Snickie doesn't overcommit herself during break.

[Snickie]

ClarinetFest is over. Vacation is over. Flash Fiction Month is over. Stomach bug is hopefully over. I have a performance next Sunday with my clarinet people. Classes don't start until August 26. I've got some free time to waste.

 

Goals: 

 

Get buff (not really). Pick up where I left off on last month's challenge. Make it not boring. Do the side quest maybe. And when the semester starts and I know my work schedule, schedule gym time. I mainly want to work on bench presses so I can up my pushup game. And rows so maybe by the end of this challenge I'll be able to do one pull-up proper. And figure out how to be physically productive on my non weight training days.

 

Eat right and eat enough. Obviously. Plan meals while I still can and then stick to the plan. I'm looking at some combo of paleo and low FODMAP at least initially to try to heal my gut after that bug I've had.

 

Finish some damn books. Read minimum 500 pages.

 

Get ahead on chemistry with Khan Academy. I don't have any hard goals for this yet. I have to look at what exactly the class covers first.

Get ahead on C with SoloLearn. Just try to get as far as possible before classes start. I'm taking this course online so I need to be on my game because in the past I have not done online courses well.

 

Make a Doing Life binder. Because life is hard and when I clean my brushes annually *cough* and have to get cat pee smell out of carpet on a twelve dollar budget, I have to look all the things up all over again. Add a page every other day or when I come up with something.

 

Logging everyday is a pain so instead I'll log here every workout day. Track my food for sure (I fell off this wagon when I was in Tennessee).

 

I would like to build a reward system but I don't know how that's going to work. Maybe something like "Finish these things by xx:00, watch two episodes of One Punch Man or one episode of Alone." Or "finish the books, score a skein of yarn." I dunno. Reward systems are hard.

[Snickie]

Placeholder for future log format. It will probably look much like the one from last month.

[Manarelle]

5 hours ago, Snickie said:

Reward systems are hard.

 

Yup, agreed. Something to consider though... would a reward motivate you? For me, I've found it generally doesn't... if I don't want to do the thing, knowing I'll get/do/see is not sufficient enticement for me to do it; usually the looming sense of self-admonishment for saying I'll do the thing and then not doing it is what prompts me to get off my lazy butt and do something. If a reward would help you power through the "I don't wannas" then set a reward. If not.... nbd. Figure out how your brain works, first. 

[Snickie]

Quote

In terms of difficulty, it is one hundred percent easier to not do a thing than it is to do it.

In terms of instant relief, canceling plans is like heroin. Such pure joy.

 

- John Mulaney

 

@Manarelle you're probably right. A reward system has not worked for me in the past. Only negative reinforcement (i.e. shame, taking away fun things, etc). Which really sucks because I have a tendency to get really hardass about it and be really mean to myself.

 

"Oh you didn't have time to do the thing you were supposed to? Don't have room on your desk and got distracted sorting your kindergarten drawings by color scheme? Let's smash your phone and indiscriminately chuck all the contents of your desk off a cliff. Look! No more distractions! Oh, your chemistry homework was in that pile? Guess you should've thought of that before you decided to spend all day yesterday binging Animal Crossing Let's Plays on YouTube!" Which of course I can't actually do those things which makes me feel even more powerless and worthless and helpless to my own nature and so on the worst days I do the only thing I can do which is deal blunt damage to myself, usually to my legs which I can hide pretty easily since I wear jeans all the time.

You can see why I'm trying to implement something different. Something less self-destructive.

 

[Manarelle]

7 hours ago, Snickie said:

you're probably right. A reward system has not worked for me in the past. Only negative reinforcement (i.e. shame, taking away fun things, etc). Which really sucks because I have a tendency to get really hardass about it and be really mean to myself.

 

I may have asked this in the past, forgive me, but have you looking into getting a therapist? I was really mean to myself through my 20s, when other events made me recognize I needed help. It was scary and felt stigma'ed and I felt stupid and worthless for not being able to cope on my own, but it was also a massively, lifechangingly beneficial thing to do, and helped me change how I treat myself, my habits, and my life. 

[Snickie]

1 minute ago, Manarelle said:

 

I may have asked this in the past, forgive me, but have you looking into getting a therapist? I was really mean to myself through my 20s, when other events made me recognize I needed help. It was scary and felt stigma'ed and I felt stupid and worthless for not being able to cope on my own, but it was also a massively, lifechangingly beneficial thing to do, and helped me change how I treat myself, my habits, and my life. 

Wow, clearly I was feeling it in my last post. It's been a long day, I've been in the car for 13 hours with Chatty Kathy and my dad who can get away with being disengaged and my mother who has become increasingly useless at navigation since GPS was made commonplace and wanted me to navigate from the backseat but thought I was too sick to drive (I wasn't). And I feel like I got duped on this vacation, like I wasted it sleeping (in Knoxville - miss chatty Kathy snoooooores and so I didn't sleep as well) and being sick (we arrived at my grandmother's house on Monday and I was throwing up Tuesday).

 

Story of my driving issues plus oversharing ranty rant which I should probably delete after I put it into my journal/diary/whatever

I've always been pretty attached to my driving privileges.

 

Literally this one time about eight years ago (I was 16 maybe) I had a dream where we were getting ready to drive to my grandmother's house and I had begged and pleaded with Mom to let me drive part of the trip and she finally FINALLY said yes, and so I get in the front seat to drive, and I look over to my right because whoever's in the passenger seat is throwing a bag of cheetos out the window (why???) and when I look back in front of me I'm in the backseat and my mom is driving. And I'm like "wait no I'm supposed to be driving this part" and she's like "well that's your fault since you were in the backseat" and I'm like "but I was in the FRONT seat!" and I woke up angry crying.  For a while, I couldn't even talk about it without angry crying again. Eventually I told my mom about it (while angry crying) and she and my dad laughed in my face because basically I was mad at her for something that literally. never. happened. which is stupid and I knew it was stupid and that just made me even more upset of course. Irrationality at its finest. My friend's mom who is not a psychoanalyst suggested it was something to do with control issues because my mother is a fear-driven control freak and it feels like she keeps a really tight leash because she's afraid I'll get hurt and wants to do everything herself and then gets mad at me when I don't do things. "She's just trying to protect you. She works so hard and does so much." And she does. How dare I feel angry at my mother for trying to be a good mother?!!?! (Which is not at all what my friend's mom was trying to insinuate.)

 

When I was still on my learner's permit, if the weather was nice I would drive to my music lessons every Sunday and she would drive back because "her nerves were too shot to let me drive back" and this pattern never altered. One weekend my grandmother was staying with us and decided to tag along at the last second (which I really didn't want her doing for multiple reasons) and so my mom was like "oh, you're not driving, I'm driving" and I cried the entire hour drive there. Which was stupid and I tried to hide it but I'm really terrible at hiding it when I'm angry because of the crying. This of course upset my grandmother who, upon being told why I was crying, was like "I would've been okay with her driving!" which was not the point because it didn't matter what she thought, only Mom.

 

I don't throw temper tantrums. I tried that once when I was two and I couldn't get myself to cry so I banged my head on the tile floor and my parents were like "Looks like that hurt. Bet you won't do that again." Crying never got me what I wanted. In fact, many times it has sealed the deal on me NOT getting what I wanted. I don't know why this behavior still exists in me. I don't understand why it works for other people because it is so ingrained in me that Crying Doesn't Accomplish Anything Ever. I don't understand why I'm expected to bend when other people start crying for one reason or another because those closest to me never bent for me. As for me, Pushed past the breaking point in public and break down crying? Shame on me because it should not take crying to get things, only civil discourse. Making a scene is bad. Apologize profusely to store personnel for crying. Lie (terribly) about the reason I'm crying because the truth is stupid. That's how I operate. It's a terrible way to operate when that happens. One time I cried because my mom (who hates driving) promised me that she would let me drive part of the 12 hour drive and then she got such bad road fever that she didn't and drove the whole way and of course I cried and I was upset all week at my grandmother's about it and she took the first leg home because twisty curvy mountain road at 5am (which, okay, fine) and then said "hey you drive" while I was still crying and I'm like "why are you letting me drive? I'm just a crybaby clearly I can't keep a calm enough head to drive" (which is total bull because I've driven full-out bawling before for Other Reasons and been perfectly fine) but I drove and it was the weirdest feeling because I was driving, crying had gotten me what I wanted, and it felt better and I should not have felt that way. I have such an unhealthy relationship with crying. I might be an idealist in a bad way in this regard.

 

I keep trying to rationalize today to myself. She did not have to drive all 13 hours, she had another perfectly capable driver (with better directional ability and less prone to road rage) in the backseat. I was fine. If I had gotten to drive I might not have been so irritable at the very end of the trip. And then I beat myself up with "her car, her rules" and "I live on her paycheck, she owns me" and "stop crying you baby" and "if you can't control your emotions then clearly you can't be trusted to drive" and just. Most of the drive I was angry. She kept asking me about traffic updates and I gave them to her until my phone died at hour 6 and I couldn't reach the phone cord so my dad plugged it in the front and then she wanted more traffic updates and so I gave up my phone about 8 hours in so she could see all the traffic reports (I have a magnet on my phone that goes on the little magnet stand in the AC vent and she doesn't so her phone would be down in the cupholder and dangerous (and illegal) to look at while driving). My iPod was inexplicably dead despite not using it at all during the week. My noise-cancelling headphones were being useless against voices and the music coming from the speakers. I read my book angry because I could barely focus. Literally hearing the British lady on Waze making traffic updates was comforting to me and it's usually the opposite (like "okay, Waze, I know how/where to exit the Interstate, I know this area, your job is to point me to the fastest way, you don't need to repeat directions to me every 5 feet"). None of that justifies the things I said to her after we dropped off our company.

 

I should make a huge giant disclaimer. My mom is not abusive. She was never the type to be "stop crying or I'll give you something real to cry about." She is superwoman and I love her (which I don't tell her nearly enough) and she's getting better at loosening the reins since I am an adult (although not necessarily an Adult since I still live in her house and largely on her paycheck, I'm such a leech). And she is always stressed because being superwoman is not easy or sustainable and she does it anyway. Although my conflict is with her, I do not blame her for being in it (except when she breaks a promise) because most of the time I'm the one making a big deal out of things.

 

 

Clearly I am feeling it all day.

 

I've thought about therapy but my insurance doesn't cover it (thanks, ObamaCare) and most of the time I stew in it for a bit and then I can move on. I know it's not a healthy thing and I end up dumping onto one of my irl best friends sometimes, or a group of random strangers on the Internet. I probably need it. My mom definitely needs it, especially come October thru March when my grandmother comes back south to live with us. Her PCP even said she needed it. And my dad, being chronically ill, almost definitely needs it. We all have our excuses for why we won't do it.

[WhiteGhost]

Sounds like the drive was as miserable as I was afraid it might be. 

[Manarelle]

11 hours ago, Snickie said:

I've thought about therapy but my insurance doesn't cover it (thanks, ObamaCare) and most of the time I stew in it for a bit and then I can move on. I know it's not a healthy thing and I end up dumping onto one of my irl best friends sometimes, or a group of random strangers on the Internet. I probably need it. My mom definitely needs it, especially come October thru March when my grandmother comes back south to live with us. Her PCP even said she needed it. And my dad, being chronically ill, almost definitely needs it. We all have our excuses for why we won't do it.

 

Honestly, I haven't met a human yet that didn't either need therapy or already have gotten it... no one is born knowing all the answers, and we all have issues from parents, friends, or just plain the world. It's not a bad thing, any more than going to a doctor because our bodies can't fight off a sickness is. There are a wide variety of options that are either low-cost, sliding-scale, or even free out there, but it does take some effort (ironically, something that is difficult to do when you're struggling with issues) to navigate through them and find a doctor who's a good match for you (link1, link2, link3, link4). The first therapist I saw was free through the university I was attending at the time, but she was exactly what I needed - snarky and sarcastic right back at me when I acted that way to her, and then dropping insightful bombs for me to mull over between sessions. 

 

Spoiler

I will 100% drop this if you want, but please consider getting help. There are several points in your rant that are, yes, abuse - it doesn't have to be physical, and it doesn't even have to seem maliciously intended at the time, but it's still abuse. Lack of support, particularly on issues you already struggle with, is just as damaging as outright abuse. 

 

Your mom may be a superwoman, and may be working on improving her own issues and dealing with you better, but she's still human, and makes mistakes. You're trying to deal with her mistakes, your mistakes, and unproductive coping mechanisms, and it sounds like it's getting tangled up in your head with nowhere to go except blaming yourself. I'm not saying blame your mom, either; the blame game doesn't help anyone process and move forward - what does is figuring out the underlying issues (which are often either forgotten, overlooked, or repressed) and learning new, productive coping mechanisms for when difficult situations arise. 

 

Just like physical fitness, mental fitness is not a case of "ok, I did x,y, and z and I will be healthy for the rest of my life!" We're all on nf trying to improve our physical health - trying, making mistakes, learning, trying new things, and working on making the things that do work for us a habit until life hits us with something new we have to figure out how to work with. Mental health is the same way: I tried ignoring the patterns I learned by dealing with a "superwoman" perfectionist mother and I sort of limped along, coping but not thriving, until life threw one more issue at me and I just fell apart, very publicly, on a poor, unsuspecting woman who simply complimented my resume. I was mortified, but thankfully she was insightful enough to gently suggest seeing a therapist, conveniently right down the hall, and I started to figure out why those patterns I'd learned weren't healthy... "here, try out some new ones, see how they work. Oh, reverse crunches work for you, but you can't do pushups? That's ok, it looks like your core isn't strong enough for that yet, try incline pushups for now, see if that works." No one is perfect, no one can do everything right off the bat, and most things we try either need or would greatly benefit from outside advice on how to do them properly and sustainably - sometimes from more than one outside source, even. 

 

Being mean to yourself, physically or mentally, is not productive or healthy; all it does is continue a cycle of feeling badly, lashing out, and then feeling badly again over how you acted. I will never forget the day my therapist asked me "Why are you so mean to yourself?" I gave the flippant, standby answer I'd always given: "Because somebody has to be," and she came back with, "Why? Who does it benefit?" 

Silence.

And then...

"What would it look like to treat yourself with the same care and compassion you give to others?"

 

Food for thought. As I said, I'll 100% drop this if you want, but please consider getting help.

 

[Snickie]

In a bit, after I clean my room and get out my laptop (unpacking and housecleaning yay), I'm going to move the mental health spoilers stuff to PMs.

 

In other news, weigh-in this morning shows I've dropped 3 pounds since my last proper weigh-in (which was admittedly in June) and probably 5 pounds overall since that was a low reading and I know where my weight tends to hover. I'm already a stick figure so I didn't need that. Trying real food again today although still going relatively bland. All seems well so far.

 

Gig next Sunday. It's a long one so I need to practice clarinet this week.

 

Need to work on some goals too. I'll probably sit down and do that sometime tomorrow after I bathe the dog (whose rash is coming back ugh).

[Snickie]

Some of my Goals and also messing with BBCode

 

Beginner bodyweight circuit

 

Exercise:                                  Last    ---->   Goal 

 

     Squat (3 lb)                        7x3                9x3

         Calf raises (1 leg)       16x3x2       16x3x2 weighted (backpack)

     Knee pushups                    5x3                7x3

          Walking lunges          5x3x2            7-8-7x2

Inverted rows bent knees        5x3         7x3

                       Plank                30x3              45x3

       Jumping jacks                28x3              30x3 is fine

 

Stuff for off-days!

 

I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts.

Deedeledeee

[spoiler]Big ones, small ones

Some as big as your                    head![/spoiler]

Okay so basically I have to do my format right the first time, no room for errors. But that tag works. Yay.

[WhiteGhost]

Looks like some pretty solid (and realistic!) goals

 

[Snickie]

Guess who has had THE MOST unPRODUCTIVE WEEK EVER!!!! 

[Image fail]

 

At least my dresser and desktop are clean. Holy crap my desktop is clean. I don't think that's happened in ten years.

[Manarelle]

On 8/10/2019 at 4:13 PM, Snickie said:

At least my dresser and desktop are clean. Holy crap my desktop is clean. I don't think that's happened in ten years.

 

Clearing up 10 years of not-clean sounds pretty productive.

[Snickie]

Spreadsheet

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1F48e3V_bMEJJxbC3CV419FcV9EVXpS6uceRfxdb3RCU/edit?usp=drivesdk

[raptron]

Thorough tracking sheet.

[Snickie]

So I'm not dead (yet - there's still a hurricane to contend with). I have a feeling I'm going to get a lot of reading done this weekend.

[raptron]

3 hours ago, Snickie said:

So I'm not dead (yet - there's still a hurricane to contend with). I have a feeling I'm going to get a lot of reading done this weekend.

Glad you're doing okay! Hope the upcoming storm isn't too bad.

[Snickie]

2 minutes ago, raptron said:

Glad you're doing okay! Hope the upcoming storm isn't too bad.

Lol we're looking at a direct hit and as of the 11a advisory it's supposed to be a cat 4 at landfall. We'll know more in about 2 hours. And it's not like Irma where it'll have gone up the length of the state before hitting us. (Apologies to those who went through Irma in south Florida. My town got the eye after it had weakened to cat 1.)

[raptron]

Welp, hope you and yours get the hecc out of there then.

[Snickie]

UUUUUUUUUUUUuuuuuuuuggggggghhhhhhhhh just waiting for the storm to get here

By which I mean turn north and go back out to sea and definitely stop bothering the U.S. East Coast and Grand Bahama.

Hunkering down. We're pretty well inland so I'm only really worried about winds causing tree damage.

But I get storm anxiety and we're going to be dealing with the thing over the next 2-3 days. Rainbands are supposed to start moving in later today. Tuesday night / Wednesday morning will be the worst of it. But I already don't like it when we just get a 20-minute rain shower in the middle of the night.

[Manarelle]

Anticipation is the worst. Hope it passes over you guys quickly and safely.

[raptron]

Sounds like maybe y'all will be a-ok after all. That Bahamian damage is insane though.

[Snickie]

In case you haven't heard the news, Florida barely got anything. We at my house didn't get anything worse than our usual afternoon thunderstorms (which still knock off dead tree limbs because we never had our trees trimmed after Irma, and I'll attach a picture of what our yard looked like after that storm) and some folks we know who live much closer to the coast than we do (and do actually take care of their trees) said they didn't even get a twig in their yard. I still slept in the bathroom on Tuesday night with the radio on (I don't sleep well in the rain). So Florida is fine. And the toll roads are toll roads again (we had suspension of toll collection to make it easier for people to evacuate). And now it is hot and dry and we're back to breaking heat records.

 

Prayers go out to the folks in the Carolinas who got a category 1 Dorian landfall and a bunch of tornadoes. Also anyone in New England and Canada who might still be getting remnants. (I don't know anymore, I stopped tracking.)

 

Book alert: the mockingbird is dead. The mockingbird is officially dead.

Now I'm on Farewell to Manzanar which is a relatively short read.

 

Who wants to help me get my life and schedule back to par for the next 5 week challenge?

[Manarelle]

Glad to hear you're unharmed and safe; that was a big storm but seems to have largely missed continental US. Grats on finishing Mockingbird, that's a heavy book. How do you feel you did overall, not counting hurricane time?

[raptron]

Glad y'all were fine after all, given the capacity for destruction this storm displayed elsewhere! Another 5 weeks, ho!