After taking some "quiet time" for myself... days at a time without logging into Twitter, not reading so much of it when I did log in, not putting so much pressure on myself to respond to every email immediately, etc... I've learned a few things about myself and how I do things. I want to share some of that, not as a complaint list, but as an evaluation and learning process that may help a few other people who find themselves falling into the "I just don't have time for everything!" quicksand.
Where Does the Time Go?
Just like everyone else, I get 24 hours to live each day. The past couple of years have felt like I've been trying to squeeze anywhere from 48 to 72 hours of life into each 24 hour period. There are a number of reasons for this. Some of them are things beyond my control... settling into a new house, doing work on said house, the hurricane that set everyone around here back a bit (quite a lot, in some areas) last year. Some are about gaining control over my life... learning to handle responsibilities I hadn't been faced with, or had left for someone else to handle, in the past. My husband and I have done a number of things to create an organized, yet flexible, schedule that prevents us from just floundering around trying to decide what to take care of each day. So really, a lot of the influences on where my time goes are under control. (The ones we can control, anyway.) What it keeps coming back to, though, is that I am simply not as capable as I used to be.
The neurological illness I've been treated for over the past couple of years puts me in an odd group of people who have never had a brain tumor but can legitimately say we know what one feels like. In the case of pseudotumor cerebri, it is an excess of cerebro-spinal fluid putting pressure on the brain, rather than an actual tumor. Very many of the effects are the same, though... thus the "pseudotumor" part of the name. I am no longer suffering from attacks of pain that make migraines look like minor headaches. I didn't go blind, and I've regained what I lost from my peripheral vision. It seems what I lost from my color vision has mostly returned, but I still have a little more trouble with subtle differences in shade and hue than I used to. I haven't had a seizure in well over a year. There is a very long list of ways that I am better now than I was this time two years ago, and I'm thankful for every one of them.
What has persisted, though, is a slowness in mentally processing some things. It's not a noticeable delay to most people. It tends to look like I'm just tired, distracted, or otherwise having a difficult day. Our home stays fairly quiet most of the time, as something like the television going in the background will prevent me from being able to really think about what I'm doing. I read slower than I used to. I still know the words and what they mean, but things just don't "sink in" as quickly as they used to. I have more trouble clearly communicating with other people because I still think just as fast, but putting those thoughts into words is a slower process, and I never seem to be truly happy with the words that come out. They make sense, but rarely seem to truly convey what's in my mind. Driving takes intense concentration and becomes exhausting for me, and heavy traffic or unfamiliar areas can easily trigger panic attacks.
The end result is that it takes me a lot longer to get things done. Doing my grocery shopping isn't a simple chore, but a huge chunk of an afternoon. Even on the days that I write a short post here, that's at least an hour of work. And it's not easy to accept because I remember being capable of more, yet I'm supposed to be glad I can still function so well that all I have is an exhausting slow-down, not a complete loss of ability. It's frustrating to think that this isn't just a temporary setback, but my actual pace for being able to handle things. I'm trying to make peace with it. I sometimes say other people don't understand how difficult things have become for me and expect too much from me. My husband says that may be because I do a good job of appearing "normal" to other people... they simply don't know how difficult it is. I think the truth is that I don't understand... not really... and I continue to expect more from myself than I can really give now. I'm working on that. It's a long learning process.
Twitter, email, etc.
I seriously need to scale back my online socialization. It's easy to think it's not eating much of my time because of how many things I'm not part of. I don't use Facebook and very rarely log into MySpace. I still look at things on Ravelry regularly, but haven't posted anything in any of the groups I'm in for quite some time. I no longer keep a daily (or mostly daily) purely personal blog. I don't frequent any forums anymore. It's mostly Twitter and email for me. There are two things I really need to get a grip on, though:
1. Not every email has to be answered immediately. Some of them could wait several days. If an immediate response was necessary, most of the people sending them could have called me instead.
2. Just because I'm doing/reading about/thinking about something worth sharing doesn't mean I'm under any obligation to share it today... or at all, really.
The second one is the big one for me. I lost a friend who had been a close friend for many years in the course of my illness for what seemed like no reason other than how difficult it had become for me to be social. I couldn't manage to drive half an hour to her house for a day of visiting, I had trouble remembering all the things going on with her kids, etc. She interpreted that as me withdrawing, feeling sorry for myself about my illness, and her not being important to me anymore. I told myself, "This is not my fault. I was very ill, had just gotten married... even the doctor was shocked by this reaction from her!" I know those things are true. I also know she's a person who is more likely to push someone away when she doesn't know how to react to a situation than admit that she's at a loss. I don't agree with that way of doing things, but I know it is her nature and not something truly done out of malice. But deep down, I'm still carrying that around and it's made me afraid of being seen as "not social enough". I seem to feel obligated to prove I'm not a hermit.
I need to let go of that. At this point, I still truly enjoy the conversations I have with people. I'm getting close to seeing socializing simply as a duty that must be done, though, and that's not fair to anybody. I wouldn't want someone to carry on daily conversations with me for no reason other than they felt it would somehow be "wrong" to pass up the opportunity to chat. I now recognize that I've done that very thing before... pushed myself to keep being social when I should have just honestly said, "I need some time to myself"... and it led to some bad cases of social burnout. Since I can recognize it before it gets to that point this time, I need to do something about it.
I will be making some cuts to the number of people I follow on Twitter. It doesn't mean I'm not a fan anymore, or that I don't care about you or your life. It means I can't keep up with so many people. I can't spend over an hour a day reading Twitter, or feeling like I'll never catch up again if I try to read it every few days. I will also cut back on how often I tweet. I signed up for Twitter when I stopped keeping a personal blog. (I had reached the point where blogging felt more like an obligation to people who kept up with my life that way than something I enjoyed writing... Told ya I'd done this before!) It gave me a way to keep people from being completely cut off from me without having to blog, make regular phone calls to lots of people, or spend half my week emailing folks. It's time for me to go back to using it that way, rather than making it a solid part of my daily routine. If I'm going to have anything worth reading to say, I need to spend more time living my life and less time simply talking about it.
The Donation Button is Gone
I've removed the donation button from the side of the blog. There have been a few times in the past when someone wanted to "show me their appreciation for what I do". I appreciate their "appreciation", but I also recognize it for what it is. Some people know I'll argue with them if they just say, "I know you're having trouble, just let me give you the money." Those people have felt the need to get creative and word it in a way that makes me feel I'm being compensated for something I've done. Those people also have my sincere thanks, but that's just not how it's going to be done anymore. If anyone wants to "show me their appreciation", they can order something from my Zazzle store. If there is just really nothing in there that they want to order, then I'd ask that they take the creativity that would be invested in making, "Let me give you some money," sound like, "I think I owe you some money," and use that creativity to come up with an idea for something they would hire me as a freelancer to create for them.
This isn't just a hobby. It is my work. You'll do a much bigger favor for me if you hire me than just give me money. I don't mean to sound ungrateful for favors and gifts... I'm just trying to be firm so people will understand that I'm serious about this.
I Love to Crochet!
No matter how much or how little I get finished each day, there comes a point where my husband advises taking a break. I know I'm probably breaking some kind of Women's Rule, or something, but I have to admit this... he's right. He's often right. He's definitely right about break time being a good, healthy idea. (He also tries me make me take weekends off. Help! I'm being forced to relax!) That's usually the part of the day I spend on Twitter. Taking time off from Twitter, I found time to crochet again! I hadn't taken time for this in long enough that I'd really forgotten how much I enjoy it. It makes me feel very relaxed, and even just getting little pieces done makes me feel better about a day where I didn't manage to complete on-going work. It can be a big mood-changer when I'm having a really bad day.
After dinner, my husband and I spend our evenings as our "together time". My days have been my work and socialization time. I enjoy what I do, and I really enjoy that "together time". I guess that made me blind to how a lack of "just me time" was contributing to my feeling overwhelmed. I can't work any faster now than I could a couple of weeks ago. I'm still kind of stuck at the same pace of "getting things done, but more things need to be done" where I never really get caught up. But just a little time to crochet each day has made me feel so much better about it. I really do need that time with nothing to worry about except running out of yarn... which I'm not likely to run out of any time soon.
The "quiet time" was good for me, and it was productive. I think I can continue to be more productive if I make the changes I've talked about, and if I keep working on not being so hard on myself about how much I am or am not capable of. And taking time to crochet means I can share pictures of that as, as well as sharing my art. Maybe the tweets will become more worth reading, even as they become less frequent. :)
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