Petra who?

Hi from Barcelona during the covid-19 year 2020

Kavala. I feel strangely attached to you even though the last week has been more of an adventure than what I would have liked.

En liten gnutta ångest. Vet inte varför jag har gått omkring med den känslan för mycket de senaste dagarna. Inte gråtångest utan bara en rumlande känsla i magen och bröstet. En liten storm inombords skapad av någon sorts stress som får mig att ifrgåasätta allt. Varför är jag här? Vad håller jag på med? Varför reagerar jag på vissa sätt? Dricker te och hoppas att det ska lugna men får inse att det inte är en universalmedicin för alla typer av åkommor. Signar upp mig på TalkSpace för att ta tag i mina livsproblem men kan sedan inte komma mig för att välja en terapeut, men jag ska, jag har ju lovat mig själv att testa. Oroar mig ORIMLIGT mycket för pengar just nu. Borde inte men kan inte slå av den känslan i min hjärna. Hoppas att det kommer lugna ner sig när jag till slut har fixat de där sista (förhoppningsvis men antagligen inte) byråkratiska grejerna här i Spanien som Spanskt körkort och Spanskt residency. Om en månad är jag i min drömstad NY men jag känner mig väldigt opeppad just nu. Min egenkomponerade plan för att må bättre tills dess är att fixa de sista pappersgrejerna, gå på alla roliga klasser på gymmet, försöka att inte stressa upp mig om jag inte hinner med mina Spanskaläxor, grotta ner mig i allt jag kan lära mig om astrologi tillsammans med S. + Våga testa terapi och strunta i att vara social när jag inte känner för det. Mvh megaintrovert.

Work patterns.

Yesterday I had a Skype meeting about a little film about me. It's going to be a part of a promotion of me as an illustrator and a way to showcase my work while also giving it some more context and personality by letting people see some glimpses of who I am. That obviously raises exactly that question to myself. There are so many things I do that are "just" rituals, things that I do which I don't really think about, but I'm guessing that many of those things are exactly what makes me me. I'm a person who thinks that these kinds of reflections, about other people as well as about myself, is very interesting. Trying to find patterns in things we do and then try to decipher the code to be able to realize where everything comes from. It definitely helps when someone is just asking you a bunch of questions about yourself like in this skype call. Like a very light and fluffy version of therapy where we only looked at the good parts. It doesn't need to be challenging though to open doors and partly unlock things in your brain so that you can start connecting more dots. For me one of those realizations after the conversation was my love and need for patterns and visual structure. I'm not a very tidy person, I wish I was but I'm not. However I need daily structure. I follow the same schedule most days and I'm not a very flexible and spontaneous person even though I would love to be just that. I also need to visualize information to be able to learn it, I'm pretty crappy at history and grammar and the kind of knowledge that is very much based on simply memorizing things. Math, statistics and art has always been more of my thing and I use that a lot to collect my thoughts and to plan for the future. I make mood boards, I draw the new Spanish words I'm trying to learn, I create lists and color block all the weeks of the year to visualize where I will spend different parts of it. I love maps and pictures of things that are neatly organized. I can't deal with messy inboxes or desktops. In many ways I think these are things that have helped me but I think the same things turnes me into a person who easily obsess over things and overanalyze actions because I want to find patterns and it disturbs me when I can't. Also, I don't do well when sharing my home and personal space with other people who don't know my routines. It doesn't matter how respectful they are, the situation still becomes an obstacle in my head. I'm working on it though because I guess I need to grow up and learn at some point if I want to properly share my life with someone (though to be honest, I don't think that every couple is meant to live together). Everytime a friend comes and lives with me for soem time my mum tells me that its good CBT for me. Maybe she's right. It's almost ironic that one of my ongoing client projects is to create a pattern using some of my favorit colors. It's like I'm building an abstract version of myself.

Alla förtjänar en post var för att det inte ska bli för mastigt, men det får bli en annan dag.