Powering Through

Let’s see if I can write yet another post about how I disappeared off the face of the Earth and then how sorry I am that I did that, and see if anyone reads it, shall we? Actually, let’s not. It sounds a bit depressing and extremely boring. Instead, let’s take a different approach—something I’m ripping off the Bloggess. I swear this will become clear in the second paragraph.

The first time I remember having a panic attack, I must have been around six. It was night, I was in bed, and I have the feeling my parents may have let me watch something with aliens on TV. I couldn’t fall asleep, and I felt nervous and sweaty, and then the next thing I knew, every sound in the universe was crashing loudly through my head and my heart felt like it was going to burst and my body felt like if I even attempted to move out of bed and get my mom, I would fly off the face of the planet.

Okay, I lied. Third paragraph. If we don’t count this one.

I’ve had anxiety forever, it seems. It took having a panic attack in the middle of the hall before the morning bell in high school for me to realize that I wasn’t actually going to die (that it was, after all, a panic attack—thanks to that wonderful English teacher who knows exactly who he is) because I never told anyone about it. After K was born, I ended up saying, “Screw this shit!”, and throughout my twenties, I spent a lot of time, energy, and effort kicking anxiety’s ass. I used every tool available to me: meds, therapy, behavior modification, you name it. And I did kick panic’s and anxiety’s asses. That doesn’t mean that sometimes they don’t come back to take another beating. So, I’ve developed a repertoire. I have some standard go-to ways to keep myself out of that anxious/panicky state of mind, and in my opinion, those ways are awesome.  One might even say they are some of my favorite things.

Hang in there, folks. I will get to the point someday…

That’s what’s been going on for me for the last several weeks. My grandfather’s passing, the stresses everyday life, being sick, some important changes J and I have been working on… all of these things added up and into some major anxiety. So, I ended up cutting back on a lot of things (like writing here, and writing at SI, and being on social media) to go back to basics: Get up. Wear clean clothes. Make sure to eat. Sleep. And do at least one damn thing each day that you enjoy—even if you don’t think you’ll enjoy it today. Do it.

That’s how I power through.

Now we’re there! The Bloggess recently had a list of her favorite things, and there were so many excellent ideas on that list that I thought it would be awesome to create a list of my own. These are the things I’ve done recently to pull myself out of a funk, but you don’t have to be in a funk to try them out. I just felt like sharing the love (as the Bloggess is one of my favorite things)…

You may love Doctor Who, or you may hate it (WHAT is wrong with you???), but even if you do love DW, have you watched Torchwood? Now, it’s not suitable for the kiddos, and frankly, the first two episodes left me feeling like I did after I watched “Rose” for the first time, but just like Doctor Who, Torchwood does get better (although, it’s not as good as DW—we all know that—but it’s an excellent Netflix diversion in the summer television doldrums).

Also, for my DW fans—do you follow Doctor Who and the TARDIS on Facebook? You totally should. That page is chock-full of memes and inside jokes and cool merch. I like that they repeat things about ten times, because I am the person who will miss something in their timeline the first nine times. Also? Sometimes a girl needs to geek out for a bit in the middle of the day, just to make herself feel better.

As for reading… I recently read The Astronaut Wives Club, and for non-fiction (Gah!), it was engrossing! I read that damn thing in one day. Also? This totally gives you a reason to go to the library. I didn’t know if I would really like this book, and I didn’t want to purchase it through iBooks, so I went the old-school route. And you know what? I missed the library. A lot.

Have you heard about the Missouri is Awesome campaign? No? Watch the video. And then, go and check out the 5 Pound Apparel  store, and hit up their Kickstarter. And start calling people you don’t know Terry, just to see what they do…

Finally, I re-found Cold Stone Creamery. I hadn’t been to one in, oh, a decade, even though I walk by one every day on my way to work. On the Fourth, we ended up going in, waiting in line, and eating massive quantities of ice cream and chocolate and peanut butter. I’ve come to realize that ice cream is not only a summertime staple, but a valued member of my ‘get-to-feeling-better’ program. We all need to eat more ice cream.

So now it’s your turn—Tell me, what makes you happy? What have you recently enjoyed? What pulls you out of a funk?

Observe. Interpret. Chronicle. Might I Add Repeat?

Over the past few months, whenever I needed to go back to the well, so to speak (God, I wish I still had well-water in my life—Jesse and I have decided that lead tasted wonderful and we were only marginally diminished), I’ve caught up on my Maynard James Keenan reading.

Yeah, you read that right. Not only does that man front some of my favorite bands and make a kick ass bottle of wine (and some pasta my husband is desperately trying to convince me to eat, STAT), but he also writes a column. Insert contented sigh of admiration and hero-worship here.

After we tried what J termed my ‘rock star wine’ (Caduceus: Anubis) and found it delicious, my husband looked squarely in my eyes and said, “Some people have too much talent stuffed into one body.” Don’t I wish I had that problem. Don’t we all?

Yeah, the other thing you’re reading right is that I have another hero-worship thing going on besides The Bloggess. Don’t judge. I excel at hero-worship. There’s more than enough to go around.

One of the little tidbits of reflection I read today brought the point I need brought home. I’d seen him allude to this line of thinking once during a concert, but the written word is more resonant for me. In the post he speaks of the time when the mundane and the creative were more closely aligned. He speaks of how important the creative was to each and every one of our ancestors. It allowed them to live. It allowed them to think of ways to survive the threats of their world. It allowed them to transmit their cultural knowledge to younger generations. They did this by using the three steps listed in the title of this post. They did not limit creativity, block off time for it, or create compartmentalized encampments in their mind between the ‘real things’ to be done and the creative things to be done.

I tend to be guilty of all of the above.

As of late, the creative has been lacking a bit in my life. Know what? My life has sucked a bit for the lack of it. Granted, yes, there’s been school shootings and elementary school lockdowns (Ant was in one this week; his report of the event is heartbreaking, and I cannot write about it yet) and broken furnaces and holiday retail hours and all the other crap that can drag a girl down… but I think the fact that creative time for Momma has dropped off the family calendar altogether has taken the largest toll. Hard to brainstorm around a broken furnace when your mind lives in this constant state of to-do list.

We’ve already established that Momma ain’t spending enough time on herself, now haven’t we? Although I’m happy to report that I broke the ugly UGG cycle and have lost the clip (the ponytail band is a bit harder to relinquish, but I did yesterday; today is second-day hair, and all bets are off) and even put on lipstick, just as Liz Taylor intended…

You can't see the lipstick here. Mainly because I've had
three cups of coffee at this point. And yes, that's a
legitimate SWEATER...

So there’s some movement there. I need to make sure there’s movement on the creative front as well.

I am a very fortunate woman. I have a supportive husband and older children capable of entertaining themselves and an amazing boss who demands we take the time off we need. I also have 16 days of vacation, starting today. There will be holiday machinations during this time off, to be sure, but there will also be days and days of unfilled time in which I can be creative to my heart’s content. I’m really looking forward to it.

At this time, I’m placing no limits on myself. I tend to do this. I tend to tell myself things like, “Well, you should at least catch up on laundry while you’re off” or “Why don’t you write several posts and schedule them?” or “Why are you even thinking of a new project? You have so many other things you’ve never finished!” No limits allowed this time around. I’ll do what strikes me when it strikes me, and if it appears in blog posts or short stories or finishing a project or just plain crafting, that’s fine. That’s what I am doing. It’s important work, after all—allowing the creative juices to flow, allowing the problem-solving channels to become unblocked, allowing serendipity to walk in and do its thing.

How to Really Avoid these Things: A Rant

Photo Source

I woke up yesterday morning, like many of you, to the horrific news of the worst mass shooting in the history of the United States. I was shocked. There still wasn’t a lot of information available 24 hours ago—the suspect wasn’t even named at that time—and as the boys woke up I quickly turned off the TV so that they wouldn’t see what was currently going on in the world.

The last thing I want is for my children to be afraid of going to the movies. The last thing I want is to be afraid of going to the movies.

By yesterday evening, with the approach of the national news I knew there would be no avoiding it. I broached the subject with both of my sons, and Ant opted out of watching any further news coverage—which was something that made me feel much better, too. Kyle and I sat down to watch the reports—both of us looking for some sense of understanding.

That’s normal, you know. When we all are met with a circumstance we just cannot understand, we search for some semblance of meaning. Why did it happen? How can it be avoided? How can I make sure that my children or my loved ones, or even me—how can we make sure that we’re never affected by something like this? We all search for these answers. Sadly, those who live through these tragic encounters cannot articulate how to live through something like this. Usually you hear these witnesses or victims say things along the lines of “There are no words,” or “I cannot really describe it,” or “I don’t know what really happened”. The experts oftentimes cannot tell us—especially in a 90 second news story—why it happened. It’s always more complex than that—which frustrates us, because we MUST understand.

We must feel safer, we must feel as if we are in control, we absolutely must avoid this occurring to ourselves or the ones we care for; so when the true answers are not readily available or easily packaged, we start jumping to little things that really wouldn’t make a damn difference, but in the immediacy, make us feel better.

Case in point: posting off duty police officers at movie theaters. That won’t work. If someone is really dedicated to creating mass terror or harming many individuals, one or two more will not matter to them. It is no deterrent. Making people avoid costumes or masks—it may help people feel better in the short term, but that’s not a solution, either.

Or talking about gun control laws. We have gun control laws. We also have bans on most assault rifles. The suspect was a law abiding citizen with no known previous history  of mental illness. He bought the guns legally. Even if our nation just outright banned guns (and many of you may be surprised that I am a NRA supporting uber-liberal—we’re a rare breed), he may have selected another way to carry out a mass killing. The evidence of this lies in the suspect’s apartment right now—rigged with IEDS and booby traps and who knows what else.

In other words, people usually will find a way, no matter the laws, bans, regulations, or anything else.

People have started blaming Obama (and Romney, to be fair) for not doing something more about gun control. To which I ask, how much more can we actually do? Are we going refuse guns to people who MIGHT become criminals? Or people who MIGHT unhinge and become mentally unstable? Who’s going to be judging this for us? Who can see the future? More gun controls aren’t really going to stop people who want to shoot other people from buying guns.

But—and this is where I get really ranty—the absolute worst thing I’ve seen in the news coverage of this terrible event is those who are chastising and blaming the parents who took their children to a midnight showing of a PG-13 movie with a SUPERHERO IN IT.

Let me rant on about this a bit more. When K was younger than two, I took him to the midnight premiere of the X-Files movie. I loved the X-Files. I wanted to see the movie. I dressed him in his jammies, and he slept on my chest the entire time. My husband and I also used to go to the drive in—letting K sleep in the back seat while we watched adult movies. Parents of young children do this all the time. Also—I took my children to see the midnight premiere of Harry Potter. They loved Harry Potter. They loved the excitement—even though Ant was still a bit too young to really understand it. It was exciting and special and one of my favorite family memories.

So why the hell are we chastising a couple who took their children—with a four year old daughter who loves Batman so much they have pictures of her wearing Batman costumes—to see a movie they were excited to see from a franchise they loved? Why are we not commending a woman who saved both of her young children herself—separated from her boyfriend in the melee—and took a bullet to the leg as she made sure her children made it out of the theater alive? No one believes that they run the risk of being shot at in a movie theater. This woman is a damn hero.

So, if we shouldn’t fixate on these little things—these things that aren’t really going to help us understand, the things that aren’t- really going to help us avoid these tragedies in the future—what should we focus our attention on? I’ll give you my opinion: Mental health services.

When I found out last night that he was a PhD student who dropped out of the program last month millions of questions started racing through my mind. I advise PhD students. What happened? Was it too much? Not what he wanted to do? Did he fail? Did he not pass his qualifying exam? Was there an issue in his cohort of students? When he dropped out, did his adviser counsel him? Did that person have a nagging thought in the back of their mind asking if they should refer him to the school’s counseling services? Did they waiver in walking him over? Did they try and he refused? These are the things I think of—having advised students for years, and after having been trained in mental health first aid.

You see, the only way—in my mind—to avoid this sort of thing is to create a culture of comfort in which a person who is experiencing mental health issues can go to someone, anyone, and say, “I keep thinking about shooting people. I think I’m losing my mind.” And then, the person who is told says, “Okay, we have someone to help you with this.” If we had a culture of comfort in mental health services (and adequate services to back up that comfort), I think many of these tragedies could be avoided.

The issues the suspect may have with his mental health are likely deep-seated and complex. I’m not saying getting some meds and talking to someone once a week would have “fixed” him. I am saying that if we lived in a culture where mental illness was not stigmatized and individuals who start experiencing signs and symptoms knew where to go to get help—perhaps we wouldn’t be living through mass shootings that seem to be escalating in frequency and scale. So, let’s focus on something that could actually help, instead of blaming the parents of young children or yelling at one another about gun control. Let’s talk about making mental health—access and accessibility-- a priority in this nation.

This way, maybe we can all feel a bit safer in public spaces in the near future.

#OperationPlayMore

Like all good things, it started with a Twitter conversation.

Friday night I was chatting with Stephanie, aka @SarcasminAction of Musings of a Sarcastic Mind. I saw her tweets and immediately contacted her. We were lamenting on the fact that we no longer play. We’re sour and cranky and slightly jaded, and we’re tired of it!

Yeah. That’s right. You heard me. Play. Like a kid.

Do you remember how much fun it was to play as a child? Jumping rope? Hula Hoops? Splashing in Puddles? Catching fireflies? Why did we ever give this up? Why in the world would we give up telling scary stories and eating smores? Or coloring? Or doing cartwheels in the grass behind our house? Or climbing trees?

Stephanie and I both decided that we needed to play more. She wrote it up on her blog and invited people to link up. You’ll also notice the title is a Twitter hashtag.

I tested the water on Saturday. The kids were bored and so, spur-of-the-moment, we swung by the park. After walking around the lake trail for a bit, and then shrieking when we encountered a copperhead snake, we ended up taking over the swings. And I swung for twenty minutes. It felt great. We had races to see how fast we could go and how high we could go and while the other mothers in the park stared at me (there was a whole gaggle of baby-wearing mommas at the park that day) I jumped off the swing—just like my mother instructed me to never do so many years ago.

On Sunday, Ant and I went to the pool and played for three hours. We dove for rings and went down the water slide. We ate concession stand nachos and slurped on ice pops. Both of us were hot, sticky, and exhausted when we came home, but it was good. Fantastic, even.

On Monday evening, we watched the thunderstorms roll in while messing around in the backyard. We identified the different types of clouds, and I would almost swear you could see the Jetstream or cold front sweeping the clouds diagonally across the sky in a single streak the width of my hand (when compared to the sky, that is). We were hoping it would begin to rain before bedtime, but it didn’t. I ended up with seven mosquito bites, but oh well!

Last night we had all four of us in the house playing Draw Something with each other. In the same room. This lasted for almost two hours—way past bedtime for Ant, and was hilarious. Ant was the most creative. J was the least (he just kept drawing fireballs for everything). The best picture of the night still leaves me stumped. K sent me this to guess (it was a three pointer) and finally had to tell me what it was, because there’s no way I would decipher this to mean ‘Google’.

Recreation. Do any of you get it? I don't!

Tonight? Well, I’m not certain yet what we’re going to do tonight. I do have to run by the store after work this evening, and I’m hoping that maybe, just maybe, they have jump ropes. Do you know much I’ve missed jump ropes? And think of the cardio. Playing more has health benefits!

Actually, it truly does. It also has a lot of mental benefits. Playing gets you up and moving, so there’s calorie loss. It helps you de-stress. It improves the mood of those suffering from depression. It can help you solve problems (by tapping into your imagination). Playing can even decrease or delay mental decline as we age.

And so, each day, I am trying to play more. I am going to start sharing how I play and—GASP—maybe even taking pictures. Of myself. I know! I hope you decide to come along. Join our #operationplaymore. Let’s make it a trend. Hell, if planking or photo bombing can become a thing, playing can too!

So, if you don’t get ahold of me right away, know this: I am likely making glow in the dark bubbles. Or we’ve gone fishing. Or we’re having a picnic. Because this is how we’re going to roll this summer!