A rough month

November was a really mixed month: here's the last three weeks of it.

☑ weekly planner accountability check-in x2 Really pretty art in November, even if it forces me to dig out a white gel pen to be able to read things. pic.twitter.com/MCPVHZWr9z

— sassa @ davesprite literature club (@AWildSassaApprs) November 26, 2019

Might as well do my ☑ weekly planner accountability check-in post while I'm here! pic.twitter.com/6hBk9h4Ku5

— sassa @ davesprite literature club (@AWildSassaApprs) December 2, 2019

Had my first panic attack in ages, and been struggling with a lot of self-doubt and ADD nipping at my brain at every turn. Hard to focus and hard to keep myself moving forward. This may sound like I'm disheartened, but I'm not - I know I can work through this. But I also want to acknowledge the fact that I'm struggling - ignoring it and pretending that everything is going great would only do me a disservice.

It's honestly a huge thing for me to be able to see that I'm struggling and talk about it honestly, rather than just trying to buck myself up and keep going. I mean, obviously I want to keep going, but so often the process of cheering myself up involves basically finding ways to numb my fears or pretend they don't exist, looking sidelong at them while continuing to plaster on a smile. Whereas being able to come here today and just acknowledge I'm struggling, and be okay with the feeling... that's a difficult thing for me to do. But, like. It's progress. So, woo. Progress.

But I am telling myself (and hoping it is true) that if I just keep pushing ahead (while not looking away from my problems) and keep chipping away at my goals, eventually I'll get out of the rut I started to fall into towards mid-November.

I know it's a fear-based rut, along with a few additional things. I'm not quite sure how to pull myself out of it, but until I hit on the thing that shakes the cobwebs out of my brain, I'll keep doing little things to chip away at it.

Hhh... actually I should mention I've been gaming basically every evening for the last two weeks, from about 10pm (when my partner goes to sleep so I have the house/TV to myself) to, on average, 2am. Light night, 3:30am. Even though I'm sleeping in, I'm being woken up in the morning by K getting ready for work and just... not keeping the same schedule as everyone else. Even though in my soul I'm a night owl, we live, as they say, in a Society, and keeping these hours is probably throwing me out of whack.

But why did I start? Probably because it's a comfort food... it's an RPG (The Outer Worlds) and slowly seeing my stats increase, helping NPCs and checking off sidequests is a very calming, restorative experience for me. Basically, I feel lacking in self care and nurture and all those relax-y type things, and I'm filling those needs with 4-6 hour late night gaming sessions.

But... as well as my fears of failure pushing back against me, and my ADD... probably the excess gaming/disrupted sleep cycle isn't helping. So... I really don't want to, but I think I have to commit to not doing those long nights at least for a few weeks. Maybe slowly dial it back, seetting a reminder at midnight to stop? I think so long as I go to bed by 11pm it's not too bad, and certainly would probably be better for me than 2-4am.

Sigh... I don't want to though... the comfort has been nice. It's been a rough month for having to support other people emotionally and care for an unwell cat... so I really need that self-care and nurturing. I just need to make more time for it during respectable hours...

Bulk check-ins are like bulk gains right

☑ weekly planner accountability check-in x2

Loving the colour palettes the October artist is using, especially the green/purple/blue one! pic.twitter.com/vvQgOR1KI5

— sassa @ davesprite literature club (@AWildSassaApprs) October 17, 2019

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...

Brain rebooting

I struggle to focus my brain a lot of the time - it's very easy for me to get lost in tangents. One thing I've really noticed helping me is making sure to 're-set' myself to start my day.

I know dreams are meant to be the brain's way of processing data taken in from throughout the day, so maybe one reason why I have more focus issues is my insomnia cutting down my dreaming time? Sounds kinda believable, but... pretend I placed a shrug emoji here.

Re-setting my brain isn't a guarantee of success, but it does up my chances. I don't think the things I outline below will necessarily work for everyone; we each probably have our own highly specific re-set switches we need to hit. Nothing in mine is particularly outrageous, but, sometimes I've read about other people's morning routines and thought 'that sounds ridiculous' or 'i tried that and it had the opposite effect on me' so - take all this with a grain of salt. Maybe even ten grains.

What I find works for me is as follows. Generally in this order, but it can change day to day depending on other factors:

A warm drink in winter, and either a warm or cold one in summer

For me, this is usually coffee. I honestly can go weeks without caffeine and I'm fine, I don't seem to really have a dependence on it. But something in my hands while I deal with being awake is good. I'll probably play a mobile game and fuss over my cat while I drink.

Shower

I think this one would apply to most people. I feel more alert after a shower, and just less lethargic in general. I bet cleaning my teeth in the morning would help with that too, but then it'd make my coffee taste awful, so...............

Dress nicely and Do Face Stuff

I think everyone knows at this point the psychological effect of changing clothes/wearing 'work' outfits. It's like a mini shower. And the Face Stuff is just doing basic grooming things... apply tea tree gel to any pimples, apply toner, serum and moisturiser... just basic skincare routine stuff. Like another mini shower for my brain.

Don't check social media until you've planned your day

I used to check my Twitter TLs and discord when I got up in the morning, kind of like the millennial version of reading the morning newspaper, but I stopped doing that several months ago and it's helped a lot. Checking my social feeds just introduces too many variables and ideas into my brain before I've had a chance to mould my expectations for the day.

Update my 3-year diary

I have a Midori 3 year journal. It has space to write 2-5 sentences about your day per page, and you share the page with the entries for the same day on the other two years. I started keeping it early this year and I'm interested to see how it goes. Writing a couple lines about the day before definitely helps my brain. Somehow.

Read my weekly plan

This is different to the day planner I post photos of here. I have charts on my wall for tracking my goals for the year, my goals for the month, and my goals for the week. It's kind of an excuse to have lots of cute stickers, but look, it works. 

At the start of this year I filled out a Kikki K 10 year planner (similar to this). I also then broke my goals for the first year into 12 month blocks, which became my yearly sticker chart. Then at the start of each month, I check the yearly sticker chart, and make a monthly one. I make a weekly checklist at the same time. It's the weekly checklist I review at the start of my day. I grab a couple tasks out of it and put them into my work planner (not posted here) and my daily planner (the one I post here). There's a lot of overlap between those two, but the work planner tracks my Big Project Tasks and my daily planner is more a 'don't forget you have an appointment, need to do laundry, and need to do a task for Big Project 3'.

This is a system I've evolved over the last two years, and it works for me, but it may or may not work for you.

Re-set the house while listening to a podcast (must have at least two presenters)

This means: put away dry dishes. Sort out dirty ones. Put on a load of washing. Take anything still on the floor and put it away. Make sure working areas are free of clutter. Open the curtains. Basically, make a working space that feels neutral (as a freelancer, I work at home).

Podcasts (the need for two presenters is so that I'm listening to a conversation, not a presentation) give me some Social Energy that makes me feel comforted while I'm setting up my space for the day, without distracting me the way social media posts would.

Do one small task while listening to isochronic tones

This would be something like: send out invoices, reply to business emails, write weekly blog post etc. type of tasks. Very simple things that don't require high levels of skill. The isochronic tones seem to help smooth down the edges of my thoughts. Lately I've been using this video a lot as my bgm.

Once I've achieved that last thing, generally my brain is in a much more positive and focused state than it would otherwise be. So after this point, I can start tackling harder tasks!

One thing I struggle with is re-setting after I've had a break and checked social media (which I don't want to cut out entirely, given it's the easiest way to keep up with friends). Often after a break, especially one with Twitter/Discord, I find myself vague-ing out again. So I probably need to start doing a smaller version of my re-set routine after breaks, maybe just the isochronic tones thing again.

Also, it's worth noting I've only been able to develop this routine after becoming a freelancer. This all would have been impossible for me while working my previous 9-5 job. It's one reason I really want to succeed as a freelancer - I just find office jobs so constantly distracting and discombobulating. I can never work at full capacity the way I can at home.

☑ weekly planner accountability check-in, and health tracker. Love the iwai and lobster yusuke on this week's pages :3 pic.twitter.com/FnmcUuiFot

— sassa: 100% (@AWildSassaApprs) July 29, 2019

As far as the health journal goes, it should be pretty obvious to anyone who read it that I'm a grazer, haha. I really struggle to eat what most recipe books etc classify as "one meal". It's much easier to eat very small amounts throughout the day... I much prefer the "five small meals" approach instead of "three medium sized meals". I also struggle to eat before lunchtime... honestly if I didn't worry about the impact it'd have on my health I'd probably just drink coffee until 2pm every day.

My exercise is going well, as of Saturday I've also introduced a new Saitama-inspired routine to my existing powerlifting/tai chi/walking exercises so hopefully that'll help round out my overall exercise routine.

One more week until six months of posting!

Even though I've successfully been using my planner for nearly six months, I absolutely guarantee if I hadn't committed to posting evidence I'm using it online, I would have stopped this month. Even a habit of six months isn't long enough for me to fully integrate it.

Honestly, I feel like I need to do something continuously for like... five years to even have a hope in hell of continuing to do it without accountability stuff in place.

 So does this mean I plan on doing a check-in for another 4.5 years? I don't know. Maybe? This level of accountability seems to do wonders for me. I like just a little pressure on me to do well - too much and I just wanna give up, too little and I get complacent.

I know I'm doing better than I would otherwise be, if I wasn't keeping a planner, and to keep a planner I need to feel accountable, and for now, this is the best method of accountability I've found - it works, it doesn't require me to rely on another person to hold me accountable (just the idea of another person) and it's time-efficient.

That said, while I've been doing better, I'm still frustrated with how easily I drift off into my own world, even now when I have the opportunity to do the work I'm most passionate about. Is it the ADD? My potential aspie-ness? (I'm undiagnosed, but I have my suspicions based on the things I recognise in myself hearing other people talk about well-passing women on the spectrum). It's just so easy for a single stray thought to absolutely dominate my attention out of nowhere, at almost any moment. My brain is constantly ready to leap into a new tangent, a new little question-and-answer with myself.

It's one of the factors that makes sleeping difficult for me - the brain never really stops or slows down. Sopophorics like hops extract, passionflower, and supplements like magnesium, sifrol and melatonin help (I can't have valerian, I'm one of those people where it actually makes you more awake) but they don't offer any kind of certainty over me being able to fall asleep within an hour of my head hitting the pillow. They just increase my chances.

It's not just drifting away that slows me down, or tiredness, there's plenty of other things - events, commitments, illness, family etc. that get in the way of me completing the tasks I set out for myself. But I could still do more if I could focus more easily.

I haven't been on social media much of late, and that's definitely helped - the less random ideas and stimulus, the less likely I am to totally get captured on a stray thought. I miss talking with my friends, though.

Everything is a balancing act. As always.

☑ weekly planner accountability check in! pic.twitter.com/x5ki4A8AqE

— sassa: 100% (@AWildSassaApprs) June 26, 2019