#maybe putting myself down as 'attending' will kickstart my anxiety enough to get me to go ;;;;

[altruistic-meme]

got lost down a rabbit hole bc i was thinking about trying to make a like crocheting/knitting group near me. but!!! i found out there IS a meetup group for it that meets every other sunday :) so im going to try and see if i can maybe join that and hopefully i can vibe with the people there ;;;; wish me luck

[kayvsworld]

kay pls share your productivity & mental health tips

!!! okie dokie!!!! some productivity & mental health tips from someone who struggles a ton with both:

[tip zero: try a bunch of stuff and find out what works best for you. do you need visual reminders? do you need to write things down? how much time do you need for things? try stuff out, and if it doesn’t work, move on to a different thing]

tip one:

my most important Day-To-Day Being Functional tip: make a goddamn plan my dude

have a to-do list on your phone or a bullet journal or Something so that you Know what you need to do because your brain will not remember ever and when you ask it what needs to be done it’ll be like “nothing” or “EVERYTHING AND IT’S IMPOSSIBLE”

depending on where you’re at, this can mean setting up 9 reminders to take meds and also shower and also Eat A Real Food. that’s fine and okay and there’s nothing wrong with needing reminders for basic life tasks. u gotta use whatever system works pal

PUT YOUR SCHEDULE IN YOUR PHONE or have it in a little agenda or something that you can bring around with you. i went from attending Zero classes to attending All of them in exactly 1 week with this cool fun tip. give yourself something to look at with your real actual eyes that you have on hand that will tell you what you’re supposed to be doing. your brain will lie to you and tell you that it’s a lot more than what it is and that it’s Impossible. your to-do-list/schedule/weekly plan will tell it to shut up on your behalf

tip two (okay it’s highkey just tip one point five but hey whatever): make a Reasonable™ plan

if you know you have brain troubles, take a minute to stare at the ceiling right now and accept that you have some brain troubles. then plan accordingly

have realistic expectations of what you can get done in a day. have realistic expectations of what you can do last minute. Know what obstacles you have to work around, regardless of whether or not they’re the Same obstacles that Everyone Else is working around, and plan around them (ex. giving yourself extra time, setting up extremely specific “drink some water kay u gremlin” trackers in your planner,,)

plan for things with the expectation that you’re going to be at a mental health level of -9999999999 at all times (which will both be super great for when you actually Do have a super bad day, and will also make you feel extra good when you can get more than you planned for accomplished on a good day!)

three: your brain is very stressed. pls give it tiny chunks of responsibilities to work with

break things into small pieces. you’re not going to write a good paper in a day, and if you TRY it’ll be massively stressful and you’ll feel terrible afterwards and it’ll just be a super bad time. do a little bit at a time 

have a big reading? do a chapter a day. have a bad day? read a page or two. it’s better than nothing and doing a little bit at a time before the due date will save your life when it’s midnight the night before your thing is due and you’re too busy having an anxiety to even start the thing

i have a project due late november. i am telling myself that the major part is due several weeks beforehand so that i have time to catch up if i messed up on it at some point! i am telling myself that the research needs to be done by the 4th at the latest. I know that if i leave it and follow the actual deadlines i will not get it done until literally the day before and i will Die Of Anxiety so i will not do this

four: eat? sleep? eat and sleep

set up a sleep schedule (a realistic sleep schedule. if you know you’re not going to be in bed at 9pm don’t lie to yourself my dude). stick to it as best as you can. if you need a nap, plan time for a 20 minute nap. if you don’t sleep your brain will just get worse and be less helpful. just lying down with your screens off for a few hours even if you don’t sleep is way better than nothing!

eat a real actual food! pls don’t try to live off of tea and, like, some crackers. i have tried this 0/10. doing the food thing takes energy, but if you plan in advance when you’re doing well, you’ll have something to fall back on! I have fruit cups and a bunch of healthy snacks set up in my room for extra bad days. a nice time

try to buy some cheap emergency non-perishables in bulk so that if you, like me, haven’t managed to go grocery shopping since the end of september, you will still have canned veggies & beans and frozen fruit and some rice and stuff. 

5: hey have you noticed that all of my tips are just “make a plan” re: slightly different parts of your life? this one is too i’m a fake tip maker

are you too anxious to do an important thing? 100% completely stuck and screaming into the void? well, thanks to the nifty plan you already set up as per the first two “make a plan” tips, you’ll know that this giant important thing is ACTUALLY some smaller, less scary things standing on each others shoulders under a trench coat and Pretending to be impossible to tackle. 

move down the list until you find something that seems kinda doable. do it, then circle back and find another part that seems the most ok. that way you’re kind of building momentum! if you absolutely can’t do anything on this list, maybe try doing something else (not time-consuming, don’t procrastinate) that will give you a little sense of accomplishment to kickstart the process!

general brain struggles tips:

being kind to yourself is hard. do your best anyway. if you notice yourself thinking mean thoughts abt yourself that have no business being there, shush yourself internally in your best “my dog is barking” voice and move on! would you say that stuff to your best friend or your pet or a ten-year-old you? replace the bad thing with a nice thing, even if the nice thing feels super fake at the time

“but these things are all true!! i’m a terrible person and–” nah dude here is your honorary shushing from me. “this is a thing i made but it’s horrible and it’s so messy and–” shh i love it and it’s good enough because you’re good enough etc etc. i’ve heard a couple of people suggest thinking abt your shitty negative thoughts as like,,,some edgelord asshole on like. twitter or something. thank you for your input, jeremy, i’m going to go actually do shit now, if you don’t mind,

physical activity actually does help and i can’t believe i thought it was a lie this whole time. stretch! go for a quick walk if you can! 

go outside if you’re able to! fresh air and a little break is good for you!!

i’ve started making lists of things that i like that make me happy. it’s very cheesy but it’s a nice thing to do to settle down and then you can look back on it like “oh shit there actually is stuff i enjoy. sweet”

reaching out to other people can help a lot! friends & family are cool, but also there are a lot of resources out there where you can ask questions and someone will give you tips (especially at university. thanks university)

if you don’t have anyone to reach out to, for whatever reason, congratulations you are your own cheerleader now!!!! a great job to have!!!! you are your own parent and your own tutor and it’s now your job to give yourself Cheesy Pre-Fantasy-Battle Level Pep Talks and make sure you’ve got your shit kind of together. walk yourself through the facts surrounding the hard thing! make a blog where you can flood yourself with cheesy positive messages and inspiration! make a journal so you have something to vent to! leave yourself helpful sticky notes on your door so that you don’t forget that you need to bring a specific thing somewhere. 

progress is progress. progress is something to be celebrated, even if you’ve just gone from Very Super Bad to Slightly Less Bad. done is better than perfect and progress is better than perfection etc etc 

Summary: 

make a plan that you can fall back on

n o, make a REASONABLE plan,

break things down until they’re in small enough pieces to be manageable

eat and sleep are important things. do those 

u know the tips from 2 and 3? it’s that, that’s the tip

do your absolute best to be kind and patient with yourself

I BELIEVE IN YOU

[rueur]

Morning Pages No. 55

Tuesday 18th August - 8:40 am

So I’m scrambling to get this finished before 9am because I have an online uni tute I need to attend. It’s going to be an hour and a half long and then right after that I’ll need to finish an article on investing in real estate in Melbourne, which has immediately coincided with Evan and I finding a house that we might like in Epping...shit’s crazy. We had a genuine conversation about buying a home together yesterday because we realised that what we’re paying in rent could quite easily go towards a home without us breaking a sweat, or having to work that much more. If we find something for around $500k, we’d actually be able to buy a house like quite soon? It’s weird! I’ve always been talking about this like it’s a bit of a pipedream and I mean, we’re 23. We have plenty of time to save up some more, but this house that we’ve found is actually quite perfect. I mean it’s very us, it’s in a superb area, and I can see myself being happy living there for decades. Epping is suiting me well, and I wasn’t expecting this, but I’m grateful for it. I’m grateful for Lonzo, and for our big sunny yard, and I’m grateful for the amount of parks and ovals that are available to us. I’m grateful for the dog park and the community that surrounds that space. We’re just so lucky to have found a rental property here. If we can find a genuine home, that would just be unspeakably perfect. What’s better is that I’ve told Sandy about it and she’s totally supportive of it! She doesn’t think we’re jumping the gun, which I was kind of worried about, because she’s been thinking of buying a house for ages now. I feel like I do a lot of things before her in life, and I’ve always been a little bit proud of that. But Sandy’s establishing herself so sensibly as she always has been. She’s only really impulsive when it comes to buying material stuff, not making big ass life decisions. I don’t know. I feel like the older I get, the more I realise how similar we are, but in our own ways. It’s nice having an older sister who’s so different to you in essence, but shares your same values. You get to share sides of the world with each other that the other wouldn’t be privy to, but is still able to appreciate. 

Speaking of, I’m frantic because it’s 8:48am, I’ve got to be on zoom at 9am, and then stay there till 10:30am. Once that’s over, I need to finish my article and THEN once that’s over...Ev and I are taking LSD. I mean...yeah. At home, of course. We just haven’t done it in a while and we haven’t really structured this one at all, it’s just supposed to be a kind of ‘we’re in lockdown’ thing and I don’t have too much work to do this week, aside from organising the meeting with Steve, talking to Dan, talking to Sam, and then the fact that I have three more articles due on Friday, but I don’t have access to the Excel spreadsheet just now and it’s Tuesday, so I’ll most definitely have time to do them I guess when we’re sober on Wednesday or even at work on Thursday. OR Friday morning. It should be fine. I honestly deserve a bit of a break. Not a day goes by that I don’t have at least some kind of work to do. I mean yesterday I spent all morning writing articles, then we got distracted by the house and went for a walk to go and look at the house. It’s not very far away, but the court it’s in is so cute and lovely that it feels like you’re in the country. I’m getting distracted by this beautiful house again! We took Lonzo to the oval after that and had a bit of a ball throw and run around. I did a small lap of the second oval, the one that was all done up. I think I’m going to use that oval to measure my laps from now on, because it’s just so much easier running on concrete. Evan says otherwise because it’s bad for your knees or something and yes, I understand that. But the ground is level so it’s just a lot easier to get into zen mode and just run mindfully. Sarah’s Day 2 challenge is to do one activity mindfully. I think mine should be running mindfully to see if I can get slightly meditative about the practice. If not, I can go for a bike ride. I’ve been meaning to do that too and it’ll only take me a half hour or so. I should just bite the bullet and do it, eh? 

It’s 8:54am and I think I might need to stop these pages halfway through in order to get to my class on time, but I don’t want to! I really don't. I want to just finish this, write the three pages all the way through without disruption, and then have a linear schedule for the rest of the day. I’m worried I’ve been operating on fumes and it’s not good for me. I need to take a break! Hence the acid. I’m not entirely convinced it’s a good idea, but I’ve never really been convinced before every trip. So at this point, I’m really just looking forward to it. It’ll be broad daylight when we drop, which should be quite nice, and the weather’s getting so much nicer now. It’d be a shame to stay inside and work all day, so we might as well have a little trip. Actually, now I’m thinking it might also be worth putting a mask and some sunnies on and taking a little walk with our faces hidden so nobody can tell we’re flying high. Maybe not right away. Maybe we’ll wait until we’re feeling where we’re at, because the stuff we have in the freezer is quite strong, like around the same strength of the tabs we had at Eso. 

It’s 8:57, and I’m just looking back at what I was able to write in the span of three minutes. I don’t like writing these under a strict time limit because it just means that the whole entry turns into anxiety about the time, so I reckon I’m just going to stop here and get ready for my class that starts in two minutes now. It’ll be easier than just trying to rush about 1000 more words in two minutes. And I owe myself more than that. For the record, I couldn’t get up early enough to do this because my classes (that I teach) finished at 7:30-ish last night, then we made and had dinner, and then I needed to watch my lecture and do my readings and I was just so done from the amount of work that I had to do yesterday that it took me ages to be able to motivate myself to do my uni work, and I ended up going to bed at around 1am. 

It’s 10:34am now and my class just finished. I don’t know what to think about it, but I’m feeling quite hot and weird in my own skin right now. All I really want to do right now is just have a shower, and I think I will do that and just get really really into it. That can be my Day 2 done: a really mindful shower where I just wash every inch of my body and use my little scrubby thing and just get the soap into a nice, thick lather. I might have a bit of weed too just to kickstart the acid, we’ll see.

It’s a beautiful day outside, it really really is. Melbourne being in lockdown during winter is no big deal, but being in lockdown now as spring is finally starting to arrive, is getting me quite down. I can’t believe the world isn’t open to us right now, and that there’s a one hour time limit on outdoor activities. It’s crazy how limited I feel right now, and even though I can fully register that my mind is working infinitely harder than my body, I can’t really do anything about it. And yet, I feel like that is just an excuse as well. I push myself hard, I always have. Because I want to be somebody who’s accomplished for my age, always. I like feeling like I’ve done so much for a 23 year-old. Maybe that’s another reason why I’m allowing myself to get so attached to this house we’ve found on the internet. We actually found it a few weeks back, and there was an online auction scheduled for two Saturdays back, I think. But the house didn’t sell then, which kind of feels like fate. Honestly, it’s also pretty interesting that this is all happening during COVID-19, when the Melbourne real estate market is experiencing a bit of a decline. This is kind of the perfect time to buy. Maybe I should talk to thathi about this. If akki thinks this is a good idea, I should honestly genuinely consider buying this place with Evan. But that’s the one iffy thing about it. I’m worried that thathi’s going to think that Evan and I aren’t established enough in our relationship to be able to think about buying a house together. But we spoke about this yesterday too: we’re not going to break up. The longer we’ve been together, the less we feel like we’re ever going to break up. We’re just comfortable with each other. Life is easy and good. And I honestly think life will just continue to be easy and good for us, and I don’t believe I’m naive for thinking that. I was talking to Evan last night about reading through the first few morning pages I published on this site, more specifically all the summaries of all the depressing phone calls I had with Ikaros nearing the end of our relationship. I can’t believe I ever allowed myself to feel guilty or personally responsible about how that relationship ended. I gave him every opportunity to be a better partner and he just wasn’t willing. I was patient, I was communicative, and I gave him so damn much of myself. Surely he can’t blame me for moving on. Surely he can’t still be harbouring ill feelings towards me. But then why hasn’t he spoken to me in three years? Why am I still blocked on his socials? Because he can’t confront the full reality of the situation, he can’t allow himself nor myself to attain closure because that would mean admitting that he’s largely responsible for the crumbling of our relationship. I feel like I’m just pointing the finger now, but honestly I also feel like I need to. That’s why I brought it up with Evan last night. I’ve been trying over the last three years to just let this go without closure and feel content with whatever sense of closure I can just provide to myself, and honestly reviewing the morning pages did kind of help with that. I just believe that I’m in the process of putting all of this to bed, and seeing how ridiculous past me was when it came to my leniency with him...it helps. I feel like I’m finally starting to get on my own side.

I do worry about him too, more than I want to. It’s kind of like Wren. Wren and I did chat a fair bit yesterday, though. Just on messenger. I was glad for that, because I at least know they’re doing okay enough to be able to hear about me and respond to me conversationally. I told them to listen to Jacob Collier’s new album, saying that I’d listened to it twice and each time I thought to myself ‘Wren would really love this’. Wren likes it when people think of them, I know that. One time I asked Wren if they could pick up soap on the way to our house because we didn’t have any soap and they felt really included in our lives, like it was an intimate thing to ask a friend. I want to do as much of that for Wren as possible. I want to provide them with a sense of family and community here. But I also need to take care of myself, and that’s something that Wren has been struggling with accepting this year. I understand why though, and I’m not mad. I acknowledge I’m in a far better personal situation during this lockdown than they are in every way except financially.