Misc. Chat Thread - Jan. 2015
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I have this weird circular thinking that gets me nowhere. I am an artist, I need to create. But now I am a SAHM and I have no time to create. I did a lot of commissioned work before, like mosaics, and kind of need the impetus so a commission to get going. I recently got 3 commissions out of thin air. It took months but I completed 2. The last one is massive-an entire wall. I love that I have a commission but have had trouble getting started. Things have to be lined up completely for me, or everything else has to be cleared (like the holidays) to start. I procrastinate, in other words, and create more stress for myself. I will likely have to work nights to complete this thing over several months time. Goodbye, sleep!0
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Journaling definitely helps me. I've been trying to get back into the habit of doing Morning Pages (from The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron), which is basically just three pages of non-stop free writing daily. It helps so much, even if you just write "I don't know what to say" for half a page when you're stuck. I'll look into the five minute thing, too -- thanks, @Krok.
I certainly struggle with depression too. I've been off anti-depressants for a few years, and am glad of that, but sometimes I get smacked pretty hard with it. Does anyone else have that issue where they chalk things up to laziness, lack of motivation, just being lame, and/or not trying hard enough, even though those moments when you *just can't* are very likely influenced by depression? I almost never think of it as a factor, when obviously it is. Working on this.
@MissHoliday -- first, no need to apologize. This thread is for whatever we want.
And I'm actually done with coursework. My only real job this semester is to write my thesis, though I will probably sit in on a couple of courses. Not sure exactly which ones, but looking at:
- Intro. to Islam
- Atheism & Secularity
- Gender, Body & Sexuality in Early Christianity
So, they should be interesting, and the benefit of sitting in is that you can just sit and listen, without doing any of the work. I try to do at least some of the reading when I do this, but it's not required.
I'm actually kind of worried about this coming semester. I do much, much better when I have outside deadlines, so to have all my work be self-directed will be a real challenge for me. Which is why I need to get into a really good routine early on. If any of you have suggestions for how you've conquered this type of schedule, I'd love to hear them.
Love you gals to pieces.
xox,
C.
It's comforting to know that so many of us are dealing with the same issues and are not alone! I think those things certainly are related to depression. It's like the "loss of interest" symptom that's always mentioned. I think I'm an ambitious person and a high achiever overall but sometimes I just can't get myself going. This then get's me down on myself for being lazy... it's a vicious cycle.
Those courses sound really interesting, particularly the last two. I wrote an undergrad thesis over my last year and a half of college. Do you have an adviser for it? That helped motivate me to get my work done (in benchmarks) so I wouldn't show up and waste their time with a lack of progress. It also helps me writing in general to set partial deadlines on a schedule and follow it. For example, find 10 sources of information by X date, write Y section by Z date, etc. Might be good to set aside a day in the beginning to format your paper. Theses usually have a lot of format rules so that they can easily upload them into a program and bind them if they're printing them. It's good to get these set in from the start to save you a lot of hang ups during writing and rework after. Formatting also gets me a little bit excited about writing the paper.
It's challenging and daunting but it's such a wonderful feeling of accomplishment when you're done.0 -
I'm actually kind of worried about this coming semester. I do much, much better when I have outside deadlines, so to have all my work be self-directed will be a real challenge for me. Which is why I need to get into a really good routine early on. If any of you have suggestions for how you've conquered this type of schedule, I'd love to hear them.
Love you gals to pieces.
xox,
C.
Ugh--I completely understand. I decided to pursue my J.D. and M.A. simultaneously. I had one semester where I was clerking, writing my thesis, and had law classes in the evenings. I'm a super-routine, schedule-driven person. I also happen to be an early morning person, so what worked for me may not work for you (if I'm remembering correctly and you are more of a night owl). All of my research was completed and approved by my department the previous semester; everything was organized into the order I needed it to be; all I had to do was to write the stinking thing. I woke up at 4am and wrote every morning from 4-7 for a few weeks straight. Once I had everything written, I began the editing process, using the same hours of the day.
I think if you make a schedule for yourself and block out time for specific things, it will be easier. At least that was my experience. Good Luck! Can't wait to read that you finished it!
That's quite an accomplishment! It's weird, I really dislike waking up in the morning and am generally useless.. and mean. But I got into this routine in college where I'd write as much as I could whenever I had time then I'd wake up early the next day with a fresh mind and start editing. It was like an "A-ha" moment when re-reading what I wrote and the paper just flowed. I'd sit there undisturbed for two or so hours straight and get the papers pretty well drafted or finalized. I think this had something to do with the lack of FOMO (fear of missing out) in the mornings since it was a ghost town until about 9 or 10 am that helped me concentrate.0 -
It looks like the mindshift app is available for Android. I'd like to see what it says for the situational anxiety.0
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On the topic of anxiety, my wedding is in less than 4 weeks and I keep on having terrible crazy dreams about things going horribly wrong. One of them, we totally forgot that it was the wedding day until my mom called us wondering where we were. Blah I'm not overly anxious during the day, but man, I go to sleep and my brain just goes "here's everything that can go wrong, and somethings that couldn't go wrong but I am going to make you worry about them any way". I miss restful sleep.
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It's normal, llama. I kept having dreams before mine about forgetting to wear my dress or with ratchet hair. I also dreamt that it rained and we had to go inside except inside was dirty and gross. I wasn't a bridezilla either. Was pretty nonchalant about the whole ordeal but my brain still ran amok at night.0
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Does anyone else have that issue where they chalk things up to laziness, lack of motivation, just being lame, and/or not trying hard enough, even though those moments when you *just can't* are very likely influenced by depression?
rheumatoid arthritis. it kills my energy and i never get the memo since i'm lucky enough not to get a lot of overt inflammation which would at least tip me off (touch wood). but twelve years since they diagnosed me, and it catches me out every.time. 'maybe it's a flare' is always fourth or fifth on my self-troubleshoot list.
i'm gonna commandeer this thread. so there's this guy where i work . . . he's one of the two developers. and this is a very weird setup compared with yer standard for-money software vendor, because they're just an in-house 'business services' development team and there's no real format or leadership. basically, he's one of the devs, i'm the qa, and since there are no grownups in this setup we're like a quartet of kids squabbling in the back seat of a driverless car (there's another dev who occasionally speaks but never ever ever makes eye contact, and there's a business analyst who i quite like).
i wouldn't mind any of this if this one particular guy hadn't been mutated by years of isolation from real-world practices into something like one of those prehistoric fish they find alive off the coast of mauritius with ears on its fins and no eyes. because this place basically hired me to come in and bring them a breath of the real outside world, but now that i'm in there he does nothing but nit-pick and carp and obstruct . . . and not even to any constructive purpose. not even about relevant stuff, either. EVER. it's always some random weird-*kitten* no-relations-to-anything thing that even he knows - and i know that he knows because it's become clear - has nothing to do with anything in the real world. it's just how he does. just because. because that's the peculiar way his strange-*kitten* mind works. and he doesn't know from qa.
sample conversation, translated into weightlifterspeak. for these purposes, pretend he's . . . oh, i dunno. a cross-country skier or something. someone who doesn't do what i'm doing but certainly ought to have been around it enough to have some kind of clue that there's special knowledge involved. which he does not have.
him: just wondering . . . why are you wrapping your hands round the bar?
me: o.O
him: wondering if there's some specific reason for it.
me: ... um well, because . . . holding onto the bar makes sure that when i straighten up the bar will come with me, you see.
him: no yeah, i get that part but. i'm just curious as to why you would do that.
me: ... do what? lift the bar, or wrap my fingers round it?
him: i just don't see the point of using your fingers . . . why don't you use your thumbs?
me: ... my thumbs wouldn't be strong enough.
him: well, they could be, if you -
me: they could be in theory, if i spent fifteen years building them up i suppose. but they're not. so i use my fingers as well as my thumbs.
him: [silence] well, i dunno, i just think it seems weird to me.
me: [silence]
him: i mean, just wouldn't it make more sense to use your thumbs?
me: why?
him: *twitch* well, i dunno, i just think so. it's just what i think. but it's what i think. you know better of course, but that's what i think.
me: okay well; i probably do know better and it's not what i think.
him: i mean, you're trying to get stronger, right? so why wouldn't you use your thumbs in that case? i mean, using your whole hand like that just doesn't make sense. it defeats the purpose.
me: are you serious? what purpose?
him: getting stronger.
me: ... i'm getting stronger
him: *triumph* but your thumbs aren't.
for you @crabada. because if i have to suffer, then other people will have to suffer with me.
also, this. pretend i'm your, um . . . pretend i work at your gym, right? and let's pretend i'm like the gym's personal-trainer-at-large kind of thing. now pretend that this individual uh . . . [tact mode] individual [/tact mode] has specifically asked me to critique a specific set of lifts that he's trying to do. it doesn't totally translate since this has to do with me reviewing use cases he wrote for test-case-a-bility, but whatever. and let's pretend that i did it, and i gave him a nice coherent written report detailing all the small changes and additions and such that he needs to make in order to give him a more complete full-body workout, and a safer one too.
now let's pretend you guys get to see his reaction when he's done reading it. here it is.
HEY GUYS. HEY ENTIRE GYM AND EVERYONE IN HERE AND ALL WHO ALSO DON'T KNOW A WHOLE LOT ABOUT GOOD LIFTING FORM. CANADIAN HAS BEEN REVIEWING MY WORKOUT AND SHE'S GIVEN ME A SET OF SUGGESTIONS, AND I'D LIKE TO SCHEDULE A MEETING IN WHICH WE CAN ALL SIT AROUND AS A GROUP AND DECIDE WHAT WE THINK OF THE FEEDBACK SHE GAVE.
i know i don't swear very much, in here at least. but has anyone ever experienced the opening lines of tim minchin's pope song? because that's what i've got in my head atm.
/edit to warn you: i personally think it's a terrific song but minchin ain't exactly a hardcore catholic and it's a um, fairly secular-humanist theme
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@Canadian -- I'm terribly sorry for you that you have to deal with this neanderthal, but I'm so wonderfully happy for me (and the rest of us) that we get to read about it. Ancient fish and thumbs and tact mode and all caps make me SMIIIIIILE.
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i'm not even sure that he HAS any opposable thumbs.0
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Heeeeey ladies! So I inadvertently took December off. And ate all the things. Whoops
So, I missed you guys! Crabada I'm sorry to hear you've been feeling depressed! That blows. I've had depression issues (like a lot of us it seems). It was really bad after I had each of my kids and a good reason why I never want any more. Also anxiety....
Krokador thanks for that journal link I am going to check it out too. Sometimes I feel lame and directionless and maybe I need to be more self-affirming.0 -
What a turd! It sounds like he likes to question to no end, perhaps to feel superior.
It's difficult working in an environment with no clear leadership. If you had a project lead, he or she would be there to make the final call regarding disputes between developers and QA (amongst other team members) and one would hope one could avoid a rogue developer organizing a parliament to argue with your findings.0 -
MissHolidayGolightly wrote: »a rogue developer organizing a parliament to argue with your findings.
that's pretty much what it is. and thanks for that - it's clarified a whole bunch of emo into one phrase so i can just bundle it all up under that label and move it out of my mental way now.
point is, they can't make up their minds whether they want me giving them leadership. when i don't do it, this guy looks to me. when i do do it, he pulls back. i recognise the temperament type a little - he's prolly the same type as my son, but my son has personal charm. so he's not just an ego; it really is how things work in his own personal mind. it's just a fundamental incompatibility. he's temperamentally allergic to closure and decisions, and i'm temperamentally allergic to vagueness and ambiguity.
i think he thinks it's seriously helpful to keep things ambiguous. gotta go face that meeting today, so i may be reporting again.
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Glad I could help and best wishes for dealing with it. Not being able to take direction and constructive criticism will be large obstacle for him throughout his career. Be glad you don't have to have his personality!0
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canadianlbs wrote: »point is, they can't make up their minds whether they want me giving them leadership. when i don't do it, this guy looks to me. when i do do it, he pulls back.
Maybe YOU should organize a parliament and force them to take a vote. Canadianlbs for president! I'd vote yes, obviously.
PS - I originally wrote "Canadianlbs for dictator," but that's such a weighted word, so I changed it. But you could be my dictator any day.
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Democracy won't do in this situation. This is an emergency. You need to usurp power and become the QA Czar.0
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@canadianlbs I love the way you describe things! Take power and rule!!! lol.
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On another note, I need to find something colourful to take a picture of in the next two days but I just have no ideas. I have found this 31 day photo challenge a great way to push my creativity (which lacks quite often) but this is a little much. I know it sounds easy but the weather has been dark, grey and icky all week which doesn't help me find colourful shots.0
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I'm going to share something with you all, but you have to promise not to judge.
This was my day in food:
Breakfast/Lunch (~12:00 Noon):
- 1 Double Chocolate Muffin (from Costco)
- 1/2 glass non-fat milk
Lunch/Dinner (~4:00 PM):
- 1 Double Chocolate Muffin (from Costco)
- 1 glass non-fat milk
I was still five calories over my range, because those damn muffins are INSANE.
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I'm going to share something with you all, but you have to promise not to judge.
This was my day in food:
Breakfast/Lunch (~12:00 Noon):
- 1 Double Chocolate Muffin (from Costco)
- 1/2 glass non-fat milk
Lunch/Dinner (~4:00 PM):
- 1 Double Chocolate Muffin (from Costco)
- 1 glass non-fat milk
I was still five calories over my range, because those damn muffins are INSANE.
LOL omg crabada! I would be so hungry all day
But I looooove those muffins. I can't have them in the house at all.0 -
one of my not-so-long-ago days in food:
coffee.
breakfast shake.
coffee.
coffee.
3/4 pound fruit juice gummy bears.
water
coffee.
dinner: breakfast shake.
working right across the street from a grocery store can be a real mixed blessing.0
