Full of beans

Christina left a comment on my post "Where is the Passion?" which summed up what I've been thinking about over the last hour. And to prove I'm not always whiny, and to show what an emotional see-saw I ride, I decided I needed to write a response to my own post.

I do still have passion, I'm just not 20 anymore and I have a lot more responsibilities than I did when I was 20. So my passion looks different, at least the way I vocalize and think about those things I love looks different. I still love to read poetry and feel the sun on my face. I think about the people of the Maldive Islands, who will lose their islands due to climate change, every time I get in a car. My understanding of environmental issues has deepened but I don't have the freedom of time to go flitting off to DC to protect wilderness like I did when I was 20. As a 40-something mother of 3, working on a PhD and running a household, my energy for my passions has had to diffuse to more things. And I now have 3 individual passions that take up way more energy to maintain than any whale ever did. We have 20 year olds in our society to be the passionate, tireless souls that they are, because at 40 we are tired and have to keep the rest of life moving! So, I'm glad I'm a 40 year old woman who struggles to keep her passions alive. And if nothing else, I can say, like Mary Oliver did--I'm still full of beans! This blog is evidence of it.

Where is the Passion?

I miss my 20 year old self. I miss the passion I felt for so many things. I felt so strongly about the environment, teaching, reading, poetry, writing, ecofeminism, learning . . . I was driven to think and discuss ideas, all the time. Now, although I still believe in and love those things, I've lost my passion. This recognition has come about because I came across a fantastic new blog called "Our Mother's Keeper" which is a "LDS group blog dedicated to environmentalism, ecofeminism and environmental justice issues that result from the changes the planet is currently undergoing." It's brilliant and everything I wished I had 20 years ago. It looks like it's a forum handcrafted for me; yet I find myself feeling like it's a place where I don't belong, because I've settled in my middle class life and can't find the passion to share my ideas and ideals any more. I have misplaced the "ecofreak" (a term of endearment from my father). I'm not sure anyone would look at me and think I was an ecofreak today. That saddens me.

The depression is not the culprit of this loss of passion, because I was depressed when I was 20. I was depressed and passionate. There's a great line from a poem called "Self Portrait" by Mary Oliver (yes, more from Mary; isn't it obvious that I've just recently found her work?). Its opening line is:

I wish I was twenty and in love with life
and still full of beans.

I think that's so awesome. The best part about it is the ending line:

though I'm not twenty
and won't be again but ah! seventy. And still
in love with life. And still
full of beans.

My sorrow comes from the fact that I'm forty (and then some) but I'm not sure I'm still in love with life. What has happened to that idealist who cried at the site of ORV tracks across the desert; who signed petitions and lobbied at Capitol Hill for the sake of the voiceless, for the sake of the earth? Where is the idealist who wanted to save the whales and the plants and went out of her way to not step on cryptogamic soil? Maybe I'm remembering myself wrong, maybe I never really was any of those things. Maybe my passion wasn't as deep-rooted as I thought it was. But maybe I'm right. If I am right, then the passion still must be there, somewhere, lying in wait, on slow burn, waiting to be reignited. I hope so, I hope I can revive that passionate, younger self. If nothing else, it's a good sign that I can remember that young self and I have desire and hope to find her. At least it's a start.

The Mood-Thought Paradox

I'm sitting here struggling with trying to figure out what I'm feeling and what to write. I should be working on the dissertation, but, c'est la vie. I am beginning to have days where I fall in and out of confidence. It's a very tiring way to live, but at least I am having moments of feeling confident. However, I'm realizing that I can only sustain those positive emotions for several hours, then I'm back to feeling like my life is useless. Like I said, it's not necessarily a bad thing, it just leaves me feeling confused. It feels like I'm in a car that's stuttering around--one moment it runs smoothly, the next it chokes or stalls out.

What is most interesting about this to me is that when I'm feeling good, I really believe any positive self-talk I present to myself. But when I'm feeling bad, I cannot believe the positive ideas or phrases and only the negative one feel real. This is quite a quandary to be in because I have yet to be able to identify any causal relationship between my moods, up or down, and I'm left feeling out of control of my emotional state of mind. It's not like I can say to myself "just whistle a happy tune and you'll feel good" or "think happy thoughts." My mood and my thoughts seem to be intertwined and I can't find where one begins and one ends. When I'm feeling okay I can believe that I am enough, just as is. But when I slip down then that thought seems like a cruel joke. It's all rather frustrating.

Riptides

Well, I received some professional critique last night and words like "rather alarming" and "unacceptable" were thrown around. I am not in a strong enough place to handle this. Over the last year and a half or so, it feels like every time I make any progress towards completing this damnable degree something or someone pulls the rug out from under me. Then I have to spend another week, or month, and get myself back up and going again. It really sucks. I had just come off a high--getting my first chapter of the dissertation finished, polished, and sent off for review for publication. I was feeling "normal," which for me is pretty good and now this. It's like my depression is sitting right in the center of my chest and it's all I can do to keep it down. And when something like this happens, it's all I can do to not absolutely loose faith in myself.

This all begs the question of what to do? The Western philosophy is that life is a battle that needs to be conquered; everything is a struggle and you fight until you win. Like my dad always said "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and never give up. The Eastern philosophy suggests that life is more of an inner struggle to learn to give up the self to the larger universe. Fighting is useless and puts you further behind, whereas giving yourself over to the higher power or some such thing ultimately brings out one's strengths. In church the other day someone used an analogy of a bush being pruned by a gardener. The bush asks why it must be pruned and the gardener answers that he's making the bush into what he wants it to be, with the analogy that we are the bush and God is the gardener and we should subject ourselves to the pruning (i.e. difficulties in life) to become all that we can be. It makes me wonder if I'm just kicking against the pricks or am I in the refiners fire? Is this all part of the struggle that makes me stronger or is the real lesson to be learned is that I should stop fighting something that is unbeatable and am I travelling down the wrong road? It's kind of like trying to get out of a riptide--instead of wasting your energy swimming against the current, you must let the tide take you out to the ocean and then get to a point where you can swim back, going with the flow rather than against it. So am I in a riptide? It feels like if I quite swimming, or dog-paddling as the case may be, that I will drown. I just don't know how to interpret the challenges I've faced over the last year and then some. But I'm afraid to make a decision because I'm not in a place of strength. My decision would most likely be made from a place of fear and insecurities. And that won't work. I'm just really tired of fighting in general. I'm ready to throw in the towel.

I apologize for some of the metaphors I'm using and mixing. They sound a bit trite and lacking in useful insights, but I'm tired and trying to make sense of things I don't really understand. So this blog is more like vomiting up my feelings, rather than being a meaningful essay of self-reflection.

Happiness is . . .

Well, I had a day this week, where I didn't feel anxious or depressed. I was able to run an errand to the grocery store without feeling overwhelmed, irritable, or bogged down at all. I just went to the store. I was friendly to people, I got the items I needed, and it was all really easy. I wonder if that is how happy people feel most of the time. So this all has got me to thinking about what happiness is to me. Here's my thoughts on it:

Happiness is . . .
-Being able to go to the store without any emotional or physical effort.
-Being able to get out of bed without any feelings of dread or dislike.
-Spontaneous moments of fun with my children (where I am spontaneous about having fun).
-Going through the day without long moments of sitting and staring out into space.
-Not feeling anxious.
-Not worrying about whether other people like me or not.
-Effortlessly making transitions throughout the day.
-Not feeling bogged down.
-Self-confidence.

Now the tricky part is figuring out how to duplicate these feeling (or lack thereof) and make that a normal part of my life. I wonder if "normal" (i.e. not depressed) people go through life like that most of the time. I envy them if they do. Depression sucks. I have been diagnosed with dysthymia. It is a chronically low level of depression where my "up" times are more in line with most people's "normal" and my "normal" times are in line with most people's "low" times. That means my "low" times are usually a major depression. Which leaves me to wonder when do I ever get to experience the normal "high" of life? Dysthymia sucks even worse than depression, because there's not a time constraint on feeling down. You generally feel down.

Writing about all of this is dysthymia is not working. . .I was doing better with the task of figuring out what happiness is. I guess for me, happiness is the average person's normal.

Sound and Fury

My big question these last couple of days is how can I gain better self-discipline? I need to finish my dissertation, but instead of making a lot of time to write, I find a lot of ways to waste my time. I've been reading a book about how to write more and one important point is that you won't ever find time to write, you have to allot time to write. So I have tried to set aside several hours a each day to write and to act as if those times were like hours working--I could never blow off work to talk on the phone or something, so I can't blow off time writing to talk on the phone, read a good book, or the like. It worked for a week or so, but since our spring break vacation I'm finding it hard to keep those writing hours separate and sacred. Part of the reason is because my mind is like mush and I can't find words. But that's just another excuse. It seems like I'm full of excuses. But I'm at the point where I need to finish this soon.

So, I have a real desire to finish, but am finding it difficult to actually do the work. What is wrong with me? Am I really not that motivated to finish my dissertation? Are the excuses I come up with merely excuses and full of sound and fury but signifying nothing? I sort of feel like a lot of my life is just that: sound and fury signifying nothing. All my woes, all of my struggles to finish this degree, all of my depression. It takes up a lot of my time and emotional energy, but ultimately is just a lot of hot air and is ultimately insignificant. And when I say that I'm not trying to say "poor me." I am saying it sincerely and wondering if I need to just get over myself and start living my life: start writing the damnable dissertation; start enjoying my life, my kids, my husband; stop wasting time and start using my potential. I may not be ultra smart, but I'm not dumb. I may not be super talented, but I'm not lacking talent. I may not be the best wife and mother, but I am a good wife and mother. So, get off my duff and do something! This is my pep talk for the week.

Beach Memories

I'm itchin' to write, but I'm not sure what I want to write about, or what I want to say. While on vacation for the last 4 days I had forgotten to bring my anti-depressants and I could really tell a difference. My thoughts slowly tumbled downward to the point where I just hated everything about myself and sleep felt like the best way to avoid my feelings. Now, I'm one day back on my meds and starting to feel better. However, my moods and thoughts seem to be whipping back and forth between depressed and not depressed, to the point of giving me severe emotional whiplash. And I feel like I'm slogging through time as if I was trudging through pudding. I had thought I would write about all of the things I really hate about myself but figured I'd try and be more positive and at least include the things I like about myself. Yet right now neither of those things seem very interesting. Instead, I want to write about the moments during our vacation to Moclips, WA (on the coast) that were most memorable. They are (in no particular order):

• finding 65 perfect sand dollars on the beach


• seeing a herd of elk (ostensibly Roosevelt Elk) in the Hoh Rainforest


• hiking in the Hoh Rainforest, in the rain, of course


• seeing bald eagles


• listening to the chorus of frogs every night, just outside my bedroom window


• watching tiny bubbles scuttle across the water and sand, looking, for all intents and purposes, as if they were living creatures


• watching the kids being chased by the waves


• finding pebbles in the sand

Not a bad list considering the overshadowing depressive thoughts and the constant downpour of rain that called itself spring weather on the coast. So, this is me, working at being happy, fighting off the natural desire to slip downwards. The emotional landscape is much like the physical landscape and the 2nd law of thermodynamics--Entropy always increases, unless you put energy into the system. And unless I'm putting some major energy into my emotional state, I'm always headed toward entropy and depression. Hmm, maybe I should put more thought into the similarities between the laws of thermodynamics and how they relate to emotional landscapes. . .look for this exciting discussion in the future! For, now, it is enough.