Sorting Out My Priorities

It has been, to put it mildly, a rough few weeks. A lot of that waiting I talked about a few posts ago took a giant step forward, and instead of being relieved I found myself relapsing into a depressive episode on a level I honestly thought I was beyond. So, I can now personally attest to another truth about depression: it is entirely possible to experience a relapse. (For more information on depression, see my January 28, 2010 post, Taking Down Depression.) No wonder it’s known to be such an insidious illness.

At any rate, there has been a lot of “just making it through” going on, and that hasn’t left me with either the energy or desire for much of anything else. The tactics I’ve been using for the last six months to keep my head on straight aren’t as effective as they used to be. My patience for all this *waves arms around wildly* is waning. It’s time to step up The Reinvention Project. I’ve decided to try to think a bit further into the future; to look to the ever-nebulous “other side” I will supposedly come out on when everything making my life a whirlwind of discontent finally resolves itself. If I can visualize this new life of mine, maybe it will be easier to hold out for it. To that end, I decided to make a list.

I jumped on to http://www.tadalist.com/, a lovely website devoted to list-making, and created the following:

Adventures for 2010
~ hot air balloon ride
~ skydiving on my birthday
~ hiking to waterfalls in the spring
~ run three 5Ks
~ join a writers group

The first three items are things I’ve been dying to do for years, and the opportunities just didn’t present themselves in my old life (I have a specific state park in mind for the hiking). The last two items are geared towards personal improvement for the benefit of my new life. The important thing about this list is that each thing is completely do-able this year. Only the first two items cost any significant amount of money, and neither cost is prohibitive.

One of the facets of my new life that I’m most eager to incorporate is not waiting so long to do the things I truly want to do. One of the hard lessons I’ve learned is that life is unpredictable. You can have it all planned out one day, and not know which way is up the next. Life itself will get in the way of you doing any actual living if you let it. As I am rebuilding from the ground up, now seems like the perfect time to make sure that doesn’t happen anymore. The things I want to do, the adventures I want to have, are going to take a much higher priority in my new life. That knowledge is getting me through when other distractions fail.

The above list-in-progress will seem inane to most people, I imagine. Plenty of people couldn’t care less about waterfalls, and relatively few have the urge to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. But are you prepared to deny that you have such a list in the back of your mind? If you sat down right now with a pen and paper, what small things have you been dying to do, or try, or see, that you keep putting off? Forget about expensive dream vacations (Rome is on my personal long-term wish list) or the desire to change careers. Think smaller. Is there a play you want to see? A favorite band in concert? Have you always wanted to try a particular craft? Maybe you have a secret desire to try an online computer game. Or go to a tasting at a local winery.

You think about these things from time to time, and each time you think to yourself, “Someday soon I’m actually going to make this happen. Maybe next month. Maybe next year.” But soon never seems to arrive, and the months pass, and the years pass, and life gets in the way of all your best intentions. It happens to us all. My list has been with me for years. But you know what? Six months ago that list was longer. I’ve already begun to check things off. And each checkmark is another completion of something important to me. Something that makes my life richer, more colorful. And isn’t that the point of life, after all? To live it?

Lesson of the Day: Life is for living. Make it happen.

Hoping for the Best, Preparing for the Worst

My life over the last five months has seemed like an absurd string of worst-case scenarios. As a result, I now find myself rewired to immediately come up with the worst possible outcome for a given situation. While this might not seem like the best disposition for someone currently prone to episodes of depression, I find it serving a constructive purpose in spite of the less pleasant effects of raising my blood pressure and making me cry at random intervals.

I can prepare! I can come up with Plan B and C and go on down the line for as long as my pessimism (or perhaps just realism at this point) holds out. Now that I have no naïve illusions that the worst can’t possibly happen to me, I can get down to the business of making sure the worst doesn’t carve another pound of sanity from my psyche if it does come to pass.

Now if that doesn’t demonstrate my mad silver-lining-finding skills, I don’t know what does.

Lesson of the Day: Hope for peace, but wear your flak jacket!

How to Stave off Insanity in 2 Easy Steps

There’s a quote contributed to R.D. Lang that suggests, “Insanity—a perfectly rational adjustment to the insane world.” This wisdom has seemed, more often than not in recent months, completely reasonable to me. However, insanity comes with all sorts of downfalls, not the least of which is the inability to properly function in said insane world. So, I have refined a two-step plan guaranteed to stave off unwanted insanity (or your money back for asylum fees!):

Step 1: Figure out what keeps you sane.
Step 2: Make damn sure you have access to whatever you decide in Step 1.

I have had to compromise, cut back, give up, and let go quite a bit recently. Sometimes it’s been fairly tolerable. More often…well, not so much. But scattered around in the remains of my life have been beacons to guide me back to the path of sanity when the road gets a bit muddied. All I have to do is recognize them, and then make sure I keep them with me. Simple.

Right.

So, what have I come up with? What constitutes “sanity-preserving?” Sometimes it’s something that makes me smile when I’d rather cry. Sometimes it’s something capable of distracting me from unpleasant thoughts. Maybe I need to be calmed down, or need an excuse to let out some aggression. Whatever it is, I’ve gotten very good at paying attention to what I need, and then supplying myself with the remedies.

Need a surefire way to occupy my mind with something other than what’s going on in my life? School to the rescue! Nothing clears the mind like studying Art of the Novel. Need to laugh? Bring on Jon Stewart. Need an excuse to cry without it feeling random and uncontrolled? I recently went to see Extraordinary Measures. Nothing lets loose the waterworks like Harrison Ford and Brendan Fraser trying to save children from an incurable disease (bonus points for being based on a true story!). Books. Movies. Writing. The occasional trip to Cold Stone Creamery. The point is, I have figured out how to get what I need to push back from the insanity table. So far, so good.

Lesson of the Day: Insanity can suck it.