Happy New Year!

alvaro-reyes-497749-unsplash — Photo by Alvaro Reyes on Unsplash

It’s 2019, and I’m feeling refreshed and ready to kick this year right in the butt! I hope you are, as well!

Like most times when a new year starts, we’re all in this mode of trying to make changes for the better. And that’s great! It’s good to have reasons to make changes in your life. Sure, every day should be an opportunity to better yourself, but the new year transition has the air of freshness and starting with a clean slate, and I think finding determination in that aspect is amazing! The issue comes with how we keep that momentum going, but no matter what, having that drive to start making changes is a very important start.

I don’t really like making “resolutions,” because they feel so distant. They feel like a setup for disappointment. I like to set smaller goals and try to create positive habits that I didn’t have in previous years. There’s definitely nothing wrong with having big, lofty resolutions, but if it’s possible to break them up into smaller goals, that can be a big help!

In 2019, I plan to…

Write at LEAST 500 words a day, 5 times per week (even more, if it’s a good day!)
Collaborate more
Grow my Twitch community even more
START. A DANG. NOVEL.
Make plans with friends at least once a week (twice, if possible)
Get into more publications
Pet more dogs

That last one is the most important, clearly.

I feel like those are all achievable, right? Like, I look at those goals for myself, and feel like working on them is possible, rather than look at a goal that’s like “I’m going to get a novel published!” and then feel STRESSED about trying to get it done before the year ends. At least with this list of goals for myself, I’ll still feel content if I don’t start a novel, but could possibly be very close to finishing one. Neat!

Aside from all of those smaller goals. The biggest thing I do want to work on is trying to work my way out of a lot of self-destructive mindsets that I created. I had a particularly tough year, last year, trying to find my way in a career that’s brand new to me while coping with the death of my mother, and that made me feel like I was both unsuccessful and VERY unimportant. I feel like this, more than anything, is what has hindered my progress, and I’m tired of that being the reason why I don’t feel like I’m talented, hard-working, or driven enough to achieve my dreams.

In fact, I even wrote a send-off to all of those self-destructive habits that I posted on my Medium page. If you could read it, that would mean the world to me. I think it was one of the best ways I could have kicked off this year, and I’m going to work hard to make sure the momentum from it sticks around for a long time. I’m hoping it’s just one of many amazing writing projects that I put into the world, this year.

I hope you all have been having an AMAZING start to 2019, and I hope you achieve every goal you set for yourself, this year!

What are some things you plan on working toward? Let me know! I want to hype you up!

Good Ol’ Writer’s Block

I’ve been in a bit of a writing rut, recently. Which is really, incredibly unfortunate, as writing is what I want to do for the rest of my life. However, the light is at the end of the tunnel! I can see a future where I’m not in a rut! Can you believe?

I have some big ideas and I’m the process of planning said big ideas. It’s been a little challenging to motivate myself to put these ideas into the world, due to a a large amount of self-doubt with a hint of depression, but the more I talk about doing it, the more I feel like the motivation is there to actually get it done. So maybe I’ll just keep spamming Twitter with how excited I am about this novel that I want to write, and eventually, it’ll just come into existence. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Anyway, in the meantime, I’ve been trying to keep my mind active with prompts and whatnot. I use a book called 642 Things to Write About when I need some sort of direction for warm-up writings, and one of the prompts asked what writer’s block feels like. All writers are far too familiar with the feeling, and with the deep rut that I’ve been in (which I’m almost out of, I promise), I figured I’d know exactly which direction to go in, with this.

So here you go. Here’s a little thing I wrote, and hopefully after putting this into the world, my writer’s block will be gone. (If only it were that simple.) Enjoy!

Writer’s block is like getting ecstatic about the cookies you have in the oven, only for them to come out burned and bitter. It feels like getting to the top of a roller coaster only for it to stop, and have to take the stairs all the way back down. It feels like watching words and stories fly through your head and around your body, but not being able to grab hold of them and put them onto a blank word document.

Imagine having all of these ideas, all of this drive, and all of this desire to see entire movies in your head become a piece of readable text, only to sit in front of your computer wondering why your fingers just won’t move. Wondering why your brain decided that, this very moment that you hyped yourself up to finally get shit done, is the moment it decided to quiet itself. You wonder how you can turn up the volume on the inspiration to drown out the thoughts that want to tell you how much you suck as a writer, but now matter how loud you empower your inspiration to be, sometimes, all you hear is “you have nothing interesting to say.”

Writer’s block is knowing you have interesting stories to tell, but feeling like no one is going to think the same. Writer’s block tells you “it’s over for you; this is it. You’re not going anywhere else with whatever it is you’re trying to write, so you better just stop.” It can be one of the most self-destructive forces out there.

But it isn’t always that way.

Sometimes, it just feels like you’re empty. Sometimes it feels like you’ve squeezed out all of your best work already, and there’s nothing else left. Can it possibly get better than the 2,000 word streak, where you were so deep into the story in your head, you looked back up at the clock and realize time left you behind? That feeling of elation can be so nice, but sometimes it’s so short-lived, when you feel like that zone will never be back in reach. You can write whatever words come to mind, and hope to stumble your way back into that zone, or you can step away from the computer and hope to find that zone elsewhere. It’s never exactly where you want it to be, and that can be frustrating when all you want to do is see words fly across the monitor.

What can I say about writer’s block other than “it sucks?” Not much, I guess. It just does. It’s crippling to get so excited to create, to inspire, and to tell a story that’s begging to get out there, only to feel like what you’re about to put onto the word document is purely vomit. It’s sucks to feel those walls appear all around you just as you’re ready to tell the tale, feeling like those words within you that were once incredibly inspiring now have no place other than within those walls. But we persevere, and we find ways to chip away at those walls. They can’t keep us in for long; our stories demand to be told.

Creating Happiness

amy-shamblen-653250-unsplash — Photo by Amy Shamblen on Unsplash

Over the weekend, I had a late birthday party with friends at my house. At first, I felt a little weird about doing this, because it’s the house I’ve been growing up in since I was like, four years old. I still don’t even really consider it my house, even though it’s technically mine, now, and I think that’s a big part of why I felt it would be weird. The house has so much history, and so many design touches to it that don’t really speak to how I would make a house a home, so the idea of having a bunch of friends over in this space as if it were my own just felt strange. Not so strange that I thought about not going through with it, but strange enough to wonder what everyone else was thinking of it.

I easily could have gone out to a restaurant like most other people do, and we could have gone bar-hopping like most twenty-somethings do, but this was my party, dammit. I didn’t want to pile ourselves into loud, public spaces and have conversations we couldn’t even hear. I wanted to cram my friends into the living room and play party games on the Nintendo Switch while eating good food and drinking great booze, so that’s what I decided we’d do. It was just social enough to not exhaust this little introvert.

My other thought while planning this party was that, toward the end of my mom’s battle with breast cancer, this house was filled with terrible memories. We were all pessimistic, sad, and angry most of the time, caretakers were coming in and out of the house constantly, and the house was no longer feeling like home. I think the vibe from those memories still lingers in the house, and it definitely drags down the experience of living in it (trust me, I’m working on moving into a place of my own). Whether or not it was for me, or for the ghost of my mom, I wanted to do something to counteract all of those bad memories. My mom enjoyed entertaining guests, and so do I, so I decided to try and create some happy memories within this space.

And you know what? It turned out great.

I got some pretty delicious chicken, rice, and beans (and a BEAUTIFULLY delicious cake), bought a plethora of alcohol to choose from (even made a spiked peach tea) and had enough games for everyone to consider. Turns out, I actually really like organizing events like these. It was my first time doing a catering order, trying to figure out how much I would need to buy as far as drinks go, and getting the house all set up to have a great night. I had helped my mom with organizing some parties like this before, but this was my first time doing it all. I had a feeling it would all be okay, but it wasn’t until we were all sitting in my living room, laughing while playing some of the best party games (The Jackbox Party Pack 4), that I finally knew that it was all going well. A friend even told me that I throw a great party, so now it’s set in stone and you can’t convince me otherwise.

Overall, the birthday party did what I set out for it to do. It filled the space up with laughter, friendship, and love (that’s so corny, but I’m standing by it), and I think it needed that as some of its final memories. Even though I know I won’t be living here in this house the foreseeable future, I figured this could be one of many parting gifts that I give it before I say farewell. It had so many good, bad, important, silly, sentimental, uplifting, and heartbreaking memories behind it, and I wanted to make sure it at least ended this family’s history with it on a good note. There may still be many more memories to come for it, but at least I could contribute something that shined bright for more than just myself.

Thanks for checking out this overly sentimental and (hopefully) heartwarming post. I’ve grown more sappy and emotional as I’ve aged, so y’all are just gonna have to keep dealing with that. Sorry, not sorry!

Trying to be Productive while Emotionally Exhausted

tired image — Photo by Xavier Sotomayor on Unsplash

So I’m just gonna put it out there; this last week was emotionally exhausting. It went from high highs to low lows, and I kind of wished I could just sleep for a whole day to recover from it. However, this has affected me to the point where the only productivity I’ve really had was doing some streams on Twitch, and writing has kind of fallen off of the grid. From there, I get myself in a cycle of self-sabotaging thoughts, thinking “I need to really get my ass in gear” and I start criticizing myself for small mistakes I make in a day. Those harsh critiques make me feel like I can’t work hard, then the productivity slips, and it all just turns into some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. Ugh.

I’m not going to go into detail about what has caused the exhaustion, but the magnitude to which it exhausted me was unexpected. It became a lot to process, and instead of firing words off onto a word document when I decided to get some work done, I sat and processed emotions while staring at a blank screen. Of course, this made me more anxious, and if that anxious energy didn’t serve as a type of writer’s block, I probably wouldn’t be having this problem. (Side note, wouldn’t it be cool if we could somehow turn anxious energy into the motivation we need to get the work done that makes us anxious? In an ideal world, maybe.)

But I think this goes back to a post I made before about just allowing myself some time to just relax and recoup before getting back into being productive. I knew I was emotionally exhausted, and I knew working against that probably wouldn’t help me at all, yet I sat in front of my laptop and willed my exhausted mind to try and get something done, when all it wanted was just an hour (or two) to just relax. Most likely with some Sailor Moon (clearly), but at that point, it could have been anything that took me out of my own problems.

It’s not easy to go through a spike in negative motions and expect to make something positive out of it. While it’s not impossible, our brain can really only handle so much. I fully believe good, creative work can come from hardship (though it’s not always required), but I think it can be exceptionally more difficult when there’s still so much to process. It’s like how computers can go slower when you’re making it upload or download videos, or anything that requires the computer to have extra strain. You have to let it do it’s thing before it can process other things more effectively.

Instead of beating myself up about having to process things a specific way, maybe I should just roll with the punches. Give myself that time to make sure I can process other things more efficiently. I realize life doesn’t always the time to rest from emotional exhaustion before cranking out some hard work, but I think if I learn how to make it just a bit easier, I can allow some extra productivity to flow. I get such a rush when I finish a piece of writing, and I know that if I can regularly get more done, I’ll be less hard on myself about the times where I didn’t get anything done. It’s that idea of working with the things going on in your mind, rather than against them, that I feel really helps make getting work done much easier.

We have to process so much in a day, so we can’t possibly expect ourselves to do it all, all of the time. Emotional moments happen without warning, and it’s completely normal for that to throw us off of our groove. It’s also completely normal to want the time to decompress from the strain of those emotions. Rather than being hard on ourselves for taking time from the work we want to accomplish, maybe we should savor that time for rest, so that the work we do afterward can be the quality that we know we can achieve.

Finding Importance in Birthdays

andreas-weiland-252618-unsplash — Photo by Andreas Weiland on Unsplash

This year’s birthday for me has been agonizing, mostly in a “oh god, what do I even do?” kind of way. I’m always that person who forgets that their birthday is coming up. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very excited about it, but it’ll usually be just two weeks before my birthday before I think “oh shoot, my birthday is coming up.” It’s never a calculated effort, but always astonishment at how quickly it comes (go ahead and make your sex jokes).

This year is a little different, though. This year is the first one without my mom, which I think I’m prepared to deal with. I say “think” because you can’t actually know until it happens. She always wanted to do something to make my birthday feel special. She started hospice last year the week before my birthday, and with the chaos of her going in and out the emergency room due to the breast cancer causing intense pain in her gall bladder, my birthday sunk into the background of everyone’s minds. Though that summer was all about making sure she was okay, she made it a point to acknowledge that we hadn’t really talked about what to do for my birthday. We eventually decided to celebrate by having a nice breakfast out with my brother, sister-in-law, and aunt. It was something we kind of just threw together, but something we knew everyone would enjoy. I don’t even want to dive into the rabbit hole of thoughts about how she knew that it would be her last birthday with me, but I know that had to have contributed to why she made sure we celebrated it.

This year, I had to actually push myself to make it important.

It’s not that I’ve never planned my own birthday event by myself, but this year has felt noticeably different when it came to thinking about it. Aside from the passing of my mom making this birthday one of those “firsts” that you inevitably have to experience after loved ones die, there have been other incidences around this year that have contributed to this birthday feeling like it’s not worth celebrating. I don’t want to go too much into detail about that specifically, but those events have made it feel like I’m just not worth the time or energy. I understand people have their priorities, and I wouldn’t want to make someone feel like they have to move me to the top if that’s just not possible, but it would just be nice to feel important.

I lost my mom, and thus, a person in my life who did her damn best to make special days of mine the most special. I realize I can’t always depend on others to be responsible for that, but it was nice to know there was at least one person who would go through all of the motions to make sure we celebrated it the way I wanted to. Maybe this is why I still value birthdays, so much, no matter whose it is. I think this is why I knew, even if I didn’t feel that I knew at first, that I should still celebrate it on my own terms.

I’m hoping what I decided to do distracts me from all of the depressing background noise around my 26th birthday. Even my therapist strongly suggested that I plan something, and made sure I left her office last week committing to making those plans over the weekend. I don’t know that I needed her to say that in order for me to actually plan something, but I do think it allowed me to give it the importance it needed by just sitting down and figuring it out (and even messaging a friend to bounce around some ideas). Once I got past the agony of not knowing what to do, I was finally excited about what was to come, and I’m glad I finally got to that point. Board games, food, and alcoholic beverages with friends sounds like the kind of cozy, but thrilling vibes I’ll need for this birthday. Thank goodness for all of the forces in my life that inspired these plans.

I want this birthday to feel important, because birthdays are important. You lived for another year! You were healthy enough to get another year experiencing life, and that’s a damn good gift. Not everyone gets to experience as many birthdays as they’d like. Some know when it will be their last, and some pass, not knowing that their last one was the grand finale. My mom spent her final birthday feeling depressed about not being able to walk anymore, and wishing her life would just end. I didn’t blame her, but it wasn’t the “happy birthday” that we all wished upon her. None of us knew that all of her happy birthdays had been spent, but that didn’t mean we’d just let it come and go without trying to make it brighter. I didn’t know how much that would pull me into feeling that my own birthday could feel just as meaningless, but I’m actively subverting this by making all of them count.

Make your birthdays happy while you can. Give them the life they deserve. No matter how many you have left, they’re always important enough to celebrate.

Sleeping With No Pants

sleep

So you probably read the title and thought that this isn’t worth mentioning, whether it’s because it’s not enough, or because it’s too much. Either way, this is out there, now, which means that I said it despite the fact these opinions could have held me back, so that’s pretty cool. It’s like my confidence is growing, or something?

Speaking of confidence, that’s what the “sleeping with no pants” thing is improving!

You probably saw that I put out an article on Medium about my struggle with body image, and how someone’s comment about overweight bodies triggered some deep-seeded feelings I still have about my body. That’s a journey of mine that may ever end, and every day, I’m trying to find ways to subvert the views I have of my own body. It’s not easy, because more days than not, it seems like every gay on my Twitter feed is liking pictures of guys made entirely of abdominal muscles, while I continue to sit here with flab on belly. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with admiring abs or having a flabby belly, it’s just that I still feel like I need six-pack abs in order to gain some sort of attention. Consciously, I don’t care. Internally, I’m rife with anxiety.

Normally, when I’m around the house for extended periods of time, you’ll find me in a t-shirt and gym shorts. I’ve never lived alone until this last year, so wearing clothes around the house was necessary to not cause any discomfort with family or roommates. Now that I have the freedom to walk around the house in whatever the heck I feel like, the only judgment I could possibly receive being from a cat, I still dress the way I would if people were around. It’s like I have this idea that I need to hide my body, even from myself. I felt uneasy walking around the house without a shirt and some sort of pair of shorts/pants on, as if the extra exposure meant criticism about my body was heading my way. But…from who? My cat doesn’t give me a judgmental look for having no pants on around the house. Well, that I’ve seen, at least.

And it’s not like I’ve never been naked in front of someone else, or at least without pants. I’ve been with plenty of guys who have seen me with nothing on, and a few guys in particular who wanted to just be in each other’s company without pants on. It never felt weird to me then, and I keep wondering if maybe it was because there was an inherent interest in seeing my body simply for the sake of it? It also wasn’t my idea, though. I wouldn’t have suggested that we took our pants off just to sit there and watch Deadpool, but if I didn’t do it after they suggested it, I think I would have felt uncomfortable about not giving some sort of reciprocation. Sure, I appreciate that a guy I had feelings for gave me the space to do something that made me feel a bit more vulnerable (even though he may not have realized it), but I wonder if I only did it because I felt the situation called for it, more-so than me feeling like I genuinely wanted to.

After I got in the cycle of these thoughts, I thought about how this was such a simple way to feel more comfortable in my own body. Maybe it wasn’t my choice to take my pants off just to go to bed, but…what if it was? What if I gave myself the space to experience my body differently? What if I was the one who decided to see the way my legs look first thing in the morning? What if I work toward the confidence to maybe include taking my shirt off, too?

What if I did something that made me develop a relationship with my body that only I got to define?

Maybe you’re looking at this as something that’s not all that full of impact. “All you did is take your pants off and go to bed. Big whoop.” I know, I know. There are people who post pictures in their underwear to their millions of followers, while I’m merely making a section of my body more aware to myself. But you know what my therapist once told me? “If it was easy, you’d be doing it.” She didn’t tell me this about taking my clothes off, but she still said this golden piece of advice about mental obstacles, so you better believe it’s applicable!

It’s not easy for me to simply show off my body. It’s even harder to show it off and feel proud of it. I see people flaunt their bodies, and though I will say “I don’t think I could ever do that,” I say it with a tinge of guilt because I want to be able to do that. I want to be able to be proud of something that I have felt is ugly for a very long time.

If going to bed without pants on is a good first step to this, then dammit, I’m allowed to be proud about that.

Belongingness

ichsan-296061-unsplash — Photo by ichsan on Unsplash

I know I’ve mentioned before that I started going to therapy, and I meant to give further updates about that, but I forgot. I apologize. Not that I have any promises or anything, but it was an agreement I made with myself, so if anything, I only let myself down. I’ve had a lot to worry about, but regardless, it’s something I should have followed through with. Maybe I needed to process how it would become a regular part of my life before I could compartmentalize it into some words. Anyway, enough rambling.

My therapist, during our first meeting, summed up a lot of what I talked about as needing to find a sense of belonging. I was shocked at how simply she could link together all of my problems with a common thread, but that’s her job. I can’t imagine I’m the first person she’s made that conclusion for, and I doubt I’ll be the last. But ever since then, it’s been something I’ve thought about every day. “Where do I belong?” This has been such a good question to ask myself, because I often tried to find how I could fit in with the people I feel I should belong to, rather than let myself drift to where I feel a natural sense of belonging.

Of course, now this means I’m in some sort of…identity crisis? Nah, that seems too dramatic. More-so…a re-discovery of my place? Sure, that sounds more like it. It’s not an easy process, let me just tell you that. It took quite a few weeks for it to really set in that I just don’t belong in certain people’s lives, right now. A few weeks is how long I’ve been actively thinking about it, though, so maybe the process overall has been even longer. Maybe I’ll feel belongingness with them in the future, but at this stage in my life, I have other places where I feel needed, validated, and supported. I don’t need to waste my energy on trying to wiggle my way into places where I don’t feel welcoming arms.

After this realization, things have been getting easier, overall. Like, even things that you don’t think it would affect. I’ve been able to feel more productive, my mood has been consistently better, and even the way I interact with others has been much more positive. It hasn’t all just snapped into place, of course. I’m not quite where I’d like to be, but at least I can actually feel that I’m getting closer to that stage. For the longest while, I felt like I was standing in a hole with no resources to get out. Now, I at least feel like I can see the scenery above it.

I wanted to talk about this because we all have a natural desire to find where we belong. I think we can let ourselves get tired out to the point where it hurts, even drains us of the motivation we need to fulfill other aspects of our life, when we try to fit into places that don’t welcome us. Sometimes, you find yourself not belonging to the places where you think you would, and that can hurt, but there’s always somewhere else that will let you in, someone else who will give you the support that you need. Sometimes, though it’s not easy to do, you have to break free of hoping you’ll get support from people you usually expect it from, and drift toward the ones who give it to you without question.

The last time I was in therapy, I used a metaphor about feeling like I’m on a stranded island during my times of needing support. I, of course, am on this island, and the people who can give support are on a bigger, more fortified mainland. There are people in my life who expect me to row over to the mainland to get support when, during those times that I need it, my boat has a giant hole in it, my oar has snapped in half, and the idea of swimming in across a great divide just sounds like more effort than its worth. Yet, they still expect me to find my way over, if I want help. Sometimes they ask to meet halfway, but that’s easy for them to say when they have a yacht, and I’m the one who has to swim. Sometimes I just need someone to close that entire gap, and after some hard soul searching, I’m starting to see who’s more than happy to use their fuel to deliver support to my stranded island.

Find people in your life who would sail across that gap to comfort you. Find people who won’t make you swim several miles just so they can feel supported. Don’t necessarily deprive yourself of those who won’t, but don’t waste your energy hoping that they’ll change. You have things in your life that you need to accomplish, so figure out which areas in your life give you the same energy that you put in, make those circles your home, and thrive.