Not that it’s a big deal or anything….
…but I’ve started looking for freelance work again.
Via good old UpWork.com. During therapy today, Doctor Costin brought the subject up. He said there was a time when I was happier because I had paid work.
And he was right. Getting paid for my work was extremely good for my mood. I have not had the opportunity to do much “earning” in my life. Mostly I have just passively lived off others. My parents, or Brian and Brian, or David n’ Dhugal n’ Ross (twice).
And even when I massively upgraded my life by getting on welfare (yeah you read that right), and therefore stopped being a financial burden on anyone I knew personally, I was still a burden in terms of making various roomies deal with reality for me.
But that’s another topic for another time.
Yes, I actually realized it in time to get back on topic!
This is a red letter day for me.
Anyhow, my point is that I was a much happier person when I was earning income with my writing. It was the perfect tonic for my feelings of worthlessness and toxicity because I was finally contributing to society and had a sense of purpose.
Then Skyrim happened. But it only took advantage of my already crumbling mood.
If depression was a virus, I was already immunosuppressed..
What’s kept me from getting back to working via UpWork has been a sense of shame due to having kind of flamed out last time.
I had a bunch of prospects, but they were all very vague and there was a lot of uncertainty and basically my anxiety got the better of me and I ghosted them.
And that sucks. It really does. I have “incomplete without explanation” jobs on my UpWork record and I am just going to have to deal with it.
But I am not going to let that limit me any more. I need a serious life upgrade and UpWork is my most accessible, least scary, and most probable avenue to getting one.
It’s all online, and it’s all writing, which is something I rock like a motherfucker, and it can be a great way for me to build up my self worth.
And maybe even save enough for a new computer. At TODAY’s prices, oh my.
More importantly, it would be something productive to do with my time. I am very tired of playing video games all the goddamned time. I need more – much more – out of life.
Here I am, brain the size of a planet, talent coming out the wazoo, with charisma and charm and a winning personality, and yet I languish in filth and obscurity.
Tell me, is that fair?
Crowd : NO!
Don’t I deserve a better life?
Crowd : Yes!
Great! Now can anyone give me a ride home? I lost my bus pass.
Crowd : (tries not to make eye contact)
So from now on, I will keep an UpWork tab open, and when I feel up to it, I will apply for a job or two.
And now, for the unhealthy part of my mind to flip out over the whole thing.
“Oh no, something is coming to yank us out of our nice safe socket! We’ll be exposed! We’ll be vulnerable! We won’t be able to retreat at a moment’s notice! We’ll have to stay focused! We’ll have to stay awake! WE WILL HAVE TO ACTUALLY DO STUFF. This is the WORST THING THAT COULD EVER BE!!!!!”
Ya know. Stuff like that.
Man it sucks to be crazy.
More after the break.
Where’s the fire?
I’m always in a state of crisis.
I’ve talked about it many times before. The feeling that there’s something I am supposed to be doing but I don’t know what it is and it’s super important and yet I have forgotten what it is and the tact that I am not doing it means I am failing.
Horribly, completely, and utterly failing.
And with no way out of the situation either. I can’t even begin to imagine an actual answer to the question of what I should be doing.
Too many variables. Too much complexity. Does not compile. Stack overflow error. Too many unknowns. Too many unknowables. SYSTEM OVERLOAD. SAFE OPERATING TEMPERATURES EXCEEDED. EMERGENCY STACK DUMP! RESET! RESET!
Um……… what was I talking about again?
So with my being constantly in the jaws of this unresolvable crisis, I have no choice but to retreat from reality and essentially hide from my own sense of failure.
Hide from my own brutal judgment.
It ain’t the cops, it’s the Judge I fear.
And I know that if I could exit this crisis mode, I would be far healthier and happier. That kind of long term stress is a killer. Those stress chemicals keep the body from healing and renewing itself properly and over time, shit starts falling apart.
No wonder I am so damned unhealthy.
At least Doctor Ebtia cleared me for exercise. That’s not enough by itself to get me to do it, of course. I am still too scared for that.
But at least I know it won’t kill me.
Well, not with a heart attack, anyhow.
Exercise would make me a lot healthier and happier too. There’s a reason it’s the number one recommendation for depression now and that’s because it fucking works.
Both the statistical and the clinical consensus is that exercise is the most effective treatment for depression.
But I’m too scared to do it. It’s not the pain and the effort I fear, though.
It’s my own adrenalized anxiety. When I imagine myself exercising, all I can envision is my gasping for air, my head throbbing. my lungs aching, and my mind filling with the sort of animal terror that makes chased rabbits drop dead from heart attacks.
That’s what I am afraid of : ending up having a hardcore panic attack of a severity not possible for someone in a calm resting state.
That’s where the deep animal fear comes from. Nature in its wisdom responds to situations that make us that scared by saying, whatever brought that on, DO NOT DO IT AGAIN UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.
Even if it’s something that poses no actual danger at all.
Like, say, going for a nice walk.
I’m still terrified to do it in case I end up in the Bad Place I described.
So if I am to get into exercising at all, I will have to come up with some very, very gentle way to get into it that doesn’t potentially trigger panic at all.
Yeah. Good luck with that.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.