Nobody knows I have a tumblr presence, so I took a screen shot of my post from this morning and am putting it here.
I miss that lady.
bottle
Dawg and I each got new prescription sunglasses from our LensCrafters in Queens this past weekend.
His are actually transition lenses, but mine are full-fledged Ralph Lauren aviators. I was so excited to receive them that I didn’t really inspect all angles of them, just shoved them on my face and grinned about it. When I wore them in the car I noticed they were a little heavy. I thought I’d get used to it. We went to see a movie then after the movie I put my sunglasses back on to leave for our next destination. The glasses still felt pretty heavy so I took them off and really looked at them. The side of the lenses were bottlecappy!
I have really terrible vision, so I asked for the thinnest lenses I could get, and this is what I got? Hmm.
I called and spoke with the person who gave me my glasses and he explained that when you get large frames the edges of the lenses will be bigger. I guess I forgot all my physics because I honestly didn’t remember this to the extreme I was seeing, so much so that I still didn’t believe him.
Over the rest of the weekend, every time I would see someone with big frames I would stare at their thin lenses and be reminded about my big lenses. I was obsessing over it. It was a compulsion to need to receive visual confirmation that my lenses were in fact the ones I ordered, the thinnest I could get. So, yesterday at lunchtime I walked to the nearest Manhattan LensCrafters and made them check for me. Visual confirmation confirmed.
Sometimes I cannot get a thought out of my head, even with the medication I take. Sometimes I need to follow through with the compulsion I am having or else the looping dialogue in my head just won’t quit. And I think that’s ok, because at least I can acknowledge this about myself and I know it’s not “normal” (I did used to wonder if it was) but I know how to fix it.
And I look smokin’ hot in my sunglasses, thick lenses and all. :p
B12·allistic
Dawg is a genius. He realized a pattern in me about Thursdays of (my lady time) being the day when I have the hardest time. For the past two months I’ve gone ballistic and had full blown anxiety attacks. So, I think he was relieved to learn that I would be at a girlfriend’s house watching movies, eating pizza, drinking wine, and cuddling with her dog on this particular Ballistic Thursday.
Absolutely nothing of consequence happened to me emotions-wise. I had a great night. I had a very odd day at work that involved my computer dying, my password not working so I could do absolutely no computer work, me forgetting all forms of identification at home so I was nervous to leave the building once I was let in by Not the Regular Guard, and… something else happened, I forget what, but I just didn’t care because I got to sit on a couch and chitchat with my friend while we watched Mean Girls and Clueless back to back and her dog licked up my nose, in my ears, down my throat, and in my eyes all night.
Yay for breaking the cycle! Dawg and I have informally agreed that I should always have plans to hang out with a girlfriend on Ballistic Thursday. He is a wise man.
My blood work came back finally (the lab forgot to send it anywhere so my doctor had to call to get the results) and it turns out I’m low on Vitamin D (aren’t we all) and Vitamin B12. The consequences of this: Vitamin D deficiency can cause a lot of bad stuff including schizophrenia and depression. Vitamin B12 deficiency can cause other bad stuff including tiredness, confusion, psychosis, hallucinations and depression. Surprise! *ding ding ding* Winner! I have that. and some of that other stuff. oh, and some of that other, other stuff.
Question for you: How do you get enough B12? My doctor wants me to eat more meat. I don’t want to. I’m trying to eat fortified cereal, but I’m open to other suggestions.
Also, got my hair cut short for summer!
See?!
(just ignore that my chest and arm look weird, the background tried to make them true white)
fresh
My head doctor was so impressed with my improvement after one month of taking a lovely little magical brain balancing pill that she told me we only need to meet every other month, except this time when she wanted to see me again in a month to make sure that I was still doing well two months in. I will see her for my third session this coming Tuesday. I am still doing really well almost every day.
If I told you all the changes in me you wouldn’t believe that I started feeling them almost immediately after I started taking those pills.
I feel normal.
I had no idea how flipping messed up I was before. I didn’t even know what normal felt like until I felt it. Now, two months into taking these pills, feeling normal is normal to me. Not feeling like my brain is constantly humming is my new normal.
At the last session almost a month ago my therapist looked into my eyes and said “the frozen food aisle is not for us”. Since she was right about giving me a magical pill to make me feel better I figured she knew what I shouldn’t be eating. I used to almost exclusively eat frozen dinners at lunchtime five days a week. Now I don’t touch that stuff. I always eat fresh food at lunch — salads, gazpacho, egg white omelettes from fresh & co., sandwiches that are made from fresh, organic ingredients. Also, I decided to eat breakfast every day after never, ever, evereverever consciously choosing to eat breakfast for my entire life. I now have oatmeal for breakfast every day that I can and a piece of fruit. I drink water. I drink milk sometimes too, and I do have 8 ounces of Diet Coke at lunch (I know, I tried quitting and got right back into the habit and I just haven’t formed a healthier habit quite yet to erase this one) and also I am hooked on Ben & Jerry’s ice cream because it’s hot.
But count all the good stuff in that paragraph.
Also, I don’t stare out the window and wonder what it would feel like to jump out of it (not that I would ever do that). And I also don’t obsess over when I can drink some alcohol “like an adult” and then feel shame that I drank it. And I also talk with my boyfriend about stuff on my mind every day instead of assuming he is too busy or disinterested to want to know about my life.
There are some days where I feel extremely anxious and out of control, and then I know there’s something extra stressful going on that I need to pinpoint so I can get through it without going off the anxiety deep end. It’s pretty awesome to manage that and be able to talk it through and think it through and not need to avoid it by self sabotaging in any way an anxious person might choose in order to avoid the reason for the anxiety.
I am a work in progress and very happy with where I’m taking myself.
coating
I posted this everywhere else, and it just occurred to me to post it here.
I met Lil Bub today!!!! SQUEE!!!!!!!!!! I posted a bunch of photos on flickr in case you want to see more. 
finally
Some of you probably understand exactly how I felt when my new therapist listened to me tell her how out of control my life feels right now and she offered to keep helping me through this instead of telling me I could just do some breathing exercises to get over it, but in case you have no idea how that feels: I felt relieved. So relieved.
Also, there’s a door code to the bathroom in her building but I can’t (won’t) tell you what it is.
legacy
Today I removed myself from a project I didn’t believe in. It was a volunteer project, something that someone in the technology community proposed and then when I showed enthusiasm for it she nominated me to run the whole thing by myself, but with her vision and timeline. I made my decision to exit from the project after some self reflection and speaking with the leader of that community and realized I have a slightly different vision that will develop into a similar but fundamentally different project. I told the people who were also involved in brainstorming the project that I was giving it up for someone else to champion. And I will be pitching the project I believe in a bit later in the year when I have more time to dedicate to it. A project I will gladly champion. Because that’s how I need all of my projects to go. They need to be championed. Raving successes. No halfassing it.
This is the most frustrating realization I have had workwise lately. If other people on a team are not supporting you to be successful, if they don’t give a flying fuck if you fail, and you don’t even support the goal, then it’s time to remove that priority and find a new one that is worth your time and energy even if everyone around you isn’t as enthusiastic about the project and is less than helpful with turning an idea into a reality.
After freeing myself from the project that wasn’t the right fit my mind finally unblocked to allow other creativity in and by the afternoon I co-launched another project with someone who is equally as enthusiastic, if not more so, about an idea we came up with together about two months ago. We don’t work in the same departments, but both our supervisors support our work on this project, so we’re going for it.
I finally feel like I am leaving a positive mark on this workplace, and that is a wonderful feeling.
top hat octopus
Sharing the happy. I think the original was first posted in the comments at Reddit.
vacation
Work has been rough lately. In addition to having a very full workload, I have also been attending a leadership program that challenges me to become a better leader than I thought I already was. (I really did think I was a good one, and now I am beginning realize how much work I have to do.) And I also volunteered for a technology community planning group that has great ideas, but very few people are interested or willing to take the risk of implementing the ideas. I am going through the growing pains of resenting that I am trying to change for the better while no one around me wants to join the journey. That might not be their reality or The Reality, but that’s my reality of the situation. And it sucks.
Also I am physically very unfit, my own fault, have been eating like crap, my own fault, and have gained way more weight than I can blame on any pill that I’m taking or mid-life metabolism shift. It’s really lack of exercise and stress that are enabling my sedentary lifestyle.
Which also leads me to my mental lack of wellbeing. I have taken several online depression quizzes and always score in the Severe Depression range.
As a result, I chose to take a break from Twitter and Facebook because I was absorbing other people’s issues as my own and it was overwhelming on top of my own shit and was allowing me to trigger that part of my personality where I believe that my life sucks because your life sucks and my problems are the same as your problems. (They’re not. Mine are mine.)
I also took the step to find a therapist covered under my insurance. I will start seeing her on April Fool’s Day, ironically but seriously. I am looking forward to untangling the mess in my head and finding out if I just need more tools in my emotional wellbeing toolbox, or if I need medication, or if I need to change a life circumstance, or if my life is actually perfect and I’m just a pretty, pretty princess who is lying on top of a pea and crying about it. (I wouldn’t put this past myself.)
The manifestation is that I don’t care about much of life in general and am a lousy person to be around. And I hate that. I want to be fun. I want to be happy. I want to love myself again. (I still Eeyore love myself, but I need the Eeyore part to back off.)
As of this evening I also started a 4-day long weekend vacation. I plan to stay home and sleep, clean, bake (a fun dish I used to make in Vermont), cook (a fun soup one of my blog buds posted), cuddle the kitties, talk with and hug on Dawg when he is home and conscious (he doesn’t have Friday or Monday off like I do), and just try to be happy. We also plan to start pretending to train for a walking 5k this weekend by walking around a park several times. Baby steps.
I also learned today that you need three things to stay happy: Something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to.
Tonight I am way happier than I’ve felt in a while. Same shit different day, but the mood in the room is turning up again.
priorities
Today we had plans to go to a restaurant we had wanted to go to the weekend we both unexpectedly came down with the flu then I was going to make the dinner I had planned to make for Dawg for Valentine’s Day but he broke his tooth and couldn’t eat solid food for several days.
I woke up at 11:00am after having those insecure dreams where people who love me so much in real life try to sabotage my relationship in my dreams. I let Dawg know about them and was having trouble getting out of the fog of them so took a shower. When I got out of the shower Dawg made sure to tell me how much he loves me and how he’s not going anywhere. A little while later we were supposed to put the laundry together so we could get on the road to activate our plan of laundry drop-off, lunch, shopping for dinner ingredients, and dinner with Apple TV movies. Instead we decided to cuddle in bed. It was one of the best cuddle sessions we’ve had ever, so comforting and void filling and bond enhancing. We didn’t leave the house until 2:30pm, and the lunch restaurant was over an hour away, we still had to drop off the laundry, and had to wait for a table when we arrived, so didn’t get to eat lunch until 5:00pm.
I suggested over appetizers that we skip me cooking dinner tonight since it was already early dinnertime and we were stuffing ourselves silly. He agreed. Instead we had ice cream and popcorn with our movies.
Cuddle time was totally worth pushing off Valentine’s Day dinner another week.