The World Keeps Turning

I’m kind of tired to be writing this right now, but no time like the present I suppose. So, here I am, again, trying my hand at getting this blog back up. I have the time now and I really just need to find something to fill my time. Since the last time I wrote not much has happened. Well, I was in North Carolina for 3 months, but that’s about it. I’m helping take care of my 95 year old grandma now too.

Life goes on whether I’m writing here or not. The reason I haven’t been writing is probably because I haven’t had anything to write about. I haven’t had any inspiration or drive. I’ve become stagnant and it’s not good. It’s not healthy or productive and I need to get out of it somehow. So, my hope is that this will help. I don’t have a ton of followers, but hopefully those of you that do will stick with me. I want to plan some content and try and be creative with this again. I need to find passion somewhere. I’ve never actually found something I’m so passionate about that I can’t contain it. Right now, there’s nothing I would die on a hill for. I need to find the creativity and the drive. The will to create something bigger than myself. We’ll see though. I’ve been here before, but I really want to try. Not half try and give up, but actually put something into this. That’s my hope anyway.

Hope is something that’s eluded me for a long time, but I think I’ve found some. I’ve found the light at the end of the tunnel and it’s creativity. That’s the light. The world will keep turning no matter what I do though. So, we’ll see what happens.

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Catching Up

I feel like it’s been quite sometime since I posted here. Well, I suppose it really has been. I needed a bit of a break after the death of my grandmother. I’m back now, well I’m going to try and be.

Honestly, nothing much has happened in the past month or so. I’ve been stuck in the house. I just wanted to write a little bit about how COVID has affected my mental health. I am easily triggered, and will quickly have a mood swing after the initial trigger. So, being stuck in the apartment you would think that I would be able to avoid triggers, that is not the case though. I am easily triggered by videos and sometimes pictures. Also, by the emotions of the people around me. Since my boyfriend and I are spending every single second of every single day together, it’s almost impossible to not feed off of each others emotions. So, I’ll get triggered by something, then he’ll feel my stress and it’ll possibly trigger him. It’s a very delicate system.

Also, the business has not been doing the best. Due to COVID, people just aren’t buying our products. We try so hard. The lack of orders and work to do leaves me very anxious and bored and then I panic because I feel like I should be doing work, when there’s no work to be done. It’s all very frustrating. I have a very strong work ethic so when I don’t have something to focus my energy on, I get severe, debilitating anxiety. I tell my doctors and they try to help me and give me advice, but the bottom line is that we can’t adjust my meds. So, it’s basically me against myself. In my head. All day everyday. I’ve been manic a few times, down, but not truly depressed, but mostly the anxiety. Except yesterday I felt extremely unstable. I don’t know what happened, but something tipped the scales. I feel like I need to channel my energy. I’ve been writing a lot of fiction, but I’ve kind of run out of inspiration.

I know they say that you have to write even when you don’t feel like it or if you don’t feel inspired. I just can’t seem to push myself though. Everything just feels off. Probably because no matter what I do or how hard I try, I’ve found that; no matter how much you try, it’s almost impossible to move forward when the world is standing still. Because we are still in the middle of a pandemic and things don’t seem to be getting better. I feel like there is no hope. Like I can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. Even as I write this I feel a sense of panic. Everything is a struggle. It also doesn’t help that it’s like a sauna in my apartment.

I honestly am doing the best that I can. I just keep forgetting to remind myself of that. Sometimes, doing the best that you can is enough. Even if all that you do is get out of bed. I had a pretty strict morning routine, but somewhere along the way it fell to the wayside. I wish that hadn’t happened, but it did. I know not to beat myself up about it, but it’s difficult.

So, COVID has not given me any more drive, it hasn’t really done anything productive for me. I’m hoping I can start feeling better today and get back into blogging. I’ve really missed this.

It’s Okay to Feel Okay

So, it’s Saturday afternoon. I’m roasting coffee for an order, it’s very warm and muggy on Long Island, and the apartment is even hotter. I was in distress because when it gets hot I’m more prone to migraines, and just like everyone else feels, I get very uncomfortable in general. Well, I found a fan on the top shelf of our bathroom cabinets, my boyfriend got it down. I went out to drop off a delivery and as I was driving back I felt that tinge of pain that is the beginning of a migraine. When I got home, he had set up the fan in the kitchen and I remembered that I had a nice cold celsius energy drink in the fridge. So, I’m standing here, drinking my cold drink, with the fan aimed at my back and youtube videos on, and writing. I am a happy camper. I don’t know that last time I said that. I used to say it a lot for small things, like, if I got ice cream on a random day, I would be a happy camper. Anyway, I’m comfortable and I’m okay. I am okay. I’m not saying I’m fantastic or anything, I’m just okay or neutral. I don’t know how long this will last so I’m going to take advantage of it.

I always have a post planned or have a seed of an idea planted in my head, but right this second I don’t. I’m just going to free write a little bit. Like I said, I’m roasting right now. The beans smell amazing and look even better. I’m happy with my work. There’s another bean I’m having a bit of trouble with, but I have confidence I will figure it out. I’m part of this blogger group on facebook and I keep seeing people posting this or that about their blog. My post about comparison is live by now, so you may know that I’m having some issues with comparing myself to others right now. Also, I’m what I like to call a “lurker” on Facebook. I don’t post too often, I don’t comment or like, I just fly under the radar. To the point where people rarely say happy birthday to me on my birthday. So, here I am seeing all these veteran and emerging bloggers come together and what am I doing? Comparing myself. This person writes 1000 word posts, on that same post I was following about word counts someone wrote “20 percent more than your competition”. I was a bit taken aback. Are we in this group to compete with each other or help each other? Who am I competing against? The only person I can think of is myself. I mean, of course there’s other blogs that are advertising and getting monetized, but I’m not there yet. At this point in my blogging career the only person I’m trying to be better than, is myself.

I have to learn to set reasonable goals for myself. Maybe one post I had during the week reached 1000 words or so. Maybe the next week I’ll aim for two posts with that many words. I mean maybe pretty loosely. I know what I’m capable of and I know what a reasonable goal for myself is. Other people set their goals based on their lives. What their everyday life is like. For example, I love blogging, but I have other priorities. I have a small business to run, I have things to do for school, and most importantly my biggest priority is my mental health. Besides my relationships with people and my animals, my mental health needs to take priority. I don’t know what these other bloggers are going through, I don’t know what they do besides blogging. Just like social media, you only see what they want you to see. I feel like I’m pretty open about my mental health and how it affects me. I don’t go much further than that though, which is why I want to add in some lifestyle here and there. I want to show you more than just mental health, because while it may be my priority, it’s not all that I am. Most of my weekly posts are pre-written, because when I do feel okay or have a spark of inspiration during my down time I want to take advantage of it. Which is why my weekend posts are written day of, I want you to see what I did this week and read my rambles about what I want to get done. Anyway, I’m going to go take advantage of feeling okay and just lounge around the apartment.

Coffee Chat, Kind Of

Happy Fri-yay! I’m sitting here drinking my coffee, todays drink of choice is a redeye (a regular coffee with a shot of espresso) made with my company’s coffee. The coffee is an Indonesian and the espresso is an Ethiopian. Also, in case you were wondering I do drink my coffee with creamer. I know, I own a coffee business I should be drinking my coffee black, but I just prefer it with creamer. Now that my daily coffee of choice is out of the way. I’m writing this on Tuesday morning, I told myself I wouldn’t write today, that I would give myself a break, but here I am. I told myself I have posts ready to go until Thursday, so there was no need to worry about blogging today. I just have some thoughts though, so I figured I would write them down.

As I sit here I’m very hungry, but I’m weird in the way that I don’t like to eat and drink coffee at the same time. In my newly formed morning routine though coffee comes before food. I’m not entirely sure why I did it that way. I’m not as exhausted as I felt yesterday (Monday). At least not yet. I have therapy today, I’m going to talk about my go hard or go home attitude when it comes to making routines or setting goals.

Okay, I’m back with another cup of coffee. I like to listen to podcasts in the morning, so, I like to sit at my kitchen table, drink my coffee, and do whatever I feel like I need to do. I’ve been up since 6:20 and I’ve just been feeling lazy. I just feel like there’s so much to do this morning. I have this laundry list of things I feel like I have to complete, but they should just be things I would like to complete. I don’t want to put the pressure on myself, because what I have to do really revolves around blogging. I have some projects and in regards to this blog, it will happen with time and hard work, I also need to do work in regards to my business blog. Even though that blog will only go up once a week I want to have those posts prepared about five days in advance Mostly so my boyfriend can edit it. I’ll probably just spend the day researching and planning.

I started this book yesterday called Be Mighty by Jill A. Stoddard. It has to do with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Honestly, I’m only on chapter two, but I’m so glad I found this book. You know when books have those “exercises” within these self-improvement books? Well if you’re like me you usually skip over them and just keep reading, but I’m not doing that this time. I’m actually doing the exercises and I really feel like I’m going to get a lot out of this book. I’m very excited to see where it takes me. I already have my next book I’m going to read and I’m excited about that one too. For pleasure reading, I’m reading The Iliad and The Odyessy. I love Greek mythology. Just a little fact about me.

So, if you’re looking for a coffee recommendation or a book recommendation, I highly recommend what I wrote about today. Have a great day!

Real life, is real

Sometime things happen, and it’s just like, well damn. And you’re left asking, who? What? Where? Why? Just like, how?

It seems like life isn’t fair, as if, the real world just crashed into your personal space and there’s no boundaries. Maybe if you believe in fate, it’ll make sense, now or later, but maybe never. Somethings are just meant to be or not be in some cases.

I wrote this in August? Maybe? Regardless, it’s a sentiment that still applies. I’m not sure what I was writing this about, but I feel like it kind of applies to now. With COVID-19, it has nothing to do with fate. There are conspiracy theories surrounding how the virus was contracted in the first place. One of which is that China created it in a lab, now I’m no conspiracy theorist, but I think it’s a possibility. I’m just going to leave it at that.

Anyway, when New York shut down, real life, it got real, very quickly. We were rushing to make sure we had what we needed. Then there was literally nothing to do. My boyfriend said that you have to accept the situation that we’re in, process it however you need to, but you need to process and accept that this may be how things will be for an unknown amount of time. What did I do? I spiraled into a depression. It was severe, and really hard on me. But he snapped me out of it after weeks on weeks of this all consuming depression. And, I now am at peace with this is how things are for however long this lasts for. Now, I can take advantage of it or I can just wallow, just be like, I’m the only one who feels this way. Which is not true. Everyone may not feel things the way I do, but they’re hurting just the same. I was living in this self-centered fantasy world, and my boyfriend brought me back to the real world. He gave me what I needed to fully process and accept what’s happening.

So yes, the real world, it’s real now. We are in the middle of a global pandemic, and there is nothing we can do about it. That’s as real as it gets. Nothing any regular person does will be able the cure the virus. We can help each other make the situation easier, but we can’t create a cure. I feel like that’s a hard pill to swallow, in the grand scheme of things, most regular people, can’t help create a vaccine, they can’t administer the necessary tests. Our futures are in other peoples hands. And to me, that’s horrifying.

Thursday Reflections

So, I went to support group last night. It was pretty good. The people were nice and we had a good conversation and I found it helpful. It was nice to be in a group with people around the same age. I was only there for an hour, so I feel like I didn’t really get a good feel for it. Would  I go again? Yes. We’ll see what happens in two weeks.

I’m supposed to go to a music festival tonight. I’m writing this instead of getting ready, I guess that shows how much I actually want to go. I just feel so overwhelmed by the thought of going. I have free tickets so I would feel bad wasting them, but if it’s at the expense of my mental health, is it worth it? I mean, I want to go, but will pushing myself to go help or hurt me? I won’t know, until I make my decision.

I was thinking earlier, while I was at work, essentially having a full on anxiety attack, about somethings that happened a few years ago. So, when I was diagnosed, I felt like my world went into a tailspin and everything was out of control. I had a small walk in closet, just big enough for me to fit comfortably. When I felt like things were too out of control, I would go in there and just cry and hide. It was small, it felt safe a cozy, I felt like laying in my bed was too out in the open. I don’t think I reflect on that part of my life very much. I don’t look back on it enough when I’m feeling bad and think, I have come so far. Because I really have. I no longer feel like I’m alone in the world, I have better coping skills now then to just go and hide in my closet. I mean, I’ve moved out of that room so I don’t really have access to the closet. Regardless though, I don’t have that need anymore. I understand myself and my disorder better now. I actually have coping skills and I feel, feelings, which for a very long time I didn’t. I didn’t understand anything and I wasn’t willing to learn, but now I am.

I have come a very long way from when I was diagnosed at 19, I’m not the same person, and for that I’m grateful. I will never forget who I was, but she is gone, I am me now. After I left the hospital in 2016, it was like a rebirth, I was a new person, my soul was rejuvenated. It truly is amazing what almost 3 years can do, when you play a part in your own recovery.

So, tonight just seems like it needs to be a quiet night of reflection and relaxation. Who knows though, I may change my mind. I just have to keep my own well being in mind, and whether or not I’m going just to go or if I’m going because I actually want to go.