when I'm all alone, the dreaming stops, and I just count sand.
Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 11:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
erikaToday I totally forgot to vote, and I feel like an idiot. The (good?) news is that there really wasn't much to vote on here, but I still like a bad adult.
(Guilty also of not voting in the 2004 presidental election, either, but that was because I was in CA and there was no chance it was going to Bush. If I'd been registered in Iowa, I would have. Um. I definitely voted in 2006, and in 2003 I voted and in 2004, when I was still in Iowa, I went to an actual caucus. I'm not one of those annoying people who never votes & then complains! I'm kind of a part of the electoral process. Except not this year. Shit.)
So to summarize: I feel like I am a bad person because I forgot to vote today. And also because I promised Chance I would clean off the table and I have not done so.
And have not mailed any postcards. (may not have actually started on any of them except in conceptual terms and feel very guilty shut up erika)
Or finished my Long Term Disability paperwork.
I did, however, manage to go to my Planned Parenthood appointment. Great. Now if I don't forget to bring my passport in, maybe I'll actually have effective birth control and I can stop taking a pregnancy test every other month.
Somehow the days just ... get away from me. I'm having trouble breaking things down into small tasks, I think mainly because I have obsessive thoughts about $issue-of-day* while I'm trying to do so, which leads me into "how do I solve $issue-of-day?" obsession when usually there's no resolution but to wait and/or do nothing and/or wait until I've calmed down.
If you've ever talked with me on AIM or the phone (or read my lj, or heard of me from someone else...), you may have noticed this tendency. It manifests as so (read ellipses as your possible responses):
Me: "OMFG... I.o.D.!!!!!!!1111one" ... "But what do I dooooooo?" ...
THEN My Response may equal:
1) "I cannot possibly imagine doing that!" and/or
2) "OK."
IF My Response = 1 THEN argue with me for my own good
EVENTUALLY My response = 2.
ENDIF
IF My Response = 2, Continue.
-Time interval of 15 minutes to hours passes.-
Me: "OMG. Same issue has floated to the forefront of my conscious mind again! WHAT DO I DO. I have new objections and/or new analysis of I.O.D. and/or totally do not remember your previous suggestions and/or have randomly rejected your previous suggestions for some reason with no apparent logic!?!?!?!?!"
If you think it's frustrating to talk to me, try living like this.
My anxiety & memory issues make me feel like I have a permanent case of "where did I park the car?"
I know I came here in a car. Ergo, to go home, I really ought to use the same mode of transportation.
But it is an large parking lot, and I probably wasn't really thinking about where I was parked when I walked in the store, and even if I HAD, I would have forgotten it by now.
So. WHERE IS MY CAR?
I look it up (maybe I wrote it down), or call a friend, or try to use one of the many coping methods I've been taught. Then I start walking towards my car.
Partway there, I forget what I'm doing, or where I'm going, or get distracted. Then:
Wait... a ... second...
OK.
Where am I? I'm at the store. OK. Well, I'm obviously done shopping. And I'm pretty sure I got here in a car . . .
Imagine that you're worried about something. Now imagine that worry never really goes away because you can't remember what you did to resolve the issue. But you can remember the worry, oh yes, of course you can remember the worry, the worry is easy to remember. But what did you do to fix it? You don't remember. Did you do something to fix it? Is it fixed? If it's not fixed, it's still broken! Uh-oh!
Maybe you're screwing up your life RIGHT NOW and you don't even realize it except you must know it somehow because you're worrying that you didn't fix it, right? And... if you had fixed it, you wouldn't be worrying. Right?
Except you know you can never remember where you parked the goddamn car.
Luckily I have a therapist appointment tomorrow and hopefully she will be able to come up with a better solution than body notes, Memento-style.
Because I swear to god, I don't care if they're toxic, sometimes I just wanna whip out a sharpie.
Deep breath. OK. Now ... what was I going to try to do next?
Scream? Screaming sounds nice.
(Guilty also of not voting in the 2004 presidental election, either, but that was because I was in CA and there was no chance it was going to Bush. If I'd been registered in Iowa, I would have. Um. I definitely voted in 2006, and in 2003 I voted and in 2004, when I was still in Iowa, I went to an actual caucus. I'm not one of those annoying people who never votes & then complains! I'm kind of a part of the electoral process. Except not this year. Shit.)
So to summarize: I feel like I am a bad person because I forgot to vote today. And also because I promised Chance I would clean off the table and I have not done so.
And have not mailed any postcards. (may not have actually started on any of them except in conceptual terms and feel very guilty shut up erika)
Or finished my Long Term Disability paperwork.
I did, however, manage to go to my Planned Parenthood appointment. Great. Now if I don't forget to bring my passport in, maybe I'll actually have effective birth control and I can stop taking a pregnancy test every other month.
Somehow the days just ... get away from me. I'm having trouble breaking things down into small tasks, I think mainly because I have obsessive thoughts about $issue-of-day* while I'm trying to do so, which leads me into "how do I solve $issue-of-day?" obsession when usually there's no resolution but to wait and/or do nothing and/or wait until I've calmed down.
*We will abbreviate this into I.O.D.
for the duration of rest of this post.
for the duration of rest of this post.
If you've ever talked with me on AIM or the phone (or read my lj, or heard of me from someone else...), you may have noticed this tendency. It manifests as so (read ellipses as your possible responses):
Me: "OMFG... I.o.D.!!!!!!!1111one" ... "But what do I dooooooo?" ...
THEN My Response may equal:
1) "I cannot possibly imagine doing that!" and/or
2) "OK."
IF My Response = 1 THEN argue with me for my own good
EVENTUALLY My response = 2.
ENDIF
IF My Response = 2, Continue.
-Time interval of 15 minutes to hours passes.-
Me: "OMG. Same issue has floated to the forefront of my conscious mind again! WHAT DO I DO. I have new objections and/or new analysis of I.O.D. and/or totally do not remember your previous suggestions and/or have randomly rejected your previous suggestions for some reason with no apparent logic!?!?!?!?!"
If you think it's frustrating to talk to me, try living like this.
My anxiety & memory issues make me feel like I have a permanent case of "where did I park the car?"
I know I came here in a car. Ergo, to go home, I really ought to use the same mode of transportation.
But it is an large parking lot, and I probably wasn't really thinking about where I was parked when I walked in the store, and even if I HAD, I would have forgotten it by now.
So. WHERE IS MY CAR?
I look it up (maybe I wrote it down), or call a friend, or try to use one of the many coping methods I've been taught. Then I start walking towards my car.
Partway there, I forget what I'm doing, or where I'm going, or get distracted. Then:
Wait... a ... second...
OK.
Where am I? I'm at the store. OK. Well, I'm obviously done shopping. And I'm pretty sure I got here in a car . . .
Imagine that you're worried about something. Now imagine that worry never really goes away because you can't remember what you did to resolve the issue. But you can remember the worry, oh yes, of course you can remember the worry, the worry is easy to remember. But what did you do to fix it? You don't remember. Did you do something to fix it? Is it fixed? If it's not fixed, it's still broken! Uh-oh!
Maybe you're screwing up your life RIGHT NOW and you don't even realize it except you must know it somehow because you're worrying that you didn't fix it, right? And... if you had fixed it, you wouldn't be worrying. Right?
Except you know you can never remember where you parked the goddamn car.
Luckily I have a therapist appointment tomorrow and hopefully she will be able to come up with a better solution than body notes, Memento-style.
Because I swear to god, I don't care if they're toxic, sometimes I just wanna whip out a sharpie.
Deep breath. OK. Now ... what was I going to try to do next?
Scream? Screaming sounds nice.
