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I have been struggling lately with being able to focus on – well anything, really. I am so easily distracted, derailed and or diverted from the task at hand that I am surprised that I have got anything done. And the things I have completed are done out of sheer bullish determination. I am nothing, if not stubborn. But I have never been this hare-brained before and I don’t really know what to do about it.

I think it has everything to do with the fact that I simply don’t have the same stress levels in my life currently that I have had literally 24-7 since I was small. I am finally making enough money that I don’t have to penny pinch those few days before pay day. I barely even have to check to make sure I have enough for the bills that are coming out on certain days, where I used to do that obsessively every time I even contemplated buying something, like a couple of veggies for dinner or a partial tank of gas. Even at work I don’t have the same hamster-wheel level of bullshit workload that I had in previous jobs. Sure there’s the expectation to do well but the environment is like the polar opposite of every other place I’ve worked. I almost typed “had the misfortune to work” because it feels a little like that in retrospect. I mean I liked some of my jobs – I learned a lot, met great people etc etc. None of them were actually supportive though. Lip service. Toeing the line of regulations. “We’re a family here” which is bullshit speak for ‘you will get paid for the work of one, but do the work of many’.

Can you believe, that when I gave my notice at my last job the CEO gave me the fucking silent treatment? That’s right, she talked over me or around me and refused to look at me like some petulant teenage queen bee. Like my leaving was a betrayal. I mean, they had to hire TWO PEOPLE to do my job after I had repeatedly told them it was a two or three person job, rather than the one person it had been when the company started in the 50’s. They also tried to give me a $0.25 an hour raise when an accounts receivable clerk’s average salary was very nearly double what I was making there – but they could get away with that because of two things: I didn’t have the credentials from a formal education in the field and I literally needed the job to survive.

And that’s the point. I’ve been stretching dollars for as long as I understood what money was. This is not a complaint! I mean I have a healthy respect for the values having literally no savings or cushion fund can instill in a person, but it wasn’t easy. You tend to buy something and take care of it in order to make it last. (Not that that is easy these days with the capitalist tendency to create demand by making consistently shitty products, but that’s a rant for another day.) You also learn how to budget and save money rather quickly – even if your math skills are the most dubious thing about you.

And trying to start a family was also stressful. All that stress and grief and pain took it’s toll and I cannot sweep that under the rug either. Hormone treatments. Repeated blood tests. All that waiting and fretting and the repeated let downs. They kept telling me to relax and not stress about things, as stress wasn’t good for the process either. So of course I stressed about being stressed. It’s also hard not to feel like a failure. I mean my body was failing me, and that was hard to swallow, even if I was over 30. Not that the statistics on successful pregnancies are great. From all that I have read and learned over the years it’s fucking miraculous that any one of us are ever born. I felt bitter that the line I was fed all my life was that it was frighteningly easy to get pregnant when you weren’t ready and ‘ruin your life’. Maybe for some people it was, but apparently not me.

Not only that but I’ve sort of given up on the rat race too. That’s not to say that I have given up on everything entirely, but I’ve given up on trying to hit all the marks that we’re “supposed” to hit. Like marriage and kids and owning a house and having a “fulfilling career” whatever that is – which is not, I think, living for your work. I am not in the mood to be judged for the things I did or did not accomplish. I’ve done a lot of things! I’ve worn many hats and masks and some of them I never thought I’d wear. It’s been an adventure and one should not diminish the accomplishments of one’s life just because they’re not the expected milestones of one’s particular society. I feel like the ideal is to be comfortable enough to spend time making art. I think that’s the epitome of human existence. To create. Sing, dance, draw, paint, write, make music. This is the stuff that moves us, not the grind. And I am so happy to be working in a place where that very thing is possible.

Of course now I have to relearn how to be un-stressed. I feel like I’m forgetting something – like my body or my brain aren’t sure what to do with this extra time and space that I previously filled with stressing and planning. That part of my daily routine is missing and in response they’re filling me up with random, inchoate anxiety, so my brain is continually repeating songs or I’m fidgeting with something, grinding my teeth or doomscrolling on social media. I used to be able to channel that into writing, or distract myself with reading, but because I’m so used to having things to stress about in the back of my brain, like a radio on low, I can’t concentrate on either of those things for very long without intrusion or just blatant ‘squirrel!’ moments. It’s really kind of the opposite reaction I thought I’d have. Granted the first year of this new job I was anxious about the seeming lack of workload and then all of a sudden I was just so tired. I had so little energy that I felt like I wanted to sleep all the time – and in fact I did nap on my work from home days. It’s just now that I’m starting to get energy back that this new part of my recovery (because it is recovery!) has begun. PSD – Post Stress Disorder perhaps? It has to be a thing.

It’s interesting how the coping mechanisms you build to survive can actually be a burden when you no longer need them. It’s thrown a lot of my routines and tricks into disarray because a basic strut of my fucked up brain has just collapsed. So I’ve been forgetting things, losing things and been less than articulate about my thoughts because I’m not needing to be so super “high-functioning” to get things done. I mean I’ve lived with this brain for so long I don’t know what’s normal. Perhaps I do have a touch of ADHD or autism or none/all of the above. I have been reading about both of those things since J’s daughters have all been diagnosed with ADHD and he’s the common denominator. While I can see some of the signs in him, they looked a bit familiar for me, too. Certainly the little self assessment tools I’ve found online indicate that perhaps I am – but at this point I’m not sure that a diagnosis would change anything. Especially since I remain unconvinced that neurotypical is actually better (or even the norm) – and currently I don’t think my life is falling apart. I am getting things done still, I’m just a mess while I do it.

I think that’s to be expected though. I had all that stress and grief living under my ribcage for so long that now I have the space to process it, it’s like re-rolling a ball of yarn the cat got into. You have to pick apart the knots one by one in order to make it a proper ball again and that takes time. When I’ve got that either all sorted or partially so, it may be time to set some new goals. I’m not old yet, I have time to do things, so who knows! In the meantime, some part of my brain has one or another song on repeat. Today it happens to be this one:

Listening to: see above
Reading: Selected Stories – Alice Munro (RIP)
Watching: Delicious in Dungeon
Drinking: Arizona lemon iced tea
Word Count: 1530
Headspace: the maze in Namjoon’s ‘Come Back to Me’ video