I have this habit of observing my own behaviour. (Who doesn’t? Isn’t the ability to reflect on our own actions part of what makes us human?)

More to the point, I have this long-standing pattern of observing my behaviour and then beating myself up about it. I’d imagine this is pretty common among the human race, too. For me, it quite often didn’t matter what I was doing – beating myself up was a reflexive action. Like blinking.

And – again, I’m sure, like lots of others – I’ve spent years on end trying to break this habit. Trying to stop. Mostly what I’ve discovered over this time is that trying to stop beating myself up doesn’t really work that well. There are lots of methods to try to stop beating yourself up and I have made at least preliminary passes at most of them. Nothing’s worked, and nothing has even given me enough of a hint that it might work for me to pursue it seriously.

(We’ll talk another time about my scanner nature. Possibly after I’ve read the book about being a scanner.)

So: beating myself up is a habit I just can’t quit. If I said that my discovery is that I’ve stopped beating myself up entirely – well, that’d be a lie. The beat-me-up voices in my head are alive and well. But I’ve discovered that there is a new mode that’s asserting myself when I come across behaviour and thinking I don’t like.

Instead of thinking “ohgodI’msostupidandevilwhycan’tIjuststopdoingthatridiculousthing”, I’m starting to think, “Huh. I wonder what that’s about?”

Where did this come from?

Is it morning pages? (I notice that I’ve been practicing doing this in the morning pages.)

Is it spending lots of time with the Havis and Heidis and Hiros of the world? People who are all about the conscious-intentional-relationship-with-yourself, and about the curiosity, and about the spirituality.

What about all the other wonderful people I’ve met through that circle of “Havi people”? Is it down to them?

Was it going on retreat that sparked this shift?

Was it Dance of Shiva?

Was it just time for me to finally make this change?

It was something. Maybe it was a combination of all these things put together. Lots of little shifts, making up a big shift – one that I’m really pleased with and proud of.

I can’t say I’ve stopped beating myself up. Not by any stretch of the imagination. But I’ve discovered, after all this time, that I have another option.

And you know what else helps? The fact that I’m beginning to be able to just ask that question and not do any more. Asking the question doesn’t have to lead to a big, deep process of internal investigation. It might lead to a couple of insights, but similarly, it might not. Just asking the question is enough, and it’s important to acknowledge that. It’s important that the process of figuring out why I am the way I am doesn’t become a should in itself, because the moment it does is the moment I’ll start resisting it.

Right now, I’m just loving the fact that I can learn shit about myself. It’s kind of awesome.

So this is going to be a bit of a grab-bag post. I want to write a bit about where I am right now and what’s going on for me, and that means careering all over the shop a bit.

First thing to know: I’m doing The Artist’s Way, which is a “creative recovery course” laid out in a book by Julia Cameron. Because it’s me, I’m doing this in a rather slow, tentative, scared sort of way. And because of where I am right now (and I’m hoping this is going to be a trend!) I’m taking as good care of myself as is possible while I do it. Part of the course is what Cameron calls “morning pages”, which is three pages of journaling before you do anything else each morning.

I’m finding the morning pages pretty powerful and helpful.

In fact, the whole mission thing sort of came out of morning pages. The first thing that came out of morning pages was a concept I call Mad Planning Mode, which is a tool I’m using to fight the fog. (I might do a whole post on Mad Planning Mode later… but that’s not for today.) Mad Planning Mode is all about this series of goals I want to accomplish by my birthday. And the missions all pretty much revolve around my Mad Planning Mode goals.

In fact I’ve got used enough to Mad Planning Mode over the past few days that I’ve started referring to it as MPM in my mission notes and in my head. Kind of fun! I like having initialisms for stuff, for some reason. Perhaps it’s my long involvement in the internet and internet fandom, which has a strong tradition of reducing phrases to their first letters.

I’m back at my place today. This makes it a hard day, for a lot of reasons. Part of that is being away from my parents and the comfort of their house. (I’ve been staying with them for several months now, and the comfort is a big thing, as is the company. I’m not actually alone here today, but my housemate’s boyfriend is in another room and not that chatty.)

And part of it is the Horrid Awful Mess in here and the fact that I have come here to sort it out and it is oh-my-god-so-haaaaaard.

One advantage is that I know the sorting out is doable. I’ve been doing it in my bedroom at my parents’ for the last three weeks and I know that, at the very least, things can be put into boxes and the boxes sorted through. But I’m still looking at this room as it is right now and freaking out. Because there is so much to do.

It’s okay, though. I’m going to take my after-lunch nap pretty soon, and when I wake up, my first mission will be to open up the Mad Planning Mode folder and find the list of missions I prepared for sorting my room. Then I’ll pick a mission and get on with it.

I am starting to see that this mission method really works.

And there lies the most clichéd title for a post in the history of mankind. But whatever. I’m taking the standards off, remember?

Today I started a new experiment. I didn’t even realize before I started that I was playing with Havi’s Metaphor Mouse, but that’s totally what I’m doing. I don’t get along with to-do lists, so instead of to-do lists, I’m giving myself missions.

To give you an idea of how thrilling the missions are, Mission One was to get dressed, eat breakfast, and decide what Mission Two would be.

They’re not designed to be big, overwhelming missions. They’re designed to be little, doable missions. Mission: Possible, if you like. I’m on Mission Six now, and this part of the mission says “eat lunch and write a blog post”. I’m allowing myself an hour to write the blog post, and then I’m going to put it up, even if it’s crap (another part of taking the standards off the blog).

But the point is that even just calling it a mission instead of a to-do list kind of recasts it. And it recasts me a little bit, too.

Instead of a drudge, grinding through the boring shit I have to do (shop! Post a letter! Thrilling) I’m an adventurer. Everything comes with a tiny amount of pre-planning – not enough to scare me, just enough to know that I will have everything I need to do the task at hand. And because I’m on a mission (instead of just “doing boring thing number one thousand and eight-seven”) it’s all a bit more interesting.

It helps that I am trying to fight the fog by having some fairly concrete goals – on which, more in another post, perhaps – and that my missions are quite consciously focused on working towards accomplishing them. I’m spending a lot of time in planning mode, figuring out what’s next, what I want to achieve and how to get there. That feels good: a lot better than spending the morning on World of Warcraft.

Then again – it’s my history with World of Warcraft, and Dungeons and Dragons, and games of that nature, that make the mission thing so good for me. It wouldn’t be half as much fun metaphoring myself into an adventurer if I hadn’t spent so much of my life pretending to be one, if power fantasies and pretending to be the little girl with the huge axe wasn’t such a big part of my fun.

In real life, I’m not a little girl and I don’t have (or need!) a big axe. But it’s cool to cast myself as the hero of my own story. I’m not fighting to save the world against insurmountable odds, or anything. But I do have goals to get to and obstacles in the way, and I’m slowly working towards putting everything where it’s meant to be.

I think this “writing blog posts over lunch” might become a tradition. (I totally used to do that when I was working, actually.) It’s sort of cool.

And just so you know, here are the steps of Mission Seven, which is “Mission Get Blog Post Up”.

1. Find links to the places I have referenced in this post.
2. Copy and paste the post from Pages into Wordpress.
3. Check for spelling errors.
4. Hit Publish.
5. Tweet about my post.

After that, I think Mission Eight will revolve around taking a nap.

Oh, and this didn’t take even half an hour. So there, blogging-takes-too-much-time monsters.

So, ladies and gentlemen of the audience. I’m working on a new idea to get myself posting more often, and it’s this: I’m going to try to stop telling myself that this blog has to be Great Writing. Or even that it has to help people. I love that people read this, I really do, but if I’m obsessed with the idea that this blog has to be full of amazing insights, I’ll never write another post.

That’s partly because the nature of my depression (hi, there !) is that I don’t think anything I say is particularly insightful. And it’s partly because, while I’m glad when the occasional cool insight pops up, this is a process blog and it’s about… well, process.

Just a quick note to say that I am back from retreat with Havi and assorted wonderful people.

Seriously, the people. Every single one of them is so cool and I feel so lucky to have met them.

It was a crazy-intense, powerful, awesome week. I loved it. There was quite a lot of hard mixed in there. And an amazing amount of joy and laughter. The chance to interact with some messy, scary, twisty patterns and some obnoxious monsters and come out the other side, alive.

I’m going to try to get back into the pattern of blogging every day. Because that seemed to be good for me. (Hi.) But at the very least, I’m going to try to blog occasionally and not disappear for months on end.

It was a really great week and I’m sure stories about it will be popping up over the next… who even knows how long?

In the meantime, I’ve got lots to process. Also, it’s almost half past one in the morning and I’m exhausted, so I should maybe sleep.

Good night!

So over the last few days, I’ve discovered a TV show called The Big Bang Theory which you probably all had discovered long ago.

It’s interesting.

It’s kind of painful at times in terms of sheer recognition. There’s a moment in the first episode, for example when one of the central characters is knocked out of his (familiar and a little neurotic) routine by the new neighbour. Both his discomfort and the exasperation with which his discomfort is treated are familiar enough to me that it’s… well, kind of ouchy.

I promised myself that I wouldn’t be writing reviews of TV shows on this blog. So I’m going to reassure myself, and you, that this is not going to be me rambling on about The Big Bang Theory. Instead, I want to talk about a thing it got me thinking about.

One of the interesting things about the show is how it positions characters with regard to “normality”, and that’s got me thinking about normality and my own relationship to it. Where I am in relation to it. I have one of those love-hate relationships with the word “normal”.

On the one hand, I’m a freak and a geek and proud of it. Queer. Maybe autistic (that one’s still more on the side of hypothesis rather than proven fact). Too many masculine traits to be totally comfortable with the whole being a woman thing and too many feminine traits to want to be a guy. Fascinated by all kinds of bizarre things. Thoroughly bizarre (sometimes incomprehensible) sense of humour. Weird in all kinds of little ways.

So there’s a freak side of me, alive and well.

On the other hand, there is another part that desperately wants to be normal.

To have a normal body (ie, one that’s not fat or riddled with illness).

To have a normal job (even though I really don’t thrive in normal 9-to-5s).

To have a normal attitude to sex and a normal, loving relationship (not this absolute hard-line inability to fall in love things that makes me really sad).

To have a normal life. Whatever the hell that means.

So there’s a tension here, and it’s really hard to reconcile the two parts. Like: I honestly don’t see how to do it. I can’t be a freak and be normal at the same time. And I can’t just ditch one side or the other, and suddenly be totally comfortable with either being a total freak or being totally normal. Cannot. Do it. Not gonna happen.

So what are the needs behind these two strong desires?

The whole “I wanna be a freak” seem like the desire to be really me. To express all the bits of me, no matter how weird they are or how little they fit into normality’s stereotypes.

But I want to fit in, too, and that’s probably part of why I also feel this intense desire to be normal. I want to have a place where I fit, and people who really get me. Right now, it seems very hard to reach out to other people because there is an awful lot of explaining to do, and that’s hard work. I’m kind of bored of explaining myself to people.

(She says, on the blog that is all about the inner workings of her brain. But this is different somehow.)

I don’t really have a conclusion.

I’m interested in figuring out the next step.

I’m interested in working out if there is a place where I can fit in as me instead of having to tweak various bits of myself in order to be liked or accepted.

I’m interested in finding support and comfort, even if it does mean establishing routines that might look neurotic from the outside.

I’m interested in being more me. And listening more to what’s going on inside.

That comment thing that still doesn’t have a snazzy name.

This thing that is becoming the “usual thing” still applies: I really don’t want advice. Also, please don’t try to analyze what’s going on here.

I’d love to hear, though, your own experiences with being normal or otherwise. And with your wants and don’t-wants about normality and freakitude.

Also: I’m wondering if you guys who comment ever check back to see if I responded. (Even though you probably know by now that I’m not a comment-responding person.) If I were to respond to your comment, would you a) notice and b) care?

PS I was totally going to talk about Pace and Kyeli and The Freak Revolution but it didn’t go that way in the end. So I guess I’ll just link to them and talk about them some other time.

Today: a totally random collection of things I have been noticing. I’m not even going to try to give this a plan or a structure. I’m just going to write it!

• Yesterday, I gave an astrology session. Afterwards I was able to make a list of “things to work on for next time” without beating myself up that the session didn’t go 100% perfectly. This is definitely progress.

• I am always beating myself up for not having enough ideas. In fact, I even bought this to help me have more ideas (I haven’t really looked at it yet, but it seems awesome.) The other night, I noticed that part of my issues with sleeping is that as soon as I snuggle up in bed and close my eyes, my brain is filled with ideas for stuff.
• Of course, this is a totally useless time for my brain to turn on. But it gives me hope that maybe I can access the idea-generating bit of my brain when I’m, like, fully awake.
• I’m noticing a lot more when I am feeling angry and irritated. On the one hand, that’s probably a good thing if I want to start hanging out with my fire more. On the other hand, it’s really uncomfortable, and I’m finding that I don’t know what to do with it.
• Maybe there’s something in just being with the discomfort. Or possibly getting to know the angry bit of me a bit. I’ve been toying with keeping an “anger diary”, but then I could keep five million types of diary, and do nothing but write diaries all day.
• Maybe “write diaries all day” would be an improvement on “play WoW all day”, though?
• NB: I’m actually not playing WoW all day. I’m doing other stuff, too! I’m looking for things that cheer me up. I’m writing blog posts – definitely an improvement! I’m taking naps (good for me right now when I’m so tired all the time). I’m helping my parents with shopping. There is other stuff. So writing diaries all the time would actually not be all that helpful.
• I’ve recently discovered The Big Bang Theory – two years later than the rest of the world, of course! I just bought the first season from iTunes, and I’ve watched all of two episodes. It’s pretty awesome, though.
• I’m still not done deciding whether I should work on my first chakra or my third. Part of me is wondering if I can do a bit of both. Or alternate days, or something. In any case, “stuff about chakra 1″ is definitely on my reading list.

And I’m done!

Asking for stuff in the comments.

So I haven’t come up with a snazzy not-stolen-from-Havi name for that yet.

I also totally feel bad for asking for specific things in the comments.

And completely ambivalent about responding to comments. I find responses really hard, and I’m experimenting with giving myself permission not to respond. However, I really want there to be friendly discussions in the comments, and it’s kind of impossible to foster that if I don’t take part in them. Plus, I totally don’t want my readers to think that I don’t read and appreciate every comment.

I totally do. (Even the spam!)

So I’m going to go ahead and ask for stuff even though it doesn’t feel that comfortable.

Again, I’m not looking for advice. (You may be sensing a theme here. I really don’t get along with advice.)

But it’d be great to hear what came up for you reading this, or what you’ve noticed about yourself this week.

Yay, comments!