Posts tagged with "self-evaluation"

change and productivity

I spent the last few days con­vert­ing the guest room1 to my new office, after giv­ing it two coats of The Plaza and mov­ing my com­put­er out of the bed­room. This deci­sion was spurred by the fact that I found myself spend­ing an unhealthy amount of time in a sin­gle room of the house, the excep­tions being when I was eat­ing or poop­ing. Now my work area is delight­ful­ly bright, and I have a view of the sum­mer foliage out of the front of the house.

new office with cats

With half the fur­ni­ture now moved out, the mas­ter bed­room looks espe­cial­ly min­i­mal. I’m keep­ing some of my pho­tog­ra­phy light­ing in there, includ­ing a large soft­box, which is a dec­o­ra­tion that fills the room nice­ly but also makes it look like a cheap porn set.

I used to be trep­i­da­tious about cer­tain things, like com­mit­ting to a paint colour or walk­ing into a room with large num­bers of peo­ple, but now I find it a lot eas­i­er to get over my anx­i­ety. It makes me think my anx­i­ety used to affect me more than I real­ized. Doing things that were out of my com­fort zone was a test I need­ed to give myself every now and then, but now I don’t find those things to be uncom­fort­able at all, and I tend to act with­out think­ing too much or over­an­a­lyz­ing.

I won­der if this is what nor­mal feels like. And how much of it is per­son­al growth ver­sus the med­ica­tion.

In either case, it’s nice to be get­ting thing done again, when I had so recent­ly found it hard just get­ting out of bed. Someone relat­ed to me his expe­ri­ence on phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal psy­chotrop­ics, and he said the peri­od was marked less by what he wrote or cre­at­ed, and more by what he did or peo­ple he met and con­nect­ed with. For me, it seems to be man­i­fest­ing itself as a peri­od of change and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

  1. Which, until last week, looked like this. [↩]

better living through chemistry

I can’t pin­point the exact moment I start­ed to feel bet­ter, which is a very pecu­liar feel­ing in itself. There has­n’t been any event to which I can attribute the fact that I’m not so anx­ious about how scary the future is any­more, or how I’m not depressed about every­thing that’s hap­pened. The only vari­able has been the med­ica­tion, which means it’s work­ing.

The side-effect that still affects me most is the insom­nia. I sleep for two hours, do some­thing mind­less for two hours, then go back to bed. Lather, rinse, repeat. I don’t feel rest­ed until night, at which point I’m soon ready to sleep again. It’s wreak­ing hav­oc with my moti­va­tion — not to men­tion my col­i­tis — which is why I haven’t start­ed rebuild­ing my life yet. For now, I try to do one thing every day that will make me hap­py, so I can say it was a good day. Baby steps.

But I’ve also lost all inspi­ra­tion, and I’m left won­der­ing if this is anoth­er effect of selec­tive sero­tonin reup­take inhi­bi­tion. When I walk the streets, it feels like a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent world from what I knew.

I used to pick up my gui­tar through­out the day and noo­dle. I used to car­ry my cam­era with me every­where in case some­thing caught my eye. I used to write almost every day. Creativity was a dri­ving force in my life, and a huge part of how I used to define myself. Now I nev­er feel like cre­at­ing. I used to be ter­ri­fied of going on med­ica­tion for this exact rea­son, but I’ve dis­cov­ered that the med­ica­tion makes it all okay. It’s like Cipralex is both the cause and the cure.

At least I can go out­side now. I can face the world, and start fix­ing what needs to be fixed.

little victories

Remember when I used to write about every­thing? When there were a mil­lion dis­trac­tions to keep me warm, and all the lyrics cap­tured a moment I nev­er want­ed to for­get. The chang­ing sea­sons, the goose­bumps beneath my fin­gers, the taste of affec­tion; it all lived on in my songs, and I want­ed noth­ing more than to put it all on paper.

I’m try­ing to get there again. Not with dra­mat­ic, sweep­ing changes, but by rebuild­ing brick by brick. I can make it if I focus on putting one foot in front of the oth­er, liv­ing day by day.

a snowy end

So I’ve been cher­ish­ing the lit­tle vic­to­ries, cause they all count. And luck­i­ly, life is full of them.

this modern love breaks me

My vice-of-the-moment is instant decaf cof­fee with loads of sug­ar and French vanil­la non-dairy cream­er; a chem­i­cal sludge I have every morn­ing like dessert for break­fast. That and long show­ers (and maybe a bit of the sauce every now and then) are the only things I indulge in nowa­days.

It’s a sign that instinct has tak­en me over. I do what I want, and I’m start­ing to sus­pect that you’re an adult when that also hap­pens to be the right thing. Not when you hit an arbi­trary age, or have kids, or a career, or a house. It’s when you start to take con­trol because part of grow­ing up is under­stand­ing that you’re respon­si­ble for the results in your life. When you dis­cov­er that there’s no room in this place for old-school roman­tics, so you’ve got­ta play the game. When you lose your inno­cence after accept­ing that the world isn’t the way you thought it was or the way you want­ed it to be.

Still, it’s unset­tling to be ven­tur­ing ahead amidst such uncer­tain­ty. I’ve learned that you can’t wait for every­thing to be per­fect in your life before tak­ing a risk, or you’ll be wait­ing for­ev­er. There will always be cycles of stag­nan­cy and change, calm and storm, hurt­ing and heal­ing. I don’t mind the changes, but part of me resents the inno­cence lost. Quixotism has always been a part of me, some­thing that’s defined so many of my thoughts and pas­sions and work. It’s like I’ve lost a part of myself — and a part I’ve always liked — to mes­sages unre­turned and the days in between.

frame of mine

I’ve made peace with this body. It has­n’t been an easy peace to come by, as I seem to get con­stant reminders about the diminu­tive size of my stature. Most recent­ly, I met an old­er Chinese woman who admit­ted that she thought I looked sick and weak only after she dis­cov­ered I had col­i­tis. It was as if she thought col­i­tis caused some kind of mal­nu­tri­tion that stunt­ed my growth, and she did­n’t want to bring up the fact that I was this size because it would have been too embar­rass­ing unless it was caused by a med­ical con­di­tion.

Asian male self portrait

 

I’ve been deal­ing with all kinds of sim­i­lar com­ments since I was a kid, so when a girl­friend would say that she liked a par­tic­u­lar part or por­tion of my body, I always thought they were just blind­ed by love. Eventually I real­ized that if they could come to love this body, then I could too. It will nev­er look right in any­thing but slim-fit extra smalls from Mexx. It will nev­er be good enough for my par­ents. But it will always be who I am, and I’ve learned to accept that.