the world is your acorn

friedapplepie posted a photo:

friedapplepie posted a photo:

Smoked oysters and herring

Yesterday I took a quick day trip down to Atlanta to see 6 day old Baby Superhero. Not a moment too soon, either. I had a decent day on Thursday, keeping busy with meetings and teaching and even a happy hour, but an empty calendar for Friday was going to be a challenge. Instead of trying to have a productive day on my own, I hit the road.

There’s something about long drives that is absolutely soothing for me. It’s somehow not the same as being alone and trapped with my thoughts at home. There’s the contextual element of being in motion, having just left something behind, with something ahead to look forward to. And in the meanwhile, there’s nothing you can do but keep driving, so you can forgive yourself for whatever’s being neglected. It doesn’t make much sense, but that’s how it happens for me. When I’m in the car on a long road trip, I somehow find a kind of peace. Yesterday I thought I’d enjoy catching up on podcasts and maybe even start an audiobook, but instead I just blasted music, let my thoughts wander, and looked around.

When I got to Atlanta I met Baby Superhero, held him for hours while he slept and grunted and twitched and waved his arms around. I put random things in his cargo pants pockets (yes, he has cargo pants), danced with him, and chatted with him about his future. We also hit Flip Burger as a nice treat for us all.

It was hard to say goodbye, but in the end I even made it home in time to watch (most of) a really shitty movie with The Little Red Haired Girl.

I should have known when I didn’t feel like eating breakfast. By lunchtime, when I couldn’t even force down the cheese sandwich I’d made myself, it was becoming clear. On the ride home, it hit me full on. I’m officially in the blahs. I won’t say depressed, because then that’d really be Trouble, and I’m not there yet. I’m still in a place where I’m thinking about how to pull myself out of it. The problem with the pre-depression blahs (and depression in general, I guess), is that it’s not because something happened. You search and you search for something that must be going wrong, that you must be unhappy about, but it’s not there. You can’t change that thing. You do, however, start to overanalyze every aspect of your life, and start to imagine things might be wrong, creating trouble where there is none. Danger.

So, what now? Catalogue the positives, find activities that get you going, remind yourself that you’re ok, get some perspective. Fight the urges to feel shitty about yourself and about the world around you. Fight the urges to shut yourself in and down and wallow and implode.

I found myself feeling sort of bummed yesterday, as I tried to get some work done from home.  Could be the anxiety surrounding preparing for the conference and the baby’s cast and not getting my proposal done, could be tiredness, could be February, could be stagnation.  Who knows.  It was a feeling that I associate distinctly with much of high school, although I’ve had it since.  A feeling like I wanted to crawl out of my skin or punch something hard or explode screaming into a million pieces.  Back in the day, I responded with self destructive behaviors.  Now, I’m looking for better solutions.  I feel much better today, so that’s encouraging.

For yesterday,

A beautiful moment: It was a grey, rainy, thunderstormy day yesterday. In the morning I went up to go get the baby when she’d just woken up from her nap. She was lying in her crib quietly, looking at the curtained window. I watched her for a little, while flashes of lightning reflected off her face, before she noticed me.

A funny moment:  Before the cast, the baby loved her jumperoo, and even when she wasn’t in it she bounced up and down all the time.  We were really worried that being immobilized from the waist down would be upsetting for her.  Yesterday we found that, where there’s a will, there’s a way.

A delicious moment: Fancy cheese, sent as a gift from my brother, eaten with The Little Red Haired Girl, while the baby sat in her bean bag and devoured her dinner of turkey and veggies, including her first leeks.

A challenging moment: In the moment that I started to recognize that antsy crazy feeling, I started to try and figure out what to do about it. Once, soon after college, I took a bunch of old, crappy tennis balls and a baseball bat, drove to the ocean, and hit balls as far as I could. Bad for the environment, but felt amazing. Yesterday I decided to take the dog on a run. Not quite the same, but helped.

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