Tag Archives: self-care

Reclaiming My Creativity, One Step at a Time

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Those of you who have been following me for a while know that I am a slow-but-steady writer. Since I began my publishing journey, I’ve written and published a book a year. When I mention this to my non-writing friends, they are astonished and never fail to ask “How do you find the time?” The truth of the matter is that time is not nearly as big a factor as finding the energy or bandwidth, particularly after an emotionally, mentally, or physically demanding day at work.

Truth be told, when it comes to being considered a successful writer these days, that kind of productivity is far too slow. There are people in the industry who produce a finished novel every 60 days. In order to gain traction with your audience, it seems like you have to write at least 3-4 books a year, something I will never do. If anything, my process is becoming even slower than before. There are a lot of reasons for this. As much as I hate to admit it, I’m 15 years older than when I started my publishing journey. I’ve worked very hard to make a name for myself as an author, and I’ve finally decided that I no longer have the energy to jump through all those hoops.

Not only do I no longer have the bandwidth to shake my little tambourine and chant my name for the masses, I barely have the energy or mental capacity to write. I’ve been working on my current WIP for a little over a year now, and I’m still nowhere close to finishing the first draft. Normally, I’d be ready to publish by now. Getting Covid this summer didn’t help. I kept a persistent low-grade fever for weeks, lost my sense of taste and smell, and worst of all, brain fog swept in to blanket every writing session with a gray mist of ‘what the heck were you thinking when you wrote this?’ each time I sat down at the keyboard. Fifteen years ago, blanking on words or struggling to capture the concept I had in mind was just a sign of fatigue and that it was time for a break. That I’d been running on fumes too long. Now I find myself wondering if my brain is turning to mush or is it the toll of the constant bombardment of daily bad news?

I’ve made a few decisions in this past year that I hope will help. I have stopped hoping that my writing pave the way for me to write full time. I’ve even stopped demanding it serve as a fallback retirement plan. It just needs to break even–to be an expensive hobby that (mostly) pays for itself. Accepting this level of “success” doesn’t mean I didn’t try hard enough or dream big enough. It simply means I can no longer keep trying to appease ever-changing algorithms, and dashing from platform to platform constantly spinning plates on sticks to keep entertaining my so-called audience.

That decision alone has meant I can spend less time on social media, which I hope will help with my regrettable tendency to doomscroll. The only reason I’m on social media is because everyone says I MUST maintain an author presence. Fine. I’ve decided that presence will be more of squatting on real estate than actually running a B&B at a financial loss. I’ve got better things to do with the short amount of time I have left on this planet than to make myself miserable because the things I’ve achieved aren’t “good enough.”

I’d been pushing myself to finish this current story by the end of this month. Today as a matter of fact. There are all kinds of theories as to the best time of year to publish–and if you only release one book a year, the final quarter isn’t it. January isn’t great either, unless you are writing a self-help or exercise book. But this story has gone from being something I thought was a cool idea to being a project I loathe working on. I don’t want to shelve it because I have too much time invested in it. I also fear if I quit at this point, I’m setting a bad precedent for myself–that I can just walk away whenever the going gets too hard. So now I’m looking at not publishing this WIP until maybe next spring, and the thought of missing my One Book A Year goal made me hyperventilate a bit.

But I’m unhappy with the story. It’s a new-to-me genre with a lot of worldbuilding and it stopped being fun a while ago. I’ll sit down to write a paragraph or two, writing and deleting the same sentence over and over again as I fail to put into words this big picture I have in my head.

The other day, I realized I no longer have to hold myself to a rigid schedule of write-publish-release. I’m allowed to publish whenever I want. The rules don’t matter.

I also realized what’s wrong with the story as it stands right now. I’ve erased all the real conflict and given the characters cartoon problems to deal with. I’ve softened the hero to the point of being ineffectual. I’ve strengthened the heroine to the point that she has no journey over the course of the story. I’ve diluted the relationships because I don’t want to deal with the emotions these character should be having. I’ve wrapped my story in a protective layer of cotton padding because I wish that my own elbows and knees were padded, and that I knew I always had a soft place to land in case of a fall.

I even gave the main character a mental block preventing her from experiencing her emotions because I must have subconsciously wished for the same. To be the strong, bad-ass heroine of my own story without doing any of the work to get there. This emotional shell around my characters–around the story as a whole–is self-preservation for me in a world I find depressing, discouraging, and terrifying right now.

But for the story to be its best, I need to take a nutcracker to that shell and break down to the meat of the characters. This little epiphany resulted in the first little spark of excitement I’ve had for this story in a while. So I will not publish before it is ready. I will take my time to make the story the best it can be. And I will put in the effort of making my characters work for their happiness.

It means there probably won’t be a McKenna/M.K. Dean release this year. But there will be one eventually. Because even though I am writing for me now, I’m also still writing for you. And I want you to enjoy the journey as well.

Finding Your Balance in an Unstable World

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View of an open field, from the back of a horse looking between its ears

The other day, someone asked me how I was doing, and I said, “I’m not okay.”

It’s not the standard response people expect when they ask this question. Usually the person asking doesn’t really want to know how you are, it’s something people say, like “Hot enough for you out there?” or “Do you have plans for the holidays?”

It’s the polite thing to say, a sort of conversational placeholder until it is your turn to speak again.

The truth of the matter is that I haven’t been okay for a long time now. I’ve been walking the fine line between burnout and breakdown for what seems like decades, long before the pandemic and personal loss swept through our lives, stretching me farther than I could have thought possible. Recovering from that time period merely put me back walking on the tightrope, so to speak, instead of clinging to it with my fingertips.

To switch metaphors, there are times when you’re riding a galloping horse and for whatever reason–it stumbles or begins to buck–and you lose your balance. There’s a tipping point at which you know you’re not going to regain it and you have to decide if you should keep trying or bail–choosing to control your fall and landing. I’ve always been good at recovering my balance and getting myself upright in the saddle, getting the horse back under control and shoving my feet into stirrups again. But there are times when it is truly impossible.

Just when I thought I might regain my balance enough to make it to the other side of these past years–whatever that other side might be–I was utterly devastated by the results of the most recent US election. This may lose me readers and followers. If so, so be it.

I grew up in a Christian household. Church every Sunday, Vacation Bible School, and spiritual retreats. Weekly worship sessions were about learning how best to walk in the path of Christ’s teachings. Somewhere along the line, the message of sermons became unrecognizable to me. I saw doors close because members of a congregation would rather have their church dissolved than to let in the influx of BIPOC members of the community resulting from changing neighborhood demographics. I witnessed a kind, decent, and inspirational pastor be removed from his pulpit because his wife asked for a divorce. I noted the rise of authority figures within a church who became powerful and wealthy men in the community, leveraging their status into more power and wealth in the larger world of politics.

Sermons became less about the teachings of Christ and more about how “life is like a football game, and it’s the 4th down and time to punt.” I wish I could tell you I was exaggerating, but I’m not. I’ve heard the football sermon more times that I can count in more churches than I care to name.

For the life of me, I can’t understand how anyone professing to be a Christian can strike down against almost every tenet of Jesus. Who believed in feeding the hungry. Healing the sick. A social activist who had known hunger, poverty, and homelessness. An immigrant, a defender of the marginalized, a champion of the broken-hearted and the oppressed. Executed by the Roman government who saw Him as a political threat.

I cannot understand anyone professing to be a Christian choosing to sit down at a table Jesus would have flipped.

These last few weeks post election have been an emotional rollercoaster for me. I fear for the future of my country and the safety of people I love. I know I’m relatively safe, all things considered. I’m a senior white woman in a loving marriage with a man who supports me as a human being and I’m well-beyond child-bearing age. We have reasonably secure jobs that pay the bills, even though I see major belt-tightening in our future because every time we have a GOP controlled administration, the economy suffers. But not every member of my family has these same privileges. The BIPOC and LGBQTIA+ members certainly don’t. The women in my family don’t. The planet and our future generations don’t have the luxury of taking a “wait and see” approach. And once you start sliding down the slope of authoritarianism, finding purchase to climb back up again is challenging, to say the least.

(I have to say, looking at the next administration’s cabinet picks, I should never give another moment’s thought ever to imposter syndrome. Ever.)

But my pendulum swings between rage and despair are shallower now. I may not be able to change what is happening to my country (and therefore, the world) but I can control how I react to it. I will not live in misery and fear.

As I have previously said, I write stories for the person who needs a few hours of escapism from their lives: the caretaker who needs some moments of respite, those who are chronically ill or in pain, the person who had a crappy day at work (or years of crappy days at work), the person living with crippling anxiety. More and more, I write because I need that kind of escapism.

So while you will see more Ginny Reese mysteries, I’m also going to write the stories that allow me to step into another world and forget my own for a few hours, regardless if they sell or not. I will spend less time on social media, jumping through hoops, aiming for a bar that keeps moving. More time with those I care about most, and doing the small things that bring me joy for as long as I can.

There’s a reason why, when you get bucked off a horse, you’re told to get back on right away. It’s because the longer you stay off the horse, the harder it is to get back in the saddle, to put yourself at risk again. Sometimes, the wiser course of action is to stay grounded and take a different path. I have the luxury of choosing a different path. I hope to use my privilege in more meaningful ways than I have thus far.

So while I’m not okay right now, I’m getting better. And I’ll be okay again someday.

 

Twitter, Mastodon, TikTok and all that other nonsense #twitterexodus #mastodon #tiktok

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I confess, I’m a bit fed up with social media right now.

I don’t spend much time on Facebook unless I am participating in a specific group event or checking in with a particular community. I mostly cross-post to it, and have had some moderate success with Facebook ads.

But this past week, several of my ads have been rejected (won on appeal, but still) for no discernable reason, and in 7 days I’ve spent almost $50 without a single sale. I keep getting notices that my ads might not deliver because they haven’t been optimized, and yet the description of how to do this makes no sense whatsoever. As much as I was loathe to give FB any money, my ads there seemed to have a greater ROI than my ads elsewhere. Not any longer. I don’t know what’s changed, and I am exhausted by the notion that I either have to figure it out or pay someone else to teach me how to appease the new algorithms.

There’s a big #TwitterExodus afoot now in the advent of Elon Musk purchasing the site. Rumors of this event occurred back in April, but then he backed out, but was forced to honor his agreement. EM’s reason for purchasing the platform was to make it a private company and easier for people to speak more freely… which means that much of the ugliness and rampant misinformation found on such right-wing sites as Parler has gained ground almost immediately on the bird platform. For a list of all the massive proposed changes in just the last week, check out this list here.

Additional concerns about the chaos of misinformation flooding Twitter before the mid-term elections is here. Many big companies have paused advertising to see what direction Twitter will ultimately take, but EM himself cited a widely discredited website in a Tweet that implied the brutal attack on Paul Pelosi was not carried out by a far-right wing blogger but was related instead to an anti-LGBTQ “theory” about a skirmish at a local bar. The Tweet was eventually deleted, but there you are.

This kind of behavior, both by EM and on Twitter, has resulted in large numbers of the people I follow and interact with choosing to leave Twitter. Most are migrating to a site called Mastodon, which claims to be a decentralized platform that can’t be bought or sold at the whim of a single entity. Jack Dorsey, the original founder of Twitter, is planning a similar decentralized platform called BlueSky. Decentralized platforms mean you don’t just jump in and have content/people pushed toward you. You have to decide what toe you want to dip in where.

Most older people say this is much how the internet used to be–and they are embracing the chaos. To me, it feels like making the jump from cable to streaming: if I want to watch a particular show, I have to figure out what channel it’s on and whether I want access to it. The problem with Mastodon, is the search engine is VERY different. You have to know what server to join, and what “instances” to join (which are kind of like clubs on Discord, it’s all very confusing). The phone app sucks, and I’m not keen on given my information to a third party app such as Tusky (which is being recommended) to use Mastodon on my phone.

Then there’s the problem that while Twitter is an established platform like Facebook or Pinterest, and sharing buttons on media have evolved to include them, there is no such thing for Mastodon as it stands. Where I (or anyone else) used to be able to easily share information from this blog or other sites, it will take extra steps to share things to Mastodon. But if you want a primer on making the move, read this post here.

The important thing to remember is it is NOT Twitter. It’s been likened to entering a high school cafeteria with your tray and looking for a place to sit down with like-minded people, and I suppose that’s why my knee-jerk reaction to Mastodon hasn’t been good. I LOATHED high school and the clique-y mentality. I’m also at a point in my life where I don’t have a lot of time and I hate wasting it on learning things I may or may not use.

Many people are touting Discord instead, but instead of a high school cafeteria, Discord feels to me like a gated community, and you can only gain entrance if you know the password. Long, threaded conversations like you have on WhatsApp and in chat rooms have never appealed to me because I’m invariably late to the party and the thing I wanted to comment on was 50 entries back and everyone has moved off of it onto something else. Don’t get me started on Tumbler, which feels like a place where someone scribbles graffiti on a wall and others come by and add their own scribblings. The end result can be interesting, but it’s hard to have a conversation there.

At the moment, I’m spending most of my time on TikTok, which I never, ever said I’d do. I admit to having spent the last eleven months having a ridiculous amount of fun there but… and you knew there was going to be a “but” right?

I’ve scarcely written a word since joining TT. I’m spending most of my writing time drafting videos. I’ve learned how to do transitions, use filters, lip sync, and have bought a crazy amount of wigs and costumes. Somehow the learning curve it took to master TT has not brought me to teeth-grinding rage the way learning other social media–it was a lot more like discovering fandom and then teaching myself all the tools I needed to know in order to play in it.

At first, TT was a BLAST. I’m still having fun with it, but ever since publishing deemed TT was THE place to be (and truthfully, that was the only reason I made the leap), there has been a lot of pressure to be young, thin, attractive, and the kind of TT presence publishers deem valuable. There have been rumors that one of the big trad pubs told an author they couldn’t offer her a contract because she wasn’t young enough (she was in her forties…). There is also talk of publishers signing up hot young women and then pairing them with older women who ghostwrite their books for similar reasons–the youth and hotness are prime selling points on this platform.

Honestly, that doesn’t bother me that much. That kind of thing has been going on as long as youth and sex have been selling factors. But what does bother me is the rumors that TT is going to move to a paid subscription model. What bothers me is that I used to routinely get 300-400 views and now they’ve dropped to less than 100. TT is HUGE for making constant changes to the algorithm, and now the word is they want to be more like YouTube by offering longer formats (up to ten minutes) and you have to make your content searchable now with captions. It’s all about SEO to increase visibility and I get so darned tired of having to change something every time I think I have a handle on it. TT has been good to me in terms of sales. But it’s a time sink, I blame it for the bulk of the drop off in my writing production, and I’m not there in order to manipulate the ins and outs of algorithm changes. I’m there to have fun.

If it turns into another pay-to-play site, I’m gone.

I had a bit of a meltdown this morning, and my husband said something to me that made me do a double-take. I mentioned that I was so angry all the time, and he said that if I were an old white man, he’d say it was because I’d been watching FOX News. It took me aback because I’m about as far from that demographic as you can get… and yet I AM stoking my rage machine all the time over things I have very little control over.

Democracy is going to live or die one way or another. Same with our civil rights, climate change, the hope of a future for our children in a world running out of resources and becoming increasingly polarized and violent, and so on. My ANGER ALONE will not prevent these things from happening. I tell myself staying informed is the best I can do because I’m working so hard on every other front to keep my head above water I can’t spare any more energy for anything else. I’ve donated where I thought it would help the most, and I only get more begging letters and emails. I can’t stop what’s coming.

But I can stop adding fuel to a furnace already about to meltdown.

They say we can’t survive as authors or creators of any kind without social media. But I think I need to consider surviving as a person for a little while with less of it.

What to Do When the Spirit of Christmas Ghosts You

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I don’t know about you, but I’m having a hard time getting into the spirit of Christmas this year.

Oh, who am I kidding? It’s not just this year, though for some reason, it feels even worse than usual. Normally by this time of year, I’m happily working my way through holiday romances and mysteries on the e-reader, as well as indulging in my love of cheesy Christmas movies on Hallmark and Netflix. I’ve picked a night to do my annual re-watch of the Muppet Christmas Carol, and I’ve decided which of my other beloved favorites to add to the list. Will it be Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer or How the Grinch Stole Christmas? It’s a Wonderful Life or Christmas in Connecticut? I rotate these favorite classics to keep them fresh but also to make room for new movies, like A Cinderella Story: A Christmas Wish or Last Holiday with Queen Latifah.

I normally hide presents all over the house (sometimes to the point of forgetting to recover and wrap them in time for Christmas), though we’ve begun to scale back on that too. Most years I become possessed by a seasonally driven urge to bake. Completely ignoring my lack of skill in the kitchen (oh boy, do I have a post to share with you about THAT at some future date), I try my hand at dozens of different kinds of cookies, filling the house with the scent of ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. Co-workers and neighbors are the recipients of anything edible that my family can’t finish, though I eat far too many of them myself.

We haven’t done the elaborate holiday dinner for some time now. The family is smaller, its members scattered. Most of us have so little time off from work that travel isn’t feasible, even if the pandemic hadn’t made it impossible or unwise. We’ve never been big on outdoor decorations, either, and when you have pets, Christmas trees with ornaments can be problematic.

So we’ve been scaling back on Christmas a little each year for a while now.

Last year, while the pandemic still raged and vaccination wasn’t on the horizon yet, there was a desperation to my attempts to get into the holiday mood. This year, there is just apathy. I haven’t been able to muster the enthusiasm to watch more than one or two of the new holidays movies out there, and haven’t watched any of my old favorites. I have dozens of holiday books on the reader, and keep scrolling past to read something else. The weather isn’t helping, either. It’s been a balmy 70 degrees here recently with nary a snowflake in sight.

But in a conversation with one of my friends this morning, she said that though she and her husband feel the same, they put up a few decorations, and were glad they did. She planned to watch a cheesy movie and drink some hot cocoa, and suggested I should do likewise.

You know what? I’m going to take her advice.

Scaling back doesn’t mean going all out Grinch. Maybe finding the Christmas spirit is a little like writing when the Muse has left you. 

Sometimes you just need to sit down and do it. Don’t wait for the feeling to come. Go out and grab it.

Or put another way, if you open your heart to the spirit of Christmas, it will come.

Tonight we took a chance on a new holiday movie, Single All the Way. Lately the newer holiday movies have been a little hit-or-miss with me, but this movie was one of the best, most satisfying holiday movies I’ve seen in some time. It perfectly nailed the goofy, strange dynamics of a loving family. The writing and acting was top-notch. It took the fake boyfriend trope and turned it on its head. Best of all, there were no bad guys, unless you count demanding bosses who expect you to work over the holidays. Highly recommend.

Teaching Yourself New Tricks: Advice from an Old Dog Trainer

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The other day I was complaining to a group of friends how frustrated I was with my journey to better health. That I was so frazzled and stressed that even the smallest things seemed impossible. That I was so angry at how much I’d had sacrificed and given up in the last few years that I resisted like hell when asked to give up anything else. How exhausted I was all the time, and how this impacted my ability to make good personal decisions when all my energy for good decision-making was reserved for work.

I begged for their support. I was hoping for some other bit of miraculous advice, the perfect diet plan that would allow me to shed twenty pounds in two days, feel AMAZING with just some small tweaks in my routine, and take at least twenty years off my appearance. Okay, not really. But certainly that’s the expectation we have when starting any new ‘clean up your act’ plan. Miracles in 21 days or your money back.

The response I got startled me.

One of my friends said, “You wouldn’t expect a reactive dog to make huge improvements overnight. Why do you expect the same for yourself?”

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a reactive dog is one who over-reacts to things in its environment. This kind of behavior can be hard-wired into the dog through genetics (certain breeds, especially the working and herding dogs, have been bred to respond to certain situations and stimuli, and can be more reactive as a result), through poor socialization (not having seen enough different things as a young pup, which makes the whole world an intense place), or from a terrifying incident–like getting attacked.

Reactive dogs are tough to live with because almost everything sets them off: movement, sound, certain situations. They lunge and bark in public spaces, making them difficult to walk. The tendency is to keep them home, which makes the problem worse, especially if you stop having people come over. The risk of a reactive dog biting someone is high because their displays are often fear-based, and if you can’t calm them down, their response is disproportionate to the stimuli.

I’ve had two reactive dogs, so I’ve had to learn a lot about managing them.

The first was Abbey, a female German Shepherd that came from bloodlines that featured a lot of Schutzhund champions. Schutzhund is a dog sport that tests a dog’s performance during tracking, obedience, and protection work. That is not to say that a Schutzhund dog can’t make a great family pet, but the sport does prize drive as a characteristic, and reactivity can be a consequence of high drive.

Abbey would have probably been a tough-but-manageable dog had she not had a horrific experience. When she was about three years old, we were out walking after a heavy snowstorm. My neighbors had a litter of adult mixed-breed shepherds that lived in a pen with little human interaction. On this day for the first time ever, they decided to let their unsocialized, untrained dogs loose to play in the snow. Four dogs all about Abbey’s size jumped us as a pack with the intent of killing her.

Had it not been for the excessive snow, they probably would have. Abbey dove under the snow pack while I waded into the mass of dogs, screeching like a banshee, grabbing dogs by the scruff and slinging them across the yard. Their owners came charging out of the house to collect their dogs–with never a word of apology or to see if me or my dog had been injured, mind you.

And after that, if Abbey saw a dog even 100 yards away, she went into an impressive display of barking and growling, pawing the air while I held her back by the collar. Going for a walk was no longer fun. We were like victims of assault, constantly looking over our shoulders for another attack. Abbey thought a good offense was the best defense. She even reacted on garbage days when people set their trash cans on the curb. Whatever was new and different in her environment was grounds for being defensive.

Over the next three or four years I worked on her behavior, taking “aggressive” dog classes, working with trainers and behaviorists. It wasn’t until one such trainer helped me to see that she was over-reacting out of fear that I was able to start managing her better. In the end, we were able to safely introduce her to strange dogs, and pass another dog-walker on a six-foot-wide trail without her blinking an eye.

But it didn’t happen overnight.

When I got my next reactive dog, Sampson, I had a better handle on what to do. I’d made sure Sampson had been well-socialized as a puppy, but his problem was he had a strong prey drive. If it moved, it lit him up. I could always tell when he wasn’t getting enough exercise because he’d flinch if a car or a jogger passed us while we were out walking. I’d have to take him to the side of the trail if we met someone on a hike and ask him to sit while I fed him treats. This required me to be hyper-vigilant, always scanning our environment for something he might react to and heading off that reaction before it occurred. Fortunately, he was very food-motivated, and eventually it got to the point when he saw the jogger, the cyclist, the car, etc, he’d flip around, plant himself in front of me, and stare at me while drool streamed out of his mouth.

A wonderful dog, but not easy to live with.

I bring this up because much like all worthwhile things in life, retraining a reactive dog is a marathon, not a sprint. It requires patience, dedication, and consistency to see results. You can’t decide that this time, you won’t reinforce the behavior you want while discouraging the behavior you don’t want. The results matter because not following through will lead to a lifetime of trying to prevent your hysterical dog from hurting himself or someone else. Not to mention it is horrible to live in a state of such anxiety all the time.

And at no point did I tell either of my dogs they were fat, lazy, or stupid for behaving the way they did. I didn’t scream at them. I didn’t tell them they were ugly. I didn’t set them up to fail. I didn’t ask them to do something not very much fun without providing some kind of reward to make it worth their while. I didn’t expect them to get it right 100% of the time, either. I accepted anything that moved in the right direction until it became a consistent habit and I could ask for a little bit more. I acknowledged that if they got it wrong, I was usually to blame because I wasn’t paying attention.

Why would I treat myself–and the changes I want to make in my life–with any less patience and compassion?

I shouldn’t. And neither should you.

So remember the tenants of dog training when it comes to yourself and the changes you want to make in your life:

  1. Set yourself up to succeed. Look ahead for the triggers and plan redirects around them.
  2. Calmly and firmly tell yourself no when faced with a decision that isn’t good for you (like walking into the break room and discovering boxes of doughnuts from the best bakery in town). Be sure to reward yourself for making the right decision. This is critical! You’ll have to figure out what your “high-value treats” are. Try not to trade one bad habit for another (i.e. you’re trying to quit smoking so you’re eating lots of cookies, or you’re spending too much money shopping online).
  3. Be patient. You’re in this for the long-haul. Getting ten little things right can be set back by getting one major thing wrong, but getting something wrong isn’t the end of the world. Just do better next time.
  4. Remember that you’re making changes for a reason. Failure to stick with it has consequences. Failing to train your reactive dog may result in your dog biting someone or getting into a serious dogfight with injuries. Failure to make needed changes in your life may result in further damage to your mental and physical health.
  5. Remember that some of the behaviors you’re dealing with may have their roots in past trauma. I never blamed Abbey for over-reacting to the sight of strange dogs–we both could have died on that snowy day! Be kind to your wounded self too.
  6. Learn from your mistakes. Failure to plan is planning to fail. I wouldn’t leave the house without a treat bag full of high-value tidbits to distract my dog in certain situations. I also learned to recognize which situations were too overwhelming for her to start, and adjusted our interactions as a result. Identify your triggers and challenging situations and plan accordingly.
  7. Accept that it is up to you to affect the changes you want to see, and that you can’t necessarily expect help from others. When you’re out walking a reactive dog, you have zero control over what other people are doing with their dogs, or on skateboards, or with kids in strollers, etc. It is up to YOU to take yourself and your dog out of a situation that you suspect will be triggering. Same if you’re trying to alter your habits (be it food, alcohol, drugs, swearing, or a pervasive need to sing Disney songs, whatever). You cannot expect others around you to create a safe zone for you. Accept responsibility for your own life.
  8. Ask for help and support. Wait, what? Doesn’t that contradict the last rule? No, not really. Training a reactive dog will fail if some members of the house refuse to support the training efforts. It isn’t reasonable or fair to expect the world at large to cooperate with your efforts to make change, but it is reasonable to ask for help from those in your immediate circle. It’s okay to admit that a house full of cookies (or alcohol or Chez Doodles, whatever your poison) proves to be too hard to resist. You can sit your family down and explain that you have to make changes in order to improve the quality of your life, and while you’re not asking that everyone follow the same strictures you might be making for your personal health (for example, going dairy-free), you are going to need to set limits on how much of the high-temptation food is in the house, and that when choosing to eat out, preference be given to a restaurant that has more options than pizza or burgers. It isn’t wrong to ask for this kind of support, particularly in the early stages of change when you are trying to get a handle on it. You wouldn’t take a reactive dog to a dog park until you’d learned how to manage their reactivity in public. A dog park is too much for many dogs, not just reactive ones! You start out with smaller, quieter walks until you know how to manage your dog in more stimulating situations. So if you’re trying to affect change in eating habits, perhaps eating out with the family isn’t the best choice at first.
  9. Consider professional help. Sure, you’ve been training dogs (or feeding yourself, or dealing with your own issues) all your life. But sometimes you need the help of a trained professional to manage a specific issue. Sometimes that reactive dog needs medication to calm down to the point it can listen appropriately to your training. You might need therapy to deal with old wounds. Perhaps your current methods of coping, which come with consequences, have their roots in previous trauma, and you won’t really effect change until you figure out how to heal from that.
  10. Give yourself credit for the changes and improvements you make. They may not seem like much at first, but don’t discount them! A baby step in the right direction is still a step in the right direction. Eventually, you will no longer be satisfied with baby steps, and you’ll be able to continue pushing forward. Six months or a year from now, you’ll look back in astonishment at how far you’ve come.

So there you have it: why training yourself is no different from training your dog. If your dog slips its collar and runs off, you wouldn’t beat your dog for finally coming to you when you called it, would you? No, you wouldn’t–or you shouldn’t, at any rate.

Then stop beating yourself up for returning to the path you want after briefly straying from it. You can teach an old dog new tricks.

DYI Salon Nails at Home

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First, I need to start this post off by saying I am NOT affiliated with any of the companies whose products are mentioned here today. I’m just a gal who loves nail polish and thought I’d share my experiences with different brands.

But you could sum up my love of nail polish–and horses–in this OPI commercial.

 

I’m not one of these people who is supremely talented with nail art. I’m also hard on my hands, and the day job prevents me from wearing my nails too long. To be honest, it’s hard for me to grow my nails out very long these days, which is probably just as well for a writer as well as a horsewoman.

But that means I need nail polish that lasts.

If you’re interested in what I do for nail health, I’ve posted about it here. In that post, I mention that when the pandemic struck, I stopped going for my monthly manicure at the nail salon. (I stopped everything: haircuts, doctor’s appointments, going to the grocery store… I got everything I needed online and if I couldn’t get it that way, I did without.)

After a year of going nail-polish free, I realized I’d broken my nail salon addiction. I no longer felt I could afford either the time or the cost of getting my nails professionally done. And to be honest, of all the things I gave up in 2020, going to get my nails done was the least traumatic to lose. Besides, you can’t check your O2 levels with a finger pulse oximeter while wearing most nail polishes.

But gradually, the urge to paint my nails returned. Painting my nails is a form of self-care. In times when we’ve had to sacrifice so much for so long, I’m not going to apologize for a little self-indulgence.

I went back to my old standby, Live Love Polish first. Sadly, after over a year of abandoning my shades for salon manis, most of my LLP colors were too old and tacky to be revived. I discovered that the site has moved away from selling any polish but their own brand, which is understandable, but I missed the variety they used to offer, particularly when it came to thermal nail polishes. I adore Rothko Red, and was sad to see LLP no longer carried it, but fortunately, I was able to find it elsewhere online. Thermal nail polishes are so much fun! They are color sensitive, like mood rings, so the tips of your nails are often darker than the beds. The color changes dependent on temperature, so I’ve seen my nails go from one shade on a cold morning walk to another after washing your hands in hot water. So much fun!

LLP still has some other fun polishes–most notably, their magnetic series. You paint your nails in black for a base color, then paint the magnetic shade of your choice over it. (My personal favorite is Siamese, but I don’t see it on their site anymore). Before the polish dries, you hold a magnet over the nail, which aligns the metal flecks in the polish to cause a linear area of refraction. The effect is similar to a tiger’s eye stone, very cool!

But neither polish is great in the longevity department. I don’t know about you, but I resent spending a significant period of time painting nails, waiting for them to dry, doing a second or third coat, more drying time, and then a top coat as well… only to have the edges wear or chip within 24 hours. That’s no fun! Gel polishes seemed to last a little longer, but no where near the promised two weeks touted by the companies.

So I began exploring other options. You’ll see a lot of those on Facebook and Instagram! The two that appealed to me the most were ColorStreet and Nailboo. 

ColorStreet is a system that has you apply strips of real nail polish to your nails. (No, I don’t understand how they do that!)

What I like about ColorStreet is that I can create some of the fun nail art designs I’ve seen online by using their clear overlays on top of a base coat polish. I found the application a wee bit challenging at first, and I would strongly advise watching the videos for tips. Do NOT apply strips to your thumbnails until you’ve done the others because you need your thumbs to shape the color strip around your nails. And be absolutely sure to apply a top coat of clear polish!! I didn’t do that the first time and was disappointed at how quickly the color began to peel as a result. There are other useful tips to know as well–such as using a flat iron or other such device to reseal your packages once you open them to save for future use–I’m afraid I wasted quite a bit of my first package as a result of not knowing these things in advance.

The end result? I really like some of their patterned designs (and am saving them for special occasions, such as Halloween, or the next time I go to a book convention) and the color lasts longer than your standard nail polish (even premium brands such as OPI) but I didn’t find ColorStreet to be cost effective for me, and the application can be a little finickity. Don’t be in a hurry!

But this sheet color Dallas Darling (since discontinued) came out nicely, don’t you think?

But then I discovered Nailboo. I have to say, I am in LOVE. It’s basically the SNS powder system I enjoyed when I was getting my nails done at a salon and it’s SO EASY. I’m going to attempt a little video later today. If I am successful, I’ll link it here. But the short version is not only is the Nailboo system easy to use, but the nail polish is incredibly durable too. Cost-wise you are paying more for the system than the others, but the ease of use and the durability makes up for it, in my opinion. So far, I’ve maintained a shade for two weeks without major issues, aside from twice I’ve had the entire polish pop off the nail in one piece (much like a fake nail) when I hit my hand wrong about a week post polishing. No big deal. I just reapplied the powder and it matched the others like I’d just done them all.

A couple of tips:

  1. Apply the base coat carefully. This is the coat that you use for the building powder, as well as the color powders. If you’re messy when you apply it, you’ll wind up with powder adhering where you don’t want it. Once I’m applying the actual color, I don’t take the base coat to the side edges of my nails, as this can result in a ridge of buildup that needs to be filed down, or you can get too thick a coating.
  2. Use the little brush provided to dust off the powder between applications, but just lightly brush over the nail or you can smudge up the powder. Be sure to use the cleaner to clean the brush afterward or you’ll end up with clumps of polish gumming the whole thing together.
  3. When the instructions suggest waiting two minutes between applying the activator coat and any next steps, wait five instead. You’ll thank me for it later.
  4. After I apply the first coat of color powder, I don’t take any subsequent coats all the way to my nail bed. This tend to build up a thick edge that will catch on your hair and clothing a week or so later, and make it easier to pull the paint off. I try to taper the color application here as a result.
  5. When the instructions tell you to buff and file the nails before applying the top coat, DO IT. Don’t be shy about buffing that surface. If you don’t, you won’t get that highly desirable glossy shine with the top coat because the color coat will be too rough.

The whole thing takes about twenty minutes to do both hands, even with the wait times. Seriously, the more you do it, the faster you’ll get as well. Here’s Ocean Blue before the final buffing and top coat. There were some thick areas of powder buildup where more stuck to the nail than was supposed too–I suspect I put too much base coat on. But it filed down without issue.

And here’s the final result. Pretty snazzy, eh? Honestly, it’s like getting salon nails done for a fraction of the time and price. What I paid for a Nailboo starter kit was the equivalent to a single trip to the salon. I have no idea how long a jar of powder will last, but I suspect I’ll get at least four or five treatments from one jar. Maybe more. My only con for Nailboo is that so far, their color palette is somewhat limited. But I think that will expand as the product catches on!

 

I’m curious: what do you do as a form of self care? 

 

 

Compassion Fatigue: or Why I Didn’t Share Your Post

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TW/CW for sad things tugging on your heartstrings.

 

 

 

The other day during work I got an email from an acquaintance. A shelter in the neighboring county had posted an urgent notice: they’d been inundated with puppies during the past week and if they didn’t find homes for them by the end of business hours that day, they would have to euthanize them.

Did I know of anyone who wanted a puppy? Like right now? Immediately.

I wracked my brains but couldn’t come up with anyone on the fly.

“Send me the link and I’ll share it when I can,” I offered as a stopgap before delving back into work.

But ultimately, I didn’t share the link. Let me tell you why.

You see, something about that urgent request to spend compassion currency that I have in dwindling supply broke me just a little.

I have to reiterate: it was puppies. Puppies that needed homes right away or they would die. But for the first time ever, getting hit with such a request rang the resentment buzzer instead of the compassion bell.

Whoa. Hold up there. Resenting an impassioned plea to help save at least one or two puppies? Doesn’t that make me some kind of Cruella de Vil?

Sure, I couldn’t do anything directly to save the puppies. But I could share the link, right? How much energy could that possibly take? How could I refuse to put out the word?

Well, there are a couple of reasons. For starters, there was the link itself, which felt very “click-baity” when I read it. “Help us! Puppies will die if you don’t come TODAY!”

Believe me, I know there is probably someone on the other end of that post, hoping against hope that they don’t have to perform the soul-destroying task of euthanizing healthy puppies because some irresponsible person let their dog have them without any intention of raising them and finding homes for them. And my heart breaks for that shelter worker. I know their pain is real, even if they couched their request like so many other posts begging for help.

But practically speaking, by the time I’d put out the half-a dozen or so fires at my job, which also requires a great deal of compassion, it was so late in the day that my sharing the post would have been too late for that litter of puppies. Perhaps it could have raised awareness for someone else out there looking for a puppy that they should check out the shelter, but the puppies in question? Too late.

And that’s when I realized that my compassion bank account was dangerously low.

Because every day we’re hit up with thousands of similar requests. GoFundMe accounts for medical or funeral expenses shared by our friends. Political organizations playing off our justifiable outrage over some restrictive measure that’s just been enacted, and if we don’t donate NOW, warning of the Bad Things coming our way. Just causes demanding we take action. Global catastrophes begging for our financial support. Legal funds for kids in cages, ripped from their families. Egregious acts of racism that deserve investigation and some kind of response. Missing children on milk cartons needing to be identified. And so on.

And yes, I realize that I’m speaking from a place of great privilege because I’m not the one begging for help paying my bills or needing someone to rescue me from having to perform a heartbreaking task.

I think of myself as a compassionate person. Professions that demand compassion tend to attract empathetic people, and I chose my career path years ago because I had compassion to spare. I donate generously to things I believe in because I usually don’t have the time to volunteer in person. I spent years serving as a caretaker to my father because it was my mother’s wish that he be able to stay at home rather than enter an advanced care facility. I trap, neuter, and vaccinate the stray cats that show up around my house on my own dime, finding homes for those that can be tamed and going to ridiculous lengths to take care of the remaining ones (see the expensive catio that I built for these furry freeloaders). I cried when the annoying trash panda, whom I caught three times before trapping the mean tom (who hisses and spits at me every day, despite being nursed back to health), got hit by a car.

I share things. The post about the homeless trans teen who needs help. The post from an internet acquaintance who needs help paying for her cat’s surgery. The posts about fundraisers, many of which I contribute to myself. The posts about organizations raising money to deal with the aftermaths of flooding, fires, hurricanes, and earthquakes. The posts where some mother is asking for likes to show her son or daughter how beautiful they are. I comment with sympathy on the posts of total strangers who have experienced a great loss.

My lack of willingness to share the post about the puppies, and the resentment the request generated, tells me I must draw the line somewhere. None of us are designed with endless wells of compassion. To mix metaphors, we can’t keep overdrawing our compassion accounts to spend on things out of our control. The constant withdrawal of coins to spend on people we don’t know will bankrupt us.

I’m not Cruella de Vil.

I have compassion fatigue.

Put another way, if I’d found a box of puppies myself, I would have taken them into my home. I would have had them vaccinated and dewormed, and tried my best to find homes for them all, while at the same time, trying to socialize them and instill some manners in order to make them the best possible candidates for adoption.

If the local shelter had a fundraiser, I’d volunteer my time, donate some money, and if I couldn’t do either of the above, I’d share the post about it. I’d probably share the post regardless, but in terms of doing something, sharing is the last on the list. I’ve said it before, but sharing posts without taking action is little more than virtue-signaling. It might make you feel good, but for the most part it accomplishes very little.

I wrote a bit about my struggles with social media in general a few weeks ago, and how I think SM breaks are necessary for our mental health. In that post, I mentioned this metafilter thread that my husband had shared with me: What’s Mine to care about and what’s NOT MINE to care about. The original post cited, as well as the discussion thread it generated, is well-worth reading. In the OP, If You Can’t Take In Anymore, There’s a Reason, the poster refers to the need for an emotional circuit breaker because our minds and hearts aren’t wired to care about everything that’s on fire all over the world at the same time, and if we don’t flip that breaker, our whole house will burn down.

I couldn’t agree more. So like the OP, I recommend you pick one fire to put out at a time, and you concentrate on the fire that threatens the things you care about the most. Battle that fire with all your heart and resources. Fight the fire you think you have the best chance of helping to contain, or the one that is the most pressing to you because it’s in your backyard. You can help fight a fire halfway across the world, if that’s the fire that’s important to you, but you can’t squander your limited resources on trying to fight them all.

Because if 101 Dalmatians show up at your doorstep looking for a ride home, you want to have enough compassion in the bank to get them there.

And perhaps if I wasn’t staring down at a compassion overdraft notice, I would have shared the post about the puppies after all. Because that is the sort of thing I care about.

Not Next Year. Not Some Day… This Year. Today.

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I have a huge mulberry tree in my yard. It is utterly enormous, its trunk gnarled and twisted with age, and every year it produces tons of berries. Every year since we moved onto the farm, I’ve told myself I would do something with them. Make mulberry scones. Mulberry cobbler. Mulberry vodka. Something. Anything.

And every year, the short mulberry season slips past me without my making use of my own crop of mulberries. You’d have thought 2020 would have been THE year I would use the mulberries. After all, I was making my own masks (until I found the ones I liked best online). I bought a sewing machine, certain world shortages would mean I would have to learn how to sew. I made my own bread–once I found yeast, that is–and collected dozens of yeast-free recipes when my attempts to grow my own yeast failed. I discovered that homemade banana bread was ten times better than any quick bread mix from the grocery, and I even attempted to grow my own vegetables. I know, I live on a farm, right? Growing vegetables should be something I do. It’s something I’ve wanted to do ever since my grandfather had the most amazing garden every year in his back yard. As a child, I kept telling myself one day I would get him to teach me all his tricks: when to plant what, and how to get the best from his little plot of land. But somehow I let the years pass without learning his life lessons. Long after he died, I wished I’d asked him to teach me how to grow vegetables when I had the chance. I managed to produce 3 baby cucumbers in my 2020 pandemic garden, which both pleased and disappointed me.

Somehow, the mulberries got away from me in 2020. Perhaps it was because by the time they were ripening, I was deep in the throes of pandemic panic and I could barely focus on tying my shoes, let alone trying my hand at baking something I’d never tried before. A great cook, I am not. I learned from friends the best way to harvest mulberries (place a sheet under the tree and shake the branches: anything that falls off is ripe enough to eat, otherwise the berries are too sour) and I even went so far as to collect recipes (doesn’t mulberry lemon pound cake sound scrumptious?), but May 2020 came and went without me trying my hand at any of the recipes I bookmarked. Okay, I had other things on my mind.

This year, I was in a better frame of mind. While the pandemic is still far from over, I can’t tell you how much peace of mind came seeing my family get vaccinated. One of my friends and I talked about making mulberry vodka (and she did!) and traded recipes for mulberry scones, but once again, I let the mulberry season slip by without making anything myself. I’m not a brave person when it comes to eating things I’ve never tried before, and in all the years we’ve lived on this farm, I’ve never once eaten a mulberry.

But this year, it looks like we’re expecting a bumper crop of blackberries. Somehow in the last few years, we’ve gone from having scattered bushes in the thickets surrounding the house to an almost impenetrable barrier of blackberry bushes higher than my head. And every thorny branch is heavy with ripening berries now.

When I checked them last week, I told myself they’d be ready to pick this week, and certainly there are plenty that are ready right now. But there are still tons of berries yet to ripen, and when I plucked one juicy berry to pop into my mouth this morning, it occurred to me that this is it: this is the year I’m going to make blackberry cobbler from the berries I’ve picked myself from my own property.

This year. Not next. This month. Not next. Not some day. Not if I have time, or if it’s not too hot, or if I can find the Church Ladies Cookbook and pull out the perfect recipe.

This year.

Because I don’t want to look back on this time in my life and think, “Darn it. I never made blackberry cobbler with my own fresh berries.”

As I said, I’m not a great cook. And even with the perfect recipe, the odds are high my results will be disappointing. But not, perhaps, as disappointing as having never tried.

 

Persistence: When Should You Give Up?

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I’ve been thinking a lot about persistence lately. When it’s a good thing. When it’s a bad thing.

I chose persistence as one of my power words a few years ago, and I have strong feelings about the concept. In fact, one of my favorite quotations is Calvin Coolidge’s famous quote on persistence (shared below). Nothing worth achieving is possible without persistence: the academic degree, proficiency at any task (be it art, sports, writing, or competency at work), the successful relationship…

But when is persistence the wrong move? When is it “beating a dead horse” and a denial of reality?

I guess to some degree, it depends on the stakes involved. The higher the stakes, the bigger the consequences of giving up. You have to know in your heart quitting is the right thing to do. Giving up has to bring a sense of relief instead of a sense of dread. Conversely, if the consequences of giving up are so minimal, you might fall into quitting by default without ever declaring your intent to do so. You don’t finish the book you were reading, or the project you started, in part because you had other, bigger demands on your time and energy and it just didn’t matter than you failed to reach a specific goal.

Last summer, someone gave me a potted orchid. My first thought on accepting it was, “I wonder how long it will take me to kill this?” Not because I hate plants and want them to die but because I have so many demands on my time and so many living things that depend on me, it’s easy to let plants take a number and wait a LONG time in line. And even though I read the care instructions that came with it, I managed to get something wrong, and sure enough, that’s here’s what this plant looked like a few months ago.

The planter is set up so that it minimizes the risk of over or under watering the orchid, but it turns out I was putting the water in the wrong slot and I drowned the plant. After six months of meticulously remembering to water it on the correct schedule, I’d nearly killed the orchid anyway. Giving up and tossing the plant out isn’t a big deal because the consequences of doing so are nil. Only a slight guilt on my part for having such a black thumb.

Quitting in this case is an easy call. But what if the stakes are higher? What if we’re talking about a relationship, or your job, or your dreams?

That’s a different ball of wax altogether.

It still comes down to the consequences of quitting, I think. In part because quitting is often the easiest part of the decision-tree. We’ve been taught if we can’t achieve something in two weeks (weight loss, master a new skill, change our lives…) then not only is not worth doing, it’s not achievable in the first place. We’re also taught the value of “being realistic” over being someone who has dreams. If we’ve chosen a difficult goal, it’s easy to get discouraged and contemplate quitting. Being persistent is a character trait that can be both good and bad depending on your point of view.

It comes down to whether being persistent is hurting you–or someone else in your life– or not.

Toxic workplace environment or relationship? Yeah, maybe that is something you should consider quitting. Persistence may not be in your favor in those situations. It may be a situation you need to walk away from even if the alternatives seem super scary (like having no immediate income or place to live). If you remain in a situation or relationship that threatens your mental and physical health, you need to carefully weigh the pros and cons of doing so. Sometimes there are no easy answers. But the questions need to be asked, just the same.

Persisting in following your dreams when everyone around you tells you to “be realistic”? Yeah, don’t listen to the naysayers. If it’s something you want to do and have faith in your ability to do it, keep plugging away at it.

What if your Number One Naysayer is you? That’s a tough one because if you don’t believe in your ability to accomplish something you set out to do, then you will never reach that goal. But if the idea of quitting, of not being a writer, or musician, or artist, or teacher, astronaut, or whatever is more painful than the idea of continuing to strive toward your goals, then you should persist. The world is full of success stories about people who kept trying, who didn’t give up, despite repeated rejections or failures. Like Coolidge says, I believe persistence is more powerful than natural talent or ability.

Even if you never achieve your lofty goals, if you persist in doing something you love, it’s never time wasted.

Three months ago, I came very close to tossing the orchid in the trash. It was mostly dead. I had no great attachment to it. But there was one shiny green leaf among the dry stalks, dead flower heads, and dull, curling leaves. So I left it on the windowsill, didn’t water it for a few weeks, and then began taking care of it, following the directions correctly this time. And that single shiny leaf was joined by another. And another.

I’m not sure why I didn’t pitch the planter in the trash, unless it was because of the persistence of that baby leaf pushing its way out of the soil when all the odds had been against it. It reminded me of how I keep writing, even when I know realistically I am not going to be the Nora Roberts of paranormal romance or cozy mysteries. Though I get discouraged at my lack of progress sometimes, writing isn’t toxic to me, and sometimes is the only thing that keeps me going.

So let’s hear it for healthy persistence.

I’m Starving and I Can’t Fill Up

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Photo by Criativithy from Pexels

TW for eating disorders.

 

 

The struggle is real.

I’ve always been prone to using food as a reward, probably in part because food was so often used as a weapon in our house growing up. But I mean, who doesn’t think about celebrating an important event or a special date with a fancy meal? Perhaps a bottle of champagne, or a cake ordered from the bakery? Or think about how the arrival of a box of doughnuts at the office puts a happy smile on everyone’s face–even on a Monday.

We celebrate the holidays with feasting: turkey at Thanksgiving, ham at Christmas, chocolates for Valentine’s Day, candy at Easter. Then there’s the obligatory cookouts for Memorial Day, the 4th of July, and Labor Day. Mega-candy holiday at Halloween and then we’re back to Thanksgiving again. And let’s not forget birthdays, anniversaries, and New Year’s Eve.

Food, glorious food, eh?

I have long used food as a reward for making it through a crappy day and have recognized the tendency to eat (especially carbs) when stressed.

But lately, it’s been more out of control than usual.

I’m not quite sure when things changed. I went through a bad year, that became a bad couple of years, that turned into a bad four years… but the weight was already creeping up before then. I have a high-stress, high-pressure job (even more so than what passes for normal here in the US) and somewhere along the line it began catching up with me. Cortisol, produced in greater amounts when you’re stressed, has a multitude of negative effects on the body, including:

  • Anxiety
  • Depression
  • Digestive problems
  • Headaches
  • Heart disease
  • Sleep problems
  • Weight gain
  • Memory and concentration impairment

Weight crept on, became the new norm, then stabilized.

But in this past year, stability has gone out the window. In part because I’m never full. I’m never satisfied.

Oh sure. I can eat so much I don’t want anything else. And for a while, it seems to work. But in less time than you would expect, I’m rummaging around in the kitchen again, opening cabinets in the hopes of finding something that appeals. Something that would be just right. So perfect that I would eat it and go, “Now, I’m satisfied.”

Only I never am. There’s just this bottomless pit of hunger that can’t be filled.

I caught sight of my reflection in a window today, and I scarcely recognized myself. Tonight, when I found myself in the kitchen shortly after dinner poking about the shelves and rejecting all my choices, I realized I wasn’t hungry, and yet I was starving.

And I asked myself why.

A lot of it has to do with the pandemic. What doesn’t? But right now, life consists of going to work, coming home and taking care of the animals, going to bed and getting up to do the whole thing all over again. My husband, still working from home in the house in town while I tend to the farm, said today, “I get up in the morning and think, ‘What am I going to do today? Oh. Right. Same as every day. Go to work.'” He has a ridiculous amount of leave that he hasn’t taken because work demands more and more of him but as he also pointed out, what would he do if he wasn’t working?

We’re not going to ball games or horseback riding. We’re not seeing family or traveling to places we’ve always wanted to visit. It doesn’t look like that will change for most of us in 2021, and honestly, I’m not sure 2022 will be any better. I’m hug-deprived and miss simple human contact with those I love. And if I’m really being honest here, I’m staying up later and later because going to bed only brings the next day and the endless cycle of Same back around again. The sleep deprivation only makes it that much harder to roll out of bed and face that Same Old Same as well.

And so I seem to reach for food to fill all the voids, but the truth of the matter is the food isn’t all that wonderful. It’s just accessible. And when you’re completely exhausted, accessible is good enough, isn’t it?

The thing is, most of us were already sliding down into this pit long before the pandemic struck. It’s a national problem: we take pride in working ourselves to death and doing whatever it takes to keep working at an unsustainable level. We’re like rats in a maze, running the paths just to press a lever and be rewarded with a food pellet.

I suspect I’ve been starving for a long time, it’s just taken the sheer weight of the pandemic to make it utterly clear how my life has narrowed down to work and food. And now that I’m standing at the bottom of the pit I’ve fallen into, I can see it’s going to be a bitter climb back out.

So I’m going to concentrate on the things that I know will improve the quality of my life. I’m going to strive for 30 minutes of exercise 5 times a week–hey, the dogs will love that! And I ordered a plant-based cookbook–there has to be something you can make with vegetables in between steamed kale and a salad. Hopefully better food choices will result in curbing this drive to eat when I shouldn’t be hungry. I’m already meditating, but I plan to spend more time in nature–I miss my long rambles through the woods. And I’m going to strive to reconnect with friends and family–online if necessary until we can all be safe again.

The days when I could eat sugar-coated cereal dry out of the box or make a stack of cheese and crackers and call it dinner are gone. That’s kid stuff. It’s time to grow up.

Because climb I must. Because no amount of food–not even eating Fruit Loops straight out of the box–is going to fill me up. And I want more out of life than to work and eat.