anxiety

It’s the Little Things

/ Alyxander James / 1 Comment

Hello, dear readers. Life continues to be weird. Time continues to feel more ethereal than normal. I still rarely remember what day it is. This pandemic continues to creep closer and closer to hitting home with me; I know for some of you, it’s already there. It’s a scary time.

I am trying desperately to hold onto what glimpses of light I can in the midst of all the uncertainty. Here are a few things that have been bright spots in my week:

  • It has been so bright in my “office” (our sunroom) when I start working in the mornings that several times I have needed to pull out my sunglasses. The sunlight, even filtered through our windows, is a welcome and wonderful thing.
  • There are trees immediately outside of our sunroom windows (we’re up on the 3rd floor). I have multiple times now experienced the joy of watching a squirrel take a nap on a branch. I think it may be building a nest in the tree, as I saw it gnaw off a twig or two yesterday.
  • I’m so enjoying watching nature from my sunroom. In addition to napping squirrels, I’ve seen house finches, mourning doves, robins, sparrows, and a woodpecker.
  • The trees are starting to bud. Before we know it, there will be fresh, vibrantly green leaves coming out, and it will feel like we live in a tree fort.
  • I’m getting ready to play a D&D campaign with some friends and family that I am incredibly excited about. I am so glad to have the distraction of play in the midst of all of this.

It is definitely a dark and scary time right now. I am rotating regularly from fear to anger to sadness to numbness and back again, and I know that’s a perfectly reasonable response to what we’re going through. It’s also why I think it’s so important to find those little moments of comfort and light.

I’d love to hear from you – what are the things that have lifted your spirits lately, however briefly? How are you holding up?

Dazed and Confused

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

Hello, dear readers! I apologize for the later-than-usual post – I only just realized that it’s Thursday, despite the fact that I had my usual Thursday check-in with my boss an hour ago. Whoops.

Working from home/sheltering in place continues, and I am really glad I’m still working, because that’s the only thing giving me much of a connection to the passage of time. As it is, I am still frequently confused about what day it is. Monday and Tuesday this week I kept thinking it was Friday, and I’m still half-convinced that today is Wednesday, and I don’t know where actual Wednesday went.

We went to the grocery store yesterday for the first time in over two weeks, and stocked up on enough things that I think we’ll be able to avoid another trip for at least a few more. It was…stressful. Some people were doing a great job of social distancing and maintaining space between themselves and other shoppers. But some people just…weren’t. Like, there were people (mostly middle-aged or older men, but not exclusively) who just had ZERO awareness of the existence of other people or the fact that we were all trying to respect the CDC guidelines. Which was disheartening, and again, stressful. I did manage to make it through the trip without touching my face, though, so that was an accomplishment (my allergies are so bad right now, y’all…I just constantly look like I’m crying).

This continues to be a weird time, but I’m also coming to terms with the fact that this is the new normal, and we need to figure out how to survive within it.

I’d love to hear from you all! How are you coping? What strategies are you finding helpful for maintaining a sense of groundedness and routine in your lives? Or how are you not coping? (After getting home from grocery shopping, I had a dinner of cereal and Cheetos, because that’s what I wanted in the moment, and I have no regrets.) Please, let’s keep reaching out and looking out for each other as much as we can (while staying in our own homes).

What Day Is It?

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

Greetings, readers, from my home to yours. (I really hope you’re all at home. This is what we need to do to keep each other safe right now.)

It’s a weird time. The fact that I am working helps give me a bit of structure, but I’ll be honest, I’m having a hard time keeping track of my days. Everything’s sort of blending together. I missed my usual 9am deadline for posting this morning because I kind of forgot it was Thursday.

I’ve gotten my first two support tickets at my new job, so I’m actually doing work now instead of just reading about how to do work, which is a nice change of pace. I’m learning a lot and ending pretty much every day exhausted from the amount of information I’m taking in.

Yesterday was a beautiful day here in Chicago, so after work I ordered a pizza for pickup. As I walked to the restaurant, I was…alarmed by how many people do not seem to be taking the social distancing thing seriously. It was a toss up – some people that I passed were considerate and moved to the opposite side of the sidewalk or the grass so we could maintain 6ft of distance…a lot of people did not. I went pretty quickly from enjoying the beautiful weather to just being really anxious.

There’s a musician acquaintance of mine who lives in northern Italy. He’s been posting about some of his experiences in English for his American friends. The posts are incredibly sobering. I worry about him every day…and I worry about us, here in America, because we’re just not responding well to this crisis.

I’m worried a lot of the time right now. I worry about my nephew, who has asthma. I worry about my mom, who’s a nurse and at an age where she’s probably more vulnerable to this thing. I worry about my friends and family members who are out of work right now, or who are still having to go to work rather than working from home. I try not to worry too much about myself, but I’m allergic to many things outside right now, and every time I cough or sniffle I have to suppress the urge to panic.

But I’m also trying to find the light in all of this. We’re connecting with a lot of people virtually. Last weekend we had virtual brunch with a friend that we have regular brunch with every couple of weeks via Google Hangouts. I played Monsterhearts 2 with friends on a Discord server. We had a little song circle with Song School friends in California via Zoom. We’re in frequent contact with family and friends and I feel really held by the communities I’m a part of, even as I do my best to hold them. If anything good comes of this mess, I think it’s going to be a greater sense of connection. I am so grateful to live in this time where physical isolation doesn’t have to be social/emotional isolation. While it is hard to balance not being glued to a screen reading the news and using that screen to stay connected, I think it’s worth it.

I hope you’re all hanging in there (and staying at home). Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. If we’re going to get through this, it’ll be together (from our own places of residence) or not at all.

Attempting Optimism

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

It’s been another kind of hard week. I’m tired, I’m achy, I got an unexpected medical bill, and I’ve been feeling cranky and out of sorts a lot of the time. However, I am attempting to look for some bright spots – not because I think everything needs a silver lining, but it’s easier to get up in the mornings and get through each day if I have things to look forward to. So here are a handful of happy things:

  • I was able to play guitar this week! A couple of weeks ago I picked up my guitar and couldn’t play, because my hands hurt so much. Thankfully, despite the fact that they still hurt, I’m finding that I can play some things, as long as I mostly avoid barre chords and don’t capo up so high that I’m having to cram my fingers into smaller spaces. So that was exciting and encouraging.
  • My department at work is going bowling tomorrow. I have admittedly mixed feelings about this – both because of how much socializing is involved and because my hands have been hurting and I can’t imagine bowling is going to help that. But I do enjoy bowling (even though I’m pretty bad at it), and it means a few extra hours I don’t have to work, so that’s good.
  • I’m getting super excited for FAWM. This will be my third year participating in this challenge, and it’s always a magical time. This year, I’m planning to get some serious work done on my 78 Songs project, where I’m writing a song for every card in a tarot deck. I’ve been “working” on this project for years and have almost nothing to show for it, so I’m excited for the external motivation to get some of the work done. This FAWM I’ll be tackling the major arcana, which is comprised of 22 cards. Since the goal is just to write 14 songs, I started working on them this week, and have two songs done and another set of lyrics started, so that feels like good progress.

What things are you excited about or looking forward to?

Some Weeks are Harder Than Others

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

It’s Thursday, and I’m having one of those weeks where Friday and the weekend can’t come soon enough. I worked from home Tuesday and called off entirely yesterday. Some of this week is a mental battle – it’s been pretty grey and dreary outside all week, and it’s hard to feel motivated when the sun doesn’t rise until after 7am and sets around when I’m getting out of work.

A large part of the challenge this week has been physical, though. My hands and arms have been aching in a way they haven’t really before, at least not so consistently. Since my job and all of my hobbies involve my hands, this is…distressing. There have been things this week that I just haven’t been able to do, because it hurts when I try.

My partner has been super great and supportive while I figure out what to do about this and has stepped up where I’ve had to step back. I feel guilty, leaving so many things to him. It doesn’t feel fair, and that’s a hard thing for this Hufflepuff to get past.

I need to call the PT clinic I tried reaching out to online that never got back to me. It would be the most convenient possible location. But the thought of calling is exhausting.

The good news is that I started taking a mountain dulcimer class at the Old Town School last week, and it’s easier on my hands than most of the other instruments that I play. So I can still make music, even if I feel like I can’t do much else.

I know I’ll figure out better ways of dealing with this as time goes on. Right now, though, it is no fun and I am pretty cranky about it.

Move and Vacation

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

We are inching ever closer to our move date, and the number of packed boxes in our apartment has increased since last week. We’ve been coordinating some maintenance needs with the new landlord so that we don’t need to have them come and fix things when we’re actually there.

We’re down to the wire for packing now, though.

My partner has been in Minnesota for the past few days, hanging out with his parents before borrowing his dad’s car to drive to Song School. He gets back into town this afternoon. We leave for Song School tomorrow.

I am so excited for Song School, for seeing dear friends and digging into the practice of songwriting. I am also worried that I’ll struggle to be present, knowing that we move two days after we get back. I’m hoping I’ll be able to set that aside and fully engage while we’re on this trip.

On that note: there will be no blog next week, as I will be in Colorado and off my phone as much as possible. The next time I write a blog will be from our new apartment!

Moving Madness

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

This blog is going up a little later in the day than usual – last week, I was super on top of things and had the post written Wednesday evening. This week, not so much. But hey, at least I wrote something!

We’re getting closer and closer to Song School, which means we’re closer and closer to moving. I am overwhelmed, but also really proud of how much we’ve managed to get done so far. Over the weekend, we went through our knitting stuff, which was the biggest and most daunting of things on our project list. We now have multiple ten-gallon tubs of yarn and knitting accessories that will not be moving with us. We’re still figuring out what WILL happen with all of it, but at least step one is done. I feel so much better about my yarn stash now. I’m letting go of a lot of beautiful things, but they’re a lot of beautiful things that I wasn’t realistically going to knit. Now they can go on to someone else who can appreciate them. (Fellow knitters: we were assisted in this process by the StashFit workbook. It was super helpful and I feel like now I have a better idea of what I actually use, which informed the culling and will also inform any future purchases, meaning my stash feels like it’s not going to balloon out of control again anytime soon.)

This week we’re shifting from sorting to packing. Friday we’ll be packing for Song School (which is still a couple of weeks away, but that way we don’t risk losing track of anything we’ll need for our trip). Saturday the moving boxes arrive. I feel a little bit guilty that if anyone tries to schedule a showing of our current apartment between now and when we move, they’ll be faced with walls of boxes, but…it is what it is.

My goal is to have things packed/settled enough by the time we leave for Song School that I can actually be present for the trip and not preoccupied with everything left to do at home. I think it’s an achievable goal, but it’s going to be challenging. It would be challenging enough on its own, but add the unpredictability of my chronic pain stuff and both of our mental health issues and…yeah. Fingers crossed that bodies and brains cooperate and we’re able to have a productive week!

Changes in Motion

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

We’re moving!

Last night, my partner and I signed the lease on a charming new apartment, and we are so excited. (Also anxious and overwhelmed, but excited!) This new place is a ten minute walk from the Old Town School of Folk Music and close to the transit we need to get to work. It’s got a sun room, a built-in hutch, and a substantially larger kitchen than what we have right now.

We’ve been in our current apartment since we moved to Chicago seven years ago. It was our first official place together. It’s served us pretty well over the years, but it’s in need of some maintenance love that it’s just not going to get while it’s occupied. (I hope it gets it when we move out, but it might not.)

I’m going to miss our neighborhood. I’ll miss the proximity to some friends (though we’ll be closer to others in the new place). I’m anxious about moving and change and logistics. But mostly I’m excited. It’s a super cute space. It’s going to be good to have a fresh space to work with. It’s an excuse to go through our stuff again and hopefully get rid of some things before we move. It’ll be good.

Home Again, Home Again

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

Happy Thursday, dear readers!

I mentioned last week that I was getting ready to go on my first ever work trip. I got home from DC yesterday afternoon. It was a good trip overall, if not exactly what I expected/intended it to be. Here are some highlights:

  • I got to see our colleague who moved to Israel 3.5 years ago, who I’m always emailing/Skyping but who I hadn’t seen in person since she moved. It was great to catch up and hang out.
  • I learned things that I think will ultimately help me do my job better. Some of the sessions I went to went way over my head, but even those at least gave me things to look up once I get settled back at the office.
  • I got to meet up with my friend Heather Mae, who is one of the most genuinely kind people I have the pleasure of knowing (and also happens to be one of my favorite musicians). Taking an hour to grab coffee with her made my week. We have brains that operate in similar ways (#BipolarAdventures), and it’s always nice to be able to talk to someone who just gets it.
  • I did NOT do the networking I had planned to do. This had a lot to do with the fact that I’m just not great at networking, and because our 1800+ person conference (which was not the only large conference happening at the convention center) was a bit overwhelming for this socially anxious introvert. But I did think of things I can do better next time, and I have ideas of where to follow up on things from home.
  • I walked about 5 miles a day, most of them without even leaving the building where the conference was held. It was a lot.
  • I successfully got through airport security both ways without setting off any machines! I think that’s a first. (Usually if I have good luck on one leg of the journey, I won’t on the other. Or I set off all the machines. Body scanners are gender binarist bullshit.)

I’m on my way into the office now. I desperately wanted to work from home today, but I think my office mate would kill me if I left her alone for another day, so here we are. I’m exhausted, but still generally feeling good about the trip. As much as I enjoy traveling, I’m very ready to get settled back into my routine at home.

Trying

/ Alyxander James / Leave a comment

Readers, it’s been a week. I’m wrestling with some sort of upper-respiratory nonsense that I hoped was just allergies but that kept me home with a fever yesterday. I feel pretty gross, and I’m really glad I had a doctor appointment scheduled for today anyway.

But let’s take a step back. I want to tell you about my weekend, when I did not feel like my head was trying to explode.

Friday night, I picked up a rental car. Saturday morning, I got up early, packed my knitting and some snacks, and hit the road to go visit my grandmother in northeast Iowa. I had not seen my grandmother in almost seven years, though we’ve been writing occasional letters back and forth for a year or so. In her last couple of letters, she expressed a desire to sit down and talk with me in person. About a month ago, when I got her last letter, I contacted her and said I would like to come for a visit, and we agreed on this past Saturday as a date.

I started on testosterone five and a half years ago, so a few things had changed since we last saw each other. I had sent her a picture of me a few months ago, so my appearance wouldn’t come as a total shock.

I really had no idea what to expect from this visit going in, but overall it went better than I could have hoped. She greeted me with a hug. We went out to lunch and she caught me up on all the latest family news. When we went back to her apartment, the talk turned more serious – she had a lot of questions about my life, and I tried to answer them honestly. I learned that her little Baptist church had recently done a study on LGBTQ issues, because their pastor recognized that we’re not going away and felt the church should decide how they were going to respond. (She sent the books they studied home with me – I haven’t read them yet, but I do want to know where she’s coming from.)

The big takeaway of the visit was that we love each other and we do want to be in each other’s lives. It was a very long day (ten total hours of driving, plus the four hour visit), but worth it. We’ll see where we go from here!