Category Archives: Self Care

You Are Here

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By J.C. Schildbach, MA, LMHC, ASOTP, Carbon-based being

If any of you pay all that much attention to this blog, then you may have noticed it’s been a little quiet over the last few weeks.

When I look at it objectively, the inactivity here makes plenty of sense. I caught a nasty summer cold at the same time I had a lot of extra work at my second job, along with the usual work at my full-time job, which has been predictably plagued by the summer vacations and seasonal staffing changes, leading to workload strains.

I was also trying to finish some of those summer projects—particularly the pressure-washing and re-coating of the deck. Even in summer, trying to get the weather to cooperate with my days off can be a challenge, not to mention my complete inability to accurately predict how long any project will take me. I’m working on a formula that is something like AT = h x 4 + 36d, where AT = actual time, h = the total number of hours I predict something is going to take, and d = days.

Whatever the equation or excuses, it’s not like I haven’t had plenty to write about. Hell, I’ve even cranked out a thousand-plus words on each of a few posts—a follow-up piece to one I wrote about a conversation I had with my niece; and one on Will Hayden of “Sons of Guns” getting arrested for allegedly raping his daughter repeatedly over the course of two+ years. (Just now, it occurred to me that the way to make those two posts work might be to combine them and dump at least half of what I wrote). When I couldn’t make these newer efforts work out, I tried re-tooling some things I had written earlier that I never liked enough to post. But all of it was turning into disjointed, bland, repetitive…stuff…stuff that I couldn’t quite untangle and reweave to the level I wanted. Trying to make any of it work at all started to feel too much like drudgery and burdensome obligation.

There were other things going on as well—upsetting situations with friends that, although, or perhaps because, I couldn’t do anything about them, were very draining. On top of that I was jumping through hoops to try to get adjustments made to the particulars of a contract, after spending over a month jumping through hoops to get to the point where any contract had been established at all. Expressing an intention to walk away rather than trying to fix anything more turned out to be just the thing to motivate a real resolution. Now why hadn’t I thought of that sooner?

A number of valued co-workers have also been moving on to what I hope are greener pastures for them, pastures that I hope will not become so lush and large that they put us out of contact. Among those who are moving on is a talented, funny, and inspirational artist.  Another who has made the big career shift is an ever-observant thinker who, with a few counselor-ly questions and observations—including pointing out the need to ‘mourn’ or otherwise acknowledge the little losses, such as co-workers moving on—has repeatedly helped me recognize whether I’m actually charting a course, or merely bobbing about in the tides.

Straddling the line of done and undone, looking for the passage to motivation.

Straddling the line of done and undone, looking for the passage to motivation.

I could turn this into a more deliberate post about self-care and minding one’s moods—about paying attention to those signs of situational depression—like pushing too hard and not having enough fun when trying to write one’s blog pieces. But really, getting this out was just about writing something that wasn’t a big struggle to be clever or original or even relevant. It was about scanning the map for that red dot or arrow that says, “You Are Here” so that maybe I could make my way to an exit and head back home.

In truth, none of the points I mentioned above are completely resolved. But at least I decided to go find that big, light-up plexiglass mall-map rather than wandering about looking at things I don’t want or need.  And now that I have some idea of where I’m at, it might be a little easier to get back to where I parked my car…after I hit a restroom.

 

 

 

Not Oriented to Day/Date

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by Jonathan C. Schildbach, MA, LMHC, ASOTP

In any good vacation, there comes a point where the day and date are completely lost to one’s immediate recall.

I’m not talking about the “I keep thinking it’s Thursday, but it’s only Wednesday,” kind of thing that happens anytime there’s a holiday or some other minor shift in one’s schedule…or that just happens from time to time for no apparent reason. I’m talking about hitting that point where you make the definitive claim, “It is Thursday,” when it is only Wednesday.

On my latest vacation, this happened Saturday night, or, rather, Sunday morning, when, with the wind outside too severe to build a fire and sit out under the stars, I had flopped out in the living room of the rental beach house with my (adult) niece and nephew, to knock back a few, b.s., and flip channels as we half-watched TV. I suggested they could tune in “Saturday Night Live,” then quickly retracted my suggestion, believing I was righting myself by saying it was only Friday night.

My nephew said drily, “Uh, no…it’s Saturday.”

“It’s actually Sunday,” my niece further corrected. Sure enough, we were all of two minutes into Sunday…assuming it really was Sunday.

Since my niece, in charge of the remote at the time, did nothing to confirm that it really was Saturday (like switching the channel to NBC so I could see that a “Saturday Night Live” rerun was really on), and the on-screen programming guide—still up in the realm of NatGeo’s “Drugs, Inc.”—showed the time, but not the day or date, I had to puzzle through the events of the day, and previous days, to try to gain some kind of bearing.

That most patriotic of birds, a seagull, drifts above an American flag, bent in the wind, signaling that all is well…whatever day it is.

That most patriotic of birds, a seagull, drifts above an American flag, bent in the wind, signaling that all is well…whatever day it is.

It should have been obvious enough, as some cousins had stopped by the beach house earlier in the day, and I was well aware that they were expected on Saturday. But that little item escaped my scan of the day’s happenings. Instead, my mind floundered through things like what I had eaten earlier in the day, and what, if anything, occurred while I was out beach-walking. Finding nothing specific enough to give me the proper cues to place myself along a timeline, I counted from the days I left home—leaving me with the conclusion that it absolutely could not have been Friday night/Saturday morning.

Such occurrences give me pause when thinking that people are routinely asked what day/date it is during mental health assessments, say, at a hospital ER or an agency intake appointment, since I realize how easy it is to be thrown off once one is not tied to a schedule. (I get that asking the question is useful for a number of things, like head injuries and anything else likely to disengage somebody from reality and/or memory). But still, a few days of being away from all the appointments, shifts, and events that I am normally tracking, away from the pressure to be anywhere in particular at any time in particular, and I start to lose my grip on just what day it is.  And that can be a very healthy thing.

For the purposes of measuring the usefulness of the question about the day/date, just imagine a person on disability with few regularly scheduled places to be…or someone in assisted living who has other people attending to the details of his schedule…perhaps somebody who has been retired or unemployed for an extended period of time…an individual who has made a serious attempt to kill herself by overdose, still in a haze of medication or illicit street drugs.

Okay, that got a little dark. But there are plenty of reasons someone could become distanced from knowing the day and/or date.

If it weren’t something of a lifelong trait, I might say that my knowledge of such assessment questions informs my tendency, once I get to the point of losing my sense of time, to tilt back into the land of the worried, and start to obsess over how many days of vacation are left, and what still has to be accomplished or avoided between now and the end of the getaway. I soon find myself mentally checking the date in my head several times a day. I pester myself out of living in the now, of enjoying the blissful forgetfulness that can, and really should, tag along on vacation when you’re not required to remember much of anything except maybe how to get back to a rental in a town you’re not familiar with—which I suppose would come under ‘orientation to place and situation.’

Such worrying and failures to maintain forgetfulness are, of course, detrimental to properly sinking into a vacation—to fully resting and restoring oneself. It’s not like the others with you on vacation, or the property owners, are going to let you forget, when the time comes, that you have to leave. Of course, I suppose there’s always the possibility that you own the place where you’re vacationing, you have nowhere else to be, and you have the option of staying as long as you want. I am not yet burdened with such problems involving the absence of obligation or other relevant forms of boundlessness…perhaps one day.

Maybe it’s good to lose that day/date orientation from time to time. Such orientation necessarily serves us when we have to be somewhere or doing something at a specific time—which seems to be an increasing portion of our lives in all of our overbooked-, overscheduled-, overworked-edness, where we are constantly prodded into mild anxiety at the need to know what’s coming next.

But goal-oriented vacations are no vacations at all…at least not for me. Some people like to have vacation plans—places to be, things to see. I most enjoy vacations that involve finding a comfortable place with a nice view, then settling in for plenty of good eats, good drinks, good company, good reading…and whatever else comes about as I occasionally wander from that temporary home base.

With the array of wonderful family and friends who join us, or invite us along on vacations (as in this case), our meals, excursions, and any other interactions become occasions for a great deal of laughter.

And I laughed a lot on this most recent vacation…including the small bit of laughter when, as we pulled away from a roadside coffee drive-through on our way home, my wife asked if it was Monday or Tuesday, then ticked off a quick inventory of items trying to orient herself to the appropriate day and date.