I am doing much better and I’m trying to figure out why. You know how you should never look a gift horse in the mouth? I would look at my gift horse’s tonsils if I could figure out what the horse was.
Lots of good stuff happened–I had a great five hour talk with my daughter, I sent an almost-finished draft of Anna to Bob that he says is “much better,” I truly do feel that I really am writing much better so that’s a relief, but mostly, I think, I’ve just let go of all the guilt I was swamped with that I was so far behind, that I was doing lousy work, that I was never going to get anything done, that I had no agency. I have agency. I just need to calm down, quit screaming inside, decide what I want and need, and explain that calmly and rationally to anybody who is trying to kindly and rationally explain to me why I’m wrong.
And if that doesn’t work, I’ll rip their faces off.
I realize taking life lessons from a super-model is probably not a prime choice, but really, I just have to remember that the problem is not that I’m too big for the dress, the dress is too small for me. Because I’m fabulous.
So that’s my good intention for the week: I’m going to remember I’m fabulous.
What good intentions do you have for yourself? (Intentions that are good for you, not what you “should” do, we spit on ‘should’ here.)
70 Responses
Yes, Jenny, I hear you.
I am down to the last 3 days of a 2-week vacation in Spain with kids and grandkids. Only today am I calming down and beginning to relax. It feels nice.
I am also doing better and I am not really sure why. It was a long year of depression and anxiety and it got pretty bad there. I made a list of things that were supposed to help and tried to do them intentionally instead of doomscrolling on the couch and laying in bed staring at the ceiling, but it’s a chicken and egg thing. Am I better because I am working on it, or did I finally get to a place where was able to listen to new books and work on projects? I don’t know, but either way, I am grateful. It’s not perfect. I still backslide into yucky places, but I am having more ‘better days’ than bad ones, I think. Of course, I am also an unreliable narrator on that front. I will pretty much always say I am doing better, and believe it, but not realize I am still in the midst of ‘not so great’.
I haven’t been painting as much, stalled out after the second piece I finished, so I need to get back to that but my last two weekends have been busy and I really do need my quiet time without traveling or visiting. House is still a mess, but I am trying to pick away at that with small bites. Low-hanging fruit, I keep telling myself. Just the easy tasks, because there are plenty of those.
My goal this week is to get my first round of advent calendars up and listed on both my handmade and vintage etsy shops. They are twelve little envelopes with jewelry inside and I sell out every year. Feeling behind as I am already seeing ads for those popping up.
Tell your unreliable narrator that I am glad she is doing better.
Me too. Was starting to not recognize myself there. Yikes.
Hell, I recognized me in what you said. Fingers crossed that we’re moving ahead.
It’s nice to know that I am not alone. I genuinely couldn’t tell you if reading some good books healed my brain or if my brain was just ready to accept new material again, after sliding off pretty much everything forever. It’s frustrating. I would like to be in control of my own psychosis, thanks.
Just saw this on the internets “I’m Fine: F@cking Irritated, Not Explaining”
One of the more useful things they told me while I was in the loony bin was that you are the best expert on how you feel. The outside may be able to judge how you are dealing with them, but they don’t know how you feel inside. And that is every bit as important as how you deal with the outside world. And the better you feel about yourself, the easier it is to deal with others. Remind yourself that you are giving yourself what you need to create.
My second finished piece.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DdOf9ixApD5/?stkn=MW80MWkyYXFoMDd0cQ==
Love the web especially!
Thanks. I had to stare at it a couple of days before knowing how to finish it.
What are you going to do with it?
That’s lovely!
Thank you!
That is fanciful and lovely!
Thank you!
Love the colors!
Thanks!
Gorgeous!
My intention is to work some more on the crochet project. I’ve got about 70 of those little motifs done, out of 143, so basically half. I find that I spend a lot of time on the phone doing stupid games and things, so that is taking chunks out of my “be creative” time. So, I need to put a limit on that. One of my “games” has a perpetual daily tournament, and I’ve got to learn to just let it go – I don’t need to win! So far this morning, I’ve successfully eluded it, so yay me!
I removed the social media icons from my home screen, to make them harder to get to. That helped some. I deleted a couple entirely. They really are a time suck black hole. And I feel like they mess with my capacity for long term thought.
Oh, and I have all notifications turned off as well. I have to go open an app to see if someone has liked something. All the buzzing was making my neurotic.
Yeah, I turned off those notifications a long time ago!
No, my particular weakness is for games. You get the hit for success, which lures you into the next game and so on. I’ve got a series of games I do first thing in the morning. My problem is using them for a quick hit later in the day. And that one with the daily tournament – that just started recently, and I’m ready for it to not take up my entire evening.
I played Plants vs Zombies 2 daily for about 30 minutes for years (maybe a decade) and then one night I didn’t. I haven’t opened the app since. I have others that I still play, but it’s been nice to read again. My brain is definitely wired to become addicted to the games.
I’m not a good measure for social interaction but … when my BFF used to say she didn’t know how I got so much writing done, I said ‘because I only use my phone for two things: texts and calls.’
Oh you radical you.
When people ask me how I get so much reading done I tell them because I watch a minimum of television and my only social media are Facebook and Argh.
Games are wired to make them addictive to us. I haven’t played PvsZ in years, but I remember the thrill, Great game.
I mostly do word games: crosswords, Shuffalo, sudoku, Keyword, Catalogues, stuff that’s supposed to keep my brain nimble. I find them soothing when I can’t get the writing to go straight; I just switch over to Sudoku and look at numbers for awhile.
I do Mahjong and FreeCell, but my grandkids do PvZ and they try to get me in on it. There’s a new version PvZ fusion that is only available on my computer which they confiscate when they are here. They are also big on battle cats. My favorite game at the moment is still rummy cube and I play that online with my sons. We never one of them is available.
For me, it’s the NYT games (Wordle, Connections, Strands, Pips, and Spelling Bee). I use them as a break at the end of the day to keep myself from reading more news or doomscrolling and feel like each of the games exercises a different part of my brain.
My intention is to get organized now that I’m back at work, and to remember that I actually work for a living, not watch films for a living. Which seems like a bad choice in hindsight.
I have a somewhat overdue wellness exam this week (we moved, new doctor, it’s a thing) for the purpose of which I took the entire day off. So I will also use that day to pick up the latest load of books from our local bookshop, go and browse the liquor store, and probably also acquire some fine locally-made chocolate. Since, you know, that shop is less than a block from the bookshop, which means staying away would just be rude. Next Sunday we also have another social dance to go to, so I intend to do my full yoga practice a day early, i.e. on Saturday.
I anticipated and listed some intentions yesterday. I did meet my deskwork goal yesterday (under the loose definition explained there) but am still in low energy mode today. I think I have enough low-energy work in sight to meet that goal again today, though.
I finished an audiobook yesterday but somehow mislaid the case with the CDs. Which I’d better find since it’s a library book, but I think I know approximately where it must be.
As noted yesterday, I intend to make up some ground in reading the book for the October book club.
I found the missing CD case with a lot less trouble than some of my library-book searches have posed!
I just started work on a new series, about a vampire who was an apprentice to Da Vinci before he was turned. Five hundred years later, he owns an art museum shaped like a giant nautilus shell on a cliff overlooking Monterey Bay. When his favorite painting disappears, he hires a young woman who was a Military Police Officer, and also the many times great-granddaughter of the woman in the painting, to track down the missing artwork. Slow-burn romance ensues over the course of a trilogy.
Fascinating premise!
Sounds great! Looking forward to it.
That sounds like great fun, both to write and to read!
I hope you’re right a out the first part. It will help make the second part true.
As best as I can determine from the Wikipedia, in the Army, as in the Navy as (with a lot of dramatic license) shown on the NCIS franchise, the serious criminal investigation is done by career civil servants, who may or may not have previously served in the military. The military police actually serving in the Army do the routine stuff like traffic control and rounding up drunks. I suppose your heroine could be a civil servant who left early or maybe got RIFed under the Orangutan, or could have been hired if our hero misunderstood the relevance of her Army MP background.
She’s not an MP. She’s an MPO, which means a Bachelor’s Degree. In her case, it’s in Law Enforcement.
Also, this is very much at the conceptual stage. If I follow true to form, it will morph and grow a lot by the end of the first draft. So don’t worry too much about me wandering in the weeds. It’s part of my, admittedly, inefficient process.
At the risk of beating a dead horse, but mostly because I got curious and had to scratch the itch, I did slightly more research. Still looks to me that this MOS doesn’t do serious criminal investigation, and if he’s going to Army, your vampire needs someone with background in Army CIS, not here.
Military Police Officer | U.S. Army https://share.google/3uPXISmJFDf7Uk594
Oops “… going to go Army”
And with that, I promise to shut up about it!
I would definitely read this book!
Sounds like fun, Jeanne!
Was it a change in the weather, Jenny? When that happens here, it will energize me. Whatever it was, I’m glad you feel better.
I have a list of things that need to be done and some that I want to do, too. Tomorrow, I see the surgeon for his evaluation of the success of this endeavor. I can stop using that blurry ointment, too. That will help a lot. I expect things to get clearer and better, from now on. Little by little, the lethargy from general anesthesia is going away.
There is one more medical appointment, and then the full complement of doctors will be in place for me. It took two tries for several of them. So many of these practices have two names, and seem to have changed hands recently. One just revamped their computer system and lost my information. Dumb, with a b.
Nope. I’m just evolving.
I do Mahjong and FreeCell, but my grandkids do PvZ and they try to get me in on it. There’s a new version PvZ fusion that is only available on my computer which they confiscate when they are here. They are also big on battle cats. My favorite game at the moment is still rummy cube and I play that online with my sons. We never one of them is available.
I have been extraordinarily happy the past few days and I attributed to September and new beginnings
Wait. A novella?
I don’t see anything in that post about a novella, Bob. But you do you.
I kept reading it over wondering how I was missing the novella thing.
Maybe Bob was eerily planting a seed.
Bob is very tricky.
So is social media.
Okay, focusing on the positive… my intention is to take at least Thursday and Friday off, maybe Wednesday too if I can get the report written on Tuesday (🤞) and I want to be at my longarm quilting. I have at least 15 tops done and I’d like to turn them into quilts. Then on Saturday, I’ll go hang out with friends at a quilt shop and work on making another top and bring a cake to celebrate my birthday.
I’m going to focus on the positive like how many words I have already written in this story and not on how many more I have to write. I have written around 47k and need another 17k or so.
I want to enjoy the extra dose of summer we’re getting – this time, not too hot, so really enjoyable. I’m planning to go to Powis Castle Garden tomorrow and explore with my macro lens. I started work on a collage for the upcoming exhibition, but find there’s a lot of experimentation & brainstorming to do. It won’t be the end of the world if it doesn’t happen; there’s only any point if I really want the finished piece, since it’s unlikely to sell. It’s always interesting to play with my photographs, so it won’t be time wasted.
Glad to hear things are looking up.
My good intention for this week is to remember I’m a subject matter expert, not an imposter, as a present on a panel at a conference in a few days.
My second intention is to find professional clothing in my closet to wear to said conference–a challenge, since I have been working from home in . . . relaxed clothing . . . ever since the pandemic and my idea of “shoes” are fuzzy slippers.
what are shoes?
You need to come visit my shoe closet. I’ll show you shoes.
I would get too jealous because most of those shoes are not available in my size.
Actually, Tammy, I don’t think I’m alone in hoping you’d show us your shoe closet!
We think it must be pretty impressive.
My intentions this week included going back to the gym – I went to a class this morning so it’s a good first step.
I’m going to continue to clean my baseboards. I did a small section in the kitchen last week. There are baseboards in every room and while they get dusted regularly, they don’t cleaned very often. So that’s my project for the few weeks.
My intentions are to eat some ice cream, get a flu shot, attend some easy meetings and get to get a bit more sleep. I think I’ll manage to do that.
Anyway, so far so good.
My intention for this week is to start writing to people. I went to memorial service this afternoon thinking about people who are either battling cancer alone or who had died alone and I just sat there crying and crying. Since it is not unusual to cry during the last few services on Yom Kippur, nobody made a fuss about it, but I was totally taken aback. I never cry in those circumstances. I didn’t cry like this at my brother’s funeral and while I remember crying at my best friend’s memorial service, it wasn’t as unrelated to where I was as today was.
So I’ve decided that my project for the fall is to write weekly to the man I know who seems to be fighting a return of his lung cancer and is terribly lonely. I will call my friend who has moved to be near her sister who is battling Parkinson’s. And I will stop using the fact that I can’t do anything to help with the medical issues that have plagued the 3 friends who have had to withdraw from their daily lives due to illness.
My intention is to try to finish incorporating comments in one report for day job. We are traveling Tuesday through Thursday so I don’t plan to do any more day job than that.
And to keep my temper with my sister. Her anxiety about caring for mom is through the roof fueled in part by two well-meaning friends who are insisting we must 1) hire private care not an agency and 2) do it now now now because we might lose someone who is apparently good and last job just ended.
The problem is we don’t know when mom will be out of rehab and whether she will be able to go home at all and if so whether she will need 24 hour care or a few hours a day. Plus no one lives near mom so we need a system with back ups if the caregiver can’t show up or doesn’t, which is easier with an agency but maybe we can with private care, we will see. But I’m not hiring someone now when we may not need them for months (if we have to do construction to make rhe house wheelchair accessible) or at all.
I have no intention of keeping my patience with the two friends.
As a side note I may lose my patience if she says “my mom” once more as if she was the only child.
Sigh.
We went with a hybrid system for my dad of private care and agency. Honestly, the private care is better, more reliable and cheaper. Comfort Keepers unfortunately has cancelled shifts on us several times, as well as no-shows, and people who sit on their phones the whole time. Some of them have been lovely, but some of them have been pretty rough. It’s a mixed bag.
We hired a neighbor of one of my coworkers who was experienced and she was great. Completely reliable, took on all kinds of extra chores without the extra fees, communicated well, less than half the price. Unfortunately, my father decided he didn’t like her after three months and was nasty to her until she quit. I think that surprised him. He didn’t quite realize that people have limits and will leave.
We have someone else now, a friend of the family who is going to school, so Comfort Keepers is covering what she can’t. She has worked in this field before. She is younger, so hopefully my dad will be more gentle, but I expect he will wear her out too. I am paying her more in the hopes that incentivizes her to stay longer, because the consistency of Dad knowing who is coming is really helpful, plus she is there enough to know what was done the day before and what wasn’t.
And unfortunately you have to watch pills, cash and financial information no matter who you get. As a bank teller we saw a lot of elderly people signing a bunch of blank checks and then the care giver filling them out or taking a handful. Stealing pills is also pretty common.
Thanks Lupe that’s really helpful. Mom is cognitively fine so far which should help and I am planning to take the checkbook . But we can’t check on her frequently because my brother the nearest lives two hours away so I’m not sure how to manage the medication issues.
The challenge will be if she really needs 24 hour care—the problem with caregivers not showing up is going to be huge since we can’t get there.
Honestly I’m not sure she is going home at all; she may need a nursing home or assisted living, but it’s too soon to tell.
There are online pharmacies that mail the meds out in cellophane envelopes with each day’s am pills in one and pm pills in another so that it is easier to keep track of which pills should be taken when.
As for hiring in home help, the advantage of the agencies is that when one person calls in sick, it is their responsibility to find alternate coverage for you. And those agencies are franchises, so the quality varies from one branch to another.
I think Lupe’s system of using a hybrid system is the best way to go, because it offers both the larger pool of aides of an agency and the lower price and more personal relationship of an outside aide. There will be times that you have to race in to see what is going on (my sister and I both lived 2 hours away from my parents when they were at this stage), but if you use both a private aide and an agency, emergencies will happen less often. And we met 2 terrific women through the agency who really made my parents feel cared for and safe.
Good luck!!!!
I was insisting on the agency so that we would have replacements, and honestly they have been the ones to stick me, and at short notice multiple times and say that there isn’t any staff available to cover a shift. Very frustrating.
Honestly Debbie, if your mother is going to need 24 hour care a home may be the way to go. Dad has too much money for medicare to step in, so it’s actually more expensive than the home I had him in for a month. Less stress on you as well, as they are pretty strict about medicine handling.
I think a home may be better for her in many ways including more social interaction.
But she’s legally competent and it’s her money so she gets to decide.
Until the fall she wanted to live at home alone. I don’t know if that will have changed —she clearly can’t be alone all day but PT hasn’t decided how much she will need and she may decide she would rather be in a home . I’m not optimistic but it’s a possibility.