life is so lifey sometimes

feel like i am hanging on by a thread. have been drinking waaaay too much coffee lately, even tho i know i shouldn’t, i can’t help myself. i’m gearing up to quit my job and all of a sudden it’s like i am so impatient i can barely even wait the few more days until i turn in my resignation. i am tired, i am tired of being so chronically stressed out and feeling so utterly human and small and inconsequential and exquisitely sensitive and annoyingly mundane. why didn’t anyone ever tell me that being human is hard and feelings are really big and relentless and lots of times i won’t feel like doing whatever it is i need to do next and yet, i’ll just have to keep soldiering on because that is how it goes? sigh.

i keep thinking of this quote i heard a while back, that i know is true and yet fucking wish it weren’t. “it’s OK to miss someone and not want them back in your life.” really? why is that? how is it possible to feel two contradictory things at once? yes i miss this and yes i know i never want it back, yes it was painful and damaging and fucked up but there is also a fondness there, a soft spot. i guess it’s grief, even as i think i am not allowed to be pained by certain losses if i am better off without it. why do i feel nostalgia for a time in my life that was pretty much nothing but desperation and despair? why do i miss that comfortable familiar pain and reject this new unnameable foreign pain? why do i always think it was better back then… or it will be better when i… but now, no, now is actually the worst time to be. this present moment right here is not good enough. i don’t want to inhabit it. i want any other life than this one. i just want to opt out. and yet, here i am.

sam harris always says in his waking up app– what if this is it? well, guess what. this IS it. this is all there is. this moment, right now, of being human, can i let it be enough?

too much

it has been SO long since i’ve written. what have i been up to? i don’t even know, just trying to figure out life. get my groove back. the husband and i moved out of our father-in-law’s house, got our own place that came with approximately 17 problems and 47 new items we needed to buy. noisy upstairs roommates that thankfully moved out soon after. though in all likelihood, new potentially noisy folks are probably moving in soon. put a pin in our dream to buy a house. the market is insane, truly. i got promoted at work which is cool but it was sorta under odd circumstances. a promotion in name only where i didn’t get a raise but sure as hell doubled my work load. and a lot of my coworkers are moving on to greener pastures, so the mood in the office is quite glum. the husband has been busy as ever at work. his tanned skin crisping nicely in the many long hours spent outside. his mind dappled with thoughts of “is this it?” “is this really what i want to do with my life?” while across town my mind reverberates its mirrored doubt: “i so can’t do this forever.” “just stick it out for a little while longer and then you’ll find something actually worthwhile and engaging”. sigh. being a grown up is hard and relentless. there just isn’t a day where i can opt out! i want a day off.

speaking of days off i do actually have today off for the 4th of july. i tried to sleep in but contractors were building new stairs off our kitchen. nothing like the whir of a power saw at 7:48 to greet a monday morning. now i’ve gotta figure out what to do with the rest of my day. i am always searching for that salvation, that one magic habit i just haven’t tried yet to snap my ease and contentment firmly into place. if only i could just get a grip on all these obligations, then maybe i could stop and breathe and think about life. what do i want to do for work? what kind of place should we live in? how much money do we really need to feel ok and afford to raise kids? arghhh the questions never end. but i think i will find some down time today to ponder. and sit in the sun and marvel. summer is my favorite time of year. may i appreciate it before it’s gone.

day 1,555

haven’t been on here in a long while, though i have been thinking about the blog. i opted for morning pages (a la the artist’s way) a few months ago, instead of morning blog posts and in some funny ways i am saying the same sorts of things there that i used to say here. i am still tired, all. the. time. and cranky in the mornings, that’s why i get up approximately four hours before i have to show up for anything or talk to anyone else. i am still restless in my career, or is it in my life? and wondering when things will start to get interesting. i simultaneously hate covid and love it because the introvert in me can justifiably stay home and never get dressed and read for 12 hours a day. the part of me that is petrified of being lazy hates it because it feels like i am wasting my whole entire life, how can someone spend so many days//weeks//months literally doing the exact same thing, which is to say, precisely nothing of substance, while holding up some facade that life continues on as normal and this is totally like all the other chapters of my life? the cognitive dissonance is crushing.

anywho–i wanted to jump on and say today is day 1,555 of not drinking, which is epically exciting oh, and i love numbers. triple 5’s has got to be some sort of good luck. it is also Day Three of not using food addictively, probably the 100th of its kind, which is depressing and boring and flat. i miss donuts and yet i know they have nothing left to offer me. there’s “no sparkle left,” as a friend says. i have struggled on 99.9% of those 1,555 days with my food and it feels like i may finally be ready to walk away, for good. i didn’t get sober to live like this, a slave to food, obsessed and manipulating and crazed and ultimately just as sad and empty as i was when i was drinking. fuck, life is hard and addiction is a progressive disease. here’s to freedom and sanity and serenity, and maybe the eventual end of covid? i keep reading about “when this pandemic is over” and i’m more than a little trepidatious… how am i going to just “bounce back” and resume normal activity? talk about shell shock. i’m nervous and not sure what to expect, but excited? i guess we’ll see.

66 days to feel like a habit

well they say on average it can take 66 days for a new behavior to feel like a habit. somewhere between 17 and 254 or something ridiculous. 66 is the average. so yesterday i hit 66 days of blogging in a row. it does feel like a habit. it also feels empty and pointless and sad. i think i’m going to take a break until i have something important to say or til i don’t know when. today was a shitty day. i hope tomorrow is better. streak or no streak, new habits or not. life marches on into a new year.

the first day

Day One almost in the books. rather unconventional from our normal schedule perspective but very restorative. on to watch more homeland and making some dinner and maybe a movie. i just have to figure out what’s causing these awful stomach aches 😦 ughhh not a welcome recurrence.

i hope that 2021 brings lightness and ease and gratitude. i hope 2021 is a joy-filled year of new things and old things and exploration and steadiness. i hope i can wrangle my nervous system into a more calm, relaxed state more of the time, and that i start to reap some benefits of all this hard work. thankful for a new year and a clean slate and a fresh beginning ❤ cheers

the final day

today is the last day of 2020. my goodness, what a ride. i am glad it’s over but it has had its wonderful moments. namely, 2020 will always contain the best day of my life thus far: my wedding day. the most perfect collection of moments and memories that i cherish, and beautiful photographs to remind us. now we just need to get a photo book so we can look at them all!

otherwise, 2020 was a hard year. i started a new job in January and got a few months under my belt before COVID forced us all to go home March 16th. working from home was a new experience for me, one i did not enjoy right away and now could not fathom giving up. the ease and convenience and simplicity of just doing my job, not having to juggle 85 other things and makeup and an outfit and commute and lunch and small talk at the coffee pot, phew. so much easier.

we did a lot of dog/cat/housesitting which is always fun, but grew tiring after a while. we had a bunch of races and a triathlon planned, one by one getting postponed or finally cancelled. we probably had travel plans, though i can’t even remember now where we were going to go. we sprinkled a few mini camping trips in the Adirondacks and Western NY over this summer but it was much quieter than we would have otherwise had. all in all, a year of monotonous days and a giant heaping of worry, topped with uncertainty.

i appreciate the many long walks i took this spring and summer, when walking was the only thing i could think of and podcasts filled my ears for hours. i appreciate my snuggly cat and our awesome dog, who’s having a rough go of it at the moment and i so hope she rallies for another little or long while. i am grateful for my job that has helped me make an enormous dent in my student loans and my boss, who is wonderful. i appreciate our awesome house and housemate, the father in law, who’s endless antics are a surefire recipe for a laugh and who will never turn down a good hug. and i cherish my husband, my biggest fan, my never-stop-believing-in-you supporter and anchor and comedian and fellow adventurer. it’s been a long simple year, filled with blessings and challenges. what other kind is there? ❤

commitment

i heard this quote once, “commitment is an exclusionary process.” when you commit to something, you are inherently saying no to all the other things you could be doing with your time, energy, and money, by saying yes to this one thing. you better be darn sure you want to commit to it as expensive as it is, costing all this effort and opportunity cost. i have been thinking about this lately, how i want to be able to half commit to a bunch of things, so that i can do whatever i want on any given day and not have to let anyone (or myself) down and yet it’s not impossibly hard to still show up and hold up my end of the bargain. well, i think half ass commitments will generate half ass results, or worse. i think that kind of defeats the whole point.

i am not sure i am one for new year’s resolutions. or put it this way, i have a stellar track record of failing miserably at any new year’s resolution i have ever made, so i prefer to downplay their importance as i continue to feel impossibly stuck and broken. however, i can’t deny the fresh, shiny, new feeling of a new year, of a blank slate, and the lure of starting over or making a clean break from the past. i know everyone is saying 2020 is above and beyond the year we need to move on from ASAP, and fully close the door on, to do an about-face so 2021 is totally different. obviously nothing much will be immediately different when we wake up on Friday than it was the night before, but still the symbolism remains.

i think 2021 can be the year i stop medicating my depression with food. entering my fourth year of sobriety what if i chose to face my experience fully and unobscured from Day One and see how it goes? i am rather set on healing and feel like at this point it’s gotta be inevitable, given i have been hammering away at it for, oh i don’t know, 14 years or something. maybe 21 if you wanna take the long view. i see no reason why i can’t attack this head on and actually do something drastic that i have never done before. my record stands at 37 days for “food sobriety” if you will, we’ll see if i can’t make it further this year. 37 out of 365 is pretty slim progress, ha. 10% of a year. i hope with all my heart that i can turn a corner in 2021 and finally be free from this horrible & destructive coping skill i learned so early on. here goes nothing.

life is hard

sometimes i wish i could just start over in a new life with a new body and a new set of problems that, surely, would be easier than the ones i have now. i am so tired of fighting the same battle and losing. and climbing the same mountain just to tumble down the other side, again. i know it’s futile but i wish it were easier. i just want a couple days of easy, or a couple months. why can’t i have that?

i am facing another quite normal day at work and it’s like the hardest thing ever, to stomach a whole day of productivity, and exerting effort and creating output. i truly don’t understand how people do this for decades on end. i mean, i can hardly stand to do it for a year. how come i get bored and lose interest in something so quickly, while other people seem to be bursting with enthusiasm that doesn’t run out? i swear, i am missing an enzyme or something that i just can’t muster any spunk anymore, for anything, if i ever could.

i hope that today goes easy on me. i hope that i can find some good things tucked away inside all the obligation and must-do’s and endless churn of tasks. i hope that i can sleep better tonight. i went to bed two hours early last night and instead of getting two extra hours of sleep, i woke up two hours before the alarm and laid there, wide awake. i don’t think there is anything more infuriating. i’m really at my wit’s end of tolerance. i want to give up. i just want a break.

monday

oh Monday, i wish you weren’t here yet. i am not ready to go back to work and back to normal life. it has been a nice little bubble of do-nothing-ness for four days and i haven’t had my fill of laziness yet. i am still exhausted, still trying to catch up on sleep, and waiting to feel better. no luck yet. this is a short week, but that fact does nothing to console me at the moment. i guess i just keep going, what else is there to do?

i have been thinking lately how much longer am i going to blog every day? i’m bored with it and feel like i have nothing to say. i think it’s great i made it 62 days or something but now what? maybe my lens is just colored by my exhaustion and fatigue and literally nothing sounds good except sleeping for a week straight. and when i wake up, sleeping some more. 😦

i was talking to my doctor the other day about sleep and how i am always so tired and he basically said well there’s no way to know if you have depression because you have shitty sleep or you have shitty sleep because you are depressed, or maybe both. it’s a chicken or the egg problem and that’s the best we can do right now. fuck that. i refuse to accept that. that i can be the only person on this planet who is this fucking tired on a daily basis after 8 hours of sleep a night. no. i refuse to accept that this is as good as it gets. maybe i need 9 hours or 10 hours. fuck me. i don’t know what i need, other than to get thru this Monday and the rest of 2020 and start over on a clean slate. sigh.

gratitude

i hate when someone suggests i write a gratitude list. perhaps for this reason i especially need to do one. i am grateful for my husband, who never gives up on me no matter how insufferable i become. i am grateful for my cat who love to snuggle no matter how many times i smush my face into his fur. i am grateful for my job, which has been a bright blessing in COVID and helped enormously toward paying off my student loans. i am grateful for the house i live in which is gorgeous and cozy and homey. i am grateful for sam harris whose deadpan voice guides me in meditation and wise insight makes me think (and laugh) through his podcast. i am grateful for my sobriety, without which i would have no life left to be grateful for. i am grateful for my health which is pretty good, all things considered. i am grateful for my yoga practice which has kept me company through the last nine years. i am grateful for my love of words which makes it fun to write things like this blog. i am grateful for my body which has never given up on me either, no matter how shitty i have treated it. i am grateful for my bed which is pretty damn comfortable. i am grateful for sunrises and walking the dog and the smell of coffee. and i’m grateful for another day to relax and unwind before going back to work tomorrow.

if the only prayer you ever said was ‘thank you,’ it would be enough.