Tag: mental health

reading, writing

For the fans

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BRAND SHIFT ALERT: I’m starting a new blog called Flipping Pages Like Mad, aka my instagram handle. Since I no longer work at a library, the blog title The Angry Librarian has been a bit of a block from writing. That, and I don’t have those sweet, sweet stories of members of the public being obnoxious or precious.

I started this blog in 2017 when I was full of rage at the political landscape. I was indeed an angry librar(y associate). Flipping pages like mad is fun because it references how much I read but also contains the fun word mad–in 2020, my anger at the state of the world led to actual madness (obviously, there were other factors, such as the complete mindfuck that was the isolation and fear of living during a global pandemic).

Essentially, I always talked about mental health, books, and public life, and I’m going to keep doing that. Those of you who follow this blog will still be able to view the posts, but will need to visit the new one and follow that to keep getting email alerts when I post!

At any rate, happy reading, and happy spring.

anxiety, community, home

The last three months

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To my dedicated base of readers: happy holidays. I myself did not get to fully enjoy Thanksgiving, nor celebrate Chanukah, nor celebrate Christmas. New Year’s Eve, I was bedridden, recovering from a 3-week hospital stay. I’m not ashamed of why I was hospitalized, but at the same time I do not feel like going into it now on the wide-open internet, but I will say I physically suffered from being in the hospital. I pray you had a less-shitty (which is to say less 2020) holiday season and you got to see your people safely and that everyone was in good spirits and good health.

My illness (and two hospital stays) means that in addition to having been away from blogging (but you knew that), I’ve also been off from work for almost three months. For a fun thought experiment you can try at home, try taking the largest source of empowerment and self-worth from a person with anxiety. Hilarity does not ensue. I love my job and the people that work with me, and I am unmoored without them.

The anxiety over wanting to return to work was nothing new; I’ve had anxiety for at least four years! What’s new is that it faded. I don’t feel anxiety because I am resigned. I know there is nothing I can do or say to speed up the return process. What positive updates, you may say! Not quite. I am numb with how much has been taken from me or otherwise lost. I physically cannot give any more fucks. The fucks have run out. This also translates to not really wanting to talk to or see others. I feel a sense of connection to family and friends who have reached out to check on me, but I am hyper aware of people who knew I was sick and did not reach out. (That said, my phone entirely died during the hospital stay and I have zero record of anything sent to me most of December.)

Despite the many loved individuals reaching out to me, I’m struggling with feeling community-less. Part of this is covid.. there is no in-person group activity happening at all in my circle of friends. Of my two main communities, one community won’t let me back in just yet, and the other I chose to step back from in November. Can I still be the angry librarian if I’m not working in a library? (I hope so, because WordPress just auto-renewed for another year.) I chose to quit because pandemic hours meant I had to go in for one two-hour shift each week and it was too much effort to juggle, and I will be happy to work there again once our hours normalize. It feels so different walking in now, but some of that feeling is due to pandemic/masks/plexiglass screens. I know that I am still part of the community, even though technically my role has changed. Now, instead of fearing that I’m the last to know library goings on, I actually am the last to know.

And for the first time ever, I’m okay with being the last to know (or, gasp!, not knowing). I’ve disconnected. I don’t even feel the anxiety over politics (thanks, Obama) because we are on our way to making the country operate like a rational entity again. Oh, and, I haven’t read the Skimm since November. It’s a wonder what being uninformed can free a person from! I was by no means a news junkie, but even the one political email I opened per day was stressful as hell. I’ll dip my toes back into the water eventually, but for right now, I’ve eliminated or disassembled many of my triggers. Medication helps, too, so I should not pretend I’ve reached this non-anxious state alone.

In summary, the last 3 months of my life have been not great. I have struggled with how to talk and write about something I don’t want to talk or write about, and this is intentionally vague to support that effort. It goes without saying, but I wanted to emphasize again that last year was a terrible year for traditional community-building methods, and I still miss our old way of life. I entered the hospital (still) a nervous wreck about the pandemic and exposure, and left as a person who often forgets to bring a mask on the way to run errands. Cured, or broken? I write to again remind people to check on their squad. Just because things are “looking up” does not necessarily mean all people feel up. I write to remind others and also hold myself accountable, as many people have reached out to me and I feel guilty only texting them back because I don’t want to talk on the phone. I write to say that yes I am jubilant about Biden and Harris in the White House but even that joy isn’t enough to motivate me when I have absolutely nothing to do. Biden and Harris can’t be my workout buddies, nor can they decide whether I do instacart or go to the damn grocery store myself.

So please excuse me as I go prepare for my day (yes, it is 11:30am). I will shower, put on real pants and go to the holy land of Trader Joe’s. God willing they will have the fancy gluten free muffins and I will even allow myself a seltzer purchase (and maybe, too, I’ll take a peek at the greeting cards). This is truly the one thing I have to do today. Here’s hoping I can find the motivation to pull it off. Though honestly, I might do my taxes instead out of procrastination. Tonight I’m meeting one of my beautiful friends for a virtual chat as we watch Uncorked, a Netflix Party of 2.

Slowly but surely I’m finding ways to pass my time as I enter week 3 of the attempt to reenter work. This month has been nowhere near as hard as being in the hospital, so I can’t hyperbolize, but I’m definitely not responding to the situation well. Send mail, send texts, even send thoughts and prayers. Anything is better than nothing!

anxiety, depression, information, let it go

Mistakes and fixing them

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In the past couple weeks, here are a sampling of the ways I have messed up:

  • drove to the shopping plaza that has Famous Footwear and Hand and Stone, did an errand, then drove to the shopping plaza that has DSW and Massage Envy only to realize I needed to go to Famous Footwear, and that it wasn’t in that plaza
  • hung up with a customer 5 seconds before I clicked one more time, finding out that yes, contrary to what I thought and told her, Uber does actually offer a driving service to non-smartphone users, aka a regular taxi company
  • did not blog once per week as intended
  • went to the gym and only ran on a treadmill for 1.5 miles, left without doing any weights
  • ducked into Target to waste time and use the restroom, left without buying anything and felt successful, only to remember what I needed from Target on the way home
  • set my alarm for 7:02PM instead of 7:02AM, was 30 min late to work
  • (not in last couple weeks, but) bought a new car when my employment is on a temporary basis AKA not necessarily secure
  • got into bed, got back up and brought a bag of tortilla chips back to bed & ate them immediately prior to sleep
  • ignored red flags and continued to invest emotional energy in men/boys who are uninterested in or unworthy for a relationship
  • replied “adios!” when someone told me to have a good weekend (instead of the obvious socially accepted response “thanks, you too!”)
  • wore the wrong sweater/necklace/dress/boots combination and looked frumpy
  • ate eggs from the dining hall and didn’t notice that the sign said they contained milk
  • asked my BFF about the micro-details of when to text/how to interpret texts/what to say back so many times that she literally purchased me a magic-8 ball

These are the ones that stick out. That last one isn’t a true mistake, since obvs my BFF likes talking to and helping me, buuut it got excessive and probably annoying. The bad part was the overanalyzing/obsessing, BUT, bonus, I got a gift out of it!

So, that’s my brain. One of the joys of anxiety/depression is ruminating. Loops of thought that play over and over and over, generally focused on bad things that have happened or mistakes I have made. I’m getting better at accepting that I can’t control when bad things happen to me, buuuut I’m still moderately stuck on the letting-go-of-things-I-messed-up. The above are a hodgepodge of work, internal, health, and interpersonal. The running themes are things I have done that [I believe] will make people think less of me and times I disappoint myself (I suppose that is just me thinking less of me).

But what if I removed the “think” from thinking less of me?

Because, though some of the items on this list have caused me to lose sleep or increased my stress, none of them are crises. I can deal with them. (That thought in and of itself shows progress!) And progress is good. Slow but good. After all, I’m not going to end my lifelong trend of acting like every next guy will be The Guy all at once. (My–optimistic, if extremely naive–motto is “it could happen!”)

It’s the thinking-the expectations my mind builds based on very limited data-that hurts. I’m working on finding a way to fix mistakes in the real world, so they stop bouncing around my head. Walking around in and reacting to reality rather than staying trapped in my thought-fog. And letting mistakes go if there’s nothing I can do about it! And doing better (probably due to being more mindful) next time.

To be continued!

anxiety, be a better human, books, coworkers, librarians, meditation, talking

Balance.. and quitting

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I just finished a book I checked out in June. (I know, I know, I rag on others for their excessive renewals. But I wasn’t done! And I have the hookup for renewals!)

I remember fondly the day I checked this book out. It was a weekday afternoon, and I had just gotten sushi for lunch with my friend and coworker. She returned to work, and I told another coworker I was there to pick up the book waiting for me on the hold shelf. Because we are book people, she was interested: what book was it!? Her unasked questions, I know well: was it new? Was it a novel or nonfiction? Should she know about it?

The gleam in her eye turned to laughter when I showed her: a random, nondescript, nonexciting book published in 1992 about Kundalini yoga practice. I was the only one excited about this book. And I wasn’t even that excited. After all, it took me a while to start, and a whiiiile to complete.

This is partly an effect of reading multiple books at a time: sometimes it takes me ages to finish a physical book. Audiobooks zip by. But turning the actual pages takes time (especially since I check out too many at once). Staring at my giant pile of library books, topped by books people have loaned me, it becomes harder to get through books that don’t hook me right away.. or lag in the middle.. or ones that I set aside in order to read something else.. It’s summer, so I’m giving myself a break on how much time it takes to complete my ever-replenishing piles! I’m out doing summery activities and not reading as much! I gave myself permission a couple weeks to not post a blog (mini-quitting).

And when I am reading, I want to enjoy it. As good as Just Mercy is, it is also about people wrongfully convicted and their prison stories. As far as I’m concerned, we are on a break. I’ll return to it eventually, but it wasn’t what I needed right now. As interested as I was in Infectious Madness, there is only so much research I can plod through before I say I GET IT I GET OK OK OK. It is interesting–in some cases, various psychiatric disorders can be brought about by bacteria, but there were just. so. many. pages. I gave myself permission to quit after dutifully reading half of it.

But the 1992 Kundalini book, I would not allow myself to give up. I needed to read it. No matter how farfetched and ridiculous it sounded. Even if it meant I stopped and started and stopped and started. This form of yoga/meditation, based entirely on chakras (energies) and the vibrational effects of various sounds, is woo-woo and far out and yet, all I know is that I leave classes in a better, more balanced mood. (That is why I like it so much.) Actual words I spoke to other drivers after class today: “you’re so silly!” and “hello, traffic! I am prepared for you!” It’s weird. Weirdly positive. Especially compared to the expletives that usually make up my communication with fellow roadmates.

Since I can’t always get to class, I read this book and can do more of the breathing exercises and movements at home (once I get over how weird it feels to do them by myself; somehow it is more natural in a group). Kundalini (movement/meditation), combined with exercise, nature and connection to others are what keep me from falling back into the everyday rut of anxiety and negativity. Even so, I can still slip into those habits within hours of working out, or another positive experience of some kind. I need to build and use my anti-anxiety toolkit, using whichever methods give me success, as weird as they may be. There is no quitting in anxiety–on either end.

anxiety, be a better human, depression, kindness, meditation, strangers, talking

Stress/Anxiety/Depression & Relaxation/Meditation/Vacation

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I really needed a vacation.

Everyone in the US probably does, because we generally work too much and relax too little. For months, arguably longer, I have been stuck in a negative feedback loop about work and where I live and generally doing life “wrong,” or at least not in the way I want to. Turning 30 helped this third-life crisis, but anxiety has a brutal way of sinking its hooks in deep.

Vacation, it was! For a friend’s wedding. And this time, I was doing this one differently, even before I left. Responsible for the planning, my friend/co-traveler/co-bridesmaid told me she was too busy to weigh in on everything. She trusted me. I can just send her links and tell her what to pay. It was great! I like trust! And planning! Whereas in the past, I may have been paralyzed with the responsibility, this time around I welcomed the project and chose lodging, still giving my friend the right to veto.

Now, I like planning because I like having things set, determined. Unambiguous. My anxieties are particularly triggered by transportation and the timing/cost thereof. I proposed a suggested itinerary in February, and when I got the go-ahead for the general dates, I almost immediately booked my tickets, out of fear the price would surge. Because it always does when I wait. Normally, I would have just worked myself into a resentful panic about co-travelers 1/2 and them reserving their flights. I did not want to pressure others or myself, so instead, I did not. I just did what I needed to do and let her do the same. Co-traveler 2 didn’t schedule her flights until within a month of the wedding, but she was also busy and the plans were set up, and eventually it all worked out. It was fine!

This may make an underwhelming story, but it represents a TON of growth and improvement. Many vacations, I bring all my mental crap along with me and am unable to escape and enjoy myself. I can be cranky and wish I had just stayed home and saved the money. My goal for this trip, though, was to be truly present, enjoying the people and places around me. And then I made a plan to travel by myself on the first day, because the rest of co-travelers didn’t arrive until the next day and I had never traveled by myself ever, much less in a foreign land.

This would be good for me, I reasoned. I would see the beautiful sights I wanted to see, and I would be jolted out of my comfort zone (but not sooo far–I opted for a bus so that I would not have to book/catch multiple trains). I would arm myself with offline maps, and I would take responsibility for feeding and entertaining myself for a whole day! (Yes, technically, I do this at home, but that gets boring and tedious, and here I was Seizing The Day and such.) The jet lag would only serve to help me, I reasoned. Meeting a tour group at 7am would be fine, because I would fall asleep early!

Then I learned from my awesome Airbnb hostess that I had to catch a 6:09am bus. Even if arrival times are flexible, I tend to run late and stress myself about possibly being tardy. In this case, I also would have missed my whole day’s plan and flushed a bunch of money as well as my independent-lady-traveler-bragging-rights down the toilet.

I did the thing I was not supposed to do… I let myself fall asleep at 6:00pm–only to wake up at midnight, wide awake and counting down until my 5:00am alarm. Meditating didn’t work, because the anxiety of catching the bus was not letting me go. I was out of bed at sunrise after several hours of tossing and turning, and waiting at the (not-so-quickly-determined incorrect) bus stop at 5:45am. My fear had come true, and I walked past the correct bus stop, walking first to the one farther down and across the street. I did not learn this from the nun, the lone pedestrian who passed me and, kindly, attempted to speak to me though we didn’t share a language. Her, probably the person most inclined to help in the town, I was meek to ask for help. To admit I didn’t know what I was doing. Thankfully, anxiety-earliness meant I had budgeted enough time to miss one bus, and miss it, I did. Not for lack of trying–I sprinted, but to no avail. It was now 6:00. Fifteen minutes is a long time to stand in the cool morning air, hoping I wore the right thing for the day’s temperature, but shivering in the meantime. The sprinting woke me up, and I was not letting another bus leave without me. Not without a fight. I had no more time to spare. The next one didn’t display the same destination and it wasn’t slowing down, but I flagged it just in time. I had to actually speak to the driver, confirming my stop. He said yes! I was triumphant.

The morning was gorgeous, sunny and crisp. The past six hours of sleeplessness had been worth it, just to make this slow and uneventful bus at the nearest to sunrise I had seen in a long time. I looked out the windows at Rome as the locals lived it, away from the city center and the tourist lures. Another man got on, a local, and asked the driver for the same stop as I had–I cheered silently for his good fortune too. I wasn’t the only one who had to ask, plus, I now had a marker for whether I would miss my stop! I had made my plan, and now it was in motion. I would make it! It was destined to be a good experience, because I had already done the hardest part.

Before I started meditating, and actively working to be my best self, I would have been a monster that day. I would have whined and complained about how tired I was. I would maybe have succumbed to the anxieties and just emailed the tour company and asked for my money back because I didn’t want to even deal with leaving. In a nutshell, I would have let my thoughts derail me.

That day was not perfect, and I caught myself being unkind to my fellow tour-goers and to myself, but all in all, I didn’t complain because there was no one to complain to. I shushed myself and reminded myself that I had navigated the public transportation in a city where I barely spoke 10 phrases of the language. I thought with gratitude of my Airbnb hostess and how thorough and kind her directions were, despite my spastic communication. I grumbled a bit when lunch (a piece of fish and an espresso) cost $37, but, the views!! Nothing was bringing me down. This was my day.

So, I saw some marvelous sights: Pompeii in all its historical glory, and Positano, one of the most beautiful tourist traps of all time. It was a roller coaster of emotions, but I recommend traveling solo based on how independent it made me feel. And, I did it with the training wheels of a group tour where I just showed up! More adventurous folk plan trains and hike with backpacks and sleep outdoors! There are plenty of options. Either way, it was a great start to my vacation, made me open my eyes and explore.

The whole vacation did knock me out of my routine and funk…once I got over the post-vacation mini-depression of returning to real life. I wanted to leave being present on vacation, because coming back, I saw the same errors and flaws. Other than my motivation. I was the person who traipsed around Italy by herself: I didn’t let the self-pity last long. I went to a yoga class, and I reached out to an awesome friend who made room in her weekend for me. I wrote some postcards and thought about how lucky I am to have the friends and family I do. I returned to daily meditation. I feel recentered.

And my real life is far from all-bad. Yesterday, a customer came into the library looking for audiobooks by Pema Chodron. As I started to read the titles off to her, I commented to her that I hadn’t heard of her, but now wanted to listen to them! She raved about one, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times. We had a lovely chat, she told me to read at least that book. When we introduced ourselves, I put out my hand to shake hers, but she said “I’m going to hug you, if that’s okay!” And she did. And it was. Vacation and meditation have mellowed me enough that strangers* hugging me is okay. In a nutshell, I’m feelin the love from the universe this week. The trick will be to manage my stress and keep the contentment/gratitude going as life sneaks back to normal.

Walking to bus station at sunrise, to Positano… Worth all the pennies.

 

*strangers who have two-way conversations with me about meditation and books first.

anxiety, be a better human, judgment, kindness, lists, meditation, writing

Activities formerly known as eye-rolled at

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Just can’t stay away from ending sentences/fragments with prepositions.. Sorry, not sorry!

Moving right on, I thought I would address Mental Health Awareness Month, aka May, our current month. I will be using comics from Sarah Scribbles’ new book Herding Cats in what is hopefully not problematic in terms of copyright, but instead inspirational to have you go buy the book or check it out from the library because all of her books are fantastic.

As with many people who experience depression/anxiety/other mental health issues, periods of my life are up and relatively worry-free, and periods are fraught with self-doubt, negative self talk.. aka times when I annoy myself, yet also antithetically isolate so I’m not seeing anyone other than myself, and many aspects of my life look lame, uninteresting, boring and shitty.

Right now, thoughts-wise, I’m pretty good! Springtime is warm and sunny and helpful to my mood. I am loving not drinking coffee (as much as I can despite missing the taste, but Larry David points out, the ritual of drinking tea from a mug in the morning is the same as drinking coffee from a mug in the morning) because I am far less jumpy/tense. There has been a sharp uptick in my weekly exercise.. in that I have started routinely exercising each week, sometimes even more than once. Lately I have been reading many good books, and have tons of summer family events and friends’ weddings/general fun to look forward to.

 

Seriously, go purchase/borrow this book. It looks like this:

ss2

As you can see from my pirated photos of her awesome work, she too suffers from periods of anxiety and depression, often (not pictured) due to current events and from social situations. I’m coming to her same conclusion, that making ‘stuff,’ in her case art and in my case writing, is a solid way to avoid or process the crap going on around me, or at least to clear my head/escape my thoughts for a little while.

Another way to do that is meditation. I have gotten a little lazy on that front, and often only use a meditation app to fall asleep rather than doing my standalone exercises. I also have found the perfect teacher/meditation class. It has been great. Yesterday, though, I learned that she will be moving the class from Saturday afternoon (yay weekend availability!) to Thursday evenings (nooo, my job is at night!). Under typical mental health circumstances, I would never have gone back. However, this is the longest yoga studio relationship I have ever had, and I’m flipping COMMITTED at this point. I even stopped lying to them to get that sweet, sweet student discount. Instead, throughout the summer at least, I intend to ask my boss if I can work different hours so that I can make it there in time, because it is that important in centering and rejuvenating me. Where once I disdained the soft, gentle yoga-teacher speak, now I see it as worthy of aspiration.

In addition to yogic calm, I once eye-rolled and avoided the following items HARD and have now come to love, advocate, or at bare minimum tolerate them:

  • Clogs (love, for their comfort and versatility, despite my BFF thinking they say “I’ve given up!”)
  • Tucked-in shirts (tolerate)
  • Meditation (love AND advocate)
  • Alternative medicine of any kind 
  • Visible panty lines (Then, the SHAME! The SHAME! Now, tolerate)
  • Emoting of any kind –other than laughter– in public (the SHAME! The SHAME!!!)
  • Nonfiction books: during my young and naive school years, I didn’t realize that after you’re done with school, there are no homework assignments. My version of self-directed learning involves a lot of nonfiction.
  • Therapy: when my parents divorced, my mom insisted that I see a shrink. She undoubtedly read somewhere in her hippie newsletters that children going through these traumatic life events needed to talk. I resented the fact that she was throwing money ($125 per HOUR) down the drain, and who the hell was this “doctor” lady? I didn’t need to talk, and so I didn’t. I sat in her office and stared at everything on the walls and thought occupying thoughts until I was too bored to maintain my moody silent protest.

That last youthful judgment brings me to my next point. Even though I’m feeling good right now, I am making an appointment with a therapist. For real this time (though I have said I should probably go for proooobably four years). Because for the first time, I actually want to do the work necessary to keep myself operating NOT on a keep-to-myself-because-I-don’t-want-to-expose-my-lameness-to-my-friends-all-sad-sack-like kind of wavelength. It’s poopy digging into the dark recesses of past heartbreaks and traumas, but at least for me it’s looking pretty necessary to prevent future lows. “The work” here is an emotional extension of the zen principle of non-resistance. Feeling the feels & releasing them to drain their power. Lightening the load by talking–to friends who have been there, getting to know the kindness of new friends, or to the olde standbys of supportive family, or to a therapist–generally makes it better.

Emote-avoidance, begone! Let us celebrate mental health progress with clogs and St. John’s Wort!