Art!

Jan. 3rd, 2021 07:01 pm
lifesnotasong: (Default)
Hello friends! I have been quite absent here (more active on twitter, follow me there as outoftheazul), sorry... but I'm popping by to say I have gotten really into art in the last ~9 months, and today I opened up a shop with some of it!

The art: https://www.artstation.com/outoftheazul and https://www.deviantart.com/lifesnotasong

The shop: lifesnotasong.redbubble.com

Check it out and let me know what you think!
lifesnotasong: (Default)
Did great on Wednesday-- woke up at 8 and used my lightbox, ate meals like a normal human, had coffee (well, apple juice and pie at a coffee shop) with a friend, went to the gym, all the things. Then yesterday happened, where I did none of those things and was only awake for ~6 hours. Saw my former short-term therapist this morning, cried in her office, worked with her to figure out how to keep on keeping on despite feeling awful. Decided that while the lightbox is helpful, I should stop making that a goal, because when I don't succeed at using it, my brain starts the day feeling like a failure for not having done so. So instead each day I'll make a list of 4-5 things I want to do the next day, and aim to accomplish 3 of them. Today I want to play board games with friends, clean the litterboxes, eat lunch+dinner, go to the gym, and go grocery shopping. Plans have solidified for the gaming, so I just need to do a few other things and I can call today a success.
lifesnotasong: (Life Is Tough)
Depression and anxiety led to me not going to work yesterday (giving me a nice combination of head symptoms and body symptoms), despite not having 8 hours of sick time available to use. I swore I would do better today, but come 6am, the same wave of awful kept me in bed. This time, I reached out to my manager and my psychiatrist, to let them know I was struggling hard and needed help handling things. Thankfully, I've cultivated a strong support network in the last 3+ years at my job, and they pulled through. Manager has given me permission to use vacation time for this entire week, and just to work from home as much or as little as I want/am able, with 0 consequences and 0 bad repercussions. Psychiatrist got me in for an urgent consult this afternoon, increased the dose of one of my meds, got me an appointment with a short-term therapist I saw a few times 2 years ago and liked a lot, and gave me a plan for how we're going to move forward to help me get out of this hole of awful.

Bry and Brian have been wonderful and supportive, but all three of us are in bad dark places right now, and it's straining all of us to support both ourselves and each other. So I'm trying to find ways to get support outside, and am doing my best to be patient and compassionate with myself and my broken brain in the meantime.

The plan right now:

-Go to the gym at least once this week
-Eat something (or drink a smoothie) every 2-3 hours when awake (I've been eating 1 meal a day for about a month...)
-Start taking multivitamin, continue taking vitamin D supplement
-Increase Lexapro dose, continue taking Buspar
-Take the rest of the week off work, work remote as able but don't push it
-Restart using light box every morning
-See short-term therapist on 12/21, and maybe again next week
-Have first appointment with therapist who will hopefully be my new long-term therapist on 12/30
-Check back in w psychiatrist on 1/3
-???
-Profit?
lifesnotasong: (Default)
Finally got back on my meds, after almost 2 weeks off of them (not by choice, but because there's apparently a national shortage). Trying to pick up the adulting pieces.

Work stuff got worse, then somewhat better. We're in a weird holding pattern. I'm so frustrated with being frustrated all the time.

This week will be a week of theater. First go see my friends' son in a play on Thursday, then see opening night of Brian's current show on Friday, then see the annual production of Midsommer that OPS does around midwinter (/winter solstice) every year on Saturday. Before all that, taking dinner tomorrow night to a friend who has been quite ill recently, and trying to get over my anxiety enough to be good company for her for a bit.

Lumi (the cornsnake of the house) shed yesterday, not all in one piece but better than she's ever done since I got her! Continuing to work on getting her the right humidity to make her sheds better, but nice to see things are moving in the right direction on that front.

Persephone (one of the five hermit crabs, and the only one above ground at the moment-- the others are all down molting) keeps piling dirt into the water dishes until they're completely filled and dry, so I set up a "carpet" of coconut fiber mat under them to keep her from doing that. She seems annoyed, insomuch as I can see emotions on a hermit crab-- she's already piling dirt on the edges of the new mat.

Eros (one of the two cats) is out of the cone, having given her feet 2 weeks to heal from where she chewed them into red swollen oblivion. Still no idea why. They look better now, but if they get worse again, next step will be the kitty dermatologist. Trying not to panic about the weird new bump on the top of her head, but will need to tell the vet about it if it's not gone in a few days, just in case it's something. And once she's more "all better," need to schedule that expensive dental stuff for Astrid (the other of the cats)...

But for now, bed.
lifesnotasong: (Life Is Tough)

-My friend died of a brain anyeurism last week. He was young and healthy and it's not fucking fair and I keep crying when I think about him and everything keeps making me think about him

-Another friend is in the hospital, and I'm not clear on how serious it is, but fuck

-My work team is imploding, with 2/6 of our team (the good 2) threatening to quit because of how our manager has been acting. We've gone through all the proper channels-- talking to the manager's manager, talking to HR, etc-- but nothing is getting better and everything is getting worse and I don't WANT to find a new job but I'm panic attacking all over the place about how hostile things are at work right now

-I'm horribly depressed and anxious and SAD is hitting hard and light therapy only works if you can motivate yourself enough to use the damn light

-Bry is depressed, though getting better after lots and lots of outside help. But he's only working a few hours a week right now as he gets his mental health under control, and that means I extra can't afford to not be staying at my job

-Brian is also depressed, and his recent acting gigs aren't paying him in a timely fashion (it's been almost 3 months...), so I EXTRA EXTRA can't afford not to be staying at my job

-My body is in full-out rebellion, both because of depression and because I have a defective body. I've been eating 1 meal a day for about a month now, and even that meal is because I'm forcing myself to. My aquadynia persisted through 3 different meds we tried, so i've given up on ever not hurting when exposed to water. My GI system is the worst, in completely 100% unpredictable ways, which led to the worst flight of my life on my recent trip to California

-One of the cats had some kind of problem (infection? immune-response issue?) with her feet, and has been in a cone for a week and a half, and that means I have to watch her like a hawk at every meal (when the cone is off) to make sure she doesn't keep eating her damn feet, which is what started this whole mess. She's getting too clever, and keeps finding ways to trick me (like shoving her foot right above her water dish and eating it while pretending to get a drink). Diagnostics have all been negative (but like $500), and the next step is a dermatologist + a biopsy, which will be even more $$$

-Other cat needs ~$600 of dental work done, closer to $900 if she ends up needing extractions

-Medical bills for my recent cancer screening just came in, and I'm looking at $600 there for the pleasure of having been claustrophobic and miserable in an MRI a month or so ago. At least I don't have cancer. Although that means I'm paying $600 for something I didn't actually need to have done

-The hermit crab tank is a mess and they keep filling their water bowls with dirt so they don't have good water and I can't keep up with how quickly they ruin everything and I don't think I should be allowed to have pets but here we are with two cats and five crabs and a snake

-The snake is ok right now. I think. She's going into shed, which she hasn't done since August. Unless she's going into shed because she's uncomfortable with the new bedding I got her. At which point she is not ok. But I can't tell until I see how long it is between this shed and whenever her next shed is

-Today I was overwhelmed with all of the above and just couldn't get out of bed when I was supposed to, so I stayed home and slept and then started working from home at 12:45. And my work team is lovely and understanding but I'm fucking 31 years old and I should be able to cope with life and I just can't.


I just can't.

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January 2021

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