Author: Alyxander James

Happiness Is…

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After being completely miserable with a cold last week, this week is shaping up to be truly fantastic. I am genuinely happy, and here a handful of reasons specific to this week:

  1. I’m mostly over my cold. I’m still a little sniffly and coughing a bit, but compared to last week, I feel great. I’m ready for it to be gone altogether, but I’m not forgetting to be grateful for simple things, like being able to breathe through my nose 90% of the time.
  2. Work is dull, but the rest of my week is not. I’m the only person from my team at work who isn’t on vacation this week. There are things I could be working on (and I am working on some of them), but mostly it’s just boring. Which is fine (it’s less stressful than the norm, for sure). The rest of my week, though, is full of friends and music and knitting and it’s just plain wonderful.
  3. I’m feeling inspired. This is largely due to the fact that my week has been full of people and events that inspire creativity. Last week I was invited to join a new D&D-type game that’s just getting off the ground, and I spent a substantial chunk of the beginning of the week digging into the character I came up with, writing up a back story. I haven’t written prose outside of the blog in a while, and it’s been ages since I’ve done much fiction writing, so that was a lot of fun! This week has been a lot of music (thanks, Joe!) and hanging out with other people who like to create, which generally does a good job of feeding my own creative impulses.
  4. I’m feeling connected. I am, at the core, an introvert. But my relationships with other people are incredibly important to me, and I feel like I’ve been able to foster new connections and strengthen old ones this week, and it’s helping me get out of my head.
  5. I’m feeling extraordinarily lucky. Things are, for the most part, going really well right now. And a lot of places this week has taken me have made me feel like I really do lead a very charmed life. Gratitude is not hard to find in weeks like this one.

Short and Sweet

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I realize I’m a little late posting this today. Sorry about that! The cold I thought I’d managed to kick last week came back with a vengeance, and I have spent the past few days feeling pretty miserable. I still sound horrible today, but at least I’m back at  work and feeling a little more human.

That said, I don’t actually have a whole lot to write about. So here’s a quick list of things I’m looking forward to in the near future:

  1. Top surgery is now officially less than two months away. I’m in the process of pulling together the documentation I need to bring to my next visit with the surgeon. I’m looking forward to getting it all over with, and I am looking forward to having three whole weeks off from work.
  2. One of our favorite folk musicians is playing a couple of places in town in the next couple of weeks. It’s always a pleasure to hear him play, and it looks like we’ll be able to catch a couple of his shows.
  3. More than anything, at the moment I am looking forward to a weekend spend hanging out with my partner (whose birthday is tomorrow!) as we both work on recovering from our respective colds.

Resisting Bitterness

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This week, I’ve been wrestling with bitterness.

There are things I want to be doing with my life that feel like they’re on hold until after surgery/recovery. Surgery is only a couple of months away, but with six weeks of recovery time tacked on to that, it’ll be nearly the end of the year before I’ll really be able to do anything to move things along. And that feels really distant, even if I know that really, it’s only a handful of months.

Feeling stuck has me feeling bitter, which adds to the general lack of motivation I’ve been struggling with in the past few weeks.

I don’t want to be a bitter person. For one thing, it’s a colossal waste of energy, and energy is not something I typically have a surplus of. And it’s just generally unpleasant. I try to be pretty happy and easy-going, and bitterness throws a wrench in that.

I’m not entirely sure what to do about it, though, aside from continually reminding myself that this, too, shall pass. I’m doing whatever research I can ahead of time, but I can’t tell if that’s actually helping or is just making me more stressed out about not being able to do anything with what I learn.

In the midst of feeling stuck, though, I’m also feeling extraordinarily grateful for friends who make me laugh and can take me out of my head for a while. Over the weekend we had the chance to cheer one of our friends on to victory at CLLAW, which was super fun. The next day, some other friends joined us for our second viewing of Ghostbusters, which was followed by bowling, which I hadn’t done in years. Bowling is one of those activities that I’m usually pretty terrible at, but it reminds me to laugh at myself and that it’s possible to have fun with something even if it’s not a thing I’m good at. (Case in point: my score of the last game almost doubled my score of the first game. I never broke 100.)

And that might be the secret to beating the bitterness: taking time out as often as I can to have a little fun with the people who remind me that there’s more to life than the parts that feel tedious.

Has Anyone Seen My Motivation?

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I’m having a bit of an off week, it seems.

I stayed home on Tuesday because I was starting to feel sick. I wanted to do the same thing Wednesday, but I recognize I need to use my sick days extremely sparingly until surgery in October, so I went back to work.

I’m just…really struggling to care. About work, in particular. The rest of my life is pretty interesting. I think there are just a lot of things I’d much rather be doing, and work is not super compelling these days. I have things I can work on, but I don’t feel especially engaged in my job. I’m just sort of getting by.

I need this job, and I need to stick it out at least through the end of the year – where else will I find such conveniently placed holidays to schedule surgery around? But I’m not enjoying it.

I’m also just really over the heat and humidity. It’s not as bad this week as it was last week, but the weather is definitely not helping with my lack of motivation. It’s also making me pretty achy and ornery, and that’s not particularly enjoyable, either.

Mostly, I’m trying not to be sick and not being entirely successful. My  head feels like it’s full of cotton balls, and so even if I was remotely motivated, it would be hard to focus on much of anything.

In happier news, we’re planning to go see Ghostbusters again with friends this weekend, and I am super excited for that. Potential bowling hangouts after the movie are also a reason to smile. (Bowling is one of those rare activities I can absolutely suck at, but still enjoy.) I’m also expecting new glasses to arrive at the end of the week. I ordered them online, and just kind of had to guess at how they’ll look on me. This could be a disaster. Thank goodness for free return shipping!

A Short List

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It’s going to be a short one this week, but here’s a tiny list of highlights from the past week:

  1. Friend visits! We had the most delightfully low-maintenance house guests over the weekend. Fun was (I hope) had by all…I certainly enjoyed it.
  2. Ghostbusters! If you haven’t been to see the new Ghostbusters movie yet, DO IT. It’s funny, and the casting is outstanding, and it makes me really angry that this thoroughly enjoyable movie with strong female protagonists who kick ass without being objectified isn’t getting the attention it deserves. We went over the weekend with our house guests and intend to go at least once more with local friends. (Confession: I thought the original Ghostbusters was okay the one time I saw it. I liked this better. Maybe I tend to find bad ass women more compelling than dudes as protagonists. If you also find yourself in this camp, you will probably enjoy this movie.) I am convinced that a lot of the cis dudes who are bitching about the movie either 1) haven’t seen it and are just being toolbags, or 2) have seen it, but a) see too much of themselves in the villain, or b) are failing to see themselves in the villain when maybe they should be. Also Chris Helmsworth is really good at playing a complete airhead. Who knew?
  3. Music! The song I wrote for class this week earned me a glitter unicorn sticker (the highest honor), and I’m pretty pleased with it. I’ve been struggling a bit this session to get things rolling, but this one came pretty easily once it started, and that always feels really good. I’ll get a recording up at some point once I’ve practiced a bit more.

Things I Have (Re)Discovered This Week

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  1. Meditation is hard, especially when manic. I’ve always known that my brain is busy in my manic phases (I tell my partner that it’s like having a head full of bees), but nothing has ever made that so starkly apparent as making an effort to sit in stillness for ten minutes every morning for the past couple of weeks.
  2. Meditation, like many things, gets easier with practice. On Tuesday, for the first time, I had a few brief moments where I was really able to find that place of stillness inside my head, where I could sort let thoughts pass through my head without chasing them around. On Wednesday, it was harder again, but I do feel like I’m making at least a tiny bit of progress.
  3. Recognizing that I’m manic and actually preventing myself from acting out because of it are two different things. I’m not the best at financial stuff in general. I’m really, particularly bad at it when I’m manic. My biggest manic impulse is to spend money. I’ve gotten better at talking myself out of things, but sometimes I forget that the acknowledgement that I’m acting manic is not the same thing as reining myself in. I’ve not done anything particularly stupid this time around, but it’s felt a little harder than it’s been in a while.
  4. Music makes me happier than almost anything else. The Square Roots festival put on by the Old Town School of Folk Music happened this past weekend, and even though there were huge numbers of people there and that would normally feel overwhelming, there was music everywhere, and that made it fun. I ended up working the merch table for a series of shorter sets by several different bands, and I had a blast – every band had a totally different sound, and every one of them made my heart happy in a different way.
  5. Even if I sometimes feel like I’m not being very successful at adulting, I’ve come a really long way. We have friends coming into town this weekend, and even though we’re a bit behind on chores, we don’t need to do any marathon cleaning sessions to make the apartment presentable, because we keep things pretty well picked up these days. I never really thought I was capable of being that sort of person, but it turns out I actually like having a relatively tidy apartment. It feels like a major milestone, even if it would be something insignificant for a lot of people.

Anxiety Management

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Some of you may have noticed that there was no Accidental Fudge post last week. I did not intend to take a hiatus – truth be told, I spent most of last Wednesday and Thursday more than half convinced it was Friday, and it was Thursday night before I realized I hadn’t posted anything, at which point I felt like I really didn’t have much to say. So I apologize for that.

July is a packed month for us this year – visits from family and friends, plus a music festival, all on different weekends. It’s a little overwhelming to look at it all at once, so I’m trying to stay focused on a week or so at a time.

I’ve been feeling pretty overwhelmed and distracted the past few weeks. ManicBrain has come and settled itself in with no indication of when it might vacate the premises. Which isn’t so bad, as long as I can remember that it’s the reason I’m overwhelmed and distracted. It’s when I get so distracted that I forget…that’s when problems happen. Thankfully, I’ve been managing to stay pretty on top of things.

One of the biggest things I’m working on right now is managing my anxiety. I deal with differing levels and types of anxiety depending on where I’m at in my Bipolar cycle, but it’s pretty omnipresent lately, and that’s no fun. For anyone who’s interested and/or looking for ways to do this themselves, here’s what I’ve done so far:

  • I quit drinking regular coffee. Cold turkey.
    • I will still indulge in some decaf cold brew from our favorite coffee shops (or that we make at home), but mostly, I’m just getting really into tea.
    • Caffeine in small amounts is okay…in coffee-sized amounts, it does seem to amplify my anxiety.
    • I’ve been drinking coffee since age 12, so this was a big step, but it wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be. Mostly, I was just really sleepy for a couple of weeks.
  • I cut waaaaaaaaay back on my access to social media on my phone. I didn’t go as far as the author of this article, but I used some of the ideas there.
    • I deleted a lot of apps, including all the retail apps I sometimes get into the bad habit of searching late at night (Amazon, eBay, and Etsy were the big ones).
    • I removed the shortcut to Facebook in my phone’s browser, and turned off the “frequently visited sites” feature. And I committed to logging out of Facebook whenever I’ve finished checking it.
    • I also disabled my phone’s ability to use the web browser over anything but WiFi, which further limits the time I spend compulsively checking my phone.
    • Maybe it just means I’m lazy, but the fact that I’m not a couple of taps away from my news feed means that I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve checked Facebook in the past ten days.
    • I left Instagram on my phone, because that’s my happy social media, which is way more carefully curated than my Facebook feed. Facebook has its uses, but it mostly just makes me sad/angry/stressed out.
  • I started developing a morning routine for myself.
    • I’m a creature of habit. As much as I sometimes like to be spontaneous and try new things, I am most comfortable in familiar places and patterns.
    • I was already kind of in a morning routine, but it mostly consisted of getupbrushteethgetdressedrunoutthedoor.
    • I’ve been pushing myself to get up earlier, so that I have time to do more calming things in my morning routine.
    • Now the routine regularly includes a quick tarot spread, a few minutes spent jotting down thoughts about the cards, and at least ten minutes of meditation. Which brings us to the last point…
  • I joined Headspace and started mediating in the morning.
    • This was unplanned. At the end of my company’s employee appreciation week last week, we were given a link and a code to get a free year of full access to the site. It sounded interesting, and since it wasn’t costing me anything, I figured I’d give it a try.
    • The little ten minute meditative sessions in the morning have been great, and I tend to feel a lot less stressed before work when I do them.
    • I do get distracted a lot, but the whole system is very low-pressure, which is really helpful for my scattered brain these days.

This is not a foolproof plan, and I’m still dealing with anxiety. But I feel like I’m building up a good selection of resources and healthier coping mechanisms for dealing with it.

How about you, friends? How are you managing anxiety these days?

Solstice Musings, Summer Edition

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The summer solstice was on Monday – the longest day of the year.

Summer is an interesting time of year for me. I love the longer days, I love the sunlight, I love the green and growing things. But the heat and humidity of midwestern summers can make me physically ill.

The long days of summer make me think about where I’m putting my energy (and where I want to be putting it), because it feels like there’s so much more of it to go around than there is in the darker times of the year.

I’m thinking a lot about the fact that top surgery is happening in under four months, and one of the places I want to be expending more energy than I have been lately is to get myself feeling healthier before that happens. I’m still trying to figure out exactly what that means, what that looks like.

I’m thinking about where I’m wasting energy, about things I’m putting off because as much as I want them done I don’t want to actually go through the process of doing them, which creates anxiety, which is an enormous energy dump.

Summer feels like it’s full of potential. In some ways I’ve been feeling very stuck lately, but there are reminders out there that progress is possible and in some cases is actually happening. I just need to pay attention.

Heartache and Heaviness

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It’s been a rough week.

By now, you’ve likely heard about the mass shooting that happened over the weekend at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando.

It’s entirely possible that, by now, you’ve moved on. This is America, where we value the right to gun ownership over the lives of human beings, particularly if those human beings are queer and/or not white. Shit happens, we move on and try not to think too hard about it.

I’m angry and sad and scared all at once on so many different levels. And let’s be clear: as a white person who is, most of the time, read correctly by others as a man, I have some of the least reason to be any of those things. I’m safe, relatively speaking. But that didn’t stop me from a moment or two of hesitation before holding my partner’s hand as we walked to the grocery store the day after the shooting. Because it could still have happened to us.

I don’t have a lot of coherent thoughts about it all. There’s so much at play here: racism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, gun control vs. gun owners’ rights, and on and on and on. There aren’t a lot of easy answers, and the few that should be easy are made hard by politics and skewed perceptions of reality. About all I know with certainty is that this has been a really hard week.

On Monday I stumbled across a Facebook event for a healing ritual at a nearby beach. That evening, my partner and I went to the event, where we stood in community with others who were hurting, and did our best to soothe each other’s wounds and send as much healing and protective energy as we could to the LGBTQIA+ community at large. And it helped. We left feeling lighter than we had when we arrived.

The trouble is, there’s still a lot of vitriol going in multiple directions on social media over all of this, and some of it I agree with and some of it hurts like hell, and the obvious solution would be to back off social media for a while, but it’s a hard thing to do when you also feel compelled to check up on your friends and community elsewhere. And so while I feel less hopeless about the world than I did before the ritual on Monday, there’s still a weight on my chest.

What I want for my community, more than anything else, is safe spaces in which we can be fully ourselves, spaces so large that we are able to move through the whole world while holding our heads high. I want transgender/nonbinary/gender-adjacent folks to feel safe and seen as themselves, not limited by the arbitrary assignment of the labels they received at birth. I want queer folks to be able to be affectionate with one another in public the same way straight folks are, and for it to be a complete non-event. I want us all to feel like we can take ownership of our identities and how we express them, and to do so without wondering if this is what’s finally going to push the world around us to far, if it’s too much of a risk.

To my straight, cisgender friends and family who checked in on me this week, thank you. It really was appreciated.

To my queer friends and family, I’m sorry I haven’t done the greatest job of checking in with you.

Everyone, let’s do our best to keep each other safe, because the world won’t do it for us.

Growing Things

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On Sunday, our neighborhood farmer’s market had its first run of the season. My partner and I really like our farmer’s market, and so we were excited to go. While we were there, we made the rather impulsive decision to buy a few little plants for our apartment.

We had a plant when we moved in. His name was Phil, and he was a philodendron. I’d gotten him back in college as a cutting from one of my grandmother’s plants.

Unfortunately, we don’t get a ton of natural light in our apartment, and I wasn’t great about finding him a good home. He died after a couple of months.

I’ve been wanting to get new plants ever since. I like growing things; my sophomore year of college I had a whole little grow-light setup in my dorm room, and I enjoyed tending to some of my mom’s garden when I lived with my parents.

So to keep this story from rambling further: we picked up plants, put them on the sill of our one free south-facing window, and are hoping for the best. Tuesday I bought some dirt and terracotta pots for them, and gave them each a new little home. They look so happy, and they’re making me super happy, too. Here’s hoping they thrive!

Plants!

oregano, basil, lemon mint, and chives