I Can't Go On / I’ll Go On.

I highly recommend taking a few minutes to read  I Can't Go On / I’ll Go On by Janice Lee. 

Quoting bits of it would be a disservice to the piece. Please read it in it's entirety. 

Sabrina Benaim - "Explaining My Depression to My Mother."

Uncharacteristically warm days.

It's been beautiful out lately. It's warm, and the sun is out. It's warmer than it would usually be this time of year, people seem in great spirits because of it. In denial maybe, of the upcoming winter. Last winter was so brutal here, it's as if we've all agreed to collective denial.

This past weekend we moved the clocks back an hour, doing our best to save some daylight. Usually I don't really have much to say on the matter, but this year it's made a difference for me. Maybe it's because I'm more aware of how much daylight affects my mood and my sleeping so I take greater care to get sunlight and to sleep at-least 8 hours (I need 9-10) or maybe it's because my higher dosage and vitamin regimen are taking effect, whichever the affecting party, it's been helping my mood.

I ended up waking up on Sunday and just getting a load of stuff done. I felt productive, and was happy with myself. I cleaned. I put tons of clothes away. I folded up clothes that are one and two sizes smaller than what I wear now, and stored them in a large moving bin. It's the plight of a woman with weight struggles, having a closet filled with a variety of sizes in it. There's always that pair of pants that's just too small. So, I put it all away. If I lose weight again, I'll have clothes to start me off. If not, at least those clothes won't be a lie I tell myself. This unhealthy inspiration, that's really just flagellation through fashion.

It's as if, after over a decade of living as someone who is recovering from an eating disorder, and disordered thinking, I can't think about the word diet, or certain marketing "health" terms anymore. They just make my angry. But beyond that, really, they don't register with me anymore. I just hear sick bullshit. Total garbage.

I still have a lot of stuff to work through in regards to my physical health, but I'm getting there, slowly.

I cooked a lot. I made (and ate) the best lasagna I've ever had in my life. Being able to cook on Sundays usually means having access to healthier lunches and meals during the week. This week I made a Gruyere, spinach and turkey meat sauce lasagna, with a vegetable potage of leaks, sweet potatoes and peppers, and some chicken salad.

I guess this helps get me off on the right foot for the week. I don't feel like a useless bum. I also spend less money going out, and eat more balanced meals.

I just finished reading M Train by Patti Smith. I'd read Just Kids, and loved it. It's an interesting read. She's a phenomenal writer, and is really gifted with language and in describing her own creative process. That's what I liked so much about Just Kids, the talking about the daily life of a creative person, in a way that's almost mundane. The ritual of it. It's just the way she is, it's a priority in her life, she still lives that mythic beat of being an artist in the romantic sense. The way it's represented in a film taking place in the 60's, with a hero that is barely unkempt, slender and androgynous, who moves slowly from place to place, with no wrist-watch and no seeming embodiment of pressure.

I read Smith's stories. Her traveling. Her reading. Her writing. Her adventures. She's seemingly unimpressed by herself, but there is no mention of money ever, no worry about money. This is where she loses me.

I would have, years ago, dismissed my own criticism by citing my age. When I'm older, I'll be making money (because we get older, and we support ourselves, naturally), things just seem difficult now because I'm a student. Or because I just started working. Or because I'm still paying off my debts. 

There seems to be so much privilege in writing. In taking the time to really imbibe someone else's art. In being able to travel in a way that isn't offensive, that isn't privileged horse-shit. In a way that's honest.

As I'm looking toward 2016, I can't help but think of this series of warm days, and my own lived experience of creativity. I am not Patti Smith. I do not have decades of work behind me. I am not a recognized artist. I struggle, often, to even identify as a creative. And on these warm days, more seems possible. Opportunity doesn't seem as exterior to myself.

If I want to dedicate time and energy to creative pursuits, what does that mean for me? Working less to have more free time? Seeing a 9 to 5 as a means to an end? Will I be "working-poor" for the rest of my life? Can I accept that as a reality? Is choosing a creative life, choosing poverty?

What does living on less look like? Smith survives on coffee and brown toast. I already live paycheck to paycheck. No financial safety net. Is a financial safety net a luxury of the 1%?

Am I unable to be original at times, because what plagues me is wholly unoriginal? Are the ghosts around me, ghosts of habit? Not only my habits, but the habits of this place, and my generation, and of my gender? Are these ghosts in my blood? Am I haunted by not only my regrets, but the regrets of my ancestors? If that my depression? Are these my anxieties?

There's something about being so near a large decision. This purchase of a home. A place to live. Something that would be mine and mine alone. This responsibility. This financial burden. All of a sudden money means something concrete. It's now a limit. It represents what I can and cannot afford. Where I can and cannot go. These numbers represent the way in which I will live my life. Spend too much and I will be shamed, I will be chained to payments that will suffocate me. Do too little, and then there's the voice of the "positive friend" saying you'll regret your choice, you'll eventually meet someone, you'll want more room, you'll eventually get a raise, you will make more money.

But I am the working-poor. If my little amount of savings can grant me land ownership, is that not an achievement? It is to me. To be near-dead for so long, and to then own something for myself and of myself,                        that                           is                    something.

All of it is noise. To a certain extent, so is Smith's representation of creativity. Just another barometer against which to measure myself.

There is something around all of this that circles around the notion of being established.

An established creative. Someone whose creativity matters. Is recognized. Is quantified.

An established person. Someone with a home. A space. Roots.

I would have something. Something in my name.

And though in the past I often felt this would tie me down, now I see it as a refuge. A safe space. My money leaves me regardless, at least this way I pay into something being mine. Even if it's just for a short while.

Sometimes all of this just seems like a question of luck and talent. Smith has talent. Some people have luck. Being born gorgeous. Being born rich. Being born convinced of your worth, and of the value of your production. These are things I was not born with. I get bursts of hard-work, book-ended by just doing my best.

Something Smith's book did bring home for me though, it how much longer I might have to figure all of this out. Smith is 68. I am 31. I could write, and try, for a very long time.

That is exciting but it also makes me tired.

What's on your bucket list?

From a conversation I had with a friend last night. My buddy was talking to me about how he felt guilty for not having a bucket list for his future. How he didn't feel especially ambitious.

Isn't it mildly ridiculous the things we fixate on? I mean, on one side it isn't, ambition and "life goals" are something we hear about often. Success. Achievement. Vision boards. But these all assume a very narrow definition of success. They also assume a level of ability and intent that we're not all born with.

So we fixate on ambition and life goals, when really we're spending a lot of energy stressing out over things that may or may not happen. So much can change. There's so much luck and chance involved. So much chaos. Yes, we can work hard for certain goals, and achieve those goals, but there is no road map, and there are no guarantees. 

There's a lot of privilege in access to opportunity. Sure, sometimes you can take the time to find out who you are, and trek through the world, intern and try things. Dedicate yourself to one specific goal. But sometimes you have to pay the rent. Sometimes you have to just use what little energy you have to do very basic living. 

It's a specific kind of sad, when all we want is to have that desire for life that others seem to have naturally. 

I don't have a bucket list. I just want to simplify my life as best I can in order to cultivate as peaceful an existence as I can muster. 

On emotional intelligence.

The Atlantic has an article up called The Dark Side of Emotional Intelligence, which they define as:

the ability to recognize, understand, and manage emotions.

I'm not 100% on managing, but I’d say I'm practically a sharpshooter regarding the first two. The article goes over how emotional intelligence should not be assumed to be a moral characteristic, and how as a form of intelligence, it can be used for both “good and evil.”

There was no relationship whatsoever between emotional intelligence and helping: Helping is driven by our motivations and values, not by our abilities to understand and manage emotions. However, emotional intelligence was consequential when examining a different behavior: challenging the status quo by speaking up with ideas and suggestions for improvement.

Emotionally intelligent employees spoke up more often and more effectively. When colleagues were treated unjustly, they felt the righteous indignation to speak up, but were able to keep their anger in check and reason with their colleagues. When they went out on a limb to advocate for gender equity, emotional intelligence helped them keep their fear at bay. When they brought ideas for innovation to senior leaders, their ability to express enthusiasm helped them avoid threatening leaders.

This was the part that stuck with me, since the friends I value as being extremely emotionally intelligent are also the most likely to notice when something isn't fair, or is inappropriate at the workplace. We’re often quick to notice work-policies we feel to be counter-intuitive or lacklustre.

I would argue that it’s a sensitivity to environment, and to the lived experience of policy and procedure. Especially in a working environment, where we live daily. It’s also a way of reading people I’d say is akin to instinct. Reading certain cues is a way of communicating that is mainly lost to us, but was a way of surviving for thousands of years. Similarly to the way in which a cat twitches a tail in annoyance, seeing someone purse their lips or grind their teeth can signal a similar state.

I wouldn't really say it’s my ability to “express enthusiasm” that allows for a smooth description of a problem to a boss, I would say it’s a navigation of their ego, explaining a basic logic and also trying to express the benefits of the idea.

I think emotional intelligence also involves an understanding of context and environment. External factors are always at play, no matter how enthusiastically you pitch more vacation time.

And, as always, there's also power at play. There are power-dynamics and hierarchies. When we describe emotional intelligence as being a major root to standing up to the status quo, we can't ignore the way in which identity politics and privilege inform our relationship to that structure.

I can't help but think of "emotional intelligence" as a classed term. There's privilege in it. It's academic. Also, considering the original researchers define emotional intelligence as:

focuses on the individual's ability to process emotional information and use it to navigate the social environment.

"Oh, you mean be a fucking human who feels things and notices stuff?"

Maybe the reason old, white academics needed the term is because they don't understand human fucking experience the way anybody who doesn't carry the privilege of white maleness does.

On neurotypical privilege.

Everyday feminism has this great web-comic on insider's view of schizophrenia. There are a few frames here, but check out the whole post.

The comic is by Christine Deneweth, whom you can follow on facebook. Googling the term also lead me to this Neurotypical Privilege tumblr and a "rant on neurotypical privilege."

It's a new term for me, but there are many kinds of privilege, and the concept of neurotypical privilege makes perfect sense to me. Although over the last few years I've been able to carve out a social circle that has an understanding of depression, anxiety and disability, I still have friends who have that neurotypical privilege, and for whom understanding me will never really be a possibility.

Usually, I'm pretty lost in my own shit. So I appreciate this post for calling me out on how there is privilege in being depressed, as at least it's a term that has increased visibility. Also, there's a ton of ignorance regarding schizophrenia.

My only experience with it is terribly tragic. My brother's best friend A (who was like another brother to me growing up) had a younger brother, S, who took his own life, gruesomely a few years ago. A was the one who found him. It was brutal on everyone. I think about S occasionally. The details of his suicide were so awful, what must it have been like to live in that? It just seems to painful.

I hope more and more comes out of the mouths of those of us living with whatever makes us "other" to the typical. Typicality is an illusion, and the more we share our stories the sooner that will become clear.