Mind matters

In matters of the mind, what really matters?

Well, right now, in my mind, the little things apparently matter–in a big way. I’m talking about all the little things that people say that might be well-intended but get skewed in perception.

Here’s the thing: I commented on a post in the writing group I’m part of. Big mistake. Really big mistake.

The OP (original poster) was talking about how if you want to be a best-selling author you need to think like a best-selling author and treat your writing like the job it is. Okay. Fine. But what about the job I have that pays the bills? What about the few real-life friends I have? What about my physical and mental exhaustion? Did the OP have any advice for me on that?

Not really. I was basically told that, since the SCA is not 100% necessary (like the job obviously is) I need to reevaluate my commitments to it (and, of course, the people in it). Okay. I kinda get that, but the OP fails to realize that the SCA is my only source of real-life friends outside of the one or two friends I have at work. So….to succeed I need to give up having friends?

Yeah, that’s how my brain works. But that’s not the best part. It gets better.

The OP also told me to “schedule” writing time and “prioritize” it. Okay. But I kind of already do that. Unless I have an urgent embroidery project (oops! there’s that pesky SCA thing again), my insomniac mornings are spent on writing, editing, and marketing my writing through social media interactions. So, yeah, I schedule writing time in a manner of speaking. I prioritize it by choosing that over trying in vain to go back to sleep. I spend hours on this. Almost every day. Probably cumulatively more time than I spend at work, when I think about it. I can easily be awake for 5-6+ hours in the morning before getting ready for the day job, and I spend a lot of weekend free time on writing as well. Hell, sometimes I sneak a little modern day into the SCA events by using my phone for Twitter interactions and Instagramming and yeah, I even bring my laptop on camping events so I can hotspot my phone and–you guessed it!–work on writing, editing, and marketing.

But my brain’s not done yet. No sirree. My brain had to tell me that the OP was singling me out. He had to have been picking on me. Insulting me. Telling me that I will fail if I don’t do the things the way he says to do them. That’s what my brain got out of that.

So that’s the worst of it, right? I got over it, calmed down, recentered my perception and got out of my own way?

Nope. I went full-on psycho paranoid ultrasensitive bitch.

I worded my response carefully, or so I thought. I didn’t bite back, even though I felt attacked. I kept it calm. Or did I…..?

Guess not, because the next day, the OP wrote another inspirational/motivational/well-intended post, this time about excuses.

Oh, shit. There goes my mind again.

Clearly he’s writing about me. Clearly he’s targeting me in this verbal assault. I’m obviously the sole inspiration for this outrageous insult. When I was asking for advice on how to deal with all that’s going on in my life, I was obviously making excuses and thus the new post was born.

I’m trying to tell myself it’s not personal. Or at least, if it is personal, it’s meant to help not harm. I am trying.

Oh, shit again. There I go. Using “try.” (The OP also posted about taking “try” out of one’s vocabulary today. Yeah. Today was a two-fer.)

I’d say that it’s a neurochemical shitstorm (ooh! I like that phrase–sounds better than “off my rocker”) in my brain right now, what with the medicine that helps me de-stress and not think this way being denied by my insurance, but I don’t even know where mind and matter separate at the moment. I don’t know where the line is. I don’t even know if there’s a line anymore. My mind is twisting everything I read to be an affront against my person, and I don’t know how to stop it.

I was better in my outward reaction today. I bitched to one or two people privately, but I didn’t comment on his posts. I kept my fat mouth shut. What does it matter, anyway? He’ll just twist my words around to make everything that’s wrong with my life my fault and I’ll feel even shittier than I already do. Best to leave it alone.

One of these days–maybe not soonish, but some day–I’ll even out. I’ll stop taking every little thing personally. Until then, though, I’d better retreat. Back into the shell you go, personality. Back in there before you screw something else up.

The treatment is a success…or is it?

So it’s been almost a week since I started the new bipolar med, and it’s got mixed results. I mean, I’m not feeling the sky-high levels of stress and anxiety that I was feeling before, but at the same time…I’m not feeling as much of anything.

Stress levels are down–which is great–but my give-a-shit-o-meter has crashed. I just don’t care. Ten-hour day on my feet with a fifteen minute lunch? Eh. Forgot to get my lab work done before my appointment today? Whatever. Probably going to get yelled at by my rheumatologist for not taking the $2k-a-month medicine she prescribed? Shit, she yells at me all the time anyway. Like it’s my fault the RA isn’t under control–try prescribing something that doesn’t cost more than my mortgage, lady.

I even didn’t get that upset when I threw up my breakfast yesterday. It was like “Okay, this is happening. I’ll just hold off on eating anything else until I’m sure my stomach is settled.”

Don’t get me wrong; I’m extremely grateful that the stress and anxiety are almost completely gone. That part’s great. But I gotta admit, it concerns me a bit that I’m not, well, concerned. I’m just rolling through life, doing what I need to do. I’m pretty sure there’s going to be backlash on that at some point. Things can’t be this smooth without some bumps along the way.

Oh well. I’ll take the bumps as they come. I’m handling things much better now. I don’t get the all-consuming sense of being overwhelmed by what I have to do. My interest in my interests hasn’t 100% come back yet, but I’m getting there. Got a new short story in the works, got Book 3 moving along–at a snail’s pace, but it is moving–and I’ve got the embroidery that I’m slowly getting knocked out.

Speaking of which, I should probably work on that while it’s nice and quiet. I’ve got most of today to work on it, but there will be that 3-4 hour period where I’m off to my appointment where I can’t embroider. (I feel weird embroidering in the doctor’s office).

Try, try again

On the advice of many, many people, I went to my psychiatrist yesterday (a month earlier than scheduled) and talked to him about all the stress I’m under. New medicine acquired, old medicine discarded, and now we play the waiting game.

Basically I have a month to adjust to the low dosage of the new med (which totally sounds like an alien species) before I get the full dose filled. There are a few bonuses to this new med:

  • No known weight gain side effects
  • Long half-life, so once I’m on the higher dose I’ll only have to take it Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays
  • Teeny little capsule, so not a huge gag issue

The med is soon-to-be-approved for bipolar depression, so that’ll help with that side of things, but I am dubious as to the anxiety/stress benefits of the med. If it’s supposed to help with depression, will it also help these other things? We shall see, I guess.

Speaking of bipolar disorder, I’m slated to appear on a podcast called Speak Your Mind, which is a mental health podcast. I know, I know, it’s not my usual book/writing podcast venue, but the host is excited to talk about Abnormal and my writing in addition to discussing mental health issues in my life and in society as a whole. More info to come on that once I’ve gotten a date scheduled. We had a good, long chat the other night, so I’m hopeful that someone listening in gets some benefit out of hearing my story and my struggles.

I try not to get too political about mental health, but let’s face it: mental health is widely ignored by insurance companies and even more widely stigmatized in society as a whole. I think back on the work that Carrie Fisher did to try to destigmatize mental illness, and I think this is one cause I can get behind, not only because it directly affects me but also because it affects such a wide range of people, and not enough people talk about it. Maybe one day, when I’ve hit the NYT bestseller list, I can have the kind of influence where my experiences make a difference.

Yes, I have a mental illness. Yes, I have bipolar disorder. Yes, I take medicines to be “normal.” No, I’m not crazy.

Shedding Light on My Darkness

Bipolar disorder sucks, but it’s livable given the right access to good mental healthcare and the right combination of therapy and pharmaceuticals. Why am I bringing this up now? Well, I’m in talks to, er, talk on a podcast about mental health issues. I was introduced to the podcast by a fellow bipolar author, and it seems like a good fit. I have mental health issues that I have to deal with on a daily basis; they’re a show about mental health.

I talk about mental health a lot here, about my stresses and stressors and stressing out in general, but I want to make it known that you can fight the demons inside and live in the world outside at the same time. It just takes a lot of effort.

It also takes admitting that you need the help.

Hopefully my appearance will help others realize that they don’t have to be holed up in their own little world of demons, suffering through hell on a daily basis. Hopefully it will help them realize that there are options and avenues for relief. And hopefully they’ll realize that they can’t give up after a few things don’t work; they have to keep trying until they find the right combination of therapies for them.

I’d say more, but that would be potential spoilers for the show. 😉 More details as they come!

Almost Home

It’s 0432, and I’m at a friend’s house for the night, waiting for my husband to wake up so we can go the rest of the way home. So what’s an insomniac to do but write?

I tried to take a writing break during Estrella War, but my story started speaking to me again, and I couldn’t ignore it. This is after weeks of little to no progress on Book 3, so I’m glad the Muses decided to become chatty. Still, hand writing when you’ve pulled a muscle in your back (on your dominant side) isn’t exactly fun. I’ve already called out from work–well, texted out, I should say–and I foresee a heating pad in my future once I’m home… Possibly a doctor’s appointment. Depends on how much worse it gets. At the moment, I really don’t want to yawn, as I discovered last night that breathing too deep causes pain in the pulled muscle.

My feet hurt, too, as well as my legs, but it’s more of an ache from overuse of muscles that I’m not accustomed to using. You’d be surprised how many new muscle groups you will discover when you have to sludge through half a foot of thick, slippery mud for days on end. It actually got to the point where walking on dry land felt unnatural.

I’ve been tasked by my publisher’s publicist to find and book no less than three (preferably five) podcast appearances by mid March. I’ve had terrible luck getting responses, so that’s another thing I’m going to have to do once my laptop is unburied from the mess that is our car. I’ve enlisted the help of Twitter, whose #writingcommunity hashtag is a wealth of help and knowledge for newer authors like me, but I’m still going to do the “legwork” of searching podcast apps and contacting shows. It’s going to take a lot of my time, but I know it’s for my own good. I need to keep promoting ABNORMAL even though I’m working simultaneously on ESCAPE THE LIGHT and Book 3. An author’s work is never done, I guess.

I’ll be glad to get home. I miss my cats, miss my shower, miss my bed. I miss my house, my comfy couch, and all the things that I couldn’t take with to Estrella.

I wish that I had ventured out from camp more during the War. I was so miserable that I didn’t make enough of an effort to see friends that I rarely get to see or even to meet new friends. To my SCAdian friends, I apologize for not having much of a presence this War. I’d promise to make more events or something, but I’m still not sure what my mental state is following this “break” from work. I feel somewhat refreshed in the sense that, aside from a few frantic texts, I haven’t had to think about work in a week. However, that little twitch in my right lower eyelid is still there, and I still don’t know how I feel about getting back into attending more SCA events. I want to keep active, but I also need to take my mental health into consideration. That being said, I got some of the best hugs this past week, much needed and sorely missed.

Goodbye, Estrella War. Until next year.

Dry for now, but a mudpit to clean up later

Estrella War has been wet. It’s been damp and mucky and gross. I’ve escaped two nights in a row to sleep off-site in a warm bed. Tomorrow, however, we have to go back and clean up the mess that is our tent and pack up the car.

That means three hours in a car loaded up with mud-soaked items. It means sorting what can be saved and what is a wash. It means tomorrow is going to suck.

I tried to get stuff together today in preparation, but the task was too daunting for myself alone, and my husband was busy most of the day. Over half of our stuff is soaking wet, another third is damp, and a small sampling of the rest is salvageable.

I’m so done with this vacation. I’m done with the mud and the port-a-johns and the cold. What was supposed to be a relaxing break from work has been nothing but a mudpit. I enjoyed the time I spent with my SCA family, but overall it did nothing to destress me.

I’m going back to a slammed office, or at least I’m pretty sure I am. I’ve stopped receiving text messages from work, but it’s a mixed blessing. On the one hand, I’m not getting inundated with texts about work stuff while on vacation….on the other hand, I could be walking in to anything. Chaos could be awaiting me when I walk in the door….or it could be handled. Who knows.

I might end up going to my psychiatrist early after all. I can’t keep going at the pace I was and survive. War did nothing to relax me. It just keyed up different triggers.

I’m still writing. I’m still holding in there. But I’m not going to be able to hold in there much longer.

Cold War

Estrella War is just a day away for me, and this is how my part of the desert is looking this morning:

Yes, that’s my land, just behind the house. It wasn’t much, but it snowed last night, and it’s supposed to be cold and rainy in Queen Creek for a good bit of Estrella.

We’ve got a new canvas tent (that’s supposed to be warmer than modern nylon tents). We’ve got a heater. We’ve got a wool coat for me and a reversible wool/cotton cloak for my husband. We’ve got thermal underwear for nighttime. We’ve got blankets and thirty-degree-graded sleeping bags. We’ve got throw rugs for the floor of the tent (because the floor is a tarp, not canvas, and that will be cold to step on in the middle of the night). We’ve got warm hats. We’ve got rain boots and fuzzy boots and thick socks. We’re set–right?

I sure hope so. Last year it got so cold that our silicone-gel-filled pillows literally froze. Rock solid. Not comfy. We had the heater then, but the nylon tent we had wasn’t very good at retaining the heat, so the heater was almost useless. Almost. I was sore and achy and miserable every morning because my arthritis did not appreciate the cold. So this year we’re packing extra heat-conserving methods.

Am I looking forward to Estrella? Sure. I mean, I’ll get to see people I haven’t seen in a long time, hang out with friends, teach some embroidery, and maybe get a little fighting in. (The last one I’m not 100% sure on, because I have the royal embroidery still to finish…so that’s going to take away some of my time.) But I am not looking forward to the cold.

Yes, I know, cold in the desert? It’s true. It can get biting cold, especially at night, and it’s not fun going to the port-a-priv at 3am to sit on a freezing-cold plastic seat. Sometimes when we’re camping and it’s cold in the morning I hold it for an hour or more just because I’m dreading the trip to the priv and the ensuing frozen butt.

I don’t know how much posting I’ll get done at the event. I usually have a few hours in the morning where I’m up and awake but not able to do anything like embroider because of the lack of light and the fact that the rest of the camp is asleep. However, if it’s cold enough, I might not want to sit up on the laptop or even lie down with my phone to post something. Regardless, I’ll try to get my weekly newsletter out. I think I can manage at least that.

One thing is certain: I’ll be glad to get back to my warm, warm house once War is over. Even though it snowed last night, I haven’t been cold inside at all, unlike the apartments we lived in. So there’s that.

Can’t afford to heal the pains

Healthcare in the U.S. sucks donkey balls.

Here’s the thing: pharmaceutical companies are able to charge out the freakin’ nose for stuff that’s basically essential for physical and mental health. I called my insurance’s compounding pharmacy for a refill of the latest biologic my rheumatologist prescribed for me. They informed me it would be two thousand plus dollars per injection (a monthly injection). That’s almost twice my mortgage! Does the medicine work for the rheumatoid arthritis? Doesn’t matter. Can’t afford twice my mortgage every month, so I’m not getting it.

It’s crazy. Two. Thousand. Dollars. A month. Most people can’t afford that even without mortgage and credit card debt and utilities and gas to-and-from work and medical insurance and… point is, it’s excessive. It’s punitive. It’s the pharmaceutical company saying ,”Fuck you, if you can’t shell out more than minimum wage’s monthly salary, you’ll just have to be in pain.”

Add to that the fact that I need to at some point find a urologist and a nephrologist and see my psychiatrist and call my rheumatologist (do you get the “gist” of it?)…Yeah. Copay city. I could afford it if I tighten up some things, but it’s getting out of hand. Long story short, a person can’t afford to be sick in the U.S. these days unless they’re in the upper tax brackets.

It’s all just another series of stressors that are ripping my psyche apart these days. Work is stressful. SCA life is stressful (at least until my royal embroidery project is done). Work is stressful. I feel work needs an extra mention, because I’m so stressed at work that it’s causing me to burst into tears any time I stop. I mean, I go on break, and the slightest trigger has me crying. I leave work, and again, I’m sobbing. Basically, I’ve been operating at such high stress levels lately that as soon as I release any of it I’m a big ol’ ball of tears. I’m hoping that my upcoming week-long vacation from the office, combined with the surgeon’s upcoming week-long vacation next month, eases enough of the stress that I can get things done. If not, I’ll be back at the psychiatrist’s office before my scheduled follow-up…crying. Again.

I know I’ll get through it. I always do. But just knowing that it’s getting harder and harder to even afford to take care of myself is overwhelming. How am I supposed to get myself well enough to function if I can’t afford the things I need to get well?

This isn’t really a political post. I’m sure there are plenty enough of those out there that are better-informed than I am. This is just a rant, a scream into the nothingness to release that pent-up frustration and get it off my chest.

A Twitch in Time

As work gets more hectic and time ticks away to Estrella War–and with it, deadlines–there has been some other ticking of late…a tic in my right lower lid.

I know it’s likely stress-induced, and I know there’s not a whole lot to be done about it, so I’m tolerating it for now. The tic. Not the stress. I’m not tolerating that well at all. Sure, I hide it…sometimes. Sometimes, though, those who know me notice the pause before my response, the gritting of my teeth, the tension in my shoulders.

I bite my tongue. I choose my words with care. I pick my battles. But it’s starting to nip away at the edges. To fray my nerves. To unravel me.

Intellectually? I know I should make an appointment with my doctor. My psychiatrist. I should go and see him and tell him about the high-octane stress and see what can be done pharmaceutically, if anything, to ease some of it. Emotionally? I am afraid. I’m terrified that for the first time in over a decade I’ll have to be taken off work to readjust to new meds, to destress, to recenter myself.

Note I didn’t say I’d have to take time off work; I have no intention of taking time off voluntarily. But I’ve been removed from work by a psychiatrist in the past, and I fear that may be what’s necessary now.

I can’t afford it. I can’t financially afford it, and I can’t afford to leave my duties right now. There’s too much at risk for me to stop. The house. My job. So. Much.

Too. Much.

It’s all too much. And I don’t know what to do.

Every which way but where I was scheduled

Not even a week after I was “counseled” by a nursing director and the office administrator about the stress I’ve been undergoing lately, I have once again been thrown into the pattern of being dragged all over the office to do my job, others’ jobs, and any job in between they can find for me.

It’s not all the fault of administration or any direct supervisors. It’s a whole crapload of unfortunate events and circumstances, some preventable, some not, that has turned this week into a hellhole.

I’d write more in depth about that, but not only will it not accomplish anything, it would be…hmm, not quite libel, because it’s all true, but not looking good for the place of business I work at should anyone read this who knows where I work. So I’ll just leave it at “it sucked and did nothing to reduce my work-related stressors.”

Home has been better, for the most part, but I must say that coming home–from a trip to the grocery store after a long day at work, mind you–to find out that my husband was headed to Tucson for the evening and I was on my own for dinner may have added to at best exasperation, at worst yet more stress. I can kinda cook when need be, but most of the dishes for the cooking I wanted to do were in the dishwasher, which was running, so I made a salad. At least we had salad makings in the house.

The writing front has been quiet–like, Western-movie, tumbleweeds-bouncing-down-the-road-in-the-wind, crickets-chirping quiet. I’ve just been too consumed with work and embroidery.

Okay, so some of the embroidery has been my own fault. I decided to give myself a new project when I still had an important unfinished one. I have been bouncing back and forth betwixt the two, but I need to buckle down and focus on the more pressing one. The one for me, which I would like to get done before Estrella, will probably end up being a sample piece for the embroidery classes I plan on teaching.

Oh yeah. Those. I have to get the handouts ready and figure out what images I’m going to print for my students to trace onto the water-soluble stabilizer so they can get started on their own projects. There’s that, too.

Some day soon, possibly after Estrella, things will calm down. I’ll be able to sit and relax and not worry about a million little things fluttering around the back of my brain that need to get done.

Right now, though? Right now, I will have to suck it up and soldier on, and I might have to have some more “counseling” before it’s all said and done. Not gonna lie, a few more, er, extreme methods of getting out of work came to mind last night. Nothing that I’m going to attempt, but yeah, the darker thoughts came to the surface, and the urge was strong.

I’m stronger though. I’m stronger than the darkness, and I’ll crawl out of it every time.