Got to get you into my life

I've tried very hard not to make all of the things on this list the opposites of the things I said last week that I wanted to eliminate; I think I managed to succeed at least somewhat.

1.  Passion.  I've noticed over the last few years that I don't really have anything that I'm passionate about any more.  I'm not sure why, I just haven't found anything that truly interests me enough for me to feel strongly about for a long time.  I'm not sure how to make passion a part of my life.  I guess I just have to keep trying new things until I find something that works for me.

2.  Direction.  This is pretty related to the above issue, but I don't really know where I'm going with my life.  I know I'm only 21 and I still have tons of time to figure it out, but last year when I was graduating it just felt like so many of my friends knew what they were doing at least for the immediate future, and I'm still not really sure.  I mean, I'm going to law school and all, but I really have no idea whether that's what I actually want to be doing.  I feel kind of lost.  Again, I really don't know what I can do to fix this.

3.  Creativity.  I feel like I've been a little creatively stifled lately.  Part of this is because I don't make enough time for it.  Also, most of my IRL friends are not really creative types, so I don't have people to bounce ideas off of and brainstorm with and collaborate with, or any of that stuff.  I'm going to try really hard to make time to be creative, even if it's only half an hour a day, that would be better than the zero hours I do now.  I've also been trying to get involved in some creative projects online, although Your Pants being down again has put a lot of that on hold.

4.  Fitness.  I'm really not in the best shape, and I know that physical activity helps reduce stress and increase energy and improves sleep quality and all of those wonderful things, so I know I should do it more, but it's just really hard to actually do it.  I took up running this summer so that I could get in shape and then going for a run or something when I was busy wouldn't seem like such a hardship, but I wasn't very motivated about it, so I only made minor improvements.  I should probably join one of the free fitness classes at the university gym, I guess.

5.  Sleeeeeeeeep.  Okay so this is actually mostly a lazy cop-out because I'm tired and I had a really long day and so sleep is something that I want right now but not necessarily in general.  However, with another year of university starting up, I can't help but feel that this will be all too true in the very near future.  I will get this thing in my life by going to bed! ...soon.

PS - Mentioning Your Pants in this post made me remember that we still haven't done anything about getting a new Thursday person.  Obviously this isn't a good time for it, seeing as Your Pants are down, but yeah.  Just thought I'd bring that up.

5 things I'd like to eliminate + 1 rant

1. Drama - Particularly recently, I've noticed that there are people around me who always have extra drama, and seem incapable of solving their own interpersonal problems without and intermediary. Some of these people are family members, so while I certainly can't be rid of the person (and I wouldn't anyway, since that's throwing the baby out with the bathwater), but I can surround myself with people where that isn't an issue. It's really freeing to not have to second-guess what the people closest to me say and do, and be able to take them at face value.

I should probably note, by drama I'm not talking about people worrying over big life issues (paying the bills, getting/keeping a job, etc) I'm talking about things like - and this is a real example - someone getting pissed because for someone else's birthday, a third party wants to go to dinner at a place 20 minutes away and insists that it's closer for everyone, and then complaining about it for a good half an hour and needing two people to calm everyone down and get things worked out.

2. Excess craft supplies - Oh man, this one's really hard, and it's been a big temptation lately. I keep a pretty good sized "project bag", where anything in that bag is something I can work on, and I have to wait until I finish one project before I can put another in. I'm trying to use up my craft supplies before I move in a few months, but I keep seeing interesting patterns and yarns and I reeeeeaaaallly want to work with them. There's not a lot here I can do except keep up my willpower and work on things I already have materials for.

3. Stress - I've been finding lately that I seem to have an almost constant level of stress. It's not a super high level, but enough to damage my immune system and leave me grinding my teeth and getting headaches. I'm the sort of person who always feels like I just need to suck it up, so it's been hard for me to take time for myself and take it easy, but that's really what I need to do to get myself back up to par.

4. Clutter - Partially because of the coming move date, and partially because it feels good to purge my items occasionally, I've been doing a lot of cleaning and organizing lately, both in my digital and physical realms. It's really cool to realize that I genuinely don't need that much stuff, and an interesting challenge to myself to see how well I can organize it and streamline my routines (Cooking for Geeks got me started on this kick; putting things near what they're used with and finding the most efficient ways to store them - seems like common sense, but I definitely don't do this enough!)

5. Internet comment sections - This morning a news/blog compilation I follow posted about how a 9 year old child from Canada with ADHD, Asperger's and ODD (oppositional defiance disorder) was handcuffed by police at his daycare. The jist of the story is that he was being bullied by his peers, got upset (it's not explained what "upset" looked like in this context), was placed by himself in a classroom, and proceeded to barricade himself in and throw paint around. The police were called in and, before a parent arrived, broke through the door and had him handcuffed.

Being in the field of working with kids on the autism spectrum, I was displeased with several aspects of this story. But then I made a major mistake, an internet rookie error: I read the comments. It was interesting to get perspective from people who agreed with the actions of the daycare, but as I went further back in the comment history I started to find comments that were increasingly derogatory toward his conditions, implying or straight out saying that they are non-existent. And then I found one that essentially said that not only is autism not a real thing, it's just kids acting out because of poor parenting.

At which point I stared at my screen in disbelief for a few moments, then slowly closed my laptop before turning into a giant squid of anger and ranting to the nearest person about correlation not equalling causation and how hard parenting is even with a neurotypical child and AAAAAAARRRRRRRGH.

Ahem. Anyway. All that to say, I like being able to interact on the internet, so maybe it's not the comments system I want to get rid of. Instead, I'd just like some civility, thoughtfulness, and understanding.

Elimination

Five things I would like to eliminate from my life, and how I would get rid of them:

1.  Fear.  I'm not scared of things like spiders or heights or anything, but I'm terrified of major life changes and meeting new people and being wrong and lots of those sorts of things.  I know I can't really get rid of these fears completely, but I can make it more manageable.  I need to learn to figure out when my fear is rational an when it's not, and if I'm afraid of something that I can't control, or that isn't really a big deal and I shouldn't be afraid of in the first place, I need to learn to let it go.  If I'm afraid of something I can control, I need to do what I have to do to make the situation work out in a way that I don't need to be afraid of it.

2.  Indecision.  I have a hard time with making choices.  I especially tend to have problems with the small choices that I don't really care which option I go with, so I just don't decide and end up being paralysed by the indecision.  I can eliminate this by recognizing when the decision is insignificant and just going with my gut response rather than over-analysing it to try to find the best option when there really isn't a best option.

3.  Procrastination.  I've gotten quite bad about this one over the past few years and it really does affect my life.  Wasting time on pointless things not only hurts my academic life, it also cuts down on the amount of time I have to do social or creative things.  I have some methods of cutting down on procrastination, like the StayFocusd extension for Google Chrome, and using a timer to make sure my breaks are reasonable.  These are usually effective for awhile, but I can only go so long before I give in and go back to my old habits.  So, to help get rid of procrastination, I'm going to try to make myself busy enough that I literally don't have any time to waste.

4.  Self-doubt.  This one is a lot harder to get rid of.  I need to change that little voice in the back of my head to be a little bit nicer.  I may not be perfect, but I am capable; I just need to be convinced of that all the time instead of just some of the time.

5.  Not asking for help.  I have a hard time asking for help even when I need it; I always feel like I'm imposing too much on people, even though I don't mind if someone asks me for help and I know that other people won't mind either as long as it's something reasonable.  Something about asking for help just makes me feel incompetent, I guess.  There's really no way to get rid of this problem except for just doing it, so that's kind of hard.  I don't really have a plan for dealing with this one.