Hear Me in the Harmony

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.
— Dale Carnegie

Still catching up.  Saturday’s prompt takes a lot of thought:

What are 11 things your life doesn’t need in 2011? How will you go about eliminating them? How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life? (Author: Sam Davidson)

Eleven things?  That is a ton of things. And they’re supposed to be things I don’t need in 2011? Seems kind of pessimistic, doesn’t it? Why aren’t we thinking about 11 things our lives do need in 2011?  But I’m game – what the hell:

1. 25 pounds.  More really, at least twice that, but I’m a realistic girl.  And also lazy.

2. Anxiety.  I worry about everything, especially my relationship, which is so silly.  We’re solid and stable and committed, yet my mind always drifts to the “what-ifs.”  I definitely need to get back to at least monthly sessions with my counselor to work on this.

3. Not getting enough sleep.  I intermittently institute a firm 11:30 lights out policy on weeknights, but after a few days, or even a week, something happens and I get off schedule.  Then I’m exhausted at work and don’t feel like making good choices about eating or exercising, which turns into a vicious cycle.  I need to keep trying to stick to this.

4. Caffeine.  I know I’m not supposed to have it (doctor’s orders), but lately, I’ve been so careless with it, ordering iced tea or diet soda when I don’t feel like just having water, and I’m paying for it.  I’ve missed several days of work in the past several months due to migraines that are caused by caffeine (and the subsequent withdrawal when I try to get back on track).  I cannot take liberties with my body that way.  Just say no.

5. Negative self-talk.  A lot of people are putting this on their lists, so it appears to be a very common problem.  It’s no secret that I can be very hard on myself, and while I think it’s great to have high expectations, the language I use in my head when I don’t succeed or when something doesn’t turn out right, or when I just don’t do something I should is really damaging.  I would never let someone get away with talking to one of my friends the way I talk to myself, so why do I continue to berate myself this way?  I think the first step is to become aware of it when it’s happening – it’s become such second nature to me that I often don’t even notice.  Once I am aware of it, I need to reassess what’s going on and try to find a kinder way to talk to myself.  This one is big.

6. Stuff.  We have a lot of “stuff” that we just don’t use.  Some of it is things I’m holding onto for when we have a house and can entertain more (I have lots of baking dishes and serving pieces and chip dishes and dip bowls and things that I just don’t use now because we don’t have a lot of space to have people over).  But a lot of it is stuff I just hold on to because I think I “might” need it “someday.”  Someday hasn’t arrived in the years and years I’ve been hoarding this stuff, so why am I keeping it?  Someone else would surely love to stumble upon it at Goodwill for a dollar, right?

7. Hate-following.  There are a couple of blogs on my Reader that make me roll my eyes regularly and get all judgey.  And I always say, “that’s it, I’m done.”  But it’s like train wreck – I can’t stop looking to see what ridiculous thing or self-important drivel will come next.  That doesn’t make me feel good about myself.  That’s it.  I’m done.  I’m deleting them from my Reader as soon as I finish this post.

8. Over-analysis.  This is one of my biggest problems.  I turn things over and over and over in my head, until something that may have started off small and inconsequential is so big in my mind that it ruins my day or causes doubt about something I have no business doubting.  I don’t know how to stop doing this.  Yet another thing to add to the growing list for my counselor.

9. So many sweets.  When it comes to weight loss (well, weight gain, I guess, is more accurate), sweets are my biggest downfall.  I’ve already started (with David’s agreement and encouragement (“When was the last time I bought junk food at the grocery store?”)) cutting back on the “treats” I buy at the store so that I don’t have them in the house.  This is not the same thing as declaring “No more sweets ever,” it’s just a way of making myself make more deliberate choices about what I put in my mouth instead of reaching for something sweet because it’s easy and it’s there.  I need to keep this up.

10. Career angst.  I may be having a mid-life crisis early, but I’m not sure I want to be a lawyer anymore.  I don’t know what to do about that, really, because what else would I be?  It might just be *this* job, or it might be *any* job – we did discuss several times recently about my depression, didn’t we?  Add it to the list.

11. I cannot think of one single thing more, so I’m using #11 on something I do want more of in 2011 – friendship.  I want to take more time with old friends and try to make new friends as well.  The latter will take me out of my comfort zone, so I expect there will be some resistance and procrastination in trying to make this happen, but I really do want to put this out there so I can hold myself accountable.

What about you guys?  Anything you don’t need in your life in 2011?

Sanity is very rare: every man almost, and every woman, has a dash of madness.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Playing catch up again this weekend.  Friday’s prompt:

What was the wisest decision you made this year, and how did it play out? (Author: Susannah Conway)

I’m not going to go into a ton of details on this, but the short answer is going back on anti-depressants after an optimistic attempt at stopping (with my doctor’s approval and after tapering down the dosage over a period of time) that lasted about a month.

I took my last pill on July 3rd.   At first, I felt great, so glad to be off the medication after 13 months on.  Within two weeks, my panic and anxiety came back almost full-force.  I fought it as long as I could, trying every strategy my counselor had taught me to rein in my whirling, pessimistic, fatalistic mind.  I lost.  I cried in my office at work, I cried at home, I cried in my car.  Finally I called my counselor and said, “I need to come back.”

Ultimately, I made an appointment with my psychiatrist and we agreed I needed to start taking my medication again.  I hate it.  Every day I open the pill bottle and feel a fleeting sense of defeat, that I wasn’t strong enough or brave enough to face my anxiety and panic and sadness on my own.  I do know that’s ridiculous, that the medicine keeps me from letting my darker angels dictate my actions, keeps me on this side of the edge rather than right up to it, peering down, wondering what it would be like to jump.

But that comes with a price.  Weight gain.  Decreased libido (I hate that word so much).  Lowered affect overall (that is, less sad/anxious/scared/etc, yes, but also less elated/exhilarated/happy).  And I wonder if I’ll ever be able to stop taking it again or whether this is just my reality now.  And I worry that at some point, this dosage won’t be enough, that I’ll need more and eventually more to keep my craziness at bay.

So how has my “wise” decision played out?  I’ll get back to you.

The family.  We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another’s desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.
— Erma Bombeck

I really was not feeling today’s prompt when I read it this morning:

What social gathering rocked your socks off in 2010? Describe the people, music, food, drink, clothes, shenanigans. (Author: Shauna Reid)

As I mentioned in the Community post (Day 7), I’m not big on social gatherings.  I’m missing the one I’ve looked forward to each year since I’ve lived in D.C. (a co-worker’s annual holiday party) because this weekend is Cookie Weekend with Karen (our fourth year), which definitely takes precedence.  When I tweeted my hesitation, the author (whose book is actually on my nightstand as we speak) tweeted back: “you could define social gathering any way you like, doesn’t have to be a big party!”

That makes it easier.  I loved Thanksgiving this year.  We all went to my grandparents in Frederick, and it was so good to be back (David and I alternate holidays with our families – last year we went to Detroit for Thanksgiving with his family and to Richmond for Christmas with mine; this year, we were with my family for Thanksgiving and we’ll head to Detroit for Christmas).  Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday, probably partly because it’s not fraught with the gift-giving anxiety of Christmas.

In my family, everyone’s responsible for something – my grandfather does the turkey, his wife does the stuffing and sweet potatoes, my mom does the salad and other vegetables, Nate (who learned from my dad who learned from my grandfather) makes the gravy (and is starting to teach the Conductor how it’s done – it’s a guy-thing), and I do the mashed potatoes (with an assist the past several years from the Princess – the first year she helped, I told her we needed to wash the potatoes and she grabbed a sponge!).  This year, David got in on the action and made three loaves of (delicious) bread in our bread maker, which we got a couple of months ago and just love.  Everything was delicious as always, and there was much laughter and good conversation around the table.

Before, and after, if necessary, we play Hearts.  Everybody’s family seems to have a game – David’s family plays Euchre, Aimee’s family plays Spades – and Hearts has always been ours.  A few years ago, everybody in my family went crazy and started throwing hearts on the first trick, and when I objected, they all swore that we’d always played that way.  No we did not.  I know this because when my cousin Stephanie and I were just learning the game, we used to play as a team, and when we had the Ace of clubs, we always, always threw it on the first trick to get rid of it because we knew we couldn’t take any hearts in the first trick.  They’ve finally all come to their senses, and now I can teach the Princess the ways of the game:

Such a serious girl.

So that was my favorite “social gathering” of 2010!

On this shrunken globe, men can no longer live as strangers.
— Adlai E. Stevenson

Today’s prompt took some thinking on my part:

Where have you discovered community, online or otherwise, in 2010? What community would you like to join, create or more deeply connect with in 2011? (Author: Cali Harris)

Ever since I lost my hearing, I’m not big on socializing generally.  There’s often too much noise for me to hear everything clearly, and too many people talking across each other.  I miss a lot; it’s hard to be the only one not reacting when the group suddenly bursts into laughter at a joke you weren’t even aware was being told.  Plus, David is a bit of a hermit, so we spend a lot of time together, just the two of us.

When I do go places, to happy hours with co-workers, or Christmas parties, or a recent retirement dinner, I really enjoy talking to different new people and catching up with people I haven’t seen in a while, but it takes me a while to get comfortable and it takes an awful lot of energy to focus and pay attention to hear what people are saying.

I was pretty involved in an online community for several years, but that fell by the wayside once David and I got together and I didn’t have as much free time, or, rather, the free time I had, I wanted to spend with him, not chatting online.

This year, in February, David and I decided to try out curling.  There’s a local curling club, and they had an open house right after the Winter Olympics where you could check it out and see how you liked it.  We had so much fun in our one-hour lesson that we decided to join a 5-week league.  We were paired with two other people we’d never met, and our team came in second in the league.  After each match, the teams hang out in the “warm room;” the winning team buys the first round of drinks and we chat and get to know each other.

The club closes down in April and reopens in October – it costs way too much to try to keep the ice up during the summer months – so we talked occasionally over the summer about whether we wanted to officially join the club as full members when the season started again this fall.  Our teammates from the Olympic League were coming back, and we decided to go for it.  So, most Friday nights, we head up to Laurel for curling, beer, and conversation.

This past weekend, we participated in our first bon spiel, or tournament.  It was an internal bon spiel, meaning it was only teams of people from our club (there are a lot of curling clubs in the US, and different clubs host numerous bon spiels throughout the season at which teams from other clubs are welcome).  The rules for this particular bon spiel were created to encourage people to form teams with people they might not already know and who might be way more or less experienced that you.  David and I played on a team with a guy who’s been curling for 7 years and a guy who has 1 year of experience.  They were both really great people, and even though we lost all three games, we had a good time playing with them.

The Saturday portion of the bon spiel was an all-day event, with games and contests (Wii tennis, team sudoku), a gift exchange, and tons of food.  Because we played three different teams, we got to spend time after each match with 4 new people.  It was wonderful getting to talk to so many different people, only some of whom I’d met before, and to catch up with people we’ve played with/against since the Olympic League.  When we left Saturday night, for the first time I really felt like I “belonged” to the club.

So that’s my community.  I hope we remain a part of it for a long time.