Just a quickie tonight, really.

One of the hard things about my particular brand of stuff is that quite often I find it very difficult to figure out what it is that’s actually bothering me.

Today, I am feeling scattered and disjointed and confused.

This is a pattern – I’ve had this feeling before. I want to say that it’s an identifiable “comedown phase”, but I’m not certain that’s the actual truth.

What I do know is that I associate this feeling with the time immediately after the high of discovering something new or of being deeply into something. So that does suggest “comedown phase”.

I associate this feeling with a panicky sort of worry that it’s going to last forever. And my memories (which I don’t trust) do tell me that I can get stuck in this phase for very long periods of time.

More worryingly, I feel like the next phase after “scattered and disjointed” is “repress the fuck out of that” and the natural result of this is more and deeper depression. I’ve been severely depressed for a year, I’m still ill with it, and the last three months have been particularly bad. I don’t want two days of “oh wow this is a cool new thing” to turn into another three months of depression.

(They probably won’t. I have this irrational fear, though.)

So I wonder if I can help myself out by creating safety and boundaries for myself.

Perhaps while still respecting my apparent need for connection and like-minded people.

Of course, I’m wondering like mad how to actually do this. The things I do to keep myself safe don’t feel particularly productive or helpful, they feel like a set of bad habits. And they’re not particularly conducive to keeping myself connected to the world.

I’m talking about the “hiding thing”. Not posting on my blog. Not even opening Tweetdeck to lurk, never mind actually tweeting. Turning my phone off, or just letting it run out of charge (it’s been sitting on the shelf by the front door, turned off, for about 4 months now). Staying away from World of Warcraft, the Kitchen Table, and other communities where like-minded people hang out. Not arranging to meet up with friends. Not looking at Facebook. Not posting on Livejournal or Dreamwidth.

The list goes on and on and on.

The hiding is a great way of protecting myself and reinforcing my boundaries. But it starves me of connection (apart from connection with my parents, who I live with, but that on its own isn’t enough for me). It starves me of the like-minded people I need.

So how to interact with like-minded people while still keeping myself safe and respecting my needs for safety and boundaries?

There’s something amorphous here about wanting deeper relationships, and also being afraid of deeper relationships. A conundrum, that. I’m great at forming relationships that are briefly deep and intense, and then running the fuck away – in fact, that’s my overwhelming pattern. Relationships that are ongoing and actually work for me? Not so much. (Oh, and that’s epically hard in ways I can’t really explain properly.)

Perhaps the answer is making a friend who has similar patterns to me – the deep and intense followed by the breaks to recover – but there wouldn’t be any guarantee that our needs for intensity and taking-a-break would ever match up.

This post is incomplete. The thoughts are incomplete. But I’m not sure where else to go with it.

Once again I have no solutions.

Once again I ask for no advice.

Just writing this stuff down is, as usual, helpful.

Oh, and apparently, this turned into that post about the hiding thing, which I said yesterday I probably wouldn’t write. So there you go.

I hate being talked down to.

I’m an intelligent woman – a very intelligent woman. And I am a very intelligent woman who’s suffering from severe depression right now. I’ve been working hard to shift it. But it’s hard, and I haven’t made as much progress as I would have liked, and I have made some progress (more than I predicted in my blackest moments, for sure).

The whole moving thing required that I get a new doctor.

I discovered along the way that it makes sense to be committed to a few things:

• Experimentation. The ancient art of “giving something a try and seeing if it works”.
• Not being too hung up on the outcome. That’s the ancient art of “noticing when something doesn’t work and moving right along”.
• Sovereignty. Far better explained by Hiro or Havi, but I define it as “the ancient art of knowing what you want and being prepared to stick up for it”.

My first experiment with a new surgery wasn’t that great. I’m committing to one more experiment with this place, and if I still don’t feel it’s the right fit, I’ll be moving on.

I have a lot of health conditions, and one of the things I know that I want is the right care.

I’ve got lots of stories from the hour I spent with the nurse there, but let me tell you just one.

I’m diabetic, and with one thing and another, I haven’t had a blood test for a while. The nurse sent me for a blood and urine test to see how I’m doing (all good). And because I’ve run out of medication, she was sorting out a prescription for me.

First of all – of course, she wasn’t able to sign the prescription herself (that’s fine, she’s a nurse) so it had to go back to the doctor.

But second. Second. She wanted to double my meds. On the basis that my condition has “probably got worse” since I was last tested. And the medication “won’t hurt me”.

Let me tell you something. Metformin, like any other medication, has side effects. Specifically on the digestive system – and my digestion is pretty dodgy at the best of times.

Plus, I’m philosophically opposed to changing my medication – never mind doubling the dose – before a blood test has even been done.

If I do need an increase in medication, the effects of putting that off until we have solid information telling us so are minimal, given that it takes a week (and I’ve been off my meds completely for a while now).

And if I don’t – well, I don’t want to increase my medication unnecessarily, for reasons that I hope are obvious.

Plus – did I mention that I was seeing the nurse? She can’t sign prescriptions. So exactly what business does she have deciding what medications I take and when? That’s the doctor’s job.

I am proud to say that the sovereignty quality got exercised today.

I told the nurse I would much prefer to wait to change my medication until we got the blood test back.

I made an appointment with the nurse for next week. But unless the new doctor impresses me mightily on Thursday, I’ll be cancelling that appointment and registering with a new doctor quite soon.

It’s not only for this reason. (She also talked down to me a lot, told me off for things that really aren’t my fault, and demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of what depression is and how it works.)

And I’m committed to getting good care from medical professionals, and finding medical professionals who can provide the kind of care I need. I deserve to do my body and my mind and my heart that much good.

Yes, I’m shifting the glutton-for-punishment pattern. That’s a new rule, I think: if I get stung, I don’t go back for more.

Comments for today

As per usual, I’m not that into advice (especially not on whether I should be changing doctors – I’m getting to my own decision on that point, and part of my “sovereignty practice” is about only asking for advice when I really want it).

But I’d love to hear about your experiences with medical care and sovereignty in figuring out what care you need.

Oh! And I want to mention this related thing. My dear friend Char Brooks has written an ebook with some fabulous worksheets all about how to get the medical care you need when you’re not feeling well. I have the free worksheet, and I’ve been thinking for weeks that the ebook would be a fabulous resource for me. After all, it’s all about “sovereignty in figuring out what care you need”.

You can check her out at The First Step (not an affiliate link, for the curious).

So, today sucks. I have jetlag AND a cold. I’m all bunged up and sore and icky, and as you can imagine, I’m not getting much sleep.

I’m going to try to stay awake all day today, in the hopes that I can then get a decent night’s sleep tonight. Because that would be awesome.

So I’m declaring today a Doctor Who Rewatch Party.

Mostly, I grant you, because I can. But also because I am putting play, rest and self-care first today. Perhaps there will be work (astrology work, marketing work, tidying, life-admin) in between episodes. Perhaps not. I’ll see how I feel.

Mostly I’m just going to be taking care of me today.

Baby steps.

Two personality traits that seem entirely opposed to each other – but actually work quite well together.

The first is the one track mind thing. When I’m into something, I’m really, deeply into it. One track mind. When I’m playing World of Warcraft, it’s hard for me to even hear you talking to me. When I’m reading a book, I’m in another world. When I’m working, I’m really going for it. I have focus and intensity like you wouldn’t believe.

I’m not going to dwell very long on where that comes from, but it might have something to do with the I-might-be-autistic thing. (I keep meaning to blog about that and don’t. It should totally go into my ideas folder for blog posts.)

The second personality trait is the butterfly thing.

I’m a scanner. I have a billion different interests. Writing. Singing. Astrology. Language. Gaming. World of Warcraft. Doctor Who. Self-work. Knitting. Lego. Tarot. The list goes on and on and on. And if you started to list things I’d been obsessed with in the past… You’d be going on forever.

I won’t dwell on where that comes from, either, but I’m pretty sure there are plenty of people waiting to tell me I’m a typical Gemini.

So that’s me. A butterfly with a one track mind. Super focus. And flitting about from interest to interest like a hummingbird. It sounds crazy.

But I’m starting to realize that it’s a combination that allows me to get loads done without ever getting bored. If my focus slips on Thing One, I can always switch to Thing Two and slide back into the zone. And yes, there’s a Thing Three hovering in the background.

As I learn more about this, I’m having to keep reminding myself to take breaks, even when the list of things is overwhelming.

Why am I telling you all this?

Partly ’cause it’s a thing that’s cool for me to know about myself, and I wanted to share. Hey, that’s what this blog’s mostly about – sharing insights into how I work. And hoping that maybe it sparks some insights for you, or maybe just gets you thinking about stuff. As you will, you know?

But there’s another part. I’m launching three mostly-unrelated things this coming Tuesday. And part of the reason I’m doing it like this is I want multiple options. Ways to keep from getting bored, by having lots of things on the boil at once.

I’m pretty sure you’ll hear more about the launch very soon. (But for now, I’m going to keep you in suspense.)

Comments

I’d love to hear what this sparked off for you!

Do you have contradictory personality traits that somehow seem to just work?

Are you a butterfly with a one track mind too?

I don’t often respond to comments, but I do love getting them, and I read every single one.

So here’s the thing I didn’t want to talk about in public until it was done.

I’ve finally quit my job.

In fact I sent the letter last week.

There’s still financial stuff tying me to the job – I owe them some money because they overpaid me last year and I haven’t been able to pay it back yet – but we’re working on that.

Basically: I’m free!

Free to start looking for ways to make money. Other ways, that don’t involve a nine-to-five.

Free to start looking for things to do that support me. That respect my boundaries, my capacity and my illness.

Free to start my astrology biz.

Free to start selling the Pattern Spotter’s Guide I’ve been working on – more about that coming very soon, I promise!

Free to start offering all kinds of stuff that might make me some cash.

It’s so exciting to finally be able to talk about that!

There are things about it I’ll miss. But stepping away from the old job gives me a big chance to start building the kind of life I really want.

Hurray!

Comments

Are you making a big leap? Or have you done so in the past? I’d love to hear stories – but as usual, I don’t want advice and I definitely don’t want doom-mongering. Though if you had a bad experience, do feel free to share.

The Doctor’s been a hero of mine since I was a little girl.

Back in the 80s, I idolized Ace more than the Doctor, it’s true. She was my first heroine: the Doctor’s companion, a time traveller, always ready with a smart remark and a home-made explosive to save the day. She was brave and tough and she spoke her mind – the opposite of eight-year-old me.

(That said, looking back I can see that there was a lot of bravery and toughness involved in simply living in my family. And while I usually didn’t dare speak my mind in so many words, I had ways of getting my point across. So maybe I wasn’t so different from Ace as I imagined.)

The Doctor was always there, though. And now that I’m grown up, it’s the Doctor I identify with more than the companions. Well – it seems weird to compare yourself to the Doctor (who is, for those who don’t know, a centuries-old alien, the last of his race, and a veteran defeater of monsters). But he’s my hero, plain and simple, and I think he’s a good one.

Here’s why.

He walks the fine line between being childlike, and older than you can imagine. That’s often demonstrated by his turning on a pin, performance-wise – from silly to dead serious, or the other way around. But he talks to people of all ages with equal ease, and usually in the same tone – no talking down to you because you’re a child, in a wheelchair, a walking tree, or coloured blue. (No more talking down, I should say. He does have a certain amount of arrogance and he’s definitely way advanced when compared to a 21st-century human.)

He’s got childlike wonder when seeing new things and new places. Meeting new species. Experiencing new situations. He doesn’t run from danger – he’s fascinated by it. He runs headfirst into it. For the Doctor, everything’s an experiment. He’s a scientist at heart.

But not only that – he’s not only a scientist, but the ultimate in cuddly scientists. Because along with that childlike curiosity and amazement, he’s got an amazing amount of compassion. Even, often, for the monsters. He sees their plight. He takes pity. He tries to help them, to save them, and to find them a home.

But don’t be fooled. If they’re threatening other life forms, other civilizations, he will find a way to stop them.

That’s another great reason to love the Doctor. He’s the monster’s nightmare. He’ll talk, he’ll negotiate until he’s blue in the face, but sometimes you have to grit your teeth and fight.

Quite often, the Doctor finds non-violent ways to solve violent problems.

Then again, sometimes he just blows shit up.

He’s a man of many solutions. I love that he’s adaptable. That he brings hundreds of years of knowledge and experience to every problem, and half the time he still doesn’t know what to do. That he’s an ideas man, but the ideas often only come under pressure. Watching the all the pieces fall into place is always fun and somehow it gives you hope that you might go through the same process sometimes.

That right in the crisis moment, you might suddenly go “Of course!” and solve everything with a few strokes on a keyboard.

Because that’s the thing about the Doctor. At his best – when he’s written best, and acted best, when the stories that are told about him do what they’re supposed to – he’s not an angel or a god or a saviour or a deus ex machina device. He’s a guy. He happens to be a pretty old, alien guy. A guy who’s been in a lot of these situations and got out of them. But a guy, all the same.

Doctor Who is about having problems and solving them. It’s about being childlike enough to believe in the fairytale solution, and mature enough to figure out how to make it happen. It’s about being ready to meet the monsters head-on and find out the best way to deal with them on the fly. It’s about living by the seat of your pants, but living, about believing every day’s a big day because you skip the little ones.

It’s a pretty good model for what I’m trying to do with my life right now.

And I’m pretty sure I don’t need to have a TARDIS to have the same attitude as the Doctor.

Comments

Just a quickie this time.

Who do you think is totally awesome? Who do you worship? And what qualities from them do you think you might borrow?

Doesn’t that sound like a (particularly weird) episode title?

Anyone who knows me probably knows I love Doctor Who a lot. But equally, a lot of readers of this blog probably don’t know me all that well. So I should probably explain: I’m a Doctor Who fan.

I’ve been hesitant about posting fannish stuff to this blog.

Partly that’s because I am, historically speaking, a writer of fan fiction, and I wanted this blog to focus more on my original writing. But it turns out I’m doing a fairly limited amount of original writing, and what am I doing is under strict password protection and on another blog entirely, for various reasons.

(If you’re interested in reading, drop me an email at lucyviret at googlemail dot com.)

I also wanted the blog to focus more on biz stuff. But I still don’t really have a biz. I’m working on the beginning bits of that, but it takes longer and is harder and more fraught with stucknesses than I imagined.

So in the interest of bringing more me to the blog, I’m going to start talking about the things that interest me. It doesn’t mean that the posts about my internal process will stop. But hopefully I will post more often, because more subject matter will be open to me.

Essentially, this post is advance notice:

Expect to hear stuff about Doctor Who in the near future. Tomorrow’s post, if all goes to plan, will be all about it.

(And yes, I’m planning to post tomorrow! Three days in a row – whatever next?)

Comments

I want to know if you like Who. And what are your weird obsessions? Or the things you think aren’t appropriate to share on your blog? What bits of you-ness don’t I know about?

PS Experimenting with post images, too. It’s interesting!

Yesterday I attended the first rehearsal of a community opera I’ll be performing in in July.

It was definitely an interesting experience.

We’re performing The Elixir of Love by Donizetti. We’ve only rehearsed a few numbers from Act 1, but so far, I’m enjoying the music.

I’m singing alto – a new experience for me. It’s a bit difficult to harmonize when you can hear the tune going on to your right. (But on the other hand, I can’t hit half of the soprano notes, so I’m clearly in the right place.)

I also joined a choir last week, and that choir is having a concert towards the end of June.

Plus I’ll be singing solo in a concert held by my singing teacher in July. So all in all, I’m doing quite a lot of music this summer.

All this while trying to rebuild my life after almost a year of depression. (More on that in a few weeks, maybe.)

On the plus side, it’s nice to have a little bit of energy to play with. And to be doing fun things with the energy.

Music! It is good. And I love it.

Okay, this is a weird thing to be writing about. And it’s surprisingly hard and vulnerable for me to write about, so I’m going to ask commenters to be very gentle with me. (Please?)

I just moved house – from a room I was renting from a friend, back in with my parents’. This is basically a good for-now move because I’ve been so ill, and because I’ve essentially run out of money. (Don’t worry, I’m just about afloat for now.)

And I have a specific issue.

Even when I was well, I sucked at cleaning. When I got ill, the idea of “clean” really disappeared completely. And my room stank. Well, now I’ve moved all my stuff back to my parents’ place, and my stuff stinks. All of it, but especially the bed linen and clothes.

It’s horrible.

(It’s also all my own fault and I’m really hating on myself for it, but that’s kind of by the by. I’m working on that part.)

Due to the “run out of money” part, there is no way in hell I can afford to just toss all my clothes and buy a new wardrobe, fun as that might be. I need to find a way to get the smell out of the clothes, and regular washing in the machine just is not doing the trick.

So, I’m appealing to my lovely friends and readers for help.

I’m not looking for people to tell me what a horrible, disgusting person I am. (Shocking!) And I’m not looking for anyone to tell me how to avoid this kind of thing in the future (it reads too much to me like criticism of what I did in the past, and I already know I did pretty crap, thanks).

But I am looking for any tips or hints you might have for getting foul smells out of fabrics which can be put in the washing machine.

Some of this bed linen belongs to my former landlady and I’d like to return it in reasonably good nick, pretty soon.

Also, I’m going on holiday with a bunch of good friends on Friday and I’d like to take some clothes with me that don’t stink to high heaven.

Thanks, sweeties!

Hello there, ladies and gentlemen of the audience! It’s been a while, hasn’t it? So much for daily posting.

(Actually, I’m thinking about making another concerted effort to turn this blogging thing into a more regular habit. We’ll see.)

Today, I wanted to talk about experiments. Not just how awesome they are (they are!), but how to conduct your own experiment. Not a chemistry set experiment, but a how-do-I-work experiment. A life experiment.

For my experiments, I use a concept created by the lovely Havi, which is called the “cuddly scientist”. I always imagine the cuddly scientist as a teddy bear wearing glasses and a white coat. I might have to make one of those, as a talisman. Anyway: the idea behind the cuddly scientist is simple. You’re doing experiments, but you’re doing them as kindly and lovingly and humanely as possible.

No animal testing here. And more importantly, no squirting stuff in your own eye to see if it hurts. No beating yourself up for not getting the results you wanted, expected, or hoped for. No telling yourself or your monsters to shut up. For the scientist, it’s all useful information.

So here are some tips for conducting your very own how-do-I-work experiment.

Test only one thing.

Any scientist or science student will tell you that the more variables you mess around with, the less reliable your results – and the more complicated your experiment.

Obviously, none of us lives in a controlled environment, and it’s impossible to lock down everything except the one thing you’re checking out. So it’s important not to beat yourself up if external circumstances change things. Try and weave the weirdnesses of life into your experiment, if you can.

For example, I’m playing with getting-up times to see how they work for me. This week, I have a doctor’s appointment across town in the morning, so that, and not my experiment, will determine what time I get up. I’m weaving that into my experiment by paying attention to what happens when I have to get up at that different time.

Check in with your monsters.

Believe it or not, your monsters – the voices in your head, the stories you tell yourself, your objections, whatever you might call them – have useful information for you.

No, they probably don’t tell you in the best way. But hey, they’re monsters: that’s kind of normal, right?

But the thing is that even if you are angry at them and want them to shut up (I often do) they usually have a point. Or at least a kernel of truth in there somewhere. It’s worth paying attention to that. If they’re predicting disaster, figure out a contingency plan. If they’ve got strong objections, figure out how to deal with them.

Telling them to shut up makes a lot of sense, I grant you. Especially when you don’t agree and you just want the monsters to go away. But letting them have their say probaby won’t hurt and it might help. A lot.

Compassion.

Yeah, this is related to the checking in with your monsters thing.

Relating to yourself with compassion is… hard. And powerful. Not expecting yourself to be perfect the first time. Allowing yourself to try and fail. Allowing yourself not to be brilliant at something you did for the first time just now. Allowing the experiment to have unexpected, unwanted, maybe even painful results.

Hell, you’re learning. The information you got is going to be useful to you some day, even if it doesn’t feel that way now. But on the other hand, your pain is important, so if something went wrong and you’re hurting, that’s okay. Try and have some compassion for yourself.

This experiment thing is hard. Try to recognize that.

Keeping track.

This is the part I have real issues with. I think I need to do more experimenting with writing stuff down because I find that really hard for some reason.

But it’s way easier to know how your experiments are going if you keep some kind of record of how things were before and how they changed while you were doing your experiment.

For me, it’s sometimes a paper journal, sometimes private online places, sometimes right here on the blog. And sometimes nowhere at all except inside my head. But paying attention to what’s going on during your experiment is going to help a lot.

I’m not a master scientist or anything.

In fact, it’s a long time since I was even a science student.

But right now, I’m a student of myself, and I’m doing a lot of figuring out along the way. Part of it is the figuring out how to do experiments.

Also: I just wrote my first how-to post.

I feel like I have to make excuses because I am far from an expert. But maybe this post will help a few people – even if it’s only helping them understand what I mean when I talk about experiments in other posts.

Thanks for reading, lovelies!