eep

Dat's alotta beer bottles,
Mary

I wonder how people view me?  I don't think about it very often, you know.  I'm generally kind of unconcerned with what people think about me.  But sometimes I get in these weird spaces where I wonder what my actions look like to people on the outside.

I especially wonder about the thoughts that belong to the people I used to be religious with.  Like, I wonder if they think I do the things I do because I don't accept Christ. How odd I must look to them. I don't buy religion... I quit buying it around 20 years old.  I've had nine years to mull over it.  I spent a lot of time being angry at religion, then I spent a lot of time trying to rediscover religion.  I've swung to both extremes... the whole time keeping blogs or journals or video rants of my feelings and discoveries and emotions. Now I'm in a gray space (I always swing back to the middle gray). I've made peace with it all, and I recognize that I don't hate religion, but also that I don't need religion -- I've recognized that religion is simply a tool to develop my Self and my Spirit into what it should be (by the by, don't try and sell me that tabula rasa b.s.).

Anyway.  So I do stuff.  I get depressed, and I post a bunch of rant-y stuff on facebook, and I party, and I have a lot of sex, and I start a bunch of projects (some of which I finish and some of which I don't), and I say one thing and I then I say something completely contradictory a week later, and I get a bunch of ink all over myself.  And I wonder, sometimes, very occasionally, what people think about all of it. 

Everyone thinks I can but me

Am I on this subject again?  My breakaway from corporate whoredom?  Christ.

Blah blah you all know the story.  I quit my job in February and want to start a brewery.  Let's see -- what have I done to start it... oh that's right, nothing. 

Some people have told me I am just suffering a little PTSD and that I just need some time to decompress and then I'll be back.  It's been six months.  I should be over this by now.  I feel like I'm behind on a frillion things but oddly I'm not doing very much at all to catch up on them because I have like 12% motivation to get up in the morning.

I have been freaking out over everything the past few weeks.  Ev.er.y.thing. After free skool, my networking skyrocketed, and for a long time I handled it really well.  I have reached a point where I don't feel like I'm handling anything very well.  My transition to this portion of my life is lacking the grace that I would like for it to have.  I'm bad at everything that I used to be good at. I'm not good at networking suddenly.  I'm not good at interviewing, apparently. I'm not good at fucking cleaning or organizing my house or my life or my finances or basically anything.  I'm not even good at hula hooping anymore.  My self-esteem has reached an all-time low, and that's why I can't get up in the morning. 

I hit a super low point last Sunday.  Like, super low.  Whisky low.  Whisky low in front of D. So that was shitty.  Things have been different around him since then, which totally freaks me out.  I thought I'd had really severe moment of depression, but I after I described it to PJ, she pointed out that I'd had a panic attack. First time for everything.

I have been really trying to get myself into a healthier emotional space. I am trying to do yoga every morning (rise and glow with the sun, they say), and I'm eating differently.  I'm eating stuff that is, well, good for me.  I am trying to put things in a recognizable order around me. I am working on breathing more.  I haven't had a drink since last Sunday. But I still have a lump in my throat and a feeling of desperation even as I type this. 

I tried taking a Sabbatical a few weeks back.  Didn't work.  Actually the whole thing was an utter failure.  Pressure. 

If I tell you a secret will you promise not to tell anyone else?  I have been toying, seriously, with the idea of leaving Tampa. 

...I am horrified that I even typed that just now.

I've been considering moving back to Alabama and living with my parents for several months.  For a real Sabbatical. I hardly know anyone left in Birmingham now, so I could go back to a quiet place.  I could live with Mom and Dad and truly decompress and maybe the noise and the dreams would stop and I would have time to think.  Not only think, but do.

I feel weak when I start having thoughts like this.  Like, why do I have to move back in with Mom and Dad?  Can't I just get my shit together here?  Everyone else can.  Why am I floundering like this?

D says that I've spent my whole life in an infrastructure of either the world of academia or the world of corporate jobs.  My time was structured for me.  All I had to do was follow the rules. But suddenly I don't have an infrastructure or a set of rules to follow and most times, I just stand around with my shoulders in a permanent shrug because I don't have a fucking clue what to do.  All that talk.  All that talk about being a self-starter.  Who knows who is a *real* self-starter, when an infrastructure is so stringently imposed on us from birth?  We're told to follow the rules, and so we do.  There is no self-discovery in that.