I was just reading a blog about women focusing on their strengths and good points rather than being down on themselves. I won't refer to it by name because I'm just using it as an example of the myriad books, blogs, etc. which are written for the purpose of reassuring women that they are not failures and their lives don't have to suck. Why women in particular are so down on themselves I'm not sure, but apparently we are and so this sort of self-helpy thing sounds positive on the surface. But then you read the bio for the authoress of said book, blog, etc.:
Super Successful Sexy Lady is a bilingual attorney who has survived cancer, traveled to Africa to do charity work, and now somehow makes $250,000 a year while providing free legal services to the poor, running marathons, maintaining an organic farm, raising three genius children, and enjoying her perfect marriage to her husband of 20 years who also makes a quarter of a million dollars a year. Oh, and she also has time to write this book, blog, etc. while traveling between her three homes in New York City, Connecticut, and the Bahamas.
But none of these things are necessary in order to be a happy, healthy and good person, she claims. All women can find the satisfaction/success/happiness/self-confidence/inner peace/strength she has.
Which is, of course, why you also see so many books, blogs, etc. on happiness and/or self-confidence and/or blending a successful career with perfect motherhood which are written by single moms with no college education who are living below the poverty line. Right?
I call Bullshit.
The very women who represent the pinnacle of overachieving womanhood are the ones writing the books, blogs, etc. which tell us to stop expecting ourselves to become overachieving women. These women reassure you that no matter what you do, as long as you are trying to be a good mom, you are one, which is potentially bullshit to begin with, but on top of that, they assume that every adult woman is a mother as well. What about those of us still struggling with our decisions not to have children or inabilities to have them? They also often assume that you are working on, have achieved, or gave up a professional career, but what about those of us who got fired? Were laid off because of the economy? Have only worked minimum wage or "unskilled" jobs? Are on disability or otherwise can't work?
Similarly, the kind of people who push you to think positive 24/7 are the kind of people who haven't struggled with chronic and serious depression or other mental illnesses and/or are not prone to philosophical crises and bouts of existential angst. They usually come by their upbeat and cheerful personalities naturally. And if you're reading advice from someone who was once in their own mental abyss and managed to find their way out, they now assume that their method or experience will serve as a guide for everyone else. I really do hate it when someone says: If I could do it, so can you.
This too is Bullshit.
No two people on this entire planet are exactly the same. That doesn't stop us from comparing ourselves to one another and wanting what other people have. It does, however, make it very hard for any given person to give any other person useful advice. The best people to turn to are those you already have something in common with. My friends and family know me, and I know them. We come from the same backgrounds or have shared the same experiences or have some common interests or have compatible personalities already. So when we turn to one another for guidance, support, reassurance, and advice there are already certain connections between us that make what we say and do at least more palatable and probably more appropriate to our personal situations.
I'm not saying that all self-help books or positive thinking blogs are worthless. I'm just saying that when someone who represents everything I always thought I should be tells me to be happy with who I am or when someone who has the life I want tells me to be happy what I have, my gut reaction is to want to punch them in the face.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Of chickens and libraries and life
For the past couple of years I've been struggling with the idea that I'd like to be a farmer. Don't laugh. Okay, go ahead. It is sort of funny. But, I am serious. I've read numerous articles in Organic Gardening, Martha Stewart Living, and even the local newspaper about raising chickens or heritage animal breeds, or about people who have given up the 9-to-5-grind for the honest, wholesome work of raising organic crops, and they grab me by the insides and pull hard. I believe that small-scale local farming, especially organic farming, is environmentally necessary, economically beneficial, nutritionally superior, and even morally imperative. The idea calls to me in part because of my love of gardening. I want an excuse to stay home and work outside, and to have enough work to keep me busy if I were to stay home all day. I want it to be meaningful and productive work. I want to spend my time with plants and animals. I want to get up and look out at vast fields at sunrise, to smell hay, to make my own composted manure, to eat fresh eggs from my chickens, to have a barn with animals of some kind in it. My heart wants to be a farmer, while my mind and my body scream, "Are you freaking kidding, Girlfriend?!" because there are certain realities which my farm fantasies ignore, like animal pests and diseases, and the intense labor and long hours required.
Because you see, I am an intensely lazy person --physically, at least. I always have been. I liked bike riding as a child, but not too fast or too far or uphill. I didn't really like playing games that required running, like kickball or tag. I was sort of jealous of people who could do gymnastics, so I was proud when I could muster enough courage to be able to pull myself up on a bar and hang upside down. But I don't know if I ever did manage to cross those sets of parallel monkey bars on fancy swing sets. If I could do one or two I was usually pretty happy with myself.
I preferred indoor activities. I liked playing pretend and drawing and coloring and painting and jigsaw puzzles and writing and more than anything else in the world: reading. What I remember most was playing house, playing librarian, playing teacher, and reading, reading, reading, reading. I LOVED going to any library. Even as a child I loved the hushed solemnity and the smell of all those books. I wanted to quietly browse for hours and pick out dozens of books to take home and read or reread. I loved searching in the card catalog and writing down call numbers. My favorite was the towering Morris Library on the SIUC campus, filled with not just rooms but FLOORS full of books. When I was somewhere between 5 and 7 and my dad was in grad school, he would take me with him. In awe, I would follow him up the wide, echoing stairwell, and then settle myself on a high stool at the tall tables near the card catalog to use the little tiny pencils and scrap cards for notes as I pretended I was doing some sort of important library work. I would sometimes look through the card catalogs there at the incomprehensible titles, or browse through the shelves of academic tomes and wonder if someday any of those books would be interesting.
And now I profile those books for a living. My 7-to-5-daily-grind involves working for a corporate business that sells those books to the very same library that enchanted me as a child. I hate working for a corporate business. This is not what I ever wanted to do. I wanted to be a writer or a teacher or a librarian, and instead I became a teacher, got fired, had already indebted myself for the rest of my life getting a master's degree to be a teacher so I couldn't afford to go back to grad school to become a librarian, and managed to land my current job out of luck and desperation. In some ways, it is the best job I've ever had. In other ways, not so much.
One major drawback is that I don't feel like I'm making a difference in the world. As a babysitter and then a nanny and then an early childhood teacher I was helping to raise interesting, loving, fascinating children. At the law library, well, the law library was a fun job because I was working at a library and socializing and/or flirting like a mad fiend. But I was helping people in a variety of ways, and learning about library work at the same time. It was that experience which impressed my current employers when I applied for my job. But now? Now I commute 2 heart-shriveling hours a day to essentially churn out sales for a company that doesn't pay me what I think I ought to be making for the amount of intelligence I bring to the job. It doesn't even make good use of my intelligence, and it doesn't allow for much variation in my duties, so I get bored and frustrated frequently. And there's no moral compensation that at least the world is a better place because I do what I do. This is not the adult life I had planned.
It wouldn't be accurate to claim that I was a really happy child. I was a precocious, opinionated, backtalking, quick-to-anger little girl who was always right and was obsessed with fairness, but who also had bouts of debilitating shyness and often thought she was unlovable and unloved. I did know that many people loved me and many people liked me. I did know that despite the fact that I could be a horrid brat, there were still many people who thought I was funny and admired my intelligence and talents. And I wasn't a morose child. I just lived in my head more than many people probably do, and I never felt quite normal. But that was okay, because someday I was going to grow up and life was going to be everything I wanted. Not that I would necessarily be rich and/or famous, just very well off in every way doing something fulfilling and sort of impressive.
I've come so far away from those visions of childhood, and it makes me sad. I still have most of the character flaws and the same frustrations with the world, but I've lost so much of the ability to enjoy myself which balanced things out. I've been out of school for 8 years, and I feel like my brain is rotting away. I don't have time to read for hours on end. I don't go to libraries anymore. I don't paint or draw or color. I don't write except for these entries. I don't even have a bicycle anymore. I don't play. Everything is about responsibilities and worrying and doing the unpleasant things that have to get done, or avoiding doing them by doing something else that is really sort of a waste of time, like sitting on the couch in front of a movie. Okay, I spend a lot of time on garden fantasizing and planning, but I could get away with spending a lot less time on that so that I would have time for other things.
But this goes back to me being an essentially lazy person who lives predominantly inside her own head. Some people work full time, maintain the small farm where they live, write books on the side, and still find time to raise a family, go to church, and do volunteer work. And some of those people even do it with less money than we make. I have NO CLUE AT ALL how these people do half of that, let alone all of it. And quite frankly, I'm not sure I want to know how they do it. Or at least, I'm not sure I could ever truly understand how they do it. I still have big ideas and big hopes, only now they tend to be about throwing in the consumer towel and forging a simpler life with honest, back-breaking work and sacrifice. But I don't honestly think that would make me happy, either. Just where is the soul-fulfillment that I seek? Does it require a massive change or can I find it within the conditions which already circumscribe my life? Can I even break the habits causing the problems in my current life? How? And when?
Will I ever own chickens? Will I find time to go to libraries once again and revel in the experience of just being there? Will I stop spending all my time and money on plants? Will I ever use my watercolor paints I've ambitiously kept around for at least 10 years now? Will I ever write a book or even a post more than 3 other people read? Will I ever again look to the future with more excitement than aversion? Will I ever stop writing this post and go to bed??
Because you see, I am an intensely lazy person --physically, at least. I always have been. I liked bike riding as a child, but not too fast or too far or uphill. I didn't really like playing games that required running, like kickball or tag. I was sort of jealous of people who could do gymnastics, so I was proud when I could muster enough courage to be able to pull myself up on a bar and hang upside down. But I don't know if I ever did manage to cross those sets of parallel monkey bars on fancy swing sets. If I could do one or two I was usually pretty happy with myself.
I preferred indoor activities. I liked playing pretend and drawing and coloring and painting and jigsaw puzzles and writing and more than anything else in the world: reading. What I remember most was playing house, playing librarian, playing teacher, and reading, reading, reading, reading. I LOVED going to any library. Even as a child I loved the hushed solemnity and the smell of all those books. I wanted to quietly browse for hours and pick out dozens of books to take home and read or reread. I loved searching in the card catalog and writing down call numbers. My favorite was the towering Morris Library on the SIUC campus, filled with not just rooms but FLOORS full of books. When I was somewhere between 5 and 7 and my dad was in grad school, he would take me with him. In awe, I would follow him up the wide, echoing stairwell, and then settle myself on a high stool at the tall tables near the card catalog to use the little tiny pencils and scrap cards for notes as I pretended I was doing some sort of important library work. I would sometimes look through the card catalogs there at the incomprehensible titles, or browse through the shelves of academic tomes and wonder if someday any of those books would be interesting.
And now I profile those books for a living. My 7-to-5-daily-grind involves working for a corporate business that sells those books to the very same library that enchanted me as a child. I hate working for a corporate business. This is not what I ever wanted to do. I wanted to be a writer or a teacher or a librarian, and instead I became a teacher, got fired, had already indebted myself for the rest of my life getting a master's degree to be a teacher so I couldn't afford to go back to grad school to become a librarian, and managed to land my current job out of luck and desperation. In some ways, it is the best job I've ever had. In other ways, not so much.
One major drawback is that I don't feel like I'm making a difference in the world. As a babysitter and then a nanny and then an early childhood teacher I was helping to raise interesting, loving, fascinating children. At the law library, well, the law library was a fun job because I was working at a library and socializing and/or flirting like a mad fiend. But I was helping people in a variety of ways, and learning about library work at the same time. It was that experience which impressed my current employers when I applied for my job. But now? Now I commute 2 heart-shriveling hours a day to essentially churn out sales for a company that doesn't pay me what I think I ought to be making for the amount of intelligence I bring to the job. It doesn't even make good use of my intelligence, and it doesn't allow for much variation in my duties, so I get bored and frustrated frequently. And there's no moral compensation that at least the world is a better place because I do what I do. This is not the adult life I had planned.
It wouldn't be accurate to claim that I was a really happy child. I was a precocious, opinionated, backtalking, quick-to-anger little girl who was always right and was obsessed with fairness, but who also had bouts of debilitating shyness and often thought she was unlovable and unloved. I did know that many people loved me and many people liked me. I did know that despite the fact that I could be a horrid brat, there were still many people who thought I was funny and admired my intelligence and talents. And I wasn't a morose child. I just lived in my head more than many people probably do, and I never felt quite normal. But that was okay, because someday I was going to grow up and life was going to be everything I wanted. Not that I would necessarily be rich and/or famous, just very well off in every way doing something fulfilling and sort of impressive.
I've come so far away from those visions of childhood, and it makes me sad. I still have most of the character flaws and the same frustrations with the world, but I've lost so much of the ability to enjoy myself which balanced things out. I've been out of school for 8 years, and I feel like my brain is rotting away. I don't have time to read for hours on end. I don't go to libraries anymore. I don't paint or draw or color. I don't write except for these entries. I don't even have a bicycle anymore. I don't play. Everything is about responsibilities and worrying and doing the unpleasant things that have to get done, or avoiding doing them by doing something else that is really sort of a waste of time, like sitting on the couch in front of a movie. Okay, I spend a lot of time on garden fantasizing and planning, but I could get away with spending a lot less time on that so that I would have time for other things.
But this goes back to me being an essentially lazy person who lives predominantly inside her own head. Some people work full time, maintain the small farm where they live, write books on the side, and still find time to raise a family, go to church, and do volunteer work. And some of those people even do it with less money than we make. I have NO CLUE AT ALL how these people do half of that, let alone all of it. And quite frankly, I'm not sure I want to know how they do it. Or at least, I'm not sure I could ever truly understand how they do it. I still have big ideas and big hopes, only now they tend to be about throwing in the consumer towel and forging a simpler life with honest, back-breaking work and sacrifice. But I don't honestly think that would make me happy, either. Just where is the soul-fulfillment that I seek? Does it require a massive change or can I find it within the conditions which already circumscribe my life? Can I even break the habits causing the problems in my current life? How? And when?
Will I ever own chickens? Will I find time to go to libraries once again and revel in the experience of just being there? Will I stop spending all my time and money on plants? Will I ever use my watercolor paints I've ambitiously kept around for at least 10 years now? Will I ever write a book or even a post more than 3 other people read? Will I ever again look to the future with more excitement than aversion? Will I ever stop writing this post and go to bed??
Friday, August 12, 2011
Why I Love Facebook
People who think Facebook is some sort of apocalypse for actual relationships couldn't be more wrong. Facebook is directly responsible for maintaining many of my most important relationships.
Thanks to Facebook, I can interact with my brothers and sisters-in-law all the time. I get to hear stories about my nephews and nieces and see pictures of them. We argue with one another, tease each other, and share music, videos, and other things we know the others will appreciate. We can offer support when we're having a bad day and remind each other that we're loved.
The same things are true for my aunts, uncles, and cousins. I am friends with 19 of my 27 cousins and 15 of my 21 aunts & uncles! With a family that large and spread almost all the way across the country, could there be a better way to keep in touch with everyone so easily? Now I often know things before Mom can tell me in our weekly phone calls, and once in awhile I actually know something about someone in the family before she does!
Facebook would already be worth my time for keeping my family so close, but it is also an invaluable link to friends of every kind. All of our friends "here" live at least an hour away and finding time to get together is difficult. Facebook keeps us connected when we are apart. (Heck, it keeps us connected when we're just sitting a few feet away from each other at work!) The same is true for "old" friends. Friends from high school, from college, from previous jobs. Kids I used to babysit. Parents I used to babysit for. Past friends. Best friends. Lifelong friends. Not everyone you ever knew has to stay in your life forever. There are plenty of people from high school I'm not friends with on Facebook. But I've had to say goodbye to too many people in my life that I didn't want to leave. And thanks to Facebook some of them are part of my life again.
Maybe it isn't who you know on Facebook that the naysayers object to, but how you interact with others online. Anyone who thinks the kinds of interaction that occur through Facebook are shallow is also wrong. Maybe they think that sharing funny pictures, favorite videos, and interesting links is too trivial, but quite frankly the same could be said of sitting around drinking together and talking about sports. What matters is that people are connecting with one another in ways that mean something to them. Because of what my friends and family post on Facebook, I see articles that keep me informed about what is going on in my hometown and the world, and I get to read firsthand accounts of newsworthy events all over the country. They make me laugh and they encourage me when I'm having a hard time. In return, I try to do the same for them. We commiserate, we advise, we reassure, we debate, we entertain, we enlighten. Isn't that what relationships are all about?
And I, at least, also get a certain benefit that is extremely important for me: it keeps me connected to the human race. I've always struggled with being both very social and very antisocial, sometimes alternating between the two and sometimes feeling both at the same time. I've always been misanthropic, but I'm at my happiest when I'm surrounded by people whose company I enjoy. Moving to New Hampshire was a triple-whammy of "bad" in this sense. I packed up my life and moved 1000 miles away from the Midwestern university town (1) where virtually all of my social support network remained (2) to a part of the country where the population density makes it virtually impossible to get away from other people (3) and where the vast majority of those people are nothing like the people I was used to dealing with (see #1). In the 8 years since I moved here my misanthropic tendencies have almost completely taken over and my faith in humanity is at a critical low. I truly understand what the term alienation can mean now. I sometimes feel like the worst of deceivers when I try to argue what is best for Society and the Human Race when I don't feel like I belong to either one. But Facebook helps. It reminds me that there are good and interesting people in the world, and that they still allow me to interact with them. It puts a familiar face on opinions and perspectives which are different from my own and, because they come in the voices of people I care about, I have a reason to listen and to try to focus on the common ground between us. Facebook is a reminder of what I have in common with other people and why I have a reason to care about other people.
No, Facebook is not the harbinger of the downfall of Society. Face-to-face relationships are not the only way the Human Race has ever maintained real relationships. Historically, friends and family members used to relocate across oceans and never see each other again, but they stayed in touch for the rest of their lives through letters. And as for quality of communication, while some letter writers may have been quite talented with words, I'm sure there were just as many people who were nearly illiterate but wrote anyway. Or actually were illiterate and paid someone else to transcribe their letters. Verbal communication has always been even less formal. I doubt anyone could find evidence that the inane banter among idiotic Facebook users is any less erudite than the inane face-to-face banter among their idiotic counterparts of past generations.
I admit, I would rather hold my friends' babies than just see pictures. I'd prefer to see my nieces' and nephews' antics in person. I would rather share a meal with my friends and talk for hours. I'm a little jealous of my extended family members who can finagle the time and money to travel and see one another. But life is full of limitations, and when they keep us from doing what we'd like most, Facebook offers us the next best thing. With the added bonus of allowing us to interact with people to whatever degree we are comfortable, at whatever time works best for us, even when we're sick.
Yeah, I know, there are vast avenues of consideration I haven't touched. I've profiled at least a dozen books in the past year or two about the sociological issues and ramifications of technologically-mediated social interaction, yadda yadda yadda. But I'm standing by what I've said here. I spend a lot of time on Facebook and I've considered letting some of it go unread. That's part of the reason I only friend people I have actually met in real life. I'm not dissing online-only friends, but if I'm going to make new friends they need to be flesh-and-blood friends. Otherwise, I don't have enough time now as it is. But that part of me that craves social interaction doesn't want to miss any of the party that is Facebook. It makes me sad that a number of the people I know who have accounts rarely or never use them. I'm sure we'd both say to one another, "But you're missing so much." We'd both be right, and we'd both be wrong. I need Facebook. How much of it I need may change someday. Doing other things instead might be good for me, too. But for now, I'm proud to be a FB junkie.
Thanks to Facebook, I can interact with my brothers and sisters-in-law all the time. I get to hear stories about my nephews and nieces and see pictures of them. We argue with one another, tease each other, and share music, videos, and other things we know the others will appreciate. We can offer support when we're having a bad day and remind each other that we're loved.
The same things are true for my aunts, uncles, and cousins. I am friends with 19 of my 27 cousins and 15 of my 21 aunts & uncles! With a family that large and spread almost all the way across the country, could there be a better way to keep in touch with everyone so easily? Now I often know things before Mom can tell me in our weekly phone calls, and once in awhile I actually know something about someone in the family before she does!
Facebook would already be worth my time for keeping my family so close, but it is also an invaluable link to friends of every kind. All of our friends "here" live at least an hour away and finding time to get together is difficult. Facebook keeps us connected when we are apart. (Heck, it keeps us connected when we're just sitting a few feet away from each other at work!) The same is true for "old" friends. Friends from high school, from college, from previous jobs. Kids I used to babysit. Parents I used to babysit for. Past friends. Best friends. Lifelong friends. Not everyone you ever knew has to stay in your life forever. There are plenty of people from high school I'm not friends with on Facebook. But I've had to say goodbye to too many people in my life that I didn't want to leave. And thanks to Facebook some of them are part of my life again.
Maybe it isn't who you know on Facebook that the naysayers object to, but how you interact with others online. Anyone who thinks the kinds of interaction that occur through Facebook are shallow is also wrong. Maybe they think that sharing funny pictures, favorite videos, and interesting links is too trivial, but quite frankly the same could be said of sitting around drinking together and talking about sports. What matters is that people are connecting with one another in ways that mean something to them. Because of what my friends and family post on Facebook, I see articles that keep me informed about what is going on in my hometown and the world, and I get to read firsthand accounts of newsworthy events all over the country. They make me laugh and they encourage me when I'm having a hard time. In return, I try to do the same for them. We commiserate, we advise, we reassure, we debate, we entertain, we enlighten. Isn't that what relationships are all about?
And I, at least, also get a certain benefit that is extremely important for me: it keeps me connected to the human race. I've always struggled with being both very social and very antisocial, sometimes alternating between the two and sometimes feeling both at the same time. I've always been misanthropic, but I'm at my happiest when I'm surrounded by people whose company I enjoy. Moving to New Hampshire was a triple-whammy of "bad" in this sense. I packed up my life and moved 1000 miles away from the Midwestern university town (1) where virtually all of my social support network remained (2) to a part of the country where the population density makes it virtually impossible to get away from other people (3) and where the vast majority of those people are nothing like the people I was used to dealing with (see #1). In the 8 years since I moved here my misanthropic tendencies have almost completely taken over and my faith in humanity is at a critical low. I truly understand what the term alienation can mean now. I sometimes feel like the worst of deceivers when I try to argue what is best for Society and the Human Race when I don't feel like I belong to either one. But Facebook helps. It reminds me that there are good and interesting people in the world, and that they still allow me to interact with them. It puts a familiar face on opinions and perspectives which are different from my own and, because they come in the voices of people I care about, I have a reason to listen and to try to focus on the common ground between us. Facebook is a reminder of what I have in common with other people and why I have a reason to care about other people.
No, Facebook is not the harbinger of the downfall of Society. Face-to-face relationships are not the only way the Human Race has ever maintained real relationships. Historically, friends and family members used to relocate across oceans and never see each other again, but they stayed in touch for the rest of their lives through letters. And as for quality of communication, while some letter writers may have been quite talented with words, I'm sure there were just as many people who were nearly illiterate but wrote anyway. Or actually were illiterate and paid someone else to transcribe their letters. Verbal communication has always been even less formal. I doubt anyone could find evidence that the inane banter among idiotic Facebook users is any less erudite than the inane face-to-face banter among their idiotic counterparts of past generations.
I admit, I would rather hold my friends' babies than just see pictures. I'd prefer to see my nieces' and nephews' antics in person. I would rather share a meal with my friends and talk for hours. I'm a little jealous of my extended family members who can finagle the time and money to travel and see one another. But life is full of limitations, and when they keep us from doing what we'd like most, Facebook offers us the next best thing. With the added bonus of allowing us to interact with people to whatever degree we are comfortable, at whatever time works best for us, even when we're sick.
Yeah, I know, there are vast avenues of consideration I haven't touched. I've profiled at least a dozen books in the past year or two about the sociological issues and ramifications of technologically-mediated social interaction, yadda yadda yadda. But I'm standing by what I've said here. I spend a lot of time on Facebook and I've considered letting some of it go unread. That's part of the reason I only friend people I have actually met in real life. I'm not dissing online-only friends, but if I'm going to make new friends they need to be flesh-and-blood friends. Otherwise, I don't have enough time now as it is. But that part of me that craves social interaction doesn't want to miss any of the party that is Facebook. It makes me sad that a number of the people I know who have accounts rarely or never use them. I'm sure we'd both say to one another, "But you're missing so much." We'd both be right, and we'd both be wrong. I need Facebook. How much of it I need may change someday. Doing other things instead might be good for me, too. But for now, I'm proud to be a FB junkie.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Heat-Induced Panic Attack
It's 3 o'clock in the morning, and I've probably had a little less than 2 hours of sleep. Why? Because it's bloody hot and I've made a series of unfortunate decisions this summer.
You see, so far this summer, even though we've had a number of days where the temperature went over 90 degrees, the humidity was low and at night it cooled off into the 50s or low 60s. Between open windows and fans, the house would cool off overnight, sleeping ended up not being too difficult, and in the morning I closed up curtains to keep the sun out and the cool air in. It was all working fine and the house never got overwhelmingly hot.
Because of this, it has not been absolutely necessary to use an air conditioner so far this year. And, because installing the air conditioner in the bedroom window (and putting it away in the fall) is an ordeal I'd rather avoid if possible, and because putting it in would mean not being able to use regular fans on the nights when we didn't need the a/c, AND because those nights where we didn't need a/c FAR outweighed the nights it would have been nice AND because I was attempting to encourage my body to adapt itself to the weather instead of resorting to a/c AND because this had been working so far, both air conditioners are still stored away.
You also have to keep in mind that we're approaching 2 dozen nighttime break-in robberies over the past 2-3 weeks, which led us to start pulling the curtains closed at night, which means the cooler night air wasn't getting in very well downstairs even when there WAS cooler night air.
So when it got hot Wednesday, didn't cool down enough Wednesday night, got even hotter yesterday, and was either 84 with a heat index of 89 (National Weather Service) or 82 with a heat index of 88 (Weather Channel) at 1 o'clock int the morning, our house got too damn hot. According to the thermostat for the heater, it is 84 degrees where I am downstairs, which means it is warmer than that on the second floor where our bedroom is.
As you might rightly assume, when I went to bed a few hours ago, it was uncomfortably warm in the bedroom. But since I sleep au naturel, and since I ended up getting up to get the second window fan to help pull cooler air in from both bedroom windows, and since that meant we had a total of 3 fans blowing on us in the bedroom, I assumed that once I had stilled myself and allowed my body to readjust itself, I would do okay. I was sweating a bit and I hate sweating, but I focused on the fact that this was giving the fans something to evaporate and helping to cool me off and eventually I managed to fall asleep.
I know that concerns about being too hot were factoring into my dreams, but right in the middle of dreaming something completely unrelated, I became conscious of feeling extremely overheated. I instantly woke up in a panic --I felt physically stifled and my skin felt hotter than it did when I came home after work when it was about 100 degrees outside. I was sitting up before I was even fully conscious, and my heart was racing and pounding even more than it usually does these days. I was trying to stop hyperventilating. I seemed to have stopped sweating and started wishing I would. In my panic I decided that I had to get the futon mattress from one of the extra bedrooms and drag it downstairs where it would be cooler. It wasn't until I got to the bottom of the stairs that I realized it wasn't noticeably cooler down here anymore.
I opened the front door to the enclosed porch, but that and the partially opened curtains meant that I had to keep my nightgown on now. I was also becoming excessively worried that someone was going to break in anyway, except that instead of me being blissfully unaware and asleep upstairs, I was going to be right there, all by myself, possibly without clothes on because I wasn't sure how much longer I could tolerate having any cloth touching my skin. So I sat there on the edge of the futon on the floor of the library, about to cry, starting to hyperventilate again, and posting my panic on Facebook.
I was also really worried about the cats. Gytha had tried laying near me in bed before I went to sleep, and her sides were heaving so fast I became very concerned about their safety. You would think that if they were overheated they would have sprawled on one of the windowsills downstairs. But they tend to follow me and they were trying to find cool places upstairs to do their sprawling. I was hoping that if I came downstairs where it was cooler it would also be better for them since they would follow me. Of course, we've already covered the lack of cooler-ness downstairs, and they don't actually seem to be showing any signs that they are suffering. Which I'm trying to focus on, because it's going to get even hotter today (Friday) and the house is going to get that much hotter.
So anyway, I drank the rest of the Gatorade I'd started earlier in the evening and had a good cry. In a renewal of panic, I went around throwing open all the windows and curtains down here, and suddenly realized I no longer cared about the stupid burglars. And I started to relax. I was finally able to lay down on the futon and rest for a bit. Except then I started getting this tight, uncomfortable tension that I get in the middle of my shoulders right below my neck. If I keep trying, I can sometimes pop and stretch my shoulders enough to get it to go away. But it made lying there on the futon uncomfortable, so I gave up.
I debated what to do for the remaining hours. If the futon wasn't on top of my puzzle, I'd have done that. Instead I decided to write this out, and I've been at it for about 2 hours. (Which is one of the reasons I don't write more often. I do about 1000 edits during and after writing, and it takes forever!) But in those hours it has cooled off a little bit and I'm feeling relaxed, although I'm starting to get tired again as well. At this point, I'm almost afraid to try to go to sleep again. If I do, waking up in an hour will be painful.
At least I know that this won't happen again. What I really wanted was one of those upright, rolling air conditioners for the bedroom. Then we could use it when we needed it and the windows would still be free for us to open and close as needed. One of my friends at work has one he doesn't need anymore, so I was going to buy it from him. Every time they predicted temps in the 90s I wondered if I should try to arrange to get it from him, but I kept putting it off. Today I realized it was urgent and asked him about it, but for a couple of reasons what we decided was that I would stop by his house and pick it up after work tomorrow/Friday/today. So once I make it through the rest of this night, I won't have to worry about the whole air conditioning ordeal and not being able to sleep anymore. And we might get one or two nights of use before the temps drop back down again, since the predicted high for Sunday is only 78/81 at this point, and the night temps are supposed to get back down into the low 60s by Saturday night.
For as stubborn as I am, for as much of a fighter as I've always been, for as tenacious as I can be, and as resilient as I used to be, it's times like this that make me feel like I've become a total puss. When you consider the hardships our ancestors faced and survived and what people all over the world endure every day, I keep wondering how I would fare if I ever had to face something truly hard. Neither Tim or I have had to fight any life-threatening diseases. My parents don't have dementia or require care at this point. I've never been a victim of any sort of crime. I've never actually suffered due to discrimination. I've never suffered any sort of real personal tragedy. And yet I usually feel like the world is pressing me down and suffocating me, that all the joy has been squeezed out of my life except for tiny bits that leak in. And most of the time when I am happy it is because I'm managing to avoid thinking about or dealing with things that will make me unhappy.
I can't appreciate the fact that I have it really good because all I can see is what isn't good, and I can't figure out how to reverse it. It's like walking around with your eyes closed and constantly complaining about being blind. You have this idea that if you just opened your eyes you wouldn't be blind anymore, but you can't remember how to open your eyes, and so it just makes you complain even more about not being able to remember how to do what you ought to be able to do and what most other people seem to be able to do. You feel guilty because there are other people out there who are truly blind and don't have the choice to just open their eyes, but that still doesn't help you figure out how to fix your own problem.
And in the meantime, I become more anxious about it every day. More guilty. Even when I was unhappy in my younger years, I didn't have panic attacks. Now it's not uncommon for me to have to struggle to just function like a normal person, and panic attacks are an increasingly common part of the picture. Did you know you can hide them, and have them on the inside without anyone knowing, even when you are at work? It's true! Maybe I'm talented after all. HAHAHAHAHA. Yeah, I've circled back out of the depressiony bit and the lack of sleep is apparently kicking in and making me punchy. I'm gonna go try to do something constructive for the remaining hour or so before I have to start getting ready for work. Boy, I hope I don't crash part way through work today. I wonder how many coffees I can carry in to work at one time without dropping them?
You see, so far this summer, even though we've had a number of days where the temperature went over 90 degrees, the humidity was low and at night it cooled off into the 50s or low 60s. Between open windows and fans, the house would cool off overnight, sleeping ended up not being too difficult, and in the morning I closed up curtains to keep the sun out and the cool air in. It was all working fine and the house never got overwhelmingly hot.
Because of this, it has not been absolutely necessary to use an air conditioner so far this year. And, because installing the air conditioner in the bedroom window (and putting it away in the fall) is an ordeal I'd rather avoid if possible, and because putting it in would mean not being able to use regular fans on the nights when we didn't need the a/c, AND because those nights where we didn't need a/c FAR outweighed the nights it would have been nice AND because I was attempting to encourage my body to adapt itself to the weather instead of resorting to a/c AND because this had been working so far, both air conditioners are still stored away.
You also have to keep in mind that we're approaching 2 dozen nighttime break-in robberies over the past 2-3 weeks, which led us to start pulling the curtains closed at night, which means the cooler night air wasn't getting in very well downstairs even when there WAS cooler night air.
So when it got hot Wednesday, didn't cool down enough Wednesday night, got even hotter yesterday, and was either 84 with a heat index of 89 (National Weather Service) or 82 with a heat index of 88 (Weather Channel) at 1 o'clock int the morning, our house got too damn hot. According to the thermostat for the heater, it is 84 degrees where I am downstairs, which means it is warmer than that on the second floor where our bedroom is.
As you might rightly assume, when I went to bed a few hours ago, it was uncomfortably warm in the bedroom. But since I sleep au naturel, and since I ended up getting up to get the second window fan to help pull cooler air in from both bedroom windows, and since that meant we had a total of 3 fans blowing on us in the bedroom, I assumed that once I had stilled myself and allowed my body to readjust itself, I would do okay. I was sweating a bit and I hate sweating, but I focused on the fact that this was giving the fans something to evaporate and helping to cool me off and eventually I managed to fall asleep.
I know that concerns about being too hot were factoring into my dreams, but right in the middle of dreaming something completely unrelated, I became conscious of feeling extremely overheated. I instantly woke up in a panic --I felt physically stifled and my skin felt hotter than it did when I came home after work when it was about 100 degrees outside. I was sitting up before I was even fully conscious, and my heart was racing and pounding even more than it usually does these days. I was trying to stop hyperventilating. I seemed to have stopped sweating and started wishing I would. In my panic I decided that I had to get the futon mattress from one of the extra bedrooms and drag it downstairs where it would be cooler. It wasn't until I got to the bottom of the stairs that I realized it wasn't noticeably cooler down here anymore.
I opened the front door to the enclosed porch, but that and the partially opened curtains meant that I had to keep my nightgown on now. I was also becoming excessively worried that someone was going to break in anyway, except that instead of me being blissfully unaware and asleep upstairs, I was going to be right there, all by myself, possibly without clothes on because I wasn't sure how much longer I could tolerate having any cloth touching my skin. So I sat there on the edge of the futon on the floor of the library, about to cry, starting to hyperventilate again, and posting my panic on Facebook.
I was also really worried about the cats. Gytha had tried laying near me in bed before I went to sleep, and her sides were heaving so fast I became very concerned about their safety. You would think that if they were overheated they would have sprawled on one of the windowsills downstairs. But they tend to follow me and they were trying to find cool places upstairs to do their sprawling. I was hoping that if I came downstairs where it was cooler it would also be better for them since they would follow me. Of course, we've already covered the lack of cooler-ness downstairs, and they don't actually seem to be showing any signs that they are suffering. Which I'm trying to focus on, because it's going to get even hotter today (Friday) and the house is going to get that much hotter.
So anyway, I drank the rest of the Gatorade I'd started earlier in the evening and had a good cry. In a renewal of panic, I went around throwing open all the windows and curtains down here, and suddenly realized I no longer cared about the stupid burglars. And I started to relax. I was finally able to lay down on the futon and rest for a bit. Except then I started getting this tight, uncomfortable tension that I get in the middle of my shoulders right below my neck. If I keep trying, I can sometimes pop and stretch my shoulders enough to get it to go away. But it made lying there on the futon uncomfortable, so I gave up.
I debated what to do for the remaining hours. If the futon wasn't on top of my puzzle, I'd have done that. Instead I decided to write this out, and I've been at it for about 2 hours. (Which is one of the reasons I don't write more often. I do about 1000 edits during and after writing, and it takes forever!) But in those hours it has cooled off a little bit and I'm feeling relaxed, although I'm starting to get tired again as well. At this point, I'm almost afraid to try to go to sleep again. If I do, waking up in an hour will be painful.
At least I know that this won't happen again. What I really wanted was one of those upright, rolling air conditioners for the bedroom. Then we could use it when we needed it and the windows would still be free for us to open and close as needed. One of my friends at work has one he doesn't need anymore, so I was going to buy it from him. Every time they predicted temps in the 90s I wondered if I should try to arrange to get it from him, but I kept putting it off. Today I realized it was urgent and asked him about it, but for a couple of reasons what we decided was that I would stop by his house and pick it up after work tomorrow/Friday/today. So once I make it through the rest of this night, I won't have to worry about the whole air conditioning ordeal and not being able to sleep anymore. And we might get one or two nights of use before the temps drop back down again, since the predicted high for Sunday is only 78/81 at this point, and the night temps are supposed to get back down into the low 60s by Saturday night.
For as stubborn as I am, for as much of a fighter as I've always been, for as tenacious as I can be, and as resilient as I used to be, it's times like this that make me feel like I've become a total puss. When you consider the hardships our ancestors faced and survived and what people all over the world endure every day, I keep wondering how I would fare if I ever had to face something truly hard. Neither Tim or I have had to fight any life-threatening diseases. My parents don't have dementia or require care at this point. I've never been a victim of any sort of crime. I've never actually suffered due to discrimination. I've never suffered any sort of real personal tragedy. And yet I usually feel like the world is pressing me down and suffocating me, that all the joy has been squeezed out of my life except for tiny bits that leak in. And most of the time when I am happy it is because I'm managing to avoid thinking about or dealing with things that will make me unhappy.
I can't appreciate the fact that I have it really good because all I can see is what isn't good, and I can't figure out how to reverse it. It's like walking around with your eyes closed and constantly complaining about being blind. You have this idea that if you just opened your eyes you wouldn't be blind anymore, but you can't remember how to open your eyes, and so it just makes you complain even more about not being able to remember how to do what you ought to be able to do and what most other people seem to be able to do. You feel guilty because there are other people out there who are truly blind and don't have the choice to just open their eyes, but that still doesn't help you figure out how to fix your own problem.
And in the meantime, I become more anxious about it every day. More guilty. Even when I was unhappy in my younger years, I didn't have panic attacks. Now it's not uncommon for me to have to struggle to just function like a normal person, and panic attacks are an increasingly common part of the picture. Did you know you can hide them, and have them on the inside without anyone knowing, even when you are at work? It's true! Maybe I'm talented after all. HAHAHAHAHA. Yeah, I've circled back out of the depressiony bit and the lack of sleep is apparently kicking in and making me punchy. I'm gonna go try to do something constructive for the remaining hour or so before I have to start getting ready for work. Boy, I hope I don't crash part way through work today. I wonder how many coffees I can carry in to work at one time without dropping them?
Thursday, July 14, 2011
One Evening of Peace in my Heart
It is so absolutely, perfectly, blissfully beautiful outside that I had no choice but to come out. I am indeed writing this as I sit in the yard, watching all the birds who don't mind my presence as they come to the feeders and feeling the cool early evening air as the sun plays peekaboo behind the clouds.
I really really wanted to write tonight, especially after the last couple of days. I have had so much on my mind during the day, so many things bothering me, so much unhappiness while I am at work, so many times I've just wanted to cry. But now that I am home, I can't bear to waste the calm and contentment I have for this evening by dredging all that back up and dwelling on it. I'd rather work on my garden plans for next year, watch the chickadees flitting about, listen to the woodpeckers and nuthatches, watch the bees sampling the cucumber flowers, even just admire my lovely lettuces which have gone to seed and are quite lovely garden plants in their own right. This is the balm I needed, and I'm not going to ignore this gift.
I really really wanted to write tonight, especially after the last couple of days. I have had so much on my mind during the day, so many things bothering me, so much unhappiness while I am at work, so many times I've just wanted to cry. But now that I am home, I can't bear to waste the calm and contentment I have for this evening by dredging all that back up and dwelling on it. I'd rather work on my garden plans for next year, watch the chickadees flitting about, listen to the woodpeckers and nuthatches, watch the bees sampling the cucumber flowers, even just admire my lovely lettuces which have gone to seed and are quite lovely garden plants in their own right. This is the balm I needed, and I'm not going to ignore this gift.
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