zeptember

Good news and bad news.

The good news:

October 16 (starting weight): 154lbs (70kg)
October 23: 153lbs (69kg)
October 30: 152lbs (69kg)
A pound a week! All because I am severely limiting refined sugar intake. Most of the stuff I’m eating is sugar free. I’m barely even touching sugar substitutes, cuz it tends to mess with my emotions. I do eat natural sugars found in Organic Food Bar (in the form of dried fruits), and I eat organic cane juice as found in my gluten free breakfast cereal (Peanut Butter Panda Puffs! - which I don’t eat every day).

The bad news is that I’m back to anxiety dreams about work, wherein it’s 2am and I need to be up by 5:30am.
Only, in reality, I went to bed like a good girl at 10pm.
*sigh*

Time to finish getting ready for work.

Friday at work turned out to be all right. When I got home, I was so happy that I had an entire weekend, finally. We watched Sean of The Dead that night.

Saturday was jam-packed with fun!
I put some clothes on hold at Mervyns (forgot my department store card), I bought new Dickies pants at the army surplus store, some friends met us and we went to the local specialty Halloween store, and from there, we drove over 40 miles just to go have sushi! Well, two reasons for that: it’s my favourite sushi joint and I wanted to celebrate the new job and first paycheck, AND we had tickets to tour through the Winchester Mystery House by flashlight! There were seven of us friends, but we were stuck having to tour with a group numbering a total of 25. That meant we were stuck with teenagers. Blech. Not only that, the tour guide was herself either a teen or in her early twenties, and sounded like a valley girl, and dressed something like Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Xena Warrior Princess. As a matter of fact, lots of people felt the need to dress in Halloween costumes to tour the mansion by flashlight. I have no idea if it’s just because it’s so close to Halloween, or if people do this every time there’s a scheduled flashlight tour. In either case, I found them to be retarded.
But I still enjoyed touring the house with my friends! I’m happy to know that I’m still creeped out by the same spaces in that house, no matter day or night when I tour the place (I’ve toured it three times now). This makes me want to research the house and its hauntings further.

We got home around midnight, but then realised we had to set our clocks back an hour to end Daylight Savings Time.

I was so tired, but then, for some reason, I got a burst of energy. Weird. So I started tidying up and planning for what the house altar will look like. That finished me off for the night, and I slept soundly.
While I had weird dreams, I’ll have you know I did NOT dream of work!!!
Woohoo!!

Today I spent most of the day doing laundry and cleaning house and putting up more of our spo0ky décor. I’d call it Halloween déor, but we keep it up year ’round. :p

While I went about my day, I started hearing a scrub jay outside, and I remembered that I’d been wanting to update you on what sort of critters we have near the new place. We moved to our new abode in early July, and since that time, I’ve been hearing scrub jays as well as the familiar mourning dove that I used to hear back at the old apartment.
We also have black squirrels in the neighborhood, but not near our house, cuz our house has a plethora of cats roaming in and around it. Of the six units in this old Victorian, at least four are occupied by cats, and of those four units, three of them have indoor-outdoor cats. Ours is the only unit to have indoor-only cats.

My legs are SO sore from all the walking and standing I’ve done over the last two days. Clearly I do not get enough exercise through the week, what with all the commuting and sitting at a desk at work all day. I’m going to have to hook my bike up on the trainer in the Kitchen to get some winter exercise.

I don’t mean to ruin my own fun, but I realised today that my need to clean and organise is a precursor to george. He’ll be here around November 8th. So I’m 11 days out. Gotta start takin’ better care of my diet and health from now til then. Although I was good to myself last week and popped lots of Vitamin C and Zinc tabs as soon as I started getting a sore throat after all that overtime work and exhaustion.

Oh and as of yesterday, we’re officially in Mercury Retrograde. I need to watch my tongue and my attitude, my spending habits, and my tendency to overshare during Mercury retrograde. Pay attention, zept!!!

Getting back to the subject of Halloween for a moment… this year I WANT to stay close to home. I think it’s the first time ever that I don’t feel the need to be at some big party somewhere. We have the option to hang out at a nearby friend’s house and pass candy out to the kids, so I may do that. Afterwards, I’m content to be at home and focus on the coming year and what I expect of myself.

Although I no longer believe in deities, I do still celebrate Halloween Pagan-style, which is to say that Halloween is my New Year’s Eve.
So tonight was rather relaxing for me to finally set up our house altar. It needs some finishing touches by my boyfriend, as it’s a shared altar.

And with that, it’s time to curl up with a good book.

I wonder how long it will be before I snap on this job, too.

I wonder if I’ll just stop working and trying all together.

The past 11 days have been very stressful on me. I’ve:

* Started a new job - this was stressful from a social viewpoint because I’m so afraid of people.

* Cashed the loan my dad gave me because I hit financial crisis again. I’ve already discussed why taking money from my father creates panic for me.

* Started omitting sugar again - this caused me to become agitated, but I felt I had no choice - I had to do this with starting the new job, in another effort to see if I can reduce my monthly pain before my next period - my first period on this new job. I cannot afford to be out of work for up to three days in a row on this new job. They are not understanding like my last job was.

* Had to adjust to a much earlier bedtime and rising time - I’ve already gone on at length about this one. And no, I’ve still not adjusted to the hours.

* Had to prove my technical abilities to untrusting co-workers because I’m female. In getting some help with a customer issue, two of my male co-workers asked me to look at my screen resolution to replicate the problem. One guy asked, “Do you know how to do that? Go to your desktop…”
I wanted to kill him. I silently went through the procedure though, showing him I knew what I was doing.
My bf said to not chalk it up to sexism, that perhaps my teammate was just trying to guage my abilities. On THAT?!? The most basic of things? Why would I be hired for tech support if I didn’t know how to do that?
So the next day, the same co-worker was being moved to a new cube to sit with the team he’s actually on. He declared that there was too much estrogen in our cube (shared by four people total, three of whom are women).
Point. Proven.

* Been terrified of being fired because I can’t seem to remember basic tech support techniques when they’re called for. Mostly because my brain forgets so much, which I honestly believe is brain damage from my car accident in 1994 where my head bowed out the windshield. I am smart. I am technical. But I do have brain injury which impedes things. Give me a minute, I’ll remember. I can look it up - I know this.
Will the workplace be patient with me, not knowing about this condition, which hasn’t even been proven cuz I still have yet to see a neurologist?

* Had nightmares nearly every night since starting the new job, with the last three nights’ worth being dreams of me working tech support all night long. I wake up trying to figure out how to help the latest customer on the phone…in my head.

I want to know when I can relax. I want to know when I will feel confident on this job and not feel afraid of being fired for incompetence because I feel I’m not ramping up quick enough.

I want to know if I’ll make it through okay.

You know how sometimes you just want a fast meal? And you go and buy something frozen or you go to a drive-through “restaurant”?

Last night, I just wanted something fast. I had bought two small frozen quiches earlier yesterday to have at work for a late breakfast, but never had the chance to eat them (and I’d brought other food for lunch).

So when I got home, I was dead tired, and I popped the quiches in the microwave.

I peeled off the yeast-ladden crust and dug out the egg/cheese portion, ate, and went to bed.

Well, apparently peeling off the pie crust is not good enough.
I still somehow ingested pie crust, and within a few hours, was awoken by intestinal pain that made me whimper, and an immediacy to get to the toilet.
I’m glad it was only one round of painful intestinal madness which also drove me to nausea.

I’d love to update you on other stuff, including the job, but I have no time. Gotta go to work, now.

One week weigh-in: 153lbs

I lost 1lb.

I’ve not been abstaining from sugar or booze very well. But, at least trying!

So my first week on the new job turns out to be a 12-day work week.

I’ve worked seven straight days (today was a half day, I should be thankful) so far. I go back for the next week’s worth of work tomorrow, and I’d better get next Saturday and Sunday off, or else I’ll need to be committed to a mental hospital.

I’ve already had two breakdowns this week at home, and two bouts with bad anxiety at work over being in a new social environment. Nobody but me knew what was going on, but it happened.

I’ve seen some really beautiful sunrises and sunsets, but it’s been from my car while driving in commute traffic.

By day three, I had an image in my head playing over and over while I tried to beat the sun up on the way to work: the part in the movie Shadow Of The Vampire, where Count Orlock discovers a movie projector, looks in the eye piece, and sees a moving black and white image of a sunrise flashing before his eyes.

After that image in my head, I’d catch a real full colour sunrise, and always wonder if, like being turned into a vampire, it would be my last.
So depressing.

I got the loan from my father, which I had to deposit into my bank account because I was near negative again.

Day four on the new job was panic mode, because they’d lost a piece of hardware in the data center. Apparently this single failure caused upwards of 70,000 customers to be without service, which royally pissed them off, because they’re trying to run their own businesses off of this company’s backbone.
I and customers alike began to wonder why the hell there was no mirror - no redundancy - no failover in place?

Because they’re stupid?

Eh, well, they’re paying me assloads of overtime, which I need because I’m massively in debt after taking two loans to get by. I didn’t want to work Saturday and Sunday. I could have said no. But I’m sure they’d have told my recruiter not to have me back on Monday if I did say no. That’s how it works - “you are asked, not forced”, they say. But if you say no, you get a bad review, passed over for a raise, and/or let go shortly afterwards. I know the drill.

I get up at 5am. I leave for work at 6:40am. I arrive at work by 7:45 or 8am depending on traffic. I leave work at 5pm. I get home by 6:15 - 6:30pm depending on traffic. I have from 6:30pm until 10pm each night to eat dinner, do chores, prepare food for the next day, and go to bed. That’s three and a half hours, with no relaxation time. I’ve been having nightmares about sleeping through my alarm clock, or of people shouting at me to wake up, or of people creating a lot of noise which wakes me up and has me becoming violent in these nightmares.

I found out today that the manager in my cube drives from Vallejo, which is much further north and east than I even live. So her daily drive must be 2-3 hours each way.

Oh, yeah and each cube has an appointed manager to eyeball the three workers in the cube to make sure they’re all dutifully plugging away at support calls and emails.

Regarding the diet, to sum up, this week I:

• eliminated refined sugar
• added sugar substitute in low doses
• reintroduced red meat into my diet with no complications (I was nearly there when I started eating small pieces of sausage last month - I just finally went and bought half a pound of deer meat and went for it)
• I’m still drinking hard liquor as a coping mechanism (one shot or one small glass w/ ice)
• I’m still drinking wine as well (1-2 glasses)

So my depression is magnified by dietary changes, I’m sure.

Also, today two of my friends got married. I was supposed to be there at noon but I had to work til noon. I didn’t get home til 1pm. There was a voicemail from my boyfriend saying the ceremony didn’t start til 1pm so he hoped to see me.

…

And I hadn’t eaten since 8am.

…

Needless to say, here I am, not at the wedding. I’m so tired that my body is shakey. You know - that “so-tired-i-could-cry” feeling.

And yet my foot won’t stop bouncing. Prolly from the coffee I had at breakfast (which I never do because it fucks with my blood sugar, but I’m in a lose-lose situation this week anyway). Awake and sugar crashing or Moody and tearful and eyes drooping?

Yeah.

Oh and Mercury is going retrograde next week.
According to astrologycom.com, “Mercury retro in Scorpio inclines to a sharp, sarcastic tongue. People generally tend to be bold and stubborn, headstrong and difficult to get along with. Knowledge and information is equated with power and secrecy. Confusion arises over secret matters that come to light and misguided information deriving from those who cling stubbornly to their opinions. Mysticism and the occult are in the news, scarily so! People are more quarrelsome, skeptical and cynical, hanging on to opposing views and often sarcastic to others. Sexual advances and sexually coloured statements are more likely to be misconstrued.

The emotional influence of Scorpio sharpens our instincts, but makes us less sympathetic. Secrets will come to light, often to the discomfort of those concerned. It is not a good time for surgery.”

Just FYI is all. Do not take literally. Use as advanced warning and a guide to what COULD go wrong, and find ways to prevent it. That is all.

Good night.

I woke up this morning and wanted to cry because it was so early. Today was day three of getting up at 5am. I take about an hour and a half to get ready because I shower and prepare both breakfast and lunch for the day. Then it takes me just over an hour to get to work.

I watched the sun rise in my rearview mirror just after crossing the Dumbarton Bridge on my way to work. I even made it to work a little early.

On the way to work though, my iPod played a song by the punk band Blood For Blood, music which my friend graciously gifted me with recently. The song touched a sensitive spot and left me near tears so early in the morning. I struggled to find happy music for the rest of the way to work.

I got to work and felt like I might have a panic attack at any moment. This feeling lasted through most of the morning, coupled with consistent hypoglycemia. By early afternoon, the panic dissolved a little to high anxiety, and I bounced my feet as frantically as I used to do when on anti-depressants. The energy had to go somewhere.

The hypoglycemia lasted all day, no matter what I did. I had no sugar. Is that what’s causing it? I had lots of protein today, WTF.

It took me an hour and a half to get home from work, and I watched the sun set as I drove over one of the small bridges onto the island.
Home at last?
Not quite. My car was running on fumes, so I went to the gas station.

Then I checked the mail - the money arrived from my father. I stared depressingly at the envelope. I didn’t want to open it. I came inside and did my budget and realised that I will in fact run out of money again before next week after the bills clear.

I’ve also been mildly freaking out each morning about what to wear to work, because I lost so much weight and never had any money to rebuild my wardrobe, so my clothes are all huge on me. I look like a slob. I can pull my jeans and dress pants down without unbuttoning or unzipping them. Belts seem to only make it look worse.

So, since I have money on the Mervyns card, I went to Mervyns tonight and spent over an hour trying on jeans for both genders. I came home with a pair of men’s jeans, size 31 waist. I used to be a 34-36 back in April of this year.

The dress pants I bought back in June or July were size 12 and within a month were too big on me. But all the dress pants at Mervyn’s right now suck ass. I hate the fashions.

I felt faint several times in the store. It was because I hadn’t eaten dinner. I had the opportunity to eat, but I was too depressed to want to eat anything.
When I came home from the store, my stomach protested, but I was still too depressed. I started to question myself:
Are you depressed because of money issues?
Or Are you depressed because you haven’t eaten dinner?
Or Are you depressed because you’ve been hypoglycemic all day?
Or Are you depressed because you’ve cut refined sugar out of your diet?
Or Are you depressed because of reintroduction of small amounts of sugar substitutes such as Splenda and Aspartame?
Or Are you depressed because of the social awkwardness at work?
Or Are you depressed because of the long commute to and from work?
Or Are you depressed because of that song this morning?
Is it all of the above? (yes)

Which one maybe brought it out more? (likely the hypoglycemia)

So…I’ve eaten a bowl of cereal with some unsweetened vanilla rice milk, and a few bites of venison, and some chamomile tea.

Did I tell you I didn’t get sick the other night when I tried red meat again? More dietary options are a good thing.

So, at least I’m no longer teary-eyed because I’ve journaled and I’ve eaten a tiny bit, and I have a new pair of jeans and two sweaters that I know I can return if I really start to freak again over money, and I have a loan from my dad that will more than help me out, as soon as I stop feeling like such a failure and cash the damned thing.

Oh look, and now it’s 10pm. Time for bed. I think I want to cry again.

Yeah, the commute really IS killing me. But why? Can’t my body adjust to 5am? Perhaps I will adjust in another couple of weeks, eh?

I really have no choice.

Aha.

THAT is why I’m so goddamned depressed.

I feel I have no choice.

In reality, I do have choices, but they wouldn’t be pleasant for my boyfriend. And we really are a unit - he MUST be in my life and I feel he’d be just as lost without me. We want to be married someday. So everything I do has to mesh with his life. I feel I cannot drastically reduce my life and belongings and ask for a smaller apartment to live in because this will negatively impact the relationship. And I don’t want that. It’s different from how I used to feel in previous relationships. This isn’t codependency.
I WANT to be in this partnership for life. I WANT to keep things going smoothly. I DON’T feel stepped on or taken advantage of or put down.

But hmmm, there will have to be more talk of what my finances can and cannot do. Continuing to pay halfsies may no longer be an option if I don’t clean up my act and make damned sure I stick with this job and get the money flowing in.
If I lose this job…

…Hell. Bad things would happen.

It occurred to me this month that I may never have in this journal or my old one explained my social anxiety issues properly.

Well, I’m drunk now, so you’re still not going to get a proper answer.

HAHAHAHAHA..

*ahem*

Anyway, today was a perfect example of my social phobia in action - at the workplace.

I had to sit with several people today to listen to their tech support calls. The last guy of the day whom I sat with, I struck up conversation with. It was job-related, but at one point, my face flushed when I couldn’t recall a simple word to use in context of the conversation.

This happens often - ever since my car accident in 1994, I find it difficult to remember simple, everyday words. For example, TV remote might become “that clicky thing over there” as I gesture clicking a remote at the TV.
Today’s word to get stuck on was “firewall”. Not very impressing to one’s coworkers when on the third day of the job. There were four of us in the cube. Everyone turned to look at me as I struggled to find the right word.

Cue what happened next.

Blushing happens to me often, too, whenever I feel I’ve become the center of attention, because I’m shy and introverted.

Add to this the fact that the guy I sat with is “cool looking” to me - a ’scooter kid’ my friend P would say. He’s got the blue jeans rolled at the ankles, the flannel shirt, and the pompadour hairdo with sideburns, only his do is spiked. Not directly my subculture, but there’s overlap between the two.

So the way my mind works (on overtime, natch) is this:

The guy I was sitting with saw me all flustered and blushing. He may interpret this incorrectly and think that I am smitten with him. Ditto with the other guys in the cube - they may tease him later about it. It’s happened to me before on a job.

This in turn leads me to internally freak out over how to put things right, but how do I explain social anxiety, especially as a new person on the job?!?!???

This is not limited to gender, mind you.

This happened to me a few times when I worked at the optometrist’s office with both males and females. The straight females just had a look like they wondered what was wrong with me. The gay females either also blushed back or acted more butch.
So I know people are misinterpreting me, which makes me feel sorry for my blushing, which makes me blush more….etc…and as soon as I am out of the situation or the person leaves, I am frantic and twitchy and ready to start with my babble tic.

The babble tic also started after my car accident in 1994. I hit the windshield with my head going greater than 50 M.P.H. upon impact. I bowed out the windshield with my head. So I know I have neurological damage. And this is how it manifests: tics and forgetting names for everyday items. There’s names for this stuff but I’m too tipsy to research and it’s past my bedtime already.

I have weak control over the babble tick these days. I can reduce it to a whisper, but it still occurs. The babble sounds at times Slavic, Latino, or Chinese, but mostly Slavic.
One day, when I have REALLY good insurance, I will get a full neurological assessment and begin therapy. But that’s a pipe dream.

So that was today’s stress on the job: social anxiety.

Otherwise, I’m a seemingly normal person. People don’t sense anything’s wrong. But I’m the one freaking out.

Now it all makes sense why I drink too much, yes?

I forgot to mention my ’starting weight’ for my latest round of diet modification. I’m starting off at 154lbs (approx 70kg).

Last spring, I cut out caffeine and ALL sugars all at once. This time, I’m being nicer to myself and just eliminating refined sugar to start, so I don’t have a mental breakdown within a week like I did back in April.

I’m still ecstatic that I’ve held steady at 154 since my springtime massive weight drop from 184lbs.

The reason I’m cutting sugar, if I’ve not stated it 83452482345 times already (cuz I tend to obsess like that), is to eliminate my chronic depressions once more. It’s okay to be upset or have anxiety over job and financial instability. It’s *not* okay to get suicidal over such things. That is chronic depression back in my life again. And I just gave the bitch the boot. Again.

I’m also taking vitamins: B, C, Calcium, Multi.

I’m also eating lots of yams and bok choy and fish again.

Oh and it helps that I’m officially re-employed, but still. For me, I know sugar is teh evil.

Last night I went to bed super early (before 11pm) because until training is over, I have to be at work at 8am.

Which means I have to wake up by 5am. The commute is just over an hour each way.

So last night I dreamt all night that I was being awakened prematurely by my boyriend or outside interferences, and I was VERY pissed off in my dreams.

Woke up this morning with stiff shoulders/neck from all the stress.