Now what?

It's been a long time since I've blogged. I've lost the motivation.

I've lost the motivation to do a lot of things.

I don't know what's happened to me. I'm a lazy person by nature, yes. That doesn't surprise me at all. But I've lost my ability to focus. I can't seem to put my mind to doing something and complete it in a timely manner. I'm constantly distracted, whether it's walking the dog, an errant thought that spawns an internet search that branches out into more distractions, the inability to pay attention to a conversation for more than five minutes.

Perhaps my will to focus is to blame. I don't doubt at all that it's got something to do with me, chemical or mental or whatever. I must be doing something wrong. I must not want it bad enough. Something.

I can focus well enough on mind-numbing things - playing video games, reading, etc. But nothing of import. Nothing that NEEDS done. Work has been a struggle the past few weeks. New ideas are at a minimum. I start working then I get distracted then the next thing I know it's 2 hours later and I've made absolutely no progress.

Chores are out of the question. The first few weeks after we moved I was good at the routine of doing a little bit every day to keep up with it all. Now, the laundry is piling up (I never can catch up with it all), the dishes are all dirty, there's boxes in the middle of the computer room floor that have been there for weeks. They contain a majority of our Christmas decorations.

I can't even muster up the energy to decorate. It seems like we'll be doing a lot of travelling this holiday season, and my initial feeling is one of "Why bother? Why decorate when we won't be here to enjoy it?" I hate feeling this way. It leads to holiday depression for me. Mom always had the house decorated. Cookies were always made, music was always playing, and things were as they should be. I hate feeling this lack of motivation. I hate this negativity.

I have a hard time looking my husband in the eyes. I feel like I'm failing him. I'm not keeping up with my work, which was my part of our agreement that I got to stay and work from home. He's not said anything to me once, never made me feel bad. He says I am keeping up with things, at least with the stuff that makes money - but I feel like it's a lie. I make myself feel guilty enough, that he doesn't even have to say anything.

I'm ashamed of myself, and too damn lazy to figure out the solution to this lack of focus. Instead I sit, wallow, and get mad at myself. I cry in the mornings when he leaves because I don't want to be alone. When he gets home, I'm so brain dead and numb that there's many days that we don't do much but play video games together. Yes, it is spending time with each other, but interaction is limited. I'm cranky all the time. I snap at him for trivial things when I should just be thankful he's doing his best to support me. He leaves the house every day and deals with teenagers. He doesn't snap at me. He's always happy to see me.

What is wrong with me? I don't know if it's depression (well, obviously, it's a slump of some kind) or just a phase. Should I be going to a psychiatrist? Would it even help? I was on meds a few years ago and all it did was give me stomachaches every day. I don't want to be a chronically depressed person. We don't have the money for me to be on expensive meds just because I can't keep myself in a good mood.

I feel like I'm failing at everything. I'm an expert at making excuses for everything, because honestly, I have no idea what's going on. I can't figure it out.

I can't keep this up. It's hurting me, and I'm sure it's hurting the husband. I've got to fix this somehow. I can't stand to hate myself this way anymore.

Homework #6 Back to Basics

Okay, so I'm going to jump on the bandwagon and try my hand at Miss Papuga's homework assignment. My creativity has been waning lately. Maybe this will get it flowing again.

Image originally from Borissov at DeviantART

"Don’t think, don’t weave intricate tales, don’t try to be brilliantly insightful. Just tell me who this is. You tell me as much as your creative mind allows, or as little. Some people’s first instinct when looking at an image is a snowball effect of ideas and stories."

*The girl is a newborn vampire. She can't remember her name, or who she was. Love, hate, joy, sorrow, likes, dislikes; it all eludes her now, drowned out by the raging thirst that is first and foremost in her mind. Confusion is the only other emotion that is known to her. Where is she? How had she become this? And why is she alone?

As she wanders the streets, a scent pulls her forward. Everything is painfully in focus. A dull thudding has her attention now. Looking down, her eyes fall on the homeless man huddled under some newspapers for warmth. If he only knew that soon, soon he wouldn't feel the cold anymore. Or anything else for that matter. She pauses, only for a moment, before she closes in.

or

*Elle has awoken in a strange place. She doesn't remember much from the night before - it's all blurred out in an alcohol-induced haze. Despite the sharp, painful stabbing of a headache, she immediately gets up and grabs her coat, the only article of her clothing she can find.

As she swings her arms around her head while pulling her coat on, she stops, wide eyed in fright. She's covered in bruises. Suddenly the pain hits her, a deep dull ache that is bone deep. She can't get the coat on fast enough. She fumbles with the tie, closing it upon her bruised nakedness, as she rushes for the door. She flings it open and stumbles out into a dark night in an unfamiliar place. She has to get home to Joss. He's going to be worried about her. How long had she been out? How was she going to find her way home?

Stepping away from the building, something on the ground catches her eye. A child's doll, dirty, worn, broken, lies on the street. Shuddering, she lurches forward, towards what she hopes is home.



That's all for now, although it really feels good to stretch my fingers and write a bit again. Perhaps I will add more later.

Apologies

Not much to post. I'm drained and unmotivated. I haven't forgotted about this blog, but I just haven't had much to say recently.

Sorry all.

Quiz time!

I saw this quiz over at Reality 101 and thought I would give it a try.

I must say, it's frighteningly accurate. The "What's hard about being a ..." is so very true it scares me. Almost every single thing listed is true/has been true at some point or another.

Your result for Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn? Or Someone Else? Mad Men-era Female Icon Quiz...

You Are an Ingrid!

You are an Ingrid -- "I am unique"

Ingrids have sensitive feelings and are warm and perceptive.

How to Get Along with Me

• * Give me plenty of compliments. They mean a lot to me.
  
• * Be a supportive friend or partner. Help me to learn to love and value myself.
  
• * Respect me for my special gifts of intuition and vision.
  
• * Though I don't always want to be cheered up when I'm feeling melancholy, I sometimes like to have someone lighten me up a little.
  
• * Don't tell me I'm too sensitive or that I'm overreacting!

What I Like About Being an Ingrid

• * my ability to find meaning in life and to experience feeling at a deep level
  
• * my ability to establish warm connections with people
  
• * admiring what is noble, truthful, and beautiful in life
  
• * my creativity, intuition, and sense of humor
  
• * being unique and being seen as unique by others
  
• * having aesthetic sensibilities
  
• * being able to easily pick up the feelings of people around me

What's Hard About Being an Ingrid

• * experiencing dark moods of emptiness and despair
  
• * feelings of self-hatred and shame; believing I don't deserve to be loved
  
• * feeling guilty when I disappoint people
  
• * feeling hurt or attacked when someone misundertands me
  
• * expecting too much from myself and life
  
• * fearing being abandoned
  
• * obsessing over resentments
  
• * longing for what I don't have

Ingrids as Children Often

• * have active imaginations: play creatively alone or organize playmates in original games
  
• * are very sensitive
  
• * feel that they don't fit in
  
• * believe they are missing something that other people have
  
• * attach themselves to idealized teachers, heroes, artists, etc.
  
• * become antiauthoritarian or rebellious when criticized or not understood
  
• * feel lonely or abandoned (perhaps as a result of a death or their parents' divorce)

Ingrids as Parents

• * help their children become who they really are
  
• * support their children's creativity and originality
  
• * are good at helping their children get in touch with their feelings
  
• * are sometimes overly critical or overly protective
  
• * are usually very good with children if not too self-absorbed
  

Take Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn? Or Someone Else? Mad Men-era Female Icon Quiz at HelloQuizzy

Two Years Ago Today...

Two years ago today I married the man who was surely put on this earth just for me.


I love you, Zach. Thanks for two wonderful married years (plus the dating years), and lets hope we have many, many more.

Update

Okay, so between moving stress, money woes, my computer's hard drive failing and losing all of my work, music, and photots (I haven't had a chance to check if it's a permanent loss - maybe I'll be able to recover some of it) and family illness - things have been crazy stressful.

Sorry I haven't been around. I also am not sure how much I'll be posting in the next few weeks. I'm not organized enough to have stuff already typed up that I can just schedule to post. I'll keep up as much as I can, but don't be surprised if it's a little dead around here for a while.

Obessions of the past

I remember, while growing up, from middle school to somewhere near the end of my highschool career, I clung to the fantastical, wishing that things were more than they were. I wasn't exactly a daydreamer, because I could focus my attention when I needed to, and it didn't affect my schoolwork at all. However, once I got home, I was fairly lost to the world - drawing, writing, dreaming of things unusual and amazing.

I remember the strength of my fantasies though, the ferocity with which they gripped my heart and soul and made me yearn for something otherworldly to happen in this little boring town. I think my first fascination was with dragons - thanks to a video game series called Lunar; Silver Star Story - a tale of an ordinary boy who is destined to save the world and his gal with the help of the dragons hidden in his world. I was completely infatuated with the idea. That's where my self-proclaimed nickname Dragonchild came from. I immersed myself in everything that I could find pertaining to dragons. I foolishly hoped that maybe my boring existance wasn't all there was - maybe I was a dragon in disguise, or a child of one, or any other number of fantastical ideas. Wishing it to be true didn't make it so - but that didn't stop me. I wrote, I drew, I dreamed. I had an especially vivid dream of a dragon , one that was my equivalent to a spirit animal. I still cling to that dream, as my proof that my imagination can be a wild place of creation for me.

Not long after, vampires joined the repertoire of my obsession. Ann Rice books were my new bedside companions. Again, I immersed myself in anything I could find pertaining to vampires (although I preferred Rice's versions to more traditional versions). Again, I wrote, I drew, I dreamed. My obsession with vampires wasn't as strong as my obsession with dragons, but still, it was a fairly large part of my life.

I began dating a young man when I was 15 (Yes, this does relate a bit). I was helplessly in love with him, despite the obvious that we were not right for each other. Of course, I refused to believe this, despite all the signs proving it was true. He was my first love, and I was tenacious. Looking back, I can see now that after the initial bliss of a new relationship wore off, we really were complete opposites, but not in the compatible way. Other than our love for fantasy books, and a few other things that have faded from our memory, we were nothing alike. I was clingy. He wanted freedom. I was overbearing and protective. He was a risk-taker and a rebel. I was a hopeless romantic. He was..well, he was not. After about a year, I was swinging between bliss when he payed attention to me, and misery and depression when he would push me away. Through all the ups and downs, I tried to ease my pain with my fantasies. Usually the pain he caused was too much, and I would just go through my life automatically. Over three and a half years - my obsessions failed to be the escape I needed them to be, and they started to fade away.

I broke up with the young man for the final time during my first year of college. Soon after, I began dating the young man that would end up being my husband several years down the line. New love sprouted, new friends were made, and I didn't think of the lost fantasies as I was happy and didn't seem to have any room left in my head for more. College killed my creativity (ironic, as I went to an art school), and I let my imagination run wild less and less. I guess responsibility, friends, and video games will do that to you.

One thing that has developed over the years is my love for angsty romances - love stories that are doomed from the start, or at least seem to be so. Not romance novels, mind you (for some reason I feel that I'm above reading romance novels, probably for the fear that I would absolutely love them, and I can't allow myself to do that) but fantasy novels, comics, or manga that involve a troubled romance. I always put myself in the place of the female lead. It helped especially if she was plain looking, or if she had low self-esteem and at least saw herself that way. It also helped if she fell in love with an impossibly wonderful/beautiful/amazing man who in turn eventually loved her back. But they have to go through so much strife to be together. I need that struggle for me to really connect. I've never been sure why. Maybe it's my earlier experience in my first relationship. Maybe it's my desire for something more, something meaningful and unordinary.

I hadn't thought about my earlier years and the strength with which my fantasies held me, until recently.

I had a gift card to Target, and seeing nothing else I wanted and being wary of having nothing to read at night, I picked up Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. I had heard all the hype about the upcoming movie and I wanted to see what it was all about.

I began to read one evening - and I was hopelessly lost again in my fantasies. Meyer's tales of vampires have brought back those years of obsession. I sat and read the first book all in one go - I could not bring myself to put it down. I finished, and near had a panic attack - I needed the rest of the series - needed it soon. I absolutely had to know what happened between her wonderful characters. I cried more reading these books that I ever have - relating to the characters, feeling and completely understanding their pain and their strife.

I'm still wrapped up in the heady feeling, the inability to focus on what I need to. I don't know if I should be happy, or miserable, or frustrated, or what I should do. Any time I try to focus, I begin daydreaming within a few minutes. I am frustrated with myself, as I never had problems with this before. I think the stress of the impending move and worries about the financial situation and everything else is again making the promise of an escape too..well...inescapable. And yet, I revel in these feelings again, after so many years. I want to create - to draw, to write, to dream. Now if I could only harness this creativity, maybe it will help.

I always have wanted to write and publish something. I want to be a storyteller, weaving a tale with the same magic I feel in Meyer's writing. I might be able to do it, if I can get past the intimidation of it - the feeling that I'll never create something as amazing as what has inspired me.

However, who knows. Maybe I can rein in these feelings and use them to create. Maybe my name will be on the bestseller list in the future. After all - I can dream, can't I?