living in a VAN down by the RIVER

I would consider today a moderate success.

Yesterday, after meeting with my therapist, I spent most of the afternoon / evening being thoroughly unproductive, feeling anxious about everything we had talked about and trying to figure out how I was going to get everything done when I was only allowed to focus on ONE thing on my list (of probably 12 different things, easy). I let the worry gnaw at me and wash over me and tried to figure out how I might be able to 'cheat' and justify it.

In the end, the product of all that worrying (and talking to my husband and a good friend about my options) lead me to the conclusion that focusing on the house was the best thing for this week. I still feel a little bit like the world might explode if I don't focus on the other things, and I have no idea what's going to happen financially, but if I can actually make this happen and get the house in order for once and for all, I might have a chance at being more productive and getting things done and making money and saving us from financial ruin. Of course I've said this before, and of course I'll spend plenty of time second guessing myself and trying to slowly work all those other things back into my life. But for now, it's just one week. One week and I can go and talk to my therapist and if I'm ready to freak out about not doing other things yet, hopefully she'll be able to help me.

My morning routine:

I got it all done. It took a while, and I hit some stumbling blocks, things I find particularly distasteful, I delayed, I experienced anxiety, but I got through it. I wrote in my personal journal a lot today, trying to make note of all the things that were particularly rough for me, times I felt anxious about things, times I was resistant to doing things. I'm still very time-focused and it all took me longer than I think it 'should'. But it got done.

My One Task:

I don't have a good name for this task, but it involves cleaning up, decluttering, and organizing my house, and boxing up things to sell / get rid of. Making The House A Home And Maybe Making A Little Money In The Process? Yeah, it's a pretty clunky title, I know. I finished three rooms today - our bedroom (which I'd worked on some a day or two previous and was already well on its way), our upstairs hallway and the upstairs bathroom.
Once I got in the groove, I was pretty happy to be working on this stuff today. Of course, I didn't get to any of the really horrible rooms yet, and I will admit that once I finished the bedroom, the temptation to stay in my clean, peaceful bedroom and pretend the rest of my house didn't exist was pretty strong.
Halfway through the day I caught myself trying to focus on the TIME it would take to complete the whole house decluttering process and setting goals for myself again. Setting goals in and of itself isn't a bad thing, it's obviously something I believe in and do with regularity; the problem is that I tend to set pretty lofty, unattainable goals. Or rather, the goals aren't unattainable, but the time I give myself to complete them is. I'm never content to just trust the process and believe it will happen if I keep working. it always has to be done by a certain TIME, and when I catch myself falling off my self-imposed timeline I get frustrated, I feel defeated, and I often give up. So I made note of that in my personal journal and will take that to the therapist next week. It's one of those things about myself where I just can't really fathom HOW it could be any different. But maybe it should be, and maybe it could be.

Here's some pictures of the progress in my house (taken with my phone, so I apologize in advance for the quality)!

Our Bedroom ( I have no befores, only afters):

from the doorway

our view from the bed. the computer has since been moved to the center bookshelf.

my bedside table, and Feona

The upstairs hallway:

before

after

before 2

after 2 (dog butts!)

The upstairs bathroom:

before

after (reorganized baskets)

before 2 (yes the dogs follow me everywhere)

after 2

I do not know how to fix ANY of this picture formatting. This was a very frustrating post, in terms of pictures. A blogging design genius I am NOT.




Unemployment:

I don't know what's happening. I got my full unemployment check this week. By my calculations, I either have one week left, or two weeks left. I'm not sure. I understand that a new extended benefits bill was just signed in but I do not understand how that affects me. Illinois Unemployment hasn't updated their website with new information pertaining to it, and often they seem to leave these things vague anyway. So I don't know if we're running out of money soon or getting a temporary reprieve. I intend to act as if we are running out of money soon and that I need to find a way to come up with that $1650 difference each month as long as I am out of work (and that if I find a job, the take-home has to cover at LEAST that much PLUS full time childcare). However, I am trying not to think about any of this until my next therapy session because it just leads to panic and will render ineffective anything my therapist is trying to accomplish with me. I know my family and friends will never let us starve or go homeless, and I guess that's what I should focus on, that even if we are destitute and lose everything, we will still have a roof over our heads and food in our bellies. That is a far cry from what I WANT, and I will certainly do everything in my power to keep it from happening, but it's better than living in a van down by the river.

OCD, Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying... That's A Lie. I'm Worried As SHIT.

I saw my therapist this morning. This was my second appointment with her, and I can't tell you how glad I am to be seeing someone again, AND to have it be someone that I feel actually, oh, maybe knows how to do something besides just let me talk at her? Someone who might actually have some ideas and guidance and maybe, oh, KNOW a little bit something about mental health?

*cough* Sorry. I might be just a little bit bitter about my last experience with a therapist. The last lady was... well, she was very nice. But I probably would have done better paying one of my close friends $100 to sit with me for an hour and listen, for all the good she did me. My friends would have slapped me around a little bit more. (with LOVE, of course.)

So. When I met this therapist last week, the session was me just trying to remember everything I wanted to tell her about in my life that I feel gives me trouble or that I'd like to work on. HUGE list, but a lot of it is interrelated, so I am hoping that as we get some of it sorted out, all of it will start just falling into place.

This week, given the magnitude of the financial crisis we just 'discovered', it was pretty much all about that and how I processed the stress over the weekend (by obsessing and thinking in circles and living on the sheer edge of panic, why, how do YOU deal with your personal crises?) and where I'm at now and what I'd like to accomplish.

At some point I brought out my list. You all just KNEW I made a list, right? Maybe I told you I made a list in my last post, I can't recall. But even if I didn't, I know you know how much I love lists. This particular list has a morning routine consisting of everything I think I SHOULD do in the mornings, an after dinner routine of everything I think I SHOULD do in the evenings, and a giant list of all the things I think I should do in between during the day to make the money I need ($55 a day! my brain keeps screaming at me. FIFTY FIVE DOLLARS A DAAAAAY!). Not on the list are the parts where I have to break for meals, spend time with the kids and the husband, and maybe occasionally stop and enjoy life. Because when you're in panic mode, YOU DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THOSE THINGS.

Panic also makes your hair change color. It's true.

I started explaining the list to her, starting with the morning routine. It's a lot of stuff. She stopped me early on and asked if I thought I was setting myself up to do too much. "Not really," I replied uncertainly. "I mean, look at the stuff that's on there. Each item really shouldn't take all that long, you know? I get frazzled because the past few days I've done it, it's taken me much longer than I thought it should, but these are all things I HAVE to do, and so I do them, but then I don't have time for anything else, but look... this one should only take five minutes, this one's only about ten, I cut this other thing out because I felt like it was taking too long..." She asked if I had trouble with any of the tasks, or if I thought it would be beneficial if I stuck to my routine for a week and identified what parts work for me, what doesn't, what I dislike. "I can do some of that already!" I said. "For instance, feeding the pets and cleaning the litterbox. It NEEDS to be done. I love my pets. But I really dislike those tasks. Probably more than normal. I don't know if anyone LIKES doing them, but take the feeding for instance - ever since I was pregnant with my second daughter, I never really lost my Dog Nose (you know, that mega enhanced sense of smell you get while pregnant), and the smell of even the dry food makes me gag now. It's awful. But it has to be done." She asked if I could give some of these tasks away, for instance to my kids. "Sure! I mean, they're capable. But here's the thing. I have... um... some anxieties about that. Pet food is kind of gross, right? And I have to, HAVE TO, wash my hands after I touch it. My husband, he could feed them and then go make us dinner and never see a sink in between, but it makes my skin crawl. And the thought of my kids touching the pet food really squicks me out. I know it shouldn't be a big deal, they can just wash their hands, and I don't want them to be freaked out by it, but it BOTHERS ME."

She asked if I thought we should test me for OCD. Heh. MAYBE! Maybe just a LITTLE!

So, next week that's ON like donkey kong. My husband told me I was gonna ace that test. I'm not sure what he means by that, exactly.

It runs in the family too, apparently. I picked my kids up from my mom's afterwards and was talking to her and learned about some funny OCD-style quirks she has that I wasn't entirely aware of. And my brother came home from work in the middle of our conversation and he's got some too. It's a family affair, oooo, a family affair...

It would be really nice to get some of my anxieties under control. I'm looking forward to this, believe it or not.

In the meantime, she tasked me this week with just doing my morning routine every day. Good or bad, stick with it. We're going for CONSISTENCY. I am to make note of anxieties I feel, perceived roadblocks, dislikes, issues, whatever. She asked me to ignore the rest of my list for the week. IGNORE MY LIST?? 'Can you do that?' she asked me. "Umm... I don't know?" I said sheepishly. "Can I focus on just ONE thing?" "OK." She said. "But just ONE. Nothing else. I don't want to give you too much this week. I think that's plenty."

But I WANT to do the whole list!!

So that's my assignment.

On the drive home, I was thinking about all the other things on the list and trying to figure out what I can 'outsource' to my husband so more things get done.

I suspect that's probably something like cheating.

So I've done nothing this afternoon so far but think about it and feel anxious because the world is going to BLOW UP  if I can't do EVERYTHING on my list RIGHT NOW.

This is what happened to me last time I ignored my list. True story.

Surprise! This is turning into the CRAZY BLOG! Bet you didn't see that coming!

Step One of my financial repair journey: stop worrying and being so anxious about so many things. It seems this might be a much bigger process than I had suspected. Until I started examining it recently, I hadn't quite realized how badly anxiety has permeated my life over the past few years. I walk around in a near-constant state of anxiety these days, even when I don't have something specific to be anxious about. Even though I am just starting to work on it, I can't tell you how relieved I feel to be addressing it. I am looking forward to feeling better.

Also, I should really see someone about that eye wound.

you might also enjoy reading:
Penniless
So Basically I Live In A Constant State Of Anxiety No Matter What
Lead Me Not Into Temptation... I Can Find It Just Fine By Myself