My vacation turned to sick-stilled rest. Sunday i had a video visit with the UNC Health virtual practice and have a antibiotic and steroid prescription. While i would love to see my primary care provider, he's so booked. On August 18 i booked my physical at the next available date: February 22.  It is so fortunate to have an option where i can go online, late Saturday night, and decide that i can wait until 9:40 and not take the first available appointment at 6:30 Sunday morning. They clearly don't sit around if no one takes early appointments. I'd passed on the 8:30 appointment but got a text on Sunday morning that they were ahead of schedule and ended up being seen at 8:30.

I didn't work but did see my therapist yesterday. Summer disruptions have jostled our schedules and i thought i wouldn't see her for another three weeks. I'd spent some time at the beginning of my vacation reflecting on the "shape" of what i think of as "critical voices" or thoughts. I'd realized i didn't actually perceive a "critical voice" -- maybe once upon a time some conditioned stimulus caused me to frame negative thoughts about myself, but i have stopped much of those self denigrating thoughts. There is still a conditioned stimulus-reaction, though, and i know i have a learned aversion to the unpleasant reaction. I feel my day shaped by this in a way i don't like, don't want.

So, last Friday i took three of the stimuli that occurred in short order. Yes, they are in the "shape" of a "should" but the reactions are not really self critical but are feelings, and different feelings: frustration in one case, a complex of guilt, shame, worry in another, and the third had so much sadness i really couldn't finish writing about it on Friday, and right now i feel the sting of tears and the same tightness at the back of my throat following my esophagus to near my heart as i did yesterday when i talked to MK about it.

We agreed (well, i wasn't discouraged from thinking) that right now, sick, my faculties for feeling will probably spin these feelings into darker places than they will go when i am well. (That hard to distinguish depression-vs-being-sick state so learned in my body and mind has deep ruts i don't need to follow.) So first, i will get well.

Then i want to experiment with experiencing, interrogating, and i guess just feeling these feelings i have been dismissing like snoozing an alarm.

I break up creative, reading, and communication mornings or afternoons with 20 min breaks to take care of our home or me. I have a number of exercise routines i can listen to and follow, but i have also memorized a few sun salutations which i can drop into doing short intervals. Sometimes cleaning kit is left out for a few days before i find my way back to a particular cleaning task, but the trade off is worth it when it makes starting back up a task easier.

Still sick, but the meds are helpful.

In lines of visioning myself as i want to be, i begin these future routine fantasies. It's partly due to picking up Mason Currey's 2013 Daily Rituals: How Artists Work.

In the warmer seasons, i am outside at 8am. We have the shed built, and i have a place for everything there. Gloves, tools, harvest baskets, etc. Maybe even a chair where i can switch from house shoes to yard shoes, although the front porch still seems fine for that. There's probably a basket by the door in the house with things that need to go to the shed. I pick that up as i leave at 8, and head to the shed, get the tools i need and head to the yard. I do a lot of weeding in the first few years but begin stretching to propagating plants again. I experiment with grafting. The garden plot's fertility is improved and so vegetable gardening is productive. I begin experiments in the woods. I clear invasives from a block aligned with the  compass, and survey what remains. I fence half off from the deer and watch what sprouts from the seed bank. I hedge saplings in places to create cover for deer and keep a sense of privacy. I come in at 11 and have a nice midday break with Christine before an inside afternoon engaging in my other interests.

== this started out as a comment but i realized it wasn't really what i should say ==

One of the things that triggers dispirit in me is how there seems to be no way to cut past the propaganda that leads to all the hate.

A friend shared this, this morning:

In his 1962 study of propaganda, Jacques Ellul explains that the most effective propaganda is based on true fact, or at least facts that are hard for the target audience to disprove. However, Ellul adds that deception about intentions and interpretations' is the most pervasive feature of effective propaganda….Propaganda by its very nature is an enterprise for perverting the significance of events and insinuating false intentions.'"

The accusations of false intentions sucks away the chance for open exchanges, especially when the accusations are about hidden conspiratorial false intentions. Proving a negative is very hard, and proving you're not doing some secret evil even harder.

This comes to mind because once upon a time, words could travel for you. Not the same as hitting the road yourself, but you could send and exchange words and feel you would make a difference. Now the propaganda and meme crap and the all the actors pitting us against each other drown out any clever or earnest voices.

gratitude, faith, health

Sick. Wednesday into Thursday i had lousy night's sleep: i got overwrought at having a hard time breathing, and settling and ended up finally settling at 2 am. I slept in and called in sick to work.  The rare times i have a hard time sleeping helps me appreciate my usual fortune at otherwise sleeping well.

I've had a virtual office visit and got some prescription cough meds, plus advice on decongestants that i will follow. I asked about contagiousness and the PA didn't seem to think there was much to be concerned about assuming i was washing my hands and coughing into my elbow. There was an implication of "you are likely less contagious than you were earlier in the infection" but it felt more like a dismissal of the concern than a statement of fact.  Benadryl last night seemed to have no negative effects on my sleep. Even with decongestants and the cough meds symptoms come through this morning.

I had PLANS for today. I spoke to Dad letting him make his own judgement, and he is up to meeting me for lunch but not for me to come over for dealing with the piles of books. [And he's not feeling well so we will catch up some other time.] I'll meet up with my nephew W at 3 and check in with him on what he wants.  I may still go to McKays on my own with the books to sell that i have at home. McKay's is apparently an amazing used book plus instruments and other things store, and i think i have enough books to make the junket worth while.

Meanwhile, figs. Coming home sick has meant my motivation for really clearing out the tree has been low. I think there may be a fungal something or other triggering unpleasantness -- the humidity etc is no help. And the "clean up fallen fruit" isn't necessarily happening as much as it should. Maybe tomorrow.

I do have a goal of making some fruit bars. I am pondering trying out a recipe that advises doubling the amount of figs leads to stability issue by doubling the figs but adding agar agar. A quick check confirms that agar agar is MUCH cheaper than Pomona's pectin. If i cook down 1.25*3 pounds of figs, use 1/3 as is, then add agar agar to the remaining 2/3, i could make a double batch and determine whether the structural integrity of double+gelling agent is equivalent to the recipe as is.

But maybe that's for tomorrow, says my energy check in (even though i want to give them to Dad and W---). I did do a round of dehydrator trays this week: three trays of the waning elderberries, two of Mike's Wild Tomatoes, and one of figs. I'm a little sad my July was so "off" and i didn't do more elderberries than i did, and i hope that i rally in time to still make plenty of fig jam.

I've been thinking about resilience and am listening to a short lectures with advice to focus on "GOALS -- gratitude, optimism, active coping, love, social skills." Active coping is something i do: what can i try to address what is "wrong"? I think i am generally grateful, but i don't mind trying that. But optimism: i think that one is hard. I know my mom trained me to see flaws. Some of that training was positive in that i can see where to improve. But what she (and my dissertation advisor) didn't know how to teach was when is something good enough. At what point does perfection become the enemy of the good?  I think the optimism comes to play with framing the imperfect. I think i end up framing things more negatively: "i can't do better than that (because time, energy)" instead of ... what? And then there is the ADHD "habit" cycle. I can have practices that support my goals with effort. Apparently neurotypical folks can have those become habits (like brushing your teeth or making your bed, chirp all the advisors) and build on them. Piffle. I don't have the part of the mind allows people to go on "autopilot" through any part of their day.  I am working on reframing this though, recognizing that my baseline is going to be different than typical habit/practice advice... and that i can allow for the reality that i will slip from practices and it doesn't mean i was practicing wrong [1], it means something (travel, sickness, focus on a project, learning something) has deviated me from the practices and with the investment of energy i can get  started back up again.

I recognize that i have to have a certain amount of resilience and optimism: i have kept trying to "get it" for decades. I've come to believe some significant amount of what i have labeled depression over the years has been the tension between not meeting my expectations for myself and trying again: but doing so by nagging and criticizing myself. Optimism (or faith?) is not constantly criticizing but believing if i accept the ... failures? imperfections? the missed expectations? ...  as perhaps unreasonable, i will keep aiming

My question of optimism vs faith is that i have leaned on -- when i was at the level of suicidal ideation -- faith that my perception of how things were was not accurate and that i would "get better" and would be more engaged with life. Is that actually optimism? In someways it was learned, too. After a certain point of cycling between lows i knew that i would not be stuck there forever.

I don't have confidence that i can stop judging myself and feel good about where i am, which sounds so bizarre as i write it. So i am trying to visualize myself accepting when i drop practices and trusting i will pick them back up.

Anyhow, this has gone on so long....

[1] This is a big deal! The energy it takes to search for the "right" way to keep up practices is significant. gratitude, faith, health