cryptic gratitude

No details, but I think last night's gratitude is important to write down. I'm glad someone called me on my shit yesterday. I may have been angry in the short term, but I got stuff done and it shocked me out of a rut. Next rut to fix: sleep deprivation cycle.

State of the Vera

Well, apparently I didn't make it very far with my gratitude posting month. I'll probably do more of it, but every day didn't work out this year. So instead, today I'll post a State of the Vera Address:

Jobs:
I've been temping since we moved to Seattle. It's been a mixed bag of fun, horror, learning new skills, and just slogging through. I'm about to move back to Portland where I don't even have a good prospect at the moment. There are plenty of maybes, but maybes don't pay the rent. So I've been freaking out about that a little bit. I'm pretty confident that once I start walking into vet clinic and handing them resumes, things will loosen up, but since I'm living up here and can't physically do that, I just have to sit on my hands and surf Craigslist. Hilarious fun!

Housing:
Matt and I just nabbed a gorgeous house in NE Portland for a little less than the one we're in now in Seattle. It's biking distance to a number of friends and walking distance to the Kennedy School and New Seasons. It's bigger than this house (by a small amount), has a fenced back yard, and butts right up against Wilshire Park, where there's an off-leash area. It's wonderful! It's beautiful! And there've been a variety of interesting kinks in our plan to move there. It's not worth going through every gory detail, but every day brings a new emotional roller coaster of housing.

Sleeping:
I finally got my sleeping habits under control. For a while there, I had insomnia like whoa. I think it was mostly related to anxiety and I got that under control after a while with cunning application of tea and therapy. But here it comes again, just in time for us to move. Woohoo! In related news, I've learned that energy drinks are awesome, but I crash really hard after they're out of my system.

Depression:
Wow! I really kicked it! Well, mostly. I'm learning some coping techniques. Some are really mundane, like calling a friend for a quick kick in the pants, or going for a walk with the dog. Others are a little more maintenance, like eating balanced meals. But every day I wake up and tell myself that today is a good day, and usually it is.

Bad pun moment:
The state of the Vera is Washington, soon to be Oregon.

Today's Gratitude:
I managed to start turning my life around before age 25. Albeit, it was just a few months shy, but I'm still glad I did it.

running running running

I was planning to write a state of the Vera address, but apparently I had other things to do away from the computer. The address should be forthcoming.

Today Matt, Baldr, and I went to the dog park and ran ourselves silly. Baldr had a chance to chase another malamute around and there were several labs and retrievers that wanted to wrestle with him. But the best part of all of that was chasing him around the park. Matt and I took turns playing tag with Baldr until he was too tired to stand up. It was great!

Day (maybe I should stop counting because I missed a few days) 15 Gratitude:
running really fast until I'm out of breath and giggly

I knew this would happen...

I made it a third of the way through the month before hitting writer's block. I've had three or four grumpy evenings and bad night's sleep, which of course, leads to tiredness and feeling generally delicate. Blah. So I guess today I'll list something I'm grateful about in general, every day, and try not to take it for granted.

Day 12 Gratitude:
Baldr and Zhenya offer me unconditional love, every day, all the time, no matter what

fans, and things that hit them

I've been a mess for most of today. I think it's sleep deprivation catching up to me, or possibly leftover stress, improperly processed, from last night. But anyways, I messed up a few things, Matt and I grumped at each other, and then the toilet overflowed. A lot. There was some screaming and swearing and then cleaning up. And a bit more grumping, because that's how these things go. But then the grumps were replaced with dinner, accomplishing something in the job search, and snuggling in front of stupid TV. All is well!

Day 11 Gratitude:
rooting out the source of the grumps

when you're not strong, I'll be your friend

No details here, but a little outline:
-Saw friends who went out of their way to see me on Sunday
-Called people on the phone and talked to them about friend things and it was great
-Had various twitter in livejournal exchanges with friends

I did a little leaning and a little supporting in the past few days.

Day 10 Gratitude:
friend networks that are strong enough for mutual leaning in many directions

PS I posted this and then decided to add another few thoughts about friendship:
It's been a good long while since the last time that I felt strong enough about myself to be the support person. It's a role that I would really rather be taking, and suddenly I find that I'm really doing ok enough to hold others up for a bit. It's only fair; they did the same for me. And the best part about it is that there are many people I can turn to next, so we're all supporting each other.

flying hugs

Today I went down to Portland on a whim. Really, it hadn't been planned before about 10am today that I would do it. But Dad and I looked at a house and hung out with folks and had coffee and it was generally awesome. More than one person I ran into gave me a flying hug. :) I took the Amtrak Cascade line back up north for the first time in my life. It was just about uneventful, though I had to screw my courage to the sticking point and whatnot. Traveling alone is all scary and stuff! The worst part of the trip was when google maps gave Matt bad directions to the station, so he got all frustrated and I waited in the rain. (Honest! I had fun!) But I think I handled today and all of its attending chaos far better than I would have 6 months to a year ago.

Day 9 Gratitude:
Good stories to tell.

Oh, dear...

I've come to one of those days that didn't have something particular in it to be thankful about. I mean, it was a fantastic day... We ate at restaurants that I love, spent time with cool people, played Scrabble, got housey things done, generally Saturdayed the heck out of today. So I suppose I can pick something from the more general list of things that I'm thankful for and go from there...

Day 8 Gratitude:
I'm glad that I live in a society at a level that allows me free time.

you got your health and you got food in you belly

I thought up this whole thing I was going to write here about today... Last night Dad got in to visit us. He hasn't seen me in a while and was pleasantly surprised to see my face has all cleared up. I haven't had my stupid eye-dripping issue for a while and I'm feeling generally healthy. Ignoring that odd infection I had a few weeks back and the general anxiety and insomnia, I'm doing pretty well at the moment, physically.

Day 7 Gratitude:
my health (is better than it was a year ago, or even a month ago)

schadenfreude

There's some drama at work at the moment... Nothing that directly involves me, but I get to hear about it a lot. A group of us ended up making terrible, terrible jokes today for a good long time. It reminded me a bit of laughing so hard in the Looking Glass House that I fell on the floor.

Day 6 Gratitude:
laughing to hard you can't breathe

remember, remember

I had a session with my therapist this evening. We talked about various things I've been doing to try to combat my depression and how successful they've been (or not) and came up with a few new tools for myself. I was surprised to realize that I'm in very similar situations that I was in about a year ago in terms of social isolation at work and monotony of what I'm doing to earn a living. And I'm handling it fifty times better than I did then.

Day 5 Gratitude:
making quantifiable progress

Blue!

I've been a bundle of nervous energy for days and days... I'm not handling this election thing terribly well this year. I was more collected in 2004, possibly because I didn't care for Kerry as much as I disliked Bush. But Matt and I are listening to OPB's coverage of the results. I'm dealing with some of my nerves by baking brownies and frantically refreshing electoral maps and news sites. If you told me four years ago that I would spend this evening eating spaghetti and sitting mostly quietly at my computer...

These brownies are celebratory and not drown-your-sorrows.

Day 4 Gratitude:
President Barack Hussein Obama

(I don't feel like this is real... We've been waiting for too long.)

failure

So I blew the experiment on the second day. That doesn't mean I didn't have something to write about, I just got home really late and forgot to sit down and write it. So here's what yesterday's entry would have been, and I swear it's not a cop-out.

So yeah, on Saturday I wrote about family. Last night I had dinner with those same cousins. It was low key, we watched some Star Wars, and hung out for a while while I wrestled with their dog and we talked about the world. So again:

Day 2 Gratitude:
Family

Today I started off with an odd morning... It was light out, because of the time change, and Matt was still in Portland, so I had to get Baldr fed and walked before I went to work. It was fun! I handled my time a lot better than I usually do in the mornings. I think I might see if I can walk Baldr in the mornings a few more days. And then I decided that today's mantra would be "Today is a good day." It seemed to work. I made a new friend and we had all kinds of great conversations about music, video games, and bad jokes. I actually kind of had fun at my dead-end warehouse temp job.

Day 3 Gratitude:
"Today is a good day."

catching up

The weird thing about family (and friends, really) is that even if you haven't seen or heard from them in ages, they're still family (and friends) and they still care. I spent some time this morning with my cousin Jules and our dogs at the park talking about Deep Philosophical Things.

Day 1 Gratitude:
Family

NaBloGraPoMo

For the past few years I've participated in National Blog Posting Month, trying to post every day for the month of November. This year I'm going to try something a little different... To start off, I'm posting here instead of my older journal. I'm also going to try to post things that pertain to this blog's purpose (self-reflection, personal growth, spiritual things, and my Fiendish Plan) and if I have nothing good to say, post about things that I'm grateful for. This will be an adventure!

fiendish plan

I have a fiendish plan of what to Do With Myself when I Grow Up. I don't really want to go into detail too much for fear of jinxing anythings, but needless to say, this plan is very, very me and will be very, very difficult.

In the process of deciding to do this I've discovered a few interesting things about myself.

1) It took me two or three years to figure out that this was something I wanted to do. Many people (parents, friends, Matt, and even me) have suggested this line of thought before, but I guess I needed to be good and ready before I'd agree to it. Man, am I stubborn!

2) I'm letting my fear of screwing up keep me from acting. I spend a lot of time looking at how scary this path is and then not doing much about it. Then a friend calls, or something like that, and they tell me how exciting it is that I'm pursuing this plan, or they remind me how great an idea it is, and I charge in again. Today I'm looking at all of the steps I need to take first and it's looking like a big, gigantic, expensive thing.

success?

From Cats!

Well, whatever I'm doing seems to be working... Some combination of diet change, activity change, and attitude change has left me feeling pretty good about the world for many days in a row. Oddly, this means I feel like I have less to talk about in this space. Just sayin'. So here's a photo of me that I took late at night with a kitten on my shoulder.

a moment of Portland surrealism

I went to Portland last weekend to visit some friends. It was pretty awesome and there were kittens. But I'm still not as self-confident as these melons.

"Hello, hello? Is this thing on?"

She said,

This is an intervention. We're not happy with the way you're living your life. You've become far too timid. You're blending in to make things easier, but you're making it harder on yourself in the long run. You can't chip away bits of yourself to fit in to this world. You've lost too much of yourself and it's hurting you. Remember that you're not alone and we're here for you. Don't make any decisions, no matter how small, without talking to us. We're always here and we'll always take your call. Remember you have a body! Use it! You're too stuck in your mind and that's making you miserable. Make a plan and follow it. Don't let timid Vera take over! Decide who you want to be and become her. You've done it before, but it's been too long. Let's make a plan. Three goals. What do you want to accomplish in the next month?

1) Find a chorus and sing at least once a week.
2) Get a job that fits better.
3) Make an appointment with a doctor.

Ok, good. Now repeat them back to me. We will help you with this. Call us any time.

And then I asked him if he was my strength.

"No. You are your own strength. I am your tiger."

Two of Swords

I started this blog initially to be somewhere I could write about rediscovering myself. Since starting, I've found that the things I'm discovering are so intensely personal that it's hard to talk about them, so here goes:

Suburban Housewives:

In my current job I'm working a lot with suburban housewives. They live in particular little boxes that make me wildly uncomfortable. As an example, they described a former coworker as "weird" because she was a little quirky and dressed a little gothy. By my usual standards, this woman was quite tame. By the standards of the people I'm working with, she was so ludicrously weird that they had no way of interacting with her.

Somehow I find myself tucked into an office with these women as if we have things in common. Yes, in some ways we do; I enjoy spending time with them and joking about things during the day, but I suspect that they would look at me even funnier if they knew anything about my personal life. I look at the Suburban Housewife archetype and I'm sort of horrified. Do I want to be a wife in that sense? How much do I want to be defined by cultural norms?

Heteronormativity:

I got used to being one of a crowd of mostly queer people and queer allies at Reed. Since graduation, with one notable exception, I've been thrust into a completely heteronormative world. It feels like I've lost something. People I spend time with now are all traditionally married or trying to get to that point. I know very few queer people (as friends) that I met after college. I barely feel comfortable talking about queer issues with the people I'm around now.

Loss of Self-Confidence:

I spent a lot of time in high school trying very hard not to fit in. Somewhere along the line I decided that the better bet was to hide how different I am with good clothing and grooming and let people discover my quirks later on. I think it was a financial decision, since it's hard to get a job if you dress funny and talk about your religion a lot. I noticed that people take you much more seriously if you establish yourself as reasonable before they learn about your atypical ideas. The unfortunate side effect that this change has had is that I find I have little confidence in identifying what is and isn't me.

I've found myself agreeing to do things that I wouldn't have otherwise, just so I don't stand out. Just the other day I agreed to order a dessert at a restaurant because everyone else in my party said they would like a bite of it. Generally, I don't like to order desserts in restaurants, let alone share them.

So where did I go from being stealthy about my differences to uncertain about what I actually like? I'm not sure where the change happened, but I most certainly need to change it back.

Conclusion:

So the point of all of this is that I need to make some major changes in the way I'm living my life. I made a promise to myself in January that I would spend more time with friends this year and that hasn't quite worked out, partly because of the move to Seattle and partly because I've fallen into unhealthy patterns. So I'm going to have to call people instead of seeing them in person. :) I also need to take more time just for me and nobody else. And hopefully I'll find more that I can write about in this space.

Next steps:

1) Spend more time with friends (in person or on the phone)
2) Eat healthier and cook more
3) Pray more, do more tarot readings, etc.
4) Analyze and identify my own likes and dislikes
5) Be more selfish