Drowning in Feelings
Major life changes are kicking my ass
In the midst of a very stressful situation, I’ve been having trouble finding/feeling joy.
Like, for real. I haven't felt this bad in a long time. For decades. I used to live with this level of anxiety a lot in my 20s, and I don't know how I survived. I guess because I was younger, having a lot of sex, and drinking quite a bit. It's much harder at my age and with no vices!
Even with all my years of building up my toolbox, this has been hitting me like a ton of anxiety-laden bricks. There are so many components to it! There’s the financing, which is now deeply entwined with a dear friend of mine. Then there's the work of packing up a bunch of crap. (Did I mention how happy I am to be a minimalist?) But I still have to gather boxes and packing paper and spend time so nothing gets broken. Then there's leaving a place that I love more months of the year than I hate. And the people I love dearly. But I know many of those people are also staging an exit. I hope some of us wind up in the general vicinity of each other. Then there's going to be shutting down and hooking up a whole bunch of utilities and getting into new routines. Then, building up my core group of friends and community connections.
I haven’t even begun to digest how much I’ll miss my neighborhood, my friends, and my regular routines.
Anyway, it's A LOT all at once.
Even this joyful hugging machine gets off track when circumstances get overwhelming. It’s called being human.
I've been repeating this mantra that I've had lying on my meditation altar:
It is helping.
And I am just slowly letting go. I can't control everything, so I am focusing on what I can control. Like how long my friend will be co-responsible for my mortgage. I'd like to make that as short as possible… two years max. If circumstances cause me to make a bank lose money, I don't give a shit. But I don’t like the extra burden of having to worry about how my life circumstances (or, honestly, just the circumstances of the world) will negatively affect my friend. So, refinancing is another piece to this puzzle to solve going forward. The initial assisted purchase is a necessary stepping stone that I am accepting (even though it pisses me off that I have to), and I am incredibly grateful that I even have the opportunity to do it this way. Many do not.
When anxiety hits, it makes me question myself. (Because anxiety is a liar that likes to make everything seem worse than it is.) Should I really be buying a house? Am I an idiot? What if the world falls apart? What if everything goes wrong?
Well, the world could fall apart right now, and I’d still be screwed. Or it could never fall apart. The future is unpredictable. That's part of the adventure.
My original plan was not to look at any more houses on the market once my offer was accepted, but I decided to do just that last week. And you know what? They all sucked. None were as good as the one I’m buying. So, I thought, maybe I should just rent up there. I looked at apartments in my price range. They were nightmares.
The conclusion I came to was that I should trust myself. I know that this house is the absolute best and most practical thing I could possibly do. I know I'll be happy living there because it is the manifestation of years of me saying that I wish I could find my current apartment up north. (This house is my apartment in house form.)
Doing this exercise allowed a little joy to creep in. It reminded me that I can and do make good decisions and that this is one I am not likely to regret. Those realizations began to give me energy.
Going forward, I'm focusing on being grateful and making this experience as positive as I can.
What’s Around Watervliet?
Last week, I went to a potluck for my time bank here in St. Petersburg, and it was so lovely. I've been following the Troy, NY branch of DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) for a while and even contacted them to see what they're up to. One thing they want to do is start a time bank. So that's really exciting, and I'm looking forward to helping them do that.
One major bummer is that the closest Creative Mornings to me will be New York City. So… not close. I will miss those meetings. I will probably try to watch the NYC meetings online.
As I do when I'm going on a trip, I've tagged a bunch of local places in Watervliet that I want to check out. Within a short walking distance are a highly rated pizza place, diner, grocery store, restaurants (including Vietnamese, Mediterranean, and Peruvian), the library, and a bike route. A little further (within 1.5 miles) is a cool waterfront coffee shop on a small island, and the entire Troy downtown with shops, a bookstore, coffee shops, restaurants, and the year-round farmers market.
There's a bike co-op of sorts in Troy, along with some small grocers. Plus, there is a phenomenal group called Sidewalk Warriors that goes out every Thursday and feeds people on the street. I'm looking forward to getting involved with local activism efforts.
👀 Life Observations
The Right to Die
I read an article recently about a 21-year-old woman who ended her life after following a pro-suicide group online. They told her what chemicals to buy to end her life and where to get them. Someone in the group even flew to the UK from the States to be with her when she did it. The group basically encourages you to suicide yourself.
Someone in the comments said people should be able to end their lives if they want to. In theory, I agree with that. However, my response was that we should be very careful about that because some people probably kill themselves because of the crushing pressures of our capitalist society and the lack of mental and physical healthcare available to many folks.
Then this post came up in a group I'm in.
Maybe let's make this a country where people can thrive and be healthy before we go letting everyone kill themselves. We’d probably see that many of them no longer wanted to.
It's disgusting that people suffer and die in the wealthiest country in the world because of a lack of affordable healthcare. People live in pain who don't have to. People die who don't have to. We should be ashamed of ourselves. Letting people off themselves is a pretty easy way to avoid dealing with these issues.
⏰️ Currently
📦 Sitting in an apartment full of moving boxes
🏡 Feeling grateful to be buying a house
🗓 Trying to stay focused on all I have to do in the next month