I’ve shared some of my “issues” before, but here’s the one I feel worst about. I truly hate unpacking. From trips to big moves, I hate it all. The reasons are not clear to me. But I have only a certain amount of unpacking energy that has to be used quickly before it goes away for months or years.
Yay! More Mom embroidery! We know where it will go.
I got a good burst shortly after we moved into the Bobcat Lair, and it was really draining. I had to give myself rewards to keep going. Having to fold every single box into a flat shape and smooth out all the paper so it could be recycled was the worst. We made so many trips to Goodwill and recycling, ugh.
I’ve had this pig my whole life. It has eyebrows. I love it’s face.
My gosh, have I heard that little put-down way too many times in my life. It mostly came from my father. Sometimes it came from my mother or my brother or my sister, or especially my grandmother. Whoever said it got me even more huffy. Soon I’d cry and ALSO be a crybaby.
Baby Suna? (My scary mask)
Being sensitive was a part of my nature. I couldn’t exactly become someone else just so they could insult me with great impunity and not feel bad about it.
I’m bringing that up now, because I’ve finally developed the skill of not taking other people’s insults, snipes, and passive aggressive digs to heart. So that’s good. Yep.
I guess lightning this red candle will help?
But. I’m still sensitive. This linguist can handle words better, but I’m annoyingly sensitive to the moods, affect, and unspoken signals of others. Sometimes it’s general malaise, like after an election. Other times someone in my close circle sends out signals of distress or negativity and it gets me.
I’m not sure why this is the case, but when I was younger, I never looked back. When I left a place or an institution, I was really bad at maintaining ties. For example, I didn’t remain in touch with any friends from high school (other than my boyfriend, since he was with me in college and most of grad school) until the last few years. Facebook helped with that. And while I do have a couple of grad school friends, such as my favorite fellow student (that’s Steve H) and favorite professor (that’s Georgia M), I’ve lost touch with most people other than a random hello.
I lived here for four years, Murphree Hall. The room with the balcony was really cool. The Rathskeller was right across the road. Handy.
What about my four years of growth and learning at the University of Florida (where I never managed to see any of my high school friends who were there at the same time)? I have one, count ’em one, friend from my undergrad years. That’s Liz from Japanese class. Someone has to share those Swann-sensei memories with me.
That was true until this week, when I finally got back in touch with the only undergrad teacher I’d considered a friend. I’d thought about him often, through the years, and always had held him up as an example of how you really get educated in important things like social skills and political dialogue (that was drinking extremely cheap beer at the Rathskeller every week for three or four years). But, I hadn’t been in touch with him for a very long time, though I’d looked off and on.
Hate seems to be cropping up all over the place. It’s not just “those other people I don’t like” that seem to be full of hate, but people close to me. I’ve been paying more attention lately to how people use the word “hate” in conversation, and I’ve also been thinking hard about my own relationship to the concept of hating.
When people I know use the word “hate,” it’s rarely in reference to a specific person or other entity. It’s always a group. A friend’s son declared, “I hate snakes! All of them!” A close friend asserted, “I hate cops!” I’ve heard, “I hate Trumpers” and “I hate libtards” (actually BOTH in the same day).
Don’t hate me just because weenie dogs like to jump up and poke you in the eyes (a thing Sue Ann once believed).
Does that make people feel better? Does hate help them feel superior to a group? Or does it help vent feelings of being wronged in the past?
Upon closer examination, I would bet both these people don’t hate every individual snake, police officer, Trump fan, or me. It’s just that nebulous category that gets their emotional reaction. It’s hard to hate things or people you know as individuals. So I say.
I can see why so many people I know are staying away from online communities, even though they provide such great ways to stay in touch, make new friends, and feel less isolated. It just seems IMPOSSIBLE to create a community where people treat each other with respect and dignity. Name calling and blaming seem to be the rule rather than the exception in today’s society in this country.
Case in point
I’m a member of a fiber arts community called Ravelry, which was founded in 2007. Back when I spent much of my time knitting, teaching knitting, and designing patterns, this was like a second home to me. I’m sure many of you readers feel the same, since I have so many knitting friends (before Ravelry we had some wonderful email lists, and some grumpy ones).
That’s right, I showed up early.
I’ve been very proud of the founders and their team, who have truly created a wonderful resource for fiber artists, and have continued to add features and branch out. It’s like Facebook, but with a focus…and generally with more kindness.
You know how your childhood issues, fears, and old patterns haunt you no matter how hard you try to move past them? (If you don’t, wow, you’re one exceptional human.) That’s certainly a struggle I’ve dealt with my whole life, or at least since I’ve realized you actually might be able to move past such things.
Spiders aren’t my childhood fear, but they make a good representation for scary things
I’ve made great progress in recent years with a lot of my “issues” (thanks to my fine therapist and Brene Brown books). I no longer blame everything that goes wrong in my life on my own shortcomings. I no longer hesitate to speak up when someone in authority makes a proclamation or judges someone in a way I know is wrong. I care much, much less about whether my personal appearance pleases anyone but me…and so on.
I’ve talked about it before, how I’ve managed to get the negative voices in my head to shut the heck up and say nice stuff instead (“Great work, me,” says my internal voice).
Hi, friends. I interrupt this period of “hermiting” to share a little bit of what I’ve learned about myself and how I handle stress and anxiety now as opposed to how I used to. I’m hoping it might help someone else to at least realize they aren’t the only ones with these confounding symptoms.
As we know, nature is a great thing for dealing with anxiety.
Like in a game of Giant Jenga, anxiety can make you feel like just one more thing will cause you to crash.
I’m lucky that a combination of a low dose of an anti-depressant, meditation, yoga, and a good therapist mean that I don’t have the generalized, daily, anxiety symptoms I used to. It’s just when things pile up or there’s some big new stress source (just family stuff; it’s okay) that my old symptom friends make a rare appearance.
For one thing, when that happens, I think to myself, “Oh, there are my symptoms again…I’d better pay attention to what is going on and see if I can ameliorate something and nip this in the bud.” In the past, I’d just wallow, think about how I must be at fault and must have caused this myself, and feel helpless.
Here’s more on our adventures in Gainesville, Florida. My hometown!
One more stop
This is 6th St. in Gainesville. The postcard was mailed in 1905.
We had plenty of time, so we visited a small museum that highlighted Gainesville history, the Matheson Museum. There was an exhibit on modern buildings of Gainesville, which featured many places familiar to me from the 1960s.
We drove by Neunan’s Lake, the subject of this post card, but not from this angle. It still looked like that when I was small.
We also found postcards of old Gainesville and some books, one on the plants and animals of Alachua County. That book will take me back to my college days when my boyfriend and I would drive all over the back roads looking for armadillo, turtles, and deer on the side of the road.
Prior to finding the Hermits’ Rest, I knew it was possible to have a physical attachment to a specific location. I may have written before about how my body feels better when I’m in the place where I grew up, in Florida. Is it magnetism? Pleasant memories? A placebo effect?
I don’t know, but I’ve become attached to our ranch just like with Gainesville. When I get to the creek, my body relaxes and the clutter lifts from my mind. Just like that.
One possible explanation is that I really knew the plants and animals, the weather patterns, the sounds, and the smells where I grew up. And over these past years, I’ve become that familiar with the ranch, working pretty hard at it with all my Master Naturalist classes and book learning. Oh yes, and just by being observant. Doing this has made me a part of this place.
I have been thinking a lot about the idea of being blessed, praying for others, and sending out prayers. That’s kind of a weird thing for me to be thinking about, to be honest, since I have been an agnostic for most of my life, and not someone who “believes in” a particular deity.* Organized religion has always made me uncomfortable, even when I was actively participating in Unitarian Universalism and getting a lot out of membership in my church.
Am I possessed by a demon?
I have had a real issue with “praying” my whole life, which has led me to examine my own prejudices and beliefs. I have a visceral reaction when people talk about praying about a situation or for a person. Why is that?
(And why am I illustrating this post with filters applied to my face? I guess to bring something funny to a serious musing.)
Prayer perceptions
Back in the days of childhood, I went to Sunday School, basically because everyone in my working-class Gainesville neighborhood went to Sunday School. We got to be Presbyterians, because that was the closest church that wasn’t Catholic (Mom had issues with her upbringing). So, I listened to those nice people pray a lot. They always asked God for stuff, so that was what I thought praying was for. I always thought I ought to at least try to get stuff for myself.
The Hermits' Rest 