i've been making progress for the first time in years
I lived a relatively standard life for a long time. Then I went independent, had a taste of success, then failed and moved home into my dad's. My mental health had been bad for sometime, had been declining for some time. But then I opted out of work & most productivity for a few years.
Then in 2018 I became politically aware (Aljazeer had a piece about refugees & the U.S.'s refusal to take very many), and I became angry, and I became extremely motivated.
This was the beginning of years of massive personal growth, a huge shift in my perspective on the world, and intense ups & downs.
Over the years that followed, my project-of-choice changed many times. But long-story-short: Get a big idea. Go full steam ahead. Crash, burn. Start again.
Some ideas were successful in ways, some were utter disappointments. The success/failure of each project isn't really the point, though.
During this time, the MESS of my life just continually piled up. Paperwork I didn't file. Physical clutter in my home that I wasn't taking care of. Progressive decline of both my physical and mental health.
This came to a tee in late twenty-twenty-THREE. I put down my project at the time (local journalism), and fell into the deepest depression of my life, the most suicidal I'd ever been.
The first four months of 2024 were awful. Just daily unhappiness. Even through many cycles of mania & burnout, many bouts of depression, many struggles of anxiety, there had been some steady level of contentment with life - not every day, but generally speaking. These four months were not that way.
I had talked to my therapist about my suicidal feelings. They'd long been around occasionally. Suicidal ideation was a normal part of my life. And generally it didn't scare me, it had no power, and I knew it wasn't what I really wanted. And she said that "I want you to be around".
I took this seriously, and it is perhaps one of the most important individual things anyone has ever said to me.
For the first time in years, perhaps in my life, I respected what my mind & body were telling me - that I was suffering and needed to change things.
So I put down that local journalism project. I put down all projects. The next dozen or so times a BIG IDEA would come to me, I'd say "No, I can't do that". I just started trying to care for myself.
I wasn't very good at it, and I had a lot of years of harmful behavior to recover from.
It's now been about two years since that depressive episode ended. It has not been without its struggles.
First of all, basic things I'm decent at now: I brush my teeth every day, have daily activity, weekly workout, and very little chronic pain any more (I had a lot of pain for a long time, primarily due to inactivity). I'm okay at doing laundry and keeping my room clean. The depression messes still happen sometimes, but they're generally not that severe when they do.
I still have ups & downs. Periods of higher productivity & periods of relative burnout, but they're mild. They're manageable. And since I'm not committed to any big responsibilities, I don't have to push myself through the downs and further exacerbate the problem.
So, the progress.
For many years, probably since 2018 or 2019, I've had a sort of list of things that I need to do. A list that was always-getting-longer. I wrote it down sometimes, tried to organize it, tried to plan, but then would never make any progress. Things just kept piling up (both metaphorically and physically) and the list got longer, and I got more overwhelmed.
But I've been making progress on that list lately. I'm not writing it down - I refuse to at this point, because it is just overwhelming & I'd rather move with my whims, move with ease, than put all that pressure on myself.
I cleaned up my basement quite a lot. There's still much mess to sort through, but it is mostly organized into two different buckets (totes, actually): Tool-related stuff & non-tool stuffs.
I cleaned out my shed. I gave away most my extra yard-related tools (extra rake, shovels, etc). There was also just hella old junk in there, piled up. The shed was practically unuseable, and now it is SO NICE.
I cleaned up my work bench in the basement & sorted tools. I sorted my toolbox. I hung some tools on the wall. Still much work to do here, but it is an organized endeavor now, rather than a literal pile.
It wasn't ever so much that I was a hoarder. It's that I didn't have the mental and emotional capacity to DO THE WORK. But lately I have had that capacity, at least on some days.
I worked on my bike - mainly the chain just needed lube, but I had to do troubleshooting & learn things to figure out how easy this actually was to deal with. It's 10 times better to ride now.
I put up a shelf in my room (next to my computer) to put my printer on. (The printer will not last forever. Eventually the ink will dry up because I never use the thing, and I will refuse to buy new ink. I will refuse to buy a new printer. I will just go back to printing at the library for 15 cents a page. But then I'll have a nice shelf still.)
I've started building storage shelves for all my excess lumber, and I actually trust that I'll follow through. It sounds like a new task, but it's actually just a step toward finishing a long-standing task - sorting my lumber & making it accessible.
There's still so much to do. So many other things. But my list of things TO DO is actually getting shorter. For the first time in years. I'd say this progress began within the last 6 months.
It's a fantastic feeling.
I still take on new stuff sometimes. Bestie moved to Germany, so I accumulated tons of her old stuff. That's new tasks. UGH. I took wood pallets from my Dad's burn pile to salvage wood frum. New tasks. UGH.
But the new tasks are manageable these days. Minor. Things I'm excited for. Things I want to do. Things I have the capacity to do, even if progress will be slow.
I hope ... I hope that I can slowly-but-surely work through everything, get my house & my life into a nice state. I want to get to a point where, if I don't have any plans for two or three days, I just get bored because i have LITERALLY NOTHING TO DO at home. No more tasks. All caught up on everything.
I want to get to that place. And then I'll start thinking about my next steps. Until then, I'm just going to try to care for myself, move my life forward slowly but surely, and enjoy time with my friends.
Not everybody has these luxuries. I'm extremely privileged & grateful. I live with my mom & she pays all the bills. My grandma pays the costs associated with my pickup truck (insurance, registration, repairs). My Dad owns the house my mom & I live in, so there's no rent - just property taxes.
I'm also quite poor. I can't go out to eat when I want. I struggle to afford basic necessities like underwear and socks (though I'm doing okay on these things right now). Buying lube for my bike chain was stressful. Etc Etc.
But anyway. Well. Not anyway. Really, that's all.
Have a great day.