elainegrey

I'm trying to come out of a turned inward paralysis phase. I think i'm beginning to recognize a sort of pattern of behavior with a variety of habits dropped and a resistance to interacting with others. There's a procrastination/paralysis mind set: a noise of "must do mumble, don't wanna do mumble, let me distract myself" where the actual avoided activity is not clear. It's vague and all encompassing, so the usual advice of "small steps" and teasing out what i am afraid of is a challenge.

I made myself go to Meeting for Business and Worship on Sunday.

I'm trying to resurrect my todo list from a week of just throwing things on, resurrect a few self care habits.... it's harder because 2017 was marked by not doing these things and i was finally feeling the opening that getting back to the habits creates when i slipped.

I recognize this pattern as "depression" and "procrastination" but i think i'm going to start calling it the paralysis pattern. That sort of unloads the history and baggage.

February's not a great month in general, and it's been more grey than i've seen in years. (NC drought followed CA drought.) While i appreciate the beauty of "dreary" days, the boost of energy is missing. Finally, Christine's therapists said to her that the people she saw who had the "crud" in January are suffering a low energy period now, so there's that, as well.

So writing this is moving through the paralysis. A step.

Past EG tried hard to get a post written, but was trying to do many other things. Current EG thanks Past EG for TRYING and recognizes that there are too many things at top of mind. Current EG hopes future EG will be happy that Current EG is writing a weird post at least.

The above time twisting note based on a practice suggested in the NYT (see below).

It's been wet and cool and autumnal: it's delightful. I don't know if my seedlings are going to be able to make any progress, but they will be hardened off enough to make it through the chance of frost in the early hours of Monday.

I used my archived journal entries in reviewing a practice i engaged in 2005. I certainly found more time to journal then. I realize that i have my evernote archives now, that have daily logs and topical logs and all sorts of recordings.... Having the evernote logs is certainly useful for pulling to-dos and such out of this venue, but, then again, i'd like to participate more in the day to day sharing.

Fortunately, my noon meeting has been cancelled, yay, so i can keep trying to whittle down the list of things whirling in my head. Today's XKCD speaks to me. Erm, Monday's.:

    [Megan is sitting and looking at a laptop.] 
    Megan: I started the day with lots of problems. 
    Megan: But now, after hours and hours of work, 
    Megan: I have lots of problems in a spreadsheet. 
    Title text: I started off with countless problems. 
    But now I know, thanks to COUNT(), that I have
    '#REF! ERROR: Circular dependency detected’ problems.

Herrera, Tim. “Your Best Tips for Beating Procrastination.” The New York Times, July 23, 2017, sec. Smarter Living. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/23/smarter-living/your-best-tips-for-beating-procrastination.html.