Slogging
It's hard to admit failure.
But I must be honest with you, dear readers, I've been having a tough couple of months.
It's been a long downward spiral that brought me to this place. It's not the worst it's ever been, but it's obvious that it's doing damage to my life and if I don't make some kind of drastic intervention, I'm going to continue spiraling out of control. I can just feel time draining away from me.
I haven't felt this low in many years.
Everything ahead of me feels so daunting. I only have major, life-altering, long-term projects to work on. Every task I need to do calls up The Resistance. Fear of Success, as weird as it sounds, has always been one of my worst enemies. I can feel myself getting closer to some of these major breakthrough goals, but the higher I get up the mountain, the steeper the climb becomes. Instead of working on the things that used to bring me joy, I find myself basking in the soft glow of the computer screen and amusing myself to death.
I *have* to keep slogging forward, slowly, diligently, with persistence until
a) External forces cause a significant disruption
b) Slowly increasing metrics hit some level that prompts action
c) Some mysterious opportunity comes by.
I believe it's this ill-defined endpoint that's resulting in the loss of motivation. The way forward has cleared up, more or less, but the trigger point for change, the goal, depends on a lot of external factors. I don't have a deadline. I don't have a target. All I can do is continue to slog and "eventually" it will be enough. Hopefully.
Starting Over
I need to be more diligent about my foundation tasks. When I'm doing poorly at maintaining my chores and exercise, everything else starts to crumble. There aren't enough individual tasks to cross off to keep myself engaged enough in the list, so I made a new "perma list" of work I need to tackle every day.
I'm breaking out the Timer again for chores. I'm not under time pressure, which has kept me from using it, but I need it as a motivator.
I've updated my list binder with four key categories of tasks that I'm going to focus on and switch between: two major, two minor. They're all related to the same end goal vision, though. One is just a list of crappy "life"-related tasks (taxes, fixing things, etc.).
Increasing visibility of tasks and success
I'm posting the list in the hall right where I come in from work. It's tacky and kind of space-consuming, sure, but I need something to get my attention right when I come in.
I'm going to use stickers on a calendar to track successful completion of tasks. I know that makes it sound like I'm five years old, but I frickin' LOVE stickers! Maybe I am five years old.
I'm also trying to think up a good "reward" for myself. Maybe a weekly "success night out"? I've been staying in on Fridays and it's been making me lonely. A good end to the week will set me up for the weekend, and would make me feel like there is actually a division between those two phases, instead of the continuation of the same "one tough slog".
Seeking Inspiration
The Slog has given me an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness. If I'm going to get moving, I need some inspiration. Since I haven't stumbled across anyting new that I really want to read, I'll be re-reading some books that really got me fired up earlier this year (or was it last year?): Linchpin, The Art of Non Conformity, Crush It!, Change by Design, Switch and the War of Art are all on my list. Maybe I'll post mini book-reviews for you all? 
Establishing Boundaries
I've identified some new time traps. It's my own fault for letting them take so much from me, but it's time to name these villains for what they are and remind myself what's really important. I'm sticking a bright red "NO REDDIT" sign on my computer, and a similar gentle reminder on my TV. It's so easy to placate fear with the constantly-available flow of things that are mildly interesting.
External Forces
I'm worried these steps won't be enough. I feel like I still need some kind of person or force who will kick my ass and keep me accountable.
I have an inspiration board but it's not really working as intended. Oh well. When I'm deep in a depression phase, it's hard for me to muster this voice for myself, so I'm just going to leave this here for myself:
"NOTHING WORTH HAVING IN THIS WORLD COMES EASILY, YOU HAVE TO FIGHT FOR IT AND KEEP FIGHTING! Are you just gonna roll over and let the challenge defeat you, huh? Are you that easily pushed over?? COME ON!"
FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT MY FRIENDS
Depression and Confidence
Went a bit dark for awhile there, I apologize. To be honest I was fighting off some personal demons, depression in particular.
A few things were happening in chorus. I'd just come off Emerald City Comiccon, which was so intense, and amazing and this big release of fear and stress. It was awesome, but the effect that this can have - especially on me - is that when you IMMEDIATELY return to your regular life, it can make the experience feel like it never actually happened. I find that in these situations that I'm prone to falling into my own echo chamber of self doubt.
Usually I can combat this. Usually.
Unfortunately, around the same time I ALSO decided that I'd like to try becoming what I call "more Vegan-aware". I'm vegetarian right now, and this has made such a positive impact on my life and health that I posited "hm, if giving up meat was such a benefit, perhaps doing the additional step of giving up milk and eggs would prove even more beneficial!"
Of course I knew this would be a very challenging thing, so I didn't even TRY to go full on Vegan cold-turkey. That's where "vegan awareness" comes in. I decided to enter a phase where I would become more aware of which foods were and were not vegan and learning to work with the alternatives.
The first phase was to stop buying milk, and this was easy. I tried a few rice milks and then settled on a Soymilk that I like. This was not a problem.
The next phase was trying to give up eggs. Now, I eat a hard-boiled egg every day because I feel it goes a long way to keeping my protein and iron levels up. Of course, this was an assumption and I like to challenge assumptions. I'd tried giving up eggs in February in a "1 week on/1 week off" pattern and I was noticing that I would fall into depression at the end of my off week. I took a break from the experiment for the Emerald Con (I NEED the energy during cons!) but I had decided that the depression was just a phase that I needed to push through - my body would eventually adjust.
Well, without the benefit of milk to mitigate the effect of dropping the eggs, I went into a much deeper depression than I experienced in February.
I withdrew and I felt very lonely. I lost confidence in everything I was doing, including this blog. I had posts written up already - a few in fact - but I couldn't bring myself to post them. They didn't seem good enough, and I couldn't see how to fix them.
I had very little energy. It was very hard to get up in the morning and go to work (but I did). It got so bad that I caught myself actually hoping that I would get sick so I wouldn't have to go in. I would go home and just crawl into bed and cry for awhile. For no reason in particular. It sucked. I tried to compensate. On a particularly dark day at work, I went out at lunch and bought some intense vegan sources of protein - some cashew nuts, a protein shake, lots of tofu... it got me through the day but it was still rough. I was surviving, but I wasn't myself.
I didn't want to quit, though, because I knew that if I could just hang on, maybe I would adjust. Maybe it would get better.
But I was out of time. When it starts interfering with my work, that's when it's gone too far. I bought a bunch of milk, cheese and eggs and I IMMEDIATELY started to feel better. After a week or two I was starting to feel normal again. That was 1 week before Stumptown comics fest, and I had to push to get everything finished that I'd been too depressed to manage earlier.
But now I'm back. And I'm feeling better. I'm not done with my vegan-leaning experiments, but I definitely have to be more careful. Veganism doesn't cause depression, but I have to come to terms with the fact that I live my life very close to the line. Maybe, because I'm so prone to depression, I'm too sensetive to manage the imbalance caused by dropping milk and eggs. I manage the depression on my own - diet control IS my medication, and I can't take that lightly. Life is too short to go through it depressed.
Lessons learned:
- Listen to your body. Experiments are cool, but if it's interfering with things that are more important to you, tread lightly.
- If you're prone to depression, just recognize that dark days just happen. It's usually not your fault (in this case it probably was my fault ) but your brain is the way it is. Don't give up. Keep moving forward.
So now I'm back to The Work. 