Did I Ever Tell You About That Time?

Hey, did I ever tell you about that time that I had a job I really hated deep down into the very middlest parts of me, and then I had to leave that job on stress leave, because it was so awful that it broke my brain, and then when I got a little bit better I went to work at a shoe store, and I really loved selling shoes, because shoes are fantastic, but then I had to leave that shoe store job a week ago because working from home has turned into doing what I love full time?

Yeah, that was awesome.

I'm Cranky AND Blessed. I Just Thought You Should Know.

I'm feeling kind of cranky, but I'm also in the mood to write, so here I am both being cranky and writing.

Aren't you lucky you stopped by?

I am feeling all foot stompy, because haven't been in the mood to do anything over the last week or two. I want to just put everything down and go on an extended vacation where I just sit somewhere warm and maybe go for a few walks but feel absolutely no obligation to take in culture or learn anything new or accomplish a single task. I want to wave a big old middle finger at anyone who would even say hello to me, because that hello comes with an expectation that I will say hello, and even that amount of obligation feels like you're rubbing my fur backwards.

I'm irritable.

While I'm irritable tonight, though, I haven't been irritable 100% of the time lately, and I've been thinking about how I have been writing all of this serious material about my newish sobriety and the kid-free kerfuffle thing and anxiety and seasonal depression, and I haven't been writing about how freaking excellent so much of my life is.

I write about how hard sobriety is, but I haven't talked at length about how much I feel like embracing my sober life and cover it in slobbery dog kisses, because I like more things and enjoy people more and remember the things I've done and don't feel hungover all the time that I'm not drunk.

I went on about how horrible some people can be to those of us kid-free types with their assumptions about everyone wanting and needing children, but I didn't talk about all of the wonderful people who stood up and said Me, too and thanked me for creating a space for them and shared their experiences and offered their support.

I talked about how I suffer from anxiety and have some bandaid ways for dealing with the panic that it can bring on, but I didn't talk about the real gift of which anxiety is a side effect, which is a heightened sensitivity to my environment and the people in it that allows me to experience and take in my environment at a level that lends to my deepening understanding of myself and the world around me and absolutely founds my creativity.

I can't think of something awesome about seasonal depression. Depression as a seasonal affliction can suck it.

I have stumbled and fumbled my way into a life that allows me to eat and sleep regularly under a roof of my choosing with a life partner of my choosing in a culture that doesn't outrightly count me as chattel, and beyond that I have the great fortune of seeking others of my kind and creating art and words and communities through an incredible set of technologies that I never dreamed possible as an isolated child.

I really do feel this fantastic sense of being blessed somehow, of having fallen into an incredible pocket filled with chance and good luck, especially now that I am sober enough to see it all.

By all of the above, I mean to say that MY LIFE IS GOOD. I just forget to talk about how my life is good, because once I explain all the dark stuff to myself here on the internet, I tend to go out into the world or eat good food or have a nice nap and feel good about stuff, because I worked it out here.

And, by all of the above, I also mean to say that I WANT TO WRITE ABOUT THE GOOD STUFF MORE OFTEN, because there is a lot of good stuff, and it's worth writing down.

So, I may be cranky lately, but I am also blessed and happy, and I think it's worthwhile to make some noise about both sides of the coin.

And you? How's your crankiness? Well-tainted with the happy, I hope.

Grace in Small Things: Sunday Edition #55

1. That the last bit of my internet anonymity fell away last night in a phone call with my parents

2. That the weather warmed up enough for an actually enjoyable walk to the grocery store

3. Splurging on my favourite coffee, just because

4. Finding myself in a headspace in which I can feel pretty darn pleased with myself

5. That the severely ancient man driving our taxi lived at least long enough to make it to our apartment building

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace in Small Things.

Let Your Thoughts Run Free, With A Side Of Bacon

Thanks to Crystal Light for sponsoring this post. To learn more about how Crystal Light can flavor your day with 30 refreshing flavors, visit http://www.facebook.com/crystallight.

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I'm no mad brilliant neurobioligist like Jill Bolte Taylor, but I do know that the end of winter drags me through some physically harsh territory, which leads to some fairly psychologically harsh territory, which leads to me to having very little to no fun. This is no fun, so this winter I've taken an active stance against allowing this to happen.

<aside> Okay, I'm going to throw an aside in here that probably has very little to do with everything else I'm writing about, but Jill Bolte Taylor gave a TED Talk in February 2008 that I revisit again and again, because what she talks about restores my faith in possibility and the universe in a magical yet rational way that almost nothing else can.

If you watch it before reading the rest of this, the rest might have a fighting chance of making more sense. If you don't, you'll miss out on some fine, fine Jill Bolte Taylor.



That was brilliant, right? Don't you just feel better about a whole metric tonne of stuff now? </aside>

Back to me taking an active stance not to allow winter to harsh my joy. Winter is a harsh mistress in Saskatchewan. There are stretches of days that dip well below -40°F. The angle of the sun drops, turning the daylight into golden summer's pekid and weak-willed cousin. And while I pretty much just want to crawl back into bed and wait for spring, life doesn't slow down. I still have elevently-billion deadlines to meet, work to go to, a house to clean, friends to meet, and that episode of Community is not going to watch itself. It's easy to leave no time for myself in there, no time for me to just breathe and actually enjoy whatever moment I am in.

If truth be told, it's often easier to avoid taking time for myself than to confront the demon that is Late Winter Schmutzie, but by making a concerted effort to take time for myself over the entire course of this winter in particular, I have learned that Late Winter Schmutzie is a little less hulkified with the extra attention. I might even hazzard to say that she is occasionally given to purr a little.



How did I do it? I wasn't even really aware that I was doing what I was doing at first. I quit drinking in August, and that knocked a whole bunch of my weekly schedule free to spend time thinking rather than wading through the morass of the side effects of alcohol for hours on end most nights. With all of those extra hours of relative clear-headedness to fill, I started spending a lot of time just sitting and thinking.

This sitting and thinking I was doing a lot of was definitely not all happy fun times. I had just quit drinking. I spent a lot of that thinking time mulling over how bad I felt and how much of my life felt wasted and wondering what the hell I was supposed to do next and since when did evening cable television start to suck much. Looking back, though, that was my brain just mucking its way out of a bad situation, which it had to do to work its way into a better one.

As time goes on, it has become more and more of a habit to spend time thinking, even if I find that time while I am cleaning out the bathtub or scooping the cat litter. It's a rhythm that my brain can now fall into easily, allowing me to spend time with myself, watching my thoughts flow in and out. And an amazing thing has happened since late August: as the art of spending time with my thoughts has grown easier with practice, more and more of those thoughts are positive and active rather than negative and passive. They are about things I would like to do and how I might do them more often now than they are about how I am a sad little troll with no future in the bank.

My thoughts aren't always positive and forward moving, of course, because I have this winter muffin top to obsess over and winter is hard no matter what way I look at it and I am not suffering a wealth of financial riches, but as I've allowed myself to spend time just thinking thoughts, whatever they may be, they have naturally moved and evolved and grown in complexity just as any human being does as they change from childhood to maturity.

My thoughts have become greater and more complex and interesting since they have been given the space to flow.

What I do is not quite meditation, and sometimes it looks more like me hovering over the bacon completely unaware that I'm burning it into fragile crisps, but it's definitely space and time for thinking, and every other aspect of my life has improved because of it. I am more thoughtful. I am more gentle. I like other human beings more. I am happier.



So often we cut our thoughts off at the pass. We start watching scenes from our childhood or thinking about how we've always wanted to take a balloon ride, but we pull back into worrying about being on time for work or meeting that deadline. Let yourself loosen those reigns a little. If you don't know how, don't worry about it. Just reading this plants that seed for you. You can loosen the reigns a little up there in that brain of yours. It's something your brain wants to do, and it likes doing it, even when there's hard stuff to wade through. Let it play. Your bacon might end up on the blackish side of crispy, but let it play.

I run into scary stuff up there all the time, but if I let the scary stuff run its drills enough times, some other pretty fantastic stuff starts to come up in between, and just like that, the fantastic stuff will start popping up in what I do and how I do it outside my brain, too.

Like right now? I need to make me some more of that bacon. See? That's me taking time to think good thoughts, and now I'm happier. Just like that. Sort of.

(Which is easy to say now after all that hard work I did freaking out throughout the fall and having scary thoughts and hating stuff and subsisting on chocolate ice cream and coffee for a while, but after some of the hard thinking that your brain might have to do while it exercises itself in the beginning, which may include exorcising its demons, you will really start to like it more. You'll be able to take your brain back, and not only watch your thoughts happen but guide them, too, and then you'll be able to take joy in bacon. Or something like that. I've lost my focus with thoughts of breakfast).

Damn that complexity.

Life might be busy, and winter may be long, but there is time for yourself to be had if you do the work to find it, and, as hudu-guru-schmaltzy-self-helpy as it may sound, it's always within you. It really is. It might be under layers of panic and worry and a heavy, years-long practice of not letting your thoughts run free, but your moments of freedom are up there, and you can learn to dig them out whenever you've got a moment, even if that moment is parsed up into 30-second stops at red lights on the way to work.

Now that that seed's been planted, here's to bacon! I have some more of that delicious stuff that is just begging to be fried up with a side of toast.

Good morning!

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Me at Aiming Low: I’ve Got Sunshine On A Cloudy Day

Read my latest piece at Aiming Low — "I've Got Sunshine On A Cloudy Day":

I'm a cynical depressive who generally thinks that this creating-your-own-happiness stuff is a huge pile of bullshit because faking it is still faking it, but I found out today that I am also generally wrong about this topic.