Month: April 2017
Moments of the Blurry Seasons
I think there’s something kind of magical about the changing of the seasons. There’s quite literally something in the air, the air you’re breathing is changing. I like to think of them as the moments of the blurry seasons. When one season hasn’t quite finished and the other hasn’t quite started so they’re not really one or other but somehow both. It’s not really a consecutive period of time, like a week or even a few days, which is why I think of them as moments within what I’ve called the blurry seasons.
Things feel different: the wind, the air pressure, people’s moods, the temperature, people’s attitudes. Things look different: the sky, the clouds, colours. But they’re not entirely different, not yet.
I think this is a bit of an obvious thing because it’s like pointing out the difference between hot and cold but what I’m referring to are the moments between the change. Not the time when someone says, “Oh my gosh, what happened? It feels like only yesterday it was below 10°C and I was grabbing my umbrella but today it’s 38°C and I’m checking the UV rays!”, which is something I’d actually say because I burn easily and I’m constantly checking and reapplying sunscreen, and also time moves very quickly.
But I love the times in between. Or the moments.
The times when it doesn’t matter if you’ve checked the weather three times that morning and left your umbrella at home only for some sudden downpour to completely saturate you on your short afternoon outing to grab a coffee. You cannot predict what will actually happen over the duration of the day. This is even more evident during the blurry seasons. If you had grabbed your umbrella that morning the wind may likely have blown it inside out rendering it useless anyway but by the afternoon the air will be eerily still.
There’s something about these times, these moments, when you’re caught in that downpour and you just have to laugh at how absurd the weather is. You might feel annoyed at being soaking wet but if you stop to think about it, it’s just hilarious. These moments are made even better when you make eye contact with a stranger and laugh about it together, neither of you knowing who the other is or what their life is like but in that moment the two of you know exactly how hilarious the situation you’ve both found yourself in actually is and you’re able to overlook the fact that you don’t know each other and just laugh.
Sure for the rest of the afternoon you might be damp and uncomfortable (which is why I’ve now brought a spare pair of socks and a spare shirt into the office, just in case) but for the rest of the day, sometimes even longer, you have that little moment.
I like to collect those moments of the blurry seasons because I think they’re nice little moments, ones worth holding onto. Most of them involve the rain or wind to be honest but they all occur during the same unknown season, as if the seasons have blurred together and pushed one into the next month so they’re all a little bit later than usual. Or maybe they’re slightly confused too.
Lizzie X
Lemon Pips
Do you ever stop to think about your life? I do, all the time.
If you do, how do you think about it? Do you focus on the good things, the things you wouldn’t change? Do you plan ahead to try and see what your life could be and how it is that you could get there? Do you pick it apart and find all of the bad things and then realise that it’s not as easy as picking the pips out of a lemon and that you’re actually going to have to get more than your fingertips wet if you want to fix them?
(That wasn’t supposed to be a life/lemons reference, I just like lemons and getting the pips out can be annoying but a necessary thing to properly enjoy the lemon)
I’ve been trying to look at my life as a whole, which in this case means looking at the individual parts then placing them together to form my life in an abstract way and assessing how well it is. Taking its temperature, checking its reflexes, all of the usual tests. I tried to think of the individual parts as large areas and broke them down to: home life, work life, personal life (which is entirely different from home, it refers to who you are as an individual, by yourself, just you, alone) and the other part being health, meaning the parts that you can tangibly measure to some degree of accuracy, whether physical or mental.
When I put them all back together I realised that they don’t measure up to a whole lot. I’ve placed a metaphorical marker on a scale of 1-10 of where my life currently sits and I feel nonplussed to say that it’s sitting at a 3, maybe a 3.5 if i’m being optimistic, which I’m not exactly known for being. There are little things that I do that make me feel better, like writing this blog, and even then I have to remind myself to make time for it but I’m glad that I do. I’d like to make a point of taking steps in each area of my life to try and improve it as a whole by actively working towards them so that I can hopefully move that metaphorical marker to a 4 one day, or if i’m being wild an dreaming big, a 5.
I’m not saying that I’m going to make a list and once I tick each item off I can move the marker half a point in the positive. I’m not naive enough to think that that’s all it’s going to take but it’s a good starting point. Just like a 3 isn’t great but it’s a starting point, now I have somewhere to move forwards from and somewhere to look back on once I’ve made progress. Instead of just sitting here at a 3 like, cool, this is my life. I will anticipate setbacks and things not going to plan while trying to keep in mind that any progress is good progress, you just have to keep at it.
I wish this post was like a pensieve for thoughts and I could take all of them and put them in these words for me to revisit later because my head feels so heavy right now. I will revisit this topic and perhaps even list some of the things in each area that I’m going to actively work towards, there will be a follow up, this is just a starting point.
Lizzie X
Battling Anxiety
I think it’s such a funny turn of phrase to say battling anxiety or battling anything that isn’t physical. I automatically envision brandishing a sword to my own mind in an animated form, if only it were that simple. If only the mind didn’t have it’s own metaphorical sword.
It’s 11:37 pm on Easter Monday and I have really appreciated this long weekend. I haven’t gotten up to much, mainly sleeping, catching up on shows and drinking lots of tea. The sleeping is the best thing. I’ve appreciated being able to sleep in and sleep through most of the day when usually I would have be jumping out of bed.
I’m hoping that this will help me in the weeks to come. Help me deal with interactions, work and everyday stresses. I can’t be sure, I don’t think anyone can be when thinking about the future, but I hope it will.
A little while ago I came up with a little list of 5 things that help me when battling anxiety and I thought that I should share them.
- Music; sometimes loud and yelly music or good singing music, other times contemplative music, or music with lyrics that make you stop and listen, and sometimes a good classical piece by Bach or a jazz number by Curtis Fuller.
- Move; shake it out and shake it off, an impromptu dance party can really help to reset your body and your breathing. Jumping around, going for a run or just changing your scenery can also be a great reset technique.
- Breathe; whether you watch a calming gif for breathing, or you count to ten while breathing in and out. Closing my eyes and concentrating on my own breathing helps my heart rate to slow down and my stomach to unknot.
- Water; nice cold water, little sips, concentrate on how good it tastes. Sometimes rinsing it around my mouth, making sure my gums are hydrated and my tongue is coated before swallowing it can really help. Actually tasting the water instead of just drinking it because we’re told we need to.
- Write; getting thoughts and feelings and words out into a physical place can help them from running around and around your own head. This can be a letter to no one, lyrics to a song, a poem, notes to yourself or whatever you need them to be. I guess this is why I wrote this list in the first place, to share it on some level.
I’m sure I could write a list of 10 things that I actually do when I get anxiety, or when I feel my anxiety creeping up and taking over, because what does “get anxiety” even mean? If I already have anxiety then I can’t get it because I already have it, right? It’s there, it’s always there, it just lies dormant sometimes making you think that everything’s okay and that you can keep doing what you doing, go about your day as normal and just see what happens.
If you suffer from anxiety what do you do in order to deal with your it? Have you found my tips useful for battling anxiety? Have you been in a situation where you can’t do anything to avoid it or battle it and you’ve just had to “deal” with it? I have and I might write about it another time but I’m leaving this here for tonight.
Lizzie X
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Just wanted to throw it out there that I like astrology. I’ve always enjoyed reading about them and finding myself within them. I’m Sagittarius and I didn’t always feel like that quite fit, until I learned about Moon signs and Rising signs and all of the other placements. I may write more about at a […]
Being a Good Person
What does it mean to be a good person?
I think that I do good deeds, that I’m polite, that I’m open minded and a good listener, I have patience when needed, I’m courteous, I don’t butt in and I go out of my way to help others. But I don’t know if that makes me a good person.
I have lied and I can’t say that I won’t lie ever again, I think bad things and thoughts, I wish some people would stop talking, I say awful things when I’m angry, I lose my patience, I’m stubborn, I don’t always follow through and I fall short of my own expectations. But does that make me a bad person?
Do any of these things cancel each other out? I don’t believe they do. I’m not sure if someone can be wholly good or wholly bad. I believe that it’s part of human nature to have both good and bad qualities and tendencies.
Granted, some people sway more to the good end of the spectrum and others to the bad. Sometimes you can think you’re doing a good thing and you can feel good about it but if it isn’t good to someone else, or someone else suffers because of it, is it still a good thing you’ve done?
I could say that being a good person is in the eye of the beholder or that as long as you think what you’re doing is good then you should keep doing it. (There is some truth in the latter.) But if what you’re doing isn’t in fact good and you’ve just convinced yourself that it is then there’s not really anything good about it, it’s just an illusion of good. However, going back to the second part of that statement that has some truth to it; if what you’re doing is good and you’re not hurting anyone in the process or being intentionally cruel, and it makes you feel good, then you should absolutely keep doing it.
I’m not really sure where I’m going with this because I don’t have a conclusive answer, it’s something that’s been on my mind lately and something of an ongoing internal struggle, I wanted to get it out somewhere.
Do you have a definition of what it means to be a good person? Do you believe you are a good person? Please let me know what you think of this topic, I may write about it again.
Lizzie X
Anxiety at Twenty Øne Pilots Concert
Disclaimer: this post deals with mental health, specifically my experience with anxiety at a concert, just so you’re aware before reading.
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“You don’t look very good, why did you even try?”
I rushed to get ready after work on Friday so that I could have some dinner and a drink out before heading to Rod Laver Arena. I caught a glimpse in the mirror at the restaurant and although my hair looked alright, I’d taken the time to straighten it the night before, it wasn’t very vibrant because it needs recolouring and it had dry shampoo in it.
“Yeah, but she’s thin and pretty.”
I wore my black ripped jeans, they’re pretty old now and pretty ripped but they’re comfortable. My black combat boots, they’re falling apart, literally. They barely have any sole left, they’re ripped at the seams and the material is wearing away. I didn’t ear my Twenty One Pilots shirt form last year’s concert because a) I couldn’t find it and b) it probably needed washing, I haven’t worn it in a while because it’s not the kind of shirt I can wear to work and I haven’t been doing much on the weekends. Instead I wore an oversized “boys” charcoal t-shirt that I feel comfortable in. There was a girl there who practically had my hair colour and a girl who almost had my outfit. Both gorgeous. They mightn’t think so but I did.
“People are looking at you and wondering why you’re here all alone.”
I made it down to my seat, which was at the very front of the lower seating area and on the left of the stairs, meaning it was all by itself, right at the railing. I remember making sure I got a good seat, especially at such a big venue, I wouldn’t be able to handle being the general admission area on the ground, being jostled around by everyone, from all sides. I couldn’t afford taking a day off of work to line up all day to get access to the front. It’s just not plausible. I belong in the seated area.
“They can see right through you.”
There were people shouting across sections to friends that they’d spotted, others singing Happy Birthday in a huge chorus, people rushing around everywhere and laughing. It was that middle section between the supporting act and the main event. I didn’t want to take out my book and start reading, I thought that might be a bit too weird.
I started feeling like I was suffocating and I didn’t want anyone to know.
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