The State of the Union

Here’s the thing – it’s not that I don’t realize how many things I have to be thankful for and how much more I have than say, someone living in poverty in a third world nation.  It’s that it doesn’t change that sickening feeling of despair and loneliness that just won’t go away.  It’s hopelessness.  It’s looking into the future and seeing that even though everything changes, nothing changes.  I will still be me.  My brain will still be broken.  I will still have to wake up every morning and face the same crushing depression.  I will still open my eyes, weep silently, and dread getting of bed.  Because what’s the point?  The sun will rise, the day will go on, the sun will set, and nothing will have changed.  So I take the damn pills.

For the record, depression is embarrassing and humiliating.  It erodes what little self-esteem you had before going crazy.  The prevailing attitude seems to be that if you’re depressed, it’s because you haven’t tried hard enough not to be depressed.    I’ve been called selfish, mopey, “a downer”.  I’ve been told if I just “change my attitude” I can find “true happiness”.  I’ve been told that if I improve my diet, exercise daily, take B vitamins, get out into the sunshine, volunteer, make friends, that all will be repaired!  I’ve been referred to therapists who have tried to help me find my “personal power”.  And, of course, I just haven’t tried the “right” kind of yoga.  And it’s all said with sincerity.  These folks really think that they’ve got it.  The have the Answer™.   They think I’m misguided (a word I’ve heard far too often) for being a pawn of the billion dollar pharmaceutical industry and relying on medicine to help my bad attitude.  Depression, after all, they tell me, is a Western concept.  They don’t have depression in non-Western countries, so it must be due to my excessive life style and reliance on medical intervention.  Because nothing helps more than hearing that it’s all my fault.  So I take the damn pills. 

What I can’t seem to explain are the chemicals raging in my brain that make it nearly impossible to leave the house without bursting into tears.  Or the unrelenting anger that makes me want to throw things.  And break them.  Or that everything – every inch of me hurts.  Or that I spend hours fighting the urge to take a razor to my arms just to let the pain surge and feel alive for a few minutes. Because, seriously, who wants to have to explain away scar after scar after scar?  Who wants to be the woman in her 30s who cuts, because everyone will happily tell you that only adolescent girls to do that.  So I take the damn pills.

Anti-depressants, aka SSRIs, are not happy pills.  You do not take them and see rainbows and unicorns (that’s a different set of drugs altogether).  You take them and face a myriad of side effects in order to numb the searing pain and sorrow.  Among the side effects of my medication are: memory loss; anxiety; sexual dysfunction; inability to find correct words when speaking; nausea; diarrhea; sleeping too much; sleeping too little; vertigo; lightheadedness; dry mouth; clenched jaw; muscle tremors.  If the depression doesn’t kill you, the side effects will come close.  But I take the damn pills anyway.

In August, I decided after four years on the pills that I’d go off of them.  Because I felt good.  I felt strong.  I was feeling my “personal power”.  I read up on the process and slowly tapered off the drug over the course of three months.  I was extremely impressed with how well I was doing.  Until I went off them completely.  And hit rock bottom.  And I tried to drive my car into a tree.  To kill myself.  Because I couldn’t conceive of not driving my car into that tree. 

Shortly after, I went back on the pills. 

Why I Love My Life

I love the fact that I sleep next to someone who also wakes up at 5am and immediately dives into a conversation about how best to preserve wet cat food - pickling or smoking; how awesome it would be to extrude cookie dough from the playdough barbershop man's hair and then deep fry it; and especially how our only holiday card we send out this year should be a Happy Presidents' Day edition featuring of one of our cats dressed as Abraham Lincoln, another dressed as George Washington, and the kitten dressed as a congressional page.

It's the End of My Job as I know It

Today is my last day as a full-time employee at my current fundraising job. After this I'll be working for them as a consultant to finish a few projects, but for the most part my time here has come to an end (and oh man do I want to make a Lord of the Rings reference there - "The time of Elves has come to an end..."). It's a mixed bag of emotions, as closing any chapter is, but it's amazing to me how clear I am that this is absolutely the correct decision. I am the ultimate second guesser - the seer of every side of a coin, a reveler in all shades of grey, and yet I sit here, a bit reminiscent and with regret at the direction I see this organization heading, but with no doubt - not a single one - that I am making the right choice.

HOORAY!!!

Tales from a Bedside Notebook

As an insomniac, I took to keeping a notebook by my bed years ago to help get out the anxiety filled loops that keep me up. I've slowly distilled what I write down to a few pithy sentences and since everything else that's consumed me lately has gone into my business' blog arena, I thought I'd share.

As seen in my notebook

1) I am a high functioning weirdo. I am at my most comfortable when around politicos, artists, cooks, homos, people who live/have lived in a bus, musicians, and most other fringe populations.

2) Why must my cats always pry open the bathroom door when I'm in there? I've always gone in for a strictly utilitarian purpose and they never look very pleased with what they found when they get in. Perhaps they dream solely of catnip behind closed doors.

3) Sleep - the final frontier. 5 am anxiety fueled freak out conquered for the moment. Light headedness in check. Nausea - quelled. Racing panicky thought, successfully shoved into the background. Success!

Hopefully the next round will be more interesting.

New Adventures

Well, it's going to be official soon. I've already given my boss notice that I'm looking for a new position and thanks to a very supportive significant other, I'm free to cement tomorrow that I'll be job-free as of August 28th. I'm really hoping to be rid of all the heartburn, nausea, nightmares and skin conditions that my current position has caused. FYI, stress sucks. The good news is that it turns out I'm pretty good at marketing and fundraising for nonprofits and artists, so I have a few projects on the horizons. I'd really, really like to not work a stifling 9-5 job for a few more months, so hopefully these consulting gigs will carry me through.

The Best Part of Waking Up

The only thing more wrong than drinking day-old cold coffee is drinking it out of a pint glass at 7am.

Stretched Skin

Sometimes I feel like I've lived so many lives in my 30 year old skin that it is stretched beyond its years. Augustin Burroughs once said that when people met him they expected him to be funny, but what he really was was tired and wrinkled, like he'd shoved 17 lives into his skin and now it was stretched and saggy. I can relate. My cat, my dear clumsy squeaky cat Oscar is in the kitty hospital tonight thanks to bladder stones and the whole ordeal made me realize that on any day of the week I'm so jaded I don't let misery and emergency come within a 30 ft range of me. I'm the master of blocking out Bad. For those of you that can master this avoidance technique, I highly recommend it. It doesn't do much for your relationships, but it's one hell of a coping mechanism. Eventually you learn to only let in what you feel like dealing with. Incredible, no? I'm completely in awe of my brain's coping mechanism. Yeay brain!

The Go-Go's Had it Right

Thanks, Belinda Carlisle, for so aptly putting my feelings into song: Vacation, all I ever wanted, Vacation, had to get away.

As I sit here at my 1940's painted desk that I rescued from the side of the road last year in bad shape and refinished, I think of what a lovely week off I've had. Josh and I refinished our hallway, had a housewarming party, bummed around, rifled through junk stores and just generally enjoyed each other's company. I've had a chance to feel human again - no stress, no worries, no obligations. Just me, my boyfriend, two cats, two turtles, guppies, a happy house, and the world to explore. And now, with champagne and local strawberries in hand (thanks to all of you who brought champagne to the party, by the way!), I intend to spend the last day of my break in high fashion: sewing skirts, drinking, and watching B sci-fi movies.

It is an interesting conundrum that has hit me square in the face this week. I love my job. I love writing for a living and working to help kids from crappy homes have better lives. It's satisfying and fulfilling. But I'm exhausted. I'm under so much stress that I've had heart burn for the last month and a half for the first time in my life and can't sleep thanks to all the nasty nightmares I have. I'm too tired when I get home to do anything fun and I'm constantly anxiety ridden. This job has hijacked my identity. I'm no longer the collection of quirky and colorful things that make me who I've been in the past, I'm now the sum total of my career. In short, I'm reaching my breaking point.

So what to do? I don't know really. Quitting seems like a dream come true, but I'd really like to pay off my mortgage in the next 7 years so Josh and I can take the long road view of our future. With no mortgage, neither one of us will be beholden to jobs that make us crazy. But to get there I have to make as much money as possible, so I can't quit. Plus there's the responsibility to my agency not to leave them in a lurch in a bad economy, threatening their ability to complete grant cycles and get continuation funding. Guilt is a powerful motivator.

I'm stuck. In the grand scheme this is not a big problem. Lots of people would LOVE to have this problem right now. I know how extremely fortunate I am to have the life I lead with great family, friends, and the love of my life. I'd just like to have my sanity and identity back. I don't want to be "the grantwriter" any more. At least not with 60+ hour work weeks, the constant after hours phone calls and emails, and the small paycheck. I'd really like to go back to being me. So if anyone would like to hire a freelance writer, furniture refinisher, tailor, floral designer, fine crafts person, potter, screen printer, carpenter, tile layer, beer brewer, coffee roaster, insert-title-here, drop me a line.

Poverty Breeds Creativity

Please excuse any typos in this post - one of my cats has decided that the spot between the monitor and the keyboard is kitty nirvana and has firmly ensconced his ample flesh in that space, which occasionally spills onto the keyboard.

But to the point - in my lovely new flat that I adore, all colorful and patchwork, I have craigslisted and refinished a fair bit of furnishings due to the poverty that purchasing this flat has created. This last week found me craigslisting and refinishing a small dresser to hold all my linens, which until this moment have been housed on a chair in the bedroom.

The nicest couple I've met in quite a while had painted this dresser to go in their 3 month old daughter's room, but they were moving and it no longer fit. So for $35 I (and Josh's yellow hatchback) took it off their hands:


While I enjoy the color scheme they chose, it doesn't quite work with our red bedroom. So I painted it white and finished the faux bamboo trim in black:



Then thanks to a couple sheets of Snow & Graham wrapping paper and a big jar of mod podge, I added the red poppies to the party:



After a thorough drying, the dresser is now happily living in our bedroom, protecting our linens from an onslaught of cat fir...



Thank you, poverty, for inspiring a new fondness for reuse.

Good Ol' Vermonters Make Craigslist Fun

This was posted on craigslist's household section this morning and it is just so typical of Vermont, I had to share:

Vintage items on Porch, Summer long (Rutland, Nichols and W. St)

"I have been collecting, buying, and selling vintage items for years and years. I have glassware, pottery, porcelain, linens and more. I have some gorgeous items out and will be continuing to put more out all summer. I’m there, well just kinda when I down there, no set hours, but making Sunday a regular day. It’s hard to find other places open then or that have anything worth looking at by then at regular yard sales. Stop by and look whenever you want, if I’m not there, feel free to come to the back wooden steps and see if I’m home, or leave me a note downstairs when you want to come back and I’ll be there."

Welcome to how the Vermont economy functions for the most part. Throughout the growing season you can also find un-staffed roadside farmer stands with a box, usually sitting on a stump, where you leave your payment. The honor system lives!

A Tale of Two Chairs

Since renovating a condo has significantly sapped my disposable income, I have taken to renovating what I already own to suit my new surroundings. Today's tale? Chairs!

I purchased two of these very standard brown school chairs from a woman in Winooski who'd used them at her kitchen table for her kids when they were young. 30 years later she finally decided to get rid of them. So I bought them last year to use at my kitchen table, which I did. However, I now have a different kitchen table that fits in a tiny corner of my kitchen, and that table is black and white. So...


A primer coat - many times I have skipped this step and many times I have regretted it.


Then a couple coats of gloss black:




Then I covered the seats with Snow & Graham wrapping paper:



Yay kitchen chairs!

And in that vein, the chair that went with my old kitchen table (which happens to be my grandfather's gorgeous dining table) had seen better days. But since it too was my grandfather's and is around 100 years old, I really wanted to give it a new life.


The cane seat was ripped in a couple of places so I removed it:


As I mentioned before, primer is a must:


Then several coats of white gloss and a kitchen towel for the new seat:



And viola! I love it. Though I kind of wish I'd painted it blue, Josh has assured me that it works. So with little money spent other than the cost of a couple of cans of paint, I've reclaimed seating for three!

Sorry Norway, It's Not a Game Until Someone Puts an Eye Out

In my meanderings from design blog to design blog I happened upon a Norwegian blog called Hei-Astrid. Without reading much of the text, I came across this:


It came with the cryptically awesome descriptor of "We played more games of kubb...". While I could very well wikipedia "Kubb" and have most of my questions answered, I prefer to leave this in its bizarre natural state: 5 Norwegian men, 1 dog, and 14 blocks of wood.