Where our Mouth is

Andy and I have a lot of opinions about the world and how we would want to better it.  It's tricky, though, to invest in good principles like solar energy without our own house to install into it.  Then, there's the up-front cost which is also a little difficult to us right now, when we weigh the balance between trying to pay off my student loans with paying a little more in groceries to ensure that we have responsibly sourced food.  

We try to make minor but important changes were we can.  

• We're exploring more about taking the train when we can for different trips
• We recycle even though we don't have a curbside pick-up
• We bring reusable straws with us to restaurants and use them instead of plastic
• We're trying to focus more on fixing what we have instead of throwing things out and buying a replacement
• I'm learning to ride a bike and we're evaluating when it might be better (both for our health and the environment) to take those instead of the car
• One of the major reasons for Andy's dietary change to vegetarianism is lessening his ecological footprint--I have not made this jump, but certainly with his change we eat a lot more Boca than burger in our household now

And that leads me to another major change.  Andy has this annoying habit of finding things that we're looking for.  It's actually very helpful and wonderful, but as the person trying to balance the budget, sometimes that means that we find an excellent deal faster than I'm comfortable jumping on it.  Our current home, for example, came together in a very short period of time for such a large decision, and while I was immensely grateful for how things turned out, I was also very frustrated with him for pushing things into such a small interval. 

Whelp, he's done it again, folks.  We have traded in our car and gone electric.

Yes, that's a Birdie sticker in the upper right.

It's a 2013 Chevy Volt.  Fully electric, but with a gas motor that powers the electricity for those longer trips.  We'll be able to make longer trips by filling up the tank like anything else, but for all of our in-town driving, we're saving quite a lot of emissions.  This was triggered by the visit of a couple of friends that visited (shout-out to the Browns!), having driven from Colorado to Illinois in theirs.  Andy then dove into his research, gathered all kinds of different leads, flooded our family contact with options, sent me dozens upon dozens of "what do you think about this one?" links during work breaks, saw that we got in to test drive a new one more or less immediately, and all other things in between.  Of course, the more we learned about it, the more we liked it, but, Lordy, we were still moving faster than I was comfortable.  But this was familiar--this was how we got our Ford Escape.  

Our Escape was a wonderful vehicle; it was a good car to have at that point of our lives and has seen all kinds of loving use.  But it is more car than we need.  And it's another step we can make toward bettering our world even in a small kind of way.  

So we plug in our car now, working on saving gas money and emissions in one blow.  Small steps, but we try to put our money where our mouths are whenever possible.  

Level Grinding

It's another instance where a nerdy kind of reference is one of the best analogies for what I'm feeling in the moment, my friends.  For anyone who has a very different connotation with the word "grinding," rest assured that I will explain.

So, I was talking with my brother the other day.  We agreed that we were at some different kinds of crossroads in our lives, where we're preparing for changes to happen, to start out on new paths and new adventures, but unable to take any kind of plunge as it stands now for various reasons.  Perhaps it's money.  Perhaps the right opportunity simply hasn't presented itself.  Perhaps the timing simply isn't right.  It's a tough place to be, feeling that you're pretty certain of what you want to do but impotentent, stuck, and on the outside of where you want to be.  

I've been describing this recently as "the millennial cross to bear."  When you have a mortgage's worth of student debt but no house to show for it, it's easy to feel hopeless.  When there's no wiggle room in the budget to fit another mortgage, most millennials can't buy a house.  What entry-level job allows you to pay down your student debt AND a house payment AND start a family?  Is it any wonder that the millennials are, by collective conditioning, frugal?  But, no, we're killing the paper plate industry by choosing to wash dishes to A) save the environment and B) save on buying paper plates or destroying Applebees by recognizing that we don't have enough money to go out to a restaurant for food we can make at home.  Also, that's capitalism for you--if your industry is no longer relevant, then your business deserves to die.  These components are the core of a much longer rant that I might get to soon, but this context is important to what I want to say today.  To any non-millennials reading the above paragraph and feeling a knee-jerk response that includes the word "entitled," please hold off for the moment and take this statement instead:  what I would want you to understand is that there are concerns and pressures that are specific to this generation that other generations do not have context for.  This ultimately frames my perception and affects my decisions.  

SO, my brother and I were talking about our lives, where we might want to end up and what our dreams are.  It feels like I'm spinning my wheels right now in a lot of ways.  Andy and I are working hard, but we don't feel like we're making much progress.  It's hard to keep working toward goals with 42K of student debt hanging over your head, knowing that there are risks and opportunities that have to be turned down as a result, even if they would move you closer to what you really want.  But, we are still making progress--my student debt is down to 40K, for example, and it is now our only remaining debt.  Right now, I'm using an app and some fun reading books to learn Norwegian; we're building our emergency fund up a little bit before focusing our efforts on my student loans; I'm continuing to better my health and seek positive changes there.  Andy and I are doing alright.  But we're still homesick for the future, and it's easy to fall into existential nihilism and flat-out depression.  

Millennial=Sisyphus? 

My brother put it thusly:  we're just grinding levels right now.  When playing a videogame, sometimes you've got a really nasty boss coming up that you know would kill you almost immediately if you were to try and take it on.  So what a lot of gamers do is grind levels, meaning that they will spend a great deal of time in the same area, before the boss, building experience and getting stronger before returning to take on said boss.  E.g. walking around in the tall grass to find more Pokemon to fight and wandering back to the Pokecenter to heal back up again and again until the whole team is at a high enough level to defeat the gym leader.  This can take a long time, building up to that level a few experience points at a time, mindlessly churning through tedious, small battles until all members of the party are trained to a high enough level to meet that boss and succeed.  

I've said the same thing in different ways, that Andy and I are trying to make ourselves ready for whatever is going to happen (buying a house, moving to Norway, starting a family, whathaveyou), but there is a different feeling of accomplishment in comparing it to level grinding.  It feels more tangible, thinking about myself as leveling up in knowledge or strength or stamina.  My time isn't wasted or useless; I'm just working slowly toward the point where I'll be able to take on that next boss level and succeed.  The frame shift helps.  It's a much more positive way to look at what we're doing without feeling down about where we're at.  

However, some of that is still about finding balance.  Grinding levels in the same place again and again can get tiring and discouraging in its own right.  It's important to find the right areas that are going to level you up in the ways you want to grow.  I've decided that part of what I'm going to be doing is taking some extra courses at Heartland, just one a semester--I need some structure in learning new things.  I know that I have enough self-discipline to do this on my own to some extent, which is how I've gotten as far on my Norwegian as I have, but there' still something different about taking an actual class.  Starting with a Psychology course this week, as it happens!  This will continue to prepare me for whatever happens next and gives me something else to work toward in the meanwhile, if nothing else distracting me from how scary the numbers are in my student debt.  

We're not floundering.  We're not spinning our wheels.  We're just grinding levels, my friends.  That super-boss isn't going to know what hit'em.  

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Okay, I just have to share the following GIF that I found when looking for Sisyphus GIFs because it makes me laugh:

Yes, a tiger-shrimp moving a macaron up a mountain.

Relax

It's been a long summer.  Well, long in the sense of packed full of things.  Short in my overall sensation of passing time.  I don't know how it can be that the days are long but the weeks are so short, but here we are.  

Work is hella busy over the summer.  Schools are trying to make any and all big changes over the summer before students and teachers return, which includes ending out the old school year well (with all of the paperwork that implies), ensuring components are in place for the new year, and any new inservice trainings for staff, in addition to any sites hoping to simplify or restructure other components from the school year and any new sites that we are onboarding, with all of the last minute panic that implies.  We have to be a calm, guiding presence, remembering specifics about different school situations (was this one on trimesters or semesters?  is this site K-8 only?  did I teach the clients this session or did another rep?).  

Yeah, I'm ready for October, please.

I'm tired. My brain is pudding that had then been boiled, chilled, and then pulled out the next day to experience the same again.  As such, my normal protections and solutions for anxiety and depression are worn thin.

When you're stressed out, people will recommend doing something relaxing, taking a walk or coloring or whathaveyou. I find that when my mind is going in sixteen directions at once, that is the opposite of helpful. In fact, I've been missing sleep because the going to bed process involves a lot of quiet. So, I've been evaluating what techniques actually do work for me and what don't.

I have been stress eating. Once I figured that's what was happening, I feel in the completely opposite direction, rededicating myself back into my keto diet to try to reestablish control. And one better, I started a new workout routine. That's fine, except that I didn't make any changes with the old one, meaning Insanity in the morning and Zumba in the afternoon. Last Friday, as I was feeling suddenly very, very tired at the end of Zumba class, I thought maybe it was too much of a good thing. Responding with healthy changes can be too much of a good thing, too, depending on how I go about them.

So here's what does work for me.  
1.  Zumba.  This has to be one of my favorite work-outs.  Sometimes, the right thing to do is Angry Dance to get out some of that internal anger/anxiety.  

Perhaps like that, but without the gymnastics stunt double.  :)

2.  Movies that I have to be engrossed in, not something that can be ignored or sits as white noise.  
3.  Problems and puzzles and games that really engage the mind.  
4.  Write.  Work out the root of the issue by journaling, blogging, whether or not it's something I end up posting, it just gets it out there.  

The connection with these is that the mind had to focusing on something else, it can't be going through all the possibilities of everything for at least that little while.  If the mind cannot focus on anything else, that's a winner.  That is relief my friends.

Melvin & Me, Part 14: Melvin vs the Zombie Apocalypse

So, my brain doing the random things that it does came up with this particular question the other day while Pop and I were out in the middle of Geneva Lake, WI, on a sailboat:  can zombies swim and/or float?

I was thinking about whether a houseboat might be a very safe location (as far as zombies, not desperate humans) or a very terrible location.  With some good water filters and fishing skills, it could certainly be a place to wait out a lot of time, coming to shore only as needed for other occasional supplies.  No need to use a motor much if there are good sailing skills on hand.  But that does depend on the question of whether or not zombies would float.

If the zombies float, then, they would eventually make their way out to the boat, and it isn't necessarily more secure than anywhere else.  However, if they sink, well, then the plan sounds less kooky as we go.  How would their body composition change during that particular decomposing process?  Maybe zombies would float initially until they become too waterlogged and start to sink?  Would the zombies be smart enough to stop at the shore or plow forward into the water without hesitation--how intact are their instincts or does it vary based on their previous life?

Let the questionable internet search history begin!

While I was ruminating on that question, I had another:  what would the zombie apocalypse be like with Melvin?  My main zombie apocalypse plan is to gather a small group of people I trust and take over a Lowe's or Menards or Home Depot or something similar.  The sheer usefulness of the tools here would be invaluable, if not for direct use then for eventual trade with other survivors.  Also, all the materials are on hand to barricade that building down more or less immediately, with plenty of high ground within the building to build up.  The Garden center turns into its own garden, of course, but there would also be some grocery items available to help tide us over, until the trading and growing were enough to keep us sustained.

Now, here's the tricky part:  eventually, I'm going to run out of ostomy supplies.  Also, I'm not going to be able to get my maintenance medication that keeps my Crohn's in check any longer, since this is a supply delivered intravenously in a hospital setting.  Ignoring the latter problem for a the moment, I'm not sure whether I would be jury-rigging some kind of makeshift ostomy bag that covers it or instead creating a "catching" kind of device that could be worn just underneath it.  The benefit of the "catcher" would be that it could easily be rinsed as necessary and keep precious supplies free for other uses, but I have no illusions that our confined space would smell to high heaven.  However, a different kind of bag would also be very difficult in attempting to manage some kind of adhesive that wouldn't make my skin too angry.

Adding back in the medication issue, though, that's where things get interesting.  I know what it's like to waste away to Crohn's--I won't walk into that willingly.  Once things got a particular point, I would probably be volunteering for all of the risky missions for much needed supplies from other groups or places or otherwise outright ask to be put down in a way I wouldn't be coming back as a mindless undead.

The conclusion came to me thusly--the zombie apocalypse is most likely ableist as hell.  I mean, I have plenty of useful skills, but I also think I wouldn't be picked first for the dodgeball team, if you know what I'm saying.  What diversity of experiences and minds would we be missing out on?  At what point is survival no longer about living?

Cheerful thoughts, I know.  ;)  Any suggestions for surviving the zombie apocalypse with a chronic medical condition out there?

I Have Depression

I'm still sorting through some of those thoughts and concerns from the previous post from Choir School.  In particular, there are two particular incidents that I want to discuss.  

1.  For the first part of the week of choir school, Holly, Andy, and Adam were all under the weather for different reasons--I found myself in the weird position of being the "healthiest" person in our suite.  How weird is that?  Whelp, that was dandy (if still weird) until about Wednesday, when I had to perform a bag change.  This one didn't go very smoothly.  That's certainly not the first time it's happened, where I was aware pretty early on that there was an air leak that could potentially turn into something bigger.  There were also parts of my skin that were particularly angry, weeping and uncomfortable, which I had to run back to the room and tend to at a couple of breaks between events.  At home, not a big deal at all--annoying, but not a big deal.  Away from home, however, I was not okay.  I didn't have a panic attack, necessarily, but I was definitely panicking.  

Now, I wasn't unprepared.  In fact, I was very prepared.  I had brought extra supplies, clothes, and a healthy stock of bandages, paper tape, etc. because I'm me and I plan that way to help mollify components of the anxiety I have around my health.  But I wasn't at home, surrounded by my entire stock of various gauzes, tapes, creams, ointments, contact numbers, and other resources.  

I was really not okay.  Logically, I know that I am capable and resourceful and able to figure things out, but I wasn't in a place to be logical.  This was the longest trip I had been away from home (both in distance and duration), and I did not feel at all okay about this particular bag change not going well.  And then I didn't actually process this grief and anxiety, because I was the healthiest person there and otherwise was uncertain of how to ask for that space when other people had pressing issues of their own.  I swallowed it, meaning that I'll have to deal with now over a longer period of time.  There was too much to do, and other people seemed to need that space more.  Plus, I was determined not to miss out on anything more than I had to.  There's a lot more to that to digest yet, specifically why I didn't feel I there was enough space for me and how I can be better prepared to feel "safe" or confident during potential bag-splosions away from home.

2.  I had a particular interaction with a friend that sticks out.  I was discussing depression with him, particularly somatic responses to depression.  My body response and my emotional response are very much linked--theses parts of the body absolutely affect each other--I added that to the conversation that I very much understood why his body might have reacted the way it did in some situations.  He seemed genuinely surprised that I have depression, that I was generally a cheerful person.  In the moment, I stuck with "I have a chronic illness; of course I have depression."  That makes the clearest sense in the world to me, yet, I had to sit back and think that there are many ways that maybe I'm not as blunt about this as I need to be.  

So I'll put it out there baldly:  folks, I have depression, with a significant splash of anxiety and PTSD up in there.  I've been medicated for it, and I continue to go to therapy to work through various pieces of it at a time.  I would say that I wear my depression differently that the typical, expected sense, but truly everyone's own conditions are their own weighted mantle they carry best they can, pounds upon pounds against their steps forward.  How people wear their depression, how  or whether people share their pain, how people do or do not function as part of managing those symptoms, that's different for everyone.  Those moments that trigger the PTSD--where I remember vividly and viscerally in that instance a tube being shoved between my ribs or staring up at the off-white corner just to the left of the TV in one of my hospital rooms, trying not to move because everything hurt too damn much--I have been through some horrifying things, my friends, and sometimes how they visit me again is not kind.  I tend to take a lot of the "fake it until you make it" and "forcibly bottle it down until it explodes" kind of tactics, which mean, yes, I tend to look fairly cheerful on the outside.  My brave-face has some significant layers.  This goes back to an idea that I've explored before, that paradoxically I pride myself on being authentic while still managing to hold back on that authenticity in certain places.

I'm coping.  I'm finding better ways to handle this.  I'm redirecting my conditioning to more positive behaviors.  I'm getting more practiced at putting away the mask when it's not needed, because there are people that want to really know me with all the unpleasantness truth can be, people who don't let me get away with being glib on things that need discussion.  I've created this space here where it's okay to be naked and at least mostly honest.  For all of the ways I'm significantly in tune with my body, I'm also finding ways to pay attention to those elements that are symptoms of my mental state, such as realizing that I'm clenching muscles or holding my breath to brace for perceived dangers.  Somedays, I live life just to spite life, a "you're not getting the best of me" raised middle finger at the universe.  Other days, I can focus on all of the positive progress I've made.  Many days I focus on the small projects in my path now that I can invest my time and energy into, simply enjoy what's happening and be present in it.  And there are days that I am definitely don't have the emotional energy to get off of the couch, looking very much the picture of what most people think depression looks like.  

But that last one, that's not what I look like most days.  I assure you that the depression elements are still there, quieted away not because I'm ashamed of it but because I want to keep doing whatever it is I'm doing, which is a double-edged sword, really.  It is a specific strategy to help depression by forcing yourself to get out there and do things--some days, that's the best thing for what I'm feeling--but that's not always the best course of action.  Sometimes the distraction of being involved in umpteen things gives me enough distance to work through whatever needs working.  But in my case, I would say I keep telling myself that I'll deal with things at some amorphous "later"  that never seems to come because I have now made myself too busy to stop now, until my body decides it's had enough and forces me to stop. (Somatically, this involves low-grade fevers, fatigue, and some cold-like symptoms; emotionally, I want to curl up and die on the couch, feel overwhelmed in making most any decisions about the household or life in general, and generally have a VERY short fuse).  

Let's compound one more factor in there--I still worry about stressing out too much, acknowledging that stress can worsen my Crohn's which is probably no small part in why I deal with stress and depression the way that I do.  "Can't feel that.  You'll make it worse," isn't exactly the most compassionate reaction to have to your body, for its own protection or otherwise.  

What this equates to for me, well, I have a much better idea of what I'm dealing with and working through now, thanks to a wonderful therapist and the support of a lot of good people.  I may understand elements of what happening, but I don't always have the solutions or feel like I have the time to work through those components.  What this means for you, that depends on what you want to take from this today.  I would suggest continuing to be gracious to others, knowing that they could be working through something you know very little about.  Consider, too, that even someone that doesn't "act depressed" or otherwise act in such a way that you expect them to in order to deserve empathy probably very much needs that empathy anyway.  Life is hard for everyone in some capacity, and it's not a contest to see who has it worse.  We can seek to be kind in all places and empathetic as we have the energy for it.