Category Archives: anxiety

~real~ness

Oh, well, hello there. Guess it’s been a minute.

A couple of weeks ago Baraboo was in the news. You probably read about it or at least saw the photo on Twitter – there’s no reason for me to post it again here. Those stupid idiot kids made me so angry and as I was thinking about what I could possibly do to renounce it, I decided to pitch an article about it to a few news outlets. A couple passed, but I ended up placing it with Refinery29 and really couldn’t be happier with how that all went; the editors were super nice and helpful and gave good edits. It was funny because I was literally in the middle of taking an online course through Catapult about how to pitch when the Baraboo story broke, and so before the final meeting I was like “GUYS! I did it! It worked!” 

So I’m proud of that. It’s my most “prestigious” byline so far and, forgive the vulgar mention of writerly compensation, paid well. I also registered myself for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference in March, which makes me feel even more like a ~real~ writer. I haven’t been to a professional conference in a few years, and it’s sort of weird when you’re doing it all on your own instead of through an employer. It’s in Portland, which is quite convenient. I’m hoping to connect with some #Binders from Twitter (women and nonbinary writers group) and whoever else wants to be my friend. I don’t have enough writer friends.

My parents visited the weekend before Thanksgiving. Not embarrassed to say I’ve never been so happy to see them in my life. It was also my first time “hosting” them, for consecutive days, in my own home – I’d like to think I did an okay job at it. Mom taught me how to make pie – apple and pumpkin – and we feasted on roasted sweet potato salad, popovers, mashed potatoes, and elote corn pudding. V and I had a ball showing them our favorite places – Green Lake, Portage Bay Cafe (that one’s just my fave), Cupcake Royale, Lincoln Park, the lovely Metropolitan Market. Which is really just a super bougie grocery store that has in-fucking-credible fresh chocolate chip cookies.

About 3.5 months into Seattle life, I’ve found a therapist with whom I think I click well enough and who checks my arbitrary demographic boxes (within 20 years of my age, female). We’re going to talk a lot about my ~feelings~ regarding my career and where I’m at right now (am I a ~real~ writer? shouldn’t I have a full-time job? am I just lazy? is this all really just late-stage capitalism’s fault? what is all this guilt I feel?), and the infertility stuff, and my general anxiety/depression that is currently pretty well-managed by medication but is also made easier to bear when I have the ear of a person who has no stake in my life and can just point out the connecting threads that I don’t see on my own.

Speaking of psychiatric help, we’ve put Isis on a small dose of Prozac to hopefully make her stop gnawing off all her tummy and leg fur. It’s going to take awhile to start working, but for some reason it’s already had the effect of her no longer sleeping in our bed at night. I’m totally 100% fine with that. Really. Doesn’t make me the least bit sad or concerned. She’s fine, I’m fine, it’s all very very fine.

What I’m Reading:

  • Just finished “Children of Blood and Bone” by Tomi Adeyemi and thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s YA, so there’s that, and it’s also probably best categorized as fantasy, so it’s definitely not my usual cup of tea. Roxane Gay wrote a good review of it though, and her word is basically enough for me to try just about anything. I loved the world-building. It’s a common enough “kids on a dangerous quest” kind of format, with a lot of magic and some quirky/arguably unnecessary ancillary characters, but the protagonist and her motley crew are fully realized and fun to root for.
  • This article I wish I’d written on yoga as the new country club in American society. Centered on a white yoga instructor’s bastardization of “namaste” into a jokey pun, it’s the sort of cultural appropriation that seems really innocuous on the surface but has layers of white supremacy and upper-class entitlement underneath. Fave line: “the question should not be ‘How can I do what I want?’ but ‘Why do I think I have a right to what I want?'”

What I’m Watching:

  • We just got through “Homecoming” on Amazon Prime. It was good – and really nice to see Julia Roberts on the small screen, looking decidedly not glamorous – but I wouldn’t say great. Bobby Cannavale though…is really something.
  • Saw a bunch of movies over the Thanksgiving holiday week – Ralph Breaks the Internet, Widows, and Creed II. Don’t waste your time on Ralph (even though the previous movie was cute), Viola is straight-up incredible in Widows, and Creed II is pretty much scene-for-scene exactly what you expect it to be but is nonetheless enjoyable.

What I’m Buying:

  • New category, because I like shopping and I like talking about my purchases. The end of 2018 is upon us (FINALLY?! because, and I know I’m not at all the first to point this out, Black Panther came out this year and there was a whole goddamn Olympics that we’ve completely forgotten about) which means: new planner time. Planners are important to me. Whenever I bust mine out in front of someone when we’ve just made plans, they act so impressed, like I must really have my life together because I write shit down. Nah, friends. I don’t. But it helps. I bought this this li’l beauty (in blossom lilac) and I am super impatient for it to arrive. MochiThings is heaven for anyone who loves planners and notebooks and their accompanying accessories.

And tonight, as I move on to a 10-3 record in the Best Friends Forever fantasy football league, I will leave you with this thought…

Image result for winning fantasy football meme

Kava-NAW, etc.

I am feeling discouraged today.

In a couple of months I will have been unemployed for a year. I suppose another way of saying that is that I have been a freelance writer for a year – and believe me, that’s what my resume says, and that’s how I try to think of it – but it has not been as fruitful as I’d like and that’s probably more my fault than any external factors. I never expected it to be easy and I never expected to make a ton of money, so at least I haven’t been surprised on those fronts. I’ve pitched some editors – maybe half a dozen – and gotten zero responses, which any writer can tell you is far worse than any rejection. A friend of a friend told me about Hugo House here in Seattle, and I’ve signed up for a couple of multi-week workshops, one of which starts tomorrow – I’m dreadfully intimidated but also just kind of dying to DO IT. I see so many women out there thriving in their writing careers and I cheer them on with every bit of my heart – I just want to get where they are, where I could casually say “here’s my latest for [x badass publication]…” instead of “OMG YOU GUYS SOMEONE ACTUALLY PUBLISHED ME THIS IS REAL THIS IS HAPPENING!!!” It will take time…I know. I feel impatient today.

And I also know that a year ago, I would’ve killed just to be published anywhere at all – so paying attention and respect to progress that has been made would probably be a better route to take, mentally.

I’ve been trying to find a therapist here but it seems like none of the lady shrinks in my network are accepting new patients and the one place that seemed promising isn’t returning my email.

We bought a new mattress and it’s delightful but naturally takes some getting used to especially since it is memory foam and we are not really accustomed to that. The firmness! My God, the firmness! My body feels good but also sore?? Or is it sore from Seattle’s hills and stairs?

Allegations against Brett Kavanaugh continue to pile up – today a third woman went public. How many will it take? How many women have to tell their stories? My Twitter feed is positively bursting at the seams with women sharing their sexual harassment and assault traumas…and it just. doesn’t. matter. If nothing else, this whole episode – hell, the last two years – have been extremely illuminating re: the number of people we have in our government who could not care less about sexual assault. They’re going to vote on Friday no matter what happens on Thursday. It’s all a foregone conclusion. What breaks my heart perhaps the most is the female GOP senators who could be putting a stop to all this and for whatever reason, aren’t. My expectations for white men in power are already subterranean so it’s pleasantly surprising when any one of them stands up for women or any marginalized group. But a woman should know. A woman should get it. If Susan Collins was my senator, I’d be picketing her office every day of the week and twice on Sunday until she agreed to vote against this piece of misogynist elitist garbage.

Then there’s all the civilian Republicans who, I guess, just have no problem with giving an alleged serial sexual assaulter a lifetime appointment on the highest court in the land. Your cousin. Your neighbor. Your boss. Your pastor. People in your life that you care about and respect, who aren’t showing any kind of care and respect toward women, because they are just going along with the party line. It’s really, really disappointing to see the lengths people will go to not believe women. Women who have EVERYTHING to lose by coming forward. We’re learning a lot about our friends and family members and community leaders by their responses to this stuff.

What I’m Reading:

  • “The Very Worst Missionary” by Jamie Wright, the story of a woman who became a Christian in her 20s as a young mom and decided to go be a missionary in Costa Rica and discovered that most mission work is bad/useless/counterproductive. Having lots of flashbacks to the weeklong “missions trip” my church youth group went on to Costa Rica in 2003. We…were not super helpful. Anyway, she’s funny and very sweary and unapologetic, my kind of girl.

What I’m Watching:

  • Still lots of Brooklyn 99. When I started it several weeks ago, I picked up in like season 3 or 4. So we watched all of that until it got current, and now we’re going back to the beginning to see what I missed. It’s so delightful.

What I’m Listening To:

  • Ella Mai, “Boo’d Up” and “10,000 Hours” and “A Thousand Times”. Also “Best Part” from H.E.R. (featuring Daniel Caesar). I had never heard of any of those people until about a week ago when I was hanging out at a coffee shop and letting YouTube play whatever it wanted after I picked a random Beyoncé song. “Best Part” is the song that plays in my mind when I envision a beautiful autumnal falling-in-love montage: walking through the leaves, drinking cider while wearing sweaters and scarves, cuddling by the fireplace, all the basic shit. Highly recommend.

What I’m Fuming About:

  • I believe we’ve covered that.

screaming

I need all the ASMR I can get

We’re back from India and about a week away from moving so, as you can imagine, I am very FHEJSDAKJDOIWEJRIOEWJDWAKFNKAJFDOASJD:OWAK.

India India India. It was wonderful to be with our family, and it was very special to be able to mark the anniversary of V’s dad’s passing with so many loved ones. But being an introvert in India is a little bit of a 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife situation, if the spoons are people, and the knife is solitude. It’s like being an alcoholic in Utah. This place ain’t meant for you. There’s nothing wrong with you and there’s nothing wrong with the place, but it’s not meant to be. Which is not to say that I don’t love going; I do. But it’s one of the reasons we will never ever live there.

I was observing a lot of white couples at the airport on the day we left and getting inexplicably annoyed like I always do. Skinny girls in plain tank tops with colorful harem pants and messy hair and dirty chappals. I think they come for yoga, but that’s just an educated guess. Why do they bother me? I guess I think that they treat India like a product. But what’s really wrong with them visiting and enjoying the culture? It’s pretty ballsy to go to India on your own, without knowing anybody or knowing any of the languages. I wouldn’t do it. If V wasn’t in my life, India would barely be on my radar beyond its geopolitical significance. India is fucking intense. It’s loud and stressful and smelly and sometimes dangerous and often dirty and hot and crowded and, as aforementioned, inhospitable to introverts. People are very very kind, generous, and friendly on an individual level but strangers are indifferent at best, hostile at worst. It always takes me a day or two to remember not to smile at anyone I don’t know. I’m an American and a Midwesterner to boot – smiling (by which I mostly mean tepid no-teeth smiles) is like breathing. The watchman will let me in and maybe grunt hello but he will NOT smile, will NOT ask how I am, and if I do either one, it’s an “invitation” rather than my cultural habit.

I think I’ve had about enough travel for 2018. After the move, other than coming home for the holidays, I think we will stay put for a little while. Which means you should come visit me!

What I’m reading:

  • Haven’t finished The H-Spot quite yet but I’ve also started Educated by Tara Westover, which is truly fascinating. It’s a memoir of a girl who grew up in a sort of survivalist/antigovernment Mormon family in Idaho, without any formal schooling throughout her childhood.

What I’m watching:

  • I discovered a new way to calm my nerves during takeoff on a plane: watching Bob Ross videos! It seems so obvious now I don’t know how I didn’t think of it sooner. Watching him paint is really ASMR heaven and the perfect calming antidote for flying anxiety.

What I’m fuming about:

  • I’m trying to ignore the outside world as much as possible this week amid all the moving preparations. I’m sure there’s a lot to be angry about but I don’t have the bandwidth for it right now. So today let’s try a different list-

What I’m anxious about:

  • handling Isis in the airport and on the flight itself and in the Uber to our new apartment
  • living for an undetermined amount of time without the vast majority of our belongings since the moving truck will arrive in Seattle anywhere from like 7-14 days after we do
  • finding a new primary care doctor and psychiatrist
  • being lonely/homesick

Next time I’ll write a list of what I’m excited about – because I am excited! – but we’ll leave it here today.

Not-sure-if-zckh1c