Like so many people, I am looking back at the past year, thinking about what’s gone right, what’s gone awry, and what I want to accomplish in the coming year.
I’ve had a very full year, with plenty of experiences (for good and ill), and I feel lucky to have come out on the other side in one piece. I’ve “course corrected” a number of things — including my poor exercise habits, the crappy job I used to have, I’ve cleaned up my diet a bit, and I’ve done a lot of work on my marriage to make it stronger. I’ve also figured some things out in my head that are really helping me get through.
I still feel pretty dull and slow at times — I can sense a difference between how fast I expect myself to go, and how fast my brain is actually moving. And I’ve come to terms with that and quit letting that make me crazy. I’ve also gotten better about focusing on what I want and getting on with the things I want to do, rather than putting them off till they are “perfect” and I understand 100% where they’re going.
My memory… I’m not sure if that’s getting better or worse, but if it’s getting worse, it’s not really impacting my ability to just live my life.
I’ve gotten a lot better about detecting when I’m not quite 100% and giving myself some more time to figure things out…. or simply abandoning things that aren’t going anywhere fast. I’ve backed away from a number of “friendships”, because the folks I was involved with are catch-as-catch-can, fair-weather friends who keep in touch whenever it suits them, not when I need them to.
The thing I’m liking about my New Year’s resolutions for this coming year, is that I’ve already started a lot of them. I’ve already taken some good steps towards some projects I want to complete in the coming months. I have a good foundation. I’m not waiting till 1/1/2015 to start down the path. I’m already headed down. And I think I found some good reading material to keep me motivated and increasingly educated.
It’s good.
So, here I am in the final days of 2014, very grateful for all that this past year has brought me. A needed job change. A shorter commute. The eradication of my massive debt. A fresh start, in so many ways.
Seems to me, the big undertaking for 2015 is to keep steady on, and make the most of what I’ve got — stay focused, keep reminding myself of what’s important, and move forward. Sure, I’ll slip back, now and then. That’s to be expected. But I am really on much firmer footing now, than I have been in a long, long time.
And the best part is — because I was in such dire straits before, now I really, truly appreciate it, like never before.
But it’s promising to be a good one. 🙂 Things at work are interesting, since the re-org announcement last week. People are still trying to figure out what to do with it.
I know what to do with it — look for the opportunity and go for what’s possible… what’s in front of me.
A lot of people are caught up in the “change thing” — they got really invested in their identities based on their roles as they once were, and now that their roles are changing, they need to adapt their identities along with it.
Personally, I’m working hard towards my own goals. I realized over the past week that I have been living like I used to — neck-deep in debt and not looking to the future, because I was just treading water all the time.
I don’t have to do that anymore. I have some things I can follow through on, some dreams I have been wanting to make a reality for many years. And now that I’m out of debt, I don’t have that same terrible pressure leaning on me.
That’s a relief. And it’s also a relief to realize it. I’m getting my strength back, resting up, getting my head turned around in the right direction, and it feels really good. I tend to be too rigid in my thinking and get stuck in old ways that don’t really have anything to do with how things are now. I am much more fluid now — and that has a LOT to do with having a much shorter commute, and also not having so many bills to pay.
Yesterday I put my tax refund to good use and paid off two outstanding debts that have been a continuous source of stress around the 24th of each month. Both of these bills were due at the same time each month, and they amounted to about 1/4 of my available money, after I was done paying my mortgage and utilities, putting food on the table and gas in the car, and meeting other obligations. Not only were they expensive, but they also stressed me out at the end of each month, because I had to remember them and make the payments at a specific time, or I would incur further costs and headaches — and one of the creditors was threatening to take my house.
The one who had threatened to take my house (which they actually couldn’t because I have a homestead declaration on my home), also hauled me into court several times over the past few years, over stupid little things like changing the spellings of names on the paperwork. Just intimidation tactics, to show me who was boss. It was pretty tiresome. And pretty stressful.
Now that is behind me, and I have finallypaid off all the debts I had racked up over the years. Four years ago, when I started the debt settlement process, I owed as much as I take home in a year’s time. So, paying it off has not been easy. I contracted with a debt settlement firm that seemed like a good option and really helped me. People all warned me away from using them, but I had no other option. My life was a story of one harassing call after another, and never being able to get ahead. I was literally paying out more than I was taking in, and all I could do was hope that something would break… but it never did, so I had to bite the bullet, kiss my credit rating good-bye, and just do the impossible. The firm I used was recently put out of business by lawsuits and going broke, but this was after they helped me pay off everything for 50 cents on the dollar. So, it worked out for me in a very big way.
And as hard as it was, I don’t regret doing it. I would probably do it again.
But now I don’t have to. And I never have to go back to that place, because I (and more importantly my spouse) know the dangers of getting way in over your head, and not having a way out. When things are going great, it’s fun to charge things on your credit card and live free and easy. But when things go bad — as they will do — well, that’s another story.
My spouse especially has grown up a lot, in the past four years. They no longer reach for the credit card immediately, because, well, we don’t have all those cards to pull from. And whenever they show me another card to apply for, I just ignore it. Personally, I can’t believe they would even think of getting more credit cards. It just makes no sense to me.
So, I will have to stay vigilant and hold the line. And focus on doing good work and making some good money. Just stick with the basics, and leave it at that.
Speaking of sticking with the basics, it’s time I got to work…
After more than 24 hours of go-go-going, with about an hour of sleep on the flight back home, I spent most of yesterday taking care of myself. I went out with some friends around lunch time, just to catch up, then I came home and slept. For almost 7 hours.
God, that felt good. I have been operating on 5-6 hours of sleep a night, with really long days — sometimes 15 hours of non-stop going — and it is fantastic to get to just STOP moving, and basically collapse.
I could do without losing the hour, thanks to changing our clocks, but that’s the least of my concerns, right now.
I have a big week ahead of me, with some significant projects. One of them is really behind – it’s overdue, and the folks I’m working with are just not happy about it. They haven’t been happy about things for several years, but I’m not the only one to blame. They don’t do what they say they’re going to do, on time, and then they come back to me, bitching and complaining about things not being “right”.
It’s generally unsatisfactory, and nobody is happy, but that seems to be how it always goes. Frankly, the fact that I’m able to get anything done under the conditions I’m working with, is a miracle. I have a feeling things are going to be changing soon in my life and work, so I’m not going to let it get the better of me and throw me off. These things happen. Nobody likes them. They’re awkward and uncomfortable, and they’re a pain in everyone’s ass. But that’s just how things are for the time being.
It’s all experience. Just that. Experience.
Speaking of experience, I’ve decide that whatever happens in my life, I alone am responsible for the experience I get from things. Yes, there are going to be really tough times and really easy times, too. But how I react to it, and what I get out of it, is on me. I can treat the tough times like they are victimizing me, and I am helpless to prevent them. Or I can treat them like lessons and opportunities to build up my strength and reach deeper within myself for more strength and endurance.
These past weeks – the past couple of months, actually, have been all about learning to deal with adversity and looking my imperfections and shortcomings and limitations in the eye. These are very public imperfections, which are resulting in frictions and drama with my workmates, as well as compromising my work product. In the past, I have really let that get to me, when I came up short, my focus and attention failed me, and I screwed things up.
I really beat up on myself, convinced that I was broken beyond repair, and I would never amount to anything. But that wasn’t actually accurate. Those were just times when I had the opportunity to see close up and personal just where I needed to put more attention and effort.
And when all was said and done, when I held steady and didn’t let things throw me in a hyper-personal way, what I had was a greater resilience and the ability to wade into potentially distressing situations without losing my cool.
That’s been a great boon to me, because the thing that my last TBI cost me — which also cost me my job(s) and almost killed my marriage — was my ability to stay cool. In the past, I had really banked on my ability to stay calm in the face of the storm, but after my TBI in 2004, I just lost it. I couldn’t keep anything together. I was so stressed and so fried by every danged thing, that I couldn’t make it through the day without melting down or blowing up over one thing or another.
It’s all a jumbled mass of shadowy recollections in my head, now, but I can remember a number of times when I just lost it — at work as well as at home. And I really know how that impacted me — lost jobs, friction at home, a fractured marriage and lost friendships…
Now, though, I’m getting back on my feet. I just got my tax refund back, and I also actually got a bonus this year, so things are actually looking up for me. I’m able to pay off a LOT of back debts, that have been sucking hundreds of dollars from me each month. It has taken me four years to clear out debts that were the equivalent of a year’s take-home salary. It has been a long, hard slog, but I am now making payments that will wipe out ALL my old outstanding debts, even my line of credit at the bank to cover my mortgage payments. I’m getting current on all my bills, and I’m consolidating and removing extra costs that I don’t need. I am now also in a position to do some house repairs which have been waiting about ten years — since I had my TBI in 2004, and I ceased being able to deal with, well, just about anything.
I’m in a position where I can actually fix the issues with my cars, and I’m considering getting a new (to me) car to replace my commuter car that’s nearing 150,000 miles and is starting to have the kinds of problems that older cars have. Radiator needs to be replaced. Back left strut needs to be fixed, rust around the edges, and so forth. So, if I can trade in the car I have for another one, it would probably be cheaper just to get a new-to-me car, instead of having to replace and repair so much on my current vehicle.
Having that influx of money to my bank account has just solved a whole lot of stress-inducing problems, the nicest one being that whenever I go look for another job, I don’t have to push the envelope on what I’m earning, just to get by. I’m not saddled with all these infernal debt payments, and I can actually work with what I’m making, rather than watching it trickle away.
Looking at all my numbers, I can see how I can actually get ahead in the coming months and years, which is a great feeling, after the past four years of being trapped in a cycle of debt resolution, feeling like I would never get out from under.
I recently realized I needed to change my tax withholding information for work. I wasn’t taking enough deductibles each year (as evidenced by the refunds I’ve been getting for years), so I submitted a new W4 form a few weeks back. The results are in, and it’s pretty amazing – I actually got a 10% “raise” in the process.
If I were my mother, I’d be shouting “Praise God!” to the heavens, Praising His Nameto everyone within earshot. And I’m almost there, myself.
It’s just now sinking in. The more I think about it, the bigger news this is for me. This changes everything. It’s pulling me back from the brink in so many ways. Even just that little boost is making the difference between a barely-scraping-by subsistence frame of mind, and actually feeling like I can plan my life.
It’s pretty phenomenal. I have now gone from being strictly hand-to-mouth… pinching pennies each week, sweating it out about how much I run the heat and electricity, driving on fumes till I’m almost out of gas by the side of the road, postponing necessary car repairs that will prevent larger problems later, and buying those $2.94 lunches at work each day.
For the record, it’s actually pretty filling, considering how cheap it is, and I can buy at the cafeteria cheaper than I can make it myself, but now the thought that I actually have a choice, is just phenomenal.
Holy crap. And all of a sudden, the world looks that much more friendly. I have been seriously stressed about money for years, now, and after realizing my mistake, I did something about it. This is all coming from my troubles after my TBI in 2004, when my brain stopped working the way it was supposed to… and it’s coming at a time when my spouse and I have been pushed to the absolute limit of our endurance. The money situation has been literally tearing us apart, and this break comes at a critical juncture, when we are going into a winter season that promises to be cold, with neither of us able to afford getting sick from not having enough heat.
Now, with just this little boost, I can quit hovering over every cent they spend, harassing them over every cup of coffee they buy on the road, instead of making it at home, fussing over ordering a large size versus a medium or small size, and worried over which utility is going to threaten us this month with shutoff.
Just a little bit can make a huge difference. And looking back at my tax forms, I realize that I didn’t do the math correctly there, either, and I did not get the full refunds I was entitled to. So, I’m going to be refiling my taxes from the past three years in the coming weeks, and it looks like I’ll get something from that as well.
Which means I can pay off some debts that are sucking us dry each month, a little bit at a time. I just might be able to fix my 15-year-old car with the radiator problems, iffy starter, and bad struts. I might just be able to have an electrician come in and fix the wiring in the dining room that’s been out for the past several years, because we didn’t have the money to get it fixed. And I just might be able to buy some new pajama bottoms — the ones I wear are about 10 years old, and they’re getting threadbare. When I look around the house at everything we have here, most of it has been given to us, and the rest has been cobbled together, piece by piece. We have very few truly nice things. We don’t live like paupers, and we have almost everything we need to live like normal human beings, but it’s a humble existence, truly.
I’m not complaining. I’m just noticing.
And the thought of things turning around… well, that’s just phenomenal. Indeed, coming out of the past three years of severe lack and limitation — every “extra” dime we’ve had has gone into paying off the mountain of debt we acquired over the years (especially since my TBI in 2004), and it has been hard. We have done without so very much. So very, very much. Basic medical care. Basic necessities. And the opportunities to see family, who are all several states away. I’ve had to pass up job opportunities, too, because I did not have the extra money to front the airfare to go to the home office and get “face time” with the higher-ups. It’s been hard. Really, really hard.
But this is changing. Which means I need to shift my perspective away from just survival, to how to manage this new “windfall”. 10% more money in the bank might not seem like a lot, but it’s actually even more than that, relatively speaking. See, a good 2/3 of my paycheck goes to paying off the mortgage as well as old debts, each month. So, that leaves 1/3 of my paycheck for us to live on each month. (Nothing like trying to buy groceries, the night before payday and having the cashier tell you your debit card was declined. Horrible.)
But now with this “raise”, taking the amounts set aside for mortgage and debt payments out of the picture, I am actually seeing over 40% more takehome pay, each paycheck. That puts it in a better perspective. Relatively speaking, after the money is allocated to the house and those creditors, I am seeing almost 1-1/2 times as much pay, as I was seeing before.
Yes, that makes all the difference in the world.
And that means I need to make some adjustments. I need get out of the hand-to-mouth way of thinking, and squirrel some of this money aside. I need to beef up the house and car repairs fund that we had (and drained) earlier this year. I need to look at the long-term plan for getting rid of the debit load and saving for the future. I know I need to get a new (to me) car, because my trusty little commuter car is having more and more problems, so I need to plan for that, as well.
Long story short, I have some thinking to do. And planning. My spouse and I need to sit down with the numbers and make a plan — that’s based on future prospects, rather than just a knee-jerk reaction designed to ease the pain of daily existence (as has been our tendency for many years, now). I’m coming out of a very dark place, and things are turning around for me, and I need to adjust accordingly.
So, it’s time to sit down and look at numbers. And get priorities together. And move ahead. Just move ahead.
The crazy thing is, I woke up early this morning – around 4:00 a.m. – feeling incredibly down. I was so depressed and felt so hemmed in, it brought me to tears. I felt like there was no way out, that I was stuck, and I was never going to get free… and that part of my brain that loves to give in to despair started thinking about how much my life insurance was worth, and how I was worth more dead than alive. That comes up, every now and then, when I am feeling stuck in a corner with no way out. It’s horrible.
Then I called my bank and checked my balance, since my paycheck went in at midnight. And everything started to look brighter. As in, blindingly. Everything turned around, just when things were seeming their darkest. And it went from the abyss to the mountain top.
Now, granted, there are still challenges, and I still have a lot of work to do, but this is a start. It gets me out of the red and to a place where I’m doing slightly better than just breaking even. I have years’ worth of backlogged obligations to take care of, and now they don’t have to hang over my head anymore. I can take care of these things, one at a time. Systematically and regularly and with a good plan that makes sense and as my spouse’s cooperation. I don’t have to live in horror and dread because of a bad credit rating, because now I can suddenly afford to pay for things when they come up.
And life is good again.
How quickly things can turn around. How quickly they can change. I just need to keep steady and not lose my head over things… and make sure my spouse is in synch with reality. Already, they’re starting to talk about skimming a little bit off the top, here and there, so I need to nip that tendency in the bud, before it puts us back where we’ve been.
I’m tired of being here. I need to get out. I need to move on. Make the most of what I have — however much or little that may be — and get back on the good foot.
Use my head. Be smart about things. And go. Really go.
The bottom line is, I must never give up. Because things might just turn around radically without me ever expecting it. Never give up. Never, ever, ever give up.
So, my plan to go for a walk this morning got postponed. I realized that I needed to start work on some important day-job stuff that is due in a couple of weeks, so I dug into that, and three hours later I realized that I wasn’t making the kind of headway I wanted to, so I gave it a rest.
Which was good, because my brain is *fried*. I had an incredibly full day yesterday, with a training I attended in a nearby city. Between the 90-minute drive in, the two-hour training, the urgent errands I needed to take care of while I was there, an introductory phone call to a possible business connection, the two hour drive home, and then dinner with friends out in the country, an hour’s drive from home, and then another hour driving back home, I spent about 5 hours driving, three hours on very mentally taxing stuff, and then even more time talking through some heavy stuff that our friends are trying to navigate — and there was a business/logistical aspect of that, too, which was more mental effort.
Come to think of it… no wonder I was baked, this morning.
So, yeah, my plans for a walk got hijacked by work-work stuff that needed to be started. And the deeper I got into that, the more I realized how much work remains to be done before this massive deadline. And then the panic sets in. And then the frustration starts to mount, and then the wheels start turning about how much I have to do in other areas of my life, and before you know it, my head is going a mile a minute in circles — or rather, it’s headed downhill at top speed, headed for the cliff, with me all caught up inside it.
And the panic starts to set in…
And then I get depressed, and I start to feel so incredibly weighed down by all the burdens of my world, and I begin to feel like there’s no hope, no chance of ever getting or doing better, and why should I even try? Why indeed?
I sat outside for a while, getting some sun and feeling better in some ways. My balance is WAY off, today — with so much activity, I’m jammed in high gear, which wears me out and makes my vertigo zoom to the outer regions of charts. I can’t spell, I can’t type, I can’t hold a pen, I can’t dial a phone, I can’t keep my balance unless I’m moving in a specific direction at a high speed, or I’m holding onto something… and I feel like CRAP.
After a while of hanging around outside getting some sun, eating some lunch, feeling like crap, and then getting bit by mosquitos, attacked by biting flies, and stung by a wasp (my bad – I walked near its nest), I finally had enough, so I took a hot shower and went to bed. I just sank into the oblivion of silent darkness, with my earplugs in and my light-blocking curtains pulled tight. I had the air conditioner on to put a chill in the air, because I sleep better when I’m not hot, and I just let it all go. After I had an hour’s rest, I went out for my walk, got my head together, and came back home to make dinner.
All I can say is, thank heavens for that nap.
This is my new thing — closing my eyes and just letting it all go… letting go of any thoughts, any tension, any ideas, any hopes, any dreams, any aspirations, any anxiety, any nervousness, any plans… just proverbially taking 1000 mg of Fukitol and dropping off the edge of the cliff to oblivion. Just saying “screw it” to everything — the good and the bad, the positive and the negative — and letting myself sink into complete darkness.
I mean, frankly, sometimes the “good” stuff is a bigger hassle than the “bad”. So many hopes, so many aspirations, so many interdependencies, so many people “rooting for me” and all that. Things were so much easier when I was a chronic under-achiever who spent their weekends hanging out, lying around on the back porch, sleeping in the sun, going for long walks in the woods, and being satisfied with a decent meal. Okay, so I was on a perpetual roller coaster and my moods were insane, and I was always on edge about something, so it wasn’t all hunky-dory. But thinking back, I can’t say it was a terrible thing, to live like nothing hung in the balance with my decisions.
Now things are very different. I own a house. I have several projects which are high profile and have a lot of people depending on them. I do a job that only I can do. And I’m the sole breadwinner for my household. Ugh. Days like today, I truly wish I didn’t matter at all.
But you know, when I think about it, the fact of the matter is, I really don’t matter that much at all. Yes, I have my hopes and dreams and the things I want to accomplish. Yes, I have my friends and associates and dependents. Yes, I have my work and goals and “deliverables”. But in another hundred years, it may very well be as though I never even existed. All the drama, all the worry, all the ambitions… in time, they all disappear and dissipate into the ethers. And what have we got to show for it? Nada. Zip. Zilch. We’re gone. And the memory of us is not far behind.
I know a lot of people who are horrified by that prospect. They want to be remembered. They want to be memorialized. They hope and hope to become a cherished memory in the minds of others.
Why? What difference does it make? Our “legacies” are never what we intend them to be, and we invest all this time and effort in “leaving our mark”, when the best thing we could probably do for posterity, is to leave no mark at all — just let them live their lives as best they can without the intrusion of our “legacy”. All that talk and fluffernutter about “creating change”… please. It seems to me it’s just a convenient way for us to distract ourselves from our existential anxiety — the simple fact that one day we will not be here anymore, and nobody will ever notice we were ever here.
I think about mortality a lot, this time of year. The leaves are starting to turn and fall, and things that were so alive during the spring and summer are starting to die off. Worms and snakes are crawling out onto warm road surfaces to keep out of the cold, and they’re either drying up or getting run over by cars. Among the larger mammals, the older, slower ones and unwary members of the new generation are getting hit by cars and dying by the side of the road.
Crops are being brought in and fields are being mowed for perhaps the last time of the growing season. Summer is ending. In another week, it will be official (work-wise, anyway). And we will launch into our busy-ness driven flight from our existential angst through to the holidays.
Again.
Yep, I’m a little depressed, these days. I always get this way around this time of year. Another year has passed. Another batch of hopes and dreams unrealized. Another year of laboring to feed the gods, without a heck of a lot to show for it. Just survival.
On the brighter side, though, in 2014, I am on track to have several large outstanding debts repaid – which will save me close to $700 a month. That’s not small potatoes, and it’s going to be pretty friggin’ awesome to have it all squared away. The first of the problem debts, which is close to $450/month, will be repaid in January of 2014 — sooner, if I can rustle up a couple of thousand bucks, which might be doable, depending. The second of the problem debts will probably take the full year to lay to rest, but I might be able to get that squared away sooner, especially if I can find a better job that pays me well.
In any case, there is a light at the end of that horrible tunnel. And the difference an “extra” $450/month can make, is nothing to sneeze at.
Looking back, I can be pretty proud of myself, having kept it together as long as I have, under these conditions. For three years, I was shelling out about $1500/month for debt settlement payments, which cut very deep and put tremendous stress on my spouse and myself. Yes, I do realize that that’s more than some people bring home in a month. Hell yes, I realize it. It was a direct result of me losing a good job, thanks to a mild TBI in 2004, and then living off credit cards for years, before it all caught up with us, and we had to choose either trashing our credit to bits and settling our debts at a great rate of about 40 cents on the dollar, or living in a perpetual cycle of indentured servitude and avoiding credit card companies calling every other week. We took a gamble and made the tough choice and went down the debt settlement road. When it was happening, it was hell. But now that it’s going to be over in another year’s time, it was so worth all the pain and suffering and threatening calls and hair-raising visits to claims court.
We have been seriously strapped for years. All sorts of things fell by the wayside, including vacations, new clothing, car repairs, dentist visits… you name it, if it could be cut or postponed, it got cut or postponed. Now we’re settling up and leveling everything out, and it feels pretty friggin’ awesome. So, that’s good. It’s something to be happy about, in the midst of my autumn depression.
So, I look for what I can, and I do the best with what I’ve got. If I’m feeling down, I’m feeling down. There it is. I can still keep on with my life, not give up, but stay steady and keep my eyes on the prize of finally being DONE with things I detest and hate. And I can spend a little time thinking about where I want to be and go instead. There are a lot of possibilities for me. I just need to not get overwhelmed.
But in the case I do get overwhelmed, I can always go to bed.
I am at a complete impasse with my money. I am doing well, salary-wise, in a competitive field, but I am literally living paycheck-to-paycheck, in no small part because my last brain injury happened at a really crappy time. There’s never a good time for a head injury, but this one took place about a year before I was about to become vested in an options program at work, which had siphoned off all my extra earnings for the past three years to pay into, so that I couldn’t pay off any of my credit cards all during that pre-vesting time.
So, after I fell, I was left not only with crazy credit card balances, but also the inability to finish out my vesting term, which means I lost half my money to taxes, a remaining fourth to paying down out-of-control debt, and the last quarter fled from my wallet in an amazingly short period of time. I hate when that happens…
Long story short, I’m earning a good living, but I’m barely scraping by. It’s straining my marriage, it’s threatening my house and my sanity, and I just can’t do it anymore. I can’t ask for help from anyone close to me, because all my friends are in terrible shape, losing their houses and marriages and jobs, and my family is all fairly not-well-off… plus, they all think I’m made of money, not knowing the details of where I’m at — and why. I can’t even begin to explain my situation to them. They wouldn’t understand. They just don’t get a whole lot about me, including why I’m having as much trouble getting by, as I am. I just can’t do the lecture-thing. Just can’t.
Sometimes it just sucks to look good, while you’re struggling.
Anyway, enough feeling sorry for myself. I’ve made some calls, and I’m getting my financial situation in order. I have been wanting to do this for years, but I’ve always been uncomfortable with approaching others about my money. I got too turned around, and I didn’t know how to ask for clarification. I literally didn’t. I thought I had to tough it out and soldier through and try to figure things out on my own. That never worked, and it was debilitating. Disabling, really. I was trying to go it alone, while that was about the last thing I could manage.
I’m not going it alone anymore, at least in this respect. I’m asking questions when I need things explained. I’m getting help, and it feels good. Scary as hell, but good.
After being on the phone about this for the past two hours, I am utterly bushed. So, I’m off to bed. More on this later. Just the fact that I was able to pick up the phone is a real sign of progress. And the more I think about it, the better I feel. But for now, I’m too tired to do more than click Publish and head off to bed.
This is my new thing — closing my eyes and just letting it all go… letting go of any thoughts, any tension, any ideas, any hopes, any dreams, any aspirations, any anxiety, any nervousness, any plans… just proverbially taking 1000 mg of Fukitol and dropping off the edge of the cliff to oblivion. Just saying “screw it” to everything — the good and the bad, the positive and the negative — and letting myself sink into complete darkness.
Broken Brain - Brilliant Mind 