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An aloe plant perched on a windowsill looking out to a street.
Resting is hard, have some links

Resting is hard, have some links

I’ve been staring at this screen for at least an hour now, trying to decide how to start and what to say.

The truth is, I’m in pain. I’ve been caught by another days-long headache—one that doesn’t respond to even my prescription painkillers, seems like. It’s been off and on for about a week and a half now, so I’ve been able to do some things on the off days. Since yesterday morning the headache has been decidedly On, and I’m spending most of my energy taking care of myself and not giving depression an opening to stir up bad feelings.

It’s agonising to not be able to do the things I want to do because my body won’t cooperate. I have ideas and plans and dreams to implement! Words to write, but I can’t seem to reach them behind the fog of pain. I’m just watching time pass me by and getting more anxious about the things that need to be done that I can’t get doing.

An aloe plant perched on a windowsill looking out to a street.

But you know what? This is my experience. I fight the mindset that experiences are less valid when not accompanied by productivity. I fight that I am defined by what I am able to do. Why do I say that to other people, and then let myself beat myself up when I have days that I can’t breathe or can’t think for pain? Why do I hold myself to a different standard?

Those are questions to let myself sit with for a while. For you, some links to articles that are helping me pass the time during this headache.

On Barrenness and Lying Fallow: Esme Wang talks about damaging cultural beliefs about productivity and doing too much and navigating it and chronic illness. My chronic illnesses are different from hers, but they still define my day to day life—and I still have trouble recognising and accepting that.

To even categorize these days is a kind of self-punishment, because I can’t control how they happen. There is no magic formula for having a “good day” versus a “bad day.” I have a chronic illness. It doesn’t answer to me; I answer to it.

Slow Cooking Your Dreams: I have an idea I’m working on with a friend, and I told myself at the very beginning that it’s okay if it takes six months—or longer—just for us to decide on a domain name and what kind of content we want and who we’ll have to contribute. But let my Tarot dreams unfold in their own time? Never. Until I read this post. If I’m disrupting capitalism, I need to disrupt this myth within myself that I have to be productive to be getting somewhere.

We’ve been sold on the idea that what we desire must happen immediately, and that the longer it takes to arrive, the more of a reason we have to feel bad.

This is the premise we have collectively hooked into: things taking long is a perfectly legitimate reason to feel bad about our lives.

5 Productivity Hacks You Need Now: Not that we need more productivity hacks. This link was chosen for this acknowledgement that’s said so rarely:

This obsession with productivity defeats the purpose of a productivity hack. The purpose of a productivity “hack” is not to produce more but rather, to get better at what you’re producing so you actually have time to have coffee with a friend or read a comic.

Enjoy the links, help distract me by talking to me on Twitter, and talk to you again soon!

January is a hard time

January is a hard time

The weasels have slipped out. The brain weasels have gotten loose of their cage, and I’ve been too busy making myself busy to catch them again and lock them up. Over Christmas and New Year’s, I spent ten days with my family, my parents and sibling, because it’s been so long since we’ve all seen each other and we needed that. One of my mom’s goals was to have me go through some boxes of old things and ruthlessly decide to get rid of math notes (and chemistry notes, and biology notes, and some English notes, and definitely language notes I no longer need). That part was fine, but some of the things I found rattled my core. I found evidence of a creative, driven, artistic little girl… and I don’t recognize myself as that anymore. I didn’t get a good chance to cry about that, though, because I was trying so hard to be strong for other reasons. It was hard.

Now I’m back home, and it’s still hard. I am keeping myself busy with knitting (which my wrists would like me to stop doing today, thanks), cool television, and volunteer commitments. I haven’t pushed myself to take a time out and figure out what’s going on with myself, because I’m so afraid of what I will find.

This time of year is always rather fraught for me, so I’ve been telling people about how much better it is this year, but that doesn’t mean it’s all that. I’m so focused on being able to breathe enough to survive right now (hi asthma flare!), and to get through every day, that I’m not working toward the things that are important to me. Part of the reason is that I’m so scared. So scared that someone will tell me how stupid I am to try to take the LSAT, and confirm my doubts. Scared that someone will point out that I will never get good with my beloved Tarot cards, because, duh, you’re nothing special, SJ. Stop pretending you ever had anything to offer.

And I looked at the pile of things that little girl I once was created, and I grieve that she’s lost forever. I fear I can’t ever get her back. I know that most of this is my depression and anxiety telling me lies, but how do I get through that? I have so many hopes and dreams that seem unreachable—especially since I’m spending all my time lately worrying about the simple act of breathing, which turns out to be not so simple when you’re me.

I’m sorry. I wish I could say I’ll do better, and update this blog, and make the design happen, and ace the LSAT, and breeze through my upcoming surgery, but I fear that’s an empty promise. I’m too far gone into the desolate wasteland of my mental illness right now. I hope someday you’ll forgive me.

Using the cards in the right state of mind

Using the cards in the right state of mind

One thing I want to combat with Witchling in Flight and my writing is the tone of articles on the Internet about how you should do this or that, but don’t give you the author’s experience with it. So much of what I read these days is about how this person did something, and you can do it too, or BuzzFeed lists of “how to” that have no personal voice. I grew up with blogs and LiveJournal and teenagers on the outside trying to find a place to fit in on the Internet because we couldn’t find our place outside of it, and that’s the ideal I hold in my head for what we all could be when we share our stories here. I want to talk about things from my experience, not from scientific trials and research conducted by big companies. I want to tell you what I have found to be true to my soul, and I want to hear your stories too.

So I can’t lie to you about why I’m not able to pull any cards today.

I keep reading all these articles about how to care for your friend with depression, or how it really feels, or “there are more people with depression than we think, we should be talking about this!”, and it never makes me feel like I’m being spoken to as a person. Depression is one of my chronic illnesses, and it’s been flaring this week. I don’t understand why, and I do all of the things I have learned over the years to take care of myself, and sometimes it’s just not enough. The flood of voices in my head eager to tell me I’m worthless, have no value, that no one wants me around sometimes gets too loud and crashes all of my barriers.

Yesterday was one of those days.

I am better today, I think, because I am at the point of being able to recognize that those feelings have nothing to do with me or how my community sees me. But those feelings and thoughts still take over, and it takes all the energy I have just to be awake and survive until I can fall asleep again and hold out hope that in the morning I’ll be stronger. That sleep will reinforce the barriers between the real me and the voices telling me I don’t belong to this world.

Now it’s morning, and they’re reinforced, but still not blocking all of the evil thoughts in my head.

Part of the reason I have had such a hard time staying connected to Tarot when I first got interested in it is because I was in such a deep depression at the time, and I refuse to read the cards when I know my judgment is clouded by my mental illness. It’s now years later and I spend more days happy with myself than not, but I still believe that I shouldn’t take out the cards to read for others when I’m feeling this low and this stuck behind a dark cloud. So this week, I’m going to focus on other things, on trying to distract myself to a better place. It might show up as some extra blog posts about other journeys of self discovery. It might just become knitting and watching Star Trek: The Next Generation for many hours this week. (I’m so happy to be knitting!) I might just set up a few blanket forts in the living room. It’s all okay. I’ll get through this, and come out on the other side again, and then I’ll pick up the cards and be delighted to find my way back.