I felt a need to do something tangible… as though the list of today’s accomplishments weren’t already long enough (Trust me: It is long enough already.).
It is called an anti-stress coloring book.
Just like the rest of its kind, though, it stressed me out with all the details.
So, I went for how I really felt.
And I actually like it a lot better this way…
Sigh…
Do you ever feel tired of being productive? Like stressed out about it, I mean…
I have been so productive the past couple weeks or so, I feel that I now have the pressure of a standard I have set to be very high…
For example, this past week, I discovered song-writing, right?
I wrote three songs, one right after the other, spending about two days on each, beginning last Friday.
By this Friday, I felt sick about writing songs, because I felt this huge standard weighing on me suddenly, in the form of ‘another week means another two or three songs’.
And I just felt like I would fail, which has made the pressure even worse…
(Plus, on that topic in particular, when I even begin to revisit writing a song now, I grow instantly annoyed with the fact that nothing feels real – feelings and emotions from within myself – except my worried, upset, annoyed, and longing-for thoughts in relation to this guy I DON’T EVEN KNOW…. [Like seriously, I barely know him, and getting to know him better has not been going very well… he seems way less interested in getting to know me now than he did at the start…] Can I get over this already, please, so that I can return to my regular set of absurd emotions?… I can totally handle crazy, but it needs to be my crazy, not whatever these past three weeks or whatever have been… exhausting is what they have been, and I’m tired of it…)
So, I feel all this pressure continuously popping up to hang around for a while – maybe even a long while – and to make me feel like snuggling up and crying into a large stuffed animal in my bed – because we all know that I have no person with whom to do this – and sleeping the world away for a while…, I love being productive, but it has somehow become more like a contest against myself, and I very much dislike it – it is not empowering for me… just stressful, and it makes me want to give up and run away…
So, yeah… that’s about where I stand tonight… sigh… and I don’t particularly want to do anything to turn the emotions positive right this minute – I just want to be heard (because, again, we all know there is no one out there calling to see how my day went, and to wish me a lovely night’s sleep tonight).
Boy, has this weekend been giving me a run for my money… oh, wait… I don’t really have any money….
Well, it has certainly made me feel like I am slowly falling to pieces via a slow and painful inward collapse from anger, frustration, and helplessness…
And I know everything will be great and more than fine, and I am great and more than fine, and everything else hopeful and positive in my life will be amazing… I know all of that.
Nonetheless, I am having lots of emotions hit me pretty hard this weekend.
An escape to the forest and mountains would be spectacular right now… some nature would be good for me, instead of a house in the middle of a city with all of its parks closed for the time being…
Anyway, I haven’t got that option.
But it was nice to visualize it for a few moments…
Perhaps I’ll just go to sleep somewhat early again tonight.
I slept really hard and well last night, and for eleven hours – clearly I was lacking in sleep.
Now, we shall see if tonight’s rest will help me tomorrow…
Time for some more meditation and reading, and then I shall pray for healing through sleep.
Some nights, I feel that I am just beyond functional – I cannot possibly do anything here on my own to improve the current state of my brain and emotions, so it is best just to go to bed already…, even if it is barely 9pm and I didn’t exactly get up until after noon today…
Yeah, today has been stressful, simple, lazy, informative, comedic, helpful; it has left me feeling a sense of helplessness, embarrassment, disappointment in myself, upsetting surprise, loneliness, physically stressed – like really physically stressed and in desperate need of human physical contact… – hopeful, useless, inefficient, unwanted, frustrated, wanted, lost for words, unhelpful, like I have wasted something, somehow…, and ready to cry…
Quite a day and night so far…
So, I think I am ready to go to sleep now, with a conscious hope and belief that tomorrow, taken on actively, can and will be significantly improved in just about every way from today.
With that, I bid you goodnight: May we all rest well tonight.
What is this life I’m living (right now, anyway)???
The world is going crazy having to stay home, and I am here being extremely productive, and somehow still napping as needed, or just lying on the floor for a bit, multiple times throughout the day…, and eating a lot and often… and still getting my job done…
This has been rather good for me, I think, having to stay home and all.
It was rough at first, especially since I really want to get to know this guy I kind of just met, but I think I approached the whole ‘stay-at-home’ situation with a genuine and thorough consideration for my health and well-being, and I have acted accordingly with my self-given guidelines and encouragements, thereby helping me to be extremely sane and comfortable and confident, and also, somewhat surprisingly, very productive (more so than usual, even).
And it was really good for me to have to sit with so much discomfort around that guy for the first while – I needed to be able to get through any panic and just chill out, approach the situation as myself, and not as the crazy person that sometimes won’t shut up in my head… she’s funny, but can get way out of hand, if I indulge her.
So, yeah…, this has been very good for me.
And, as mentioned, I have written now a third song… that’s three songs in a week’s time… crazy… and in a good way… a very good way.
Which, I guess, means that there’s no time like one in the morning! 😛
I had just completed a few hours of meditative work both for myself and for a friend – making a mala, and being very intentional about the whole thing and its entire process, thus taking hours to do it all, to meditate first on what to do, and then meditating by doing it – and, as I was packing up things, I acknowledged that the pull I had felt the past hour or so to play my second song (with the hopes of getting it recorded to share) was worth it… bed could wait a little longer – it wasn’t like I had to be anywhere early tomorrow, nor that I couldn’t nap as needed throughout the day (though I do have to start work at 9am, it is from home, and I don’t exactly have to talk to anyone first thing, possibly at all, so I’m okay to be a bit short on sleep…, even though I struggled with sleep last night…, but I’ll get back to that in a sec…).
Plus, this pull was more than just one to record a video or audio recording… there was something emotional pulling at me through it…
All these emotions that had gone into the song, they were ready to release, to be expressed, and to start to move onward… I had sat in them consciously for long enough – it was time.
Just to be sure, I played once just for myself, just to see how it went.
It was practically flawless.
So, then, yes, it was time.
I pulled up my computer, tested the sound and video and all, and then recorded…
And it was perfect.
And it was 1:12 in the morning, and that was perfect, somehow, too.
And now, without sharing the video, I will go get ready for bed and go to sleep, with hopes that, with these emotions out of me like this, I will find rest tonight, and can wake up refreshed tomorrow… unlike today.
And yet, even with these thoughts and feelings waking me while it was still dark outside, and not allowing but another short bit of respite – although, can we call it respite when we just end up inside stressy dreams with all the same thoughts and feelings that kept us up in the first place? – I still seem to be functioning at, now, almost two in the morning… I trust that I will be okay tomorrow, especially after resting for real… yes… I will sleep well tonight.
Thank you, God, for the music and the words… they are invaluable to me right now, and I am immensely grateful.
I lay in bed, exhausted, for an extra hour and a half, after already having woken up almost two hours later than usual (!) (and I went to bed earlier than most nights); danced around my living room to the test recording of my song, to grow accustomed to it before recording it properly; stood in my open doorway, enjoying the weather, and watching people pass without even noticing me; I walked in the sun and shade on my own; I heard French(!) from some neighbors; I practiced, finalized, and recorded my song (only a video and simple audio version [versus with a good microphone, as for a CD or something], but still a finalized one!); played it for my mom (she almost teared up a bit, and really complimented it with her words along the way and afterward); painted a whole painting (from a fun and loosely-guided tutorial) on the porch, with my mom painting alongside me for a good while; I made another mala; I ate a lot of home-cooked food; I shared my song online (eek!), carefully excluding certain relevant individuals from seeing the post (okay, well, it was really just one person, but that’s beside the point); I listened to a lot of music from musicals that I hadn’t known until this weekend (Hadestown [stellar music!], 36 Questions, Heathers, Co-Op, and one whose name I am not currently recalling [only got one song so far from it and Co-Op and Heathers, but I’m liking them all so far!]); and I started to figure out the chords to a set of songs I want to learn to play on guitar.
Suffice it to say, today was a good day… emotions are very real and honest, yet very light… it is a beautiful feeling.
So, yeah… this was one of the best standard Sundays of my life… and I also stuck to my regular goal of having Sundays include painting, without even originally realizing that I was planning this particular paining event for Sunday.
With that, I go to sleep, exhausted on the other end of the day, and deeply satiated… for now. 😛
It appears by, well, all accounts, that I have just written a song.
I started at about 7 PM, and finished the initial complete draft around 8:30 PM tonight.
I then cleaned up all of my materials from my task of the day, brought them upstairs where they belong, showered and started preparing myself for bed, and then pulled out my notebook and laptop so that I could type up the lyrics and put them together, organized and in an easily rearranged format.
I then did some slight rearranging, and phrase editing, and am now ready to go to sleep with a deep sense of satisfaction both in my accomplishment and in the awesomeness of the song itself.
I can hardly wait to record it and get some instrumentation figured out for it(!).
(I’m a dork, I know – always have been and always will be, and gladly so!)
I want to get to sleep as fast as possible now, so that I can wake up sooner to work on it in the morning.
Woohoo. Haha
This has really been a fun miniature adventure today and tonight… I kept wanting to write a song this week or next, and I couldn’t seem to get the right style or topic – I kept straying from the focus every time I started to write, and then didn’t like it… until a friend (? We’ll call him that, anyway.) shared a song that he had written…
When I heard the first line, I felt struggle and pain being released… by the second line, I was almost certain I knew the origins of the song, the cause for the emotions expressed within it through its music and words… and it was, somehow, so relatable, although I had never been in the same situation… it was also so vulnerable…, which made it all the more powerful.
Thinking about the song today, I thought, Man, those are Real, meaning the emotions in there…
And it struck me: What would happen if I did that, went ahead and wrote about the heavy, loud emotions going on inside of me right now?
It might be embarrassing…, but it would be honest and to the heart…, which, I think, is a huge part of what makes my friend’s song so amazing – you can feel it, deep inside.
So, let’s get deep and put it onto paper, I guess…
I pondered on it as I walked for a while, listening to musical songs, and then, upon returning home and preparing to start work on a new mala (meditation and prayer beads), I was suddenly feeling a need to write down this idea calling out to me from inside my head – I am real emotions, hear me roar and write me down poetry style(!), it was saying to me.
Have you ever been so supremely satisfied from a dream, that, even when you wake up and discover that it was all just a dream and is not, in fact, your real life, you find yourself still feeling satisfied?
Despite the harsh reality that those amazing hours on end of your every wish right now in some aspect of your life coming true were merely a dream, and not how your brain felt and believed them to be, your deep-seeded experience of utter bliss is unshaken – you are nevertheless content…
This morning, I was heartbroken when I realized that I would have to accept that my dreams-come-true had only come true in my dreams…, yet, to my core, I was nearly overflowing with love and satisfaction, so fantastic were those lifelike dreams…
I wanted to cry, yet I didn’t even need to do so, for I was so calm and centered in my cellular and brain-function satisfaction from the night’s adventures… my mind had been so pleased, and my body had responded in kind – I was at ease, and I chose to dwell in such a blissful space for a while, merely lying awake in bed, taking note of how wonderful I felt…, and wondering how I might feel one day of those dreams really did come true, but in no way regretting their having been in my dreams last night – a spectacular dream is always welcome, when it is uplifting, inspiring, loving, and empowering… and this one, these ones, was and were.
And then, blessedly, my day today was supremely satisfying, as well – kind of a beautiful combination from the universe for today… how I would love to have another tomorrow(!).
Perhaps I can start the day right with beautiful dreams again tonight…
Here goes…
P.S. That’s a song from a French movie I saw back in high school… it had a lot to do with a roller rink with a slide, and that’s about all I remember, aside from the song. 😛
Let’s talk for a minute about how we live into the future…
You know, on any given weekend, Sunday is kind of the sucky day of the weekend, because we are acutely aware of having to go back to business Monday morning… and then, if we have a vacation coming up, we’re overjoyed and excited all the time, all throughout the day, even if it is Monday morning, and we have work to do…, because our vacation is soon(!)… The boring meeting right now has no power over our cruise that starts Saturday morning…
In that sense, we live into our future, right?
Right.
So, for me, I need to be around people – I need to have my solo time, but I also need to be with people, really be with them… a friend(?) recently mentioned the term “ambivert” to me, and I like it… it very well describes my situation with all of this being extroverted and introverted…, which people almost never seem to understand, by the way…
Anyway, I need people in my life.
For the past two weeks, I have been living with very few people in my daily life… it was enough to get me by last week and the start of this week, but then the working from home this week has crushed all interactions with people in my daily life now…
However, I had work to get me through the week, e-mails to exchange, interactions (though cyber) guaranteed to be had throughout the day…
But tomorrow is Saturday… I have no work, no e-mails, no semblance of human interaction…
And I am miserable… I almost – scratch the almost, I feel like weeping, I am filled with such an experience of stress and of being unloved…
There is that beautiful quote of, “I have called you by name; you are mine,” and, though it is used initially as defining a part of the relationship between God and humanity, I feel it applies to how we interact with all things and beings in our life… when I have called you by name, given you a name of my own, I have given you a place in my heart, and you are dear to me – in some way or other, you are mine.
When people interact with me, call me by name, I often am filled with the love that is present in our relationship, whatever that relationship may be… essentially, when people interact so directly with me, I feel and experience their love for me.
In contrast, when people do not interact with me directly…, I sometimes lose sight of that love…, I sometimes begin to convince myself that the love has faded, and that I am left to myself, to be loved by no one else…
And the experience of that always sucks.
Just saying, it does.
And I know that my love is enough, and I know that the pieces of God that reside within me are enough to sustain me and fill me in every way…
That doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck to feel unloved by the rest of the world.
I know I will be okay… I will be far more than okay…
I’m just letting myself experience this overwhelming feeling of sick right now, so that, in acknowledging it, in allowing the intense, hiding yet ebbing emotions to express, I am able to let it all go, to release it all in a cathartic convulsing of body and searing tears…
It is already late tonight, but I know that I will go to bed in an intentionally much improved state…, and I will get out of bed in the morning and take care of myself – I will play music and make art and work my body as hard as it needs to release anything else that might remain in the morning… if I cannot focus my love on others, perhaps there is something missing in my love for myself, something on which I would do well to improve… I am worth loving, and I know that and experience that with my whole being… even when I stray to wonder at its being true…
Nonetheless, I will take care of myself… I will do what I wish others would do to show their love for me, because I love me, and I am worth being loved (and even lavished), and being all alone for so long and for so much foreseeable future is scary right now…
But perhaps it is this problem exactly that has me in this situation… perhaps I need to grow more comfortable with providing all the love on my own, so that I become fully clear and comfortable in the fact that I do not need the others’ love – I merely want it.
As I was thinking in a dreamed conversation just today, do you really want to be with someone who needs you?… Would you really choose that over being with someone who wants to be with you?
I have said it before, and it still holds true entirely, I want to be with someone – in all my relationships, really – who doesn’t need me, but who wants to be with me nonetheless… who wants not to be without me, and so chooses to be with me.
It is in times of these feelings of isolation that I wonder where the people in my life stand on this spectrum, to what degrees they want me in their lives…
I have yet to find the far edge of the spectrum of wanting me…, but perhaps it will come some day… soon…
Anyway, I’m off to clean up and get ready for bed, now that I’ve finished this whole cry fest… who would have thought that Friday night and an entirely open weekend ahead could be so upsetting??
Haha
Anyway, this was how I spent my evening: eating fancy stew straight from the pot, while watching the first half of one of my favorite films, which was just recently gifted to me for my birthday, all while detachedly wondering about something that won’t seem to leave me alone lately… (I mean, what are you gonna do, right?… it’s like when a song gets stuck in my head… just let it ride, and it eventually will be replaced by something [hopefully] better, you know?)
These dreams feel so real, so vivid… I can almost smell in them… and yet, they are so good, I wake up from them with a seeping feeling of sadness at the loss of them – when I awaken, they end, and I return to a lesser world than the loveliness that was my world five minutes ago.
The tips of my fingers still tingle, and the sides of my arms, too, from the touch of hands and arms in loving embraces.. I can feel the residual pressure on my chest, and the hands in my back… such embraces are filled through and through with satisfying, tactile love…
And, though they are not real in terms of taking place physically, they are exactly what I most need and want, and my mind allows them to be real, so far as my brain is concerned… we already know that watching something being done activated the same parts of the brain as actually doing that something… my mind knows I want this physical expression of love in my life right now, especially considering my current experience of physical isolation, and so it helps to take care of me, to give me what I most want and need… to love me…
And so, tonight again, I suspect, I shall have some more such dreams, and I will encourage myself to be glad of it – it is a beautiful blessing for my mind and brain to take care of me, and I want to respect their efforts with appreciation and gratitude, and to let go easily of my letdown upon waking and discovering that my world has suddenly transformed from exactly what I wanted…
But then…, what I want truly is possible…, so perhaps, one day, it will be my physical reality, and not just in my head anymore.
Now… that would be amazing…
Fingers crossed(!!!).
*Bonus points for knowing the song and singing along!!
hannah ananas 