Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
Oh. I'm so angsty.
Despite all the good intentions, it’s been a long weekend of mostly lying around my apartment feeling sorry for myself. And I really am not sure why. Am I actually sick with something (as certain physical symptoms would indicate)? Or am I just descending into another bout with depression (as my general emotional state would attest to)? Is it just a period of nervous unrest manifesting exhaustion and sickness in my body? And if so – what can I do to stop it? (I’m trying everything I know but none of it is helping – and some stuff, like hiking, seems too much for me at the moment as I am physically wiped out for days afterwards.) Quite honestly, it’s frustrating and leaving me a bit angry with myself – betrayed in a way – I want to be better. Now. Right fucking now.
I am craving sugar and sex and other things that make me feel good momentarily – but I’m pretty sure that if I indulge in anything too much it will be to my detriment. And so instead, I lie on the couch and read and nap and visit people who come to my home. And I’m lonely when I’m by myself, but when I’m with other people I’m too tired to interact properly, and I’m afraid that there’s something really wrong with me while being simultaneously afraid that it’s all in my head…. I’m not sure if I should give into the temptation to rest or if that’s just feeding a latent depression that will get worse if I don’t force myself into interaction. It’s very strange anyhow. I feel very out of touch with myself and I’m not sure how to get back in.
I’m pretty sure that my naturopath would counsel me to sit with my depression (which she has in the past) but I don’t want to. I never do. It sucks and it frightens me how little control I have over it. If that’s what this is, I want none of it. But it could be just that I’m so exhausted that the symptoms look similar. And that’s really what I mostly feel – fatigued. And the fatigue makes me anxious (because I’ve got tons to do and I’m not doing it), and the anxiety makes me more fatigued, and then my inability to cope comes out and there. I’m depressed again. Simple. And I don’t know how to fix it. As usual (despite the rather optimistic end I wrote to my coming out piece about depression two years ago).
Hm. At least I can laugh at that. Okay. I’m going to try harder this week. No indulging in self-pity. Work every day. Lots of sleep. Healthy food. Lots of walking if the gym seems too much. Anyone else have surefire remedy for existential angst? I could probably use it right about now.
Yeah, I'm going to keep living after all.
It’s been difficult to choose my words for this page in the last week as my life has recently become the subject of some internet debate and attack, which I have no wish to fuel further. I’m finding it difficult to be constrained from writing about the thing most pressing in my mental life – but my private thoughts turned public would be a mistake at this juncture. I will say however, a thanks to those of you who have sent me words of support and love. As always, these are of immense significance in helping me to ground during difficult times.
I have been ill in the past two weeks as well which has not helped my overall ability to cope… At least now I believe I have an answer to some of it, and am taking supplements and other measures to rectify the imbalances in my body (which of course spring from a deep and ungovernable response to stress). I am really lucky to have a naturopath I trust, even though I don’t see her regularly anymore (too expensive since I moved back to the city). Good she’s around the corner from me when I need a consult! I must say that I have caught myself by surprise at a whole new level of neurotic dysfunction these past ten days or so. I tend to believe this is the returning wave from two months ago – as nothing else in my life warrants this type of angst at the moment.
Today feels like turning a bit of a corner even though I’m still fatigued and don’t feel super-hot… the homeopathic remedy and cranial sacral treatment yesterday seem to be putting my nervous system back in order which is going to help a hell of a lot in settling down my stomach and other unhappy internal organs. I have managed to catch up on email and tackle a couple of work problems needing my attention. Having realized that I’m not going to die from my mystery illness has gone a long way to encouraging me to behave more functionally. Sheesh! You think I would know better by now (it’s all in your head dear, just get used to the voices and it’ll be okay).
On another tack, I’m hoping to get 2 or 3 hikes in this weekend, even if I have go slow and be all sickly about it…. I need to get myself into the woods and breaking in my new hiking boots for the trip at the end of August. (And don’t even get me started on my neurosis about that trip. If it wasn’t for Aaron’s endless coaxing I would have bailed months ago. It really doesn’t help that I have a new co-worker who feeds this with her own weird anxieties about the world. Not that I’m trying to pass the buck on this. But still. It doesn’t help.)
Anyhow. Despite the anxiety. Despite the neurosis. This is my plan for the weekend: Some hiking, some visiting with friends, some sleeping and a general tidy-up of my house, not to mention some reading and some fabric cutting (quilt). I mean, I am going to live after all, so I might as well get at it again.
Leaping.
The sun came through my window this morning and illuminated the sunflowers resting in a vase on my table giving me the moment of dark and light in which I snapped this photo. Until then (over breakfast) I had been immersed in Fear and Trembling – one of the early existential works by Soren Kierkegaard in which he explores the nature of faith through the story of Abraham – his writing is fluid, poetic and profound on this subject and his words are carved into the stones of the road on which I am traveling. Feeling my way by text and memory, I am not able to articulate much beyond some small practices which have brought me respite during this time shot through with difficulty.
Somewhere else Kierkegaard said “faith requires nothing more than a non-rational leap into the arms of God” (a poor paraphrase I’m sure) and it was because this quote resonated so strongly that I sought out Fear and Trembling. A concept with which I have difficulty until I am reminded that the project of revolutionary anarchism or socialism is really no different, is really a blind faith of its own. As much as politics likes to dress itself in rationality and materialism, the belief that “this revolution is going to be different” is about as hopeful (and unrealistic) a proposition as they come given what we know of the histories of conflict. Not to mention observed human behaviour. And yet we make the faithful leap into the arms of Bakunin and Marx and Bookchin and Luxemburg with eyes wide, because at least we have proof of their lives and their works, no matter how frail their premises were.
This post is no declaration of one loyalty switched for another, for what matters to me now has always mattered. Reminded of this over the weekend as I ate and sipped gin with my oldest friends around a fire – I am assured of my place in the world by small moments. If only they were *all* moments, which perhaps is the real struggle here. A sustained belief rather than one in glimpses and starts. These are the only fragments I can elicit right now – bits and pieces of transitional thought.
I leave you here a passage from this morning’s reading, because it caught me in the throat when I read it:
If a consciousness of the eternal were not implanted in man; if the basis of all that exists were but a confusedly fermenting element which, convulsed by obscure passions, Produced all, both the great and the insignificant; if under everything there lay a bottomless void never to be filled what else were life but despair? If it were thus, and if there were no sacred bonds between man and man; if one generation arose after another, as in the forest the leaves of one season succeed the leaves of another, or like the songs of birds which are taken up one after another; if the generations of man passed through the world like a ship passing through the sea and the wind over the desert—a fruitless and a vain thing; if eternal oblivion were ever greedily watching for its prey and there existed no power strong enough to wrest it from its clutches—how empty were life then, and how dismal!
Long hikes.
I need to do a couple of long hikes between now and when I leave for my trip at the end of August. Preferably one this weekend and one next. 12-15 km. Any takers or am I hiking alone? (I’m thinking at least of Diez Vistas for one of the hikes – it’s a killer workout and the trail is varied). Also probably will do some shorter/easier ones such as Norvan Falls. Let me know.
Work life.
I’m almost a month into my new job working on this national website redevelopment project and I’ve almost cleared all the stuff from the old job off my desk, hired a new person this week to take up some of the slack, and gotten through a bunch of mind-muddling bureaucracy of the type I have an inborn resistance to. Although I have been working at my project since the beginning of the month, I finally feel like I can put my full attention to it now – and that is exciting. And a bit scary. It’s one of those big jobs that requires me to put my creative intelligence to work in a way I haven’t been asked to in awhile. Information mapping, architectures, potential application development…. these things I need to be clear on before I go to do the big battle of changing the way we do web (which by any estimation is poorly, which one would think people want to change).
I am surprised at how much of a shift this is, even though I am in the same cube (or working from home), with the same people around me. The change is in no longer reporting through the same structure and a new outlay of expectations and responsibilities in front of me – which gives me that little bit of necessary distance from the regional office politics and disappointments of the last year. It also gives me a whole new set of problems to solve, and although daunting, I am always happier in the state of charting a new course than being forced to follow someone else.
So, apparently I am plotting things correctly, and at least my boss back east seems quite pleased with all my ideas so far. They seem a bit crazy, some of them, but as long as I can back them up with the why and how then they will at least merit some discussion at the top. We’ll see. We could come out of this with some pretty significant new tools for those involved in our field of research and decision-making. But not if we don’t get people onside – which is the larger part of the game than just thinking up a bunch of cool ideas.
It’s strange really, I’ve been working for the same outfit for over eight years now, and every time I have come close to leaving out of boredom or frustration, a new internal opportunity comes along at just the right time and saves me. The only thing keeping me going in the past year was my union involvement, my job life had become so unsatisfying and I was starting to apply out for other work again, when along comes an offer that makes me recommit to my work and my workplace. And it’s not the first time. I’ve been lucky that way I guess – and with the job market the way it is (professional admin/communications are hard to hire these days) I expect I should be able to continue to reshape roles over the next several years of work. Failing the apocalypse that is.
And you know, I am grateful for this privilege of work in a world of so much marginal labour – grateful that during times of emotional turmoil I have this work-thing to focus on; a stability in an otherwise shaky life which gives my days a shape and my life a security. Strange to me that I have hung in here this long, but not at all a regret – though I also suspect this is my last big project before I go elsewhere – a couple more years to savour this easiness of place and path.
Red Cedar 
