:: Monday 10 September 01
Aiiee. Did I say something smug in here just the other day about how it's good to keep busy? Keep the black dogs of depression from the door, by dint of brisking about the life?
Ah, the many amusing permutations of mental fucked-upedness. What I tend to forget is that while, for me, insufficient occupation --> depression, it is equally true that all too often busyness --> anxiety attacks.
It's odd about anxiety; in my soi-disant professional life, I've counseled plenty of people through various permutations of anxiety (chronic, acute; medicated or un-), so I know all the good cognitive-rational self-talk and the relaxation techniques and blahdy blah. But it's easy to forget, or to not-know, that once you're in there, all the good sound sane rational anxiety-management strategies are like a very small chihuahua yapping somewhere in the far distance; you can't really attend to it when the Hound of the Baskervilles has got his jaws clamped around your throat.
Coping, coping. Have got most of my most urgent responsibilities dealt with--the Escapade page is up, unlovely and suboptimal though it is; it's working, that's what matters, I managed (with invaluable help from the sainted Carol S.) to cobble together just enough "PERL for Morons" to get the registration page to function. I got my father and stepmother booked with bargain airfares and hotel reservations for their impromptu trip to Columbia, S.C.; my advisees are mostly in the right classes and doing what they should be doing; I'm dealing with hotel accommodations for a group of friends coming to town in October; I finally got my hot water heater working again, so I managed to clear away the mountain of filthy malodorous dishes in the kitchen.
I taught my first class, and it was good; I perform well, I perform very well, channelling some mysterious reservoir of energy, the little kinky streak of Mick Jagger deep in my soul, I can grab the students and compel their attention, make them wake up, except it's draining as hell, and I crawl back to the office afterward, shaky and spent, and knowing that I should have done so much better.
I really do think, on some level, that I have to do it all. And perfectly. Everything must be managed, dealt with, organized, orchestrated; and if it's not, it's my fault. At 3 a.m., I lie awake, shivering, grinding my teeth, feeling my heart pound, and think It's all going to go to hell, it really will, and it will all be my fault.
Heh. Grandiose much, Kat? Ah, grandiosity and self-loathing, the joined-at-the-hip tag-team that never fails to kick my feeble ass.
Eh. I'll be fine, just need to get a bit of a grip here. And I need to get writing again, haven't touched the WIP in three weeks, and that's probably not helping anything. Go torment the poor hapless guys for a while, that's the ticket.
fandom journals
Anna | Aral | Athena4 | AuKestrel | beth666ann | Brighid | CLFinn | Colleen | Debchan | denise | Destina | Dine | Erica | Fluff on Top | Gemma | grit kitty | Helen | Ins | Ins2 | Jane St. Clair | Kate | LaT | Livia | Maygra | melymbrosia | Mia | Miriam | Mona | nancy | Nestra | Olwen | Olwen2 | Pam | Rowan | sabine | Sara | Sarah T.| Sheila | Shrift | Simplelyric | Soo | Te | Valeria | Viedma | Viridian | WitchQueen | xen | ZorroRojo
other sites I visit
Bad Hair Days | Barbelith| Hissyfit | Iain | kottke.org | lileks | memepool | Mighty Big TV | Pop Culture Junk Mail | plaintive wail | Tomato Nation
"Our vocation is not a sphinx's riddle, which we must solve in one guess or else perish. Some people find, in the end, that their paradoxical vocation is to go through life guessing wrong. It takes them a long time to find out that they are happier that way."
--Thomas Merton