My life's a bit of a tangle: an update

Rat King preserved at Museum Mauritianum in Altenburg, Germany
 [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Isn't that a nasty photo?  I love it.  I'd say it's a good visual metaphor for my life right now, but that's totally not true.  The picture above reminds me that, yeah, I'm tangled up, but I'm not gross.  I am not made of rats, nor am I dead and somehow, disgustingly, preserved.  So that's awesome.

I mostly made it through my first week of no television or streaming.  Mostly.  I broke down Sunday night and watched the movie Mascots and two episodes of The Gilmore Girls on Netflix.  Still, not bad, all things considered.

I had a couple of bad nights and one bad day.  Friday was horrible, but mostly because I somehow strained my back the night before and was in pain.  Much pain.  I really don't recommend straining or otherwise hurting your back.  Saturday and Sunday night though were the worst.  Saturday was fine while I was at work, I was still a little achy, but everything was manageable.  When I got home, though, it was all dark thoughts and despair.  I had to go for a long muttering walk* to burn off my anger enough to sleep.  Sunday was much the same, as evidenced by my last post—rewritten several times to not sound quite so insane.

Mostly, I'd count last week as a success, and will continue with my moratorium on TV and the like.

There are a few things that I realized about myself during this week, and those are:

1. I need to learn how to deal with my mental scratches.  You know how when a record is scratched, the needle jumps, and it will sometimes play the same few bars over and over and over again?  My brain does that.  I'll get on this track–generally thinking of something unpleasant–and my mind will replay the same thoughts over and over and over again.  Driving me to rage and despair.  To continue the metaphor, I need to find some healthy, non-destructive way to interrupt that cycle, and move on with my song.
2. I am WAAYY more aware of myself when I'm not watching TV.  This is a good thing.  I eat less and healthier.  I don't let myself dehydrate.  I notice what I'm doing and thinking more.
3. I have a seriously fucked up sleep schedule.  I can probably blame this on my retail experience.  You haven't known misery until you've had a schedule where you close one night at midnight or 1AM, and are expected in the next morning at 7AM to open.  I did crap like that for years.  Now I'm not working retail, but I am working mostly evenings.  It doesn't matter what time I go to bed the night before, left to my own devices I won't wake up until after noon.  I have to set 2 or 3 alarms to be up at 8AM on Saturdays.  This needs to change.  So for the next several weeks I will work on resetting my internal clock, and waking up and going to sleep at decent, not college student/retail worker hours.
4. I am not nearly physically active enough.  I need to get up and get moving.
5. I freak out when I don't have access to the internet.  It doesn't matter if I'm planning on using it or not, the second it's out I'm desperate to get it back.  Thursday night out internet went out, resulting in one such freak out.  I had planned on joining one of my best friends for tea, a walk, and a gab session, but when I got home I discovered the outage and cancelled it all while I desperately ran around the house trying to fix it.  Turns out our wifi router needed to be replaced.  We got the internet back on Friday, but my Thursday night plans were shot.
6. It's easier to zone and not think about things.  Of course, that's how I got so tangled in the first place.

So that's it.  In the coming weeks I will be working on changing my sleep schedule and learning how to deal with my brain when it decides to go on a maniacal repeating cycle.  Oh, and finding a job.

My language studies are going well.  I can't say that I can actually say anything, but I'm on track.  I think I mentioned this last post, but in two weeks I'm planning on slowing down on the Irish and picking Mandarin back up.  

Also, I'm going to try to write a story worth reading, hopefully before this month ends.  We'll see.

*A muttering walk is one in which I walk and talk to myself to work out my problems.  I may or may not also make angry gestures at the air.  I look like a madwoman while doing it, but it makes me feel better.