State of the Jay: Extreme Babble Edition.
I'm having trouble finishing things.
And it's not like this is something new, something I've never dealt with before. Half the reason why I've got multiple Rubbermaid bins full of yarn is that I'm A) terribly attracted to the new shiny, B) get bored easily and want to start something new, and C) have an almost pathological inability to resist a sale, even when I don't actively need something. "LOOK! It's Firefly, on sale for under TWENTY DOLLARS OMGWTFBBQ!" 'Uh... you already have a copy, and there's nothing wrong with it.' "But... SALE! MUST BUY! BUY SEVEN WHILE YOU'RE AT IT!"
I'm joking and all, but it happens, and it's seriously fucking hard for me to avoid walking home from the store with a half-dozen box sets of something when it's on sale, even if I don't particularly want or need it. I once almost bought "Oz", even though it has been pointed out to me that it is fundamentally NOT a Jay show, and that I should never watch it. But it was a really great price!
Anyway, that's another one of my myriad issues for another day. Right now, it's really getting to me how much trouble I'm having finishing things. Because it's gotten worse. Back when I was in university and first dealing with being diagnosed as having depression, and trying to get properly medicated (I'm not sure they ever really got it right, but that's also another story), I ended up having to take a Withdrawal on a number of courses because I couldn't get stuff done. I couldn't write. I'd spent an entire university career being able to sit down and pull a ten page paper out of my metaphorical ass, and all of a sudden it just couldn't happen. The words wouldn't come.
Or I'd keep putting it off, keep arguing, keep rationalizing how I'd be able to get it done later, I had time, I could just do [fill in blank] first. Sometimes [fill in blank] was sitting down for seven hours and flipping channels. Even if I saw something I wanted to watch, I wouldn't stop to watch it, because something could be on one of the other channels. Or FreeCell. If I just managed to win one, two, seven, eighteen games of FreeCell in a row, then I could go back and work on my paper, and I'd get it done, and it would be finished, and everything would be fine, and oh holy God, how did it get to be six am, I am so fucked. I'd had those tendencies in my first few years, but then it got bad. Really bad.
I still sometimes want to kick the crap out of myself for the courses I dropped and the Withdrawals I took, and the money I wasted. I got my degree. I pulled it off. But I didn't get my double major--couldn't get the last few English credits managed. I got a minor and a major, English and Theatre, and I did graduate, but it didn't feel like much of a triumph at that point. I didn't go back for my University graduation... didn't walk the stage. I guess in retrospect that I didn't really feel like I'd earned it.
So, it was bad then. With the not finishing things, and all. And a lot of stuff happened in the in between, but in the past five years or so, I've felt like the depression part of everything was really under control. And I still do feel that. I don't feel depressed, at least not depressed the way I felt before. But I do feel scattered. I feel torn, and I feel like my brain doesn't want to cooperate with what it's supposed to do. And you know, the one thing I've usually been able to get it to MAKE it behave for is work. If you're paying me to do something, I show up, I get it done. It helps that at the peak times of the year, my job is so goddamned busy that I can't help but haul it when I'm there. And up until this year, I've always been busy. I've theorized that in part, it was finally not being overwhelmed at work that let my body relax enough to let me get so damned sick in the fall. It's a theory, but I think it's got some basis to it.
I'm having a hard time focusing at work. And that's not usually a problem, but it is right now, and it's kind of stressing me the hell out. Because that's the one place where things are supposed to just... make sense. Where I'm good at my job, and I get in there, and I haul ass, and I get shit done, and I don't find my mind wandering or find myself thinking about going and looking at Facebook or getting caught in a wiki loop or anything like that. But I'm hearing those same whispery thought patterns I did before when I had a paper deadline. You can get it done later... you can get it done after... maybe you can get some overtime... you can come in early and catch up...
And I just. Because wtf, brain. All of this makes no logical sense. Why would I want to come in on a weekend? Why would I want to come in early? Why don't I just knuckle down and do my damned work, and not get distracted. And it's just. so. fucking. hard. right. now.
It's not just work, although work is the part that's making me the most stress because it used to be the one place where I could pull it off. Because you're paid to be there, and not wanting to do it isn't a good enough reason not to do it, you know? It's your job. You get it done. Even more so when you're the only one who does your job and if you don't get it done, you're the only one it's going to fall on. Good motivation there. And it used to feel easier, but lately... lately it's hard. It's really, really hard. And there's a whole thing with issues with my coworkers that I could get into and probably should get into at least to get it out of my head, but it'll just have to go on the list.
If it's something that can be procrastinated, I'm procrastinating it. Even stuff I want to do. Even stuff I like. And then I get caught in a tumblr clicking Facebook checking flist refreshing circle of doom and then I've blown five hours, I'm up too late (oh, because I don't want to go to bed these days even when I can either, so that's great too) because I keep convincing myself that I don't need to go to bed yet because I can sleep until X except I just convinced myself that I didn't need to work that hard because I can go into work early on the next day and... seriously, my brain is kind of an asshole right now.
I want to multitask all the time, and I'm struggling to do it. At the same time, I'm having an almost impossible time "allowing" myself to do an activity that requires sole focus, if I'm not being paid to do it.
On an average night, once the littles are in bed, I'm doing laundry, crocheting, chatting online, tagging, watching something on TV, and/or reading fic. If I'm just watching TV, I feel guilty because you know, I could be crocheting something right now, and that's just wasted time just watching TV, and you could be three, five, seven squares ahead in the amount of time it took you to watch those episodes of that show. If I'm just chatting, then I'm not getting caught up on watching Doctor Who, and someone's going to spoil me, and you know I hate spoilers, and that's going to irritate me, so you'd better put it on.
But the worst is trying to do something that stops me from doing anything else. I love to read. Above anything else when people are asking for present ideas for my littles, I'm saying books. Books, books, books. I have dozens--literally--of boxes of books that we don't have room for on the shelves. We have about a half-dozen bookshelves in current use. And these days? I don't read. I don't read because if I'm reading, I can't do anything else. I can listen to music, maybe, but I can't chat, I can't watch TV, I can't crochet... all I can do is read. And I realized lately that I've stopped giving myself permission to read anymore. Which is kind of insane when I think about it. I feel guilty allowing myself to read. Because nothing productive is happening. I'll finish it, but I won't have accomplished anything besides reading the book. I won't have crocheted something or posted a fic or edited something or... whatever. So I don't let myself read. It still kind of makes my brain break that I've all but stopped reading, which is one of the things I love to do most. But it's so hard to give myself permission to "just" read.
The other thing I find really hard about the not finishing things is how it's transferred over to media. The Academic Husband makes me slightly crazy (in a good way crazy, but crazy) because he likes things that are serial, and he doesn't mind waiting. It makes him think of the good ol' days where comic books only came out every X often, and you had the anticipation of waiting until the next one came out to be able to get the next bit of a story.
Me? I say fuck anticipation. The only thing I hate more than spoilers is cliffhangers. I have been known to avoid watching the last 2-3 eps of a season until the day before the new season begins, because I hate being left hanging not knowing what's happening. I swear, I have lingering Aaron Sorkin PTSD from the West Wing Season One Finale ["Who's been hit? Who's been hit?"]. So that was already a thing that I did that made some of my friends probably want to brain me with a box set. But for me, I'm much more happy taking something and just watching it marathon style. A few years ago I watched all ten seasons of SG1 in a matter of weeks, after it was cancelled. So I knew that there wasn't going to be any more story at the end of it, and I was fine with that. Bring it on.
But lately? I can't finish things. I mean, I seriously can't finish watching things. Especially if it's over, regardless of the reasons--organic end, or cancellation. It's gotten a little ridiculous at this point. This is a list, guaranteed incomplete, of things that I can't make myself keep watching right now, all things that I genuinely want to watch, and have been enjoying watching:
Castle (current season)
Criminal Minds (midway through the current season)
Doctor Who (I'm behind three episodes, haven't been able to make myself catch up)
Eureka (I'm stalled mid-season two)
Farscape (stalled at the beginning of season three)
Hawaii Five-O (midway through the current season)
Heroes (stalled mid-season four)
Human Target (stalled midway through the final season)
Leverage (have been stalled five eps before the series finale since, well, since they aired, have only just been able to get myself to watch all but the series finale as of today)
Merlin (stalled at the beginning of season... four, I think. Maybe a couple of eps in? I don't even remember, wtf)
SGA (never watched the series finale)
Southland (stalled at the last three eps of the fourth season, all of the current season unwatched)
The Big Bang Theory (stalled two thirds of the way through the current season)
The Mentalist (current season)
White Collar (last three eps of the current season)
Now, part of what that says to me is I watch a lot of TV. That's not even counting the new stuff that I've gone out searching for because I'm trying to find something that I can just watch, and get through, and not get stuck on. That's part of the reason why I ended up watching Game of Thrones--I wanted SOMETHING that was completely different than everything else I was doing or watching (or not watching, as the case certainly is). It fit the bill, and I've kept myself watching it, mostly because it's so in the media right now that I'm trying to avoid spoilers. Which is weird, because I've made people spoil me for a hell of a lot, because the whole thing is like a giant deathfic from HELL, and I don't like not knowing when a character is going to die.
But still, anyway, that doesn't even include movies. And there are a lot, shelves of movies and media still in plastic that I can't make myself open even though I really want to see it. I almost did the Academic Husband in (as well as a few other people) because I couldn't make myself sit down and watch Inception. Which I loved, as soon as I watched it, but sitting down to get it watched was a Trial.
But that's still in the package, stuff that's new, which I didn't put on that top list. The thing I find really weird is the In Progress stuff that I'm looking at and running away from like it's a paper that's due or a work project that has to get finished. It's TV. It's media. It's happy fun times. It's getting to see people I like doing things I like. And I can't. make. myself. watch. them.
So, I don't know. I'm confused about all of this. I'm perplexed by my inability to focus/inability to multitask/need to multitask/refusal to do tasks that require I do only one thing. I'm really stunned with the realization that I've stopped letting myself read, unless it's on a computer (because if it's on a computer, I can still chat, I can go back and forth between that and watching a movie or TV show--assuming I can make myself pick something out to watch).
And I'm tired. So, so physically and emotionally and mentally tired, and yet I don't want to go to bed, because then my brain will keep going zingity and I'll wake up feeling like I spent all night running, once I finally do go to sleep.
But I'm hoping that having unloaded some of the nonsense in my brain will make it shut up for the night so that I can at least try and get some sleep without the constant whir. It's worth a shot.
Thanks for listening.
And it's not like this is something new, something I've never dealt with before. Half the reason why I've got multiple Rubbermaid bins full of yarn is that I'm A) terribly attracted to the new shiny, B) get bored easily and want to start something new, and C) have an almost pathological inability to resist a sale, even when I don't actively need something. "LOOK! It's Firefly, on sale for under TWENTY DOLLARS OMGWTFBBQ!" 'Uh... you already have a copy, and there's nothing wrong with it.' "But... SALE! MUST BUY! BUY SEVEN WHILE YOU'RE AT IT!"
I'm joking and all, but it happens, and it's seriously fucking hard for me to avoid walking home from the store with a half-dozen box sets of something when it's on sale, even if I don't particularly want or need it. I once almost bought "Oz", even though it has been pointed out to me that it is fundamentally NOT a Jay show, and that I should never watch it. But it was a really great price!
Anyway, that's another one of my myriad issues for another day. Right now, it's really getting to me how much trouble I'm having finishing things. Because it's gotten worse. Back when I was in university and first dealing with being diagnosed as having depression, and trying to get properly medicated (I'm not sure they ever really got it right, but that's also another story), I ended up having to take a Withdrawal on a number of courses because I couldn't get stuff done. I couldn't write. I'd spent an entire university career being able to sit down and pull a ten page paper out of my metaphorical ass, and all of a sudden it just couldn't happen. The words wouldn't come.
Or I'd keep putting it off, keep arguing, keep rationalizing how I'd be able to get it done later, I had time, I could just do [fill in blank] first. Sometimes [fill in blank] was sitting down for seven hours and flipping channels. Even if I saw something I wanted to watch, I wouldn't stop to watch it, because something could be on one of the other channels. Or FreeCell. If I just managed to win one, two, seven, eighteen games of FreeCell in a row, then I could go back and work on my paper, and I'd get it done, and it would be finished, and everything would be fine, and oh holy God, how did it get to be six am, I am so fucked. I'd had those tendencies in my first few years, but then it got bad. Really bad.
I still sometimes want to kick the crap out of myself for the courses I dropped and the Withdrawals I took, and the money I wasted. I got my degree. I pulled it off. But I didn't get my double major--couldn't get the last few English credits managed. I got a minor and a major, English and Theatre, and I did graduate, but it didn't feel like much of a triumph at that point. I didn't go back for my University graduation... didn't walk the stage. I guess in retrospect that I didn't really feel like I'd earned it.
So, it was bad then. With the not finishing things, and all. And a lot of stuff happened in the in between, but in the past five years or so, I've felt like the depression part of everything was really under control. And I still do feel that. I don't feel depressed, at least not depressed the way I felt before. But I do feel scattered. I feel torn, and I feel like my brain doesn't want to cooperate with what it's supposed to do. And you know, the one thing I've usually been able to get it to MAKE it behave for is work. If you're paying me to do something, I show up, I get it done. It helps that at the peak times of the year, my job is so goddamned busy that I can't help but haul it when I'm there. And up until this year, I've always been busy. I've theorized that in part, it was finally not being overwhelmed at work that let my body relax enough to let me get so damned sick in the fall. It's a theory, but I think it's got some basis to it.
I'm having a hard time focusing at work. And that's not usually a problem, but it is right now, and it's kind of stressing me the hell out. Because that's the one place where things are supposed to just... make sense. Where I'm good at my job, and I get in there, and I haul ass, and I get shit done, and I don't find my mind wandering or find myself thinking about going and looking at Facebook or getting caught in a wiki loop or anything like that. But I'm hearing those same whispery thought patterns I did before when I had a paper deadline. You can get it done later... you can get it done after... maybe you can get some overtime... you can come in early and catch up...
And I just. Because wtf, brain. All of this makes no logical sense. Why would I want to come in on a weekend? Why would I want to come in early? Why don't I just knuckle down and do my damned work, and not get distracted. And it's just. so. fucking. hard. right. now.
It's not just work, although work is the part that's making me the most stress because it used to be the one place where I could pull it off. Because you're paid to be there, and not wanting to do it isn't a good enough reason not to do it, you know? It's your job. You get it done. Even more so when you're the only one who does your job and if you don't get it done, you're the only one it's going to fall on. Good motivation there. And it used to feel easier, but lately... lately it's hard. It's really, really hard. And there's a whole thing with issues with my coworkers that I could get into and probably should get into at least to get it out of my head, but it'll just have to go on the list.
If it's something that can be procrastinated, I'm procrastinating it. Even stuff I want to do. Even stuff I like. And then I get caught in a tumblr clicking Facebook checking flist refreshing circle of doom and then I've blown five hours, I'm up too late (oh, because I don't want to go to bed these days even when I can either, so that's great too) because I keep convincing myself that I don't need to go to bed yet because I can sleep until X except I just convinced myself that I didn't need to work that hard because I can go into work early on the next day and... seriously, my brain is kind of an asshole right now.
I want to multitask all the time, and I'm struggling to do it. At the same time, I'm having an almost impossible time "allowing" myself to do an activity that requires sole focus, if I'm not being paid to do it.
On an average night, once the littles are in bed, I'm doing laundry, crocheting, chatting online, tagging, watching something on TV, and/or reading fic. If I'm just watching TV, I feel guilty because you know, I could be crocheting something right now, and that's just wasted time just watching TV, and you could be three, five, seven squares ahead in the amount of time it took you to watch those episodes of that show. If I'm just chatting, then I'm not getting caught up on watching Doctor Who, and someone's going to spoil me, and you know I hate spoilers, and that's going to irritate me, so you'd better put it on.
But the worst is trying to do something that stops me from doing anything else. I love to read. Above anything else when people are asking for present ideas for my littles, I'm saying books. Books, books, books. I have dozens--literally--of boxes of books that we don't have room for on the shelves. We have about a half-dozen bookshelves in current use. And these days? I don't read. I don't read because if I'm reading, I can't do anything else. I can listen to music, maybe, but I can't chat, I can't watch TV, I can't crochet... all I can do is read. And I realized lately that I've stopped giving myself permission to read anymore. Which is kind of insane when I think about it. I feel guilty allowing myself to read. Because nothing productive is happening. I'll finish it, but I won't have accomplished anything besides reading the book. I won't have crocheted something or posted a fic or edited something or... whatever. So I don't let myself read. It still kind of makes my brain break that I've all but stopped reading, which is one of the things I love to do most. But it's so hard to give myself permission to "just" read.
The other thing I find really hard about the not finishing things is how it's transferred over to media. The Academic Husband makes me slightly crazy (in a good way crazy, but crazy) because he likes things that are serial, and he doesn't mind waiting. It makes him think of the good ol' days where comic books only came out every X often, and you had the anticipation of waiting until the next one came out to be able to get the next bit of a story.
Me? I say fuck anticipation. The only thing I hate more than spoilers is cliffhangers. I have been known to avoid watching the last 2-3 eps of a season until the day before the new season begins, because I hate being left hanging not knowing what's happening. I swear, I have lingering Aaron Sorkin PTSD from the West Wing Season One Finale ["Who's been hit? Who's been hit?"]. So that was already a thing that I did that made some of my friends probably want to brain me with a box set. But for me, I'm much more happy taking something and just watching it marathon style. A few years ago I watched all ten seasons of SG1 in a matter of weeks, after it was cancelled. So I knew that there wasn't going to be any more story at the end of it, and I was fine with that. Bring it on.
But lately? I can't finish things. I mean, I seriously can't finish watching things. Especially if it's over, regardless of the reasons--organic end, or cancellation. It's gotten a little ridiculous at this point. This is a list, guaranteed incomplete, of things that I can't make myself keep watching right now, all things that I genuinely want to watch, and have been enjoying watching:
Castle (current season)
Criminal Minds (midway through the current season)
Doctor Who (I'm behind three episodes, haven't been able to make myself catch up)
Eureka (I'm stalled mid-season two)
Farscape (stalled at the beginning of season three)
Hawaii Five-O (midway through the current season)
Heroes (stalled mid-season four)
Human Target (stalled midway through the final season)
Leverage (have been stalled five eps before the series finale since, well, since they aired, have only just been able to get myself to watch all but the series finale as of today)
Merlin (stalled at the beginning of season... four, I think. Maybe a couple of eps in? I don't even remember, wtf)
SGA (never watched the series finale)
Southland (stalled at the last three eps of the fourth season, all of the current season unwatched)
The Big Bang Theory (stalled two thirds of the way through the current season)
The Mentalist (current season)
White Collar (last three eps of the current season)
Now, part of what that says to me is I watch a lot of TV. That's not even counting the new stuff that I've gone out searching for because I'm trying to find something that I can just watch, and get through, and not get stuck on. That's part of the reason why I ended up watching Game of Thrones--I wanted SOMETHING that was completely different than everything else I was doing or watching (or not watching, as the case certainly is). It fit the bill, and I've kept myself watching it, mostly because it's so in the media right now that I'm trying to avoid spoilers. Which is weird, because I've made people spoil me for a hell of a lot, because the whole thing is like a giant deathfic from HELL, and I don't like not knowing when a character is going to die.
But still, anyway, that doesn't even include movies. And there are a lot, shelves of movies and media still in plastic that I can't make myself open even though I really want to see it. I almost did the Academic Husband in (as well as a few other people) because I couldn't make myself sit down and watch Inception. Which I loved, as soon as I watched it, but sitting down to get it watched was a Trial.
But that's still in the package, stuff that's new, which I didn't put on that top list. The thing I find really weird is the In Progress stuff that I'm looking at and running away from like it's a paper that's due or a work project that has to get finished. It's TV. It's media. It's happy fun times. It's getting to see people I like doing things I like. And I can't. make. myself. watch. them.
So, I don't know. I'm confused about all of this. I'm perplexed by my inability to focus/inability to multitask/need to multitask/refusal to do tasks that require I do only one thing. I'm really stunned with the realization that I've stopped letting myself read, unless it's on a computer (because if it's on a computer, I can still chat, I can go back and forth between that and watching a movie or TV show--assuming I can make myself pick something out to watch).
And I'm tired. So, so physically and emotionally and mentally tired, and yet I don't want to go to bed, because then my brain will keep going zingity and I'll wake up feeling like I spent all night running, once I finally do go to sleep.
But I'm hoping that having unloaded some of the nonsense in my brain will make it shut up for the night so that I can at least try and get some sleep without the constant whir. It's worth a shot.
Thanks for listening.