Spoiled Only Child

Midnight rambler

I've been plotting this post in which I say, Guess what???!!! I've slept without a sleeping pill for an entire week! I am finally putting that little insomnia incident behind me. Yes, it took eight months, but I am no pussy. I was not going to let that shit beat me. I win! I am woman, hear me roar! ...

But I made it to four nights, and now here I am on the couch. It's night two of not sleeping and, after tossing and turning for long enough that I could tell it wasn't going to happen, taking the damned pill. Sigh. I had pretty much decided that, if I needed a little pill with no side effects to sleep normally, that there really were much bigger problems in life. I was just going to accept it. But then, after a couple months of getting by on my doctor's generous bags of free samples, I went to the pharmacy to fill the prescription for the new pills she put me on. And it was $50 for 20 pills. That works out to $2.50 a day. No fucking way. So my resolve to get off them was renewed. And I've done surprisingly well. Until the past couple nights, when I am back to my old tricks again. Very disappointing, but I should not be worrying about it because...

I gave up worrying for lent. I wasn't going to give up anything this year, but then I was on facebook and I happened to see a comment from a guy who said he was giving up paying the mortgage and going to work. Obviously, that was a joke, but it inspired me to quip back. "Great idea, I think I'll give up worrying." And then I was struck by a bolt of lightning. What if I really did give up worrying for lent? Of course, a life without worry is impossible. But what if you just gave yourself permission not to do it for a set period of time? Anything stressful happens and you just say, well, fuck it, I'm not allowed to worry right now. And maybe I finish lent with the realization that worry has been accomplishing nothing in my life, that I can let go of it and still function in the world. That I can have a problem, and I can seek a solution to that problem, without obsessively worrying over it.

I think we all (or at least I) go around with the impression that worry is somehow necessary to life, that it  keeps you safe and keeps you moving and looking for solutions. I mean, only acid-crazed hippies who live on the beach and root through dumpsters for food don't worry, right? Worry is what separates us from the apes — and the losers. But I think the reality is that all it does is weigh us down. I can not sleep and piss and moan and work myself into a state about how tired I'm going to be tomorrow. Or I can just sit here quietly and say, well, my body doesn't want to sleep. So let's write that rambling nonsensical blog post I've been meaning to put up. So I have a chronic insomnia problem. So fucking what. More time for reading, writing bullshit on the internet, medidating. Ha! Take that, insomnia.

Obviously, I'm not achieving my goal entirely because I would probably be sleeping right now if I hadn't allowed worries about whether I was going to be able to sleep to creep in. But I'm doing my best. And tomorrow, I plan to have a little ceremony wherein I release my worries to the universe, and I'm planning to write about it here and even include a photograph (my first blog photograph!) of my silly little ritual. But it's only silly if you believe it is, so I think I'll call it a Profound and Life Changing Ritual.

OK, this is becoming less coherent by the minute so I'm going to cut it off here. It is paining me not to have a pithy ending, but the harder I try for one the more addled I begin to sound. So I ... (gets pulled offstage by giant hook.)

Parenting 101

I think I have reached a more stable level of mental breakdown now. Economy sucks, no bottom in sight, job might go away, few other prospects, don't know how we'll manage if I lose my job, what is my future?, what is the future of our country? ... all of that has receded to a sort of fuzzy background noise for the moment. It's always there, but it's low-level enough to allow me to get on with life. Although I have become rather obsessed with figuring out how to save money on beer. And yes, I know, stop drinking it is really the easiest solution to that problem. But it's not going to happen.

In other news, I just finished a parenting course. Just the words "parenting course" are enough to make people who don't have children, or who still have compliant little babies, roll their eyes. But any of us who knows how wily and difficult children can actually be, I hope, understands the need for such a thing. Anyway, it was wonderful. I am already seeing Mia respond to many of the techniques, which center around abandoning the idea of punishment. Discipline is not about making your child suffer for her bad behavior, it's about teaching her the correct behavior. We were instructed to tell our children what they should do, rather than what they shouldn't, tell them what good can come of doing the right thing, rather than what bad can come of misbehavior.

Above all, the teachers said, express your belief that the child can do what you ask, that you believe in them, that if they fail you will give them another chance to get it right. (If they don't do what your ask, say, "I bet you can do it next time.") Now, when Mia balks at doing what I ask, I say "I know you can do it!" And she often goes and does it. Then I make a big deal about how proud I am. The other morning, I forgot to praise her after she picked up her own toy and she said, "What were you going to say to me?" Confused, I asked, "What do you want me to say to you?" And she said, "I knew you could do it." It's working! Should have taken this course before birth to avoid spending all this time screwing it up.

Time out

It seems I'm not doing all that well with the recent bad news at my workplace. I can't even put my finger on exactly what it is I'm feeling. I just know that I am not at my most stable or optimistic right now, despite all my best attempts to talk myself out of this funk.

At home, I feel the drudgery of a life in which we're no longer allowed to go out to dinner or plan vacations or purchase anything not absolutely necessary weighing on my shoulders. I want to go skiing, and I sulk like a child that we're having our first good ski weather in years, and we can't afford to go. I want to see the good in hunkering down, spending the next year or two focused on family and home, exploring my own state rather than planning trips to California, trying to find ways to live our day-to-day lives with a sense of adventure. I want to be thankful that we have so much more than many, that we have supports that will hold us up even if the worst happens, that we have our health and each other. Instead I am resentful, wishing for more than I have, looking for someone to blame. Most often, I blame myself.

At work, I cannot force myself to do anything but the bare minimum. My brain turns to mush the minute I walk into the building. The wasted days drag on for months, years. I think sometimes that I cannot go on in this place, that too much has gone wrong here here, that it can never be right again. I fear that I lack the courage to make the changes I need. These thoughts defeat me, because what choice do I have in this economy but to hang on to what I have? My co-workers' talk about our dying business, and what should be done to save it, swirls around my head like fog. I don't  want to think about any of it. I just want to sit and look at useless shit on the internet. It's all too much for me.

Today, I am taking a time-out. I called in sick to work. (In my defense, I am headachey and scratchy throated, in addition to being mentally ill.) I'm not going to figure anything out, or go over our budget, or make a plan to cheer myself up. I've done all that more times than I can count in the past two weeks. I am going to spend my day knitting, reading a book, relaxing on my front porch, sitting quietly with myself and accepting. It is what it is.

Life in the new economy

I'm having a bit of a freakout over here. On Thursday, my boss announced that our company's financial situation has deteriorated even further and the next round of layoffs, etc., is in the offing. Now, this announcement should not have come as a surprise. For months, whenever I mention where I work, I add a wry little "for now." Of course, more layoffs were coming down the pike, I would have been foolish to think anything else. But it still hit me like a punch in the gut. I think it was the tone of the meeting. The boss actually used the words "fighting for our survival," and he said that our financial picture was bleaker, in many ways, than it has ever been before. He compared our circumstances to those of the Great Depression (although I would argue, for reasons I won't get into here, that they're probably worse.) He essentially told us that, for at least the next year, working at this place is going to resemble hanging onto a leaky lifeboat in a hurricane in the middle of the ocean. Even for those of us not thrown off the boat or eaten by starving shipmates, pay cuts appear likely.

Now that I write it down, I can see why this news has panicked me just a bit. I mean, here I am, the girl who looked for a job for more than a year when the economy was a hell of a lot better than this — and couldn't find one. Now, unemployment in my region, typically a prosperous one, is the highest since 1972 and rising. My motivation for restarting my job search under those conditions is nil. Essentially, I'm sitting on this lifeboat without even a life preserver or a bucket to bail with. I am truly going down with the ship.

For the past several days, my mind has been running in circles. Can we keep our house without my salary? OK, if we cut out every unnecessary expense, take Mia out of preschool, dump our gym membership and our cable and our internet and our newspaper subscriptions and our cell phone and never eat out or take a vacation or even a weekend away and quit saving for retirement, or saving anything at all, and quit drinking beer and start buying Folgers coffee, we can probably swing it. OK. I feel a little better, knowing we could, even though I sort of want to throw myself off a bridge when I think about life without all those things. And then I remember the health insurance costs and realize, there's no fucking way we can do this. Shit. So then I think, well, what are the chances I would lose my job and all my unemployment and severance would run out, and I still wouldn't have found anything at all? Not that good. So I decide that my income will probably just be diminished but not eliminated. So I start thinking about what budget cuts we could make. But everything I decide to get rid of, there is some argument against. Get rid of internet service and use the laptop at the library. But fuck, there is a high schooler in this house who actually needs internet service to do much of his homework. And on and on and on.

Underlying all of this is the feeling that something fundamental in my life has shifted. That we have officially reached the point when we are no longer moving forward, that some dark hand has grabbed ahold of us, and is now pulling us back. I care about money not because I care about material possessions. I could care less about owning new cars or fancy clothes. What I want is the access to experiences that money brings. It lets you eat great food, see the world, ski down steep mountains, hear music, lie on the beach, sail through crystal blue water, have date night with your spouse, drink martinis at sunset. I am now left with the feeling that all that is lost to me. The era of fun is over, replaced by the age of survival. I often find myself thinking mournfully about the beautiful rocky windswept coast of California, wondering if I'll ever get to see it again.

What I need here is to get a grip. Last night it occured to me that, in the past two years, our household income has risen by about $10,000. And before we had that money, we really weren't any less happy than we are now. We still took vacations and drank good beer and ate well and enjoyed all the comforts of the middle class. So, perhaps we really could live a happy life even on less income. Some of our lofty plans, like buying a nice big sailboat, might be pushed off. We might have to spend a year or two hunkering down, drinking Yuengling and not taking the kinds of trips we fantasize about. But none of these things translate to: YOU MUST SPEND THE REST OF YOUR LIFE WORKING IN A SLAUGHTERHOUSE. We also have the support of a very generous family, and if things ever got truly desperate, I'm sure they would not let us be thrown onto the street. We really are going to be OK. Yes, the lifeboat is leaking, but I need to learn to trust that it is not going to sink. And that even if it does, I know how to swim.

What I need to remind myself is that there is joy just in the living of regular life. You don't have to be on vacation or eating a $100 meal to be happy. You can be happy wrestling your kid on the living room floor, playing a board game, watching a movie on the couch, taking a hike through your neighborhood. But it is so easy to get caught up in the chores and the worrying that we forget to enjoy it. Can anyone give me tips? How do you find happiness in these humdrum days of dishes and bill-paying and toddler temper tantrums and grocery shopping and all the rest?