I think my drugs just kicked in.

[baratron]

I have had the most amazing day! Woke up today feeling bleurgh but got on with life anyway - and look what I've done!

• Work for money (1 hour).
  
• Emptied the clothes drying rack & put the contents away.
  
• Loaded up the dishwasher & set it running.
  
• Put a load of laundry on.
  
• Folded up the entire contents of the laundry basket so that later in the week I can just pull out a pile & bung it in the washing machine.
  
• Emptied the dishwasher (assisted by meeping).
  
• Made dinner for 4 people (assisted by gerwinium).
  
• Put the clean, wet laundry on the clothes drying rack.
  
• Hoovered the bathroom, landing & half the bedroom.
  
• Tidied up the front room - it's still an expletive deleted tip, but you can see floor and table now!
  
• Hoovered all the accessible bits of the front room floor.
  
• Sorted out a load of video games to sell on eBay.
  
• Filled the recycling bin. (wuzzie put it outside).
  
• Talked to artremis on the phone.
  
• Filled in my accounts book so it's up-to-date.
  
• Did 2 invoices for the tuition agencies, wrote the cheques & envelopes, ready for wuzzie to take to the post tomorrow.
  
• Wrote all the information in my paying-in book so I can just take it to the bank tomorrow without needing to faff.
  
• Photographed all the stuff for eBay.
  
• Had a shower.
  and, most excitingly of all,
  
• Completed three songs on the Insane mode of Amplitude for the first time ever!!

I know it might seem weird that I'm spelling out every stage, so Emptied the clothes drying rack, Put a load of laundry on and Put the clean, wet laundry on the clothes drying rack are three separate items, but on a bad day, each of those would take one of my metaphorical spoons.

I have something of a confession to make. I think that I must have stolen several other people's supplies of spoons. If you have been exhausted and apathetic all day I'm sorry! I'll give the spoons back as soon as I have some spare! On the other hand, maybe a bunch of you were hoping and praying that I'd have a pain-free day one of these millennia, and if that was the case - thank you. I enjoyed it.

The reason I've put Completed three songs on the Insane mode of Amplitude for the first time ever in bold is that for several weeks now, I haven't even had enough concentration to be able to play the game, let alone get half-decent scores on vaguely difficult songs. Today I sat down and played REALLY DAMN DIFFICULT songs fairly easily. (Yes, my scores sucked - but I completed the songs!). It is exactly 2 weeks since my antidepressant dosage went up - it looks like it's actually had some effect. Hooray!

I'm happy :) Even if I have a totally crap rest of the week, at least I got a lot of useful things done today.

Comments

[jhaelan.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

*spoon*

[baratron.livejournal.com]

<Matrix>There IS no spoon!</Matrix>

I was going to say "Hello, what are you up to being awake at this hour?", but I just went to your journal to find out. Ahh.

I have very little idea what's going on in your life. I find your journal weird to read because you tend to write from the point of view of a character who isn't necessarily you, deliberately distancing yourself from your own life. Whereas I sit here and blether crap like I would on the phone. Also, I realise that when I knew you was an awfully long time ago, and you were quite a different person then. (I don't think I've changed all that much at all, but then I would).

Do you think you're a much more opaque person than me, Transparent Girl? Or is it surprising that I've said that?

[jhaelan.livejournal.com]

I have to admit my first response was that of suprise: I would consider my journal to extremely open. Then I had a think. I still reckon it's open - I certainly have a no holds barred approach to the topics I cover - it's just not necessarily full or obvious. There's a fair bit I only usually talk about through references, many of which mean something to me alone, but that's true in the real world as well as the virtual one

Your remark about writing as someone else is true; I treat it as a writing style but I can see it coming across differently when combined with the obfuscation

Hmm. Got me thinking now

[baratron.livejournal.com]

I dropped your journal off my Default View a while ago when you started asking questions of your readership like "What Masks do you wear?" (I apologise for forgetting the right wording). I found myself completely confused - I wear no Masks, I am me. I generally don't use my surname on the internet to avoid birth family finding my more interesting writing, but other than that, the me you get here is the same me you get on the phone or in person. baratron = helen-louise = me. Warts & all, or more likely, moaning & all ;)

I often wish that I could write a blog-style journal, where I post about things in a formal, editorial sort of way, but it's just... not me. Occasionally I do make serious posts, and even do research into them first - this (http://baratron.livejournal.com/361842.html) was my last one. But, at the end of the day, I'm happier just sitting here pouring out my thoughts and... blethering.

Some of my closest friends don't actually read this journal - often, or at all - because I write so much and it is mostly waffle. They think they get the edited highlights on the phone, so there's no need to read the stuff here :) I find that... slightly offensive, when I'm in an over-sensitive, under-self-esteemed sort of mood. Other times, I recognise it's an extrovert vs introvert thing - I have to accept that most of my local friends are introverts and get burned out on me and my need for people.

There are lots of older friends that I've lost touch with because of differing communication styles. I don't do email well, or at least, not consistently - right now, I have a few current email communications that have been bouncing backwards and forwards for a few months, and I'm pleased with that because it represents a positive change that I'm able to do that. Other people... well, I don't know. I would like to make some changes, and try to resurrect some old friendships.

Feel free to email me, anytime. (This is an open offer to anyone reading this - you all know my address, it's in my userinfo). I can't promise to reply timely, but I am making a real effort now.

[jhaelan.livejournal.com]

Think I understand where you're coming from with the Masks confusion - in my worldview there is one underlying me, but different aspects of it are in ascendance at any one time. Perhaps "aspect" or "facet" might be a more accessible term? If it helps, a metaphor might be that h-l as a teacher needs to be concerned with different things than h-l as a writer of SimsFreezePop fic though it's the same h-l underneath..? On the other hand, your worldview might not want that differentiation - certainly that sequence of entries both fascinated and disturbed my regular readers

Can't promise email, as I'm equally poor at doing email, but I shall try once I'm back in the UK

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Right - but the science teaching part of me and the deranged fangirl part of me are still all me! I'd be a pretty boring person if I only did one of those things, after all. And to treat them as separate aspects or facets of me neglects the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. This sounds facetious, but the one single over-riding reason I am so mad about Freezepop is that they are a geek band. The first song of theirs I ever heard was Science Genius Girl (http://baratron.livejournal.com/137400.html), and I just went "omg, this is a song ABOUT ME".

To be introspective for a moment, previous songs I've heard that were ABOUT ME were things like Alice (http://www.helen-louise.net/Music/alice.html) by the Sisters of Mercy, or very (http://www.helen-louise.net/Music/speck.html) introspective (http://www.helen-louise.net/Music/peripheral.html) Mega (http://www.helen-louise.net/Music/props.html) City (http://www.helen-louise.net/Music/underdog.html) Four (http://www.helen-louise.net/Music/clown.html) songs (each of those words is a separate link, btw). SGG was probably the first happy song I ever heard and immediately associated with myself. That song represents recovering my mental health, and my ability to think & do science. (I've mentioned before that when I was in serious depression, I lost my intelligence. Imagine what that's like - to go from having been a gifted child with a string of qualifications to being barely able to read a novel, let alone an academic text. I spent hours staring at the wall, not even aware that time was passing, thinking at one thought per hour. Scary stuff. I remain pleased that drugs & cognitive therapy have helped me fend that off, so now even though I'm having days of complete non-functionality where I can't get out of bed, my brain is still working.)

I could tell you about the years doctors spent trying to treat my asthma and depression as two entirely unrelated things, and how asthma drugs and depression drugs never seemed to work too well. I only started to get better after the absolute genius that is my GP realised that my depression was treatment-resistant because I wasn't breathing properly. (You remember the whole hyperventilation (http://baratron.livejournal.com/158340.html) thing?). By the time that was diagnosed, I could barely walk (http://baratron.livejournal.com/155996.html). I could have gone on for years with a vague, nebulous, chronic fatigue diagnosis, and been seriously disabled for years, with no hope of recovery - if someone hadn't looked at the situation as a whole.

Nowadays, the holistic approach is the very essence of me. Yes, A-level chemistry is dressed up in a lot more rationale than playing The Sims, writing fiction, listening to Freezepop, and the bizarre crossover that is writing fiction about SimFreezepop. But underneath the layers of reasoning, I don't see any difference between the joy I get from my subject and the joy from my favourite band. I try to give my students the same exuberant enthusiasm for science that I have when I listen to Freezepop. Doesn't always work, but I try.

So, while I use a large number of labels (http://www.livejournal.com/users/baratron/325349.html#cutid1) to describe myself, I don't keep my life in little boxes. It's also why I talk so openly about things that could be embarrassing - my illnesses (physical and mental), my sexuality, and other things that make me tick. I realise in writing this that to some extent I've always felt this way. So that's why it's always bugged me when friends want to pick & choose the bits of me they like - when I used to give tapes of music I care about to people because I wanted to share it, and they'd give it one listen and go "eh". Huh! This is being a very interesting conversation :)

[jhaelan.livejournal.com]

What you say makes a lot of sense, particularly within the context of h-l ;) One thing particularly resonated, the thoughts about holisticsm

Examining myself by looking at the different facets of me was interesting and challenging because it's not something I like other people doing and it's not something that reflects how I live. It is/was an interesting and useful experiment in attempting to separate out bits of myself, and to understand the whole by looking at the parts. It was driven by a fear/thought that I was still moving in distinctly different circles of people and some of them would only see one facet of me - not because I was not being myself, but because the context encouraged particular aspects of my character to assert themselves more strongly. Perhaps that is me not being myself, perhaps I'm just socially chameleonic - I'm still not sure

Going back to your remark about my entries being a little distanced from the real me: I would say I talk quite openly about the things that make me tick - who I am in the world, connections with other people, etc - it's just there less rooted in a physical commons as a social one (and that's by no means saying one is "better" than the other). If I had more physical concerns I like to think I would talk about them - and I have, when I'm ill or when I had exceedingly minor surgery earlier in the year

[jhaelan.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Your thoughts have definitely got me thinking!

[erik]

You've mentioned the spoons before, but not referenced it back. Now I see what you're talking about. (I already understood somewhat what's behind what you were talking about; one of my former sweeties has MS)

You are welcome to some of my spoons any time we can figure out how to get them to you. Both metaphorically/metaphysically (I send good thoughts to you) and physically (I help you do things; although with the distance this might be tricky.)

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Yay! A good day! If my headachy meh came from spoon-lending, that is fine by me.

(You need to come visit again and play Katamari Damacy with me.)

[inquis.livejournal.com]

I think my lack of spoons yesterday was more to do with Public F***ing Transport and lack of tea, but if they helped you out, so much the better :D *hugs*

[nitoda]

Nice to see my spoons being put to good use. Am off work sick today with a viral condition that's been going around the office. Mainly headaches and stuffed up sinuses and feeling brain dead. Am vegging in front of TV and occasionally checking on emails from work, just so that when I get back in the office on Wednesday (am out on a training day tomorrow) I won't be totally overwhelmed.

[otterylexa.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I got very little done yesterday. The fact that this is slightly surprising is a new and pleasant development (about which I'll post soon). If you were using my spoons, you're welcome to them.