Where’ve I been?

When I started this blog, I was so excited. I wanted to write and write and write. I was ready to take off. I wanted to share my experiences. But, then an odd thing happened. I got worried about sharing, worried that you would be bored. I was worried that what I had to share would be so ordinary, yet at that same time, I wanted to hide out. I didn’t want you to know too much about the grueling, boring, day to day part of coping with, well, with ME. I suffer from depression and anxiety. I fight it. I medicate it. I don’t experience all the effects all the time. At times, I even feel like a fraud because I go on with my life. I work. I even play. I don’t get much accomplished, and I beat myself up regularly. That would be where the depression really creeps in. When you read the diagnostic ramblings that we’re supposed to go by in my profession, they talk about “atypical depression,” meaning a depression where the person’s experience of depression is impacted by what’s going on around them. The depression can lift a bit. There can be experiences of fun, although I’ll admit that it’s hard even at those times for the experience to sink all the way down into my solar plexus. One reason I’ve always loved dance is that is sort of breaks me past that, if only for a moment. Unfortunately, my body has trouble going to that point now. I will dance and dance, but I feel the pain. I feel the ankle almost give way. Those things make me feel disconnected from the music, the beat, what’s going on around me. I’ve been trying to cope with the fibro as well, but the exhaustion and the brain fog really get to me. I feel upset with myself for not “pushing through” and doing more. I know that “pushing through” can be very tricky. At times it works. At other times, it backfires and causes a flare that may take up a week of my life. The new year came, and so few things seemed to have been accomplished since last year. My house was still a mess. My financial situation was overwhelmingly complicated and negative. My health was not improved. I’d lost a bit of weight, but not nearly what I’d wanted to lose. I hadn’t improved the problems I have with the business end of my practice, and I hadn’t fine tuned the things that needed to be tightened up a bit. I could make a huge list of things I had not done, things I’d failed to do, things I did not have. This list included things that were obvious to others and also those things that were more obvious to me. I have long range goals for growing into the person I want to become, and I seem to have been struggling with this forever.

So, I stopped writing. I could not imagine that anyone would want to read these struggles. The more I feared it and put it off, the harder it became. I have at least one other idea for a blog, and I’ll try to get to it in the next few days. I do have things that “have” to be done in order to get paid, but it’s so important that I begin to grow as a writer.

I don’t have much of an audience, and I know that. But, I won’t ever have an audience if I don’t become more consistent in my writing. Sure, quality needs to become more consistent. But, first there has to be something out there. I can’t grow as a writer or as anything else just sitting here with good intentions. I have to do it, even fail at it, in order to grow. That’s incredibly scary.

I’m sorry I abandoned my blog, even if it’s just for me at this point. I apologize to any audience I might have. Maybe more importantly, I apologize to myself. I feel this blog is important for my growth but also that it might be leading me somewhere else. If i don’t keep at it, I’ll never get to that “somewhere else.” I don’t know what that means. I just know that I need to write. I’ve been told I have some skill, and I need to use it.

So, Dear Blog, I’m back. I don’t want to feel “guilty” about not writing. I carry enough guilt with me, and I’m weighed down enough by so many things. But, I do want to feel excited to get back to the page, even when I don’t feel I have anything that interesting to say. Maybe I have to risk being boring at times. Maybe to grow into a more interesting person, to myself and to others, I have to risk being boring as well. So, here we go. I have no great wrap up, no solid ending to “stick” like a gymnast right now. I just have a promise to come on back to the page, over and over, until we grow something interesting. And, when I disappear or screw up, I promise to start again. That’s become my new theme. Sure, screw up. But, start again.

Interesting, that was a part of the theme in church today as I crept in half an hour late. It was a baptismal sermon

~ by Janice Holladay on February 6, 2012.