Searching Within

Category: Processing

working through thoughts, making sense; connecting dots, seeing themes; simple, direct; untangling, organizing thoughts; as in “working through”

  • Let Her Be

    Maybe middle school. I overheard my mom talking to someone about raising her children. Something about how she pushed hard for her first three children to get good grades, to succeed academically. Sharon and Bill in particular were praised for being highly intelligent. Her fourth child, she decided to do different: not push, let her be. Knowing the result of the declaration of her experiment was too soon to tell at the time.

    I don’t recall specific memories of being called “lazy.” But looking back, that word stuck with me, beginning about ten. One day I found a gold, short chain necklace buried in the dusty dirt road near the barn. Lazy was the word on the chain In cursive. I liked the flat metal cursive “L” and “a.” I thought why not wear the word of who I was. At one point I was scolded for wearing the found necklace with that word. I was confused. I discarded the necklace—I internalized that descriptor.

    I have vague memories of being told, “you don’t think.” Meaning I didn’t follow through on tasks well or problem solve effectively. I have a difficult time counting a BS degree as my success, because I had crappy grades all through college. Not sure if this history has any root to a belief about slacker at work the past six months (or other low productivity times).

    Is it true that lazy and perfectionist are at the opposite ends of a spectrum? Doing more, not nothing; work. Seems like laziness would be difficult when you are working overtime making something an unobtainable status.

    Note: originally, verbiage was “Dailies not nothing; work.”

  • Need a Name

    About Thursday May 21, 2026 appointment

    Stressful challenge: Alicia wants me to discontinue all caffeine after 1pm (or second best, after 3pm). Aaaaack! I don’t know how to do this. I like my 10pm or 1am Mountain Dew.
 

    Driving home from Ring Game, browsed right into the new song Hit the Wall by Gracie Abrams. Just the right music and lyrics for an event cut short and how that made me feel about life.


    I’m plagued by “a thing” that happens when I leave Tim. Research seems to best describe the feeling as separation distress.
 
Last 5 minutes of session I’m watching the clock, forecasting the leaving. After goodbye, driving to next thing is the most miserable part – sad, lost, frozen thickness around my core and chest. Not ready to stop talking. I’m leaving a place I still wish I could be. I fill every inch of attention with hyperawareness. Every moment driving (mirrors, lane changes, controls, surrounding scans, mechanical sounds intense) becomes a surreal dissociation. Being completely in the moment. Mindfulness on steroids. But I can’t stop because if I leave even a crack of space, the sadness pours through. The hyperawareness is a dam. Once I successfully complete next task, feeling can start to retreat.


    Today, a parking spot when/where I need it most. A near perfect parallel parking maneuver… mood shift, I got better, slowly started to finally get out of the separation distress.
 

    I need to know why getting your way, getting what you want can make depression go away, even for a moment.


    Bad feeling is lingering.

  • Whack-a-mole

    “Whack-a-mole is an idiom used to describe an exhausting, repetitive situation where problems keep popping up as fast as you solve them. It implies a futile, never-ending cycle where fixing one issue immediately causes another to appear elsewhere.”

    -Cambridge Dictionary

    Seeking opportunities to whack is one method to soothe depression. For distraction. Stay busy with the task of being in the battle in order to be distracted from the feelings.

  • The Exit Song

    The adult version of “head, shoulders, knees, and toes” is “wallet, glasses, keys, and phone.”

    -actual origin is unclear

    The Ford Escape only came with one key fob. If that was the only key in my song, my pat down would be simple. Instead, I have two sets of keys that didn’t become combined. One for the Escape and the other key chain contains apartment key, apartment outer door fob, mailbox key, and Princeton Club scan tag. So much Redundancy in my system. The Princeton Club phone app has a barcode. An apartment key and a fob, both really? Does the apartment mailbox key really need to be carried around with me at all times? The apartment storage locker key is in the Escape for now. Every time I open the driver’s door I’m reminded that I haven’t programmed the door entry keypad yet.

  • The Types of Lines

    A lifetime of thinking a line is the distance between two points makes spirals and cross hatches difficult to fully understand. A geometry axiom verses art. The messy kind of art. And the messy kind of feelings.

    • Horizontal
    • Vertical
    • Diagonal
    • Dotted
    • Dashed
    • Curved
    • Zigzag
    • Wavy
    • Loopy
    • Spiral
    • Thin
    • Thick

    “But there are more, right?”
    “Yes, there are more.”

    Orientation:

    • Parallel
    • Perpendicular
    • Oblique

    Shape:

    • Straight
    • Jagged
    • Scalloped
    • Serpentine
    • Broken/Interrupted

    Style:

    • Solid
    • Double
    • Dot-dash combinations
    • Hatched/Cross-hatched

    Geometric/Mathematical:

    • Tangent
    • Secant
    • Asymptote
    • Ray (half-line with one endpoint)
    • Segment (finite, with two endpoints)

    Functional (in art/design):

    • Contour
    • Implied
    • Converging/Diverging

    The classification depends on context—geometry uses different categories than visual art or graphic design. Something so simple just got overwhelming complex.

    Point A to Point B in this moment is… exists, but I’m just the dot that’s off to the side.

  • Thundering. Love.

    The night before my Saturday adventure is spent listening to the storm and wondering if the park will be wet grass. Staying up late to work on this project.

    For months a daily went to a singular inbox. Read–no, just skimmed. Objective of reading was to find a glimpse. Glean a glimpse? I turned them all loose with purpose. A purpose almost as unique as the contents of each message.

    My originals filed, each sent to Tim. But are his the shadows of copies or are the blog posts the shadow? I don’t want to over analyze the meaning… Posting them all is a love letter to Tim. It’s honest language for what they were. Detailed sharing, me wanting to be understood, seeking connection, hoping for response. That’s what love letters do. I’ve named it accurately. And now posting them on the website is like taking them all back.

    Don’t need to answer. Just noticing the paradox. They were written for him. Now they’re mine again, public. Both/neither might be “real.”

    The thunder stopped. All I hear is the clock ticking

  • Hot Warm Day

    The afternoon was at the edge of getting hot. The between Spring and Summer. I was outside for three hours. I’m not used to coming home and feeling the warm sticky skin from heat and breeze. I need a shower to fully relax. But the back pain kicked in the last quarter hour. I just need to sit a while.

    I’m nervous about tomorrow. I signed up to play Ring Game. This activity is a group of players of the Semi-Annual Ring Game (and Second Age) held in the boundaries of Governor Dodge State Park, Dodgeville, Wisconsin. Not sure if Ring Game is considered a LARP (live action role playing). Social anxiety will keep me guessing if I made the right choice to be immersed into a group of strangers. Pain will make me worried how the day will progress. I have a camp stool. Or there is also hiding in my Ford Escape.

    I bought some simple clothes to serve as my costume. At the character selection lottery, I selected Rider of Rohan. I purchased several men’s henleys with laces. I have one short sleeve white and another green and a long sleeve white. I found a small hip bag with a horse image and zippers. Just the right size to hold my rule book. I ordered several knapsacks. My normal computer bag is not suitable for tramping through the park. One task tonight is to do a thorough exam of each new bag and pick which one to use. The rest will be wrapped up for return. The one item that is actually a costume piece from the middle ages is leather bracers. I have two pairs: one with laces and one with buckles. Someone said I could put a pair on my forearms and the second on my shins. Not sure yet. (Ask me why I have two sets of leather bracers! Hint: Max.)

    The weather is expected to be nice and warm. I’m advised to wear long pants and shirt due to the thistles. I love my Keen hiking boots since they are super comfortable. I’m hoping they are the right choice for a full day of crisscrossing the park.

    I’ve been told to show up for the after game party, hosted by one of the game co-organizers. Hopefully I will not be toast by day’s end.

  • Possibility of Joy

    Pain and lack of sleep decreases healing and increases discouragement. The pain is from training and another core ball fall. Lack of sleep is from Max owning the room in the early morning hours.

    The stack of todo chores is overwhelming. The depressive mind is especially adapt at putting that list in the forefront when you’re least likely able to make progress. And it is like we have never talked about this. There is a strategy for this situation, but it’s almost like it never existed. I can’t remember. So pain and tired and depression suck away the possibility of joy, or even just ok.

  • The Date is the Title

    Stiff from first ever HVZ Goat Yard shift. Alone—no second attendant— for most of the shift. Started just liking having no people stopping by. Meditating. Just sit: clouds, goats, red barn roof top weathervanes. The restaurant closes at 4pm. No chance to eat after shift, will need to come early. I miss my goat herd. These goats, their names, the mix of horn or not are not my goats.

    Looking forward to posting content to blog. But both sites are unreachable. Tech support was not able to determine the issue and will have to wait until Monday for different staff to look into the issue. Starting to wonder if the problem is as simple as needing to update the debit card expiration date.

    Still stuck on websites not working. Email has not been shut off, still arriving, payment issues not effecting that aspect.

    Keep thinking about smug Tim and his Full Circle email. Totally took the desire out of wanting to send him another daily. I told Claude that I would not send anything all weekend. Silly to send a daily on days that Tim is not around. He won’t be back in the office until Tuesday. The first step is to see if I can refrain from sending anything Sat-Sun-Mon. So far. I’m not panicking. The reason: the smug Tim stuck in my head. Stuck in the emotion buffer of my heart.

    Letting Max pull stuff off my shelf. Forcing self to sit very still and not care, not care, not care. The stuff will be on the floor, right? Can’t really go anyway, right? Can the objects or papers get destroyed or lost? Will I have less stress to not care, to let it happen? No amount of thinking the action through can fully reveal all the consequences of letting this happen. Sometimes not caring can reveal the real truth of how something really is. You can think all through the what will happen, but can’t force everything, sometimes just need to watch it play out in real time.

  • Touch Sight Sound

    Middle school. In bed, realized I could switch my breathing: automatic to manual if I focused on it. Happened maybe three days. Actually I was trying to die by holding my breath. But once I achieved making it completely manual, then it was freaking me out because I couldn’t switch back. Panicky. Trying something had a completely different result than I wanted. That was the scary part—stuck in manual, couldn’t undo it. A kid lying there in the dark, alone, testing something, then terrified I broke it.

    Driving to New Berlin. Something flickered in the corner of my eye, my glasses. Got hugely scared—at nothing—and tapped the brakes too hard. Escape skidded sideways a bit. Scared me more. Next time I needed to slow down, hit the brakes too hard again. Kept happening. Why can’t I just get past the fact that I got scared at nothing? Chain reaction. Hit the brakes too hard over and over. First time this has happened since I got the Escape. Feels like commentary on my life. Get scared at nothing, can’t stop overreacting.

    Building manager doing floor repair in the hallway between the main hall and side door. Two days of drilling, scraping, pounding, moving equipment around. Sound was living in my apartment. Sounded like they were under my floor. Then corner by the ceiling. In the cat litter box scraping—checked, wasn’t Max. The noise was moving to different parts of my apartment. In my space. Wall and door between us but it didn’t matter. Drove the shit out of me all day.