unreasonably rational

I finished my classwork. I think. The OCD had a bit of fun with that. Like exams; test-taking strategy: never admit that you don't know the answer to a question (unless your teacher is one of those who specifically tells you she would rather you just right "I don't know" or draw a pretty picture or tell a joke - I've heard that before). Maybe your guess will be right and you don't want to admit ignorance if you are actually right. But OCD says, "You might be lying. Maybe you should just admit that you don't know." And Anti-OCD, a logical, conscienceless creature that lives to fight OCD, says, "If you are "lying," the teacher will know it right off. If the teacher knows it right off, then you did not deceive the teacher. It's called guessing on a test, okay?" And OCD mutters, "I'm never okay with anything. Why do bother asking." But OCD did pick up on that "choose your battles" phrase thrown a...

Optimist that I am (did I really just say that?), I assumed that because I am taking the medication in the morning, all my sleeping in troubles should be gone. But that doesn't explain why I slept until after I should have left for work yesterday and then was 7 minutes late for work today. I don't know if it is the medication or the anxiety and stress and depression (do I still have that? Oh, for goodness sakes! Save that question for another time) just wearing me out. And now it seems to hang on through the day. I went to my sign language lab (via the lovely internet) this afternoon, but when I started to practice my presentation, my signs were all mixed up. About the equivalent of saying "bood day" instead of good day. I would expect that if I had taken most of the year off of sign language, but it had only been a week! And my part of the paper we have to write together? On Monday I tell her that I'll have my part ready before lab, could she please work on h...

I had one of those conversations when I talk about things with someone, momentarily setting aside the fact that this conversation will probably disturb me later. I keep wondering why I talk about these sorts of things with some people, knowing how they might respond, but I do keep talking. Maybe hope is a good thing. Maybe sometimes it will make me sad later. Oh, well. It doesn't look like I'll stop talking (at least not for too long). But this came up again. The theory seems to go like this. I'm not better yet (better enough, whatever that is), so my counselor must not be a good counselor. I should find a new one. Okay, that's probably a bit oversimplified with some added black and white. But here is what I wonder - no, first, here is what I think. 1. It's not fair to judge a counselor by their patient. Depression and OCD aren't always "fixed," even by the best counselors. At least, I'm pretty sure I could back that up, and much easier than b...

Today, I finished one of my classes. Finished! With a high B or a low A, if something good happens (like a bunch of people getting a lower score on the final exam? That doesn't seem very nice). But I'm okay with a B. Or trying to be. And this helps; I've decided that doing schoolwork while your brain tries to convince you that dying is a great idea should give you extra points. I've decided it should give you ten percentage points, i.e. move you up one grade level. With that, I'm getting an A in this class (in my mental transcript that grad schools will never see). So that's good. I've accomplished something good. (Please realize that I tend to remember academic things pretty easily and I tend to test well with multiple choice tests; if you are one of those people who really works hard for a C, don't think I worked harder than you, because I probably didn't.) Then, I went shopping for new shoes. Justification: My knees ache at the end of most day...

Oh, no. They just changed format for blogger. I think that is annoying (the change, not necessarily how they have changed it)... but I'll get used to it. As might be expected, my counselor and my psychiatrist were quick to point out that other things could be causing my tiredness and my anxiety. Like taking too many classes, for example. (And neither of them argued with me when I said I took too many classes.) But I only have two weeks left, so I think I will survive. And the teacher I was so frustrated with? He wrote back a nice, reasonable letter explaining that he didn't mean for me to feel frustrated and explaining the project in more detail, including that he was more interested in how we were signing than what we were signing on this project (I'd been stressing out about having "good enough" research and perfect APA reference listings and all that). So I think I will survive. And it is due in a week, so I have visualized for myself that I will do my best...

Sometimes I want to use a bunch of "bad" words, all together, and very loudly. Preferably with no one around to hear. Perhaps I should come up with some other way to express frustration. Besides throwing my car keys on the ground as hard as I can (I don't have one of those fancy electronic button key things, so this isn't particularly damaging to anything). Besides... I don't know besides what. I guess I'll just settle for trying to cool off by writing (might go over better than physical or vocal exercise seeing as I'm in the library right now). It's the end of the semester. Everything is coming due (besides all I've already turned in). Time is, um, disappearing. So, I squeeze in observation hours of Speech Language Pathologists (SLPs, for short) at work. This means that after spending five and a half hours working with too many one-year-olds, I rush from work to the place the SLP will be working. The time between finishing work and starting obse...

Really, I should probably admit to myself that the pastor was in a loose-loose situation with me before he even said a word. I can't fault him for doing a sermon on the first part of Philippians 4; even I agree you shouldn't avoid passages because they might make someone upset, today's someone being me. Then he mentioned the Anxiety Disorders Association of America - who even knew they existed? (Well, I knew that, Pastor.) And here is my problem; I don't like anxiety disorders in the same sermon with the "don't worry" message. And if they must be there, I want a careful differentiation between disorders and the kind of worry that we see as sin. And that differentiation probably couldn't be made to my satisfaction, even if I had written the words and then forgot that I was the one who wrote them. So talking to him after church might not have been a good idea. I don't trust my brain to have heard him right, especially what he said to me when I talk...

Tuesday and Wednesday nights, I was able to turn my light off by 10:15 and made it to work on time the following mornings. Last night? I ran late. This morning? I ran late again. It really bothers me. I don't think I'd loose my job over it, but if it became too much of a problem, I'm afraid I could loose the hours that I currently work, which I really like. Today, when apologizing to a coworker, I explained that I was on a medication that I couldn't wake up on time from. The coworker surprised me when she said that it wasn't my fault. I, of course, was blaming the medication, but blaming myself even more. But she wasn't blaming me. Another coworker didn't even notice that I was late (8 minutes late; terrible, in my perfectionist mind). I see my psychiatrist Thursday. Hopefully we can find a solution. I realize that I haven't been getting as much sleep as I should because I keep staying up late, but even then, I have normally still been able to get up i...

I'm exhausted and almost ready to give up schoolwork for the night. I think I will blame part of the tiredness on depression and/or anxiety and/or medication. Because I think if I was healthy and non-medicated, I would be able to wake up in the morning after sleeping 6 hours. I realize that 6 is less than the "advised" amount, but I should still be able to wake up then. Instead of an hour later, when I'm supposed to be about to arrive at work, not just opening my eyes. Of course, in my dream, I was dealing with a fire and a flood and thought how convenient/ironic it was that I had just gone to a training on emergency preparedness. Maybe all that excitement in my dream tired me out, or at least tied me into my sleep during the adventure. My plan for tonight is to put my alarm clock under the dresser instead of on it and to hide my cell phone somewhere else unusual, so that hopefully I will have to look for it, and hopefully in that time, I will wake up enough to ge...

Something about feeling like I should be happy on a certain day sets me up for trouble. Makes perfect sense, I suppose. Christmas Day was a bit tough because everyone is running around saying, "Merry Christmas!" as if the day should have me smiling and happy. At least for Easter, they actually use a more current word to wish me cheer when they say, "Happy Easter!" I did okay at church. Drew on my sermon note sheet, as usual. I drew a cross and was going to draw something sad, but ended up with an empty tomb, the sun rising, and flowers opening up in blooms. A nice hope of future joy. The next picture was of a woman crying. She might have been Mary in the garden before she knew Jesus was risen. She had a stereotypical Mary head covering. She was also me (but I wasn't currently crying). Then, above her, was a cloud. A dark cloud. That also came down over her. And above that? The sun was shining in a beautiful, clear sky, with a few small, light clouds. The sun...

Last night, I was looking for a story I had started years ago. I didn't find that story, but I found some pictures that I thought I had lost forever when a certain computer died. Apparently, I had backed them up after all. This is the first place that I lived that was far from home and my family and anyone I had formerly known. After high school, I spent the summer working at camp, and then moved to Luquillo, Puerto Rico, to work at a school for the deaf.   I could recognize Luquillo (Lu- key- o) by it's five tall buildings in the set, two clusters. This is a view of it from higher up, ascending the rain forest.   Closer up to two buildings. Riding home on the highway. My first living room (shared) Combined with partial kitchen (shared)   And bedroom (shared - conveniently, I was used to sharing and had done it most of my life). The beach bordering Luquillo (see the tell-tale tall building). The first picture has the lighting wrong, showing it more like if you were w...

I saw my counselor today. Spent the first part decompressing from a hard morning of work. It wasn't just me; I think all the staff felt it. Why do we decide to decorate eggs and conduct egg hunts? But we all survived. We talked about my anxiety with some social situations that my nasty - I mean, my challenging college classes have brought to me. I still don't like it, don't like the anxiety. But time is running out... nothing like a little pressure to force me into an anxiety-triggering situation (haha, it's probably a good thing that happens since I'm not good at doing it completely voluntarily; that's how I got so much more comfortable driving on the interstate - and I mean the nice semi-country interstate near where I live). We touched on the potentially obsessive-compulsive issues I have with Christianity. I was eager to defend my recent research of Charles Spurgeon. My counselor was wary of anything involving the word research (outside of "normal...

It's been quite a day. My firefighter theme at work was put on hold as Easter eggs and candy arrived. Sometimes I have fun with holidays, but I wanted to just sneak past this one. But no, that was not to be. Today a teacher helped my older kids dye eggs while I managed to get snack cleaned up just before we started preparing for lunch. It was a busy morning, the sort that builds stress without anything bad happening. Actually, we got through it pretty well. Then I had a quick (as in, shorter than usual) lunch, followed by studying. See, after worrying that my partner in this school project wouldn't do her research, I put mine off until last night and this afternoon in the hour and a half before lab, when our research was supposed to be done. Needless to say, I was no expert by lab time, but I did get enough crammed into my brain to slide by without looking really bad. My partner also had enough to go on, so we made it through lab. And now? My self-discipline for the day is ...

Well, I'm already set for turning in at least one assignment late (not by midnight). If I hadn't set up a dentist appointment, then maybe... But I did set one up, so my paper can loose one point (a tenth of it's value). So, with my handy prioritizing brain, it occured to me to write the short paper today so that only one gets turned in late. Only, I still have to do the lab for this paper. The lab requires going to three different places and having a conversation with a lisp. I have to go to the bank, so there's one. I can go for-fun shopping and make myself have a conversation at two other places. And my current buying obsession is focused on board books. Good thing I'm a toddler teacher, or I really wouldn't have an excuse. How I'm feeling changes, but is over-all staying at my normal, not-quite-healthy state. I think that is a good sign. I still want to blame some tiredness on my new medication, but I still can't quite justify that, considering how ...