but since I save all kinds of money on makeup, salons, eating out, and drinking (because multiple allergies and I don't drink) I have all kinds of amazing money for my tech. I call it a fair trade off. My tech is actually bigger than this, but it's feeling nostalgic (and a tad jealous) with all this back to school shopping going on.
I've had this mobile office since 2009, supplemented with my mobile secretary since 2012. They make a good team.
Time to get my day organized. Imagine how much I could get done if my head worked this well.
If you liked that, there are more animated music machines here. Have one more, on Pinky Robot.
Time didn't exist yesterday so I was surprised how much I got done with the clock randomly jumping a couple of hours here and there. People who crave the effects of pot would love being in my head. I'm just like this all the time nowadays, but yesterday was spacier than usual. See what I mean, time just slipped again while I was wowing thru pix, click for your own experience.
I did a little quick pinning while I was spacing out.
This week Jenny mentioned her triggers and Anne told us her story and lots more people are writing how they feel. I wrote circus baby yesterday myself. It's not very good, more like a splat, but I know from long experience to just keep talking. I have spent very long days alone for years in a rural subdivision while Scott works. Most of the people around here are gone all day. I can't even count how many days I've driven into town just to be around people during severe anxiety attacks. Some days I can barely touch the steering wheel with a finger tip while I drive, but I know it's important to get somewhere around people. Sometimes when I'm driving I call people and tell them to keep me talking while I drive. This has been going on for years.
I keep thinking I really don't want to say too much yet, because it's going into the book. But it's important. I'm not afraid to talk about it any more. Anxiety and depression can get so bad that the mind splinters, and you can't tell when stuff is real or not. You can't tell what things floating around in your mind are just dreams or memories or wishing really hard for something. You can't tell if the wall or door you can feel right in front of you is really there. You can't tell yourself that you won't be able to float or fly if you lean too far off a deck. I have been there. I have been talked through it over time with a psychologist who has known me for seven years. I've been monitored for a year by a psychiatrist who has finally stopped pushing me to go on head meds because I complied with other things he said to do. A neurologist has ruled out illness and trauma because the physical involvement has been so entangled. My regular doctor keeps a very close watch on me. And finally, the reason I got Scott onto twitter is so he can watch me from work. If he can see me tweeting, he knows I'm getting through my day. He can gauge how I'm handling things. My whole family is involved, a team of doctors is involved, and some of my twitter/blog followers are involved. People can check on me continually. I have set it up that way on purpose.
If you feel like you are sinking or drowning or caught in a sticky mire or feel panicky about leaving your house or whatever, make a Plan, and get people involved by letting them know what you are doing. Several years ago when everything fell completely apart for me, I made a Plan. If I could get nothing else done, I would at least log into a blog and write a paragraph. Once I was able to do that for a week, I added at least making supper to my list. Poor Scott, if I could get nothing else done besides a paragraph in a blog, at least the guy would get something fresh and hot and yummy to eat. Believe it or not, I still struggle with that because time passing is such a non-issue for me. But after I got the hang of at least trying to do that regularly for a week, I added Do one load of laundry every day. Over time (it's been 8 years since I finally admitted I can't hide not being normal and capable any more) I have been able to add stuff to a very regular routine to the point where I'm actually feel like I'm getting a lot done, even on really bad days.
The key is routine. Take it from an aspie, routine WORKS. Very first thing is rounding up my brain. Next thing is What am I going to do next? What do I need to do next? What am I doing right now? You wouldn't believe how many times a day I stand around staring, and then go Oh, yeah. I can barely keep together what day it is. Hey look, here is a sample from a couple of years ago. Click to make it big so you can read it.
And that's nothing. I missed my daughter being 30 weeks pregnant on her 30th birthday last year. If anyone is a loser, it's me. But you know what? I'm learning so much about my mother that I didn't understand when I was younger. I get now why she got so wacky. I get how hard she kept trying even when all we could see was fail. I get why she finally gave up and let diabetes ravage her. We got the message, thank goodness. Not in time, sadly, but maybe in time for OURSELVES.
This has been a rough week for a lot of people. Keep moving, keep finding distractions to keep you busy, find a way to stay in touch with other people. Your story is just as important as everyone else's.
You all know by now my obsession for distraction is youtube. Thank God for fans.
One of those extremely rare mornings where I luxuriously sleep in past 7:30 and wake up to two different people trying to get hold of me for help with something. I've got years of private blog posts full of how I feel about constantly being needed and yanked around by a convergence of other people's drama probs from several directions like I'm a cosmic target. I haven't indulged in retrospection on irony in awhile, but I'm having trubba getting the bwain to engage, so I'll just use that as an exercise while I stumble all over typos like a broken robot. This paragraph has taken nearly ten minutes to complete. I am finally satisfied with it. On good days it's a breeze and flows right out. On bad days it can take several minutes to construct an intelligent sentence without any mistakes in it, and up to a couple of hours to construct a paragraph.
Burritonado. That's a word in our house now. Over the last week- shots, more teeth, stuff, MOAR TEETH, fever. I'm so tired. Scott is so tired. The irony is that after July my calendar was suddenly all cleared out. Appointment follow ups are over, physical therapy is over again for awhile, birthdays are over for awhile, everything is just over. All I asked for my 21st anniversary was an entire Saturday off because we completely missed doing any special anything for our 20th anniversary last year because we were so distracted and exhausted with new baby. I got my ONE day off, felt invigorated, full of new work Plan for August, and *boom*, no that isn't gonna happen. It's still not about me. In the 21 years I've been married, I am lucky to get Scott to myself even one weekend a year, and it sure didn't happen this year. I've been using this new work thing (I'm totally disabled, physically and mentally, and the plan is to do everything in my power to get. off. disability.) to distract myself from the severe depression part of aspie spoonie married into a severely ADHD self destructive alcoholic family (I really do love Scott, he broke free of that crap and is a great guy, and then built a house next door to his mother because he's a good son... NOW he understands why you just don't do that), and it's totally working- I am actually cleared by FOUR doctors (three of them specialists) to stay off head meds now (that's a huge thing, people) as long as I continue to SLEEP. I finally started sleeping after 20 years of severe insomnia. Yeah, that *ahem* coincides with getting remarried. *cough*stepdaughter*cough*neversleeping*cough* etc.
So I'm on track. I'm getting healthy. It's very slow. I feel like a turtle pulling a stalled out tractor trailer rig, but I'm doing it. And I'm glorifying in this wonderful month that opened up... No. Just, no. My body feels like a crash test dummy that hit the wall a few times. I can barely think. (I'm really proud of the complicated sentence structuring in the last paragraph, but I blanked on the word complicated and sat here staring like an idiot. This is taking an hour so far already.) Five years ago a doctor ordered restrictions, and the pain was so bad I wasn't allowed to lift even a gallon of milk. Guess what- I'm carting a 20 pound baby around like I'm Schwarzenegger. And she's one of the wiggliest strongest babies I've ever met. She's a circus baby. Here is proof. This is what it's like being married into a super hyper family. Notice the complete trust and strength of balance this baby has. And her mom has never dropped her. Burrito mama is the same way, she was one of the strongest little kids I ever met in my life. I think they lack a fatigue/pain awareness or something telling them to slow down. Scott is the same way, too, it's very genetic. It's not surprising that they can trace their family history directly back to Nathan Boone. Yep, I'm married into the Daniel Boone family, lol. I have this hypothesis that hyper people are the ones who can't stop moving so they are constantly going to find and see new things. They simply have no clue what a lazy day is. I think it's funny that Scott's history comes from Quakers and mine from Mennonites, but I'm going way off track now, here is circus baby.
In this second vid you can see she looks over to see if grampa is watching.
All I'm saying is that this slow determined brain crawling is my motivation for keeping up in real time with the people I love. I need a day here or there to write MY stuff and make it real if they wanna see me continue to get stronger.
I meant this, because I live it. I have family who lives it. I know other people who live it. Not 'quitting' is a DAILY preoccupation for ALL of us. Always. Even on good days. What Dreams May Come
I want my readers and followers to understand I know it's hard. I want the people thinking I'm self promoting too much to understand THIS is what keeps me here. I'm not hanging on view counts, I'm hanging on the discipline of getting up every single morning and committing myself to print in a very public world. When I say it's taking everything I've got, I really do mean it. I'm still here because I love my family. I've seen what death does ripping holes in lives, how extensive and far reaching the holes are through time, how it cripples those who are left behind. I feel very left behind. I don't want to do that to the people I love. But it's a daily commitment. I don't apologize for not joining in the delusion that drug and alcohol abuse is a fun and funny way to problem solve. Y'all haven't seen the ditch I've scraped myself out of doing that. We are all one step away from being face down in a ditch, so if you are using to deal, you need to take a step back and look at what you are doing to your families. Burrito mama survived a really big mess, a preemie that went through DTs and an absent parent (she's my step), and I'm so proud of her that she has her life together and has a wonderful healthy baby now herself.
I always crack up when this survey pops back up on the radar. Seems to come in spurts from several countries all at once, so it's a pretty fair bet someone linked it somewhere again. I could cheer because people find me entertaining, or I could just be honest and say there is a picture of John Barrowman in his Superman underwear somewhere in the survey. Clicking this sample will take you there.
Getting nervous again. I see Xangans asking on facebook if the 2.0 will roll on over another year or disappear after all, no one on the team is posting publicly, no mention of yearly fees coming up... I'll have my money ready but that will mean nothing if they go ahead and dump it without warning, as has happened with so many other blog hosts over the last ten years. I've started moving some of my Lexx posts over to blogger just in case. Wondering if I should start moving my bluejacky surveys. Thinking what a monumental load of work that will be. All of everything I do takes extra work. Crossing my fingers the move is permanent and my blogs never disappear again.
Scott asked me yesterday how the book is coming. He isn't aware that I still regularly get out of bed in the middle of the night to write another 900-3000 words as quickly as possible into a spiral before I forget my thoughts because I don't dare wait for my laptop to boot up, but since I haven't read anything to him aloud lately, he thought maybe I stopped. My head is so on and functional now compared to even just last year, but there is still always danger of new thoughts dropping right back out into an unrecoverable recycle bin, and I still feel like I'm racing time to get all the words done while I still have a window of opportunity. This clicks to how it all got started.
My psychologist did a quick rundown assessment asking me a lot of questions this last week. I'm technically 'cut loose' and don't really have to go back, but I've been touching base every other month. It's good for me to go through that kind of intense 'where am I now' and 'are my motivations still on track' assessment. No one else in the whole world does that with me. I remember how hard it was starting back up two summers ago. I remember every day was such a drag and everything was so hard and I had to BELIEVE every single moment that I can do this. And I had to want it more than anything. This clicks to one of my very first blogs ever, started in the worst year of my life. I never revealed for ages what was really going on.
I just deleted a paragraph about the dissonance I've been feeling lately, but realized as I write those words that constructing this particular book is one of the most utterly depressing things I've ever put myself through on purpose. So many things I've never told anyone. I've been slamming through staying so busy with other people this last year that I think I've missed a lot of crucial processing 'me' time. Sometimes I miss losing myself in the moment of letting my mind travel across the earth feeling the eons of accumulated time. People who've had near death experiences say time has no meaning on the other side. I love staring out across a vista and feeling time piled up in the earth beneath me, like riding on a giant clock through a brief burst of the heavens. It's taking every bit of grit I've got to keep pushing through. The writing is the easy part. The forcing it all together into a solid thing for the whole world... Ug, that goes against the grain of my soul.
Long ago in an alternate life in college I wrote an essay on the Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. My angle was that the idea of happiness itself is an absurdity, but I point out that for all we know, Sisyphus has the freedom to sit and rest as long as he wishes after the boulder gets away before he must go fetch it again, and that he can stick his tongue out at the gods or whoever he wants all the way back down the hill and then curse them all the way back up it while he's pushing the boulder without any further retribution. I wasn't verbal enough back then to discuss the freedoms that abound inside of the restrictions we feel upon us as we go through our days, but I am now. We sometimes forget to take a better look at our own boulders and whether we are justified in whining about them, or even using them to get attention. I'm sure nowadays Sisyphus would post a selfie with his boulder on twitter and facebook to see how many retweets and shares he could get, and some genius would undoubtedly create a mockup of an autocorrect convo between him and Zeus. I'm sure a producer somewhere would jump on the chance to create a reality show about the whole thing, and we'd see endless commercials of Sisyphus promoting athletic shoes, fast food, and a rockin' Dodge Ram helping him move that boulder, right? I think I would be able to identify more if Sisyphus had to turn in a manuscript and something bad kept happening to the file every time he had it all done.
My head feels pretty raked out. Time to fill it back up with something really cool, like this fan funded web series by Andrew Lee Potts and Keychain Productions. This just out 2 days ago.
Four quart bags of stuffing in the freezer now BOOYA. Won't have to make stuffing again for a year. I keep it simple around here, but if you wanna try something fancy like stuffing waffles, here you go, click that.
Scott is picking burrito up very early this morning and bringing her here for the day, so I don't have time to mess around. I'm just trying to wake up, keep poking my eyeballs back in, pouring benadryl in my coffee, brain slamming into consciousness. Then I have to run to town myself after a very quick breakfast. One of those days. The wallpaper in my brain looks like this.
Thank God for fans.
Ug, that goes against the grain of my soul.
