Is it over yet?

The clock is ticking down to the official end of 2015. I'll be perfectly honest, I am looking forward to this. The past year has been a lot of hard work. I am hoping that next year will be a little less labor intensive. I have been banned from working on Yule gifts for next year until the beginning of next year. As Beloved pointed out, I will have 365 days to work on it because it is a leap year.

I have been struggling with keeping up with the FLYLady thing over the last year. I am basically rebooting the process and starting over again from square one in January. I know that I need more structure in my days. FLYLady helped provide that. I am confident, however, that I can get back on that bicycle and ride with out too much trouble. I have the FLYLady book and my control journal. I don't necessarily need the website. Which, honestly, is looking like a good thing.

The emails from FLYLady are getting preachy again, and not in the sense of 'let's do this stuff to organize our lives' but in the sense of 'praise Jesus' variety. I don't have a problem with Christianity. It seems to be a faith that works really well for a lot of people. What I've read of the teachings of Jesus, there is a good deal of wisdom there. I take issue, however, when people that I am patronizing for an entirely different purpose begin preaching at me. I am debating removing myself from that email list.

I have started a journal where I track my mental state, my diet, and what exercise I do. It takes a little effort to remember to do so. It also takes some effort to remember to do some exercise on a given day. My goal with this journal, however, is to gather data that will allow me to get a good picture of how my moods cycle. In my other journal for daily writing, I am going to attempt to get a picture of a given day's major events. My thought is I can cross reference between the two and know what happened that day and how it effected my health. All of this is an effort to get myself healthier.

I am looking over things like where I want to be this time next year and what I want to have accomplished. I believe that my sense that I need to organize is a good thing. I think this is actually one of those times where I can make my anxiety work in my favor. I just have to stick to my rules for being healthy and such. As long as I can make it through with out breaking taboos, I think I can turn this into a very good year.

Fiber Update & Yule Projects.

I have fifteen days to finish all of my projects. I am confident I can manage it. Considering that I am half done with Beloved's sweater (actually a little over that) and the remainder of crafting type things I have left to do are involving fabric paint, I don't think it is going to be a problem this year. I am presently stalled on my spinning. I still have that batt of pink fiber to tie onto my distaff and spin. I also have several other bits of fiber that I still need to card.

This doesn't include the backlog of work for the sheep study that the spinning guild is doing right now. I think, however, I have finally concluded what I am going to be using the samples for. I believe I am going to knit another sampler scarf for myself, this time less than 12 feet long. (I accidentally did that with the last one I knit for myself.) I have been thinking about fiber and what I am going to do with the samples of Lincoln wool that I've got kicking around. It is all less than an ounce each. And they're dyed in really vibrant colors.

Looking at everything, I am seriously trying to figure out how to make spinning off the distaff with the kick wheel work. If I can manage it, I am pretty sure that I can get a significant amount of my fiber stash spun. I am starting to run out of room for storing it. Thus, I need to start spinning it all.

I am looking over the Yule gifts that I made thus far this year. The large shawl that I made for E. came out fairly well. I still need to soak it in fabric softener and run it through a wash to soften up the fibers but I am anticipating that will not be a problem. I honestly think the only challenge with that is going to be transporting it to the laundromat for washing after I soak it. And that is something I can use a clean garbage bag or plastic shopping bag for.

I was attempting to make another wingspan shawl with the skein of yarn I had sitting from last year. I ended up with a small scarf. I still have to block it out. I am debating if I should sew beads onto it or not. I am not pleased with how small this thing came out. The yardage of it, according to what I had for directions, meant that I was going to get a small shawl out of it. Instead, I got two repeats of the pattern, which makes something just long enough to wrap about the neck once.

I have a pile of washcloths and kitchen goods that I made up earlier this year packed into a little recycled canvas rice sack. I am fairly sure it will be a gift that is appreciated as well as found to be useful.

Running low on spoons.

I don't know why I feel so run down and depressed right now. Today was not outrageously difficult. I took care of the thing that was a major source of anxiety over the last two weeks this afternoon. The kids are behaving relatively well. On the whole, everything looks just fine. No major catastrophes or trauma happened today.

But, here I am, feeling terrible. I wasn't feeling up to cooking dinner so I ordered a pizza special from the local pizza place. I got through most of my two slices before I became overwhelmed with revulsion. I tried eating some chicken wings. But I found myself so repulsed that I could only eat two. This wasn't just a case of dinner not agreeing with me. At breakfast time, I was utterly disgusted by the thought of the act of eating.  At lunch time, I forced myself to choke down most of a hot pocket sandwich. It kinda has been a theme today.

I find myself worried that this may continue. I am someone who has problems with a borderline eating disorder. I have a history of starving myself when I feel like my life is completely out of control because I feel like that is the only thing I have control over. I honestly can't pin down why I feel like my life is so completely out of control right now.

I am anxious about sleeping again. I have had Beloved reminding me to go to bed at a reasonable hour. I still lay there awake for a while or I wake up several times in the night. I haven't been having the nightmares that I am so afraid of having. The dreams have actually been surreal but not fear inducing. In many cases, I am reliving what was actually relatively pleasant times in my childhood.

I wake up feeling for a moment like I am that child in my parents house. I suppose that could be part of the reason why I'm on edge but I don't know for sure. I have been having dreams like this on a semi-regular basis for the last several months. I know it is because the downstairs neighbor smokes like a chimney and our apartment is well permeated with the smoke.

I have been feeling anxious when I don't get everything I plan to do for the day done. I find myself anticipating a beating or some form of verbal harassment. I have been a bit gun-shy on the idea of going out and socializing. It is like all of the anxiety from my childhood has popped up over the last few months and it has been slowly getting worse.

I know that the flashback that I had last Saturday didn't do me any favors. I have an appointment with my therapist next week. I am not entirely sure how that is going to go. The week after, I see my psychiatric care provider. If I'm still having problems with sleep, I'll be bringing it up and checking to see if I can get back on the medication I was on before. I don't like having to take 6 different medications to function, if you don't count my frequent use of Aleve for my arthritic knees.

I keep finding myself feeling ashamed of it. I keep hearing the old commentary that I was getting as a kid when I took medicine. The arguments made that I was becoming a drug addict and that I was faking my illness to manipulate people keep popping up in my head every time my eye falls on the pill bottles. As a result, I feel so much shame that it makes me nauseated and gives me terrible heartburn. So, I take antacids every night between the heartburn caused by my medication and induced my my psychological angst.

In all of this, I am struggling to keep some measure of gaiety and such in my demeanor. It is the holiday season. The boys are excited and happy. I'm trying to share it and not let my own issues with the season make me a bitch. I don't think I am succeeding, to be honest. I know that once I loved this time of year. Then... Then I 'lost' the holiday spirit because of how keenly aware I was of the differences between myself and my peers at school. And then N- happened, which kinda was the coffin nail on the holiday cheer. The subsequent trauma over a decade later involving C- really was secondary to the rest.

I don't know what to do with myself. There is a birthday party coming up this weekend that I am expected to make an appearance at. Beloved argues that it will be healthy for me to go out of the house and socialize. I suppose he is right. At the same time, I am already getting anxious over the thought of going to this thing. It doesn't matter that they are all people who are kindly inclined towards me. I am still getting a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach over it.

I tell myself that these are my friends. I tell myself that they are all people who care about me and wish me well. And in the next heartbeat I find myself torn between the feeling that I am being politely tolerated and the thought that they're all faking the friendship. I know these things are not true. But I can't break those mental loops. Which makes me feel horrible.

My therapist says this is because of how I was conditioned when I was younger. I don't have words for how much that makes me feel worse. I understand it. I know that there is no shame in it. It is simply a technical way to describe what happened and it is realistic. But I feel like I am somehow inferior for having been subjected to it and coming out on the other side of it with that garbage stuck in my head.

I don't know what to do about it. I'm not doing very well right now. And it is still the beginning of the holiday season. I dread the rest of it.

Day after NaNoWriMo!

So, NaNoWriMo is done for another year. I clocked in just shy of 70 k for my word count. I'm not finished with the manuscript yet. I am approximately half way through my plot map. I honestly wonder if I am going to have to split this up now. I want to finish it. I just feel a bit tired right now. I have spent a good portion of today attempting to catch up on blogging. I hamstrung myself with Facebook. Now, I am going to push to get more done in the evening. As a result, this post is going to be brief.

Here's a picture. Me with my implements of doom. And yes, that is a mechanical pencil tucked behind my ear. Not shown is my collection of calligraphy pens and pile of notebooks. Which I feel like will at some point reach an infinite value if I continue collecting in the fashion I have been.