Sunday 27 October 2019

Promare was awesome anyway hello



I'm feeling a little worried that despite doing a ton lately, I'm losing focus on some of my over-arching goals. It's tough because everything I've been doing lately has been great for my mental health, but I'm concerned that I'm spending too much time on that and not enough on being productive. Finding balance is really hard. But I know working on my mental health will ultimately feed into my achieving my goals, so... I don't know. Maybe it's fine? I had my first session with a therapist last week so maybe I can discuss with them this week about whether I'm being too hard on myself. I never know if I'm pushing myself too hard or not enough. I only notice when I burn out, and I'm not sure how I'd notice the other direction. Feeling too chilled out? I have no idea tbh.

And yes I saw Promare on the weekend, it was great. If you have ecological anxiety triggers, burned alive triggers, or end-of-the-world/apocalypse triggers, then you may wish to skip it, but if you do not, it's a wonderful, extremely Trigger film with a great soundtrack, gorgeous visuals and a great story. Also, mecha. And triangles. What more can you ask for.

Thursday 17 October 2019

Bulk check-ins are like bulk gains right


Not a ton to say - this week I got a referral from my partner's psych to a psychologist she thinks might help me with some of my anxiety issues, so I'll be meeting with her next week. Will be interesting to see how it goes, given it's not exactly a "I need help dealing with this one life thing" type of referral and more a "my brain does Things sometimes that make it hard to be in the world but I'm not like suicidal or anything so uh how do we make me better at being in the world I guess". Which, it turns out, is quite an expensive question to ask, though at least through my excellent national healthcare program I get 50% rebates on ten sessions a year, so technically I could do one session a month and only pay the full, scary cost twice a year. Though I feel like at least initially I'll probably be asked to go more frequently than that as the psych gets to know me.

I hope it helps. Getting clinically assessed for ADD and potentially medicated for it might help - two of my friends with ADD swear by it, but my sister had a terrible reaction to her ADD meds when she was a kid so my mum is very much on the side of "yeah I'm confident you have it but also you shouldn't get medicated for it". But I can't help but wonder how much more I could do every day if my brain didn't bluescreen regularly when I'm trying to complete a thought.

I've spent a lot of time looking after other people this month, which is fine, I'm doing well enough that I can offer some care to others without drowning myself, though some of the things going on with my family right now have been very emotionally taxing. Part of it is the fact that my grandfather is beginning to succumb to dementia and can no longer live on his own - though it's really impressive he made it to the age he has with most of his brain and body intact. It's only been the last couple years that he really began to deteriorate. But there's a lot of things to do now that he's only partially with us, and getting those done has been bittersweet at best. Though it must be much, much harder on my mum.

Guess I had more to say than I initially thought. I kind of swing between not wanting to disclose too much here, because, you know, what if someone finds this, links it to me, and decides they don't want to hire me as a consultant because they're worried about my anxiety issues impairing my work, or whatever. But on the other hand, this feels like the affordable kind of therapy, that I don't need a rebate to be able to do as much as I need. And it only feels real when it's public, which perhaps says more about the way I've adapted to a social media way of assembling and regurgitating my life, or maybe it's just some deeper Brain Thing. It may still be a bad idea, though. I don't know. But I do feel that I've been coping better with everything in part due to holding myself accountable to using the planner, and posting these entries. I've probably said this all before, but, that's the great thing about making something with zero intended audience. I don't have to entertain anyone but myself, and anyone reading this far only has themselves to blame if they're bored to tears by this paragraph, haha.

I haven't been very Online lately, my Twitter has been mostly a desert... which is good and bad. I've had so much to do (none of which I resent, and much of which I actively think is worthwhile) so I don't feel like I'm missing out much. Though, on the other hand, almost all my closest friends live in other countries, so I am missing out on contact with my friends, especially my bestie in NZ, my fave kohai in Canada, and the handful of bright, shining parks of pals in the USA... all of whom have timezones incompatible with mine most of the time, hahahah...h... I guess the problem is I don't have a lot to talk about with people online at the moment, a lot of my work is associated with NDAs and I am not in my biggest fandom any more (I'll still post more content for it eventually, because I have unfinished works, but I'm not really actively interested in seeking out anything in it for myself any more). I do wanna be involved in the Homestuck fandom more, just need to spend the time catching up on the games...

Thursday 3 October 2019

Post-holiday round-up

I've been flat out for the last three weeks, wrapping up work before my holiday, then prepping for my holiday, then going on my holiday. But! I did continue to use my planner. I have a lot of catching up to do now that I'm back home, so I'll leave the update here for now!