Crazy is scary

This is not a funny blog post. There are no pictures. It’s about mental illness. Most of the time, I’m only 40% mentally ill.

That’s not right; it’s not illness when it’s only 40%. At 40%, it might be called creative or unorthodox or imaginative or intuitive. Or fun or uninhibited or outspoken. Maybe even probing and problem-solving.

But even that 40% comes with a struggle to maintain. I have to watch that I don’t tip over. I don’t touch, taste, or take anything that would mess my mind. I stopped reading Hermann Hesse novels in college. I exercise, I try to straighten out messed-up sleep patterns, I try to expend creative energy. I am a high-functioning crazy person.

But every now and then – rarely – I become 85% of whatever it is. And then, it’s just crazy.

Crazy is scary.

Nothing looks the same when I’m 85%. Reality leaks. The fronts peel off and sadness leaks out. If I look too long at it, it un-reals itself. Or maybe none of that happens outside of me, but inside of me, I know it’s lurking. It’s just waiting to leak. I have to be vigilant.

And then I succumb. I examine it, stare at it, poke it and prod it. I want to get inside this other-ness. It is so complex and compelling, but whether it’s sad or not, it consumes. I can either get to the alive-ness in the world (up) or the sadness in the world (down) …  if I just probe deeper. And deeper. I’m not sure if I’m seeking to understand or if I’m beyond understanding and just merging with unreality. Things “appear” that may or may not really be there.

Have I lost you yet? I’m pretty sure the rest of the world is not 85-percenters. The problem is, you still only know my regular-old 60% which is now down to 15%, and so I’m not even me (to you). So if the me you know is not even present, then I am isolated. There is the world of people … and there is me, without connection.

85% is lost in a mental world, so 85% can’t write or talk or draw. 85% is not creative or productive. 85% can only hide. 85% faked being normal.

The little 15% keeps trying to push on. It always makes sure to wash my hair. With dirty hair, I might be a full-on 100%, and then I am lost. But if 15% pushes too hard, enters a practical world, there’s the possibility of failure. “No, I cannot buy stamps. I will have to talk to the post office lady.” And maybe I can do it, or maybe I have to leave with the crushing realization that I’m probably down to 10%.

I went out to lunch. I think I blathered, or else I froze up. I fell to 10%.

I could talk to my friend Laurie, and she would understand; but Laurie jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, so I can’t. My friend Jennifer told me once that she had no one to talk to about it, and I said (because I was at 60% and feeling good), “Jennifer, you just need more crazy friends.” I was her crazy friend, but Jennifer died, too.

I think I need more crazy people in my life. Crazy people can sniff out other crazy people, but I must have stopped sniffing. How did I get so normal?

Ha ha. That is a funny line.

I am married to a reality anchor. Thank God. He looks at me, utterly clueless. Maybe he’s not clueless, maybe that’s just me being trapped in my head and positive no one’s head can ever be in the same place. He suggested a walk in the woods. No, no, no! Too much seeping reality and free roam brain! He suggested orienteering, and once we got past the registration table, it was just us and clues. My brain had to work on clues and could escape all its other workings.

Afterwards, I washed my hair.

When our daughter was very little, we stuck glow-in-the-dark stars on her bedroom ceiling. She screamed at us to turn the light back on. We thought we’d have to pull them down, but she ran to get her fairy wings, climbed up on her dresser, and told us to turn the lights back off. Then she flapped her arms and flew amongst the stars.

I cried. She was my daughter. She was flying, but maybe she’d crash. Maybe she’d just be “troubled.” Maybe she’d inherited my 40%. I told my doctor, and she said, “Maybe you just have to teach her to land.” I hope I have.

For myself, I’m always trying, always landing (so far). Today, I’m back up to 40%. I thought you might be interested in the craziness among you, about where I go when I’m gone.

That’s all.

To Begin

I think I’m getting better.

One day, I woke up and physically felt my depression LIFT. Yes, grand pianos came up, off my shoulders, and floated away. I was going to write about my cure.

But that was an illusion.

Facebook kept telling me “People haven’t heard from Our Third Thirds in a while. Add a post.” Only today did I look at the blog and realize I’ve been “gone” for months.

During that time, I’ve struggled through Ginger Bugs and conquered them. I now have ginger beer! That is a victory. I have planted a garden. That is a victory. Tim and I took a trip, saw Shakespeare, redwoods, and the daughter. That was a victory. Nevertheless, I watch Tim as he industriously builds and plasters and sands and paints and rakes topsoil and seeds and waters and mows. I occasionally do a really good job cleaning the bathroom. That is a victory.

I re-read Allie Brosh’s Hyperbole and a Half, trying to remember her cure for depression. She discovered a kernel of corn under the refrigerator, found it hilarious, and her depression broke.

I haven’t found my kernel of corn.

A couple of days ago, I went for a run (despite the knee that isn’t supposed to run any more). I only went two miles, but I could feel my body moving through air. I’m not fast, and it was raining, but I was moving through air. That was a little piece of corn.

I got involved in the World Cup. I remembered players’ names, rooted for underdogs, marveled at physical prowess. To watch the last games at Beartooth Theatre, I had to get up at 5 a.m. That night, I had Ideas. I had to write them down. So many Ideas, I never went to sleep. I was so groggy, I ran into the guy delivering coffee to the audience and spilled coffee all over myself.

Ideas, Ideas, Ideas! Having them is one thing; putting them down on paper and drawing pictures is another. It seems that was the insurmountable hurdle. And yet, and yet….

Here I am! I could do it. Something happened. I could physically pick up a pencil and my sketchbook and … begin. I can make no predictions, draw no conclusions, guarantee no results; at most it’s a cure-ish. But I began. I’m here.

A Snag

My Third Third has hit a snag.

Me.

When I am terribly depressed, I still go to social events, fulfill my commitments, wash my hair, and do laundry. I volunteer. I get out of bed.

Unfortunately, I do that while dragging grand pianos around on my feet. Everything takes an enormous amount of energy, and I’m oomph-less. Which mostly you probably wouldn’t ever know because I am so very high-functioning and well-trained not to ever be oomph-less in public. Mostly, I look and sound energetic.

 What I can’t do is write.

I do get inspired and energized by art and theater, a good book or movie, and good conversation. My curiosity still works. But lately, that only lasts for the nanosecond in time while I’m in the theater or the conversation or the activity. Joy doesn’t linger. Mostly, it only makes rare appearances.

Writing happens at home when I’m all by myself. I don’t have to ratchet up for company, and I’m not distracted by the brief interlude of fun. I’m just sitting at my computer with just me.

And my lack of motivation.

And the whirling thoughts that come with that.

And the grand pianos.

I feel a need to explain (to you? to myself?) where I’ve gone in my head for the last six weeks as the blog went quiet. The blog went quiet; my mind went noisy. Bad noisy. This post is a fight to the light, a reach for interior quiet.

Unwritten rule: Never blog while depressed. Because then I end up with posts like this. But maybe, if I get this one out of my system, the pump will be primed and I’ll be able to write again.

The thing is, if you know me, you’d think of me as my funny stories. Well, yes, I still have lots of funny stories. But they travel with my sad heart. They’re a team.

I can’t just jump in and tell you about the probiotic soda class I took and the bottles of ginger beer and carbon dioxide waiting to explode in my pantry. It would seem so fake. So here’s this big sad thing hovering over me … and I’m going to tell a funny story?

We’ll see.

Two months ago, I took a class on “Design Your Energy (and your life).” Instead of trying to manage our time, we were asked to manage our energy. We had to list our top energy giving or energy draining activities in a week and then make a graph with energy going up or draining down.

I realized that all my things took lots of energy to make them happen so they could give energy afterwards. In order to go on a refreshing and exhilarating camping trip, for example, you have to pack, organize, plan, make arrangements. That takes energy. So my graph had activities going up and down, but they mostly went up. That was a surprise to my energy-drained self, reminding me that any energy drain yielded a reward.

Three months later, my graph looks much different. Things take a lot more energy to get above the line. Staggering and paralyzing energy. And sometimes I ruin the reward by crying. It’s those grand pianos.

Why would I ever tell you all this? Why would I subject anyone to the pathetic whining of a self-absorbed crazy lady? I think it goes back to why I even started this Third Thirds blog: to understand, to maybe connect with people going through the same passages, to gain some clarity about ups and downs and detours on my Third Third path. Sometimes there’s a restless unease, a disturbance of the spirit before creativity strikes. If I can verbalize, I can move on. Maybe if you’re in this place, too, you will feel less crazy.

Because deep in my heart, I believe that crazy is valuable. Stigmatized and painful, but valuable. Within limits.

And maybe your reward is a funny story I can tell tomorrow.

Contentment Lurks

Let me introduce myself. A therapist once told me I was an Enneagram 4. She said 4s look at a room and say it would be beautiful with a chair over in that corner, and that’s absolutely true as 4s add creativity, but 4s tend to focus on what’s missing. That’s all I know about enneagrams and 4s. I also know I’m a Pisces/Aries cusp, for whatever that’s worth. I also know I’m bipolar. And it’s dark outside.

So mostly, I live in a world of lots of unlimited possibilities that feel impossible. I collide with things and events, try inadequately, do them wrong, and mostly don’t fit. I can find my way into a profound depression at the drop of a hat and spend most of my time working my way out of one. With tiny bursts of elation in between. My glass is often half empty … unless it’s overflowing.

But every now and then,

once in a while,

just occasionally,

simple contentment settles in me.

Sophie, the adult daughter, was in town. She’d raved about a book, and I put a hold on it at the library. When it came in, she said, “Let’s go to the library, get the book. Now.” We did. It’s a 700-page book! (Who reads a 700 page book?!? Oh, no. Another insurmountable chore...)

We came home. She went into the living room.

I did laundry.

“Where are you?”

“I’m putting things away.”

“Where are you now?”

“Just washing up.”

“Where are you NOW??? Come into the living room and read with me.”

I did.

“What page are you on? Don’t you like it?”

I did! We sat in the living room and read.

The next day we had friends over. We had LOTS of friends over. (4ish Barbara said, “Oh, no, there won’t be enough food.” Judith, my role model who looks at life through the prism of abundance, said, “There’ll be enough food. Friends will bring.” Judith is a miracle of non-4.)

Long after our friends left and Tim and I were putting away LOTS of food, the twenty-somethings were still playing and laughing in the living room. Laughter rocked the house. Sophie turned to us and said, “This was a great party!” It was. I am part of a community, and that community was in our house (even though I wasn’t a very good hostess because I was distracted a lot of the time).

That night, I couldn’t sleep. Sophie had gone out and hadn’t come home. I worried. I thought of that nightmare that always peeks around the corner.

In the morning, she said she’d gotten in earlier. I hadn’t heard her.

Tim and I took her to the airport. She’s off to her own New Year’s Eve party. We’ll see her in March.

I lay down on the couch. The couch that Deena had noticed at the party and said it must be heaven to lie on that couch and read. It is my spot. I pulled out the book. (I’m on page 300 now.)

I looked around at the living room and didn’t see the plants that need trimming, the old videos that need culling, the pillow that needs repair. I didn’t fret that I should be exercising or out in the air, that I hadn’t written or painted in a while.

I looked at my living room, and it looked like home. A home with scraggly plants, old videos, and a torn pillow. (And although I thought about all the refugees without homes, I didn’t WORRY about them right then and there.)

I let contentment in.

I lay there – with that book – in the right place for me in that moment. The universe was good, I was in it, and I fit.

Tomorrow I won’t fit, but today, I remember that I did.

Happy New Year.

One foot in front of the other

I’d hoped that by my Third Third, I would have achieved some Wisdom. I thought Wisdom would be kind of mellow, that I’d feel content and solid and calm.

I spent election day happily welcoming A-->L and M-->Z voters  (A-->Ls beat M-->Zs 656 to 491, as expected). Then I heard the results. So now I’m processing this all, and it’s taking me a long time. Sometimes I cry, sometimes I am angry angry angry. Sometimes I’m vindictive; sometimes I’m passive. None of it feels like Wisdom. It’s an Elisabeth Kübler-Ross process. Bear with me.

Day One, Wednesday
Overpowering grief settled on me, overwhelming futility, despair, and sadness. A lifetime of fighting mental other-ness and I succumbed, for the first time, to not getting out of bed. I stayed there. Even my mother’s death didn’t put me there; the election put me there.

It wasn’t because my candidate lost. My candidates mostly always lose. I live in a “red” state; most people vote differently from how I do. I can handle that.

In fact, it’s precisely because I’m “very blue” that I have been saying all along that people left out of prosperity aren’t stupid. The stupid ones are the 1% that thought they could keep this up forever, that they could keep people scraping by while they lived at the top of the food chain.

But it’s turned out that prosperity may not have really been the issue at all. One Trump supporter told me America needed to return to the time “when men were men,” when women didn’t act like men, when there weren’t so many homosexuals around. One said, “We’ll never go back to Black again.” And the anti-Semitism has been so overt I can pick it up without a “dog whistle.”

I believe in making America great again. If we’re in our Third Third, we share the same decades, but they weren’t the same for all of us. Some of us couldn’t buy homes in certain areas or swim in their pools. We girls couldn’t take shop class and play the sports we might want to. Some of us were discouraged from applying to certain colleges because they didn’t take “our kind.” Some of us couldn’t vote.

That’s not the great America I want to return to. In fact, returning to that America would mean my America was dead. I knew my mother would die; I didn’t know my America would.

Day Two, Thursday
I feel like every single person who voted for Donald Trump is telling me I have no place in America. They’re telling me my daughter has no place here. They’re telling me my gay family and friends, my Muslim students, my Black friends, my Spanish-speaking friends have no place here. In fact, I probably have the wrong friends. Oh, maybe they’ll make an exception for me because they know me, but the world they want to return to has no place for me.

Maybe the Trump voters felt like all the changes in society meant they have no place here. Where could they go to get away from gays, from bossy women, from “Happy Holidays”? From black lives mattering, from people speaking Spanish? From people wanting to limit guns sold to mentally ill people?

But we’re just one country geographically. How are we going to share?

Day Three, Friday
But how can we share a country with people who want us not to exist? Are gay people supposed to vaporize? Non-Christians, too? People who speak other languages?

Let me try an example, a very personal one. Maybe you think America was great because there was prayer in school. But I have a different memory: I spent every morning of my elementary school years being forced to pray to Jesus – not my religion – in public school. On Fridays, when class was released at lunch time for catechism, only the Brown kids remained. Let me tell you how much our teachers liked that. Let me tell you what it was like when I was told to stand up at Christmas concerts because I was different: “Santa will never come to Barbara’s house.”

And I was in privileged America. My parents could buy a house in a white neighborhood, watch it appreciate in value, and create a nest egg for the future. Black families were denied that option.

Ask me if that’s the great America I want to return to.

I’ll tell you what I miss about America, the one I wouldn’t mind returning to. I miss common courtesy. I miss kindness. Now violence, bigotry, and meanness have been unleashed. People are saying things OUT LOUD that are appalling and threatening. Swastikas are being painted on store windows, the KKK is planning a victory parade, our new president bragged about sexual assault. He incited this and condoned this, and people voted for this.

It was here that I’d written that if someone didn’t vote, they couldn’t complain. And now I’ll say that if they voted for Trump, they have to own it. They can’t say, “I didn’t know it would be like this” or “I was just being a good Republican.” The whole campaign functioned on a racist, anti-Semitic basis at its core, and if they didn’t speak against it, they have to own it.

I’ve often wondered how the people who screamed at Black children integrating schools in the South, who were photographed with their hateful signs, felt years later when those photographs re-surfaced. Did they say, “It was different back then” or “I see I was wrong”? Did they own the damage they caused, the fear and terror they put into a young child’s life? And what about the silent people who let them do it?

It was hard to find a Nazi after World War II, and eventually, it may be hard to find a Trump supporter. People living near Auschwitz could claim they didn’t know what was going on, but I will MAKE SURE people know the damage they wreak. I am an avenging angel. I am Rage.

Day Four, Saturday
Garrison Keillor wrote that “Democrats can spend four years raising heirloom tomatoes, meditating, reading Jane Austen….” and I am outraged. How can someone tout privilege like that? How can someone dismiss the rightful concerns of so much of the population? The Democratic Party is part of the problem. They got us into this mess because they protected their inner circle, they catered to the 1%, they didn’t listen! No one in power was listening! People are being left out of prosperity, out of opportunity!

No one is listening!

Yes, I sound like a Trump supporter. Bernie supporters start at the same place, with the people who’ve been left out.

I shared a house once with a young man who told me he wasn’t into the political work I was doing. He said letting more people have “some” meant he would have “less,” whether it was money or power or even access. He was not into sharing if he could hold onto “all.”

Now I’m angry at everyone.

Day Five, Sunday
I see Arrival, the movie, and I step out of my angry present. Wisdom, I think, is always relearning empathy. Do you know my reasons? Do I know yours? I have not stood in your shoes and you have not stood in mine.

I have spent most of my professional life crossing divides, whether labor with management, political positions, social causes. I have taught, lectured, and run entire programs about “seeking first to understand.”

My Third Third is not the time to start demonizing people.

Whew.

As many of my friends have been consoling sobbing daughters over the last few days, my friend Helen told hers it wasn’t like after other elections, it was more like after her cancer diagnosis: “It wasn’t at all hard to decide what to do then – NOT run away and hide … or give up and give in to pessimistic projections of a doomed future. The only viable option for me was to fight as hard as I could and force myself to believe in an eventually positive outcome, despite the awful things I’d have to endure along the way.”

It’s going to be very, very hard if our climate is destroyed for that future; if families are broken up over papers and documentation; if more children grow up afraid. So I will stand with Standing Rock on Tuesday, I will march with a million women in January, and I will continue to teach English to refugees and immigrants. I am a brave Big Mouth – here and elsewhere – but I hope I will be a kind one. I miss kindness.

Post-Vacation Blues

Re-entry is hard.

Really hard.

I got home and saw the mountain of a month of mail – junk, magazines, bills, newsletters. I sagged under the weight of it, both literally and spiritually. The junk is easy; it’s the “do-something-with” pile that overwhelms me. The renew-my-membership or this-is-your-new-PIN or please-switch-to-automatic-deposit or look-through-the-catalog-because-the-30-year-old-sheets-finally-died. Or the simple but overwhelming pile: “read me.”

 And I’m not even talking about doing the taxes.

Then I looked around the house. Tim had cleaned, vacuumed, swept, laundered, put away for the summer, all that. He was great. (It may have all happened the day before I returned; I’ll never know.) But there were still things I needed to do. Chores, maintenance, obligations.

Not to mention confronting the need to GET IN SHAPE for the Chilkoot Trail hike.

There was the thrill of the Defiant Requiem, but then…. My life felt like the mountainous pile of mail: it had to be endured, chipped away at, slogged through.

Someone said the problem with not working is that you never have “time off.” No weekends; no 5:30, it’s over. But in New York City, I had Vacation. Real vacation. From chores, commitments, mail. All I had were interesting things waiting for me to pursue them, enjoy them, plan more of them.

Remember when getting mail was a treat? You’d race to the mailbox to get there first? When I was about ten, I wrote to every airline, asking for their calendar. I got spectacular calendars with glorious pictures from around the world; I lived for the mailman.

Same with the phone. It rang and you were electrified with possibility.

Now? Oh, yuck.

In New York City, I lived with the six shirts I brought, the three pairs of pants. Instead of all my paints and art supplies, I had nine colors, three pencils. Dinner was two bowls, a fork and spoon, one glass. Back home, I have a closet and a dresser of clothes, a kitchen of dishes and equipment, a pantry of supplies. An office of paper, bookshelves of books.

I wanted to fire bomb my house.

I think of myself as a high-functioning depressive. I don’t lie around in bed; I do get moving. But it doesn’t seem to influence my mood. Recognizing that fire bombing the house was a tad extreme, I started Getting Rid of Stuff. I have moved out planters, jars, knick-knacks. I am eying everything with venom: “You are crowding my life: Get Out!”

But that’s not it really.

The “it really” is my life. This Third Third. I still need a theme, an overarching purpose, and I don’t know what that is. New York City proved I could have fun, but when I saw Laura Poitras’ Astro Noise exhibit – just one example – and the life work she’s done on exposing injustice, torture, and surveillance, I think, “That’s valuable, worthwhile, important.”

New York confirmed that I’m a very good “appreciator.” I really, really appreciate all the terrific things other people do.

But right now, the biggest thing crowding my life is me.

Don’t worry. I’m not going to drown you in the Black Hole. But I am still trying to figure all this out, this Third Third business. (Someone once told me he’d never heard the expression “figure it out” so much till he met me….)

Okay, the mood has broken: I’m back.

Stop! Do you see a pattern here?!

I’m leaving on vacation to New Orleans this week so I’ll be offline for about ten days. (Attention: thieves, burglars, and arsonists) But before I go, I’ll start by telling a little story from my second third.

A while after Tim and I were married, everything about him started irritating me. No, it was beyond irritation; it was the D-word. How had I gotten myself mixed up in this marriage thing? to him? Now I was just angry, full of regret, and searching for escape.

We went to a counselor. She asked if we were there to figure out how to separate or how to stay together. “Separate,” I said. We had a couple of visits and then had to take a break; we’d previously made plans for a trip to Mexico (when I still liked him), and we’d be away.

But after the trip, we never went back to her. Had no problems. Love was restored.

Just about a year later, our marriage was (in my opinion) back on the rocks. Any fix must have been temporary. This was a bleak story of a marriage that could not be saved. So we went back to the counselor. But again, we had to take a break for a previously planned trip to South America. True Alaskans, we always make sure to head to sunlight, sunshine, and warmth in the winter.

A little dose of light, and we canceled any future visits to the counselor. Life and love were good.

The next year, the counselor said, “Stop! Do you see a pattern here?! You always come to me the third week in January, and then you go to Central America in February. Why don’t you schedule your trip for the third week in January and then you might never have to see me?”

Worth her weight in gold that counselor! We made our light-seeking trips earlier – have done it ever since – and never saw her again. My mood stopped sinking as low as it did back then because now I knew what was going on. But even dawn simulation lights and other remedies just weren’t enough to keep me … pleasant. I needed my infusion of light to come from natural reality. Just earlier.

So, the marriage was preserved, and the lesson learned. Tim and I are leaving on vacation this third week in January. Oh, but this has been a snowless winter. There’s no snow to reflect back the minimal light we have, no snow to be out and about in. No cross-country skiing, no winter wonderland. It’s even hard to find addresses in the dark, to drive on certain roads. It is dark, dark, dark. Not even crisp and cold dark; it is soggy, wet, dingy dark. (Attention: tourists and visitors)

So I looked back on my last few posts, and I see the pattern there! All that moaning, all that doom and gloom. Depression and lethargy, DVD binges and sleep disturbances. In a snowless winter, I needed to be out of here earlier!

At least, by my Third Third, I’d learned it had nothing to do with my marriage. Thank heavens I wasn’t dragging us back to marriage counselors. Now, whether Tim might feel differently … hmmm, I’m not pushing my luck: he had to deal with that zombie on the couch, the voice from the abyss.

See you all in about ten days!

Anatomy of a Descent

The problem with getting depressed in your Third Third is that you’re missing the guard rails that keep you on track. There is no job where you have to be at the desk; no kids you have to get up for school. Even your volunteer teaching is on winter break. There is nothing forcing you to suck it up: you are free to fall into the abyss with no hand holds.

On Monday and Tuesday, I felt the mood descending. I was like a balloon slowly deflating, air leaking out of me, but I had some scheduled distractions and engagements to keep me afloat. But Wednesday, there was nothing on the calendar.

The night before, I’d posted the blog about my travails with the Internet and drawn the picture of a hysterical me. Immediately, regret and panic took over: I re-examined every sentence, positive they were signs of a woman too desperate, too over the edge. Positive I’d missed the humor entirely, that I’d gone too public with my craziness. My God, I’d even given her crazy eyes.

I worried about this all night long. I never went to sleep. I tried reading, but the woman in the novel wasn’t in a good head place either. Besides, my whirling thoughts were drowning out any thoughts the author could possibly have put on the page. At 5, I decided I had to turn on the T.V. It’s in the living room. I got out of bed.

Evidence of descent #1: Watching T.V. in the daytime. (I have never done this before in my life. This is a really Big Sign.)

But at 5 a.m. in an Alaska winter, you could still count it as “night.” Thank heavens for Netflix. I discovered Blacklist. Not only does it have mysteries and twists in the plot, but it has a zillion episodes. After each, Netflix gave me a few seconds and then would automatically feed me another episode. I chain-smoked Blacklist episodes. When Netflix was worried I’d left, it asked if I was still watching, and I told it to “continue.”

Evidence of descent #2: I did this for 13 hours straight.

My mother battled depression most of her life. I think her solution was to stay busy, mostly cleaning, dealing with four kids, working till she was 72. She did things to make sure she was “up and at ’em” – she always made the bed as soon as she got out of it.

Evidence of descent #3-6: I never made the bed. I didn’t even brush my teeth, comb my hair, or put on a bra.

I didn’t have to be anywhere, didn’t have to look presentable for anyone, didn’t have a reason to engage. This was my Third Third: I could create my own dungeon.

Evidence of descent #7-a million: Whirling thoughts.

In between Netflix episodes, I thought some more. I thought about how I’d gotten off track in my Third Third, how I’d abandoned my future of worthwhile employment. How this blog idea was an egotistical amateurish pursuit. How I was looking flabby and old. How my daughter made such thoughtful, measurable resolutions for her new year and how I didn’t even make resolutions because I wasn’t going to fulfill them anyway. How we’d had people over and had a great time, but it was over and now seeing friends again would take Effort. Mostly, about how my “otherly-mental,” double-edged sword of a brain would always betray me eventually.

Evidence of descent: You don’t even muster movement when exposed.

Tim came home for lunch. Now it really was daytime … and I was still watching T.V. Even embarrassment didn’t move me. Tim said the freezing temperatures had refrozen the lake, there was ice skating again. What I suspected he was really saying: “What’s the matter with you? Get up and get out, get some exercise, see some daylight.” I went to the bathroom and then back to the couch.

Evidence of descent: refusal to take remedial steps

You think, “Go ahead, force yourself, put on your skates,” but you don’t. And then you decide you’re sabotaging yourself and you’re the problem. Which you already knew.

Towards evening, the phone rang. It was a friend.

Evidence of recovery: I picked up the phone

I’m not sure if our conversation cured me. I honestly think 13 hours of T.V. did it. (I did finally turn to Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries for some fluff so I could eventually sleep.) I think I had to get my thoughts out of my head. That night, I slept soundly and thoroughly. I went to a morning meeting and luncheon, had a great time with friends, went ice-skating.

The freedom of our Third Thirds is both liberating and terrifying. Mostly, I have quiet, non-busy times when I can feel content and reflective, letting my thoughts drift pleasantly without the constraints of Job or Kid. But I also have unquiet, non-busy times when my thoughts – unconstrained by the usual “guard rails” of Job or Kid – drive over the cliff.

Moral of this story: this Third Third is a new road under construction. Just as I’m laying the route and building the road, I have to include new guard rails, new structures that work for me personally. (Not to include 13 hours of T.V.)

The Over-examined Life

Back about 15 years ago, I discovered that other women were shaving their armpits and legs. Somehow, I’d missed that memo and thought that during the ’70s, we’d all radicalized and stopped doing that. It was one of those “Uh, oh. Uh, oh: Am I outside the standard deviation again?” moments.

Yesterday, in the midst of writing this blog, I crashed under another of those moments. I was writing about Dr. Atchley’s stages of retirement, about disenchantment spurring reorientation. That makes total sense to me: when you feel things aren’t working, you change direction. But I began wondering what the time frame of that stage might be: When would disenchantment spur reorientation? After six months, a year? Is there a stretch of disenchantment leading to a period of reorientation? Does reorientation end?

Which led me to the bigger question, the one about Other People. How frequently do Other People re-evaluate their lives? Does everyone reflect every day on whether his or her life had the meaning they wanted it to have? (Uh, oh. Uh, oh.) I am constantly deciding whether today – if it were followed by other days like it – would add up to a good life. And then wondering whether that’s enough because shouldn’t the whole be greater than the sum of its parts? And if not, how might I fix it tomorrow?

Suddenly, it was overwhelming. What started as a literary panic attack (How can I explain all this in the blog?) became a full-fledged onslaught of desperate self-evaluation: was all that questioning a thing to STOP? Was introspection crushing me?

I’m not sure if this has accelerated in my Third Third, what with having the time to think combined with intimations of mortality. I am after all the person who had dozens and dozens of identity crises. And I do like the philosophy that every moment is an opportunity to “repair the world,” to make a choice to do well instead of ill. So that makes for a lot of decision-making over all those moments.

So what happened yesterday was I heard all the whirring of decision-making in my head, the constant muttering of self-evaluation and I thought, “That’s the problem. It puts me too inside myself and not enough outside.”

To the rescue, my friend Linda, who emailed:

“I seem to forever be in an existential crisis of re-evaluation, self-examination, and relentless rumination and would like to get off and enjoy the moments. Maybe this time of year is not the time to expect to jump off this particular merry-go-round as reflection and rumination go along with the New Year, so my New Year’s resolution is to really enjoy my moments instead of trying to figure IT all out.”

Now Linda wrote this at 3:40 in the morning so I’m guessing she was awake and busy figuring things out, but she’s right!

And it means “Other People” includes Linda (and you perhaps?) so I’m not so outside the range of normal! Not so crazy in my own skin.

I don’t know if I’m constitutionally able to stop thinking things to death or if it’s just a deep rut I have to break out of. I was, after all, once a Philosophy grad student. When I work a job or contract, all my problem-solving is on work place problems, strategic problems, project problems, NOT how-am-I-living-my-life problems. That’s challenging and – right now – seems like a refreshing break. But writing about one’s Third Third requires personal reflection.

Living my moments is different from evaluating my moments. I’m going to remember that. It’s my New Thing.

All the world's a stage...

I think the first formalized stages I’d ever heard described were Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ five stages of grief after the death of a loved one or similar bad news.







Recently, I heard of the six stages of retirement described by gerontologist Robert Atchley:

And now, I’ve discovered the Nine Emotional Stages of Holiday Travel:

1   Nostalgia	4   Frustration	7   Annoyance
2   Anxiety	5   Calm	8   Excitement
3   Productivity	6   Happiness	9   Relief

So I guess if we were just looking at the complexity of the process, it takes more steps to do holiday travel than it does to retire, and it takes more steps to retire than to get over a loved one’s dying. Okay, I’m being facetious.

Kübler-Ross’ stages don’t begin with looking forward to something – hers are all about reacting to horrible news – so she’s missing those steps of positive anticipation. But it seems to me that the other two processes are basically the same thing: looking forward to something, making plans, confronting the reality of that which you wished for, feeling bummed, and then recovering. (The travel one has more steps because it’s a round-trip: you get to visit family – with both positive and negative anticipation … and then you get to come home.)

This is called a PGIO. I learned this in college:

After hearing this, I bet you’ll see PGIOs everywhere, too. These same five steps apply to everything:

For instance, a First Third, college example: (1) I really wanted to go to that party, (2) I called up friends to go with me, (3) place was full of drunk assholes. (4) What a waste of an evening! (5) So let’s all talk about it and hoot and laugh over at the coffee house.

Now a Third Third example:

1. My job ends in April; I can hardly wait for all that free time


2. I’m going to take an art class, finish binding those books, finish the quilt, travel


3. I seem to be drifting, not getting any of it done, and I’m not a very good artist anyway


4. Yikes, what have I done! Am I going to be this worthless and unemployed for the next 30 years?!


5. Oh, I get it: I’m making my own future. Who knew it would involve blogging, some contracts, teaching, ice skating? But I need to impose some structure for this to work.

The thing is, I have a hard time seeing these steps as describing a period of my Third Third (or any third). It makes it sound like once you move through the steps, your caterpillar has turned into the butterfly. Well, even the grief folks say that’s not true; you can keep repeating the cycle as new realizations or situations hit.

I think there are two versions of this cycle: the daily one and the Big Picture one. I had the daily one just yesterday, with the quest for the calendars: (1) Today I’ll buy my new calendars, (2) Off I go to the store, (3) They’re all out, (4) It’s taking forever to find the calendars I want; 2016 is a mess already, and (5) Wow! I found a way to get the calendars after all.

But the Big Picture one: can we only see it in hindsight? Do we only see the stages of our lives as we move out of them?

[to be continued due to the existential crisis of the author who found herself in a paroxysm of re-evaluation, self-examination, and relentless rumination]

A year's worth of posts

If this were my old newspaper column, a whole year would have already gone by – 52 weeks’ worth. Instead, it’s only been 2½ months. That’s some crazy pace. So I’m going to consider this a milestone and think about what the blog does for me.

When I started this blog, I was pretty depressed. This Third Third – and my expectations for it – was eluding me. I was floundering with no end in sight. I was beating myself up for lacking discipline, wasting time, being valueless. And I was bombarding everyone my age with “and what are you doing in your Third Third?” I was a demon at my college reunion and a one-question fanatic in my social life.

Somewhere in my vast stretch of time-wasting, I read Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh. I read the book, which developed from her blog, which is mostly pictures but also text. It’s truly wonderful, and it gave me Ideas (so it wasn’t a waste of time after all).

I don’t like reading blocks of text on the computer so I thought I’d add my doodles, too. And then, because it helped me to clarify my thoughts when I put them down – those ten things on the list in Identity Crisis #314 – I felt better.

And when I did it the next day, I felt better again. I was being creative! By the next day, I felt disciplined. And when people told me they liked it, I felt valued. When I tried drawing something difficult, capturing something just so, I felt like I was stretching myself. And when I craft a story, I have to think very hard about how to develop it, how to construct a beginning, middle, and end. I like thinking hard.

Wow, just one thing – this blog – and it could solve a whole lot of my dilemmas. And the ones it didn’t? Those were the ones friends and readers weighed in on and helped the discussion along. Relocation anyone?

Last week, probably because of the latest round of mother-care issues, I was horribly anxious. So anxious I couldn’t quiet the frantic ramblings in my head. At one point, I felt like running screaming into the street. My whole self vibrated, and I couldn’t write. So then I decided I must be “empty.” I’d used all my good ideas up. How embarrassing to announce in my blog that I’d run dry, good-bye. Third Third fizzled.

Mostly, I think I’m a glass-half-empty sort of person. When it’s not empty, it’s so-full-and-isn’t-it-so-interesting-how-that-is-and-why-is-that-the-case-because-there-are-so-many-glasses-in-the-world-and-so-many-different-things-to-fill-them-with. You get the picture. In my often black-and-white world, a glass half-empty – glasses not overflowing – might as well be completely empty. And curiosity is both the cure for a bad mood and the symptom of a good one.

Wise people would say this is a case for moderation. I’m guessing other people may have learned this by their Third Thirds. I’m slow.

But this I know: When I finally sat down and wrote this week, I felt better. Cured even. Some people do it with exercise, some people play the piano. I’m going to sit right here and tell a story about it.

On edge and sitting there

I woke from an anxiety dream last night. The kind where you have that heart-stopping, throat-closing, stomach-lifting feeling as if you’d dropped off a high-diving board. I don’t remember the dream, but I know why I had it.

I feel like I’m not doing my Third Third right. (It is a positive sign that I’m not saying I’m failing at it, but that’s the feeling.) I have one friend who hopped on a bicycle and has covered the country and is still going. Another who took up photography and is preparing for her first solo exhibition.

And I’m still sitting here.

Okay, I’ve been to Machu Picchu, been back to care for and visit my mother, explored Vermont and Portland. I’m excited by this blog and the creativity it inspires. I thoroughly enjoy the classes I teach as a volunteer, and I’m challenged by a contract I’m presently working on and the problem-solving I need to address for it.

Enough of the floor work is done and things moved back into their places (and dusted and vacuumed!) so that I’m not living in chaos.

So what gives?

In re-loading the bookshelves, I came across the giant envelope full of photos. I put it in the box with all the other unsorted, tossed-in-the-box photos. To work on the floors, I put on a pair of old jeans that needed mending. When I pulled out my sewing supplies, I saw the still-unfinished quilt. I finished browsing a magazine, tearing out a couple pages of recipes I’d like to try, and added them to the pile of many more recipes-I’d-like-to-try. The mint and chives are still unharvested from the garden, and I know it’ll be too late when snow lands on them.

I saw a movie where they said, “Sitting is the new smoking,” and here I sit. My feet developed some odd pain after the Mayor’s Half-Marathon (in June!), and I haven’t been running barely at all since then.

Yes, I know this is whining. This is WHINING. I would be horrified except that I’m making the excuse that if it’s in this blog, maybe other people will identify with it and think they’re not so alone after all. I’m still horrified.

I just don’t like feeling this way. This on-edge, unsatisfied, fidgety, uncentered feeling. Even my clothes feel uncomfortable. I guess I keep hoping for a once-and-for-all resolution to life questions, that I figure it out and I’m good. That things on my list get DONE.

I’d been excited to solve the goose poop problem at Cuddy Park. People had all come together from all different agencies with lots of good ideas. And then they all separated, and I can see that the solution for one is going to create unintended consequences for another and they really need to be brought together to decide on solutions. But I’m only a volunteer. A volunteer amongst volunteers is fine, but no one listens to the volunteer in an interdepartmental crowd. So that’s a fizzle.

I know this is all to be expected in our Third Thirds. That trying new things means some won’t work out, but that failing to try would be the real tragedy. That coming up with too many new things means some – a lot! – won’t get done. As always, I know that “If nothing changes, nothing changes.”

Okay, today I’ll put one foot in front of the other and make an appointment with the podiatrist. (!) The rain has stopped. Maybe first I’ll go out for a run.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (one of my heroes) said, “We are what we pretend to be….” So right now, I’m going to pretend to be a runner with a lift in her legs. Let’s see if that works.

Into the Light

If you guessed #3 yesterday, you win. It is easy to get depressed when you don’t know what you’re doing with your life.

So after moping a lot, finding a ton of faults in Tim, noticing every time I wasn’t included in a social event, and sagging deeper and deeper, I decided I was clinically depressed. I went to a therapist, Linda.

She had me artistically illustrate what gave me pleasure.

Drawing this gave me no pleasure. Only DVDs gave me pleasure. Lots of DVDs. A constant supply of DVDs from the library.

Let me tell you about Golden Moments. Golden Moments are when the universe lets you know that you are in the right place at the right time and all is good with you and the world. I can still close my eyes and picture the time I looked out my doorway and my friends were playing pick-up football on the green and one shouted, “Hey, B-squared, come out and play!” The sun was shining. All was good with the world.

Golden Moments happen when I’m in my living room, and my eyes survey the whole scene of what makes our home, and all is right with the world.

Intellectually, I could say, “There is always a period of restlessness and turmoil until it reaches critical mass and a creative period surfaces. Just wait for it.” Instead, I huddled with that restlessness and turmoil in my living room and couldn’t move with the paralysis of my unknown future. No Golden Moments there.

And Linda used that word, that elusive but oh-so-enthralling word:

Yes, that’s right! That’s it! That’s what I want. How could I bring joy back into my life? Not with me sitting here whining.

That’s when Linda told me about “If nothing changes, nothing changes.” (See this blog post.) In college, friends would call that a P.G.I.O – Penetrating Glimpse into the Obvious – but I took it to heart. I also visited my sister and we took a road trip to Burlington, Vermont. Burlington appears on every list of “good places to retire” so if you’re thinking relocation might solve your problems, it was a reconnaissance trip, too.

Burlington failed, but the trip succeeded. By crossing relocation-to-Burlington off my list, I had taken action. (Yes, it worked that way.)

Then I started this blog, happily sitting in my nice new room. Writing but using my hands to paint. And one day I sat in the living room, surveyed the scene, and felt comfort wash over me. And I thought maybe this is my Third Third. Maybe this is not a detour on where I’m supposed to be; maybe it is where I’m supposed to be, detour or not.

I have spent a lifetime whirling through the turbulence of my emotions, the bedlam of choices to be made, the ups and downs of events and tides. Arrhythmia was the rhythm of my life. I’ve collided with life.

This new thing, is this the wisdom of the Third Third?

Gasp.

Is this unemployment?

Groups of friends meet every week – during the day because they’re not working – and they call themselves “retired.” I’m not working, but I call myself unemployed. And even that’s not accurate because I have contract “gigs,” but mostly it means I don’t go to the same place on a regular basis, get a regular paycheck from there, and have a boss. But if you’re a certain age, people assume you’re retired.

But I think I’ll eventually get A Job so by my definition, that means I’m unemployed.

I don’t do unemployment so well. Which is odd because I unemploy myself regularly. About every five years or so, after pouring myself into the venture of the moment, I start feeling restless. I’ve taken whatever I’ve done to new heights (yeah, I think so), but when it turns into “oh, it’s April, in April we do this” and “time to gear up for October,” I start fading.

In San Francisco, running the street and subway operation of the Muni was a 24/7 job before we even had the expression 24/7. When that wore thin, I had this big dream of working internationally and was hired to run the Melbourne transit system. So I quit my S.F. job. But the visa process was so long, I was unemployed for longer than I would have liked. Ultimately, I abandoned Plan A and came to Alaska to People Mover.

In San Francisco, when you don’t have a job, you feel like you have to say to people

I felt like one day I’d look in the mirror and there’d be no reflection. Even though I took classes and got a certificate in Graphic Design, even though I was heavy into major political matters, I felt valueless.

So I wasn’t going to let a job define me again.

This is how my employment cycle works: I have a great 5-7 years. I try new things, make things happen. There are glory years of accomplishment and satisfaction, meaningful work and workplace camaraderie. Then I fade and quit. Then something else emerges.

Yeah, emerges. I look around, something captures my interest, I explore it. Eventually, I’ll talk to someone, tell them how I can fix something or make something happen for them or their organization, and a job emerges that I fill. This is a very happy process that has taken me from buses to theater companies to newspapers to leadership to early childhood.

But something went awry this time. As I looked around, I’d find a potential interest and … nah. What about this? Nah, same old, same old. Ho-hum. Ugh, no way. My whole self winced at the thought of most jobs in my field. I don’t want to sit at a computer. I want to use my hands! I taught workshops for contractors: maybe I’d like to be a tile guy. I thought I’d like to be a check-out person at the library, talking to people about their books. Maybe I would prune trees and fix all the poorly pruned trees I see around town.

I didn’t want to do what I’m very good at; I wanted to try something I’d never done before.

There are several ways to interpret this:

1. Oh, you’re so eager to explore and try new things. How exciting!


2. If you don’t figure out what you want to do soon, you will be part of the “long-term unemployed” and you’re 60 now and you’ve read all those articles about how no one wants to hire old people.


3. You sound really depressed. Nothing interests you. What’s wrong with your whole life?

You get two guesses.