Not that it's very material progress, mind you. I have moved several times, completely failed to find a doctor or counselor that I can live with, and have spent about 3-4 months volunteering, no time at all actually employed.
But... Now, think back... What were my GOALS? Originally, I mean. When I made this blog. Sometimes you have to dig to find them, but not very far in this instance, I listed them on my first post.
"The intended effects of this project are:
- to allow me to understand, communicate, and solve, some of my own personal issues with greater confidence
- to gain respect and opportunities for my academic abilities
- to improve my own morale and overall confidence and assist in gradual recovery from my depression and anxiety"
And amazingly... while I have completely and utterly neglected to actually study rationalism, as I had set out to do... I have made progress on the fronts that I was, essentially, intending to make progress on.
To allow me to understand, communicate, and solve, some of my own personal issues with greater confidence.
Simply living through my life experiences in the most honest and self-aware ways I could has accomplished this naturally. Though I experience a lot of conflict and tend to inflate it before resolving it, I have learned more about myself and how I function, and have gotten gradually better at self-presenting in ways that are accurate, defining what I am looking for, and even, in some ways, actually looking for it. I still have a very long way to go, especially on that last front. I have developed new relationships and somehow managed to still be in the one I was in when I started this blog. It isn't perfect, and it's certainly not smooth. But in some fundamental way, as fucked up as it is, it's working.
Just like Western civilization, ba dum tish.
Humour is a wonderful way to soothe personal issues. Such as, for example, being far too uptight. I think I am generally much more relaxed now. This is a good thing. If I can remember the last time I had a major panic attack, it was a very long time ago. This is a very good thing. I have become much better at telling people when I am angry or upset or offended and what about. Et cetera.
Of course, this is all just maturing, and should come with time.
But a lot of people manage to avoid it, and I'm not, so I'll take that credit, thank you very much.
To gain respect and opportunities for my academic abilities
As respect from an outside community does not come if you fail to act to impress it, I have not obtained much of it, except from friends and briefly impressed strangers. Admittedly, I have not actively pursued this goal, and as such have not attained it. This may change. Maybe.
To improve my own morale and overall confidence and assist in gradual recovery from my depression and anxiety
Ahh, the holy grail, and the biggest, baddest, and most urgent of my (cl)aims. In case it has not already been made clear... I have made substantial progress on this ground. While I have not found a doctor I like or trust, I did, for a while, have a doctor, and I got my blood checked out. It turns out I have hypothyroidism, which often mimics depression and anxiety in many ways. It took me quite a long time to accept that I did, in fact, need the supplements which would balance out this issue, and so I had many false starts in taking them.
I have now been doing so for over a month, fairly reliably. I miss one here and there when I fail to plug in my alarm clock or something, but I am now in the habit, and the neutralizing effect on my mood has been noticeable. While still stormy and wrathful, and inclined to be enraged by stupid things in the world, I find myself less often stuck in a depression and unable to get out. The depressions I do feel can be reasonably tied to external factors, like the unpleasant living conditions I am currently enduring - I live in a cramped room with no storage and quite a lot of mess (storage is necessary for organization, unless you're content with categorical piles of stuff), in an apartment rented by a passive-aggressive authority figure (boyfriend's dad) I actively dislike, and I believe the feeling is likely mutual. I lack the motivation to actively work on quite a few things that I do want to accomplish in time, but that is largely tied to being in a state and place which is intended to be transitory. I don't, for example, want to find a job here, because I want to move to London, and getting a job here would necessitate staying.
Confidence comes better with stability, better still with action and progress.
I have started working out. I've done two days of it so far, and have been happily announcing this achievement to everyone I know. I'm starting reasonably small - just enough, every other day, to make me ache on the off days. I'll build on this over time.
My partner and I have also started to change our eating habits, albeit slowly. We're doing a meal replacement thing with protein shakes once a day. I expect we'll make it two later on, when we have more of a sense of our sleeping and waking and eating schedule. This promises, interestingly enough, to make grocery shopping likely quite a bit cheaper. Which is useful, for the unemployed. We'll see how much as time goes on.
I hope to start posting here about everyday things more often, whether they are rational and on the original topic or not. Maybe build a few readers. Have a public diary, kind of thing. I've never been able to keep a diary (I'm sure you'd never have guessed). And it's not just that I fail at committing to things. It always seemed profoundly pointless writing down my thoughts, expressing myself, without any expectation of actually sharing it with anyone.
So welcome. Be the audience to bits and pieces of my life, if you care to. For now, I'm going to post here a couple of things that I wrote in other communities that I would like to make visible here as well. I think I will store some of my poetry here. After all, it's one of the things I'd like to share. I might start posting art, too, at some point, because it's something I do sometimes and want to display and show off, even if I'm not all that good at it.
To clarify, here - I have been drawing for a long time, and the experience does show. I'm not bad, for an occasionally-practicing amateur, but not as good as I'd like to be, either, and I have been out of the habit for a while, so at the moment I'm probably not even as good at it as I have been in the past. We'll just have to see.
As to the satisfaction of realizing and working towards my goals even without much structure or any study at all... Is it a cop-out for me to claim success on my goals without having worked on them in the way I promised to? Of course it is. But that's okay. I have not been pursuing the study of rationality... but I have, occasionally, in small ways, been acting in a rational way - a way that got me closer to where I wanted to be. So is that a success? Is that really good enough?
Well, if you tell me it isn't, I can tell you where to shove your expectations of me.
I'm back, baby. And this time... I'm not taking myself quite so seriously.
Serpent Stare Out.
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