Adventures in Change

So.

For those who haven't been keeping up: I've recently started teaching a new subject, to a new grade level, at a new school, gotten a new apartment - both in new cities, and am trying to navigate some new rules for an old relationship....hmmm...For those who have been keeping up...we know that I don't deal well with new.

This is where Chriss (and everyone else in my inner circle) will tell me that a line of medical defense would be extraordinarly helpful against this state of depression I've been choosing to "beat back" with cookie dough and sleep. But you don't have to know me well at all to know what my response to that looks like.

What does this mean?

Be on the look out for some really bad, really angsty poetry...or maybe some really hostile pseudo-political rants here in the near future. And if are one of the "chosen few" that edits my stuff for me (is it wrong to say groupies? Are you mad? You can call me your groupie too if it helps)....be on the lookout for something honest.

Speaking of poetry - guess who decided to take a year from Slam? This is not a throwback to the time I took off from writing (Do you remember that foolishness?) - this is a "it really isn't cute to disappear from your job to spend all of your money acting like you're 20 with a group of poets also pretending that they're 20." Next year, when I've built some cred with the boss and have *gasp* set aside some money for this kind of trip, I'll take my spot on the team back. Because that's not arrogant. I'll compete again, and hopefully be able to get a spot amongst the best that Piedmont's got to offer.

More to say, but I'm...tired of talking. So.

Peace Be

Adventures in NPS 2011 (Part 2)

So.

Today was the first official day of Nats...and I'm sincerely hoping that it is not an indication of how the rest of the week is going to go. We missed the haiku death match prelims,  missed the workshop with Patricia Smith, the bout we really wanted to see was at capacity and not letting people in, the second choice bout was at capacity, walked in the rain to the third choice....you guessed it - at capacity, and so we just left. Hopped the train back to Emmanuel, and of course by "hopped" I mean, got completely turned around and had an unpleasant run in with one of the attendants before successfully locating the correct path home. Sigh.

But this post is not about that. This post is about being...concerned.

So of course I'm pretty much completely broke [side note: medicine is hella expensive] and checked my bank account several times to try to work out a way to you know...eat here in Bean Town and still survive when I make it back to the Dash. I made a pretty strict budget for myself, and made a note of what the consequence of not following that budget would be. But today I literally could not stop myself from buying extras. Like...the impulse to get things immediately and keep spending until there is nothing left is starting to overpower my rationale - to the point that I was getting visibly anxious and couldn't breathe in this one spot where I wanted to buy a shirt and was trying to talk myself out of it. Even now the back of my mind is racing with all of things I want to buy tomorrow so much so that I want to get dressed and see what shops are open. My teammate is going back out tonight to see our coach compete in the Slam Master's Slam, but I'm going to stay in. I even put on my PJ's.

Good news - No smoking thus far.
Bad news - Sam Adams is sponsoring an open bar for the after party on Saturday. That's going to be challenging.

Hopefully tomorrow will be better. I'm hoping that much of the stress and pressure to buy things was brought on by the curve balls that the day threw at us. Because of them however, we have better learned to navigate the city and know how early to show up to the tiny venues if we want seats...so there wont' be quite as much of it tomorrow. Plus - I finally get to hit the stage...which I've been itching to do since we landed. I plan to go...all the way in.

Peace Be

Adventures in Emotional Productivity

So.

I've spent quite some time between 2006 and now, developing a systems for myself to fall back on when things are starting to become intense emotionally. Those of you have been around for any length of time have seen the evolution of those systems into kind of a two-step guide to handling all emotionally volatile situations:

1. Remind yourself, "how something feels is not necessarily how it actually is"
2. Only respond to how it is; never respond to how it feels,

and it occurred to me today that this "checklist", while at a very surface level seems effective, may be not be the kind of "be all, end all" that I thought it might. I mean, you'd have to consider first of all that usually I start thinking about personal productivity during states of hypomania - those two or three months when you find me cranking out po-ems, and thinking about expanding my writing to other genres, and cleaning regularly, and all these other things that seem to be on this "path towards health". I was thinking the other day about the conversation Nash has with his doctor in A Beautiful Mind, where the doctor refutes Nash's claim that he apply his own mental strength to his illness, because his mind is where the problem is. Beyond that, I've come to this place where I'm ultimately dismissive of every emotion that I have, but that can't be valid either... because this illness that I only admit occasionally to having is about...severity and duration of emotion, not about the emotions themselves. And finally, I've gotten in this really bad habit of only expressing the emotion that I know I'm supposed to have, and not being honest about any of the other things going on with me...and repression leads to depression and bla bla bla...

I do not know what the solution here is. 

I keep wrestling with this idea of God's promise to provide peace and joy and what not to his children and then this notion that I'm somehow unable to feel that joy 70% of the time because of some chemical imbalance that needs to be corrected with pills. It just seems...antithetical to who and what God is. Except on this whole different level which I can also appreciate theologically it's not...because I don't expect for him to supernaturally cure the rest of the illnesses in the world or end hunger or all of that. Mm.

My baby sister asked me once why I'd been so willing to smoke or drink or whatever else in order to "feel better" but was so opposed to going the prescribed antidepressant route...and I just think it's dangerous to cross this threshold from taking something every now and again to feel better to taking something consistently to feel normal.

In short - I feel very much like an exposed nerve ending - feeling too much and not knowing how to deal with it.

Peace Be