rewolfaekilerom

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dear diary #3

Oh, hey, long time no talk. I've been busy, and I'm sure you have been, too.

Among my many, many excellent excuses for not keeping up with this is this charming one: I took on too many crochet projects and then Nintendo dropped the ACNH 2.0 update trailer immediately after I restarted my island, so I've had a lot of weekend projects to keep up with and writing just didn't fit in my oh so busy schedule. lol.

Honestly, though, that's how I've been spending the majority of my weekends lately. I also started rewatching Dawson's Creek, which I think says something about my mental state; I'm just not sure what it says. Am I trying to recapture my youth, now that I'm on the brink of 31? Am I still young? I feel like I'm still a child, so there's that.

I'm still in the midst of my ongoing effort to shed the nonsense habits I developed in grad school. My current self-frustration is the waves of anxiety I keep feeling about things that simply aren't worth worrying about--or, worse, the waves of anxiety I feel for literally no reason at all. I guess that's what's difficult about anxiety, right? Sometimes you just feel worry, tension, stress, whatever for absolutely no reason--nothing caused that particular wave of stress, nothing led your brain to start spiraling, grasping for something tangible to attribute that sinking feeling to. I was just lying in bed the other night, staring at the ceiling feeling worried about nothing in particular. And then my obnoxious brain decides to start searching for something to attach that worried feeling to. Rather than just letting the worry go, I inadvertently created things to worry about. It's the most frustrating thing! And I don't know how to stop it! I rationalize these worries, neatly fold them up and put them onto shelves of "things that don't need to be worried about" and "things that you can worry about in 6 weeks, if you need to worry about them at all." At least I'm beginning to be able to do the rationalizing--that's a massive step from even six months ago. But now I'm getting to the point where I'm becoming frustrated with myself for worrying. I think it's getting better, but I get frustrated that it's not getting better at a faster rate.

My main anxiety focus seems to be work. I worry about whether something will be back to me on time, what I'll have to do if something isn't on time, what will happen if I make a mistake that's only caught after something has been submitted, who will be mad at me if I do something wrong or misinterpret something, etc. And then I'll have this moment of clarity where I'm like, "yeah, okay, these are things to be aware and conscious of, but you also can't control them. You literally cannot control what someone else does, and it's not like you'd deliberately make/leave errors in things, so you can't worry about that. You can only do the best you can do."

Instead of just sitting there worrying, I've tried to redirect those worries to think more about why I have those types of worries in the first place. I can't blame it all on grad school habits and culture--I've always been a bit of a worrier. I distinctly remember worrying about whether I'd turned the heat down in the basement when I was finished in the computer room for the night. Any time some big change was approaching, I'd fixate on some other aspect of my life--some imagined ailment, for instance--instead of just allowing myself to be worried about the thing I'm actually worried about. It wasn't until the third or fourth beginning-of-the-semester cycle of worry (in high school, I think?) that I started to realize that this was something I just do. Now that I'm no longer entrenched in a semesterly schedule, my worry cycles seem to operate a little less regularly--or, maybe I haven't recognized the pattern quite yet. It feels like I just always have a baseline of worry and anxiety that spikes and peaks around specific times in my work cycle (which tends to divide the year into quarters).

I do know, though, that much of this worry cycles phenomenon is the product of habitual thinking in grad school. I worried so much about the fact that I could not control the future, and so did not have any idea what the future would hold, that I'd obsess over trying to do everything perfectly in order to maybe be in the right position to have a few different options. I'd worry about not making mistakes, about not doing enough, about not saying yes to enough things, about not keeping everyone happy, about not being happy enough myself, about ... everything I couldn't control.

I know there's no point in worrying about things I can't control, but sometimes I slip into old habits and do it anyway.

One of the best solutions I've found is talking about my worries. Unfortunately, I feel like a lot of the time I end up dumping my worries onto the two people I share those worries with--my parents. We're incredibly close, and I feel lucky to have them in my life. I worry (lol), though, that I'm not able to stop worrying on my own. Am I so dependent on them as my sounding boards to say "yes, you're right. it's not worth worrying about" that I can't tell that to myself (and have myself accept it)? I hope not, but I think it's something I need to be more conscious of.

I'm also beginning to recognize what triggers me to worry. Working on certain types of work projects in the afternoon--after, say, 2:00, when my brain starts to get a bit tired--will set me up for a night where I just can't unwind. Certain types of emails also spark my anxiety, but I can't control when those come in or what they say. I can, though, control how much--if at all--I access those emails when I'm not on the clock.

Speaking of which, being "on the clock" has been a challenge. I work pretty much on my own schedule, but I try to stick to 9-5 or 8:30-4:30. That said, I check email pretty much immediately when I wake up, which I know is a thing you should not do--experts have been saying that for years. So, some days I'm answering emails--or at least drafting them in my head--as early as 6:30 or 7am. And then I'm checking my email well into the night--like, 7, 8, 9pm. And then I'll answer if something important comes in! That's like a 14-hour workday, really, but I can't set boundaries! And I blame grad school for a lot of that thinking and impulsiveness. It always felt like not checking email, not responding quickly would mean you risked missing out on something important--even if the requirement to get that important thing depended on something as unfair as a random, unexpected email from some uni higher-up about some opportunity no one even knew would arise that year, let alone that week or that month. I think social media and email and just our generally technological society is largely to blame for this, but I know for sure that the way it manifests for me is a direct result of habits and ways of thinking/behaving I developed and depended on to succeed as a grad student.

I feel immense guilt for taking a break that's too long, or for focusing on something other than work for a little bit on a work day. And that's even though I make myself available and perform work tasks on weekends, holidays, after hours, etc. I can't blame my job for any of this--it's entirely my own doing. My job and my boss are fantastic--my boss takes off weekends and holidays, doesn't email me after hours unless it's something really important, and has never expected me to do anything outside of normal business hours. I put that pressure on myself, and I can't help but attribute that partially to the habits I developed in order to make it through grad school. I needed to do those things and behave those ways in order to make it, I felt, because I never thought of myself as on the same level as a lot of my peers. I always felt like I had to work way harder than a lot of my peers to produce the same quality of work. And then when I realized that some people were turning in lower quality work, it was too late--I'd already shown my capacity to produce this high-quality work, so I was stuck. I'd be penalized--I was penalized--when I didn't produce something that was of the same quality as something I'd produced before. It felt like there was no margin for error, no time when it was okay to slip up or make a mistake without it having disastrous consequences. Or at least that's how it felt. Those disastrous consequences never really materialized, but by the time I realized that, I was too far into the spiral of perfectionism where I simply felt lucky that disaster hadn't struck that time--as if I'd somehow skated past by the skin of my teeth.

In retrospect, I know that's not the case... at all. I know that a lot of things--most of the things--I feel are dire emergencies are actually just things to be aware of and casually plan to avoid. It's not like I'm saving lives with the work I do, so there's no point in worrying at the same level one might if one were performing that type of life-saving work.

But tell that to my brain, my stomach, and everything else that just spirals.

I wish I had a happier or more resolute way to end this. All I can say is that I know I need to stop worrying so much, and I need to look for better ways to channel anxiety--regardless of whether it's attached to something tangible or simply a free-floating feeling that's plaguing me. I've wasted a lot of time and energy worrying, and I'm not sure worrying ever got me anything. I think that's a thing to remember.

xoxo, you know.

[rewolfaekilerom]

Amigurumi Doll Pebbles Flintstone Free Pattern Crochet https://amigurumidaily.gidif.com/2021/02/23/amigurumi-doll-pebbles-flintstone-free-pattern-crochet/ Pinterest: https://tr.pinterest.com/artofamigurumi Could you please follow me on Pinterest?😊

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things will look different in the morning.

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forgive and forget.

or just forget but don’t forgive?

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the gang, 21st century.

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Twilight (2008) + letterboxd reviews (insp)

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deleting my dating apps because i want to meet someone the old fashioned way (he uses his super speed and strength to save me from a van that is spiraling out of control)

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Rewatching Twilight, and I realized that the human boys’ silliness is exaggerated to make vampire Edward seem so mysterious and cool in comparison. As a teenager, I fell for the trick, but now, I respect the appeal of Eric Yorkie, simply wanting to show me a cool worm that he found in the compost heap at the greenhouse.

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botw + tumblr text posts

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Via Owl! at the Library

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Ten Major Artists:

Wong Wong & Lulu

Pepper examining himself before commencing a self-portrait

Pepper’s self-portrait

Tiger the spontaneous reductionist

Misty goes off the wall

Minnie, the abstract expressionist

Minnie’s Reindeer in Provence, 1992.

Smokey painting after an hour in the catnip patch

Smokey at work

Ginger’s Stripped Bare Birds, 1992.

Princess, the elemental fragmentist

Charlie, the peripheral realist

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e. e. cummings, La Guerre

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