pick-myself-up

[pick-myself-up]

Well hi there!

It’s been a couple years since I last touched this blog and I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or not. I don’t believe it’s a bad thing that I feel like posting now- I was just scrolling through old side blogs and realized that I was once a lot more active here.

I used to use this space as a journal. Not a daily one nor even monthly, usually, but a place to get some thoughts out and written down somewhere before they got overwhelming. I don’t find myself needing that kind of space anymore, but I’m glad it was here for me when I did.

Let’s see. A summary of how life’s been since I last posted here:

My partner and I set a hopeful date for our wedding, both got jobs, and failed excellently at planning the wedding due to everything that came with the new jobs. We managed to get hired on at the same place, which was great! I started a month before my partner so I moved into company housing here a month before he did and I went back home on days off to help pack the apartment. Wonder of wonders- we managed to find an apartment for pretty cheap rent that we were able to immediately sign on and got to move everything from the old apartment to the new one within a day. However, our jobs kept us so busy that we weren’t able to do anything more with the new apartment for a few months, so it basically acted as a giant, expensive storage unit until we got a vacation week and were able to move most of our things (and ourselves) from the company housing to the new apartment. So yay! We’re in the new apartment and it’s a decent space! It took us a couple more months to find the time to get the rest of our belongings out of company housing, but luckily there were no new hires, or not enough new hires, in that time frame to necessitate us rushing to get our things. That final move out of the company housing was just over a year ago now! Since then, the apartment has been fine if a bit cramped because my partner and I both own A Lot Of Stuff. The front bedroom, which we intended to use as a crafting/gaming room, is its own storage room but at least it’s all out of the way and not underfoot like it was in the last apartment!

We both love our jobs here, which is a lot more than either of us could have said about our previous non-college jobs! He’s mostly doing what he studied in school and I’m doing something that I only barely scratched the surface of in my final semester, but I’m really enjoying it! I do still eventually want to get back into what I Actually went to school for, but for now I’m pretty content with where I’m at and the people I work with. I’m going to be asking for a raise next year (because I’ll be damned if I continue to be the asst head of our department for a 3rd year and still get the pay grade I’ve been getting since I got here)! Overall work has been going really well! Every few months there’s a new challenge and I really enjoy the change of pace from time to time- I never thought I’d get sick of doing the same thing every day in my line of work, but it does wear on me after a while. I love getting a new project in and experiencing the process all over again every now and then.

! Most recently our cat has been pretty sick and the vet bills have been atrocious. Paying off the credit card for that won’t be fun, but at least we had that option. He’s doing much better now, back to normal in every way - including zoomies at odd hours of the night and trying to climb the drying rack like it’s a kitty jungle-gym. We never thought we’d be so glad to wake up to him scratching on the box spring as we were when he did so after not eating and hardly moving for 2 days.

Oh! The wedding! We finally FINALLY have an actual date set and a venue secured and a deposit down and IT’S HAPPENING!! We’re so excited!! It’s been a couple of years of failed attempts at planning because we either couldn’t afford it or didn’t have the time BUT NOW IT’S REALLY HAPPENING! We have about 9 months to prepare! Those months are gonna fly by FAST, we know, but at least we already have a lot of the bases covered. We have a photographer, baker, videographer, the officiant, and the venue decided and confirmed! There’s a lot left, of course, beyond those parts but it’s still more than I hoped to have at this point in the planning!

Basically, life is going pretty okay right now for us. We both still have our own mental health issues to contend with, that’s never going away, but we’ve gotten a lot better at working with and helping each other through the rough patches. It’s never going to be perfect but that’s okay.

[pick-myself-up]

I decided to do some 45/15s to try to clean up the living room some today. My fiancé is out of town for work, so what better time to put my all into something I’ve been putting off? The whole room, including vacuuming, only took a bit under 2 45/15s.

Before shots on the left and afters on the right

Turns out the roommate was Also wanting to get cleaning so when he came out and found me at this, he joined in!

Not pictured: the 1 full bag of trash, a startlingly large pile of cardboard, the reorganized closet, bathroom the Lowe’s box of kitchen stuff waiting to be sorted out in the kitchen (9th pic), and the tired roommate who passed out on the couch after XD

[pick-myself-up]

I’m a very messy person who tries VERY HARD to keep a clean home. It’s probably ADHD. Anyway, the best advice I ever saw about it was:

“Instead of changing your habits to keep clean, look at where the clutter is. Now put a bin under it.”

I tend to remove my socks at the computer and then there’s a mountain of socks on the floor? I put a small bin and now it looks tidy. There are piles of junk mail on the table near my front door because I can never bring them to the recycling bin? I put a smaller recycling bin there. Etc etc.

Another trick that helps me immensely are BOXES.

The bathroom sink is covered in small bottles and all sorts of products? I got small plastic crates and I put them over the toilet lid, one for my stuff, the other for my roomate’s. The linen closet is just piles of things that fall when you open the door? Baby I just got a bunch of baskets and I will separate them by function.

I have baskets and small boyxes for: my cleaning products; my bird’s toys and stuff; my workout accessories; my meds and daily skincare products; my tools; and pretty much all my art stuff. 

It still takes some effort to keep everything in its place, but having everything in a box still looks tons better than having everything on the counter, and it’s so better for the mental health. 

[pick-myself-up]

!! I did get a bit of organizing done today!

I picked up these little plastic organizers at *insert whatever chain store here* in the office supply section for maybe $3 for the entire set (which included two more of that long skinny one). I used a few other sets in my desk drawers months ago, but these were leftover back then and got shoved in a box under my bed. Today I pulled them out and decided I needed to go through my night stand drawers. All of this stuff plus a whole lot of trash and a bunch of other miscellaneous things were dumped out, sorted through, and either thrown away or given new homes.

I’m pretty proud of this little drawer. Already today it has made a difference in how quickly I was able to find my meds and my tattoo cream!

[pick-myself-up]

Before and after :) beating depression, one 20/10 at a time :)

[pick-myself-up]

A few months ago I powered through every closet in the house getting them organized and beautiful.

Oh, except this one.

I planned out two 20/10s to make a dent, turns out it just needed thirty minutes of TLC. The water bottle and happy cat are not permanent!

Now to cart the donations off……

[pick-myself-up]

A Productive Morning

[pick-myself-up]

Talk about a satisfying before-and-after…

[pick-myself-up]

I’m such a lazy person during the school year but I finally bucked up and cleaned! My mental health feels so much better when my room is clean

[pick-myself-up]

Thank you @unfuckyourhabitat for helping me overcome my depression and anxiety related mess. I feel like I can breathe in my room and it’s become my little oasis. Now to scrub and repaint the walls and replace the beat up rug.

[pick-myself-up]

Let me tell y'all about this bed.

About a month ago, I randomly stumbled across the tumblr @unfuckyourhabitat , which is based off a book by the same title that gave practical strategies for cleaning and maintaining your environment in a practical way. The author makes posts daily reminding everyone to make their beds, and I, being a devout anti-bedmaker, was prepared to dismiss that. But the rest of what she was saying made sense, so I decided to give it a try, and I can say without exaggeration that this habit has changed my whole home life. I’ve made my bed every day for the past month, and starting the day with that one quick act of tidying makes me feel prepared to spend other minutes in other areas of my house and car and classroom, because if I can get up at 3:30AM and muster the energy to better my habitat then, surely I can manage to wash a dish or sweep a floor in the evening.

My house is sparkling, y'all. You know how many dirty dishes are in my sink right now? Zero. When was the last time I cleaned the base of my toilet? Why, every Thursday actually! And what did I do last weekend, just for giggles (and because it needed doing)? I washed my blinds. Washed. My blinds. Like with a bucket and rags and the whole shebang. A month ago you would never have caught me willingly spending my weekend doing something that labor-intensive for a reward as small as not having a decade of dust on my blinds. But I find myself wanting to do those little things now, because I’ve been living in this clean and organized habitat and I love it. It doesn’t take much, just one or two quick tasks a day to keep things from getting out of hand, and I honestly credit my continuing enthusiasm and motivation to this bed.

If my bed is all pretty and made, surely I can put the clothes into the hamper when I take them off instead of a pile on the floor. And if I have a clear floor, I suppose I can avoid dropping my junk on the tables too. And if my room is organized, I guess I can keep my bathroom tidy too. And if my bathroom is tidy I might as well keep the kitchen clean. The chain of logic goes on and on until eventually it just clicked somewhere in my brain that I want a clean habitat and I’m willing to do a little work each day to have one.

And it starts with a bed that’s made.

So thank you, ufyh, for kicking my butt into gear in this one eensy weensy area of my life that turned out to be not so eensy weensy at all. The light switches I Lysol this afternoon will be dedicated to you. ✊

[pick-myself-up]

Saturday, June 20th, 2020

Things have actually been... pretty good, all things considered.

The world is in a panic, the state I live in is reopening way faster than expected (which. Is probably not good. But hey, enough people complain and yell and even a governer who is actually a doctor can’t put it off much longer).

I’ve had an anxiety attack a day for the last four days, and I don’t know what that’s really about, but it happens every now and then I guess. (I might have forgotten to take my meds a few days ago. I don’t know if I did or not, but that might have been it. Missing my meds tends to throw me for a loop. Though it could also have just been my period starting. Who fucking knows)

My partner and I have been together almost 4 months now and honestly? I’ve been happier these last few months than I was for the combined first two years of college. I can’t believe how happy he makes me, and I love him so fucking much. AND HE FEELS THE SAME.

My room on my apartment is and Absolute Disaster but we’ve been working on it bit by bit so that it doesn’t get overwhelming. I move out in just a few weeks (have to be out the last day of July) so I have some time to get everything organized and packed. Hopefully this time I’ll do a better job packing than I usually do when I move. Maybe I’ll actually pack things together according to what they are instead of just throwing everything into boxes!! Maybe I’ll actually be able to find stuff after I move into the next apartment instead of hoping to find it over the couple weeks of unpacking!!! (This may be a wistful, unrealistic dream, but it would be nice.

I’ve already packed up and sent home all of my winter and fall clothes to my parent’s to get them out of the way, so at least the rest of the clothes should fit in one tub. That would be nice. I think the biggest issues are going to be my desk materials, my pop funko collection, and all of my books... we’ll see how that goes when we get to it.

I might post photos of how my room looks tomorrow, that gave me motivation to clean my room at home back when I did that.

[pick-myself-up]

i don’t have before pics but i reorganized my room and w the help of my stepdad got shelf supports in!! i switched where my bed was and put my dresser in the closet and i’m SO FUCKIN HAPPY W IT 😍

[pick-myself-up]

Left: Before
Right: After

I’ve been dealing with depression for about three years now, and while my room has never been among the tidiest out there, the state of my habitat just worsened my mental state. After stumbling across @unfuckyourhabitat about a month ago where we saw all the Before & After shots, my girlfriend and I decided it was time to clean our rooms. For the following two weeks, whenever we had free time, we would call each other on the phone and do 20/10’s for hours at a time, being the other’s support. There was a lull for a couple weeks after that in which nothing got done while I prepped for college and she was busy. The last few days before I moved to my dorm were spent in constant 20/10’s just to finish. Thanks for the motivation! Without it, none of this would have happened.

Not pictured: the countless loads of laundry done and put away, the six full trash bags, or the four bags of things that went to donation.

[pick-myself-up]

July 9th, 2018

It’s so strange to think about where I used to be. That I used to so thoroughly hate myself and actively sought harm. I just thought about the last time I did that. I can’t even remotely find a mindset where I allowed myself, let alone pushed myself, to do that. The person who used to cut her wrists and carved words into her arms - that’s not me. That person is blissfully gone and shows no signs of ever returning.

And I couldn’t be more thrilled and relieved and proud of this realization.

[pick-myself-up]

just start. do a single math problem out of the 20 you have. one page of reading and youre done. try to just place one item where it belongs. research that one thing you need for your paper. go over a powerpoint slide for that lecture youre confused in.

i promise you doing one single action feels better than doing nothing at all. take 5 minutes to do just one small task thats been staying in the back of your head.

[pick-myself-up]

Monday, May 11th, 2018

The day started out well enough. I went to a meeting with the SM, directors, and producer with a theatre company that I was being eyed for and got the ASM position with them.

I cleaned some, chilled, watched the Tony’s until some friends picked me up and a bunch of us went to hang out

And when we left to grab ice cream from Walmart and go back to my house I just sort of

I don’t know

Slipped?

I wasn’t there and when I was I just felt bad and couldn’t hide it and I hate feeling like this

I felt... a bit envious of a friend

And just suddenly so very lonely

And lost

And confused over a friend

I’m at a loss right now