agitatedmuffins

Having the thing that appears to happen to me every couple of years, where I think I’m trucking along and handling everything Very Well and then one more thing arrives on my plate and I start decompensating. Sometimes this is helpful in terms of revealing how much energy I’m spending on silly shit or compensating for other people’s lack of executive function. This does tend to get revealed in waves of irritation, but trying to view that as information and not something to silence myself about. Eg: if I spend my lunch break dealing with a non urgent request from my mother in law, that is poor priority setting and poor boundaries on my part, because it sets the afternoon up to be bad and hungry. Her requests are often urgent so any request from her feels like a priority, but I need to be able to free up enough mental bandwidth to actually assess and not just jump from one perceived crisis to another. 

recently cannot read anything that I am not compelled by. as an adult, I’ve usually read ~100 new books per year plus a ton of repeats, which is not an extraordinary amount but is enough to give one a reputation. but this year I am not remotely on track for that, partly because I keep starting things, not feeling compelled, and putting them down. idk if this is burnout or something else. eg, I am happily making my way through a marine bio textbook but I’m stalling out on can’t pay won’t pay. it’s possible that I’m stalling out esp on history and politics, must start tracking this.

Thinking a lot about eating disorders recently, probably because in trying to work on food security as a public health practitioner, I am surrounded by people whose professional aim appears to be the promotion of eating disorders. Thinking through things that contributed to me not developing an eating disorder, given that so many of my friends and family have one, and am coming up with my grandma (mom’s mom) who is a complex person in many ways but has been an overall pretty positive presence in my life (if we can subtract out her effects on my mom). As a child and teen, I would walk to her house from school and then she would drive me to dance classes (later I just changed clothes at her house and then drove myself) and she ALWAYS made me a grilled cheese sandwich. Grilled cheese with fancy new cheese, grilled cheese with fruit and honey, turkey and grilled cheese, etc, but consistently a grilled cheese. So basically I had 4 meals per day most days per week, and because I was “raised to be polite,” I always ate everything she made, which sometimes encouraged her to make me two sandwiches. She also had absolutely zero interest in any of my interior landscape or drama, which was fairly refreshing. She did not care less if I had good grades or friends or did well in an audition, her interest was if I could competently get on a ladder and change a lightbulb for her. Anyway I was underweight during that whole time but I think the consistent extra food and I-do-not-care attitude really helped me get through being a teenager. Honestly I guess the closest I got to a true eating disorder was early in college, which was a combo of: 1) having to purchase every meal at the dining hall because I didn’t have a kitchen, which had me constantly thinking about all the money I was spending when I wasn’t making any money 2) having to eat in a dining hall that had strict hours, which required me to stick to a tight schedule 3) having no one to eat with so having extremely bad social anxiety about eating alone because they wouldn’t let you take the food home. Anyway, mainstream US public health is not worried about people not eating enough, despite the extremely clear proof that is happening all around us.

something I’m doing is assigning colors to other people’s emotional shit. mother in law calls and starts giving a ton of unsolicited advice and worry about how we’re going to move, even though we aren’t moving until July and have an overlap of 2 weeks within which we can move? all that anxiety is bright yellow and does not belong to me, because my stuff isn’t yellow.

anyway, this is also why it’s slightly weird hanging out with lovely wife’s family, because while they also will explicitly comment on weight, women’s bodies, whether I look 2lbs heavier or lighter and this is both familiar and horrifying, their platonic ideal of womanly beauty is basically a super curvy woman like my mother. so I am still being judged and coming out lacking and being pityingly told things like “well, your thighs aren’t THAT bad” but this time it’s in reverse. new benchmark, fail in new ways, slightly refreshing.

Successful body hacking - could feel a migraine coming on last night and did not have any of my usual things for dealing with it. Could feel my right shoulder tensing up defensively and the pain radiating from my head down into my arm. Thought to myself ok, so if I’m feeling a crunching in emotionally and physically, maybe if I open up a bunch of space in my body it will help. Called lovely wife and talked about my feelings and did a bunch of stretches to open up space in my right hip socket, which by extension allowed my shoulder to untense. Woke up not fully headache free but way better than I thought I would be.

At a close friend’s med school graduation. Interesting observing someone else’s family dynamics, how clearly those patterns seem to me and how they are just so not my own. Struggling slightly with the amount of socializing and talking and a bit with the fact that my friend has not asked me about my mom’s health. I know this weekend is about her but it’s the kind of carelessness of someone who has never been seriously ill or had someone close who is. So different from seeing my other friend a week ago, who was so careful in hearing me out about all the mixed feelings and medical system experiences since she’s also been the caregiver of her mom.

Went to a work party and a couple of people were kinda catty to me but afterwards I got to eat an arepa and lovely wife found a salsa concert and we danced.