Inkjet iron-on transfers are genius.

Next up, Pickering Community Concert Band Children’s Concert.
Where: Forest Brook Community Church (60 Kearney Dr, Ajax)
When: Sunday, March 27, 2:30 p.m.
Cost:$10 Adults, $5 Children

Next, we’re back to UTSC for our regular concert band’s performance. (It’s going to be AWESOME! Come to this one!)
Where: UofT Scarborough, AC223
When: Saturday, April 2, 7 – 9 p.m.
Cost: Free!

And finally, PCCB is celebrating it’s 20th Anniversary by – surprise surprise – having a concert!
Where: Forest Brook Community Church (60 Kearney Dr, Ajax)
When: Saturday, April 16, 7 p.m.
Cost:$15 Adults, $10 Children

Yay band!

And look, I’m in the picture in this newspaper article! Yeah that’s right, my website is linked at the end of it. W00t. *So proud of Sean!*

I’ve been able to make it to work on a few days (three out of ten of the most recent workdays.. not super, but I’m proud that I went in when I did.) Today is not one of those days. Maybe these feelings will pass and I can go in later. These are the problems I’m struggling with:

(1) The panic attacks / fear of them.
(2) Whenever I feel the tiniest bit ill, I freak out and can’t function until I sleep or until I have Ativan, which I don’t like to take.
(3) I can’t separate my personal issues from my other life responsibilities. I can’t just push stuff out of my mind while I go to work or band or anything. These things stay in my head, constantly, rendering me useless. I don’t know what has happened to my ability to “rally” and just get things done. I feel like the power to be able to do that is just out of reach. I used to be able to find it, but I can’t right now. So instead, I sit it corners and cry and rock back-and-forth and and pull my hair and tense up into a ball to the point that I give myself muscle cramps that last for days. This is all I can do.
(4) Work is hard because I’m having a really hard time focusing, and thinking. I know in my head exactly how to write their program, but actually getting myself to do it is inexplicably difficult. If I was allowed to work from home, I’d be able to do it. Blast music, sing along, put on the tv… Distract those parts of my brain that need distracting in order to work. But telecommuting is not allowed. Hurrah.
(5) What the heck do I want to do with my life!??!? This never goes away. I don’t know what is going to make me happy. I don’t want a job that I can just *tolerate*, I want something I *like*. I need to find something to like. It’s not Comp Sci. It’s maybe teaching. It’s maybe psychology. What else is there? Or, actually, I suspect I’m never going to be a person who lives for their job. Maybe I should be focused on finding someone to love, instead of finding a job to like. It’s all about the cuddles. Yeah.

Phew.

Last Friday I took part in a competitive essay competition for the VARI Scholarship at UofT (for teacher’s college). There were 13 finalists and there’s usually 4 awards. So.. that would be nice, if I won. I’m not exactly in the best state for essay writing, but it went okay. Wrote something about incorporating technology into education… easy enough. If I win, I’ll be an OISE girl. Downtown every day. Oy.

Moving on.. I have the most amazing people in my life. People who come to hug me and let me cry on them, people who will spend an hour lying on the floor with me helping me breathe, people who manage to say just the right words to take the edge off all the badness I’m feeling. People who check up on me without being overbearing. People who want real answers when they ask me how I’m doing. I’m so loved. I love being loved. And I love loving back. This is the only thing that is important.

As it turns out, my “Sort Out My Life” day has coincided with “Let’s Talk” day.  I didn’t realize the timeliness of my post last night! Greg and Alecia both blogged about their experiences, too. I best way I can think of to describe how I felt after reading their stories is that I felt hugged. I really do wish that more people would talk about mental illness. I think that being in psychology has made me forget about the stigma around it. I really don’t have a problem talking about it, and I don’t freak out when I find out other people have mental illnesses. I forget what it’s like to not want to talk about it. I feel like people don’t actually know me until they know this aspect of me. I need them to know, so that they understand my behaviours that might seem “weird” otherwise. When people know, my life is easier. I can demand aisle seats, leave to take calm-down walks, and tell people that I need them to distract me / hug me / get away from me. I can tell my friends that I’m not feeling social right now, and I’ll get back to them when I feel better. It was much harder when I used to make up excuses for things. Talking is good! I feel so much better today There’s still lots of work to come in my near future, but I feel good about this day. Thanks to all the people who made it better for me.

This is my sixth week of work now.  It should be fine.  They give me things to program, and I program them.  I listen to music and write code.   I make websites.  These are things that I like.  I do them for free for other people, and now I’m getting paid.   This should be easy.  But it’s not, because my brain hates me.  Tell me to do these things at home, and I can do them.  Tell me I need to go to a building and sit in a cubicle and do these things, and I can’t.   Instead, I think about the fact that the cubicle is so far away from all the exits of the building.  I think about the fact that I’m hungry, and being hungry is making me panicky, but being panicky renders me unable to eat.  I think about the fact that I’m thinking, and not writing code.   I feel guilty.   I want to cry, but hold it back.   Getting panicky.  Okay, need to walk.  Get up, walk to the bathroom.  Calm down.  Go back to cubicle.  Repeat.  Somehow I’m actually getting work done while all this is happening, but if I was at home, this work would’ve been done about 10 times faster.  And somehow this is still faster than some other people work. Braintorturebraintorturebraintorture LUNCH TIME!  I go home.  Put on TV, and try not to think.  Or take a short nap.  Or like today, cry for twenty minutes, clean myself up, and then head back to work.   The afternoon is usually worse than the morning.  Two nights a week I have band, and those are the only times I feel human.

Today I failed at the going-back-after-lunch part.  Bad day.  Bad, bad day.  I’m staying home tomorrow, too.  Since stopping my anxiety medication over a year ago, I’ve had lots of bad days, but in between the bad days, there was lots of time to reset back to a functional state.  Two-day weekends are not cutting it.  I’ve been crying myself to sleep, and constantly feel like I need to run away from everything.  I simultaneously want people to stay away from me, and to hug me.  I’m depressed, and anxious, and I’m going to the doctor tomorrow.  Déjà first year.  But not really, cause I’ll never let it get that bad again.

All of this just makes me so terrified about the future.  This job is pretty much as close to “ideal anxiety conditions” as I could get.  It’s 10 minutes from my house, I’m mostly left alone to work, I get my own space, my boss is super nice and understanding, and I can do the work.   If I can’t do this… I don’t know how I’m supposed to get through life.  There are work-from-home jobs, yes.  I could do those.  Then I’d be okay.  But I don’t want those.  I don’t know what I want.  I want to want things.

A few weeks ago I actually gave a presentation about mental illness at work.  That’s good, everyone knows not to stigmatize me now, I guess.

I am jealous of the people who don’t have to deal with this…  who can just go to places and be social and do things.  It’s really impressive.  I don’t know what I’m going to get from my doctor tomorrow.  Probably some sort of medication, but I don’t want to take whatever I was on before.  Maybe something different will not cause the emotional numbing effect (although right now, numb sounds good.)   Therapy is good stuff, but I don’t have insurance right now.  It’s probably worth spending the money though, anyways.

In conclusion, things are stupid, I want to be on a beach, writing this has made me feel a little better, and if you see the following bottle of shampoo anywhere, BUY THEM ALL and I will pay you back.  (Pantene Classic Care Shampoo or 2in1)

NOT the one in this bottle:

My pink laptop is even girlier now.   (Seemed impossible, I know!)  I’m always suprised when my attempts at sewing turn out okay.  Well.. don’t look too closely at the buttonholes.  “Okay” is a bit of a stretch.

GIANT PILE OF CS FLASH CARDS! YAY! It’s pretty hilarious that I used to do things like this.

Oh yes, that is indeed an index. Involving coloured star stickers.

Here are more samples!

ZOMG, NOT ==

moth – 1

Okay, this one is worth writing down.

Yup.

Programmer: a person who writes computer programs.

Srsly?

The slashes.  They go that way.

Also:  don’t spend so much time making flash cards.

I think this guy escaped from the MAT223 pile.  Poor dot product, you don’t get a star sticker!

Somewhere between second and third year, I figured out that cramming all the stuff into my brain two days before an exam gives me approximately the same grade as when I do that craziness ^^^  This marked the end of the flash card era.

My lack of driving is motivated by a number of things: (1) I’m not excited about it. (2) Driving is still terrifying. (3) Parking is expensive. (4) I’m trying to care about the environment. The operative word in that last one being “trying”. Up until two summers ago, I was basically a “yeah, climate change, whatevs” person. Then I did my summer working in the software engineering lab at U of T, and I met a bunch of super inspiring people who are incredibly passionate about this issue. Apparently this sort of passion is contagious, because I actually *do* think about the environment now, and well.. it’s not like i’m doing anything big to try to “fix” things, but I’m certainly trying to avoid things that are bad. Like driving. I’m not driving anywhere that I wasn’t already going before, and if anything, this is actually less driving, because Mom was dropping me off and picking me up from these places before. Now it’s just a there-and-back drive instead of a there-and-back-and-there-and-back drive.

So now I have a few people in my life who really care about the world and it’s future. (I also have a few people who think that the climate change movement is a conspiracy set up by the government, but anyway…) Everyone else is “meh.” As you can imagine, I’ve had a lot of conversations about my car this last week. When I mention that I’m trying to avoid non-essential driving for environmental reasons, the reactions I’ve got are mostly “What!? Weirdo.” YAY ENCOURAGEMENT. This is not helpful, since like I said before, I feel like I’m *trying* to care, and not like I actually *do* care. I know that the trying can lead to actual caring, so trying is good. That’s right, brain, I’m going to trick you into caring.

I went downstairs to talk to my brother about all this. Adam I tend to think alike on most things, so I wanted to ask him why it is that we don’t really care. We’re smart kids. We’re nice, we’re compassionate — why don’t we care? He said the usual “it’s futile” thing — we need everybody to make changes, and that’s never going to happen. Fair enough. I don’t really think that’s how I feel, though. *thinking.* I think some of it comes from a dark, emo place where I just don’t quite care what happens to the world. People are weird. Sentience is weird… weird in a such a way that when I think about it too much, it just seems like it is wrong, and that I don’t want it. It’s strange that I have such a negative view toward people in general, but the opposite toward specific people that I know. I care so SO much about the people in my life. It’s pretty much the only thing I can get myself to care about. I have a hard time restraining myself from telling people that I love them, because I know it’s not the “normal” context to say such a thing. (This feeling usually gets translated into hugs, since they are more appropriate.) Yeah, I know that climate change will affect these specific people I care about, but somehow that just doesn’t do it for me. I’m intensely fascinated by (and jealous of!) people who are able to stay consistently devoted to issues. I do not understand how they do it, or what it would feel like. Does it come naturally? Is it difficult? Does it waiver? How often? Is that kind of person in me somewhere, too, but I’m just too detached and bummed out to “find her”? Many questions! Speaking of this whole caring thing, I know that by tomorrow I won’t care about the answers to these questions nearly as much as I do at this moment. So inconsistent.

I think that’s all I have to say about that right now. Moving on to Rant Time:  When did “I could care less” become a thing? You mean the opposite of what you are saying, people. It’s “couldn’t.”  You couldn’t care less.  If you could care less, you should do that… and then devote that extra caring power to caring about climate change!  Smart!