mindfulness – The Angry Librarian

anxiety, be a better human, books, information, let it go, librarians, social media

Working memory

October 10, 2020October 10, 2020 flippingpageslikemad

Last week I logged on to my library account, like nerds do, and had only one checked out. An error! I could have sworn I had checked out multiple books. A library insider, I had definitely gone to the building, sanitized my hands, taken my temperature, recorded it in the designated google doc on the designated computer in the designated room, sanitized the thermometer, followed the arrows to pick up two tiny books, and then brought them home. The books were on my nightstand. I had, however, forgotten to check them out.

I was only in the building for maybe three minutes, and 95% of what I did was not part of the pre-pandemic skillset/the typical shift. I forgot to do the 5% that was entirely familiar and library-related. Especially considering it wasn’t the part involving sanitization, I argue that this was not a big deal, and in the regular times many of us have forgotten to check out books before we took them home. I remedied this situation right away once I realized, so no one will be expecting the titles to be available when they aren’t. No harm, no foul.

But, as anyone with anxiety, depression or a perfectionist bent will recognize, this made me question the inner workings of my mind. What is going on in there, as I forgot basic processes?

Likely, I was thinking ahead to the other errands I was running. Or I was replaying all the quippy responses I could have said in any one of the million conversations I run over and over in my head. The recursive thoughts are tough, because they can be anything from actual lived experiences (positive yet finite! Negative but persistent!) to arguments either real or hypothetical, to entertainment, to worries about the election, to worries about the future in general, to an actor’s face or a clip of dialogue that I frantically try to identify. My mind is a labyrinth of past/present, minor/major, dreams realized/dreams deferred. One thing was for sure; my working memory, overloaded by the 2020 of it all, was not working.

Recently, I heard two nuggets of wisdom. The first: “a buried emotion never dies.” It made me wonder how much of my revisiting and reminding and wearing the grooves of my brain to fit memories is in order to keep them comfortable for the long haul versus how much is my trying to work through them. And how much is an obsessive need to categorize (one of my librarian-est tendencies) because I am only as good as the information I can remember. Or maybe whoever remembers the most is the most right?

The second, from a piece of poetry I heard aloud: “we are all radiant, but sometimes we forget.” It’s true with eating right, it’s true with anything where you know the right thing to do and choose not to do it when push comes to shove until it fades from importance. As usual, mindfulness is key–to recognize the slide between what I prioritize and the choices I make or the memories I’m holding onto that keep me from living like I want to.

One anchor I’ve been cultivating relates to my childhood friend who three of us traveled to be with almost exactly one year ago. We had gone to school together as kids, and she was a marvel. She also happened to be dying. I have always run away from the hard stuff, or at least, if I have shown up, I do it quickly or from a distance (ie, with a letter). Sitting with and truly facing discomfort is not my strong suit, my own or anyone else’s. Walking up the stairs to her house for that weekend was sad and scary. When she opened the door, seeing how much weight she had lost from being sick and undergoing treatment was sad and scary. Watching her talk about her illness and mortality was sad, but it was not scary. It was inspiring, and noble, and unifying in a way only things that break you open can be. It was so deeply human.

The memories of her that pop into my mind are not all from that weekend, but many are. One is sitting next to my two friends watching her give that interview, all three of us beyond the help of tissues. One is of the only twenty minutes the two of us were alone the whole weekend, and she was warm and happy to have our company, to be together after more than ten years. The feeling was mutual.

During that conversation, I mentioned 10% Happier and she lit up, saying she had worked on that team. I froze briefly, but went with it, saying yes, it’s a great resource for new meditators. This was something we had connected over; half a year earlier, I had opened a listserv email to discover an essay with her name in an email digest and reached out to her afterwards and we had a nice chat. As loving as her energy was, she had forgotten. Justifiedly so! We hadn’t spoken in the ten years before she got sick, and she was in constant pain with limited energy. Her body and mind were under siege. I am the archivist in my friend group, and I try to document/preserve/remember everything, so sometimes gaps like these hurt. However, I understand that the connection meant something to both of us at the time, and we were together in that new moment, with or without it. We were connected and present, making another memory, regardless of not sharing the old memory. We are only human after all, and all we have is now.

Anyway, all this to say, I think about her a lot, and how she eliminated the gap between how she wanted to live her life and how she was living it. She had to do this. She had to say what she needed to say because she was running out of time. And often, this meant she was a terrible texter/user of social media. She was present for the people lucky enough to be closest to her.

There is a LOT happening every day both locally (within my intimate circle and various communities I belong to) and nationally/globally. Society has gone off the rails, and there are so many things to think/protest/speak out about. Depending how you use social media, it is mostly photos of lifestyles you may want (ie babies, spouses, houses) or political outrage. I shared all the things to be mad about, all the injustices, and… It’s all just screaming into a void unless people take their actions to the real world. And it’s so easy to completely overload maintaining a woke/activist presence on the online. As a huge empath, alive in the weirdest year and approaching the most contentious election, I had to change something. Something had to give.

So, I dropped off the face of the media. Gone are the Twitter and Instagram apps from my phone. With the help of my best friend (identifying my post-breakup behaviors as obsessive), How to Break Up with Your Phone by Catherine Price, and depending where my passwords are saved, I may never get back on… If it’s not in the Skimm/Mel doesn’t think I need to know, I may not need to know. My philosophy is not that these sites/apps are all bad, despite how much I want to fully remove myself after watching The Social Dilemma on Netflix. The idea is that I use the media for specific purposes because I choose/want to, not because I am compelled to/addicted to them or they are the default time-filler. Closing the gap between how I want to live and how I am living. Facing the memories jostling around in my head, retiring the ones that don’t serve me out of active rotation, foregoing the social media presence in order to make sure I can function and cultivate presence in real time.

Consider donating a book to honor a beautiful soul.

anxiety, audiobooks, be a better human, books, empathy, lists, reading

I go outside now

August 1, 2020August 1, 2020 flippingpageslikemad

Strap in, people. There will be heavy-handed metaphors. Due to what can only be called the 2020-time-vortex, the past two months have felt both like a year and a week. In late May, I looked at the thistles growing through and above the bushes in front of my door, and decided to tackle them. I had seen one too many neighbors walk by and admire the beautiful irises only to visibly judge the massive weeds overtaking the whole plot. The leasing lady had told me that tenants can either garden for themselves or the maintenance crew would do it. Based on the height of the weeds and my recognition that their only method was a weed whacker, I took matters literally into my own hands. This would take time and effort, and no one was going to put in the time and effort but me.

Did I properly outfit myself first? No. I attempted, but the gardening gloves I got were not made for thorns. The thorns attacked my hands and thus they lived to see another week.

Did I endeavor to start under proper conditions? No. I first tried pulling the weeds after a stretch of warm, sunny days. The weeds immediately snapped at the ground. The roots stayed in the soil, to regroup and grow again.

Did I learn and watch out for ideal conditions? Yes. Did I get impatient and decide then to jump on ideal conditions despite not having proper equipment? Heck yes. Before long, it was raining for an entire night and morning. Did it look like an ideal day? No. Did it look like an ideal day…for pulling weeds? YEAH BUDDY. I grabbed my lil cat-grooming gloves (non-permeable though not optimal) and went to town.

These deserved better

The source of shame

Vanquished

And it was GOOD! The blooms were so heavy that the stalks couldn’t hold them up–their beauty forced people to look at them, if only to walk around them. I knew these flowers deserved less toxic neighbors. It was righteous work. The damp conditions made the soil more forgiving. Some of the bigger, more established weeds were still resistant, and I had to let it go when they snapped instead of coming out completely. I would just have to try again later. The medium/small ones came out, though, roots and all. I thought about how our brains are gardens, and the food we put into them has the power to influence or dominate. I thought about how efficient it would be to pay attention to small distress signals/thoughts, face and address them. How they’d give up their hold before taking root and growing powerful and entrenched.

This was a mindful act. I observed the spots of the soil that were more rigid (near the concrete sidewalk) and the spots that released. A wasp landed on a flower next to me and I nodded at it. We coexisted. The wasp did its wasp thing, and I left it alone and did mine, taking care that I didn’t bump/ripple the plant it was on. I saw those teeny tiny green bugs crawling on plants, on my arms, and then had the feeling they were crawling on me for the rest of the day. I pulled so hard, squatting over the plants, that I fell backwards when the target thistle relinquished. I laughed because of course I tried so hard and yanked so aggressively that I ended up hurting my butt.

All in all, I loved it. It was great for anxiety because it was mindful, sensory, tactile and it was a patch of green that I felt some level of control over. Not total control, because weeds are living things who are programmed to survive too, but I was glad when with each effort, the pile of thorns got bigger and taller. I made a visually measurable difference. I cleared the shame-weeds! I made room to honor beauty!

But yeah, a lot has been happening. Much political, some personal, but the common thread in my pandemic survival (in addition to/to balance out limited social encounters) is being outside. For YEARS (high school + into adult life) I would only be outside in transit or playing softball or when the sun was at an amenably low position to eat dinner on a patio. At some point I developed allergies, so the incentive to go outside for being outside’s sake dwindled even further. I’m a monthly supporter of the Sierra Club; I didn’t have to go outside to show my support of nature. Doing so might mean subjecting myself to sweat/precipitation/moisture. Best to avoid the whole thing.

Then this year. I had to get outside, if only because that was where/how I was allowed to see my friends without fear. I need my people, and the people were outside! If you had told me prior to this year that I would voluntarily go on walks, I would have thought you were crazy, but now I look forward to them. The outdoors is a place for observing and chatting and overall just being anywhere other than in my apartment, in front of my tv or computer. It can be lightly raining; I don’t care. I’m walking. It can be high 80s; I don’t care. I’m walking. I’ve made peace with my less than ideal conditions. It’s almost like I cannot control the weather, so I gotta do what I need to do to make the best of my day. Best not to avoid the whole thing.

To be clear, I have not become a professional or even a hobby gardener. I have planted zero plants. I have weeded two times in the last two months; the initial weed-slaughter was all I needed. But this experience made me put my hands on plants, and thus appreciate them. The strangest part is that I didn’t even have to go far to ‘find’ the nature/beauty. It was literally at my fingertips. Nature isn’t only found in far off destinations, full of hiking trails and recreational watersports or whatever else people take instagram photos of. It was within three feet of my doorstep.

So, obviously, plenty (both political and personal) has happened since this initial glorious gardening outing. The flowers have bloomed and shriveled in that cyclical way they do.

Fullness!

Fullness and decay!

Shriveled nubs of formerly full irises

I realize it’s an abrupt shift of topics, but…the country remains on fire. I used to just rail against the system of capitalism and the various ways corporations exploit their workers/the environment. This is to say, I thought I knew/did my part to be aware. But what I was ignorant of was that in this country, systemic racism (which is to say white supremacy) is interwoven into all of this. I used to avoid the discomfort that comes from learning about racial injustice just as I avoided sweating. I recognize this comes from a privileged place. But it’s time to face it, which starts with learning and leads to discussion, activism and change. The past two months, I’ve mostly just been reading and learning and talking to loved ones and just being human. If you want to know what I’ve been reading/watching with the frame of how to improve the country/world, here is a list:

Racial – film (included on service indicated, can rent on other platforms)

13th (Netflix)
Long Time Coming (Hulu)
YouTube recording of a conversation between Angela Y. Davis and Jane Elliott (1.5 hours after skippable introduction, but worth it!!)

Racial – book

White Fragility – Robin DiAngelo
The New Jim Crow – Michelle Alexander (longer form of the ideas in 13th)
How to be An Antiracist – Ibram Kendi (he also co-wrote Stamped from the Beginning with Jason Reynolds, more condensed, for YA audience)
Between the World and Me – Ta-Nehisi Coates
So You Want to Talk about Race? – Ijeoma Oluo (Her upcoming book is called Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America)
Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor – Layla Saad
Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own – Eddie Glaude (Teaser article in New Yorker recently)
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America – Richard Rothstein
Women, Race & Class – Angela Y. Davis
Anything by James Baldwin but my favorite so far is The Fire Next Time

Sex/Gender

Good and Mad – Rebecca Traister
My Life on the Road – Gloria Steinem

Environment/Sustainability

On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal – Naomi Klein
Kiss the Ground: How the Food You Eat Can Reverse Climate Change, Heal Your Body & Ultimately Safe our World – Josh Tickell

Economics/ Politics (connects to other categories as well)

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right – Jane Mayer
No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need – Naomi Klein
The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap – Matt Taibbi
The System: Who Rigged it, How We Fix It – Robert Reich

IMG_5470 (2) — Why I care (spoiler alert, it’s because everyone is just a human doing their best and not caring is so so so harmful)

From “White Fragility” by Robin DiAngelo

anxiety, be a better human, books, career, community, depression, joy, let it go, reading, writing

How Time Works

January 4, 2020 flippingpageslikemad

As the clock struck midnight on January 1st, I sat, like many others, watching the ball drop. As the cameras panned the crowd at Times Square, an announcer held a microphone in front of a group of young women who exclaimed it was “SO CRAZY!” how it was a new decade. I laughed with someone I don’t know well but respect, as he said “it’s not crazy! It’s how time works!” My thoughts exactly. Literal! Practical!

Though it’s easy to critique merrymakers in varying states of intoxication, and though in general I am an advocate of remarking on wonder whenever it strikes, time really does work minute by minute and hour by hour.

Anxiety would have me fast forward through future days/hours/minutes until I know all the answers and the ways everything plays out. Depression and obsessive thinking would trap me in the past days/hours/minutes and replaying all of the cringeworthy mistakes and missteps I made, all the people who I lost. And it’s easy to look at a month, a year, a decade, in those terms.

Ten years ago, I was reeling from the most traumatic and destructive event of my life. I was paralyzed by fear, doubt, isolation and loss. I could not let go of the plan I had made and outwardly insisted I was fine, marching forward into the worst year of my life up to that point.

It is my hope that over the last ten years (especially the past one), I have learned to let go of the controlled plan and to deal with reality before I move forward. To stop forcing it. It is my goal to take each day as it comes and do my best with it, which is to say mindfully advance through, while prioritizing my needs as well as the people I care about. It is also my hope that when (not if!) I fail to do that, as I feel about this holiday season, I won’t punish myself with a constant stream of internal criticism but instead show some compassion.

And some of the minutes/days, compassion is out of my reach. I get trapped in my habits. And those are the days when I need to surround myself with the amazing humans in my orbit. New Year’s Eve was one of those days: I needed a shock out of my head. And I got it, in the form of social connection and warmth. (Note: NYE was not exclusive in this–I needed and got social connection and warmth over the holidays as well, from my amazing long-distance friends too.)

A lovely co-guest at my amazing friends’ dinner party brought a jar of questions for us all to answer, ranging from light and conversational to reflective and emotional. We were talking about the tribulations and triumphs of the year, the people we are grateful for and the lessons we’ve learned. And, like any good event, we quoted Titanic (to making it count!) It was a great end to the year, and it did feel crazy that I was into this sentimental, sort of mushy activity. It felt crazy and wondrous what a difference this decade has made.

And speaking of counting, 2019 was the first year of the decade that I didn’t meet or exceed my reading goal. I couldn’t be prouder of this shortcoming, because it means I was doing other things! Some fruitless, some counterproductive, but overall I was trying to take in a variety of media, and to output/create to counterbalance what I took in. There are many ways I can do more, or better, or more compassionately, but at the close of one HARD year and the start of another, I am okay with how I’ve done. A far cry from being in love with my life and free from fear or regret, but at least on that side of center.

Last week at the library, an older gentleman approached me and asked if we had a certain title. I helped him, and he challenged me to guess how old he was. He was excited and proud to show me his drivers license, stating his birth year of 1926, making him 93 years old (2 years older than my grandpa would be if he were alive). I was shocked, considering how mobile and lucid he was, and he wanted to share his ‘secret:’ he swims and rows 3 times per week, and has for years. That, and he dyes his hair 🙂 He seemed, overall, to be in love with his life.

This year, I’m going to take a page from him. I’m going to capitalize on any youth or strength I feel and celebrate the (sometimes painfully few) ways my body serves me. I’m going to be open and friendly with people I know and people I don’t (within boundaries). I plan to take pages from my friends and family, by creating (artfully or not) and putting people and pets first; from my colleagues by thinking before speaking and taking pride in my work.

This decade, I’m reclaiming my time. I’m getting my shit together, and keeping it that way. I’m falling in love, with my life if not more. And as long as I can, I’ll be working on being mindful and making this happen every minute and every day, because that’s how time works.

be a better human, let it go, meditation, strangers, talking

Off Days

December 20, 2019December 20, 2019 flippingpageslikemad

The last women’s meditation, I wasn’t feeling it. And that’s okay.

It started off wrong. As a gluten-free individual in a world of free sandwiches, I rely on salads. This salad, however, had wheat berries and croutons mixed on in, and there weren’t allergen statements on anything else to ascertain safety. The event took a safe, familiar salad and made it toxic to me. I recognize the privilege of being served a free lunch at work, and I don’t want to complain, but this made me sad because the salad they usually have is delicious. Why mess with a good thing?

Anyway.

The actual meditation started out fine enough. The theme was “excitement” and the leader asked everyone what they were excited for this month. The obvious answers (family, food, time off) popped up. Someone got close-to-personal as her voice quavered as she said “I’m not feeling excited right now, and I am having trouble trying.” I said giving gifts, because I like doing that and it’s not too personal of a statement to share with a room of strangers (friends/family would get a different answer :)* When someone at the end of the circle said “making gifts” (emphasis spoken), I felt immediately that I had an enemy (aided by the fact that this particular person never acknowledges outside of that room that we have been in the same room many times). She was one-upping me. Okay, fine. Don’t let the negativity stick.

Then the instructor began, telling us about how excitement manifests not only in positive ways, but that when our systems are ‘excited’ by stress, we feel it, and we feel it too when our systems are defeated and succumb to the rest and relaxation when we are sick or just over it. I appreciated that she talked about how she was feeling under the weather and stressed over an upcoming final project she has in her yoga teaching program. She’s a human, and I like when people share more than just the positives.

She lost me after that. She guided us through a meditation about the seasons, and what we wear/eat/do during the seasons.

….um, what? How is this exciting? Not that she had to perform for us, but I didn’t see the connection to excitement at all. I was too excited to pay attention to her!

But, whatever! I was there, and that’s all I could do. Instead of judging her (or really even listening to her enough to get annoyed by the meh-ness) I just did my own thing and thought about what I actually needed right then. And I had that. I had a colleague sitting next to me, I had a warm and sunny space. I had a job and coworkers I love waiting on the other end. And following this disappointing event, I had a great conversation about real shit.

I had lots of positives going on, but when the facilitators invited everyone to share their follow-up feelings, I passed. My positive feelings had nothing to do with what just happened. In fact, I felt not positive about that. My nemesis had only one word, “free,” said with a smug smile. And this part of the event always irritates me. It feels like a performance, and an easy line of delineation for who the meditation “worked for” and who it didn’t, aka a line between those who are “in” and those who are “out.” The person who started off by conveying her fragile and unexcited state was yet unchanged as well.

The same day, I went to kundalini, because it had been weeks and I kept making excuses not to go. The movements were physically challenging, and I had fed myself not enough, not nourishing food (see: the two bags of chips I ate for lunch). Also, the class was directly after therapy, so I was already mostly depleted.

Needless to say, it was an off day.

As I gave up midway through almost every exercise, I was surprised to find myself still happy. I thought about how typically, I would have been pissed at my subpar performance. I thought about how annoyed I get when people (usually dudes) are too loud or off-key with their breathing or chanting or singing. Instead, I realized that there were so many off-key singers that even I couldn’t calibrate my voice. I couldn’t even carry a tune for the very basic chants, and yet. How different that I was okay just to show up to class. To be in the room. To be.

At the end of the day, after a full day of being slightly off and when I tried to show up for arguably too much, I was totally accepting my limitations! Killing the mindfulness thing!

Hooray!

If my nemesis ever decides to show up to my precious yoga class, though, I might snap. (And I accept this about myself.)

*This specific reason for excitement is no longer applicable due to the three-week gap from when I started writing this to the actual completion. Really gotta write more often.

anxiety, books, community, kindness, reading

Yes? No!

March 22, 2019 flippingpageslikemad

Inexplicably, on campus, there is a stone with the word YES! carved into it. It was literally on my path towards a destination I’d never visited before. Though I appreciate the positivity, opportunity and encouragement inherent to this three-letter word, sometimes YES just is not the answer!

I recommended a book to my BFF, which she is now listening to (yay for people taking my recommendations 🙂 and the subject matter, though dealt with in a humorous way, is dark. She told me the chapter about suicidality was particularly hard to listen to, and that it made her feel sick. I almost didn’t remember that the chapter existed, because when I got to it, I too started to feel sick at how detailed it was. As I recognized its negative impact, I said “Nope, I don’t need this,” and shut it down. I skipped the rest of the chapter, and considered it a successful exhibit of boundaries.

This is How: Help for the Self in Overcoming Shyness, Grief, Molestation, Disease, Fatness, Lushery, Spinsterhood, Decrepitude & More by Augusten Burroughs

(This book is magnificent, and a truly helpful ‘self-help’ book. I recommend it wholeheartedly, but also suggest skipping the suicide chapter.)

Saying no is not always my instinct, nor does it come easily. One of my chosen ways of checking out of my problems is checking out online shopping. Because other problems seem bigger and more threatening and it’s not like another $30 (or $50, or $80) will send me directly to the poorhouse, why not embrace the “treat yo self” mentality and buy the beautiful items (read: clothes. It is always clothes) I want. They’re secondhand, so not as expensive as they could be, and besides, I need an infusion of color or newness into my wardrobe. I’m working six days this week; surely the extra hours will cover the cost.

No.

Setting aside that my income is not what it was at the job I hated, (which for New Jersey wasn’t even much) it is high time I started saving rather than living paycheck to paycheck and eating meals out all the time. I have never been late with a payment, nor do I make extravagant purchases, but nevertheless I need to act like my financial now will impact my financial future. Every $30, $50, $80 adds up. Often, my instinct is to say “YES! Why not?” when it needs to be “no. Shut it down.”

Last weekend when I had a bad day, avoided all human contact and was strongly tempted to bail on a friend’s invitation, my instinct was to say no, and shut it down. In that case, the answer was definitely to fight my instinct, honor my RSVP, and go socialize. I did this, and had a great time seeing my friend and meeting new people. YES! for the win.

Choices give me a lot of anxiety, so you’d think it would be best to boil it down to just the big two, but there is no blanket answer. YES! is only constructive some of the time. Universal NO: anxiety edition gets extremely isolating. My working mantra veers away from the dichotomy, and towards an ambiguous question: “what do I need?” This is not always in line with what I want, but I have to at least be honest with myself.

And this is what mindfulness is all about: slowing down to recognize these choices and the mental conversation behind them. My instincts are often wrong, so to indulge them is counterproductive, even self-destructive, and they require checking-in and rewiring. Do I sometimes ignore the rules I set for myself (like “no shopping”)? Yes. Did I miss out on something by skipping that suicide chapter? Yes, it turns out I did–but my BFF filled me in. And I’ll fill you in if you ask!

Teamwork! Boundaries! Progress.

anxiety, depression, information, let it go

Mistakes and fixing them

January 25, 2019 flippingpageslikemad

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!

books, community, empathy, kindness, reading, strangers

Collective

December 1, 2018December 1, 2018 flippingpageslikemad

It was a great week, and I will tell you why. This week, I saw not one, but two amazing speakers. I feel privileged to have seen Ta-Nahesi Coates and Michelle Obama in person, one in a more intimate theater and one a sporting arena. Very different settings, and no one screamed/gave Coates a standing ovation, but both nights were exciting!

These events were particularly significant to me because I don’t do a ton of audience type of activities. In the interest of saving money, I don’t go to a ton of movies, or concerts, or theatre. Crowds are often annoying, because people, so often my money-saving measures are doubly successful in keeping me at home or out with a small/curated group of people I like to be around.

But this week, I saw a lot of different people. At the university event, Coates was in conversation with a professor from the African-American Studies program, and it was the most intellectual conversation I have heard since college! It was great to listen to the two of them, both researchers and writers with a broad knowledge of history as well as each a specific expertise. They discussed the concept of progress, in terms of race relations and current events like police brutality and the NFL protests. Coates’ response about the NFL was perfect. Discussing how some fans dug in their heels and continued to wear Ray Rice’s jersey after the video of him beating his fiancee, he said “if people think Colin kneeling during the national anthem is grounds for removal from the league more than a man who beats his intimate partner, we have to ask whether they should be the arbiters of patriotism.” At one point they talked about their favorite books, and their nods of recognition at the other’s suggestions as well as the knowing “yes!”es and general geeking out made me so happy. I love when people talk about books, and apparently it doesn’t even matter if I am part of the conversation!

The crowd, though… It was a struggle to remain nonjudgmental. Throughout, the people behind me commented back and forth to each other disruptively. The woman two seats down filed her nails. Someone opened a package of fruit snacks with the full CRINKLE CRINKLE obnoxiousness. A young man answered his cell phone. And then, the classic people leaving before the event concluded. Finding all these actions inconsiderate to the fellow audience members and disrespectful to the presentation, I got a little distracted and irritated. However, I could tell that my reaction wasn’t nearly as bad as it may have been six months ago. I chose instead to be mindful of the privilege I had to be there and didn’t let others’ behavior ruin my night when I could pretend I was back in college. Plus, I was there with a friend, and she was the perfect seat mate. Afterward, we discussed our favorite parts, as well as the energy in the room; we noticed the crowd’s way of expressing their reactions (clapping or snapping in agreement, laughter or callbacks) and that it added to the experience. We felt like part of a collective.

Seeing Michelle Obama as part of her book tour was a drastically different experience. The crowd’s energy was crazy. The arena is enormous and equipped with arena-quality speakers, and between the happy vibes and the layout, I couldn’t have been annoyed by neighbors’ behavior if I tried. No one would hear a fruit snack package opening here. Even the fact that I was in the last row (literally. The only thing behind me was a wall, only thing above were the highest boxes) didn’t bother me–the ticket was free, and I love Michelle. LOVE. I went alone, using someone else’s ticket who last minute couldn’t go, and there was a young scholar on one side of me and another woman on the other. Instead of gluing my eyes to my phone as one does sometimes in close proximity to strangers, I chose to chat with both of them. It was really nice. The young man told me about a paper he needed to write after the event (about humanness and artificial intelligence), and we discussed Michelle’s book Becoming and I brought up another book I’m reading, called UnSelfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me World. (Yes, I tell strangers about books. He started it!)

And her talk was amazing. She is such a classy, brilliant, warm human. Her book is phenomenal so far. She talked about her childhood, about marriage counseling, about going to college insecure and realizing she could hack it just as well, if not better than, anyone else there. She talked about the hope she has in the next generation of leaders and citizens. Hearing her speak was a reminder that the current news-burnout of controversy and corruption is not normal and not inevitable. Some of the talking points she discussed are the same as she relayed on Colbert, but being in the room with so many people who also adore her and who she inspires was special!

So, a great week was had by me. I got out of my usual routine, talked to strangers, and felt a sense of community, commonality, and gratitude for being able to go to listen to these awesome (literally, awe-inducing) people.

anxiety, career, librarians

Thank you, next

November 16, 2018November 16, 2018 flippingpageslikemad

There has been a lot of NO in my life lately. In the past two days, I received two “thank you, nexts” about jobs I had interviewed for. And in the last two weeks, I backed out on two interviews I had set up for myself. One of the rejections was at a place where I was hoping I wouldn’t hear from them at all, because the interview was so uncomfortable (and short! 30 minutes!). The other, I liked and respected the people in the room, and I did my usual uncomfortably chatty babbling in between answering their questions. Overall, I thought we had all gotten along well and that despite botching some questions, I had something of a shot.

Alas, no. But the rejection doesn’t hurt this time. I used to get wildly upset, but now I know that as long as I show up as my authentic self to the interview, if it’s the right place, they will respond. And if it’s not the right place, I don’t want it anyway. This job I held out a little hope for, when I think about it, caused me concern about how small the branch was. The jobs I turned down were for a children’s position that wanted me to prepare a storytime and craft for the interview (storytime, ok, but a craft??? I draw the line. My idea for a craft is literally drawing a line) and a job that asked me to provide links to websites I have designed or maintained (spoiler alert: I don’t have any), and whose interview I was told would last TWO HOURS….. Though I deem these reasonable excuses not to attend interviews, I cringed about the what ifs: what if it turns out I am a secret whiz at maintaining websites? What if I really do need more crafts in my life? What if these are the last people to ever ask me to interview for librarian jobs?!?! A large part of me feels like I am the princess and the pea, but with jobs. Not too big, not too small, not too slow, not too busy, not too many hoops to jump through… etc.

I will be honest when I say: I did not know librarianship is a competitive field before I signed up for classes. This is fairly indicative of who I am as a person: I fling myself into situations, cross my fingers and hope for the best, on average slightly underprepared but hoping to make up for it in charm. And, if I have not confessed this here already, reader: I lack perseverance. Grit. That buzzword that you hear more and more these days in regards to character and growth mindset. Who knows whether I would have still chosen to go through with the program if I knew how hard it would be to find a good professional fit. (I probably would have, because I am stubborn and don’t change my mind for almost anything–which is a huge problem for someone prone to anxiety and overthinking! Mindfulness is literally reprogramming the habits of the mind…)

The lack of grit also means I am not blessed with the patience to wait for an organization’s culture to improve. I cannot simply endure for the sake of having a paying job. It gets too uncomfortable (read: my anxiety surges to drastic levels) and work is 8 freaking hours of my awake life every day. I bolt the instant I find an alternative. Maybe the alternative will be better. Surely, it has to be! The known workplace problems are bulkier and more inhibitive than the unknown workplace problems and I will take my chances with the next one. Thank you, next.

When it’s all said and done, I am so happy that I endured grad school. (The question of how much this endurance increased my student loans… not so happy.) It is what brought some of my favorite people into my orbit. But I always felt a draw to the work I was doing during grad school, in a university department. It was work I felt confident in, and helpful (which is my favorite feeling).

Do I dare to not use the degree that saddled me with all those loans? Dare I turn down interviews for library jobs? Dare I reserve the right to not waste two hours of my life in an interview for a job that I already don’t think I want?

Yes, I think so. Never before have I been comfortable turning down an opportunity. They think I’m an interesting candidate, therefore I must pursue this. Then there’s the subsequent anxiety on anxiety on anxiety about how I don’t really want it, and I wring my hands and wait until the last minute to cancel, or just suck it up and go, and give a lackluster interview, and don’t get hired. This time around, I’m being more selective, and thinking about what I actually want my work life to look like, and if the jobs that I applied to in a blind, desperate fury don’t match, then… thank you, next.

I’ve landed temporarily in another university setting, and because it’s temporary, it feels like less pressure. There is a built-in end date, after which there will be the next thing. Though not as financially secure, this work is giving me the room to feel out my options and the freedom not to jump at jobs that are tempting, but not juuust right. I’m sitting tight, and working on being more intentional about where to go from here. And giving myself permission not to stick with the stuff that seems not to be working. Maybe a princess, maybe a quitter. For now, I’m okay with both, if they’re in the name of finding the right fit. Finding something worth saying yes to.

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

Stress/Anxiety/Depression & Relaxation/Meditation/Vacation

July 15, 2018July 15, 2018 flippingpageslikemad

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, giving, judgment, kindness, stuff

Mission: simplify.

February 12, 2018April 17, 2018 flippingpageslikemad

I consistently stare into my closet. For what I deem unhealthy amounts of time. Every day, if the door is open, I peer into it and try to acquire a new target for my not-new, but not-often-practiced skill of culling my personal possessions.

This will not sound remarkable to anyone who has lived through the four-month lease cycles of New York City, but in the 7.5 years since graduating college, I have lived in 3 different states and 8 apartments/houses. In March, I will move for the 5th time in 2 years. (Heads up, penpals.)

Moving is the absolute worst. (Melodramatically, of course.) It forces me to touch all the crap I have dragged around with me to all of these places. (I or other awesome humans who help me move the crap, that is.)

So perhaps it is a mere response to my rambling woman status, but: I need to get rid of clutter.

The symbolism isn’t lost on me, a person who suffers from anxiety. At my worst, every sentence that leaves my mouth, text or email I send, as well as statements said to/about/near me can rattle around my head for days/months/years. My mind at its worst is a pinball machine, with tiny thoughts hurling around at warp speed and maximum volume, carrying self-chastising/self-doubt/FOMO/self-analysis/self-judgment. (See a pattern?) A pinball machine where I cannot let ANY OF THE THOUGHTS go down the little chute, defending its exit.

Mind clutter is real, it is deafening and it is not healthy.

Depression is a filter, but anxiety is a magnifying mirror I hold up and see all my faults, failures and ways I don’t measure up, and I need to step away from the mirror.

So, I prune the closet. Normally, I prune the closet AND STILL feel anxious.

One of my biggest stressors is money. It would make sense, then, that since I began an almost-every-day meditation practice and committed to the decision to spend money on experiences rather than items, I have been less anxious. (And this is even BEFORE I read The Year of Less by Cait Flanders, motivational text about not spending money on non-essentials.)

Two things needed to happen: 1, I need to divest my non-essentials. 2, I need to stop stress-shopping, which is my entirely nonhelpful habit of buying clothing for the joy it will bring. Though the joy is real, it is temporary and does not mask or replace the anxiety about x, y, nor z.

Ultimately, what I need to address is a simple question. What do I actually need?

For the physical clutter: I have fewer books than any other librarian I know; I know how heavy they are to move, and I donate them. I either unsubscribe or immediately delete marketing emails. I donate clothing (using Marie Kondo as a suggestion, not a religious text), recycle papers I wrote in high school/college (and yet I still retain some, because I am a pack rat). If I can’t or don’t use it, I’m at the point where I am content with losing it. Someone else needs it more than I do.

For the mind clutter: it is cleansing getting rid of stuff, and worrying less about what to buy is freeing for both my head and my financials.

All this said, one of my 2018 resolutions was not to spend money on ‘stuff.’ January did not see any progress in that regard. February has seen a rock solid commitment thus far, though, and I feel great about paring down. I feel great about planning a trip to Italy for a friend’s wedding because I know it will be memorable and rejuvenating, delicious and beautiful, and it means quality time with people important to me.

Simplifying my life will hopefully turn this pinball machine brain into a gumball machine… Instead of all the mental noise, I’ll be able to focus on one thought-gumball at a time with mindfulness and calm and intention.

Get me out of my head/closet/apartment and into the world.
Librarian Moment/Suggested Reading: