Re: The fear of "Too Late"

by bomaye Wed Sep 30, 2015 7:36 pm

I live in a pretty blue collar/resource extraction heavy area

by **Werel** Wed Sep 30, 2015 7:44 pm

One more at-home freelancing possibility I just thought of: transcription. If you're a fast typist with decent spelling skills, it's actually not bad money, and the most people-schmoozing you have to do is answering assignment emails and making the occasional phone call. Otherwise, it's very much a "do at home when you want" kind of job. I enjoyed it, and covered some bills with it while I was unemployed. I dunno how many companies only hire US citizens, but some like Scribie seem to hire native English speakers from wherever.

by bomaye Wed Sep 30, 2015 9:40 pm

I'm not even sure I can do that right :/

by **Werel** Wed Sep 30, 2015 9:44 pm

I'm pretty sure you can if you're not in the middle of catastrophizing hellmode. Razz

Maybe actually not a good idea to be thinking about job/future stuff while your neurochemistry is going haywire, though?

by **reboot** Wed Sep 30, 2015 9:52 pm

Werel wrote:I'm pretty sure you can if you're not in the middle of catastrophizing hellmode. Maybe actually not a good idea to be thinking about job/future stuff while your neurochemistry is going haywire, though?

Seriously. Let the brain and body get past the caffeine withdrawal before thinking of next steps.

by bomaye Wed Sep 30, 2015 9:56 pm

This is true

(though I'm pretty catastrophic normally, I think :/)

by **Enail** Wed Sep 30, 2015 10:18 pm

Thirded. Let yourself get done with the caffeine crash, work on this stuff later on. Regular catastrophic is still going to be easier to manage than heightened catastrophic, right?

by bomaye Thu Oct 01, 2015 8:17 pm

I don't know how to turn this ship around

by **Enail** Thu Oct 01, 2015 8:22 pm

Take it a little bit at a time, let it build one thing on another. Try not to stress about it while you're in the midst of a high-anxiety period, that'll just make it feel more unmanageable than it is.

by bomaye Thu Oct 01, 2015 8:55 pm

I think it's gonna be high-anxiety no matter what, to be honest :/

by **Enail** Thu Oct 01, 2015 9:11 pm

Yeah, but while you're coming off caffeine is probably worse. Come back to it when you're feeling a little more stable, it's not going to help you to try and solve it while you're in the middle of the withdrawal.

by bomaye Thu Oct 01, 2015 9:23 pm

I actually had a talk with my mom and she kind of reiterated the whole "it's not too late to [do anything]" stuff :/

by **Enail** Thu Oct 01, 2015 10:00 pm

She's right about that. Glad you were able to have calmer discussion with her!

by **Werel** Thu Oct 01, 2015 10:40 pm

Yeah, I'm with your mom on that one. And also with Enail: if it's gonna be high-anxiety no matter what, there's no point in making it higher anxiety. Ships don't get turned around while the captain's hyperventilating.

by bomaye Fri Oct 02, 2015 8:57 pm

So today, I ate lunch with my mom and my sister and I just kind of... had no idea what to say to either of them. I kinda asked mom later if she ever felt lonely, she said "no" and then didn't really know what to say when I said I feel lonely all the time.

Is there some hack or trick to deal with this kind of feeling?

by **Werel** Fri Oct 02, 2015 9:23 pm

I don't think there's a hack. And I don't think "no" can be an honest answer to whether someone ever feels lonely. Maybe it can, but I've never met the person who could truthfully say that.

It can help to think a while about your social needs as smaller sub-needs, rather than one big "lonely" category; it's easier to think of ways to get those individual needs met one at a time rather than solve your whole social life in one swoop. E.g. I moved to a little island a year and a half ago. Some of my social needs, like close IRL friends I know/trust enough to be earnest/vulnerable with, are still not fully met here. Some needs, like a circle of friendly acquaintances who I can get a beer and crack jokes and decompress and not be super earnest with, are pretty much met. If I look at the gestalt of my current social life, I don't feel great about it. But if I look at each component, I can at least say "well, X part is in good shape, anyway," and I can say "since the absence of Y is bothering me most, I can dump all my allotted social energy into working on that." Seems way more manageable and livable that way.

I'm really sorry you feel lonely all the time.

by bomaye Fri Oct 02, 2015 9:44 pm

I did it to myself :/

Just the idea of making like IRL acquaintances and stuff seems really foreign. I don't know what to say to people or how to be in an area where you even make friends

by **Enail** Fri Oct 02, 2015 10:16 pm

Is it something you'd like to work on?

by bomaye Fri Oct 02, 2015 10:17 pm

I guess so. I can't tell if it's "grass is greener" or not

by **Enail** Fri Oct 02, 2015 10:21 pm

Most people do sometimes feel lonely even if they've got exactly their ideal social life, but it does generally help.

by bomaye Fri Oct 02, 2015 11:55 pm

That's kind of what makes me wonder.

I feel like there's some kind of gaping void that I'm desperately trying to fill up all at once, and I'm not really sure what to fill it with, how to fill it or if it's possible to at this point. I've tried to be happy or content in being an outsider or a weirdo because figuring out normalcy or even cool stuff has been something that's always backfired on me. I've tried to paper over things with addictive behaviour (thankfully nothing dangerous) or nerdshit that can be satisfying, but there's something that feels deeply missing.

I'm also somewhat afraid of repeating family history. There's bouts of loneliness or sadness that have ended very badly (my grandmother was pretty lonely the last few years of her life, but I think that may be a given for the elderly), and I'm afraid of getting into such a state that I'm going to be a repeat. Or maybe just afraid of an inability to connect with other people is terminal and it's already beyond me to turn anything around.

I really maybe caffeine is heightening this but I don't think it's going to go away when I finally expel that much stuff from my system :/

by **Enail** Sat Oct 03, 2015 12:03 am

Try not to think about it so all or nothing. Small steps - there probably isn't one thing that can fill in the void all on its own, but you can add more things that fill it a little at a time; you can gradually get better at connecting with people to build up those links one at a time and make them closer or stronger as you go along.

It's not so unusual to feel lonely or out of place, it's something that a lot of people go in and out of to greater and lesser degrees throughout their lives, not something that has to be static or terminal, or one giant monster that you have to defeat in one blow or surrender to utterly. Things can get better, take it slow.

by bomaye Sat Oct 03, 2015 12:05 am

One skill I apparently really need to learn is how to calm down too :/

Actually I want to say too, thank you guys for putting up with me for however much you did. I don't say this enough but it's meaningful

by **Werel** Sat Oct 03, 2015 3:00 pm

Everything Enail said.

Dunno if it also helps to know that IME, almost everybody has a void which is more or less filled, and filled by different things, at different points in their lives. You're not weird or dysfunctional for feeling it.

bomaye wrote:One skill I apparently really need to learn is how to calm down too

That's THE skill. If meditation isn't too woo-woo for you, it can help a lot in the longer term, as can that ol' CBT classic, just thinking/saying "I feel [thing] as hell right now," for the short term.

by bomaye Tue Oct 06, 2015 4:08 am

When my thoughts get racing, there's just not much stopping them :/

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