The slow path out of wallowing
It’s been a few weeks since I wrote a blog but not so long since I’ve written or done something worth blogging about. I’m behind. Always behind. Trying to find patience for myself. When I write out everything I did or do in a day, the list is always longer than I imagined. If I didn’t get everything done, maybe I just had too much to do.
CN: Mental Health, etc. for the next bit or Skip.
What I’ve been up to
There were ten items on my todo list for today just for basic life stuff. Most of those items were multi-step affairs. From 9AM through {4:30PM}, I worked on the list. No real breaks because I didn’t have time. If I don’t have energy after all those things … am I a bad person or a failure? Am I screwing my weekend up?
No.
Would I try to hold someone else to the same standard I apparently hold myself to? No. I can’t even imagine holding someone else to the standard it looks like I hold myself to.
Meditation is helping a bit. Being more present helps me catch this stuff earlier. Mild help today is a bit like closing the barn after the horse is out though. I could have used mild help when I was 5 or even 9. Now mild help just slows the drowning (overwhelm) already in progress.
Workflows and the stories we tell ourselves
For the last few weeks, I’ve been putting together the last few pieces I need to get my workflow1 together so I can write from anywhere. I’m sure there are still a few pieces I could improve on but I’ll figure those out as I work with them.
I kind of broke my workflow as I was going through getting the new one going. Hence the lack of blogging among other dropped things. Now things work again. I wrote a few blog entries but in the broke time but I don’t think I’ll bother publishing them. Reading month old angst is not going to do anything for anyone probably (only the freshest angst for my readers!).
The fun thing about this new workflow is I’ve wanted to do this workflow since 2010. I bought some things I wouldn’t have if not for the idea of this workflow. In 2018, it’s actually possible (probably was in 2016 too … for some value of what I wanted to do).
One of the nice things about 2018. There’s a few nice things about 2018. I mean, yes, it was mostly terrible but I came to a revelation a few months ago.
When I finished up my old notebook, I wanted to keep doing journaling in the new notebook but including 5 specific additional items.2
Most of my life is stories. Stories I tell my journals, stories I tell my family, stories I tell my friends, stories I tell my coworkers, stories I tell this blog. If I don’t tell a story about it, I forget about it. And the best stories I get to tell have “this was ridiculous.” But if I only tell the ridiculous things I went through, I only remember the ridiculous things I went through
I want to record my favorite memory from every day. It can be the smallest thing but at least one small thing. There won’t always be even the one small thing but if I don’t write it down, when I look back on this year, I won’t remember any of the good things. The people who helped me get through. The times I did better than I believed I would or could.
It’s a little too easy to see myself as a failure if I continually forget things I didn’t think anyone would want to hear about.
I’m going to try the opposite. No one ever mistakes me for an optimist … at least not for long. But that doesn’t mean I need to ignore the good things that do happen.
Thought of you
Including this song in memory of Nancy Wilson.
- In case you’re interested, it’s a combination of Microsoft’s OneDrive and a Markdown app on iOS called GTW. The computer side of the workflow is the same one I’ve been working with in some capacity for years. I’m not in any hurry to tell you to download an app which hasn’t been updated in 4 years or go through the pain of setting up Pandoc with LaTeX. It works and I can output finished documents quickly but it’s not easy to set up. [return]
- For reasons, I almost immediately fell off the journaling wagon. I’m working on getting back to it. [return]