Spring Cleaning

/ Alyxander James / 2 Comments

Last weekend was the vernal equinox – the first day of spring. From here until the summer solstice in June, the days will be getting longer. As much as I like to say that I don’t mind winter (particularly because, as a knitter and an exceptionally warm-blooded person, I am rarely cold, but easily overheated), I’m definitely ready for more daylight and the opportunity to ditch my winter coat for a while.

At some point last year, when I started looking into various forms of earth-centered spirituality, I came across the idea of taking the standard pagan “wheel of the year” – marked by the equinoxes, solstices, and four holidays that fall between each, based largely on an agrarian calendar – and create a sacred calendar that speaks to your own life, traditions, and seasons, which may or may not have a lot to do with planting or harvesting. I came up with some ideas for marking the changing seasons, based on a combination of general tradition and things that are important to me. The big thing that came up for springtime was the idea of spring cleaning.

Last year, it seems like most of my spring cleaning happened on an interpersonal level – letting go of toxic relationships and situations that weren’t making my life fuller. This year, the focus feels like it’s shifted to a more literal sort of spring cleaning, the sort where I let go of physical possessions and make an effort to tidy my living space.

To say that I am not particularly tidy would be very kind and quite a bit of an understatement. While I am slowly getting better as I get older, I am fighting years of packrat tendencies, mental illness, and housework-related inertia, and all of this amounts to a lot of good intentions and a frequent lack of follow-through. But, like I said, I’m getting better. I’m learning that I actually to appreciate tidy space, and I do not need clutter to function, and I feel better about myself and the space that I occupy when I take care of myself and that space.

Last weekend, aside from chipping away at the list of weekly housework my partner and I try to keep up with, I tackled two areas in our apartment that I’d been avoiding for months in one case, years in another. While it didn’t hit my conscious radar until after the fact that I was doing this over the equinox, in retrospect it makes a lot of sense – in a lot of ways, the arrival of spring feels like the true beginning of a new year, and I want to start things out right, without a lot of baggage. The cleaning I did last weekend feels like a major step in the right direction. Now I just need to stay motivated!

Highlights

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I forgot to write up this post early, so here’s a quick one from my commute this morning about some highlights of the past week. 

  1. Over the weekend, I had the wonderful opportunity to participate in a little house concert with the members of my last songwriting class. We each invited a few superfans, and it was a beautiful, intimate, incredibly fun time. 
  2. The other exciting event of the weekend: my partner and I got to go to a special employee viewing of the new LEGO exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry. If you’re in Chicago, I highly recommend you go. The models are incredible. The whole thing made me feel like a kid again, in the best ways. 
  3. I’ve made a lot of progress on the sweater I’ve been working on, and I’m super excited about it. I don’t know that it’ll be done before the weather really turns warm, but it’s one that’s going to last me a good long time. It’s a beautiful, blue, cabled thing, and with any luck will be the best thing I’ve ever made. 

Sick Day Guilt

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I spent most of last weekend feeling like I was fighting off a cold. Monday afternoon, while I was at work, I started feeling dizzy and feverish, so I left a little early. Tuesday, I woke up still feeling feverish, and decided that, even though I need to be saving as much of my sick and vacation time as I possibly can right now, I wasn’t going to get anything done if I went in to work (aside from spread my germs around). I called in.

I slept until almost noon. I spent most of the rest of the day on the couch, where I knit, dozed, and watched Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone for the eleventy-billionth time.

And it helped. I felt much better yesterday (even if I wasn’t back to 100%), and I went back to work.

But even though I know I made the right decision in staying home on Tuesday, there’s a part of me that keeps trying to feel guilty. Like, I probably could have sucked it up and gone in. I probably would’ve been miserable, but I could’ve toughed it out, right?

I wrestle with this guilt every time I call in sick to anything, be it work or a volunteer shift or even hanging out with friends. I think a lot of it comes back to having my authority on my feelings called into question as a kid/young adult. I worry that I’m overreacting, that I’m being too sensitive. Particularly when I take a day off for more mental health than physical health reasons, I feel like I’m just not being tough enough. I worry that it means I have a poor work ethic.

Which is all such bullshit, right? If I’m sick, I should stay home and not get my coworkers sick. I should rest so that I can come back to work on top of my game (or at least close to it), rather than getting less and less productive as I try through sheer will power to keep my immune system from failing me. I know all of this. I’ve told other people this I don’t know how many times.

The biggest reason I am trying to save all my sick and vacation time is that I’m planning to schedule chest masculinization surgery for this fall. I’ll need to take at least two full weeks off, and should probably plan for three or four. I’m hoping to be able to work things out so that my recovery falls in the month of All the Jewish Holidays (which is October, this year), where my office doesn’t have a single full week of work for an entire month. That will help with the being able to afford time off. And I should be able to work from home before I’m ready to come back to the office, which will also help.

But see? Even there, I’m thinking about working from home immediately after major surgery, rather than giving myself time to recover. I should know better. I pushed myself too hard after a minor surgical procedure last spring, and wound up missing more work than I would have if I’d just given myself a couple of extra days at the beginning of recovery.

I pride myself on the fact that I own my dysfunction and do my best to deal with it. I’m at a loss with this one, though. I can acknowledge that my fears that my worth is affected by how productive I am at work are irrational, but it’s hard to know how to reframe them into something more useful.

Guess I have something to talk about next time I see my therapist.

It’s Been a Long Week

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It hasn’t been a bad week, exactly. I wrapped up one songwriting class and started two new classes – another songwriting class and a guitar class that is already kicking my ass. I’ve been a little bit sick, but mostly in the typical-for-the-season sniffly way that is more a mild annoyance than anything. My debit card number was stolen, but the bank caught it right away, so even that wasn’t as terrible as it could have been.

I’m just…exhausted. I’m having stress dreams about work, which is absolutely a reflection of how I’ve been feeling at work every day. I’m swinging into a manic phase, which usually means more energy, but this time around is mostly resulting in restless nights and anxious days and me feeling like I’m running on empty.

So I’m trying to do little things to cheer myself up. Yesterday, I got a (much-needed, way overdue) haircut after work, which improved my mood immensely. I’ve been trying to remember, when I feel overwhelmed, to stop and do the little meditative visualization that made up the practical part of the druidry lesson that I’m on this week, and that does help. I started rereading (from the beginning) a web comic I’ve been enjoying for years. I’ve been listening to Welcome to Night Vale: A Novel on my lunch breaks and some of my commute. I’ve had Ben Wallace’s new album on heavy rotation in my daily soundtrack, occasionally switched up with a Bach cello suite.

And all of these things are helping. I’m okay, really, just tired and sometimes more on edge than I’d like to be. I have plenty of resources at my disposal, plenty of healthy ways to make myself feel more settled. I just need to remember to use them.

Pause and Reflect

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I’ve been in an introspective sort of place this past week.

Yesterday marked the last session of the songwriting class I’ve been in for the past eight weeks at the Old Town School of Folk Music. I’m 99% certain this is the first class where I haven’t missed a single day, and 100% certain this is the first class where I’ve done the assignment every single week. It’s been an incredible growing experience. I’ve tried new things, challenged myself…and I am overall very pleased with what I’ve written over the past two months. There were weeks where the first song I wrote was okay, but not as good as I thought I could do…so I wrote another one. I feel like I’m really finding my voice as a songwriter, and that’s a fun place to be in. Sue Demel has my eternal gratitude for teaching such a transformative course. It’s been a truly magical eight weeks with our little class of five. I’m excited to head back to Steve Dawson‘s class next week to continue this process of growth!

I’ve also been reflecting on less happy things. My nephew’s birthday is next week. It’s been almost a year since I’ve seen a picture of him or heard anything about how he’s doing, and that hurts my heart more than I can say.

I feel a little bit all over the map emotionally, between those two lanes of reflection, but I’m trying to take concrete steps to take care of myself physically, mentally, and emotionally. It’s a slow road, but I’m making progress. My goal for 2016 has been integration of the various parts of myself, and while that involves some hard work, I can feel the effort paying off in some ways already.

Life is Good

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Last weekend, my partner and I drove up to Minneapolis to see 20% Theatre Company Twin Cities‘s current iteration of their Naked I series: The Naked I: Self-Defined. It was SO GOOD. If you’re in the Twin Cities and haven’t seen it yet, go. They’re technically sold out, but there’s a waiting list every show and several people off the list always get in.

The weekend was a bit of a whirlwind, but we got to spend some quality time with some of our favorite people, which was lovely. The whole trip made me grateful for friends and chosen family and safe spaces and the fact that I have all those things in multiple cities.

 

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how great my life is. It’s absolutely not at all what I expected it would be, in most ways that I can think of. But what I have is so much better than anything I ever would have dreamed up for myself.

It’s not all sunshine and roses – there’s plenty to deal with between bipolar adventures and adventures in fluid identity. But even when the less-than-great stuff comes up, it feels…more manageable somehow. Maybe not in the middle of every dark moment, but it feels like I’m better at finding the light than I used to be. And that, in itself, is a big deal.

Old Words, New Thoughts

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Yesterday was Ash Wednesday. Four years ago, I went to an Ash Wednesday service at the church I was attending in Minnesota, and it sparked some interesting thoughts, which I wrote about at my old blog, here. Looking back, I think that service and the thoughts that followed marked a pretty major turning point in my spiritual journey. It was the moment when I realized that I no longer needed to believe in a higher power for my life to feel like it had meaning, that I was far more concerned with living my life well and leaving the world a little better for my presence than I was about any sort of afterlife.

Remember that dust you are, and to dust you will return. I sort of feel, as I ponder these words while finding myself called to a more earth-centered spiritual path, like I’m coming full-circle, returning to familiar words and rituals with new eyes. We are born of the earth, we return to the earth…we should treat the earth well during the time in between. And beyond that, the idea that we’re all made of the same stuff. Yesterday, I registered for the correspondence course from The Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids in an effort to lend more structure to my exploration of earth-centered spirituality. I have found lately that while I have no interest in returning to organized religion, I’ve been missing spiritual practice. I’ve slowly been trying to integrate some spiritual practice back into my life, but I tend to do better with things like that when I have some sort of externally-imposed structure. This course feels like it strikes the right balance: structure, but no dogma.

I’m excited to see where this year takes me. It’s a fight, sometimes, to remain present in the present moment and not to obsess over the future, but I think if I can do it, there will be a lot to learn along the way.

Happiness

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Have you ever hit a point in your life, particularly after a rough patch of some sort, where suddenly things were going really, really well, and you didn’t really know how to handle it?

Last year was, largely, a good one, but it definitely had its rough patches: I started the year in immense amounts of pain thanks to a badly spasmed back, I began a slow process of acknowledging that I experience chronic pain (and a slower process of actually doing something about it), I made the decision to cut off contact with my family of origin (which has been an overall positive for my mental health, but has still been hard), and I started dealing with body-related dysphoria in a way I hadn’t before.

The fact that I did NOT have to kick off this year with my back out was a major positive in itself, but really, the past month and change has been pretty wonderful. Even though I’ve been in more of a downswing in my bipolar cycle recently, I’ve had so much to be genuinely  happy about that the low moments in between have been quite tolerable. I’m excited about the creative work I’ve been doing. I have an incredibly supportive social network both at home in Chicago and elsewhere. I’m making plans more than a few weeks in advance, and have a feeling of certainty that these plans will actually happen.

And it’s all great, until I stop moving, and suddenly I wonder how on earth this happened and whether I’m actually allowed to be this happy.

But those moments of doubt keep growing fewer and farther between. I’m realizing there’s nothing wrong with being happy. If I’m coming from a good space, I’m better equipped to deal with the injustice of the world, which I really can’t handle when I’m all wrapped up in my own problems.

So here’s to happiness, and to gratitude, and to using that positive energy to do some good in the world.

Making Music

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I have always, always loved music. Listening to music has always worked wonders for my unpredictable brain. It’s incredibly soothing. I enjoy music across most genres for a myriad of reasons. (Fun fact: when I’m manic, nothing brings me down and back to myself like putting on headphones and listening to heavy metal music. It’s the only thing that can keep up with the frenetic pace of ManicBrain.) But I also really love making music, and that’s becoming more of a focus in my life again. I’m really excited about a lot of what I’m writing, and I feel more of an urge to share it with the world instead of just playing for myself.

This week I’ve been wrestling with the fact that I am always wanting to learn new instruments, but that I need to be saving money and working with what I have, at least for this year, as I’ve got some big expenses coming up in the fall. Contentment is something I struggle with, along with patience and delayed gratification, but it’s something I need to learn.  So, I’m thinking I will need to focus on writing more than ever, and on expanding the skills that I have on the instruments that I already know how to play, so that I can do more interesting things with the music I write.

Last week I read this article about Apple’s new Music Memos app for the iPhone, and over the weekend I got a chance to play around with it. It is so cool and I’m super stoked about it – I’ve basically been telling all the musicians I know that they should try it.

I was pretty pleased with the song I wrote for my songwriting class last week, so I recorded it and stuck it up on my SoundCloud page. The guitar was recorded in Music Memos, where I also added the automatic drum and bass tracks. Then I exported it to GarageBand (also on my phone) and recorded vocals over it all. I’m really pleased with how it turned out – this is the closest I’ve ever come to hearing how one of my songs would sound if I played with a band, and it’s making me extra excited about making more music.

Ramblings

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First off, in case you missed it: I posted the audio of the show I played last week here.

And with that out of the way…I’m not totally sure what to write about this week. I’m still feeling fairly scattered. I’m still on the lower end of my bipolar cycle, which has been especially weird because things are going really well, generally speaking, and I have a lot of happy moments…but then I come down from the happy moments, skid past baseline, and find myself back in the land of sad for no real reason. It leaves me a bit befuddled every time, because how on earth can I be sad when there’s so much to be happy about? But it is what it is.

I think part of why I’m so scattered lately is that I would really love to just be doing creative things all the time, and that’s just not an option. I’m filling much of my free time with creativity, though, and that does help.

On the subject of things to be happy about – I’m really, really enjoying my new songwriting class. More than that, I’m really, really enjoying the songs that I’m writing! This is uncharted territory for me, but it’s fun so far. I actually had a moment this past week where I realized I could hear a harmony line to the song I’d written for class; that was a totally new experience, too.

I’m just wrapping up some creative work for 20% Theatre Company Twin Cities, putting together the book format for the script of their new show (The Naked I: Self-Defined, which opens in Minneapolis on February 12, and if you’re in town, you should absolutely buy tickets right now, because it’s going to be excellent). I’ve done the layout for the last two Naked I show scripts, and it’s always such an honor and a joy to be involved.

I have been knitting in fits and starts, much less frequently than I ordinarily would be at this time of year. I blame the weather – it’s been fluctuating quite a bit, and all my joints (including the ones in my hands) have been cranky because of it. As much as I’m thankful that it hasn’t been consistently miserably cold, I kind of wish Chicago would just pick a weather pattern and stick to it.

On that note, stay warm and well, folks; hopefully I’ll have something more interesting to write about next week!